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THEOLOGICAL TRANSLATION WORKS EDITED BY F. A. PALEY, M.A. LL.D.

FUND LIBRARY.

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1. BAUR (F. C.). - CHURCH HISTORY of

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2. BAUR (F. C.). -PAUL, the APOSTLE of JESUS CHRIST, his Life and Work, his Epistles

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PSALMS. Translated by the Rev. E. JOHNSON,
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8. ΚΕΙΜ (ΤΗ.). -HISTORY of JESUS of

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11. PFLEIDERER (Prof. O.). -PAULINISM: a Contribution to the History of Primitive Christian Theology. Translated by E. PETERS. 2 vols. 218.

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NEW TESTAMENT. With General and Special ÆSCHYLUS. Translated into English Prose, with Short Notes. Second Edition, Revised.

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Letters of David Hume to William Strahan. Edited by G. Birkbeck Hill, D.C.L. (Oxford, Clarendon Press.)

HUME was a good letter-writer, and the prospect of reading the letters by him which are now published for the first time will cause many persons to take up Dr. Birkbeck Hill's volume in the hope of enjoying a treat. Those whose expectations are least highly pitched will not be disappointed. The book is filled with excellent matter, but the notes are better than the text. The editor's industry is more striking than Hume's letters to his publisher. Indeed, there is no great reason to suppose that Hume's reputation will be increased by the publication. If a book has been a failure the author's correspondence with his publisher may be dull and dry; and if the book be a success that correspondence will not yield much that deserves the honour of type.

Hume had less trouble in finding an

appreciative publisher than might have

been expected. an author's career which Heine, writing from painful experience, called the beginning of an author's martyrdom. Hume's earliest work, his Treatise of Human Nature,' which has been the subject of much controversy, and which has been as widely read as his 'History, "fell deadborn from the press." Yet when he wished to bring the first volume of his history to the notice of the public he had little difficulty in achieving his object. Shortly after its publication he had a bitter disappointment. Forty-five copies only were sold within twelve months. In November, 1754, the first volume appeared, containing the reigns of James I. and Charles I.; the second, containing the reigns of Charles II. and James II., appeared a year later; and Hume wrote to Strahan on the 1st of February, 1757:

This is the epoch in

"I must own that, in my private judgment, the first volume of my history is by far the best; the subject was more noble and admitted both of greater ornaments of eloquence and nicer distinctions of reasoning. However, if the public is so capricious as to prefer the second, I am very well pleased; and hope that the prepossession in my favour will operate backwards, and remove even the prejudices formerly contracted."

show is the assiduity of Hume as a corrector. He was never satisfied with his phrases-always trying to produce something which was beyond his powers. rs. More than once he quotes with approval the saying of Rousseau's that "one-half of a man's life is too little to write a book and the other half to correct it." His labour was purely for love, and he was able to boast to Strahan, "I am perhaps the only author you ever knew who gratuitously employed great industry in correcting a work of which he has fully alienated the property." He had a competitor as a corrector in Lord Lyttelton, who paid a thousand pounds for the corrections in his 'History of Henry II.,' yet the difference between them is that Hume's history is readable and Lyttelton's is not. In the

same letter in which Hume takes credit

for unusual attention to his writings, he tells Strahan what in his view is the advantage of printing, a view which differs from the one generally taken:

"This power, which printing gives us, of continually improving and correcting our works in successive editions, appears to me the chief of books, that circumstance does, perhaps, as advantage of that art. For as to the dispersing much harm as good: since nonsense flies with greater celerity, and makes greater impression than reason; though, indeed, no particular species of nonsense is so durable. But the several forms of nonsense never cease succeeding one another; and men are always under the dominion of some one or other, though nothing was ever equal in absurdity and wickedness to our present patriotism."

This letter was written on the 25th of March, 1771, while the dispute was in progress between the City authorities and the House of Commons relative to the printers whom the House wished to punish for printing the debates. The Lord Mayer and Wilkes were then conspicuous amongst the City magistrates, and they would not sanction the execution of the Speaker's war

rant within their jurisdiction. The House

was worsted in the struggle, and the liberty of printing the debates was tacitly conceded. What is more interesting still, in one of the few letters containing much that is curious, are Hume's comments on Dr. John

son's pamphlet on the Falkland Islands -a pamphlet which he calls "a very good one, and very diverting from the peculiarity and enormity of the style." Neither writer admired the style of the other. We have just quoted what Hume wrote about Johnson as a writer; this is what Johnson thought

of Hume :

"His style is not English ; the structure of his sentences is French. Now the French structure and the English structure may, in the nature of things, be equally good. But if you allow that the English language is estab

lished, he is wrong."

In fact, the critics who knew and, perhaps, wrote French as well as they did English were most emphatic in admiring Hume's English style. Walpole, when giving his opinion of the first published volume of Hume's 'History,' said that "his style, which is the best we have in history ......is very pleasing." Gibbon wrote, after "repeated perusals" of the 'History,' that "the careless inimitable beauties often forced me to close the volume with a mixed

What the letters now published chiefly | sensation of delight and despair."

More curious, though not more important, than the particulars to be gleaned from these letters concerning Hume's method of writing, are those relating to his political attitude as an historian. In the two volumes first published the leaning of the author towards Whiggism was as marked as in Macaulay's history; in the other volumes, and in succeeding editions of the first two, Hume wrote in the opposite spirit. His professed desire was to be impartial. Writing to William Mure, of Caldwell, in 1754, when the first volume had appeared, he says:

"The first quality of an historian, is to be true and impartial. The next is to be interesting. If you do not say that I have done both parties justice, and if Mrs. Mure be not sorry for poor King Charles, I shall burn all my papers and return to philosophy."

Writing to Strahan in 1760, after the accession of George III. and the delivery of that king's first speech, he says:

"I was glad to observe what our king says, that faction is at an end and party distinctions abolished. You may infer from this, that I think I have kept clear of party in my history; that I think I have been much injured when anything of that nature has been imputed to me, and that I now hope the public ear will be more open to truth: but it will be a long time first, and I despair of ever seeing it."

Those who read this with a full knowledge of the facts may ask, Was Hume trying to deceive others, or was he a self-deceiver ? He wrote in his brief, but pregnant autobiography that when his first volume, dealing with the accession of the house of Stuart, was published,

"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."

He states in another part of the same work

that in a subsequent edition of his history,

"in above a hundred alterations, which further study, reading, or reflection engaged me to make in the reigns of the two first

Stuarts, I have made all of them invariably to the Tory side." That he should admit this and yet take credit for impartiality may appear inexplicable. Foreignobservers, however, whose opinions had no improper bias, were struck with the impartial character of

Hume's narrative. Amongst them Voltaire was able, from his knowledge of English, to write with understanding as well as his usual acuteness, and he wrote, as Dr. Birkbeck Hill points out: "Jamais le public n'a mieux senti qu'il n'appartient qu'aux philosophes d'écrire l'histoire M. Hume, dans son histoire, ne paraît ni parlementaire, ni royaliste, ni anglican, ni presbytérien; on ne découvre

en lui que l'homme équitable." The truth is that Hume was tolerably impartial when dealing with events, and the reverse when describing persons. He did not strive, by a skilful marshalling of occurrences, to impress a particular view upon the reader; but he gave explanations of motives which a writer imbued with Whig predilections or prejudices would not have done. Moreover, the matter has less importance than appears at first sight. The only historian of that time who was absolutely impartial was Lord Hailes, of whom Dr. Johnson said that "the

exactness of his dates raises my wonder," who wrote history after the manner of an almanac, and whose history, as Macaulay observed, has the value of one.

More important, as well as more novel, are the views of his own time and contemporaries which Hume expressed in a letter to Strahan dated March 25th, 1771, from which we learn than an historian and a philosopher may be as mistaken as a coffeehouse politician when passing judgment upon contemporary events. After having referred to Johnson's pamphlet on the Falkland Islands, he continues as follows:

"When I blame the insolence of our Ministry with regard to Spain, I must at the same time confess, that we do right to swagger and bounce and bully on the present occasion: For we have not many years to do so, before we fall into total impotence and langur. You see that a much greater and more illustrious people, namely, the French, seem to be totally annihilated in the midst of Europe; and we, instead of regarding this event as a great calamity, are such fools as to rejoice at it. We see not that the same catastrophe or a much worse one is awaiting us at no distant period. The monarchical government of France which must be replaced, will enable them to throw of their debts; curs must for ever hang on our shoulders, and weigh us down like a mill-stone. I think

T

that Mr. Johnson is a great deal too favourabie to Pist, in comparing him to Cardinal Richelieu The Cardinal had certainly great talents besides his audacity: The other is totally destitute of Eterature, sense, or the knowledge of any one branch of puble business. What other talent indeed has he, but that of reciting with toler atle action and great impudence a long dis ocarse in which there is neither argument, order, instruction, propriety, or even grammar! Not to mention, that the Cardinal with his inveterate eches, was also capable of friendship: Wile our cut-throat never felt either the one sentiment or the other. The event of both Ainistrations was suitable. France made a

Egure during near a century and a half upon

the foundations laid by the one: England-as

above: if I be not much mistaken, as I wish to

be.

A few sentences may be devoted to William Strahan, to whom the letters in this volume were addressed. In his way he was not less remarkable than Hume. He was four years younger than Hume, being born in Edinburgh in 1715, and outlived him by nine years, dying in London in 1785. He was a printer of the type of

from his press; indeed, he was the man of
his time to whose foresight the firepet
men of letters owed muhof their fame.
Had he delined to push their works
many, if not all of them might have
remained in manuscript.
He was Dr.
Franklin's bosom friend till Franklin de
lared that he must treat him as an enemy
on arcunt of the war between Great Britain
and the United Conies. He was elected
a member of Parliament in 1774, the year
in which Wilkes re-entered the House as
Lori Mayor and one of the members for
Milillesex; but having supported the Coali-
tion Ministry, Strahan was numbered among
Fox's martyrs, failing to be re-elected in
1784. He was printer, and probably the
proprietor, of the London Chromicie. Dr.
Birkbeck Hill has printed in a note a part
of Strahan's obituary notice of the mother
of George III., which appeared on the
11th of February, 1772. That notice in the
•London Chronicle was the only one which
appeared in the papers after the death of
the Princess Dowager:-

"She is now in a state far superior to mortal
praise or blame, where the lying and malignant
voice of faction cannot reach her; and it will
Low be discovered and believed that never was
a more amiable, a more innocent, or a more
benevolent princess."

Hume said that the encomium, of which the
foregoing is but one sentence, is " elegantly
written, and contains a very proper and
spirited representation of the scurrilous
and scoundrel patriots who had so long
abused her." It was of her that Junius wrote
a private note to Woodfall, in which he said
that the Princess Dowager was "kept alive
by the horrible suction of toads," and dis-
played himself in his most venomous and
unmanly mood. It is a misfortune that very
few of Strahan's letters to Hume are extant.

Those which have been preserved and which
are printed well deserve perasal. A passage
in one is worthy to be put on record. After
begging Hume to continue writing, he adds:
"As far as my experience goes I have
generally, if not always, found happiness
to dwell not with men of much leisure and
retirement, but with those who have had a
little less time than they had employment
for."
It is scarcely possible within moderate com-
pass to give an adequate notion of the mass

Woodfall, being well educated, well read, of notes which Dr. Birkbeck Hill has supand able to write with as great point as plied. The text is but a rivulet meandering

his literary correspondents, and to correct through them. Amongst them are many the writings of his countrymen, of whom which the ordinary reader will welcome as

new as well as apposite, the sources from
which they are taken not being accessible to
all the world. By way of example, we may
give one written in 1757 by the Rev. Charles
Godwyn, Fellow of Balliol College, in the

first volume of the first edition of Hume's

Hume was not the only one who profited by
his fine taste. He was a partner first of
James Miliar, and next of Thomas Cadell,
both of the latter being the most noted
booksellers of their day, their position being
equivalent to that of publishers in ours.
Strahan looked after the printing. and Millar
or Cadell was the member of the firm
who supervised the publishing department.
When Elmsley, another bookseller of repute,
declined to run the risk of giving Gibbon's
• Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' Consider him as an historian and in private
to the world on the ground that it was too |

History, the volume containing it being now in the Bodleian Library:

"I have heard much of Mr. Hume by persons who know him well, and think him to be one of the oddest characters in the world.

life, there is not a better man living.

No man

great, Strahan not only undertook the task, has more generous sentiments of social virtue. but, as Gibbon states, it was owing to his He has great candour and humanity, and the

preed to make ch ace of a religion, he would ge this the preference

The book is highly creditable to its editor. He has spared no pains to elucidate the text, and though his view of Hume's character cannot be accepted without reserve, he has helped to make Hume better known. We give this general praise subject to the quali tration that on several points Dr. Birkbeck Hill should not be followed implicitly. In ante at p. 241 he writes Philip Francis, the author of the Letters of Junius'"; at p. 25 he refers to a letter by Junius signed "Correzzio." If Dr. Birkbeck Hill knows that Francis wrote the 'Letters' signed Janius, he is in possession of information whith has not yet been made public; and if he believes that Junius wrote the letter signed Correggio," he may also believe, with almost equal propriety, that the Epistles of Phalaris are not spurious.

Kerangton, Picturesque and Historical. By
W. J. Loftie, F.S.A. With Illustrations
by William Luker. jun. Field & Tuer.)
Od Chelsea: a Summer-Day's Stroll. By
Benjamin Ellis Martin. Illustrated by

Joseph Penneil. (Fisher Unwin.) KENSINGTON has been waiting long for a chronicler, but it has at last found a worthy one in Mr. Loftie. It is sixty-eight years since Thomas Faulkner, the historian of the western suburbs, published his History of Kensington. Faulkner was not an entertaining writer, but he was careful, and the

esteem in which his work is held is evidenced by the high prices which his books fetch in the market. Mr. Loftie has produced a volume which is both interesting and accurate, and not only has he given us a readable account of old and new Kensington, but he has taken great pains in the clearing up of some difficulties in the topography of the district. Kensington is an honoured name which the surrounding districts seek to appropriate, and much ground is known as Kensington which is not in the parish; for instance, Kensington Gore is a triangular space intercepted between the parish boundary and the high road.

The popular etymologists have played rare pranks with London place-names, and Kensington has been the special subject of a large number of fantastic guesses. One supposes it to be "the town belonging to Chenesi"; another thinks it is "from the Saxon Kyning's-tun, King's town"; while a still earlier guesser evolved from the name a certain Queen Kenna, otherwise unknown

to fame, but immortalized in Tickell's poem
of Kensington Gardens':-
Kenra! that gave the neighbouring town its name.
Mr. Loftie holds the opinion that Kensington
was originally the settlement of a Saxon
family named the Kensings or Kemsings,
and that Kensal Green is "the Green of
Kensings holt." This may be so, but we
should like a little outside evidence in favour
of the suggestion, and that we shall probably

never get.

prophetic taste that the number of the im- utmost regard for truth. Consider him as a that it belonged to one Edwin, but Domes

pression was doubled." The works of Gibbon and Hume, Johnson and Robertson, of

philosopher in his speculative capacity, that he a

not a grain of religion or virtuesit there is

Adam Smith, Blackstone, and Blair, issued Church of England has great regard for the

Nothing further is known of the history of Kensington before the Conquest than day Book records that the manor was held by Albericus de Ver of the Bishop of Coutannvalid id received some benefit from tances. Geoffrey, the son of Alberic, was

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