variously terms the impressions made on the senses, sensations, perceptions of the senses and original sentiments; and further contrasts with these perceptions of the senses the perceptions of the mind. Here is further illustration, if such be needed, of our position, that Hume's writings were produced for the sake of making himself an author; that he was not an author because he felt he had something to communicate. Here is the metaphysical essayist intent, not upon clearness of expression, but upon rhetorical variety of expression; and confounding sensation, perception and sentiment in the outset of an essay on the Origin of Ideas, because he will not repeat the same word when the same thing has to be mentioned again. The History of England is no exception to this view of Hume's authorship. He had not characteristically or eminently the qualities most necessary to the historian. He was deficient in laborious research and accuracy; and he wanted the knowledge of constitutional and statute law, which his early distaste for his destined profession had prevented his acquiring as matter of course. He distinctly conceived the idea of writing the History of England under the Stuarts, soon after being appointed Librarian to the "Advocates' Library" in Edinburgh. This was natural enough to a man who had laid his account for a literary life. The first volume published contained the reigns of James I. and Charles I. Hume, we are convinced, endeavoured, in his first edition, to do equal justice to the two great parties in the State, and convinced himself that he had done so. In reference to his essay on the "Protestant Succession," he had called himself, six years before, “a Whig, but a very sceptical one." He now writes in reference to his forthcoming History, "I may be liable to the reproach of ignorance, but I am certain of escaping that of partiality; the truth is, there is so much reason to blame and praise, alternately, King and Parliament, that I am afraid the mixture of both in my composition, being so equal, may pass sometimes for an affectation, and not the result of judgment and evidence." (I. 381.) "The history of the two first Stuarts will be most agreeable to the Tories; that of the two last to the Whigs; but we must endeavour to be above any regard either to Whigs or Tories."-I. 382. Again: "I have the impudence to pretend that I am of no party and have no bias. Lord Elibank says that I am a moderate Whig, and Mr. Wallace that I am a candid Tory."-P. 387. To another correspondent he writes (a lady): ease, "In expectation that you are to peruse me at first with pleasure, then with I expect to hear your remarks and Mr. Dysart's and the Solicitor's. Whether am I Whig or Tory? Protestant or Papist? Scotch or English? I hope you do not all agree on this head, and that there are disputes among you as to my principles."-P. 410. All this is evidently sincere, and shews with what right-mindedness the attempt at impartiality had been made. But it was as Hume expected; that the first volume would be liked best by Tories at any rate, whether the second was by Whigs or not. And very unwisely, therefore, nay, fatally for the desired reputation of impartiality, he published the one volume without the other, and was forthwith set down as a Stuart partizan. Then he was anxious that public judgment should wait for the appearance of the second volume; but judgment could not be delayed; and the second could never undo the prestige of the first. In the interval he says of himself, "With regard to politics and the character of princes and great men, I think I am very moderate. My views of things are more conformable to Whig principles; my representations of persons, to Tory prejudices. Nothing can so much prove that men commonly regard more persons than things, as to find that I am commonly numbered among the Tories."-II. 11. But what is this in effect, if it be not another form of his vile doctrine of reservation? He advocates Whig principles, but conforms to Tory prejudices. He would set things right by principles, but let persons sin with immunity under the protection of the prejudices in their favour. It is like the late Premier's quondam Free-trade in the abstract with Protection in the concrete. When busy preparing his third volume, Hume wrote this confession of his views of authorship as an historian: "I am writing the History of England, from the accession of Henry VII., and am some years advanced in Henry VIII. I undertook this work because I was tired of idleness, and found reading alone, after I had often perused all good books (which I think is soon done) somewhat a languid occupation. As to the approbation or esteem of those blockheads who call themselves the public, and whom a bookseller, a lord, a priest, or a party can guide, I do most heartily despise it. I shall be able, I think, to make a tolerable smooth, welltold tale of the history of England during that period; but I own I have not yet been able to throw much new light into it. I begin the Reformation tomorrow."-II. 33, 34. Now this suits our idea of Hume, as we have already expressed it in reference to his Philosophical works. On the strength of his small patrimony, he laid out his plan at first to be a philosopher and a man of letters. A gentlemanly appointment or two, with no very large proceeds from his earlier works, have now improved his finances, and the "molles somnos non absint" is realized. He has written two volumes of History, and while their reception was uncertain, he felt the excitement and interest of an author on their behalf. Disappointed in part with their reception, he defies the "blockheads who call themselves the public," but resolves to write more for them to read and criticise ;-why? Because he is tired of idleness, and finds reading alone somewhat languid. And what kind of a History does he hope now to produce? Is it to throw light on the progress or principles of the English Constitution, and on the questions of right and liberty which burst forth into fearful agitation in a subsequent reign? Nothing of the sort. He" has not been able yet to throw much light into it," but hopes to make a “tolerable smooth, well-told tale of the history of England." This is just it. He wants a subject to try his pen upon, an exercise of style. He looks at the matter as a rhetorician, not as a philosophical historian. And the minute verbal corrections in subsequent editions are designed to make a tolerable smooth tale smoother still, without always adding any thing to its truth, fulness or strength. These alterations in subsequent editions, which were not alterations of mere style, it is difficult for an apologist to vindicate or fully to explain. They consisted in scrupulously Torifying every bit of Whiggery that had found its way into the "impartial" original volumes. He avows this in his letters to Gilbert Elliot, in a tone that shews he was acting more under the guidance of petulant feeling than of conviction. This petulance against his former self and his theoretical philosophy of politics, is amusingly childish. For instance,— "In this new edition I have corrected several mistakes and oversights which had chiefly proceeded from the plaguy prejudices of Whiggism, with which I was too much infected when I began this work. I corrected some of these mistakes in a former edition; but being resolved to add to this edition the quotations of authorities for the reigns of James I. and Charles I., I was obliged to run over again the most considerable authors who had treated of these reigns; and I happily discovered some more mistakes, which I have now corrected. As I began the History with these two reigns, I now find that they above all the rest have been corrupted with Whig rancour, and that I really deserved the name of a party-writer, and boasted without any foundation of my impartiality: but if you now do me the honour to give this part of my work a second perusal, I am persuaded that you will no longer throw on me this reproachful epithet, and will acquit me of all propensity to Whiggism."— II. 144. And this (dated Feb. 21, 1770*): "I am running over again the last edition of my History, in order to correct it still further. I either soften or expunge many villanous seditious Whig strokes which had crept into it. I wish that my indignation at the present madness, encouraged by lies, calumnies, imposture and every infamous act usual among popular leaders, may not throw me into the opposite extreme. I am, however, sensible that the first editions were too full of those foolish English prejudices which all nations and all ages disavow."-II. 434. On his journey to Bath a few months before his death, Hume was morbidly haunted by his full-grown hatred of the Whigs. His companion writes in his journal: "From the treatment Mr. Hume met with in France, he recurred to a subject not unfrequent with him—that is, the design to ruin him as an author, by the people that were ministers at the first publication of his History, and called themselves Whigs; who, he said, were determined not to suffer truth to be told in Britain."-II. 500. These confessions will not increase our respect for the author's last emendations. Mr. Burton points out the inconsistency between the political principles espoused in the History and those previously published in Hume's Political and Philosophical works. "He had discarded the theories of arbitrary prerogative and divine right with bold and calm disdain.” His utilitarian theory represented the good of the people, not the will or advantage of any one man, or small class of men, as the right object of government.' Mr. Burton accounts for the anomaly, by thinking that in the progress of his work he had been beguiled by personal taste and sympathy, and especially by the influence of Clarendon's History, into partizanship with high-church and high-monarchy men. But what a confession of incompetency to the great duty of the historian, or of the political philosopher, or of both! There is no heart in such writ This was the year of the "Horned-cattle Session." Wilkes in London and Democracy in America, discontent among the people and weakness in the administration, seem to have thrown a new Tory light upon Hume's retrospective views of the Stuart reigns. ings. They are written for writing's sake, not for the sake of things known as true or believed as good. Let no one take pen in hand but with an object; nor desire to be an author till he has burnt to communicate something that he believes will make the reader wiser, better or happier. Without some such impelling purpose, authorship may be a craft, or an idleness, or a selfish conceit; but the world's true authors always speak what they know or earnestly believe, and persuade to what they themselves love and have faith in. E. H. H. OUR COUNTRY. THE Blessings of Old England, The Rivers of Old England, How brimfully they sweep, With the murmurs of a thousand years, Hall, ruin, bridge, rock, tree, Or cattle, at still evening-tide, The Mountains of Old England, And there on broad brown moor, Scarr'd with dim camps, whose moat-weeds shake The Churchyards of Old England, In what a greensward nest, Each one beneath his own gray tower, Her Gone lie down to rest! |