again with a rich profusion of moral reflections equally beauti ful and just."

Now that the heat of the political controversies of his time. has died away, Burke's writings, so far from having become obsolete, as referring to questions which do not at this period. engage our attention, have become more valuable. In particular points he was, no doubt, wrong and misleading, as every party writer must necessarily be; but his mastery of general principles, his large views, and his constant flow of original and striking ideas, lift him far above the level of the political writer who addresses himself merely to the question at issue, and whose work consequently loses its interest when that question has been settled. "Burke had the style of his subjects, the amplitude, the weightiness, the laboriousness, the sense, the high flight, the grandeur, proper to a man dealing with imperial themes, the freedom of nations, the justice of rulers, the fortunes of great societies, the weightiness of law. Burke will always be read with delight and edification, because in the midst of discussions on the local and the accidental he scatters apophthegms that take us into the regions of lasting wisdom. In the midst of the torrent of his most strenuous and passionate deliverances, he suddenly rises aloof from his immediate subject, and in all tranquillity reminds us of some permanent relation of things, some enduring truth of human life or society. We do not hear the organ tones of Milton, for faith and freedom had other notes in the seventeenth century. There is none of the complacent and wise-browed sagacity of Bacon, for Burke's were days of eager personal strife and party. fire and civil division. We are not exhilarated by the cheerfulness, the polish, the fine manners of Bolingbroke, for Burke had an anxious conscience, and was earnest and intent that the good should triumph. And yet Burke is among the greatest of those who have wrought marvels in the prose of our English tongue."1

During Burke's lifetime he was frequently credited with the authorship of the famous letters of "Junius," which created an

1 "Burke," by John Morley (English Men of Letters), p. 213.

excitement such as perhaps has never been called forth by any other political writings, and which still, owing to their great contemporary fame, and to the mastery they display over keen, vigorous invective, retain a place in literature. The main reason for attributing their authorship to Burke was because of certain real or fancied resemblances between their style and that ot Burke's acknowledged works; but Burke positively declared to Dr. Johnson that he was not the writer of them, and his claim is now, we believe, abandoned by all competent authorities. The letters, of which the first appeared in January 1769, were published in Woodfall's Public Advertiser, one of the leading newspapers of the time, and attracted great and universal attention, not only on account of their fierce invectives against the leading contemporary politicians, but because they showed a minute acquaintance with the inner life of politics, and a knowledge of state secrets which could not have been possessed by an outsider. Among the many claimants who have been put forward as their probable author are Colonel Barré, Thomas Lord Lyttleton, Lord Temple, and Lauchlin MacLeane; but there is an overwhelming consensus of authorities that their real writer was Sir Philip Francis, who was a clerk in the War Office at the time of the appearance of the letters. His claims have been warmly supported by such great names as Macaulay, Earl Stanhope, Brougham, Lord Campbell, and De Quincey, who declares that the proofs of Francis's authorship rush in upon us more plentiful than blackberries, and that the case ultimately becomes fatiguing from the very plethora and riotous excess of evidence. It is not unlikely that the controversy as to their authorship has done more than their intrinsic merits to keep the "Letters" alive; for it must be confessed that they now present little attraction save to students of political history. Many will sympathise in this matter with Mr. Carlyle, who once bitterly complained of having been wofuily bored about the matter at a dinner-party -"as if it could matter the value of a brass farthing to any human being who was the author of 'Junius.'"

A greater contrast can scarcely be imagined than that

afforded by the impetuous, brilliant, imaginative Burke and the "douce," tranquil, sober-minded Scotchman of whom we are now to speak. Both were great writers and original thinkers, but Burke was fitted for a life of action and ambition, and was in his element while engaged in the bustle of political controversy, and in taking part in the great conflicts waged in Parliament, while Hume, had the Fates so willed it, would have been quite content to pass the life of the ideal philosopher, devoting himself to the society of his books and his friends, and letting the turmoil of the outside world pass unheeded. He was born, the younger son of a good Scotch family, at Edinburgh in April 1711. According to his own account, which is corroborated by what we know otherwise, he passed through the ordinary course of education with success, and was seized very early with a passion for literature," which has been the ruling passion of my life, and the great source of my enjoy. ment." With all his love of study and desire for literary distinction, Hume was by no means what would be called a brilliant youth: he seemed more likely to pass his time in reading and in vague day-dreaming than to rise in the world. "Oor Davie's a fine good-humoured crater," his mother is reported to have said of him, "but uncommon wake-minded." As, however, his fortune was very small, it was necessary that he should exert himself in some way or other to provide for his support. Accordingly, to use his own words, "My studious disposition, my sobriety, and my industry gave my family a notion that the law was a proper profession for me; but I found an unsurmountable aversion to everything but the pursuits of philosophy and general learning; and while they fancied I was poring upon Voet and Vinnius, Cicero and Virgil were the authors which I was secretly devouring." Law having failed, commerce was next tried, but it proved a still more unsuitable .occupation for the young philosopher, who in 1734, “letting fortune and the world go by," retired to France, there to prosecute his studies, resolving to make a very rigid frugality supply his deficiency of fortune. In France he resided for three years, first at Rheims, and afterwards at La Fleche, in

Anjou, and there he composed his first work, his "Treatise of Human Nature." It was published in 1738, and, greatly to the author's vexation, fell "still-born from the press." This work was followed in 1742 by a volume of essays which had more success; then came in 1748 the "Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding," a revised and much altered edition of the "Treatise of Human Nature;" then, in 1752, his "Political Discourses," and his "Inquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals," which he himself considered incomparably the best of all his works. Lastly, to conclude the list of his philosophical writings, there appeared in 1779, three years after his death, his "Dialogues on Natural Religion." We have here to do with Hume as a man of letters, not as a philosopher, and may therefore pass over his philosophical writings, the sceptical views of which are so well known, with the remark that they are written in a style always perspicuous, and often rising into elegance.

While engaged on the above philosophical works, Hume improved his slender fortune by engaging in more remunerative pursuits. He passed a most wretched but not unprofitable year as guardian to the Marquis of Annandale, a partially idiotic, partially insane young nobleman, and he was for two years secretary to General St. Clair, whom he accompanied on an expedition, "which was at first meant for Canada, but ended in an incursion on the coast of France," and with whom, in 1747, he went on an embassy to the courts of Venice and Turin. "These two years," he writes, "were almost the only interruptions which my studies have received during the course of my life. I passed them agreeably and in good company; and my appointments, with my frugality, had made me reach a fortune which I called independent, though most of my friends were inclined to smile when I said so; in short, I was now master of near a thousand pounds."

In 1752 Hume was appointed to succeed Ruddiman, the illustrious Latin scholar, as librarian of the Advocates' Library, Edinburgh. The salary attached to the post was small, but his duties were not onerous, and he had full command of a

Hume's "History of England."

265 large and excellent collection of books. The opportunities for literary research thus afforded him caused him again to think of a scheme he had formerly projected of writing a History of England. Till this time England had been sin gularly destitute of historians of any high order of merit. Clarendon's "History of the Rebellion," indeed, is, from its grave and weighty style, a work of great literary value; but it scarcely even pretends to impartiality, and may be more fitly designated "Political Memoirs" than a history; while the Rymers, the Echards, and the Cartes, who had aspired to relate the history of their country, were destitute alike of genius, of discrimination, and of accurate research. Frightened at the notion of continuing a narrative through a period of seventeen hundred years, Hume commenced with the accession of the House of Stuart, an epoch when he thought the misrepresentations of faction began chiefly to take place. "I was," he goes on to say, "I own, sanguine in my expectations of the success of this work. I thought that I was the only historian who had at once neglected present power, interest, and authority, and the cry of popular prejudices; and as the subject was suited to every capacity, I expected proportional applause. But miserable was my disappointment: I was assailed by one cry of reproach, disapprobation, and even detestation; English, Scotch, and Irish, Whig and Tory, churchman and sectary, freethinker and religionist, patriot and courtier, united in their rage against the man who had presumed to shed a generous tear for the fate of Charles I. and the Earl of Strafford." Johnson used sometimes to regret that his works were not enough attacked, as controversy about them attracted public attention and promoted their sale; but Hume had not even this consolation to compensate for the storm of detraction with which his work was assailed, for within a year after its publication only forty-five copies of it were sold. With his usual calm stoicism, he was not daunted by the want of popular appreciation, but quietly went on with his task. In 1756 appeared the second volume; three years after the "History of the Tudors" followed; and in 1761 the work was

Dr.