Here Scotchmen's heads do guard the wall,
But Corby's walks atone for all."[227:1]
In the face, both of this assurance of the limited extent of Hume's poetical efforts, and of the circumstance that he was occasionally in the practice of copying such verses as pleased his ear,[227:2] or fancy, I venture to offer the following specimens of his versification, admitting the possibility but not the probability that some minute investigator might be able to identify them as the production of a less distinguished bard. The censorious critic will probably admit their genuineness, on the plea that no one but their author would commit such verses to writing. But apart from their internal evidence, there is every reason to presume that these efforts are by Hume. The first piece is dated in the writer's hand, as if to mark the day when it was composed. With the exception of
the third in order, they all contain, in corrections and otherwise, decided marks of being composed by the person in whose handwriting they are; and they are in the handwriting of David Hume.[228:1]
Go, plaintive sounds, and to the fair
My secret wounds impart,
Tell all I hope, tell all I fear,
Each motion in my heart.
But she, methinks, is listening now