I have made all my citations from a 4-volume edition of Hume, published by Black and Tait in 1826, which has long been in my possession.
Do you think I ought to quote Green and Grose's edition? It will be a great bother, and I really don't think that the understanding of Hume is improved by going back to eighteenth-century spelling.
I am at work upon the Life, which should not take long. But I wish that I had polished that off at Penmaenmawr as well. What with lecturing five days a week, and toiling at two anatomical monographs, it is hard to find time.
As soon as I have gone through all the eleven chapters about the Philosophy—I will send them to you and get you to come and dine some day—after you have looked at them—and go into it.
Ever yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
Science Schools, South Kensington, October 29, 1878.
My dear Morley,
Your letter has given me great pleasure. For though I have thoroughly enjoyed the work, and seemed to myself to have got at the heart of Hume's way of thinking, I could not tell how it would appear to others, still less could I pretend to judge of the literary form of what I had written. And as I was quite prepared to accept your judgment if it had been unfavourable, so being what it is, I hug myself proportionately and begin to give myself airs as a man of letters.
I am through all the interesting part of Hume's life—that is, the struggling part of it—and David the successful and the feted begins rather to bore me, as I am sorry to say most successful people do. I hope to send the first chapter to press in another week.