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body, unless he had taken pains to master the evidence in the case. Musset-Pathay, who spent years in the investigation of Rousseau's career, avows his conviction of the suicidal act.

delusion plainly was, that he often forgot this indulgence in pursuit of others; and also, that he had less shame than other men in unveil ing his faults and frailties, when their disclosure ministered to any ruling propensity, not He quotes, of course, the seldom when it fed that same vanity itself. But no one can read his account of the fancies procès-verbal, which declares that the body he took in his early years, and not perceive had been examined by the two signing perhow strikingly the love of distinction prevailed sons en entier, and that the death had, in in him even then, and while his existence was their opinion, been occasioned by serous perfectly obscure. The displays that captivated him, excited his envy, and even led to his apoplexy: but he shows that this entire exuncouth attempts at imitation, were not the amination must have been a singularly rapid solid qualities or valuable acquirements of one, or its report grossly incomplete, since those he saw at Annecy or at Turin, but the the doctors make no reference whatever to a base tricks and superficial accomplishments of hole in the forehead, which the sculptor, a Bacler and a Venture, performers of the who made a cast the same evening, had to lowest order, but who, he perceived, were fol- stuff with wax before he began his work ; lowed by public applause. Later in life he which hole the proprietor of Ermenonville seems to have been almost insensible to any existence but his own, or when he could and Rousseau's widow accounted for to believe in that of external objects, it was al- their friends at the time by a fall in the ways in reference to himself; and at last this agony of death; but which the innkeeper feeling reached the morbid temperature of in the village told these very friends had fancying that he and his concerns were the been caused by a pistol-shot. There are only thing about which all other men cared, many other discrepancies: Thérèse, for and with which all were occupying themselves; thus absorbing in self-contemplation instance, asserted that Rousseau had taken selves; thus absorbing in self-contemplation nothing that morning-but the doctors all the faculties and all the feelings of his own found the stomach charged with coffeemind.'—pp. 190-192.

It

We have expressed our general satisfac-which, however, they did not analyze. is obvious that the family of Ermenonville tion with this Rousseau chapter-yet we and Thérèse had strong inducements to cannot leave it, without again complaining conceal the suicide, if suicide there was; of some carelessness in the matter of au- for at that time the old laws of felo de se thorities. We do not see any trace of were in full vigor-and the consequence Lord Brougham's having consulted the of a proces-verbal alleging self-murder most detailed and laborious book as yet would have been the refusal of decent inpublished on the subject-the 'Histoire de terment and entire confiscation of properJa Vie et des Ouvrages de J. J. Rousseau, par V. D. Musset-Pathay '-Paris, 8vo., 1827 and we are induced to observe this neglect by the light off-hand style in which Lord Brougham treats the story of Rousseau's death. Lord Brougham being of opinion that Rousseau was from youth diseased in mind, and latterly quite mad, the question whether he did or did not put an end to himself cannot appear to his Lordship one of much importance. We doubt

about the madness. As Hallam observes in reference to a greater than Jean Jacques, 'the total absence of self-restraint, with the intoxicating effects of presumptuousness, is sufficient to account for aberrations which

men of regular minds construe into actual madness." But even with Lord Brougham's opinion on the point of insanity, he was not entitled to pronounce a brief contemptuous negative on the story of the suicide, as an idle fiction, 'over and over again refuted,' and now credited by no

* Introd. to I it, of Eur, vol, i. p. 516.

The amiable Girardins were of course, ty. on every ground, averse to having it believ ed that their friend caused his own death while under their roof; and the widow had indeed more than ordinary reason for solicitude, inasmuch as the neighbors at the time connected Rousseau's sudden death

with a discovery by him of her intrigue. with M. Girardin's groom, which groom she in fact married almost immediately afterwards, to the deepest disgust of the Ermenonville family. But even M. de Girardin's narrative contains within itself some most suspicious circumstances. He admits that his own wife, called at the wing occupied by Rousseau about an hour before he died, when Rousseau was in possession of all his faculties, but said he was suffering agonies, and entreated the lady to withdraw, and not witness the inevitable catastrophe.' He says she did withdraw

and heard Rousseau bolt the door inside. All this does not look like the symptoms of approaching apoplexy: but if we suppose

seau, 1789'-eleven years after the event: at least this was the first publication that had a name of consequence. A young lady of the Girardin family, who must have been little more than a child at the time of the event, complained to Madame de Staël, and she answered that if she had fallen into an error, she had been misled by apparently

tain that his whole "

that Rousseau, brooding over the stable- ever, quote what Lord Brougham says in yard discovery, took poison in his coffee-proof of David's unconscionable carelessthat when Madame de Girardin came in heness about authorities, as contrasted with was suffering the torture of the poison- the real labor of which we have the fruits that as soon as the lady withdrew and the in his apparently careless style. door was secured, he retired into the closet 'Hume's first volume could not have been and clapt a pistol to his head-and that Thérèse concealed the pistol and invented for it was begun when he went to the Advothe work of above a year or fifteen months; the fall-which must indeed have been a cates' Library, early in 1752, and it was pubremarkable fall to produce such a hole as lished in 1754. The second volume succeedthe sculptor describes-then, the whole ed in 1756, but he had written half of it when story becomes clear aud intelligible. It the first was published; and in 1755 there apwas first told in print, as we believe, by peared also his "Natural History of ReliMadame de Staël, in her 'Lettres sur Rous-gion." Consequently we are positively cercould not have taken above three years to preHistory of the Stuarts" pare and to write. It is impossible to doubt that this mode of writing history must leave no room for a full investigation of facts and weighing of authorities. The transactions of James's time comprised perhaps the most because the struggle between the Crown and important period of our constitutional history, the Commons then began, and occupied the insurmountable evidence for her Own greater part of his reign. It was impossible father's secretary, a Swiss well acquainted to examine the period too closely, or in too with Rousseau, had told her that a few days before the death Rousseau announced to him his intention to commit suicide: secondly, another Swiss gentleman, M. Moultu, a most intimate friend of Rousseau's, gave exactly similar information: and thirdly, Madame de Staël herself says 'des lettres que j'ai vu de lui, peu de temps avant sa mort, annoncaient le dessein de terminer sa vie.' Finally, Madame de Stael wrote and published incessantly during her long subsequent life, yet she never retracted or cancelled her statement; and M. Musset-Pathay says of his own knowledge that she retained her original belief to the end of her days, as he does now.- —(Histoire | de la Vie, &c., pp. 430, &c.)

The Life of David Hume is another com

minute detail. The struggle continued in
Charles's time, and ended in the quarrel be-
tween the King and the people, in the usurpa-
tions of the Parliament, and in the overthrow
followed, and the Cromwell usurpation. Now
of the Monarchy.
there is hardly one passage in all this history,
from 1600 to 1650, which is not the subject of ve-
hement controversy among parties of conflict-
ing principles, and among inquiring men of
various opinions; yet all this was examined
by Mr. Hume in less than two years, and his
history of it was actually composed, as well as
his materials collected and his authorities in-
vestigated and compared and weighed, within
that short period of time. No one can be eur-
prised if, in so short a time alloted to the whole
work, far more attention was given to the
composition of the narrative than to the pre-
paration of the materials.'-pp. 211, 212.

The Commonwealth then

'He is represented as having written with pact and vigorous sketch. It exhibits not such ease that he hardly ever corrected. Even only honest and sagacious criticisms on the Mr. Stewart has fallen into the error; and various classes of his works, but a perfect Mr. Gibbon commends as a thing admitted the understanding of his temper and feelings," careless, inimitable beauties" of Hume's and the results of a closer investigation of his literary habits than seems to have been attempted hitherto. We find in an Appen dix some curious new correspondence, and it is obvious that the text has often been strengthened and enriched by the use of original materials.

style. It was exactly the reverse, of which evidence remains admitting of no doubt and no that of Henry VII., written after the "History appeal. The manuscript of his reigns before of the Stuarts and the Tudors," is still extant, and bears marks of composition anxiously labored, words being written and scored out, and even several times changed, until he As we but lately placed before our read- could find the expression to his mind. The ers (Q. R. vol. xxiii.) a somewhat length-manuscript of his "Dialogues" also remains, and is written in the same manner. Nay, his ened article on the structure, and especially very letters appear by this test to have been the influence of Hume's great historical the result of care and labor. The maxim of work, we need not be tempted to a new dis- Quinctilian-" Quæramus optimum, nec protisertation on these subjects. We must, how-nus offerentibus gaudeamus "-seems always

"Those

j still remaining and in Edinburgh.
who have examined the Hume papers, which
we know only from report, speak highly of
their interest, but add that they furnish painful

tropolis; distinguished ministers of the Gospel
vailing among the clergy of the northern me-
encouraging the scoffs of their familiar friend,
the author of the Essay on Miracles, and echo-
ing the blasphemies of their associate, the au-
thor of the Essay on Suicide." (Quart. Rev.,
vol. Ixxii. p. 556.) Now this heavy charge
against some of the most pious and most vir-
tuous men who ever adorned any church-Dr.
Robertson, Dr. Blair, Dr. Jardine, Dr. Drys-
dale, and others-seemed eminently unlikely to
be well founded. I have caused minute search
to be made; and on fully examining all that
collection, the result is to give the most un-
qualified and peremptory contradiction to this
scandalous report. It is inconceivable how
such a rumor should have arisen in any quar-
ter.'

to have been his rule as to words; and his own testimony to the same effect is to be found in a letter which I have obtained.'-pp. 221, 222. Lord Brougham produces some fac sim-disclosures concerning the opinions then preiles of the Hume MSS., which show many alterations of word and arrangement; the change almost always towards the side of simplicity. We wish we had more examples: not to confirm the general fact, that Hume's felicity was the result of pains, but for the sake of the lesson in taste involved in each specific instance. We have not the least suspicion that compact perspicuity can ever be sustained without much care and reflection; but different men conduct the mechanism of composition in different fashions, and the negative evidence of an unblotted page is worth next to nothing. Of the two most graceful prose writers on a large scale, in our own time, the MSS. show few erasures. But the one had so extraordinary a memory that he could finish a chapter during a ride, and then set it down so as hardly to need revision. The other not only kept common-place books in which every thought that occurred to him as likely to be useful afterwards, was entered and indexed; but wrote out every separate paragraph on a scrap, and worked it up in pencil, before he trusted his pen with a syllable of what we can now com- The rumor,' however, will not be entirepare with the print. If the pencilled frag ly dispersed by Lord Brougham's note. ments had been preserved, then we should He produces no evidence except as to the have had a curious study. Such we have in the autograph of Ariosto, which marks actual contents of the Hume papers. They came but lately into the hands of their prethe unrelenting sacrifice of a thousand lofty sent possessors; and we think it might have and figurative expressions, succeeded by occurred to Lord Brougham as not altogether that chaste simplicity, to the imitation of which Galileo ascribed his own success in impossible (considering the late Mr. Baron Hume's refusal to let any use be made of making science attractive. Such we have, thanks to Mr. Moore, in the case of Sheri- them during his own lifetime) that the learned Judge purified the collection before he dan; the wording of whose dramas will albequeathed it to the Royal Society of ways repay any scrutiny that an artist can Edinburgh. bestow on a model. But see what bundles of self-contrast we are. It is to the laziness of Hume that we owe these demonstra

tions of his diligence. He could be tempt ed to polish and repolish bit by bit-but shrunk from a complete transcript; which done, we should have been left to our conjectures. Thanks then to the strenua inertia of David's sofa. Lord Brougham, in his Appendix, has a paragraph which it concerns us to notice. He says—

It is necessary to correct a very gross misstatement into which some idle or ill-intentioned person has betrayed an ingenious and learned critic respecting the papers of Mr. Hume

We beg leave to say that the Quarterly Review did not mention one of the reverend names here enumerated by Lord Brougham; and that we quite agree with him in respecting some of those individuals as sincircle were at least long-headed, cautious cere ministers of the Gospel. Others of the men very unlikely, knowing with what regarded, to commit themselves in writing. suspicion their intimacy with Hume was

But Lord Brougham has himself printed, in this self-same Appendix, a letter of David Hume's to his friend Colonel Edmonstone

(written in 1764), from which we apprehend many readers will draw an inference in tolerable harmony with the rumor' so magisterially dismissed.

'What do you know that Lord Bute is again all-powerful ?-or rather that he was always so, but is now acknowledged for such by all the world? Let this be a new motive for Mr. V. to adhere to the ecclesiastical profession, in which he may have so good a patron, for civil employments for men of letters can scarcely be found. All is occupied by men of

business, or by parliamentary interest. It is putting too great a respect on the vulgar, and on their superstitions, to pique oneself' on sincerity with regard to them. Did ever one make it a point of honor to speak truth to children or madmen? If the thing were worthy being treated gravely, I should tell him that the Pythian oracle, with the approbation of Xeno phon, advised every one to worship the gods You nodεws. I wish it were still in my power to be a hypocrite in this particular. The com mon duties of society usually require it; and the ecclesiastical profession only adds a little more to an innocent dissimulation, or rather simulation, without which it is impossible to pass through the world. Am I a liar because order my servant to say I am not at home when I do not desire to see company?'

ges very singular for their ridicule and absurdity. He says that Mark Anthony, travelling from Rome in a post-chaise, lay the first night at Redstones. I own I did not think this a very classical name, but on recollection I found by the Philippics that he lay at Saxa rubra. He talks likewise of Mark Anthony's favorite poet, Mr. Gosling, meaning Anser, who methinks should rather be called Mr. Goose. He also takes notice of Virgil's distinguishing himself in his youth by his epigram on Crossbow, the robber. Look in your Virgil: you'll find that, like other robbers, this man bore various names. Crossbow is the name he took at Aberdeen, but Balista at Rome. The book has many other flowers of a like nature, which made me exclaim, with regard to the author, "Nec certe apparet utrum Minxerit in patrios cineres, an triste bidental Moverit incestus: This letter, we suspect, would never have certe furit." But other people who have read been intrusted by the late Baron Hume to through the volume, say that notwithstanding the keeping of the Royal Society of Edin- these absurdities it does not want merit; and burgh. Here we have David earnestly urgif it be so, I own the case is still more singular. ing a young infidel to take on him the vows What would you think of a man who should speak of the mayoralty of Mr. Veitch, of a Christian minister, as the likeliest. meaning the consulship of Cicero ? Is not means of procuring a comfortable income, this a fine way of avoiding the imputation of and to trample down as mere follies what-pedantry? Perhaps Cicero, to modernize him ever scruples he had been entertaining as entirely, should be called Sir Mark Veitch, beto the breach of 'honor' involved in the cause his father was a Roman knight.'* deliberate dedication of his life to a course of dissimulation, or rather simulation;' and Hume conveys his high-minded advice to the young student through a third party -a gentleman of Hume's own standing, living in precisely the same Scotch society as himself. We think the whole affair does throw very clear and very unpleasing light on the interior of Edinburgh life, both lay and clerical, in 1764. Will any man believe that David Hume would have ventured to write as he did to Colonel Edmonstone unless he knew that the Colonel was as familiar as himself with a set of their fellow-countrymen who considered it honorable to preach the Gospel every Sunday in the year, all the while holding believers in Christianity to be what David and the Colonel esteemed them-to wit, on a par

with children or madmen?

We too have had access to some of Hume's unpublished letters, and we are glad to extract part of one which may amuse some of our readers, and can offend nobody:

'Edinburgh, April 20, 1756. 'Even places more hyperborean than this, more provincial, more uncultivated, and more barbarous, may furnish articles for a literary correspondence. Have you seen the second volume of Blackwall's "Court of Augustus"? I had it some days lying on my table, and on turning it over met with passa

The life of Robertson (whose niece was Lord Brougham's mother) is the most interesting one in the volume—and indeed we think it might be selected as the best example yet published of his Lordship's skill in this kind. Not that we agree with him, or suppose that the majority of contemporary readers, far less that posterity will agree with him in his estimate of Robertson as an author; that seems to us somewhat exaggerated; but the view of his character, manners, and personal story is hardly to be overpraised. It is a charming piece of composition-animated throughout by feelings that do honor to the author, who in early life sat at the feet of his venerable kinsman, remembers with affectionate fidelity his looks, words, tones, and gestures, and having treasured the ampler reminiscences of several dear relations now also removed by death, presents the world with a picture which something within every breast at once acknowledges for a portrait. As no future edition of Dr. Robertson's works can appear without the advantages of this ornament, we shall not copy more than a few passages.

'He had laid down for himself a strict plan of reading; and of the notes which he took

* Veitch-the northern form of vetch-is a com mon patronymic in Scotland.

there remain a number of books, beginning duct as a great party chief, and their uniform when he was only fourteen, all bearing the observation was upon the manifest capacity sentence as a motto which so characterized which he displayed for affairs. "That he his love of learning, indicating that he delight- was not in his right place when only a cleried in it abstractedly, and for its own sake, cal leader or a literary man, but was plainly without regarding the uses to which it might designed by nature, as well as formed by be turned-Vita sine litteris mors. I give study, for a great practical statesman and orathis gloss upon the motto or text advisedly. tor," is the remark which seems to have struck His whole life was spent in study. I well re- all who observed his course. His eloquence member his constant habit of quitting the was bold and masculine; his diction, which drawing-room both after dinner and again flowed with perfect ease, resembled that of his after tea, and remaining shut up in his libra- writings, but of course became suited to the ry. The period of time when I saw this was exigencies of extemporaneous speech. He after the History of America had been pub- had the happy faculty of conveying an argulished, and before Major Rennel's map and ment in a statement, and would more than memoir appeared, which he tells us first sug- half answer his adversary by describing his gested the Disquisition on Ancient India. propositions and his reasonings. He showed the Consequently, for above ten years he was in greatest presence of mind in debate; and, as the course of constant study, engaged in extend- nothing could ruffle the calmness of his teming his information, examining and revolving per, it was quite impossible to find him getthe facts of history, contemplating ethical and ting into a difficulty, or to take him at a disad theological truth, amusing his fancy with the vantage. He knew precisely the proper time strains of Greek and Roman poetry, or warm- of coming forward to debate, and the time ing it at the fire of ancient eloquence so con- when, repairing other men's errors, supplying genial to his mind, at once argumentative and their deficiencies, and repelling the adverse asrhetorical; and all this study produced not saults, he could make sure of most advantaone written line, though thus unremittingly geously influencing the result of the conflict, carried on. The same may be said of the to which he ever steadily looked, and not to ten years he passed in constant study from display. If his habitual command of temper 1743, the beginning of his residence in a small averted anger and made him loved, his undeparish, of very little clerical duty, to 1752, viating dignity both of demeanor and conwhen we know from his letter to Lord Hailes duct secured him respect. The purity of his he began his first work. But, indeed, the com- blameless life, and the rigid decorum of his position of his three great works, spread over manners, made all personal attacks upon him a period of nearly thirty years, clearly evinces hopeless; and, in the management of party that during this long time his studies must concerns, he was so far above any thing like have been more subservient to his own grati- manœuvre or stratagem, that he achieved the fication than to the preparation of his writings, triumph so rare, and for a party chief so hard which never could have required one half that to win, of making his influence seem always number of years for their completion. to rest on reason and principle, and his success in carrying his measures to arise from their wisdom, and not from his own power.

Translations from the classics, and especially from the Greek, of which he was a perfect master, formed a considerable part of his labor. He considered this exercise as well calculated to give an accurate knowledge of our own language, by obliging us to weigh the shade of difference between words or phrases, and to find the expression, whether by the selection of the terms or the turning of the idioms, which is required for a given meaning; whereas, when composing originally, the idea may be varied in order to suit the diction which most easily presents itself, of which the influence produced manifestly by rhymes, in moulding the sense as well as suggesting it, affords a striking and familiar example.'-pp. 259, 260.

Of Robertson as leader of the then dominant party in the Kirk of Scotland, and the foremost speaker in the General Assembly, Lord Brougham says:

'Of the lustre with which his talents now shone forth all men are agreed in giving the same account. I have frequently conversed with those who can well remember his con

'They relate one instance of his being thrown somewhat off his guard, and showing a feeling of great displeasure, if not of anger, in a severe remark upon a young member. But the provocation was wholly out of the ordinary course of things, and it might well have excused, nay, called for, a much more unsparing visitation than his remark, which really poured oil into the wound it made. Mr. Cullen, afterwards Lord Cullen, was celebrated for his unrivalled talent of mimicry, and Dr. Robertson, who was one of his favorite subjects, had left the Assembly to dine, meaning to return. As the aisle of the old church consecrated to the Assembly meetings, was at that late hour extremely dark, the artist took his opportunity of rising in the Principal's place and delivering a short speech in his character, an evolution which he accomplished without detection. The true chief returned soon after; and, at the proper time for his interposition rose to address the house. The venerable Assembly was convulsed with laughter, for he seemed to be repeating what he had said before, so happy had the imitation

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