Camden's Remains (1870), p. 351.
[897] 'When Mr. Hume began to be known in the world as a philosopher, Mr. White, a decent, rich merchant of London, said to him:—"I am surprised, Mr. Hume, that a man of your good sense should think of being a philosopher. Why, I now took it into my head to be a philosopher for some time, but tired of it most confoundedly, and very soon gave it up." "Pray, Sir," said Mr. Hume, "in what branch of philosophy did you employ your researches? What books did you read?" "Books?" said Mr. White; "nay sir, I read no books, but I used to sit whole forenoons a-yawning and poking the fire." Boswelliana, p. 221. The French were more successful than Mr. Edwards in the pursuit of philosophy, Horace Walpole wrote from Paris in 1766 (Letters, iv. 466):—'The generality of the men, and more than the generality, are dull and empty. They have taken up gravity, thinking it was philosophy and English, and so have acquired nothing in the room of their natural levity and cheerfulness.'
[898] See ante, ii. 8.
[899] See ante, i. 332.
[900] See ante, i. 468, and Boswell's Hebrides, Oct. 4.
[901] I am not absolutely sure but this was my own suggestion, though it is truly in the character of Edwards. BOSWELL.
[902] Sixty-nine. He was born in 1709.
[903] See ante, i. 75, note 1.
[904]
'O my coevals! remnants of yourselves!
Poor human ruins, tottering o'er the grave!
Shall we, shall aged men, like aged trees,
Strike deeper their vile roots, and closer cling,
Still more enamoured of this wretched soil?'