Garrick has what we might almost call melodramatic monument among the marbles of the Poets' corner; Reynolds has abiding memorials in the dashes of mellowed coloring and in the tender graces of those cherished portraits, some of which belong to every considerable gallery of England; Burke and Gibbon lie in quiet country places—the first near to his old home of Beaconsfield; and the historian among those southern downs of Sussex which look upon the Channel waters; his books may never have touched us to tenderness; but he bows his way out of our presence, with the grandest history belonging to the eighteenth century for a memorial.
A Scottish Historian.
David Hume.
We must not forget that hard-headed man who wrote Hume's History of England, who was born twenty-two years before the historian of Rome, and died in the year in which Gibbon was reaping his first rewards. He[[1]] was a sceptic too of even more aggressive type than Gibbon—was, like him, somewhat ungainly in person, and though of larger build and of coarser mould, possessed a cheery good humor, and a bright colloquial wit which made him sure of good friends and many. Like Gibbon he lived and died a bachelor: like him, he leaned toward continental ways of living, and like him garnered some of his highest honors in France. Of course you know his History of England—where it begins, where it ends—but we do not press examination on these points. In most editions you will find—(it should be found in all)—among the foreleaves, a short autobiographic sketch, written in his most neat, perspicuous, and engaging manner, which is well worth the close attention of every reader, even if he do not wade through the royal extensions of the History. You will learn there that David Hume was born in that pleasant border land of Scotland which is watered by the Tweed, the Yarrow, and the Teviot—where we found the poet Thomson. North of his boyish home stretched Lammermoor, and westward within easy tramping distance lay Lauderdale; but in that day these names had not been illuminated by a touch of the magician's wand, nor was his mind ever keenly alive to the beauties of landscape. Hume's childhood knew only great stretches of brown heather, bounded by bare bluish-gray heights, with the waves of the German Sea pounding on the rocky, desolate shores—where stands the ruin of Fast Castle, the original of "Wolf's Crag" of the Master of Ravenswood.
You will learn further from that precious bit of autobiography—which he calls with a naïve directness, "My Own Life"—that he was younger son of a good family; that he came to fairish education thereabout, and in Edinboro'; that his family would have pushed him to the study of law; but he—loving philosophy and literature better, and in search of some method of increasing his means for their pursuit—wandered southward to study business in the city of Bristol. This was a place of much greater commercial importance, relatively, then than now: but Bristol merchandizing presently disgusts him; and husbanding carefully his small moneys, he goes across the Channel—to study philosophy, while practising the economies of French provincial life in a small town of central France. A few years thereafter he prints his first book in London on Human Nature; and he says it fell "dead-born" from the press; but he is still sanguine and cheery; writes other essays after his return from France—hovering between Edinboro' and his old Berwickshire home; studying Greek the while, and for a year serving, as secretary, the crazy Marquis of Annandale. Shortly thereafter (1746) began his official connection with the General St. Clair, involving a new and pleasanter experience of European life. On his return, after three years, he goes to cover again in his old Berwickshire home, where he elaborates the Political Discourses—setting forth those broad views of trade and commerce, which came to larger illustration later, under the pen of his good friend Adam Smith.[[2]]
Hume's England.
In 1751 he removed from country to town—the true scene he says "for a man of letters," and established himself in a small flat of one of those lofty houses which still look down over the New City and the valley gardens, and lived there comfortably—with his sister for help mate—on some £50 a year. He tried vainly for a professorship in one of the Scottish universities, but was counted too unsafe a man. As Custodian of the Advocates' Library of Edinboro', a place which he secured shortly after—largely through the influence of lady friends—he came to that familiar fellowship with books which prompted him to the making of his History of England. He does not begin at the beginning: he tells of the Stuarts first; then goes back to the Tudors; and then back of these to the dull (dull to him and dull to us) Anglo-saxon start point: Stubbs and Freeman had not in that day made their explorative forays and set up their scaffoldings.
Hume's ambition was high and sensitive: he was intensely disappointed with the reception of the earlier volumes of his history. "I was discouraged," he says, "and had not the war been at that time breaking out between France and England, I had certainly retired to some provincial town of the former kingdom, have changed my name, and never more have returned to my native country."
But his writings had qualities which were sure in the end to provoke the reading and discussion of them by thoughtful men and women. He is known wider than he thinks; his books have been translated; Montesquieu has corresponded with him; so has a certain Mme. de Boufflers—a pet of the Paris salons—who has written gushingly of her admiration; and the stolid, good-humored, cool-blooded Hume has responded in his awkward manner; other missives, with growing confidences have passed; she always clever, and witty and full of adulation; and he clumsy and clever, and with such tenderness as an elephant might show toward a gazelle. And the shining side of life opens bewitchingly upon him when he goes to Paris in 1763 as an attaché to the Embassy of Lord Hertford.