[25:1] MS. R.S.E.
[25:2] Elliot had been made a Lord of the Admiralty in 1756.
[27:1] Viz. of Edinburgh.
[29:1] Minto MSS.
[29:2] The title of the Epigoniad does not, unfortunately, convey any associations to the general English reader, who requires to be told that it is derived from Ἑπίγονοι, or descendants, in allusion to those of the warriors who had been slain at the first siege of Thebes; and the main incident of the poem is the subsequent sacking of that city. It is not difficult for the reader of the better parts of the Epigoniad to imagine, that he is perusing Pope's translation of Homer. When an approach was thus made to a model so famous, all was supposed to have been gained; and it was thought that a work had been produced which would stand beside the Iliad and the Odyssey. It is hardly necessary, at the present day, to ask, whether the highest genius will produce an immortal poem out of the machinery of another age and nation, and appealing to sentiments which have no response in the habits or feelings of the people to whom its author appeals? We read the great national poems of other countries in their own language, because we thus endow ourselves, as far as it is possible, with the feeling and ideas of those to whom the poem was addressed. We read spirited translations, because they are an attempt to represent to us, in our own tongue, that which is grand in another language; and our interest is like that with which we view the portrait of a great man. We thus encounter Ulysses, Agamemnon, and Menelaus in the Iliad, with the interest of excited curiosity; and those who cannot read the original, are content to make acquaintance with persons whom a great genius has made so famous, even through a rude translation. But few cared to meet them reappearing in Wilkie's imitation; nor, however forcible may be his expressions, or flowing his versification, do we feel very vividly the horrors of Cacus' den, and the destructive ire of the Cyclops, or sympathize in the torments of Hercules, from the Centaur's poisoned robe, when they are described in the Epigoniad.
[31:1] The paper is reprinted from The Critical Review , in the Appendix to Ritchie's Life of Hume.
[33:1] These fictions were to a considerable extent superseded by an act, so late as the year 1833; 3 & 4 Will. IV. c. 74.
[34:1] In 1757 Adam Ferguson became tutor to the family of Lord Bute.
[34:2] Minto MSS.
[35:1] Warburton writes as follows to Hurd:—"As to Hume, I had laid it aside ever since you was here; I will now, however, finish my skeleton. It will be hardly that. If, then, you think any thing can be made of it, and will give yourself the trouble, we may, perhaps, between us, do a little good, which, I dare say, we shall both think worth a little pains. If I have any force in the first rude beating out of the mass, you are best able to give it the elegance of form and splendour of polish. This will answer my purpose; to labour together in a joint work to do a little good. I will tell you fairly, it is no more the thing it should be, and will be, if you undertake it, than the Dantzic iron at the forge is the gilt and painted ware at Birmingham. It will make no more than a pamphlet; but you shall take your own time, and make it your summer's amusement, if you will. I propose it to bear something like this title:—'Remarks on Mr. Hume's late Essay, called The Natural History of Religion; by a Gentleman of Cambridge, in a Letter to the Rev. Dr. W. ' I propose the address should be with the dryness and reserve of a stranger, who likes the method of the letters on Bolingbroke's Philosophy, and follows it here against the same sort of writer, inculcating the same impiety, naturalism, and employing the same kind of arguments. The address will remove it from me; the author, a gentleman of Cambridge, from you; and the secrecy in printing from us both."—Letters from a late Eminent Prelate to one of his Friends , p. 240. In the immediately preceding letter, we find him saying, "I will trim the rogue's jacket, at least sit upon his skirts, as you will see when you come hither, and find his margins scribbled over."