Gentleman, Francis: a very defective article. Glafs, John," educated at New College, Aberdeen." There is no fuch place. Hardwicke, Lord, is faid to have been born in 1690, and died 1790, aged 70! Helfham, Richard, neither birth nor death. Henry, David, was a proprietor, but we believe never a conductor of the Gentleman's Magazine, and certainly not for 50 years. Hooke, Robert, born 1735: should be 1635. Howard, Earl of Surrey, never was at Flodden Field. Dr. Hudfon, the critic's chriftian name was John, not Johnson. James, Dr. his powders "procured to his family an inexhauftible fource of opulence.' The profits of this medicine. went into another family. "Jones, Sir William, a judge of the King's Bench, in the reigns of James I. and Charles I. was author of Reports in his court, and in that of common pleas." But why no more? Wood has a good account of him. We may ask the fame refpecting Sir Thomas Jones, who follows, and of whom we have a bon mot inflead of a life. Law, Rev. Wm. took his degrees at Oxford. doubtful. He does not occur among the graduates. This is Sir William Trumbull, here called Dr. Trumbull. "The time of his death is not fully afcertained." We know no date better afcertained, if any one will take the trouble to confult Pope's Epitaph on him. Some of thefe errata are probably typographical, but others evidently proceed from copying preceding works of this kind without fufficient attention. Mere copying will never produce a correct work, for our biographical collections are in general extremely faulty in dates, as well as in leading circumftances. We have not difcovered any important omiffions in this volume, but as the author's materials will infenfibly accumulate, room might be made for future additions, by the, omiffion of fome articles which feem to belong to chronology rather than biography; and furely fuch names,as Barebones, Brafs Crofby, Col. Defpard, &c. might be reserved for fome inferior and lefs honourable collection. We are in clined, although upon very different grounds, to object to the admiffion of the perfonages recorded in the Bible. They cannot be the fubjects of personal hiftory, nor of literary criticism, and when we fee, as in this work, the character and hiftory of Jefus Chrift difmified in fix lines, we are convinced that fuch articles will not be confulted from curiolity, and cannot be read with advantage. The Abridgment of this work, in octavo, appears to be executed with judgment, and muft prove a very useful com panion to ftudents. The articles are but little fhortened in material points, and by printing on a small but legible type, are made to contain a prodigious quantity of interefting matter, to excite the curiofity of the young, and refresh the memories of the old. When, indeed, we confider the copious nature and variety of the larger volume, we cannot but look on the few errors we have taken the liberty to point out, as perhaps infeparable from a firft edition, and by no means derogatory to the induftry and talents of the author. ART. VI. An Account of the Life and Writings of David Hume, Efq. By Thomas Edward Ritchie. 8vo. 520 pp.. Price 10s. 6d. Cadell and Davies. 1807. CIRCUMSTANCES, of which the detail would be in no ways interefting to the reader, have prevented us from noticing this work within the accustomed period after publication; and we might perhaps be acquitted of any material omiflion of duty, were we now to pafs it by altogether, fince it can boast of bringing forward but little new information concerning the fubject of which it treats. It is, however, the only work of length which has yet been offered to the public as a biography of David Hume; and that perfonage occupied too confpicuous a flation in the republic of letters during the period in which he flourifhed, and exercifed his talents with fuccefs in too many of the departments of literature and philofophy, not to afford a promifing and interefting fubject for a critical furvey of his life and writings. To appreciate with accuracy his merits and defects as an hiftorian, metaphyfician, and moralift, and fairly to effimate his character as a man, would indeed far exceed the limits to which this article is neceffarily circumfcribed; nor is fuch a tafk very neceffary in an age when his admirers and opponents liave nearly exhaufted every epithet of panegyric or reprehenfion, which the warmth of admiration or zeal of efentment could fuggeft. It will not, however, be ufelefs to endeavour to hold the fcales of juftice between these prps bably over-vehement adverfaries, and fhortly to point out fome Tome of the dangerous fallacies of this infinuating feeptic, without feeking to deny him thofe merits to which, both as a writer and as a man, he feems to have a fair and equitable claim. Mr. Ritchie, if he cannot demand the praise of much originality of research, or profundity of criticifm, in the volume now before us, has at leaft the merit of moderation in respect to the fize of his work. According to the allowance which bookfellers feem difpofed to make to the natural expanfivenefs of their authors in the prefent age, we should have thought a couple of quartos a moderate tax upon our purfes for the life of fo eminent a perfonage as Hume; and if we rightly recollect this was exactly the extent to which, Mr. Godwin informs us, he was affured by his bookfeller the public might be expected to go, when he fet upon writing his life of Geoffrey Cucer. We therefore think it a piece of very commendable modefty in Mr. Ritchie, to have ufhered his work into the world in the fhape of an unaffuming octavo. This author alfo deferves praife for candidly avowing, that he poffeffed no new or peculiar channels of information concerning the fubject of his biographical effay: no unpublifhed letters, unexplored manufcripts, or memorandums, or traditionary records, which had efcaped the industry of former collectors. He applied indeed for information to the furviving relatives of Mr. Hume, when he intimated to them his intention of publishing a life of that celebrated writer; but, as he informs us in a note at p. 4, received a promise of affillance, only on condition that his account fhould be favourable to the memory of his hero. That he was right in rejecting a proffer of fervice, fettered with fuch an obligation, we are by no means difpofed to queftion; though we cannot help queftioning the propriety of his affigning himself fuch a task, without this or fome fimilar aid; and do not at all coincide with him in opinion, that the information which he could have procured from fuch a quarter was likely to be of little importance. The note we have alluded to is as follows: -: "In the hope of being enabled to fill up any chafm in this narrative, I applied to a near relation of Mr. Hume, and was told, that if the work was to advance his fame, and a copy of the manufcript furnished to the family, the information wanted would, perhaps, be fupplied. With fuch conditions I refufed compliance, chufing rather to remain fatisfied with the little. I had otherwife obtained, than to fetter my fentiments, and fubject myself to fo laborious a task, in return for what was pro bably of little importance." P. 4. David Hume was the fon of a country gentleman, of fmall property, in the county of Berwick, and was born the 26th of April, 1711, old flyle. His father was a descendant of the family of the Earl of Hume, or Home; and his mother, whose name was Falconer, was defcended from that of Lord Halkerton, which title came by fucceffion to her brother. This double alliance with nobility was, we are affured by his biographer, a fource of great felf-complacency to Hume during the whole of his life; a pofition which we are readily inclined to believe, as we cannot help confidering vanity or felf-fufficiency as a very predominant ingredient in the mind of this extraordinary man, although it was carefully veiled under much affume 1 meeknefs and gentleness of deportment. Hume, inheriting a very limited patrimony, was, on the death of his father, exhorted by his friends to betake himself to fome active profeffion; but he himself affures us, in his "Own Life," that he found an "unfurmountable averfion to every thing but the purfuits of philofophy and general learning." It was, it feems, in the republic of letters that he fought to render himself confpicuous, and to gratify his predominant felf-love; and as fame and notoriety were to him more captivating objects than mere utility, we need not be greatly furprifed, that at the outfet of his literary career, he chofe to diftinguish himself by propagating a fet of doctrines of the moft extravagant and dangerous tendency. He was not, we are willing to believe, a deliberately wicked or malevolent man; but his love of human kind feems to have gone no further than to induce him to cultivate the good-will and kindness of the circle of his friends and acquaintances; and was by no means powerful enough to prevent him from attacking, in his writings, every obligation of morality, and every fanction of religion, by which the bonds of fociety are moft effectually held together. Having reluctantly, and with no fuccefs, attempted first the ftudy of the law, and next the labours of the comptinghoufe, Hume, in 1734, retired to France to profecute his ftudies without interruption; and here, he fays, he laid that plan of life which he afterwards fleadily and fuccefsfully purfued. "I refolved," fays he, in his Own Life," to make a very rigid frugality fupply my deficiency of fortune, to maintain unimpaired my independency, and to regard every object as contemptible, except the improvement of iny talents in literature." During his retreat in France, he bufied himself in preparing for the prefs his "Treatife of Human Nature," a work which, he fays, he had meditated even while at the University; a circumftance which proves the cold-heartedness and preLuming felf-fufficiency of this extraordinary character in a very striking manner. For a youth, in the full tide of blood and generous fympathy, to meditate the diffufion of a fyftem of univerfal feepticifm, in which it is endeavoured to prove not only that all the fpeculations of the philofopher or the divine, but every virtuous feeling of the heart, every endearing tie by which man is bound to man, are no better than ridiculous prejudices and empty dreams, appears to us the moft fingular deviation from the natural and laudable propenfities of a mind, unhackneyed in the ways of the world, that has yet occurred in the anomalous hiftory of man. The fcepticism and irreligion of Voltaire, Diderot, and Rouffeau, "grew with their years, and ftrengthened with their ftrength, but Hume ftarted as if from the nursery into a perfect and full grown infidel; and at the age when paffion and affection wholly, or in a great measure, engrofs the minds of others, bufied himself entirely in devifing intricate fophifms and obfcure quibbles, to prove abftractly that man is the basest and moft contemptible of beings. The two firft volumes of the Treatife of Human Nature were publifhed in London in the year 1738, and, according to the avowal of the author himself, never was any literary attempt more unfortunate. "It fell," he fays, "dead born from the prefs, without reaching fuch diftinction as even to excite a murmur among the zealots." He adds, however, "that being naturally of a cheerful and fanguine temper, he foon recovered the blow;" by which he would have us to understand, that his literary difappointments had very little effect upon the equanimity of his teniper. But this is not at all confiftent with what he afterwards acknowledges he felt, on the bad reception of the first volume of his hiftory; which, he fays, fo greatly difcouraged him, that "had not the war been at that time breaking out between France and England, I had certainly retired to fome provincial town of the former kingdom, have changed my name, and never more returned to my native country."-(Own Life.) It is likewife flatly contradicted by a commentary on this very paffage of Hume's own Life, which appeared in the London Review for 1777, then edited by Dr. Kenrick; which afferts, that Hume's difappointment at the public reception of his Treatise of, Human Nature had a very violent effect on his pallions, at leaft in one particular inftance. It did not, it feems, fall fo dead-born from the prefs as not to be feverely handled L BRIT. CRIT. VOL, XXXIV. AUG. 1809. 1 |