NOTE TO THE LIVES OF VOLTAIRE AND ROUSSEAU. THE French critics appear to have greatly misappre hended the object of this work when they have asked what occasion there was to write lives of Voltaire and Rousseau, when there was no new information conveyed respecting those celebrated persons, and no new judgment pronounced upon their works. They seem to have been misled by the accidental circumstance of the French publication only containing these two pieces, which, however, formed part of a series comprehending all the men of science and letters who flourished in the time of George III. Surely my French friends and neighbours would have been the first to complain had Voltaire and Rousseau been left out of the list. In the most severe of the criticisms which have appeared of these two Lives, I have to acknowledge the very courteous and even friendly style of the learned and ingenious author, M. Berville; but he will permit me to express no small satisfaction at finding that, after all, he confirms almost every opinion which I had ventured to pronounce upon Voltaire, the subject to which his remarks are almost exclusively confined. As for the want of novelty, nothing can be more perilous than running after discoveries on the merits of works that have been before the world for almost a century, and on which the most unlimited discussion has taken place. It may, however, perhaps be thought that, in one respect, the Life of Voltaire differs from its predecessors. There is certainly no bias either of nation, or of party, or of sect shown in the opinions given whether of the personal merits or the works of that great man. On one subject M. Berville evidently has entirely misapprehended me, when he says I have expressed an opinion dif ferent from Clairaut's on Voltaire's scientific capacity. Clairaut's judgment was confined apparently to subjects of pure mathematics; and I have only ventured to wish that either it had been expressly so limited, or that it had been so understood by Voltaire, whose capacity for experimental philosophy, though not for the mathematics, I ventured to consider was very great. Of this I have given the proofs, and M. Berville considers them as an important addition to what had hitherto been said of Voltaire. Respecting the Life of Rousseau, his opinion is much more severe; but on this subject I never can hope to agree with a writer who manifestly regards that individual as a great benefactor of his species, and as having waged a war against tyranny equally successful with Voltaire's against priestcraft. Rousseau's political works are wholly beneath contempt. No proofs are required to show the ignorance and even incapacity of a writer whose notions of the representative system-the greatest political improvement of modern times-are such, that he holds a people to be enslaved during the whole interval between one election and another-a dogma which makes it utterly impossible for any free state to exist whose inhabitants amount to more than fifteen hundred or two thousand. But, in truth, it is not as a political writer that Rousseau now retains any portion of the reputation which he once enjoyed. fame rests upon a paradoxical discourse against all knowledge, a second-rate novel, and an admirably written, but degrading, and even disgusting autobiography. The critic is very indignant at the grave censure which I pronounced on this last work, and on the vices by which it showed the author to have been contaminated. I deliberately re-affirm my opinion as formerly expressed on the subject; nor can I imagine a more reprehensible use of faculties, such as Rousseau certainly possessed, than the composition of a narrative, some parts of which cannot be read without disgust by any person whose mind is ordinarily pure. CHATEAU ELEANOR LOUISE, PROVENCE, 5th January, 1846. HUME. GREATLY distinguished as the people of Great Britain had ever been for their achievements in all the other walks of literature and science, it is certain that there never had appeared among them any historian of eminence before the middle of the eighteenth century. The country of Bacon, of Newton, of Locke, of Napier— the country of Milton, of Shakspeare, and Buchanan -of Dryden, Swift, Bolingbroke-had as yet nothing more to produce as the rival of ancient historical fame than the crude and partial annals of Buchanan, great only as a poet, and the far more classical and less prejudiced political Memoirs rather than History' of Clarendon. While Italy had her Davila and Guicciardini, and France her Thuanus (Du Thou), this island was nearly unknown for any native annals, and a Frenchman (Rapin de Thoyras) had provided the only History of England' which any one could find readable, nor in reading that could he affect to find pleasure. It was reserved for two natives of Scotland to remove such an unhappy peculiarity, and to place our fame in this important walk of literature upon a level with our eminence in all its other departments. Mr. Hume first entered the field; and though his is by no means the work on which the historical merit of the country mainly rests (for he had neither the impartiality nor the patience of the historical office), yet he is decidedly to be praised as having been the first to enter the field with the talents of a fine writer, and the habits of a philosophic inquirer. David Hume was born at Edinburgh, in April. 1711. He was the younger son of Mr. Hume of Ninewells, in the county of Berwick, and related to Earl Hume's, or Home's, family; his mother was the daughter of Sir David Falconer, Lord President, and niece of Lord Halkerston, one of the Judges of the Court of Session. His father dying soon after his birth, his guardians intended him for the bar; but he tells us that while "he was supposed to be poring over Voet and Vinning, he was secretly devouring the pages of Cicero and Virgil." He neglected Greek in his early years, and had to make up for this deficiency, with some labour, in after life. The fortune of his father, to which his eldest brother Joseph succeeded, was inconsiderable; and his own portion being necessarily very small, it was deemed expedient, as he refused to be a lawyer, that he should exert himself in some other way to provide for his support. He was therefore sent to a mercantile house at Bristol, in 1734; but he found the drudgery of this employment intolerable, and he retired to Rheims, in the north of France, determined, while he prosecuted his favourite studies, to supply, by rigorous economy and a life of abstinence, the want of fortune. From Rheims he removed to La Flèche, in Anjou, and there wrote his Treatise on Human Nature.' It was published in 1737, and fell, as he says, still-born from the press. He afterwards distributed it into separate Essays,' which, with additions, he published in 1742, and it had more success. After his first publication he retired to his brother's house, and lived so happily there among his books that he afterwards says, in a letter to Dr. Robertson, that he should never have left it, had not his brother's marriage made a change in the family. Although he appears to have felt much more and much earlier than Robertson the love of literary fame, his first work having been published when he was only 26, while the History of Scotland' only appeared in the ་ author's 38th year, yet manifestly the same love of literary pursuits for their own sake, the desire of knowledge, the indulgence of a speculative turn, and meditating on the events of past times and on the systems of former inquirers, appears to have been the mainspring of both their movements; and Hume was happy in being allowed to gratify these strong propensities of his nature. The last Marquess of Annandale was a person of weak intellect. Though neither insane nor idiotic, he required the company of a friend, as his imbecility excluded him from society, and he was not ill enough to require the care of a keeper. Mr. Hume, in 1745, accepted this situation, as a large salary was very naturally given to induce him. But after a year's residence, finding, as we see from the late publication of some querulous letters very little like his ordinary correspondence, that he could no longer submit to such a life, he left this occupation, and was fortunate enough to receive an invitation immediately after of a very different kind. It was to attend, as private secretary, General St. Clair (a relation of Lord Loughborough, and great-uncle of the late Lord Rosslyn), whose family has always been honourably distinguished by their love of literary society. The General was appointed to command an expedition, at first destined for the conquest of Canada, but afterwards very unwisely, and with no result any more than any rational design, diverted to the folly of making an incursion on the coast of France. The following year, 1747, he accompanied the General on his embassy to the courts of Vienna and Turin. This mission was of a military nature, and the philosopher tells us that he was not only Secretary, but Aide-de-camp, with two military men-Captain, afterwards General, Grant, and Sir Henry Erskine, afterwards a General officer also, and nephew of the Ambassador. These two years, 1746 and 1747, formed the only interruption ever |