In April, 1788, the publication of the concluding volumes took place, under his own superintendence, for which purpose he had come to London, where he passed most of his time with Lords North and Sheffield, and resided with the family of the latter. In July, he returned to Lausanne, but the death of his friend Deyverdun, which occurred shortly afterwards, and ‘the tide of emigration and wretchedness,’ caused by the explosion of the French revolution, had broken the charm which that place once had for him. In 1791, he was visited by Lord Sheffield, and in 1793, on the death of that nobleman’s wife, he, at the earnest desire of the former, proceeded to England, and again took up his residence at his friend’s house. After some months spent in familiar intercourse with the principal political and literary characters of the time, he sunk under the effects of a hydrocele, the result of a rupture, with which he had been afflicted for nearly thirty years. He was tapped several times previously to his decease, which took place on the 16th of January, 1794. On the preceding day he had talked as usual, and, so far from anticipating his death, said, ‘that he thought himself good for a life of ten, twelve, or perhaps twenty years.’
The character of Gibbon, in many points, resembled that of Hume; he died a bachelor; was a gentleman, a sceptic, and a historian; treated his literary antagonists with contempt, and had a dignified sense of his own abilities. He was careful to retain his place in society, by a strict adherence to its established rules; and as he lived for the world, took care not to lose its esteem by any conduct inconsistent with the calmness of a philosopher, the dictates of honor, or the maxims of morality. He possessed a lofty mind and spirit, but acted rather from motive than principle; and, as a politician, he can be considered in no other character than that of a ministerial follower for the sake of convenience and emolument. His conduct in his domestic relations was in the highest degree exemplary; and in his friendships he was sincere, constant, and ardent. He possessed great natural powers of mind, which he assiduously studied to improve: in conversation he is described, by Lord Sheffield, as ready, cheerful, entertaining, brilliant, illuminating, and interesting. As an author, he is among the most distinguished of the eighteenth century; but the lapse of forty years has somewhat impaired his reputation for a style which is now generally admitted to be enigmatical, pompous, and elaborate, where it should have been concise, simple, and explicit. Dr. Beattie says, ‘Such is the affectation of his style, that I could never get through the half of one of his volumes;’ and a celebrated bishop observed of his ‘bulky quartos,’ that they were ‘only fit for the gloom and horror of wintry storms.’ None can deny to it, however, a pervading splendor, stateliness, and majesty; and, indeed, the writer seems to be always on his guard against a common expression, as if he were afraid of degrading his own powers, by descending to the level of ordinary capacities. It is thus that he has some passages of surprising and matchless beauty; and where his language is in keeping with his subject, the understanding is readily captivated, and the ear unconsciously delighted.
As to the matter of his history, the principal charges against him are the grave ones of a covert attempt to overthrow a belief in revealed religion, and a complacent indelicacy of description, especially in the latter volumes. To this he answers, that ‘the licentious passages are confined to the notes, and to the obscurity of a learned language;’ an apology which few, perhaps, will consider sufficient. His attack on Christianity he himself seems to have regretted, though he never retracted. ‘Had I believed,’ he says, ‘that the majority of English readers were so fondly attached, even to the name and shadow of Christianity; had I foreseen that the pious, the timid, and the prudent, would feel, or affect to feel, with such exquisite sensibility; I might, perhaps, have softened the two invidious chapters, which could create many enemies, and conciliate few friends.’ His pathetic observations at the close of his memoirs, show that his own notions offered no security for felicity here, if, as he insinuated, those of others would fail to do so hereafter. After quoting the opinion of Fontenelle, who, he observes, fixes our moral happiness to the mature season in which our passions are supposed to be calmed, our duties fulfilled, our ambition satisfied, our fame and fortune established on a solid basis, he says, ‘I am far more inclined to embrace than to dispute this comfortable doctrine. I will not suppose any premature decay of mind or body; but I must reluctantly observe, that two causes, the abbreviation of time, and the failure of hope, will always tinge with a browner shade the evening of life.’ In a letter to Lord Sheffield, after the death of his wife, he says, ‘the only consolation in these melancholy trials to which human life is exposed, the only one at least in which I have any confidence, is the presence of a real friend.’
DAVID HUME.
This celebrated historian was born at Edinburgh, on the 26th of April, 1711. He was of a good family, both by father and mother, and the former dying whilst he was an infant, he was brought up under the care of his mother, whom he describes as a women of singular merit. A passion for literature took possession of him at a very early period of his education, and, in consequence of his sobriety and studious disposition, he was destined by his family for the law; but ‘while they fancied,’ he says in his autobiography, ‘I was poring upon Voet and Vinnius, Cicero and Virgil were the authors which I was secretly devouring.’ His health, however, becoming impaired by sedentary application, he, in 1634, went to Bristol, with a view of engaging in mercantile pursuits, but found them unsuitable to his disposition, that in a few months afterwards he took up his residence in France, and laid down a plan of life which he steadily and successfully pursued. ‘I resolved,’ he says, ‘to make a very rigid frugality supply my deficiency of fortune; to maintain unimpaired my independency; and to regard every object as contemptible, except the improvement of my talents in literature.’
After a stay of three years abroad he returned to England, and, in 1738, published his Treatise of Human Nature, the fate of which he describes by saying, ‘it fell dead born from the press.’ Of too sanguine a temperament to be discouraged, he continued his literary labors, and in 1742, printed, at Edinburgh, the first part of his Essays, which were received in a manner that fully compensated for his former disappointments. In 1745, he went to England as tutor to the young Marqueis of Annandale, and after remaining in that situation for a twelvemonth, he stood candidate for the professorship of moral philosophy at Edinburgh, but although strongly supported, the notoriety of his sceptical opinions prevented his success. In 1746, he accepted an invitation from General St. Clair to attend him as a secretary to his expedition, which ended in an incursion on the coast of France; and, in 1747, he accompanied him in his military embassy to the courts of Vienna and Turin. During his residence at the latter place, imagining that his Treatise of Human Nature had failed of success from the manner rather than the matter, he published the first part of the work anew, under the title of an Inquiry concerning Human Understanding. Its new shape, however, made but little difference in its success; and on his return from Italy, Hume observes, ‘I had the mortification to find all England in a ferment, on account of Dr. Middleton’s Free Inquiry, while my performance was entirely overlooked and neglected.’
His disappointment was increased by the failure of a new edition of his Essays; but borne up by the natural cheerfulness of his disposition, he, in 1749, went to his brother’s residence in Scotland, and composed his Political Discourses, and Inquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, both of which were published at Edinburgh in 1752. At this time his former publications had begun to attract notice, and more than one answer had been written to his Essays, of which, however, he took no notice, having made a fixed resolution, which he inflexibly maintained, never to reply to any body. His Political Discourses were favorably received both abroad and at home, but his Principles of Morals, although, in his own opinion, incomparably the best of all his writings, came, as he says, unnoticed and unobserved into the world. In the year of its application, already mentioned, he was chosen librarian to the Faculty of Advocates, when the large library, of which he had the command, suggested to him the idea of writing the History of England, ‘Being frightened,’ he says, ‘with the notion of continuing a narrative through a period of seventeen hundred years, I commenced with the accession of the House of Stuart; an epoch when I thought the misrepresentation of faction began chiefly to take place.’ The history of this period appeared in one quarto volume, in 1754; but instead of meeting with the applause which he confesses he expected, it was assailed, as he tells us, ‘by one cry of reproach, disapprobation, and even detestation.’ The only individuals of literary consideration from whom he received encouragement to proceed, were the primates of England and Ireland, Drs. Herring and Stone; whilst the sale was so inconsiderable, that, in the course of a twelvemonth, only forty-five copies were disposed of. He attributed the opposition it met with to the regret expressed by the author of the fate of Charles the First and the Earl of Stafford; but, in all probability, it arose from the contemptuous tone in which he spoke of adverse religious parties.
He was so far discouraged by the reception of his work, that he resolved to quit his country for ever, and pass the remainder of his days in France. The war, however, breaking out between that country and England, his intention was frustrated, and he determined to persevere in his historical design. In the meantime he published his Natural History of Religion, which was answered by Warburton in the name of Dr. Hurd, in ‘a pamphlet,’ says our author, that ‘gave me some consolation for the otherwise indifferent reception of my performance.’ In 1756, appeared his second volume of the History of England, containing the period from the death of Charles the First till the Revolution; and, in 1759, it was succeeded by the History of the House of Tudor. This performance was not less obnoxious than his first published volume, but being now grown ‘callous against the impressions of public folly,’ he devoted himself, with calm perseverance, of the early part of the English History, which he completed in two volumes, in 1761.
Notwithstanding the altogether unfavorable reception of his History of England, which had now become a chief standard work, our author received a sum for the copyright, which, together with a pension he enjoyed through the influence of Lord Bute, had procured him not only independence but opulence. He therefore meditated passing the rest of his life in philosophical retirement, when, in 1763, he accepted an invitation to accompany the Earl of Hertford on his embassy to Paris, where his literary reputation obtained for him a reception, which, after the apathy of his own countrymen, astonished and delighted him. He remained at the French capital, in the situation of charge d’affaires, until the beginning of 1766, when he returned to England in company with the celebrated Rousseau, who is said to have repaid the delicate and generous behavior of our author with his usual ingratitude. In 1767, he was appointed under secretary of state to Mr. Conway, and after holding that situation for about two years, he returned to Edinburgh, in 1769, with a fortune of £1,000 a year. The next four years of his life were passed in the enjoyment of ease and reputation; the succeeding portion is best described towards the close of his autobiography, dated April 18th, 1776. ‘In spring 1775,’ he says, ‘I was struck with a disorder in my bowels, which at first gave me no alarm, but has since, as I apprehend it, become mortal and incurable. I now reckon upon a speedy dissolution. I have suffered very little pain from my disorder; and what is more strange, have, notwithstanding the great decline of my person, never suffered a moment’s abatement of my spirits; insomuch, that were I to name a period of my life, which I should most choose to pass over again, I might be tempted to point to this latter period. I possess the same ardor as ever in duty, and the same gayety in company. I consider, besides, that a man of sixty-five, by dying, cuts off only a few years of infirmities; and though I see many symptoms of my literary reputation’s breaking out at last with additional lustre, I know that I could have but a few years to enjoy it. It is difficult to be more detached from life than I am at present.’
After having finished the account of his life, he, at the request of his friends, went to England for the improvement of his health, but returned with no benefit, after a few weeks’ stay at London and Bath. He now employed himself in correcting his works for a new edition, and considering himself as a dying man, talked familiarly and even jocularly of his approaching dissolution. To one of his friends, who, struck by his cheerfulness, could not help expressing hopes of his recovery, he said, ‘Your hopes are groundless; I am dying as fast as my enemies, if I have any, could wish, and as easily and cheerfully as my best friends could desire.’ His weakness increased daily, until the afternoon of the 26th of August 1776, when he expired, says Dr. Black, ‘in such a happy composure of mind, that nothing could exceed it.’