Hume to Adam Smith.
"Edinburgh, 9th January, 1755.
"Dear Sir,—I beg you to make my compliments to the Society,[417:3] and to take the fault on yourself, if I
have not executed my duty, and sent them, this time, my anniversary paper. Had I got a week's warning I should have been able to have supplied them. I should willingly have sent some sheets of the history of the Commonwealth, or Protectorship; but they are all of them out of my hand at present, and I have not been able to recall them.
"I think you are extremely in the right, that the Parliament's bigotry has nothing in common with Hiero's generosity. They were, themselves, violent persecutors at home, to the utmost of their power. Besides, the Hugunots in France were not persecuted; they were really seditious, turbulent people, whom their king was not able to reduce to obedience. The French persecutions did not begin till sixty years after.
"Your objection to the Irish massacre is just, but falls not on the execution, but the subject. Had I been to describe the massacre of Paris, I should not have fallen into that fault. But, in the Irish massacre, no single eminent man fell, or by a remarkable death.[418:1] If the elocution of the whole chapter be blamable, it is because my conception laboured with too great an idea of my subject, which is there the most important. But that misfortune is not unusual. I am," &c.[418:2]
We shall have farther occasion to notice the deep interest which Hume took in John Home's tragedy of Douglas. The following letter, which is without date, was, probably, written at the beginning of the year 1755, and before Home made his unsuccessful journey
to London, to submit his effort to the judgment of Garrick.
Hume to John Home.
"Dear Sir,—With great pleasure I have more than once perused your tragedy. It is interesting, affecting, pathetic. The story is simple and natural; but what chiefly delights me, is to find the language so pure, correct, and moderate. For God's sake read Shakspere, but get Racine and Sophocles by heart. It is reserved to you, and you alone, to redeem our stage from the reproach of barbarism.