many customs peculiar to this Island, require explanation; and it will be necessary to accompany the translation with some notes, however short, in order to render it intelligible to foreigners. None but a person, so well acquainted as you, with England and the English constitution, can pretend to clear up obscurities, or explain the difficulties, which occur. If, at any time, you find yourself at a loss, be so good as to inform me: I shall spare no pains to solve all doubts, and convey all the lights, which, by my long and assiduous study of this subject, I may have acquired. The distance betwixt us need be no impediment to this correspondence. If you favour me frequently with your letters, I shall be able to render you the same service, as if I had the happiness of living next door to you, and was able to inspect the whole translation. In this attempt, the knowledge of the two languages is but one circumstance to qualify a man for a translator. Though your attainments in this respect be known to all the world, I own that I trust more to the spirit of reflection and reasoning which you discover: and I thence expect, that my performance will not only have justice done it, but will even receive considerable improvements, as it passes through your hands.

"I am, with great regard,
Sir,

"Your most obedient, and most humble servant,

"EDINBURGH, 15th Oct., 1754."

"DAVID HUME.”

"MY DEAR SIR,

"LISLE HOUSE, LEICESTER FIELDS, 12th August, 1766.

"I have used the freedom to send to you in two packets by this post, the whole train of my correspondence with Rousseau, connected by a short narrative. I hope you will have leisure to peruse it. The story is incredible, as well as inconceivable, were it not founded on such authentic documents. Surely, never was there so much wickedness and madness combined in one human creature; nor did ever any one meet with such a return for such signal services, as those I performed towards him. But I am told, that he

used to say to Duclos and others, that he hated all those to whom he owed any obligation. In that case, I am fully entitled to his animosity.

"I am really at a loss what use to make of this collection. "The story, I am told, is very much the object of conversation at Paris: though my conduct has been entirely innocent, or rather indeed, very meritorious, it happens, no doubt, as is usual in such ruptures, that I will bear a part of the blame, from which a publication of these papers would entirely free me: yet I own I have an antipathy and reluctance to appeal to the public, and fear that such a publication would be the only blame I could incur in this affair. You know that nobody's judgment weighs farther with me than yours.

"Think a little of the matter. If Madame de Dupré were in town, I would desire her to give these papers a perusal, and tell me her opinion. Unhappily, M. Trudaine would only understand the French part, which is by far the most considerable. What would his friend, Fontenelle, have done in this situation?

"I am as great a lover of peace as he, and have kept myself as free from all literary quarrels; but surely, neither he nor any other person, was ever engaged in a controversy with a man of so much malice, of such a profligate disposition to lies, and such great talents. It is nothing to dispute my style or my abilities as an historian or philosopher; my books ought to answer for themselves, or they are not worth the defending: to fifty writers, who have attacked me on this head, I never made the least reply; but this is a different case: imputations are here thrown on my morals and my conduct; and though my case is so clear as not to admit of the least controversy, yet it is only clear to those who know it, and I am uncertain how far the public in Paris are in this case. At London, a publication would be regarded as entirely superfluous.

66

I must desire you to send these papers to D'Alembert after you have read them. M. Turgot will get them from him: I should desire that he saw them before he sets out for his government.

"Does not Madame de Monliquy laugh at me, that I should have sent her but a few weeks ago, the portrait of Rousseau,

done from an original in my possession, and should now send you these papers, which prove him to be one of the worst men that perhaps ever existed; if his frenzy be not some apology for him. I beg my compliments to M. and Madame de Fourquex, and am, with great truth and sincerity, My dear Sir,

"Your most affectionate humble servant,
"DAVID HUME.”

P.S.-I am sorry to tell you, that our accounts of the poor Chevalier Macdonald are very bad.

It is impossible to estimate too highly the value of Mr. Brodie's admirable History.' He has, with the greatest diligence and sagacity, traced Hume's errors, and his work, beside its other merits, may truly be said to demonstrate, in detail, how untrustworthy that celebrated writer is, and how deficient in the first quality of an historian.

NOTE TO ARCHBISHOP MAGEE, p. 222.

Ir any one will read the Examination of the Archbishop before the Lords' Committee of 1825, he will have painful proofs of the lengths to which sectarian prejudice, or it may be religious zeal, will carry a person, generally speaking, of integrity and of acuteness. The deposition was upon oath; and the Archbishop was found to have very materially altered his answers after they had been regularly taken down. He was, therefore, again called before the Committee, and endeavoured to explain this proceeding. Nothing can be more unsatisfactory; I know it gave Lord Plunkett, as a friend of the Archbishop, great concern; and as the course taken in his supposed explanations can only be reconciled with a belief in the honesty of his sworn testimony, by the assumption, that his mind was either wholly deficient in perspicacity, or warped by prejudice and zeal, it may readily excite wonder to find, proceeding from such a quarter, the sentence which condemned Mr. Hume for want of both integrity and understanding, without any such alternative as above. The passages to be compared are those of pp. 673, 678, 679 (3 May), with those of pp. 947, 948, 949, 950, 953, 954 (8 June).

231

ROBERTSON.

JOINED in friendship and in fame with the great man whose life and writings we have been contemplating, and equally with him, founder of the reputation of our country for excellence in historical composition, was William Robertson, also a native of Scotland. His father, a learned, pious, and eloquent divine, was settled for several years as minister of the Scotch church in London Wall, but had returned to Scotland before his marriage with Miss Pitcairn of Dreghorn, in the county of Edinburgh, and was settled at Borthwick, in the same county, at the time of the historian's birth, on the 19th of September, 1721. I have been curious to ascertain the kind of genius which distinguished his father beside his talent for drawing, of which I possess a specimen showing some skill, and by the kindness of a kinsman I have had the great satisfaction of receiving a copy of the only sermon which he ever published, as well as of two or three hymns, translations, and paraphrases from the Hebrew of the Old Testament. The sermon is able, judicious, correctly composed, both for accuracy of diction and severity of taste, and contains passages of great beauty and effect. It resembles what in England would be called an Ordination Sermon or Charge, being delivered at the opening of the Metropolitan Synod in

*It is a miniature in Indian ink of James, Earl of Seafield, one of the forfeited Lords, to whom he was believed to be distantly related. A tradition prevailed in the family that they descended from John Knox. The historian professed himself quite unacquainted with the reasons of this rumour which connected him with "the rustic Apostle," whose character and conduct he has described most faithfully and strikingly.

May, 1737, and is a full description of the duties of ministers, the title of it being that "they should please God rather than men." The poetry is elegant and classical. Both productions plainly show that good taste, as well as strong but sober reason, came to the great historian by descent as well as by study. But that his father held opinions more strict on some subjects than the relaxed rigour of the Presbyterian rule prescribed half a century later, may be seen from his requiring his son's promise never to enter a playhouse. This was stated by him in reference to his father, when debating the question of John Home's having written the play of Douglas.' It is needless to add that, however much he differed with his father on this subject, he strictly adhered through life to the promise thus given, insomuch that when Garrick and Henderson at different times visited him, they entertained and interested him by exhibiting to him in private specimens of the art in which both so eminently excelled. The traditional character in his family, of the venerable person whom I have mentioned, was anything rather than sour or stern, how severe and unbending soever may have been his moral feelings. For the sweetness of his placid temper, and the cheerfulness of his kindly disposition, I have heard him spoken of in terms of the warmest enthusiasm by such of his children as were old enough at the time of his decease to recollect him distinctly. The idea of again meeting him in another state was ever present to my grandmother's mind, (who was his eldest daughter), and especially when stricken with any illness. It was with her a common source of argument for a future state, as proved by the light of nature, and in her pious mind a confirmation of the truth of Christianity, that, believing in the Divine goodness, she could not conceive the extinction of so much angelical purity as adorned her parent, and so fine an understanding as he possessed. Their mother