Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 5.djvu/44

104 which lie pursued his legal studies, and this early acquired disgust would at least hint, that like his friend lord Kames, he commenced his career with the repulsive drudgery of a writer's office, in which his natural taste for retirement and reflection was invaded by a vulgar routine of commercial business and petty squabbling, and his acuteness and good taste offended by the tiresome formalities with which it was necessary he should occupy much valuable time, previous- ly to exercising his ingenuity in the higher walks of the profession. But to those who are acquainted with the philosophical, and more especially with the constitutional writings of Mr Hume, the contemptuous rejection of the works of the civilians, and the exorbitant preference for the Roman poets, will appear at least a singular confession. To him any poet offered a mere subject of criticism, to be tried by the standard of taste, and not to gratify his sentiment; while in the works of the civilians he would have found (and certainly did find) the acute philosophical disquisitions of minds which were kindred to his own, both in profundity and elegance, and in the clear and accurate Vinnius, whom he has censured with such unbrotherly contempt, he must have found much which as a philosopher he respected, whatever distaste arbitrary circumstances might have given him towards the subject which that great man treated.

In 1734, the persuasions of his friends induced Mr Hume to attempt the bettering of his income by entering into business, and he established himself in the office of a respectable merchant in Bristol ; but the man who had rejected the study of the law, was not likely to be fascinated by the bustle of commerce, and probably in opposition to the best hopes and wishes of his friends, in a few months he relinquished his situation, and spent some years in literary retirement in France, living first at Rheims, and afterwards at La Fleche in Anjeau. " I there," he says, " laid that plan of life which I have steadily and successfully pursued. I resolved to make a very rigid frugality supply my deficiency of fortune, to maintain unimpaired my independency, and to regard every ob. ject as contemptible, except the improvement of my talents in literature;" and with the consistency of a calm and firm mind, he kept his resolution. For some time previous to this period, Hume must have been gradually collecting that vast mass of observation and reflection which he employed himself during his retirement in digesting into the celebrated Treatise on Human Nature. In 1737, he had finished the first two volumes of this work, and he then returned to London to superintend their publication. From this date commenced the earliest traces of that literary and social correspondence which furnishes many of the most characteristic commentaries on the mental habits of the philosopher. With Henry Home, afterwards lord Kames, a near neighbour of the family of Ninewells, and probably a connexion of the philosopher (for lie was the first member of the family who adopted the name of Hume, in preference to the family name Home,) he contracted an early friendship, and a similarity of pursuits continued the intercourse. To that gentleman we find the subject of our memoir writing in the following terms, in December, 1737: "I have been here near three months, always within a week of agreeing with my printers: and you may imagine I did not forget the work itself during that time, when I began to feel some passages weaker for the style and diction than 1 could have wished. The nearness and greatness of the event roused up my attention, and made me more difficult to please than when I was alone in perfect tranquillity in France." The remaining portion of this communication, though given in the usual placid and playful manner of the author, tells a painful tale of the difficulties he had to encounter, and of hope deferred. "But here," he says, "I must tell you one of my foibles. I have a great inclination to go down to Scotland this spring to see my friends, and have your advice concerning my