genius, adorned by a noble, harmonious, forcible, and even correct versification:" its author, "relying on his sublime imagination, and his nervous and harmonious expression, has ventured to present to his reader the naked beauties of nature!" And so one sees that it was not in David's eyes that the Epigoniad was a mere teased-up, trickedout counterfeit to be taken to pieces in a day: it was impossible for him to get beyond what for him had "even correct versification"-a harmony quite possibly, so far as he could judge, like that of Mr. Pope! The letters of Hume, in which these things appear, are always, nevertheless, very interesting, and not without hits at times of rare sagacity, as when he asks Gibbon, why he composes in French, and tells him that "America promises a superior stability and duration to the English language; " or when, from his own observations, he expresses it as his opinion of Germany that, "were it united, it would be the greatest power that ever was in the world." One learns, too, from these letters, and, generally, from Burton's Life of him, many earnest things of Hume. He was a warm and active friend, without a vestige of a grudge in him. How generous he was to Robertson, urging him to write, negociating for him with publishers, pushing his books, and praising them to everybody! And as he was to Robertson, so was he to every other possible rival-to Ferguson, to Henry, to Gibbon. To Adam Smith he had been so kind, and good, and helpful, that Smith, like the affectionate, simple creature he was, veritably worshipped Hume. Hume's friends indeed were a host, and not one of them but loved him. He had old mutton and old claret for them, and was very hospitable to them. He was a most zealous and affectionate uncle and brother; and did his best, simply for everybody, related or unrelated. One might, perhaps, except a little in the case of Smollett, whom, as a be-puffed rival, he had evidently viewed with impatience, and spoken somewhat disparagingly of in the character of a historian. That was not quite just. Smollett wrote his History for bread; but he wrote it well; with admirable style in the main, and he broke his constitution in its service. It was when so worn and exhausted that Smollett made an application to Hume, who was at that time a Secretary of State. Hume's answer, that he had spoken for him, but could give him no hope of a consulship, is cool business, and no more. A year later, Smollett, on the eve of starting, as he says, for his "perpetual exile," writes again to Hume, not for himself this time, however, but for a certain neglected, though deserving, Captain Robert Stobo. Hume, on this occasion, writes warmly in return; but what contributes, perhaps, to move him now is the opinion, expressed by Smollett, that he (Hume) is "undoubtedly the best writer of the age." David cannot resist that compliment; it goes to his heart; and he accepts" that "great partiality" of "good opinion" on the part of Smollett, "as a pledge of his goodwill and friendship!" Edmund Burke is said to have affirmed of Hume, that "in manners he was an easy unaffected man previous to going to Paris; but that he returned a literary coxcomb." There does not appear to have been really any such change in Hume, so far as we are to accept the testimony of his friends at home. It would have been very strange, at the same time, if all his varied circumstances of life had left behind them no traces on his character. Such flatteries as that of Gibbon, who offers to burn a work if Hume says so, though he would "make so unlimited a sacrifice to no man in Europe but to Mr. Hume," or that of Smollett, which we have just seen, must have been not rare in the end; and they were precisely the incense that would intoxicate a Hume, if, in such a subject, intoxication were possible at all. But, Q really, after everything, his experiences at the hands of the public and at those even of his friends, his experiences at Paris, his experiences as a Minister of State, he could not have been any longer the mere floundering youngling in the dark; but must, in thought, speech, and action, have borne himself with the crest and confidence of a grown man that knew his own support in the trainings and trials within him. Hume was too genuine a man to be carried, so to speak, out of himself to fall away into the insolence and conceit of the shallow. It might have been of him that Dr. Young said: "Himself too much he prizes to be proud." I think we shall see reason, too, when we specially come to that, not to be so very hard and harsh on Hume in the matter of religion. He hated superstition; but no thought lay nearer his heart all his life than the thought of God. He meditated nothing more deeply, more reverently, more anxiously, than the secret source of this great universe. Walking home with his friend Ferguson, one clear and beautiful night, "Oh, Adam!" he cried, looking up, "can any one contemplate the wonders of that firmament, and not believe that there is a God?" the death of his mother, too, whom he loved always with the most constant affection and the sincerest veneration, a friend found him "in the deepest affliction and in a flood of grief:" to this friend, then taking occasion to suggest certain improving religious reflections, David answered through his tears, "Though I throw out my speculations to entertain the learned and metaphysical, yet, in other things, I do not think so differently from the rest of the world as you imagine." On We are now prepared to advance to our conclusion in these matters, as I shall hope to accomplish in our next lecture. GIFFORD LECTURE THE THIRTEENTΤΗ. The Dialogues concerning Natural Religion-Long consideration and repeated revision of them-Their publication, Hume's anxiety for, his friends' difficulties with-Style, Cicero-Words and things, Quintilian-Styles, old and new-The earlier worksThe Treatise-The Enquiry, Rosenkranz-Hume's provisionLocke, Berkeley-Ideas-Connection in them-Applied to the question of a Deity-Of a Particular Providence-Extension of the cause inferred to be proportioned only to that of the given effect-Applied to the cause of the world--Natural theology to Hume-Chrysippus in Plutarch-Greek - The order of argumentation-The ontological-Matter the necessary existenceThe cosmological answers that--Infinite contingencies insufficient for one necessity-The teleological - Analogy inapplicableHume's own example. IN passing now to those works of Hume which more especially regard our precise subject, we are naturally led, in so far as literary considerations still influence us, to the Dialogues concerning Natural Religion. At the time of his death, these Dialogues, it seems, had been under their author's hands for no less than twenty-seven years exactly the judicial nine years three times over ! -twenty-seven years, during which they had been the subjects of innumerable revisions, corrections, alterations, emendations, and modifications of all kinds. I daresay we do not doubt now that what was principally concerned in these was the matter of style. "Stylus est optimus magister eloquentiae, style is the supreme master of eloquence," a quotation of his own from Quintilian, seems to have been ever present to Hume's mind as his constant guide in writing. So it is we find that these twenty-seven years have eventuated in effecting for the Dialogues in question a perfect finish and a polish ultimate. Doubtless, it is in his belief of this that their author manifests so much anxiety in regard to their posthumous publication. In his will, he leaves his manuscripts to the care of Adam Smith, with power to judge in respect of the whole of them, the Dialogues concerning Natural Religion alone excepted: these Dialogues are to be published absolutely. It would appear now. that, in Hume's circle, these dispositions of his will leaked out somehow and became known; for already before his death there is question of these Dialogues between Hume and his friends. His biographer, Burton (ii. 491), says, "Elliot was opposed to the publication of this work; Blair pleaded strongly for its suppression; and Smith, who had made up his mind that he would not edit the work, seems to have desired that the testamentary injunction laid on him might be revoked." Hume was not to be baulked. He becomes sensitive on this subject of his Dialogues: "If I live a few years longer, I shall publish them myself," he says; and, after various rejected propositions, losing patience even with Smith, he, by a codicil to his will, retracts his previous destinations, and leaves his "manuscripts to the care of Mr. William Strahan of London," with the express condition that the Dialogues on Religion shall be "printed and published any time within two years after his death." But the anxieties of Hume, even after signature of this codicil, were not yet at an end. He is found to have returned to it, and to have tacked on to it a paragraph-to the effect that, if his Dialogues were not published within two years and a half after his death, he "ordained" the property to return to his "nephew David, whose duty in publishing them, as the last request of his uncle, must be approved of by all the world." And this David it was who did, |