The Sun.
London, England, 1847-01-18 00:00:00

S JANUARY 18, 1847.
7

LITERATURE.

THE EDINBURGH REVIEW. No. CLXXI.

One of those admirable biographical articles for which
the blue-and•buff Review has been remarkable since its
commencement, is prefixed to the seven other articles in
the present quarter. The subject has been suggested
by the recent publication, edited by Mr. John Hill
Burton, viz., a copious biography of David Hume.
As a composition the paper is singularly difficient: it
has none of the graces of style, and none of the orato-
rical enthusiasm, which would have characterised a
contribution upon the same theme from the pen of
Lord Jeffrey : it is altogether devoid of that epigra-
matic tartness and brilliant illustration, which would
have been found in one written by the late witty
Canon of St. Paul's Cathedral, Sydney Smith : it
has neither the graceful style of Walter Scott,
nor the splendid enamel of Macaulay. Never-
theless, the article is valuable, readable, and
judicious. Since the decease of the great his-
torian of England, but little, comparatively, has
been known by the multitude respecting his
domestic career, and his familiar character.
Whatever circumstances or peculiarities in his per-
sonal history had reached the ear of the public, had
only come to us incidentally:4*a his contemporaries
—the more illustrious of them—ltiellowed him to that
ferry-boat of old Charon, which he himself in a de-
plorable fit of levity, joked about on his death-bed,
stray anecdotes and casual incidenta relating to David
crept out piecemeal in their memoirs and autobio-
graphies. Otherwise nothing was printed which
could elucidate his disposition and his habits, until
the letters and manuscripts left by Hume to
the care of his nephew, Baron Hume, with a tes •
tamentary injunction as to their publication,
(an injunction rejected by Adam Smith,) were
consigned to the Royal Society of Edinburgh on the
decease of the Baron, were ultimately resigned into
the editorial hands of Air. Burton, and were finally in-
-1846 given to the world in two goodly and interesting
volumes. Before then, the generality of the English
public had only picked up a few intermitently recog-
nised traits in regard to the historian of the country.
Everyone knew that Hume was (ethically) rather
more than slightly deistical. Everyone knew that he
had dabbled in metaphysics, and had tried to establish
a system of philosophy, and had failed. Everyone
knew that Hume had a natural affection for
frugality, and an occasional passion for vo-
luptuousness. Everyone knew that Hume was
a fat man—a decidedly fat man ; more than
corpulent in his middle age, and towards the
close of his life rapidly approximating to obesity.
Everyone knew that he absolutely abhorred Eng-
land, that he contemned " the barbarians living on
the banks of the Thames," that he had contracted an
incongruous friendship, and afterwards picked an
anomalous quarrel, with Jean Jacques Rousseau ;
that he rejoiced in the luxurious society of Paris;
that he could at last thoroughly enjoy the fabrications
of the cuisine; that his physiognomy was lumpish
and unineaning;:and (be it said with tenderness and
reverence) that he had wept passionately on hearing
of the death of his mother. We had grouped together
the hieroglyphs, but we wanted the key to them.
We were aware of the principal actions and events of
his bodily life, but we wanted the narrative
of his mental alternations ; we wanted admittance into
the secret chambers of his heart ; we wanted to plomb
the depths of his infidelity, and to form some ade-
quate conception of his extraordinary intellect.
These desiderata could be best obtained through the
medium of his private correspondence, and the multi-
tude of hitherto unrevealed facts treasured up among
his private manuscripts. Through the intelligent
agency of Mr. Burton, under the sanction of the
Royal Society of Edinburgh, most of these mysteries
are now explained, many of the most intricate por-
tions of the labyrinth are threaded. "The Life and
Correspondence of David Hume " reposes in
authentic " leather" on a thousand bookshelves in
the kingdom, and that Life and that Correspondence
are condensed into the compass of some seventy pages
in the January quarter of the Edinburgh Review.
From the period of his birth, at Edinburgh, in 1711,
to his demise in the same capital, on the 25th of
August, 1776, the career of David Hume is tracked
with sagacity and discrimination. After his matri-
eulating, in 1723, at the University of Edinburgh,
we are introduced to him when the victim of the
most morbid and hypocondriacal phantasies. For the
law he is destined—reads the rudimentary chapters of
Voet and Vinnius—and imbibes a thorough and iner-
radicable detestation of the profession. In his twenty-
£rst year, namely, in 1731, we find him selling
gloves and bombazeen from behind the counter of an
extensive tradesman in Bristol. A fierce disgust
seizes him at his occupation, and befi)re the expiration
of the twelvemonth, he is off to France, and-domesti-
cated at La Fleche." By 1737 he has returned to
London with his " Treatise on Human Nature" com-
pleted, and in 1739 the same treatise is issued through
the press—an abortion. Thereupon David Hume is
defected, and seeks consolation in the family circle at
Ninevvells. Before 1741 has expired there appears
in Edinburgh a little volume from him, entitled
"Moral and Political Essays," a volume which
ultimately accumulates in bulk and worth
into the shape of his renowned " Essays, Moral,
Literary, and Political." SUbsequently he produces his
" Dialogues on Natural Religion," and in the course
of 1745, he is degenerated into " the company-keeper
of a literary lunatic," Lord Annandale, living near St.
Albans. Then comes the ridiculous 'expedition in
Britanny, carrying off the Scotch scribe in the retinue
of General Sinclair, in the capacity of secretary and
Judge Advocate. Saving that this adventure en-
abled him to obtain some more extended experience of
the world than he could have gleaned by dozing in
his elbow-chair, it was the waste of the invaluable
time of Hume. After an absence of two or three
years he returns homewards, one thousand pounds in
pocket, and settles down, in something like domes-
ticity and comfort, at Edinburgh. He is there
soon afterwards elected Librarian of the Faculty
of Advocates, which places an enviable assort-
ment of books at his command. In 1752 he
commences his History of England, beginning with
the Smarts, and so g.oing back towards the Conquest,
till its completion in 1762. During the interval:: of
its composition he comes to London, namely in 1758,
and, resides there somewhere about a year in Lisle-
street, Leicester-fields. By the publication of his im-
mortal work, David Hume had now won for himself
laurels upon which he could repose (and not inglo-
riously) during the remainder of his days. He visits
Paris in the full blaze of his celebrity ; returns to
England, and lives in London two years, dating from
the middle of 17,66 to the middle of 1768, and settles
finally in the autumn of the latter year at Edinburgh
with a respectable income of twelve hundred pounds per
annum. An amusing description is given by the
reviewer of the literary despotism exercised in Lon-
don by Doctor Johnson, at the period of Hume's
arrival in the metropolis. " Considering Johnson's
occasional brutality,' says he, "it would not have
been safe for him and Hume to have met in private."
And as a superb illustration of the sway of the great
lexicographer, he observes, " it was only by taking
advantage of Johnson's being away, that half-a-dozen
friends contrived to smuggle Adam Smith into the
club." The laughable antipathy of Hume to Eng-
land and the English people, is unquestionably the
weakest of the many weak points in his character.
It tainted his whole nature like a gangrene ; it
flawed his intellect like monomania. During his
sojourn in the French capital, the historian was not
merely " a passion," with its inhabitants, he was
a God, before whom they bowed down is ado-
ration ; and we conceive the writer is not
far from the truth, where he suspects that the incense
offered to him for a time intoxicated his masculine and
robust nature. Among the numerous acts of extrava-
gant homage paid to Hume, was that of the presen-
tation of the three little princes (sons of the Dauphin).
aged respectively nine, eight, and six. These poor
children were "set up to deliver prepared harangues
to David Hume, on his Philosophy and History."
Little did the enactors and spectators of that burles-
que scene anticipate that those infantine panegyrists
of the English historian, were the germs of three
sovereigns, who were to be rendered memorable by
their misfortunes—Louis XVI., Louis XVIII., and
Charles X. We can imagine to ourselves the
grotesque figure of Monsieur Hume, engaged
in the role of a Sultan in a pantoMimic tableaux at
Paris : we can itnagine the,'Scotch author making
fictitious love to his imagliitileeaptiveOttsted upon
a sofa, between two of the prettiest women in France,
thumping his legs and stomach, and spluttering
out
over and over again "Ell bien I ?nes demoiselles.
bien! vous voila done; eh bien! vous, voila, vous voila
id!" until he is tumbled out of the rcom. "disgrace-
fully" as incorrigible. We can readily imagine that
preposterous exhibition, now that it has been so vividly
revived to our recollection by the reviewer. There is
a very noble image introduced into this article by way
of illustration to the meanness of Hume's haughty
infidelity in matters ethical. It is comprised
in three brief sentences, and is this :—" He would
have been happier, we think, i
if the severity of
his code of morals had been a little raised—and
if he had lifted himself up by looking to a higher
nature ! There was of old a legendaryfigure of
Christ, which was said to have a power of growth in
1 a s taller than the tallest man.
iitliageoc as
ut°thanelobi:antua:wthbiyso,fi figure, and also converse to it,
gerect in himself and noble,
N-Son-- °be.

yet, from looking upwards, becomes nobler still I"
We have commented so largely upon this biographi-
cal paper, that we have left ourselves little space
for the enumeration of the subsequent articles.
A contribution larded with anecdotes, and brimming
over with antiquarian gossip about the streets of
Paris, follows. Talking about the Place Royale, the
writer has availed himself of the opportunity to sketch
the character of Cardinal Richelieu in a few brilliant
touches—so brilliant and so truthful withal, that we
transcribe the passage entire :

" Cardinal Richelieu, take him for all in all, was per-
lisps the ablest, if not the greatest of Frenchmen (foe
Napoleon, it must be recollected, was not a Frenchman
by birth) ; and he was the most essentially French.
Capable of the greatest schemes of statesmalike anabi
tion, the smallest personal interest or personal pique la)
ever more closely at his heart. Even while planning his
vast combinations of foreign and domestic policy, the
bulk of his time and thoughts seem to have been eccu
pied with cares of the most trifling description : wits
amorous and literary enterprises, having nothing but the
gratification of vanity for their object : with elaborate
devicss of mystification and b'iffoonery, childish rivalries,
womanish intrigues, and the tricks of a malicious monkey.
He had Lone of the sympathies, few of the prejudices.
of Lis age. Neither sacred things, nor consecrated im -
postures, had any empire over him. King, Pope, and.
Parliament were to him mere names, representing pieces
in the game of politics. Yet the same man was the slain
of the paltriest impulses, wheu his conceit:or egotism was
piqued. If we read of him one day as guiding the sword
of Gustavus, of stemming the It ,mish re-action, founding
the short-lived absolute monarchy of France ; the nex,
day he figures on a level with per Dr. Goldsmith, when
he wanted to exhibit his agility in jumping over a stick
against a showman's puppet. This is no idle compari-
son. Brienne has recorded how Mary of Medici., making
sport of her clerical lover, then Bishop of -Litcon, per
suaded him, by adroit reflections on his skill,-to rxecutt
s new saraband in her royal boudoir, with castanets in
his: hands, and in the costume of an Andalusian majo—
amidst the suppressed convulsion laughter of certain
spectators posted behind the arras—laughter which
Richelieu, when he discovered the trick, never forgot or
forgave to his dying day. On the one hand, Father Jo-
seph, the masked politician, the secret councillor of al:
the deepest plans of Richelieu's ambition ; on the other.
Bois Robert, the unfrocked athiest and buffoon—these
are the contrasted figures with which that of Richelieu
seems inseparably connected. On the whole, great as In
was, there is something fundamentally odious in his
character, which makes him one of the most uninterest
ing great men of history. Like Voltaire, whom he so
strikingly resembled in many points of character, he was
spiteful. hard-hearted, and cruel. He hated the Queen,
who had rejected his impudent suit. He hated all whom
she favoured. His political victims were not many, but
they were hunted out with peculiarly cold and careful
cruelty. He could be generous towards those who had
committed offences against him: there is a striking story
told by Tallemant des Itfeaux, who may be believed when
he speaks well of any one, of his conduct to a thievish
secretary; but he could not forgive an insult, a jeer, or
the slightest mortification to his vanity, or oppositisn to
his projects. His death was felt by France like the re-
lief from a nightmare—from the king to the lowest
rhymester of the ruelles, all joined in the burden of the
couplets which proclaimed it—
' 11 est parti, it a plie bagage,
Ce Cardinal !,

But it is remarkable that a man so hateful, so destitut,
of all faith and all loftiness of purp(.se, should hare lefi
such durable impressions on the world. Scarcely does
Paris itself, which is full of his reties— the Valais Royal,
the library, the street which bears his name—speak mon-
plainly of Richelieu than that fabric of mothrn Europear
policy, of which he has, acarely with exaggeration,
been termed the founder."

That fabric was erected on the ruins of aristocratic
feudalism ; and, in return, upon the ruins of that
fabric was erected the yet more modern system of
European policy. A clever argument in favour of
the transference of the moneys collected by the local
taxation of the kingdom (amounting annually to some-
where about 11,000,0001. sterling) into the hands of
Government, is contained in the next contribution.
The writer conceives that by this transference
of the administrative power from a number
of scattered and conflicting municipalities to the
one united power by which the whole destinies
of the empire are protected, a very considerable
economy would be the consequence. In this there is
something beyond mere plausibility, but the matter
is one involving so many interests, and is one, more-
over, in which the body of the citizens of this empirt,
are so deeply interested, that it requires the most
elaborate scrutiny before a single step be taken one
way or the other. There is much reason in the ad-
vocacy both of the Government distribution of those
11,000,0001.. and of the local distribution of them.
As Lord Lincoln observed in his recent ad-
dress to the constituency of Manchester, there
is ample scope for both Government exertion
and individual exertion, though the Noble Lord
qualified the observation by exclaiming, "Do not sup-
pose that I should wish to see everything conducted,
as in other countries, by the effort of the Govern-
ment." The calculation of the amount of rates, tolls,
dues, and fees collected annually in England is of so
much importance to the consideration of the question
at issue, that we transfer it to our columns :
" Relief of poor (1845) £5,039,703
Miscellaneous purposes defrayed out of
poor's rate

537.737