I do not like this sentence in page 149: This step was taken in consequence of the treaty Wolsey had concluded with the Emperor at Brussels, and which had hitherto been kept secret. Si sic omnia dixisses, I should never have been plagued with hearing your praises so often sounded, and that fools preferred your style to mine. Certainly it had been better to have said, which Wolsey, &c. That relative ought very seldom to be omitted; and is here particularly requisite to preserve a symmetry between the two members of the sentence. You omit the relative too often, which is a colloquial barbarism, as Mr Johnson calls it.
Your periods are sometimes, though not often, too long. Suard will be embarrassed with them, as the modish French style runs into the other extreme.[413:1]
Turgot, at the instigation of some Italian friends, had applied to Hume to recommend a scholar, who would undertake to teach the English language and literature at Parma. He selected Robert Liston; but he had overlooked an objection which the enlightened promoters of the scheme in Italy appear to have considered too obvious to require preliminary explanation, that Liston was a Protestant! In returning thanks to Hume for the unavailing recommendation, Liston discovers the bent of his genius, by desiring that, if an opportunity should occur, Hume would recommend him as secretary of legation to any of the secondary embassies. The fate of the Parma scheme was thus communicated to Elliot.
Hume to Sir Gilbert Elliot.
"London, 5th July, 1768.
"Dear Sir Gilbert,—I beg of you to direct the enclosed to poor Liston, who will be disappointed in the scheme for Parma: they will have nothing but a Papist. Such fools! Let the Pope excommunicate them on the one hand: I will do so on the other.
"I have seen a book newly printed at Edinburgh, called 'Philosophical Essays:' it has no manner of sense in it, but is wrote with tolerable neatness of style: whence I conjecture it to be our friend, Sir David's.[414:1] I am obliged to him for the treatment which he destines me, to be locked up for five years in a dungeon, and then to be hanged, and my carcass
to be thrown out of Scotland. He supports himself, indeed, by the authority of Plato, whom I own to be truly divine. Pray, have you seen the book? Is it Sir David's? I think it has not so many attempts at humour, as that pious gentleman would employ.
"We are all very quiet here; as quiet as you are at Minto, though perhaps not so busy. No more noise of Wilkes and Liberty. Lord Mansfield said to me, that it was impossible for him to condemn him to the pillory, because the attorney-general did not demand it. Yesterday he represented to the Spanish ambassador, that moderate sentence, as a refinement in politics, which reduced the scoundrel the sooner to obscurity. It would be a strange cause, which he could not find plausible reasons to justify.
"I beg to be remembered to Lady Elliot, and to any of your family who may be at Minto. I ever am, dear Sir Gilbert, yours sincerely."[415:1]