[339:1] Sic.
[340:1] In allusion to that mayor who, on his first introduction to field sports, hearing a cry that the hare was coming, exclaimed, in a fit of magnanimous courage, "Let him come, in God's name; I fear him not!"
[340:2] Mackenzie's Home, p. 104. The original is in the MSS. R.S.E.
[341:1] Essays Moral and Political, published in 1741.
[343:1] From a copy transmitted by Ramsay's nephew to Baron Hume, in the MSS. R.S.E. The blank denoted above is in the copy.
[344:1] London: 8vo, printed for A. Millar. It is in the book list of the Gentleman's Magazine, for December.
[344:2] "A Delineation of the Nature and Obligation of Morality, with Reflections upon Mr. Hume's book, entitled an 'Inquiry concerning the Principles of Morals.'"
On the publication of this book, Hume wrote the following letter, addressed "To the Author of the Delineation of the Nature and Obligations of Morality," and left it with the bookseller.
"Sir,—When I write you, I know not to whom I am addressing myself: I only know he is one who has done me a great deal of honour, and to whose civilities I am obliged. If we be strangers, I beg we may be acquainted, as soon as you think proper to discover yourself: if we be acquainted already, I beg we may be friends: if friends, I beg we may be more so. Our connexion with each other as men of letters, is greater than our difference as adhering to different sects or systems. Let us revive the happy times, when Atticus and Cassius the epicureans, Cicero the academic, and Brutus the stoic, could all of them live in unreserved friendship together, and were insensible to all those distinctions, except so far as they furnished agreeable matter to discourse and conversation. Perhaps you are a young man, and being full of those sublime ideas, which you have so well expressed, think there can be no virtue upon a more confined system. I am not an old one; but, being of a cool temperament, have always found, that more simple views were sufficient to make me act in a reasonable manner; νηθε, και μἑμνησο ἀπιστειν; in this faith have I lived, and hope to die.
"Your civilities to me so much overbalance your severities, that I should be ungrateful to take notice of some expressions which, in the heat of composition, have dropped from your pen. I must only complain of you a little for ascribing to me the sentiments, which I have put into the mouth of the Sceptic in the "Dialogue." I have surely endeavoured to refute the sceptic, with all the force of which I am master; and my refutation must be allowed sincere, because drawn from the capital principles of my system. But you impute to me both the sentiments of the sceptic, and the sentiments of his antagonist, which I can never admit of. In every dialogue no more than one person can be supposed to represent the author.