completed by he publication of two volumes containing an inadequate, and, even for the time, an unscholarly account of the early period of English history. The work gradually stole into popularity, and several years before the author's death had come to be reckoned the standard History of England, a position which it maintained till within comparatively late years. Nor was its proud position undeserved. As an historian, Hume possessed some highly estimable qualities. His style is lucid and excellent, his narrative flows on in a calm, equable course, his reflections are generally judicious and sometimes profound, and his sense of proportion is admirable. Few writers have excelled him in the art of giving to each event its fit place and its proper degree of length. But these excellences are counterbalanced by grave faults. In common with all the historians of the eighteenth century, with the exception of Gibbon, he forgot that truth was the first requisite in an historian, and aimed rather to lay before. his readers a polished and philosophic narrative than the results of patient accuracy and original research, in this respect affording a notable contrast to the latest school of historians, who sometimes in their anxious care to avoid the Charybdis of inaccuracy appear to make shipwreck on the Scylla of pedantry. Moreover, his spirit of political partisanship was unworthy of so great a philosopher. Like Dr. Johnson, he always took care "that the Whig dogs should not have the best of it." Still, with all its defects, his History is a great work; and if later writers have superseded it as an historical authority, it is yet worth reading as in many respects a model of style. We should not omit to mention that Hume was the first to mix with his account of public affairs chapters on the condition of the people and on the state of literature.

From his tranquil, studious life in Edinburgh, Hume was, in 1763, drawn by an invitation from Lord Hertford to attend him on his embassy to Paris. He was soon appointed secretary to the embassy, and passed three years very pleasantly in the glittering capital, where his fame had preceded him. "Le bon David," as he was fondly called, found himself

Hume's Character.

267

surrounded by an admiring crowd of male and female adorers, who were never tired of admiring the stout old philosopher. On his return from Paris, he was appointed, in 1767, Under Secretary of State for the Northern department, a position which he retained for two years. In 1769 he returned to Edinburgh, having amassed a fortune sufficient to yield him an annual revenue of over £1000. There he passed the remaining six years of his life, engaged in his favourite studies, and exercising a bounteous hospitality to his large circle of friends. On August 25, 1776, he died as he had lived, with tranquillity and cheerfulness.

Hume's personal appearance was not prepossessing. Lord Charlemont, describing him during his residence at Turin, says: "The powers of physiognomy were baffled by his countenance; neither could the most skilful pretend to discover the smallest traces of the faculties of his mind in the unmeaning features of his visage. His face was broad and fat, his mouth wide, and without any other expression than that of imbecility, his eyes vacant and spiritless, and the corpulence of his whole person was far better fitted to communicate the idea of a turtle-eating alderman than of a refined philosopher." Of his character he has himself, in the brief narrative which he calls "My Own Life," given a sufficiently correct description. He was, he says, "a man of mild disposition, of command of temper, of an open, social, and cheerful humour, capable of attachment, but little susceptible of enmity, and of great moderation in all my passions. Even my love of fame, my ruling passion, never soured my temper, notwithstanding my frequent disappointments."

There can be no better evidence of Hume's amiability of disposition and freedom from petty jealousy than the friendly. terms on which he lived with a large circle of literary acquaintances, and the heartfelt applause which he bestowed upon Robertson and Gibbon, his rivals in the field of historical composition. When Robertson's "History of Scotland" appeared, he was one of the loudest in its commendation, declaring to Robertson (with, as his whole conduct showed,

perfect truth) that he had not for a long time had a more sensible pleasure than the good reception of Robertson's History had given him. Robertson is one of the few instances of an author's being raised from obscurity to great and widespread fame by the publication of his first work. He was born in 1721, the son of an Edinburgh clergyman, and after passing through the usual course in Arts and Divinity, was appointed in 1743 minister of Gladsmuir, a small parish in East Lothian. There his duties were light and his natural love of study found full scope, but, unlike most of those who are fond of reading, he was in no hurry to appear as an author. His "History of Scotland" which was begun in 1752, did not appear till 1759, and previous to that time his only publications were a sermon, and one or two insignificant articles which appeared in the "Edinburgh Review," a shortlived periodical supported by the leading Northern literati of the time, such as Adam Smith, Blair, Jardine, Wedderburn, &c. His History, unlike Hume's, was received immediately on its publication with loud and general applause, and the whole edition was exhausted in less than a month. One reason why it was so much more successful than Hume's doubtless was because it did not to such a degree run counter to popular prejudices. Robertson is compelled to admit. Mary's guilt, but he does it with reluctance, and endeavours to excite in the breast of the reader so strong a feeling of pity for her that none but the most fanatical Jacobite could take great offence at anything he says.

A few months before the publication of his "History," Robertson removed to Edinburgh, having been appointed minister of Old Greyfriars'. Honours were soon thickly bestowed on him. In 1759 he was appointed one of the chaplains-royal, and in 1762 he was elevated to the dignity ot Principal of the University. Despite the studious solitude in which the early part of his life had been spent, Robertson was a man eminently adapted for public life; an excellent speaker, and a cool and cautious debater. He soon became one of the leaders of the General Assembly, advocating the

William Robertson.

269

claims of the "moderate" or anti-evangelical party, and made his tact and ability so widely felt, that it was a common saying that he would have been better employed in acting history than in writing it. Although his first work had been so successful, he was in no hurry to appear again as an author. It was not till 1769, ten years after his “ History of Scotland," that his "History of Charles V.," which is generally regarded as his finest work, was published. How much his fame had advanced within these ten years is clearly shown by the fact that while for his "History of Scotland," by which the booksellers made about £6000, he received only £600, he sold the copyright of "Charles V." for £4500. In 1777 appeared his "History of America." Robertson's last work was a "Disquisition on Ancient India," which was published in 1791, about two years before his death, which occurred in 1793. On the whole, it can scarcely be said that the great contemporary fame of Robertson has been justified by the verdict of posterity. His writings, it is true, belong to the category of standard works, but they are now pretty generally consigned to the dreary limbo of "books which no gentleman's library can be complete without"-books of which everybody is supposed to know something, but which, in reality, very few ever read. Robertson was one of the writers who steadfastly kept up the so-called dignity of history, thinking it beneath him ever to descend from his stilts, and edify the reader with any of those little anecdotes of fashion and character, or details of domestic life, which are so often much more instructive than pages of pompous dissertation. Of his style, which was elaborated with scrupulous care, Johnson once truly observed that it had the same fault as his own, "too big words and too many of them." It is, however, always sonorous and dignified, and sometimes, as in the account of Mary's execution, rises into very impressive eloquence.

We now come to the last and by far the greatest of the

1 Hume appears to have received £700 a volume for his History-that is, £4200 for the entire work. Gibbon got £8000 for the "Decline and Fal."

famous trio of historians who adorned the eighteenth century, Edward Gibbon, whose "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" towers above all the other historical compositions of the period, like a great cathedral dominating a city. Alone of the histories of that time, it has sustained uninjured the fierce light of modern research, and it is very unlikely that it will ever now be dislodged from the lofty pedestal which it occupies by any later production. In his "Autobiography"—to any one with a taste for literature one of the most fascinating and stimulating compositions in the language-Gibbon has recorded the principal events of his life with something of the same pomp and swell of style as he employed in describing the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. He was born at Putney in 1737, the son of a wealthy gentleman, who had estates in Surrey and Hampshire. His mother, who died while he was young, was, from various causes, incapacitated from paying much attention to him, but the maternal office was discharged with the most tender assiduity by his aunt, Mrs. Catherine Porten, to whom he felt a lifelong gratitude. So frail and sickly was he in his early years, that it was scarcely anticipated that he would ever reach maturity, and he may be described as almost entirely self-educated, for his ill-health incapacitated him from learning much at the various schools to which he was sent; and if his desire for knowledge had not been unusually strong, it is probable that he would have become one of those ignorant, illiterate squires then so common. To the kind lessons of his aunt he ascribed his early and invincible love of reading, "which I would not exchange for the treasures of India." He read variously and widely, studying all the historical books that fell in his way, and acquiring a knowledge, wonderful for one so young, of ancient geography and chronology. "In my childish balance," he says, "I presumed to weigh the systems of Scaliger and Petavius, of Marsham and Newton, which I could seldom study in the originals; and my sleep has been disturbed by the difficulty of reconciling the Septuagint with the Hebrew computation." When, ere he had reached the fifteenth year of his age, he was entered at