the most tragical stories ever I heard of, and than which nothing ever gave me more concern. I know not if ever you heard of Major Forbes, a brother of Sir Arthur's. He was, and was esteemed, a man of the greatest sense, honour, modesty, mildness, and equality of temper, in the world. His learning was very great for a man of any profession; but a prodigy for a soldier. His bravery had been tried, and was unquestioned. He had exhausted himself with fatigue and hunger for two days, so that he was obliged to leave the camp and come to our quarters, where I took the utmost care of him, as there was a great friendship betwixt us. He expressed vast anxiety that he should be obliged to leave his duty, and fear lest his honour should suffer by it. I endeavoured to quiet his mind as much as possible, and thought I had left him tolerably composed at night; but, returning to his room early next morning, I found him, with small remains of life, wallowing in his own blood, with the arteries of his arm cut asunder. I immediately sent for a surgeon, got a bandage tied to his arm, and recovered him entirely to his senses and understanding. He lived above four-and-twenty hours after, and I had several conversations with him. Never a man expressed a more steady contempt of life, nor more determined philosophical principles, suitable to his exit. He begged of me to unloosen his bandage, and hasten his death, as the last act of friendship I could show him: but, alas! we live not in Greek or Roman times. He told me that he knew he could not live a few days: but if he did, as soon as he became his own master, he would take a more expeditious method, which none of his friends could prevent. 'I die,' says he, 'from a jealousy of honour, perhaps too delicate; and do you think, if it were possible for me to live, I
would now consent to it, to be a gazing-stock to the foolish world. I am too far advanced to return. And if life was odious to me before, it must be doubly so at present.' He became delirious a few hours before he died. He had wrote a short letter to his brother, above ten hours before he cut his arteries. This we found on the table."
"Quiberon Bay in Britanny, Oct. 4, 1746."
"P.S.—The general has not sent off his despatches till to-day, so that I have an opportunity of saying a few words more. Our army disembarked on the 4th of October, and took possession of the peninsula of Quiberon, without opposition. We lay there, without molestation, for eight days, though the enemy had formed a powerful, at least a numerous, army of militia on the continent. The separation of so many of our transports, and the reinforcements not coming, determined us to reimbark, and return home, with some small hopes that our expedition has answered the chief part of its intended purpose, by making a diversion from the French army in Flanders. The French pretend to have gained a great victory; but with what truth we know not. The admiral landed some sailors, and took possession of the two islands of Houat and Hedie, which were secured by small forts. The governor of one of them, when he surrendered his fort, delivered up his purse to the sea officer, and begged him to take care of it, and secure it from the pillage of the sailors. The officer took charge of it, and, finding afterwards a proper opportunity to examine it, found it contained the important sum of ten sous, which is less than sixpence of our money."[217:1]
"October 17."
As Niebuhr was an eye-witness of the battle of Copenhagen, so Hume also had thus an opportunity of observing some practical warlike operations, though they were on a much smaller scale, and were witnessed in much less exciting circumstances than those which attended the position of the citizen of Copenhagen. Thus, although not themselves soldiers, these two great historians swell the list, previously containing the names of Thucydides, Xenophon, Polybius, Guicciardini, Davila, and Rapin, of those historians of warfare who have witnessed its practical operation. Voltaire, when the accuracy of his description of a battle was questioned by one who had been engaged in it, bid the soldier keep to his profession of fighting, and not interfere with another man's, which was that of writing; but there is little doubt, that the person who would accurately describe military manœuvres, will have his task facilitated by having actually witnessed some warlike operations, on however small a scale, and however unlike in character to those which he has to describe. Scott considered that he had derived much of his facility as a narrative historian from his services in the Mid-Lothian yeomanry; and Gibbon found that to be an active officer in the Hampshire militia was not without its use to the historian of the latter days of Rome.
It is pretty clear that Hume looked upon these operations, not only as events likely to furnish him with some critical knowledge of warlike affairs, but with the inquiring eye of one who might have an opportunity of afterwards narrating them in some historical work. In the appendix there will be found a pretty minute account by Hume, of the causes which led to the failure of the expedition, in a paper apparently drawn up as a vindication of the conduct
of General St. Clair. It does not appear to have been printed, although it seems to have been designed for the press. It contains the following passage: "A certain foreign writer, more anxious to tell his stories in an entertaining manner than to assure himself of their reality, has endeavoured to put this expedition in a ridiculous light; but as there is not one circumstance in his narration that has truth in it, or even the least appearance of truth, it would be needless to lose time in refuting it."
The following passage in a letter to Sir Harry Erskine, dated 20th January, 1756,[219:1] shows that he here alludes to Voltaire: "I have been set upon by several to write something, though it were only to be inserted in the Magazines, in opposition to this account which Voltaire has given of our expedition. But my answer still is, that it is not worth while, and that he is so totally mistaken in every circumstance of that affair, and indeed of every affair, that I presume nobody will pay attention to him. I hope you are of the same opinion." But if Voltaire ever wrote on this subject, it must have been in one of those works of which he took the liberty of determinedly denying the authorship, for there appears to be nothing bearing on the subject in the usual editions of his published and acknowledged works, and in his "Précis du Siecle de Louis XV.," he passes over the expedition with the briefest possible allusion.
We find Hume, on the return of the expedition, writing the following letter to Henry Home. It contains some curious notices of its writer's views and intentions, and betrays a sort of irresolution as to his subsequent projects, which seems to have haunted him through life. It is here that we find the first allusion