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[376:1] Literary Gazette, 1821, p. 745. The original is in the MSS. R.S.E.
[378:1] Thus it appears that it was his original intention to continue the history down to 1714, before he went back to the earlier periods.
[379:1] From the original at Kilravock.
[379:2] Probably Alexander Wedderburn, afterwards Lord Chancellor Loughborough, who was then twenty years of age.
[379:3] From the original at Kilravock.
[381:1] Memorials of James Oswald, p. 72.
[383:1] Scots Mag. 1802, p. 794. Collated with original at Kilravock.
[385:1] Scots Magazine, 1802, p. 902.
[387:1] Alexander Hume, a director of the East India Company.
[387:2] Edinburgh Annual Register for 1809, p. 553.
[387:3] Singer's edition of Spence's Anecdotes of Books and Men, p. 448.
[394:1] It is out of some vague rumour as to this transaction, that Lord Charlemont must have constructed the following romantic story of Hume. "He was tender-hearted, friendly, and charitable in the extreme, as will appear from a fact, which I have from good authority. When a member of the University of Edinburgh, and in great want of money, having little or no paternal fortune, and the collegiate stipend being very inconsiderable, he had procured, through the interest of some friend, an office in the university, which was worth about 40 a-year. On the day when he had received this good news, and just when he had got into his possession the patent or grant entitling him to his office, he was visited by his friend Blacklock, the poet, who is much better known by his poverty and blindness than by his genius. This poor man began a long descant on his misery, bewailing his want of sight, his large family of children, and his utter inability to provide for them, or even procure them the necessaries of life. Hume, unable to bear his complaints, and destitute of money to assist him, ran instantly to his desk, took out the grant, and presented it to his miserable friend, who received it with exultation, and whose name was soon after, by Hume's interest, inserted instead of his own."—Hardy's Memoirs of Charlemont, p. 9. This story is constructed after the received model of the current anecdotes of Fielding, Goldsmith, and others, and is perhaps as close to the truth as many of them would be found to be, if they were minutely investigated. It is pretty clear that Hume's generosity,—for generosity he certainly had, to a very large extent, by the testimony of all who knew him,—was not so much the creature of impulse, as that of the authors who have been mentioned above: but such an instance as that just given, is a warning to distrust those anecdotes of the inconsiderate generosity of men of genius, that are put into a very dramatic shape.
[394:2] It is along with the letter to Smith in the MSS. R.S.E.
[396:1] The fastidious Gray's appreciation of La Fontaine, is thus recorded. "The sly, delicate, and exquisitely elegant pleasantry of La Fontaine he thought inimitable, whose muse, however licentious, is never gross; not perhaps on that account the less dangerous."—Nicholls' Reminiscences. Gray's Works, v. 45.
[396:2] In 1756, some disputes appear to have arisen between the Faculty and their curators, owing to the arbitrary disposal of the books by the latter. On 6th January it was represented by Mr. William Johnstone, that the curators had ordered certain books to be sold, and that the practice was a very questionable one, "seeing as one curator succeeded another yearly, and different men had different tastes, the library might by that means happen to suffer considerably." It was declared that the curators had no right to dispose of books.
[399:1] From the original at Kilravock.
[399:2] Edinburgh: published by Hamilton, Balfour, and Neill. It is entered in the Gentleman's Magazine list for October.
[401:1] Carte's last volume was posthumously published in the year after Hume's first.
[403:1] He does not appear to have suffered any persecutions before he wrote the first volume of the History of the Stuarts, unless the opposition to his appointment as a professor deserves that name. The tone of the History itself was indeed one of the grounds on which he was attacked in the ecclesiastical courts.
[403:2] Article by Lord Jeffrey in The Edinburgh Review, xii. 276.
[405:1] Article on History by Mr. Macaulay. Edinburgh Review, xlvii. p. 359.
[407:1] Printed in the Appendix of Voltaire et Rousseau, par Henry Lord Brougham, p. 340.
[408:1] See the letters in Appendix. The French bibliographical works of reference, which are in general very full, do not mention any translation of the History of the Stuarts earlier than 1760, when Querard and Brunet give the following:
Histoire de la Maison de Stuart sur le trne d'Angleterre, jusqu'au dtrnement de Jacques II. traduite de l'Anglois de David Hume, (par L'Abb Prvost.) Londres (Paris) 1760. 3 vols. in 4to.
The edition about to appear in Holland, which threw Le Blanc into despair, seems to have been overlooked. This Prvost, or Prvt, is the well-known author of the "Histoire du Chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut," which still holds its place in French popular literature, though it bears but a small proportion to the bulk of his other voluminous works which are forgotten. The authors of the Dictionnaire Historique, say they find in his translation of Hume, "un air tranger, un style souvent embarrass, sm d'Anglicismes, d'expressions peu Franoises, de tours durs, de phrases louches et mal construites." This abb led an irregular life, being a sort of disgraced ecclesiastic, and his death was singularly tragical. He had fallen by the side of a wood in a fit of apoplexy. Being found insensible, he was removed as a dead body to the residence of a magistrate, where a surgeon was to open the body to discover the cause of death. At the first insertion of the knife, a scream from the victim terrified all present: but it was too late; the instrument had entered a vital part.
