Life and Correspondence of David Hume, Volume 2

by John Hill Burton

The following letter, though it must be already familiar to many readers, is so clear an exposition of the writer's views on some branches of historical and biographical literature, that it ought not to be omitted.

Hume to Dr. Robertson.

I have frequently thought, and talked with our common friends upon the subject of your letter. There always occurred to us several difficulties with regard to every subject we could propose. The ancient Greek history has several recommendations, particularly the good authors from which it must be drawn: but this same circumstance becomes an objection, when more narrowly considered; for what can you do in most places with these authors but transcribe and translate them? no letters or state papers from which you could correct their errors, or authenticate their narration, or

supply their defects. Besides, Rollin is so well wrote with respect to style, that with superficial people it passes for sufficient. There is one Dr. Lelland, who has lately wrote the life of Philip of Macedon, which is one of the best periods. The book, they tell me, is perfectly well wrote; yet it has had such small sale, and has so little excited the attention of the public, that the author has reason to think his labour thrown away. I have not read the book; but by the size, I should judge it to be too particular. It is a pretty large quarto. I think a book of that size sufficient for the whole History of Greece till the death of Philip: and I doubt not but such a work would be successful, notwithstanding all these discouraging circumstances. The subject is noble, and Rollin is by no means equal to it.

I own, I like still less your project of the age of Charles the Fifth. That subject is disjointed; and your hero, who is the sole connexion, is not very interesting. A competent knowledge at least is required of the state and constitution of the empire; of the several kingdoms of Spain, of Italy, of the Low Countries, which it would be the work of half a life to acquire; and, though some parts of the story may be entertaining, there would be many dry and barren; and the whole seems not to have any great charms.

But I would not willingly start objections to these schemes, unless I had something to propose, which would be plausible; and I shall mention to you an idea which has sometimes pleased me, and which I had once entertained thoughts of attempting.[84:1] You may observe that, among modern readers, Plutarch is, in every translation, the chief favourite of the ancients. Numberless translations and numberless editions have been made of him in all languages; and no translation has been so ill done as not to be successful. Though those who read the originals never put him in comparison either with Thucydides or Xenophon, he always attaches more the reader in the translation; a proof that the idea and execution of his work is, in the main, happy. Now, I would have you think of writing modern

lives, somewhat after that manner: not to enter into a detail of the actions, but to mark the manners of the great personages, by domestic stories, by remarkable sayings, and by a general sketch of their lives and adventures. You see that in Plutarch the life of Cæsar may be read in half an hour. Were you to write the life of Henry the Fourth of France after that model, you might pillage all the pretty stories in Sully, and speak more of his mistresses than of his battles. In short, you might gather the flower of all modern history in this manner: the remarkable Popes, the Kings of Sweden, the great discoverers and conquerors of the New World; even the eminent men of letters, might furnish you with matter, and the quick despatch of every different work would encourage you to begin a new one. If one volume were successful, you might compose another at your leisure, and the field is inexhaustible. There are persons whom you might meet with in the corners of history, so to speak, who would be a subject of entertainment quite unexpected; and as long as you live, you might give and receive amusement by such a work; even your son, if he had a talent for history, would succeed to the subject, and his son to him. I shall insist no farther on this idea; because, if it strikes your fancy, you will easily perceive all its advantages, and, by farther thought, all its difficulties.[85:1]

In 1760, Macpherson published those "Fragments of Ancient Poetry, collected in the Highlands of Scotland, and translated from the Gaelic or Erse language," which, afterwards enlarged, became the celebrated "Ossian's Poems." Hume took an early interest in this professed resuscitation of early national literature. He at first doubted the truth of assertions so unprecedented in literary history, as those by which the genuineness of the poems was maintained. But there was nothing to which his heart would have responded with a warmer enthusiasm than the

discovery, that his ancestors, generally reputed to be but late accessions to civilization, could look back upon a literature as rich and great as that which had crowned Greece with the literary supremacy of the world. Hence, he seems to have, after some time, willingly yielded to a belief in the genuineness of these poems. His good sense and sceptical spirit, however, resumed the supremacy, and he afterwards wrote a very searching though short "Essay on the Authenticity of Ossian's Poems." It is printed in the Appendix; and thither the whole correspondence on the subject is transferred, that the reader may peruse the various pieces in a series. It is probable that the sole reason why Hume never published this detection, was a kindly feeling to his friend Dr. Blair, against whom he might not wish to appear in a controversy, where the critical powers of the latter would be so severely tested. And yet they stood on perfectly fair ground. Neither Hume nor Blair had any knowledge of the archæological merits of the question. Each of them discussed the probable genuineness of the poems on grounds as purely critical as if they had been brought from Central Africa, instead of being the alleged literature of a people who are supposed to have at one time occupied the ground on which Edinburgh is built; and at the time of that controversy, as at the present day, might be visited on a journey of fifty miles. In such a state of knowledge, it required great freedom and decision in criticism to pronounce the poems forgeries. Then, as now, every genuine Celt protested that he had heard them over and over again in Gaelic with his own ears; and with this only difference from the translation, that there were peculiar delicate beauties in the native Gaelic, which neither Macpherson, nor any other man, was capable of expressing in English.

In such an unequal controversy, between the internal evidence of criticism, and the external evidence of broad assertion, it is singular that no one should have attempted to solve the question through the faint light which the chronicles of the surrounding tribes throw on the history of the Celts in Scotland. That knowledge has now been pretty widely extended; and hence "Ossian's Poems" have been estimated at their true value, as an embossment of poetical language and imagery, on the surface of such barren metrical narratives as all uncivilized and warlike people possess; it has been found that the structure of the narratives, the characteristic names, the events of history, and the manners of the times, have been treated with no more deference, when an alteration was found to suit the purpose of the "translator."[87:1]