During the busiest portion of his political career, however, he had found time for literary work. Thus in 1816 he had published a translation of the Agamemnon of Aeschylus, and in 1817 corrections and additions to Adelung’s Mithridates, that famous collection of specimens of the various languages and dialects of the world. Among these additions that on the Basque language is the longest and most important, Basque having for some time specially attracted his attention. In fact, Wilhelm von Humboldt may be said to have been the first who brought Basque before the notice of European philologists, and made a scientific study of it possible. In order to gain a practical knowledge of the language and complete his investigations into it, he visited the Basque country itself, the result of his visit being the valuable “Researches into the Early Inhabitants of Spain by the help of the Basque language” (Prüfung der Untersuchungen über die Urbewohner Hispaniens vermittelst der vaskischen Sprache), published in 1821. In this work he endeavoured to show, by an examination of geographical names, that a race or races speaking dialects allied to modern Basque once extended through the whole of Spain, the southern coast of France and the Balearic Islands, and suggested that these people, whom he identified with the Iberians of classical writers, had come from northern Africa, where the name of Berber still perhaps perpetuates their old designation. Another work on what has sometimes been termed the metaphysics of language appeared from his pen in 1828, under the title of Über den Dualis; but the great work of his life, on the ancient Kawi language of Java, was unfortunately interrupted by his death on the 8th of April 1835. The imperfect fragment was edited by his brother and Dr Buschmann in 1836, and contains the remarkable introduction on “The Heterogeneity of Language and its Influence on the Intellectual Development of Mankind” (Über die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen Sprachbaues und ihren Einfluss auf die geistige Entwickelung des Menschengeschlechts), which was afterwards edited and defended against Steinthal’s criticisms by Pott (2 vols., 1876). This essay, which has been called the text-book of the philosophy of speech, first clearly laid down that the character and structure of a language expresses the inner life and knowledge of its speakers, and that languages must differ from one another in the same way and to the same degree as those who use them. Sounds do not become words until a meaning has been put into them, and this meaning embodies the thought of a community. What Humboldt terms the inner form of a language is just that mode of denoting the relations between the parts of a sentence which reflects the manner in which a particular body of men regards the world about them. It is the task of the morphology of speech to distinguish the various ways in which languages differ from each other as regards their inner form, and to classify and arrange them accordingly. Other linguistic publications of Humboldt, which had appeared in the Transactions of the Berlin Academy, the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, or elsewhere, were republished by his brother in the seven volumes of Wilhelm von Humboldt’s Gesammelte Werke (1841-1852). These volumes also contain poems, essays on aesthetical subjects and other creations of his prolific mind. Perhaps, however, the most generally interesting of his works, outside those which deal with language, is his correspondence with Schiller, published in 1830. Both poet and philosopher come before us in it in their most genial mood. For, though Humboldt was primarily a philosopher, he was a philosopher rendered practical by his knowledge of statesmanship and wide experience of life, and endowed with keen sympathies, warm imagination and active interest in the method of scientific inquiry.

(A. H. S.)

HUMBUG, an imposture, sham, fraud. The word seems to have been originally applied to a trick or hoax, and appears as a slang term about 1750. According to the New English Dictionary, Ferdinando Killigrew’s The Universal Jester, which contains the word in its sub-title “a choice collection of many conceits ... bonmots and humbugs,” was published in 1754, not, as is often stated, in 1735-1740. The principal passage in reference to the introduction of the word occurs in The Student, 1750-1751, ii. 41, where it is called “a word very much in vogue with the people of taste and fashion.” The origin appears to have been unknown at that date. Skeat connects it (Etym. Dict. 1898) with “hum,” to murmur applause, hence flatter, trick, cajole, and “bug,” bogey, spectre, the word thus meaning a false alarm. Many fanciful conjectures have been made, e.g. from Irish uim-bog, soft copper, worthless as opposed to sterling money; from “Hamburg,” as the centre from which false coins came into England during the Napoleonic wars; and from the Italian uomo bugiardo, lying man.

HUME, ALEXANDER (c. 1557-1609), Scottish poet, second son of Patrick Hume of Polwarth, Berwickshire, was born, probably at Reidbrais, one of his family’s houses, about 1557. It has been generally assumed that he is the Alexander Hume who matriculated at St Mary’s college, St Andrews, in 1571, and graduated in 1574. In Ane Epistle to Maister Gilbert Montcreif (Moncrieff), mediciner to the Kings Majestie, wherein is set downe the Experience of the Authours youth, he relates the course of his disillusionment. He says he spent four years in France before beginning to study law in the courts at Edinburgh (l. 136). After three years’ experience there he abandoned law in disgust and sought a post at court (ib. l. 241). Still dissatisfied, he took orders, and became in 1597 minister of Logic, near Stirling, where he lived until his death on the 4th of December 1609. His best-known work is his Hymns, or Sacred Songs (printed by Robert Waldegrave at Edinburgh in 1599, and dedicated to Elizabeth Melvill, Lady Comrie) containing an epistle to the Scottish youth, urging them to abandon vanity for religion. One poem of the collection, entitled “A description of the day Estivall,” a sketch of a summer’s day and its occupations, has found its way into several anthologies. “The Triumph of the Lord after the Manner of Men” is a song of victory of some merit, celebrating the defeat of the Armada in 1588. His prose works include Ane Treatise of Conscience (Edinburgh, 1594), A Treatise of the Felicitie of the Life to come (Edinburgh, 1594), and Ane Afold Admonitioun to the Ministerie of Scotland. The last is an argument against prelacy. Hume’s elder brother, Lord Polwarth, was probably one of the combatants in the famous “Flyting betwixt Montgomerie and Polwart.”

The editions of Hume’s verse are: (a) by Robert Waldegrave (1599); (b) a reprint of (a) by the Bannatyne Club (1832); and (c) by the Scottish Text Society (ed. A. Lawson) (1902). The last includes the prose tracts.

HUME, DAVID (1711-1776), English philosopher, historian and political economist, was born at Edinburgh, on the 26th of April (O.S.) 1711. His father, Joseph Hume or Home, a scion of the noble house of Home of Douglas (but see Notes and Queries, 4th ser. iv. 72), was owner of a small estate in Berwickshire, on the banks of the Whiteadder, called, from the spring rising in front of the dwelling-house, Ninewells. David was the youngest of a family of three, two sons and a daughter, who after the early death of the father were brought up with great care and devotion by their mother, the daughter of Sir David Falconer, president of the college of justice.

Of Hume’s early education little is known beyond what he has himself stated in his Life. He appears to have entered the Greek classes of the university of Edinburgh in 1723, and, he tells us, “passed through the ordinary course of education with success.” From a letter printed in Burton’s Life (i. 30-39), it appears that about 1726 Hume returned to Ninewells with a fair knowledge of Latin, slight acquaintance with Greek and literary tastes decidedly inclining to “books of reasoning and philosophy, and to poetry and the polite authors.” We do not know, except by inference, to what studies he especially devoted himself. It is, however, clear that from his earliest years he began to speculate upon the nature of knowledge in the abstract, and its concrete applications, as in theology, and that with this object he studied largely the writings of Cicero and Seneca and recent English philosophers (especially Locke, Berkeley and Butler). His acquaintance with Cicero is clearly proved by the form in which he cast some of the most important of his speculations. From his boyhood he devoted himself to acquiring a literary reputation, and throughout his life, in spite of financial and other difficulties, he adhered to his original intention. A man of placid and even phlegmatic temperament, he lived moderately in all things, and sought worldly prosperity only so far as was necessary to give him leisure for his literary work. At first he tried law, but was unable to give his mind to a study which appeared to him to be merely a barren waste of technical jargon. At this time the intensity of his intellectual activity in the area opened up to him by Locke and Berkeley reduced him to a state of physical exhaustion. In these circumstances he determined to try the effect of complete change of scene and occupation, and in 1734 entered a business house in Bristol. In a few months he found “the scene wholly unsuitable” to him, and about the middle of 1734 set out for France, resolved to spend some years in quiet study. He visited Paris, resided for a time at Rheims and then settled at La Flèche, famous in the history of philosophy as the school of Descartes. His health seems to have been perfectly restored, and during the three years of his stay in France his speculations were worked into systematic form in the Treatise of Human Nature. In the autumn of 1737 he was in London arranging for its publication and polishing it in preparation for the judgments of the learned. In January 1739 appeared the first and second volumes of the Treatise of Human Nature, being an Attempt to Introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects, containing book i., Of the Understanding, and book ii., Of the Passions. The third volume, containing book iii., Of Morals, was published in the following year. The publisher of the first two volumes, John Noone, gave him £50 and twelve bound copies for a first edition of one thousand copies. Hume’s own words best describe its reception. “Never literary attempt was more unfortunate; it fell dead-born from the press, without reaching such distinction as even to excite a murmur among the zealots.” “But,” he adds, “being naturally of a cheerful and sanguine temper, I very soon recovered the blow, and prosecuted with great ardour my studies in the country.” This brief notice, however, is not sufficient to explain the full significance of the event for Hume’s own life. The work undoubtedly failed to do what its author expected from it; even the notice, otherwise not unsatisfactory, which it obtained in the History of the Works of the Learned, then the principal critical journal, did not in the least appreciate the true bearing of the Treatise on current discussions. Hume naturally expected that the world would see as clearly as he did the connexion between the concrete problems agitating contemporary thought and the abstract principles on which their solution depended. Accordingly he looked for opposition, and expected that, if his principles were received, a change in general conceptions of things would ensue. His disappointment at its reception was great; and though he never entirely relinquished his metaphysical speculations, though all that is of value in his later writings depends on the acute analysis of human nature to which he was from the first attracted, one cannot but regret that his high powers were henceforth withdrawn for the most part from the consideration of the foundations of belief, and expended on its practical applications. In later years he attributed his want of success to the immature style of his early exposition, to the rashness of a young innovator in an old and well-established province of literature. But this has little foundation beyond the irritation of an author at his own failure to attract such attention as he deems his due. None of the principles of the Treatise is given up in the later writings, and no addition is made to them. Nor can the superior polish of the more mature productions counterbalance the concentrated vigour of the more youthful work.