Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 5.djvu/53

Rh few of the subjects of these essays are the following: "Of the Delicacy of Taste and Passion," "That Politics may be reduced to a Science," "Of the Independency of Parliament," "Of the Parties in Great Britain," "Of Superstition and Enthusiasm," "Of Liberty and Despotism," "Of Eloquence," "Of Simplicity and Refinement," "A character of Sir Robert Walpole," &c. Of these miscellaneous productions we cannot venture the most passing- analysis, in a memoir which must necessarily be brief: of their general character it may be sufficient to say, that his style of writing, which in his Treatise was far from approaching the purity and elegance of composition which he afterwards displayed, had made a rapid advance to excellence, and that the reading world quickly discovered from the justness and accuracy of his views, the elegance of his sentiments, and the clear precision with which he stated his arguments, that the subtile calculator of the origin of all human knowledge could direct an acute eye to the proceedings of the world around him, and that he was capable of making less abstract calculations on the motives which affected mankind. A few of these essays, which he seems to have denounced as of too light a nature to accompany his other works, were not republished during his life; among the subjects of these are "Impudence and Modesty," "Love and Marriage," "Avarice," &c. Although these have been negatively stigmatized by their author, a general reader will find much gratification in their perusal: the subjects are handled with the careless touch of a satirist, and in drawing so lightly and almost playfully pictures of what is contemptible and ridiculous, one can scarcely avoid the conviction that such is the aspect in which the author wishes to appear; but on the other hand there is such a complete absence of all grotesqueness, of exaggeration, or attempt at ridicule, that it is apparent he is drawing a picture of what he knows to be unchangeably rooted in human nature, and that knowing raillery to be useless, he is content as a philosopher merely to depict the deformity which cannot be altered. Among the essays he did not re-publish, is the "Character of Sir Robert Walpole," a singular specimen of the author's ability to abstract himself from the political feelings of the time, calmly describing the character of a living statesman, whose conduct was perhaps more feverishly debated by his friends and enemies than that of almost any minister in any nation, as if he were a person of a distant age, with which the author had no sympathy, or of a land with which he was only acquainted through the pages of the traveller. It was after the publication of this work that Hume first enjoyed the gratification of something like public applause. "The work," he says, "was favour- ably received, and soon made me entirely forget my former disappointment." He still rigidly adhered to his plans of economy and retirement, and continued to reside at Ninewells, applying himself to the study of Greek, which he had previously neglected. In 1745, he was invited to become tutor to the marquis of Annandale, a young nobleman whose state of mind at that period rendered a superintendent necessary; and though the situation must have been one' not conducive to study, or pleasing to such a mind as that of Hume, he found that his circumstances would not justify a refusal of the invitation, and he continued for the period of a year in the family of the marquis.

During his residence in this family, the death of Mr Cleghorn, professor of moral philosophy in the university of Edinburgh, caused a vacancy, which Mr Hurne very naturally considered he might be capable of filling. The patrons of the university, however, and their advisers, took a different view of the matter, and judged that they would be at least more safe, in considering a person of his reputed principles of philosophy, as by no means a proper instructor of youth: nor were virulence and party feeling unmixed with cool judgment in fixing their choice. "I am informed," says Hume, in one of his playful letters