HUME, David, an illustrious philosopher and historian, was born in the south of Scotland, on the 26th of April, old style, in the year 1711. His father was a descendant of the family of the Earl of Home or Hume; and his mother, whose name was Falconer, was descended from that of Lord Halkerton, whose title came by succession to her brother. This double alliance with nobility was a source of great self-complacency to Hume, who was not philosopher enough to despise such distinctions. But being the younger son of a country gentleman of no great fortune, his patrimony was consequently insufficient to support him. For this reason he was destined for the bar, and passed through the usual course of academical study in the University of Edinburgh; hut having conceived an early passion for letters, he contracted an insurmountable aversion for any other pursuit; and whilst his friends imagined that he was poring over Voet and Vinnius, he was secretly occupied with Cicero and Virgil. His fortune, however, being small, and his health somewhat affected by close application, he was induced to make a feeble attempt at engaging in business; and in the year 1734, he went to Bristol, with recommendations to some eminent merchants of that city. But the bustle and activity of a mercantile city were by no means suited to his meditative disposition; and, in a few months, he left it in disgust. Immediately after this, he went over to France with the view of prosecuting his studies in private, and established himself first at Rheims, and then at La Fleche in Anjou, where, in order to maintain his independence, he practised the most rigid frugality. The writings of Locke and Berkeley having directed the attention of many learned men towards metaphysics, Mr Hume had early applied himself to studies of this kind, and, during his retreat, composed his Treatise of Human Nature, which he published at London in 1738. This work he had meditated even while at college; a circumstance which proves at once the self-sufficiency of Hume, and the early bias of his mind towards scepticism. He had the mortification, however, to find his book generally neglected, and to perceive that the taste for systematic writing was now upon the decline. “It fell,” he says, “dead-born from the press, without reaching such distinction as even to excite a murmur among the zealots.” He adds, however, that “being naturally of a cheerful and sanguine temper, he soon recovered the blow.” But this pretended equanimity was, we suspect, mere affectation. For the work, so far from passing altogether without notice, was criticised with much ability in the only review of that period, The Works of the Learned; and the critique has with some reason been ascribed to Warburton. One remark of the reviewer is singular, and may be almost thought prophetic. “This work abounds with ego [7:11:721]tisms. The author would scarcely use that form of speech more frequently, if he had written his own memoirs.”

In 174'2, Mr Hume published, with more success, the first part of his Essays moral, political, and literary. But these, though better received than his former publication, contributed little to his reputation as an author, and still less to his profit; and his small patrimony being now almost spent, he accepted an invitation from the Marquis of Annandale to go and live with him in England. With this nobleman he remained a twelvemonth, during which time his small fortune was considerably increased. He then received an invitation from General St Clair to attend him in the capacity of secretary to the expedition which was at first meant against Canada, but afterwards ended in an incursion on the coast of France. In 1747, he received an invitation from the general to attend him in the same situation in his military embassy to the courts of Vienna and Turin. He then wore the uniform of an officer, and was introduced at these courts as aide-de-camp to the general, along with Sir Harry Erskine, and Captain, afterwards General Grant. These two years were almost the only interruptions which his studies experienced during the whole course of his life; but his appointments made him some compensation on this account, for he was now “master of near L.1000,” and, in his own opinion, “independent.” In 1749 he returned to Scotland, and lived about two years with his brother at his country-house, where he composed the second part of his essays, called Political Discourses. And now the general approbation of his productions was indicated by a more extensive sale than formerly, and likewise by the numerous answers published by different persons in order to counteract their supposed pernicious tendency. In 1752 were published at Edinburgh his Political Discourses, the only work of his which was well received on its first appearance; and the same year at London, his Inquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, which in his own opinion was incomparably the best of all his works. This year also he was appointed librarian to the Faculty of Advocates at Edinburgh; but the principal advantage resulting from this employment was, that he had thereby the command of a large library. He then formed the design of writing the History of England; but deeming the whole to be too extensive, he confined himself to the history of Britain under the house of Stuart; and in 1754 published the first volume, entitled A Portion of English History, from the Accession of James I. to the Revolution, in 4to. The book, however, was almost universally decried on its first appearance, and soon afterwards seemed to sink into oblivion. Dr Herring, primate of England, and Dr Stone, primate of Ireland, were the only persons of the author’s acquaintance who approved of the work, and sent him messages not to be discouraged.

But notwithstanding the approbation of these eminent men, Mr Hume’s spirits were so much sunk by his want of success, that he had some thoughts of retiring to France, changing his name, and bidding adieu to his own country for ever. This design, however, was rendered impracticable by the breaking out of the war of 1755 between France and Britain. He then published his Natural History of Religion, to which, soon after its appearance, an answer was published in the name of Dr Hurd, bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, though, in reality, it proceeded from Bishop Warburton, as Dr Hurd afterwards expressly declared. In 1756 was published the second volume of the History of the Stuarts. This was better received, and helped to retrieve the character of the former volume. Three years afterwards his History of the House of Tudor made its appearance, and was almost as ill received as the History of the Stuarts had been, the reign of Elizabeth being particularly obnoxious. The author, however, had now learned to aespise popular clamour; and proceeded to finish at his leisure the more early part of the English history, which was published in 1761, and received with tolerable success.

Mr Hume being now turned of fifty, and having obtained by the sale of his books a competent fortune, retired into his native country of Scotland, determined never more to set his foot out of it. From this resolution, however, he was diverted by the Earl of Hertford, whom he attended as secretary in his embassy to Paris in 1763. In 1765, the earl being appointed lord-lieutenant of Ireland, Mr Hume was intrusted with the sole management of the business of the state till the arrival of the Duke of Richmond towards the latter end of the year. In 1767, he returned to Edinburgh, with a much larger income, procured for him by the Earl of Hertford, than he formerly possessed; and now formed the same design he had previously entertained, namely, of burying himself in his philosophical retreat. In this, however, he was again disappointed, by receiving an invitation from General Conway to become under secretary of state; and this invitation he was prevented from declining, both by the character of the person, and his connections with Lord Hertford. In 1769 he returned to Edinburgh, possessed of L.1000 a year, healthy, and, though somewhat stricken in years, yet having a prospect of long enjoying his ease, and of seeing the increase of his reputation. Of his last illness and character he has himself given the following account:—“In spring 1775 I was struck with a disorder in my bowels, which at first gave me no alarm, but has since, as I apprehend it, become mortal and incurable. I now reckon upon a speedy dissolution. I have suffered very little pain from my disorder; and, what is more strange, have, notwithstanding the great decline of my person, never suffered a moment’s abatement of my spirits; insomuch that were I to name the period of my life which I should most choose to pass over again, I might be tempted to point to this latter period. I possess the same ardour as ever in study, and the same gaiety in company. I consider, besides, that a man of sixty-five, by dying, cuts off only a few years of infirmities; and though I see many symptoms of my literary reputation breaking out at last with additional lustre, I know that I could have but few years to enjoy it. It is difficult to be more detached from life than I am at present. To conclude, historically, with my own character, I am, or rather was (for that is the style I must now use in speaking of myself, which emboldens me the more to speak my sentiments)—I was, I say, a man of mild dispositions, of command of temper, of an open, social, and cheerful humour, capable of attachment, but little susceptible of enmity, and of great moderation in all my passions. Even my love of literary fame, my ruling passion, never soured my temper, notwithstanding my frequent disappointments. My company was not unacceptable to the young and careless, as well as to the studious and literary; and as I took particular pleasure in the company of modest women, I had no reason to be displeased with the reception I met with from them. In a word, though most men anywise eminent have found reason to complain of calumny, I never was touched, or even attacked, by her baleful tooth; and though I wantonly exposed myself to the rage of both civil and religious factions, they seemed to be disarmed in my behalf of their wonted fury. My friends never had occasion to vindicate any one circumstance of my character and conduct; not but that the zealots, we may well suppose, would have been glad to invent and propagate any story to my disadvantage; but they could never find any which they thought would wear the face of probability. I cannot say there is no vanity in making this funeral oration of myself, but I hope it is not a misplaced one; and [7:11:722]this is a matter of fact which is easily cleared and ascertained.” His fears concerning the incurableness of his disorder proved too true. He died on the 25th of August 1776, and was interred in the Calton-hill burying-ground, Edinburgh, where a monument is erected to his memory.

Hume’s account of his own life is dated only four months previous to his decease; and as he was then aavare that a recovery from the malady under which he suffered was hopeless, if not impossible, it may be considered as the testimony of a dying man respecting his own character, conduct, and opinions. But it disappointed those who expected to find in it some acknowledgment of error in speculation, and perhaps also some expressions of regret for the injury done to many by the promulgation of doctrines calculated to unsettle their faith and annihilate their hopes in religion. Hume, however, was not a man from whom any thing of this sort could have reasonably been expected. Devoid of all sense of religion in his own mind, and constitutionally disposed to call in question the received opinions concerning it, he had, from a mere fondness for speculation, mixed with a love of philosophical applause, laboured to extirpate from the human mind all respect for the authority of revelation, or the obligations imposed by it, and had even treated the disciples and advocates of Christianity with a contempt bordering on detestation, “as if he had been revenging a personal injury.” Having early imbibed the principles of a philosophy the direct tendency of which was to unsettle all the foundations of belief, philosophical and moral, as well as religious, and thus to undermine the best interests and dissolve the firmest bonds of society, he went on doubting until he even doubted whether he doubted, and at last became so entangled in the inextricable mazes of scepticism, that all kinds of opinion or belief appeared to him involved in nearly equal uncertainty. With a mind thus overclouded by its own speculation, and a natural temper, in which quiet self-love was interwoven with perfect equanimity, it is scarcely to be wondered that Hume, instead of being visited by repentance or regret, should have terminated an otherwise irreproachable life “in such a happy composure of mind that nothing could exceed it.” In short, he died in the same state of mind in which he had lived, “believing nothing, and fearing nothing and though, to men of different sentiments, there is something sickening in the levity of his imaginary conversations with Charon, when in the near prospect of eternity, yet this seems in no degree inconsistent with our general conception of his character, and still less with the desire of rendering his death a sort of triumph to philosophy, over what he and some at least of his friends deemed superstition. In fact, he was at last surrounded by men who, from congeniality of sentiments, contemplated his end with satisfaction; and it is by no means improbable, that the same love of approbation for which he was distinguished throughout life, should have contributed to give a peculiar colouring to its close. But however this may have been, his social qualities, his wit, his acuteness, his generosity, and, we may add, his fame, preserved to him the regard of his learned countrymen, who forgot the sceptic in the philosopher, and the infidel in the historian.

It is indeed as an historian and a political writer that Hume will perhaps be best known to posterity. Yet even in his capacity of historian he has many faults. As slavish in politics as lie was daring in religion, he does not scruple to disguise facts from party motives; and he seldom omits an occasion to sneer at Christianity under the name of fanaticism or superstition. The inexpressible charm of his style has been universally felt and acknowledged; but this is at best only a poor compensation for that negligence which prevents an historian from discovering the truth, or that prejudice which leads him to misrepresent it. Hume, we fear, sinned in both ways; and his reputation has suffered in consequence. His errors have been detected, his misrepresentations exposed, and his unjust aspersions refuted, often by the very authorities which he professed to have consulted. But his political and historical disquisitions display throughout an acuteness, penetration, and comprehensiveness which no writer of modern times has approached, and which, notwithstanding all the defects we have alluded to, will secure to him a rank permanently high in the literature of his country. In his political essays, he anticipated many truths, which it has required more than half a century adequately to unfold and illustrate.

Of the character of Hume as a speculative philosopher the reader will find the most able and exact appreciation in the First and Second Dissertations prefixed to the present work. That he w$s profound, far-sighted, and even original, in as far at least as originality consists in discovering consequences which had escaped the penetration of others, has been admitted even by his opponents; nor can it be doubted that intellectual philosophy has benefited by the rare sagacity with which he traced some of the prevailing systems to their necessary consequences, and thus showed how dangerous it is to form theories on a subject where the sphere of observation is extremely confined, and direct experiment is in a great measure impracticable.

Few books have been so often reprinted as Hume’s History, and none has ever experienced greater injustice, than by being united, in the same form, with Smollett’s Continuation. The best and most complete edition of his philosophical works, is that which was published at Edinburgh, 1826, in four vols. 8vo, including all the essays, and exhibiting the more important alterations and corrections in the successive editions published by the author. In this edition, which was superintended by Mr David Constable, the essays are reprinted from that of 1777, corrected by the author for the press a short time before his death, and which he desired to be regarded as containing his philosophical principles; whilst the essays contained in the early editions, but which were omitted in that of 1777, are annexed to the fourth volume, together with two essays, the one on Suicide, and the other on the Immortality of the Soul. In addition to the author’s Life, written by himself, the account of his controversy with Rousseau, originally printed in French, and shortly afterwards (in 1766) in English, is also prefixed. The English translation was superintended by Mr Hume himself; and as it relates to an extraordinary occurrence in the lives of these eminent persons, it has justly been thought a suitable appendage to the short memoir which Mr Hume left of his own life.