The Essays met with the success they deserved. Hume wrote to Henry Home in June, 1742:—
"The Essays are all sold in London, as I am informed by two letters from English gentlemen of my acquaintance. There is a demand for them; and, as one of them tells me, Innys, the great bookseller in Paul's Churchyard, wonders there is not a new edition, for he cannot find copies for his customers. I am also told that Dr. Butler has everywhere recommended them; so that I hope that they will have some success."
Hume had sent Butler a copy of the Treatise and had called upon him, in London, but he was out of town; and being shortly afterwards made Bishop of Bristol, Hume seems to have thought that further advances on his part might not be well received.
Greatly comforted by this measure of success, Hume remained at Ninewells, rubbing up his Greek, until 1745; when, at the mature age of thirty-four, he made his entry into practical life, by becoming bear-leader to the Marquis of Annandale, a young nobleman of feeble body and feebler mind. As might have been predicted, this venture was not more fortunate than his previous ones; and, after a year's endurance, diversified latterly with pecuniary squabbles, in which Hume's tenacity about a somewhat small claim is remarkable, the engagement came to an end.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] A picture of the house, taken from Drummond's History of Noble British Families, is to be seen in Chambers's Book of Days (April 26th); and if, as Drummond says, "It is a favourable specimen of the best Scotch lairds' houses," all that can be said is worst Scotch lairds must have been poorly lodged indeed.
[2] Mr. John Hill Burton, in his valuable Life of Hume, on which, I need hardly say, I have drawn freely for the materials of the present biographical sketch.
[3] One cannot but be reminded of young Descartes' renunciation of study for soldiering.
[4] My Own Life.
[5] Letter to Gilbert Elliot of Minto, 1751. "So vast an undertaking, planned before I was one-and-twenty, and composed before twenty-five, must necessarily be very defective. I have repented my haste a hundred and a hundred times."