Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 5.djvu/63

Rh History of England. Dr third in his Dialogues on the English Constitution stoutly combated his opinions. Miller brought the force of his strongly thinking mind to a consideration of the subject at great length, but he assumed too much the aspect of a special pleader. Dr Birch and Dr Towers entered on minute examinations of particular portions of the narrative, and the late major Cartwright, with more fancy than reason, almost caricatured the opinions of those who considered that Hume had designedly painted the government of the Tudors in arbitrary colours, to relieve that of the Stuarts. Mr Laing appeared as the champion of the Scottish patriots, and Dr M'Crie as the vindicator of the presbyterians; and within these few past years, two elaborate works have fully examined the statements and representations of Hume, the British Empire of Mr Brodie, and the extremely impartial Constitutional History of Hallam.

In the interval betwixt the publication of the first and second volumes of the History, Hume produced the "Natural History of Religion." This production is one of those which Warburton delighted to honour. In a pamphlet which Hume attributed to Kurd, he thus politely notices it: "The few excepted out of the whole race of mankind are, we see, our philosopher and his gang, with their pedlars' ware of matter and motion, who penetrate by their disquisitions into the secret structure of vegetable and animal bodies, to extract, like the naturalists in Gulliver, sunbeams out of cucumbers; just as wise a project as this of raising religion out of the intrigues of matter and motion. We see what the man would be at, through all his disguises, and no doubt, he would be much mortified if we did not; though the discovery we make, is only this, that, of all the slanders against revelation, this before us is the tritest, the dirtiest, and the most worn in the drudgery of free-thinking, not but it may pass with his friends, and they have my free leave to make their best of it. What I quote it for, is only to show the rancour of heart which possesses this unhappy man, and which could induce him to employ an insinuation against the Christian and the Jewish religions; not only of no weight in itself, but of none, I will venture to say, even in his own opinion." Hume says, he "found by Warburton's railing" that his "books were beginning to be esteemed in good company;" and of the particular attention which the prelate bestowed on the sceptic, such specimens as the following are to be found in the correspondence of the former: "I am strongly tempted too, to have a stroke at Hume in parting. He is the author of a little book, called Philosophical Essays: in one of which he argues against the hope of a God, and in another (very needlessly you will say,) against the possibility of miracles. He has crowned the liberty of the press, and yet he has a considerable post under government. I have a great mind to do justice on his arguments against miracles, which I think might be done in few words. But does he deserve notice? Is he known among you? Pray answer me these questions; for if his own weight keeps him down, I should be sorry to contribute to his advancement to any place but the pillory."

Of the very different manner in which he esteemed a calm, and a scurrilous critic, we have happily been able to obtain an instance, in a copy of a curious letter of Hume, which, although the envelope is unfortunately lost, and the whole is somewhat mutilated, we can perceive from the circumstances, to have been addressed to Dr John Stewart, author of an Essay on the Laws of Motion. It affords a singular instance of the calm and forgiving spirit of the philosopher: "I am so great a lover of peace, that I am resolved to drop this matter altogether, and not to insert a syllable in the preface, which can have a reference to our essay. The truth is, I could take no revenge but such a one as would have