In this office, Hume succeeded the celebrated Thomas Ruddiman. The life of this distinguished critic and philologist was written in an 8vo volume by George Chalmers, (1794.) This book is valuable as containing some of the finest specimens of mixed bombast and bathos in the English language. Chalmers was a distinguished antiquary, and his high fame in that department of research was well earned; but this did not content his ambition, and like an eminent Anglo-Saxon antiquary of the present day, he must needs mount a cap and bells on his head, by aping the style of the fine writers of his age. Gibbon and Johnson seem to have been honoured with an equal share in the elements of his style. He can say nothing without a due pomp and state; when he tells us how John Love was the son of a bookseller in Dumbarton, he must put it thus: "He was born in July, 1695, at Dunbarton, the Dunbriton of the British, the arx Britonum of the Romans, the Dunclidon of Ravennas, the Alcluyd of Bede, and he was the son of John Love, a bookseller, who, like greater dealers in greater towns, supplied his customers with such books as their taste required, and, like the father of Johnson, occasionally exhibited his books at the neighbouring fairs." We are then of course provided with a list of what these books sold by Love's father might or might not probably be, which has this reference to the life of Ruddiman, that young Love quarrelled with him. We then find such solemn announcements as the following: "Love had scarcely animadverted on Trotter, when he was carried before the judicatories of the kirk by Mr. Sydserf, the minister of Dumbarton, who accused him of brewing on a Sunday; and who, after a juridical trial, was obliged to make a public apology for having maliciously accused calumniated innocence." A printer publishing books calculated for an extensive sale is thus described:—"To these other qualities of prudence, of industry, and of attention, Ruddiman added judgment. He did not print splendid editions of books for the public good; he did not publish volumes for the perusal of the few; but he chiefly employed his press in supplying Scotland with books, which, from their daily use, had a general sale; and he was by this motive induced to furnish country shopkeepers with school-books at the lowest rate."
[373:1] The state of the library in Hume's time may be guessed at by consulting the first volume of the catalogue, printed under Ruddiman's auspices in 1742, folio. It is a singular circumstance that this library has always been very deficient in the early editions of Hume's works—those which were published before his librarianship. Another set of works, which one misses in the early catalogues, consists in the controversial books, written by Logan against its previous librarian, Ruddiman.
[373:2] The assistant, whose remuneration was to be at the pleasure of the Faculty, according to the above minute, was Walter Goodall, an unfortunate scholar, whom Hume's predecessor in office, the celebrated Thomas Ruddiman, had attached to the library as a hanger-on and miscellaneous drudge. The extent of his emoluments may be appreciated from a minute of Faculty, (7th Jan. 1758,) which, in consideration of his long services, awards him a salary of "£5 a-year, over and above what he may receive from the keeper of the library." Goodall's character and fate are summed up in the sententious remark of Lord Hailes, that "Walter was seldom sober." Yet he did not a little for historical literature. He was a violent Jacobite and champion of the innocence of Queen Mary; and in 1754 he published, in two volumes 8vo, his "Examination of the Letters said to be written by Mary, Queen of Scots, to James, Earl of Bothwell, showing by intrinsick and extrinsick evidence that they are forgeries." In 1759 he edited the best edition of Fordun's Scotichronicon, in two volumes folio.
The following traditional anecdote has been preserved, of the keeper and his assistant. "One day, while Goodall was composing his treatise concerning Queen Mary, he became drowsy, and laying down his head upon his MSS. in that posture fell asleep. Hume entering the library, and finding the controversialist in that position, stepped softly up to him, and laying his mouth to Watty's ear, roared out with the voice of a stentor, that Queen Mary was a whore and had murdered her husband. Watty, not knowing whether it was a dream or a real adventure, or whether the voice proceeded from a ghost or a living creature, started up, and before he was awake or his eyes well opened, he sprang upon Hume, and seizing him by the throat, pushed him to the farther end of the library, exclaiming all the while that he was some base Presbyterian parson, who was come to murder the character of Queen Mary, as his predecessors had contributed to murder her person. Hume used to tell this story with much glee, and Watty acknowledged the truth of it with much frankness." Chambers's Biographical Dictionary of Eminent Scotsmen, voce Goodall.
[375:1] "Of Love and Marriage," and "Of the Study of History."
[376:1] Literary Gazette, 1821, p. 745. The original is in the MSS. R.S.E.
[378:1] Thus it appears that it was his original intention to continue the history down to 1714, before he went back to the earlier periods.
[379:1] From the original at Kilravock.
[379:2] Probably Alexander Wedderburn, afterwards Lord Chancellor Loughborough, who was then twenty years of age.
[379:3] From the original at Kilravock.