Hume in Paris.
In place of Scotch kerseys, his square, massive figure is set off with the golden broidery of a diplomat. His reputation as a philosopher and as a historian had been confirmed by all the literary magnates of Paris; and the queens of society in that gay capital, Mme. de Boufflers among them, pounced upon the big Scotch David, to be led away through the pretty martyrdoms of the salon. And he bore it bravely; he had feared, indeed, that his inaptitudes and inexperience would have made such a life irksome to one of his quiet habits; but he good-humoredly and complacently accepted the sacrifice and came to love the intoxicating incense. Sterne, who happened in Paris in those days, says that Hume was the lion of the city; no assemblage was complete without his presence. Yet he did not lose his cool philosophic poise. He carried his good humor everywhere, and an indifference that made him engaging; if arrows of Cupid were launched at him, they did not pierce through the wrappings of his thick Scotch phlegm.
Mme. d'Épinay tells a good story of these times about his taking part in some tableau where he was to personate an Eastern sovereign, seated between two beautiful Circassian damsels, to whom he was expected to show devotional assiduities of speech. But the frigid philosopher, banked in between those feminine piles of silk and jewels, only rubs his hands, slaps his knees, purses up his mouth, and says over and over, in his inconsequent French,—"Eh bien, Mesdemoiselles, vous voilà! vous voilà donc! Eh bien, nous voici!" Whereat we may be sure that his pretty companions let fall slily a disparaging "qu'il est béte!"—As if the man who had traced to their ultimate issues the subtleties of the Principles of Morals could parry and thrust with the pretty conversational foils of a Pompadour!
David Hume.
It chanced that by the unexpected withdrawal of Lord Hertford, Hume was for a time chief of the Embassy, and for the first and last time (in so full a sense) did a historian of England thus become British Ambassador to the Court of France. But Hume does not love the English or England; he resents their neglect of him; he never forgets that he is a Scotsman; it twangs in his speech; it twangs louder in his heart; he would like to live in that pleasant country of France:—"They are all kind to me here," he says; "but not one of a thousand in all England would care a penny's worth if I broke my neck to-morrow." And though his reputation is now largely upon the growth at home, still he is not pleasantly lié with the masters. Somewhat later, when by another unexpected good turn he is made Under-Secretary of State and has official position in London, he writes to Dr. Blair, of Edinboro', who has offered to give him a letter to Bishop Percy—"I thank you, but it would be impracticable for me to cultivate his friendship, as men of letters have here no place of rendezvous; and are indeed sunk and forgot in the general torrent of the world." And yet this was at a date (1763), when the Turk's Head gathering was all alive, when Sterne had recently published the last volume of his Tristram; when poor Smollett[[3]] (of Roderick Random fame) has won success by a flimsy, but popular continuation of Hume's History; when the Vicar of Wakefield was fresh (though as yet unprinted); when Mason and Gray and Warburton and Johnson were all sounding their trumpets. With such feelings of alienation it is not strange that Hume did not nestle into the hearts of great Londoners as he had nestled into the good-will of Parisians.
Under the influences of Mme. de Boufflers he tried to make a home in England for that strange creature, Rousseau, who had become an exile, and who brought with him—to the torment of Hume—all his eccentricities, his peevishness, his inhuman vanities, his abnormal sensitiveness, his wild jealousies, and his exaltations of genius. These things work a rupture between the two in the end—as they should and ought to do,—and the next good sight we have of the Scotch philosopher is in a new home of his own (1772), which he has built in the new part of Edinboro'. Twenty odd years before he had lived in the old city on an income of £50 a year; and now he lives in the new with an income of £1,000 a year. In the old times he had hardly secured place as Custodian of the mouldy Library of the Advocates; now he is the marked potentate in the literary world of Scotland. Stanch Presbyterians do indeed look at him askance, and shake their heads at his uncanny beliefs, or rather lack of beliefs. Old nurses put hobgoblin wings upon him to frighten good children; but he has stanch, loving friends among the best and the clearest sighted. Dr. Blair is his friend; excellent Dr. Robertson is his friend; his good nature, his kindness of heart, his rectitude of life, his intellectual charities, won even those who shuddered at his disbeliefs; that sceptical miasma—born in his blood—and harmful to many (as it was to himself), seemed to lose its malarious taint in the large, free, intellectual atmosphere in which the philosopher lived. Honest doubts were then, and always will be, better than dishonest beliefs; just as honest beliefs are a thousand fold better than dishonest doubts.
Death of Hume.
It was in our year of 1776—when his reputation was brightening and widening month by month, that David Hume, the author of the first scholarly History of England, died, and was buried on a shoulder of the Calton Hill, from which one may look eastward across the valley (where lies Holyrood Palace) to the Salisbury Crags on the left and to the Castle Rock on the right.
It is probable that his History will long hold place on our library shelves; its style might almost be counted a model historic style—if we were to have models (of which the wisdom is doubtful). It is clear, it is precise, it is perspicuous, it is neat to a fault. It might almost be called a reticent style, in its neglect of those wrappings of wordy illustration and amplification which so many historians employ. He makes us see his meaning as if we looked through crystal; and if the crystal is toned by his prejudices—as it is and very largely—it is altogether free from the impertinent decorative arabesques of the rhetorician. Many of the periods of which he gives the record, have had new light thrown upon them by the searching inquiries of late days. Old reputations with which he dealt reverently have suffered collapse; political horizons which were limited and gave smallness consequence, have widened; but for good, straightforward, lucid, logical setting forth of the main facts of which he undertook the record, Hume will long remain the reference book. There will be never a time when lovers of good literature will not be attracted by his pathetic picture of the career of Charles I.; and never a time when the judicious reader will accept it as altogether worthy of trust.