The literary history of this sermon is curious and instructive. When its author received his appointment of professor of divinity in 1744, a party in the church opposed his being admitted in the usual manner as a member of the presbytery of Glasgow; and one of their methods of attack was to charge him with heretical opinions, promulgated in this sermon, of which the first edition had been then published. It is singular enough, in comparing their charge with Hume's criticism, to find the two attacks brought against the same point, though with different weapons. "The purport of the whole went to charge Mr. Leechman with having laid too little stress on the merit of the satisfaction and intercession of our blessed Saviour, as the sole ground of our acceptance with God in prayer, and with teaching Christians to look for pardon and acceptance on other grounds than this."[165:1]

At this time, we find Hume making an effort to obtain a professorship in Edinburgh. Dr. Pringle, subsequently Sir John Pringle, and President of the Royal Society of London,—

held the chair of "ethics and pneumatic philosophy"[165:2] in the university of Edinburgh. In 1742, he was appointed physician to the Earl of Stair, commander of the British troops in the Low Countries; and through this circumstance it will be seen, from the following letter, that Hume contemplated a vacancy, and that he was employing the usual means for securing his own appointment to the chair.

It may easily be imagined that both Mr. Hutcheson and Dr. Leechman would be opposed to the appointment of David Hume as a teacher of moral philosophy in one of the universities; and that they might entertain this opinion along with an honest admiration of his character, and an appreciation of the value of his talents when exercised in another sphere. It is at all events gratifying to find, that whatever opposition Hutcheson may have made, he was influenced by no sordid motive, as he was offered the chair, and refused it. On 27th March, 1745, a letter in which Dr. Pringle resigned the chair, was read to the Town Council. On 3d April, a nomination to the chair was transmitted to Hutcheson.[169:1] He declined the honour, in a rather verbose letter, in which he speaks in the tone of one whose tenure of life cannot be expected to be strong enough to fit him for new labours: yet he was then only fifty years old. His death occurred two years later, and he probably felt that his long series of intellectual labours had exhausted too much of the stamina of life to leave him the prospect of a successful career in a new sphere of duty. On Hutcheson's letter being read to the council, on 10th April, 1745, the minutes bear, that "several other persons having been named as proper candidates, it was thereupon moved in council, whether to proceed to take the ministers' avisamentum betwixt and next council day, in order to facilitate their choice, or to delay the same for a month or six weeks, so that the members of council might with the greater leisure deliberate thereanent; and the rolls having thereupon been called, and the vote marked, it carried delay for said space."

It is probable that the "ministers' avisamentum," whatever may be precisely designed by that phrase, was not such a recommendation as would turn the minds of the members of council in favour of Hume. His name is not mentioned in the council records in connexion with the proceedings, and the vacancy was filled up on 5th June, 1745, by the appointment of William Cleghorn, who had acted for Dr. Pringle in his absence.

The date of these transactions, brings us into the middle of a very curious episode in Hume's history, which must now be examined.

FOOTNOTES:

CHAPTER V.

It might have been favourable perhaps to the dignity of his position in the world of letters, that this episode in his history had never been more fully narrated; for a philosopher conducting a litigation for £75 of arrears of salary, is apt to experience that diminution of respect in the eyes of the public, which the prince of Condé discovered that a hero suffered in those of his valet. Since, however, many statements have been given to the world, connected with that part of Hume's life, and many charges and countercharges among the persons connected with it are preserved, it is necessary to give such a brief view of the whole affair, as may enable the reader to estimate the respective merits of the parties in the dispute. A collection of documents on the subject was lately published by a gentleman to whom the literary history of Scotland is indebted for many other services;[171:1] and from his book the following statement is compiled.

The person with whom David Hume was thus connected was the last Marquis of Annandale, on whose death that title became dormant. On the 5th of March, 1748, he was found, on an inquest from the Court of Chancery in England, to be a lunatic, incapable of governing himself and managing his own affairs, and to have been so since 12th December, 1744, a few months anterior to Hume's engagement with him. The correspondence does not give the reader the notion of one reduced to so abject a mental state, but rather that of a man nervously timid and reserved; distrustful of himself and his ability to transact business with other people, but not quite incapable of managing his affairs, though exciteable, and liable to be driven into fits of passion by causes not susceptible of being anticipated. A party to the correspondence, talking of him as in an improved condition, says: "My Lord walked out with me lately two or three miles, received and returned the compliments of the hat of those we met, and without any shyness or reserve: and bears to stand by, and hear me talk with any farmer or countryman. This is a vast change for the better, and the greatest appearance that it will continue."[172:1] He appears to have been haunted by a spirit of literary ambition. Hume says in a letter to Lord Elibank, "I have copied out half a dozen of epigrams, which I hope will give you entertainment. The thought in them is indeed little inferior to that in the celebrated Epigrams of Rousseau; though the versification be not so correct. What a pity! I say this on account both of the author and myself; for I am afraid I must leave him." And on another occasion he alludes at length to a far more extensive literary achievement, a novel, which the excited Marquis had written, and which those about him had found it necessary to print, circulating a few copies, and advertising it in one newspaper to allay any suspicions in the author's mind that a thousand copies had not been printed. Hume says:

"You would certainly be a little surprised and vexed on receiving a printed copy of the novel, which was in hands when you left London. If I did not explain the mystery to you, I believe I told you, that I hoped that affair was entirely over, by my employing Lord Marchmont and Lord Bolingbroke's authority against publishing that novel; though you will readily suppose that neither of these two noble Lords ever perused it. This machine operated for six weeks; but the vanity of the author returned with redoubled force, fortified by suspicions, and increased by the delay. 'Pardie,' dit il, 'je crois que ces messieurs veulent être les seules Seigneurs d'Angleterre qui eussent de l'esprit. Mais je leur montrerai ce que le petit A—— peut faire aussi.' In short, we were obliged to print off thirty copies, to make him believe that we had printed a thousand, and that they were to be dispersed all over the kingdom.

"My Lady Marchioness will also receive a copy, and I am afraid it may give her a good deal of uneasiness, by reason of the story alluded to in the novel, and which she may imagine my Lord is resolved to bring to execution. Be so good, therefore, as to inform her, that I hope this affair is all over. I discovered, about a fortnight ago, that one of the papers sent to that damsel had been sent back by her under cover to his rival, Mr. M'——, and that she had plainly, by that step, sacrificed him to her other lover. This was real matter of fact, and I had the good fortune to convince him of it; so that his pride seems to have got the better of his passion, and he never talks of her at present."

The "novel" appears to have referred to some little event in its author's private history. If there be a copy of it now any where existing, it is to be feared that it wastes its fragrance on the desert air, as the existence of so choice a flower of literature, were it in the possession of any collector, could not fail to have been rumoured through the bibliographical world.

The Marquis had previously been attended by a succession of hired companions, of whom one was a man of considerable distinction, Colonel James Forrester,[174:1] a person who, in the Scottish society of the age, seems to have united some of the qualities of a Chesterfield to a like proportion of those of a Beau Fielding. He was the author of "The Polite Philosopher;" a lively little essay, sometimes published along with Chesterfield's "Advice," in which the author is so much at ease with his reader, that he discourses in prose or poetry as his own humour dictates. Johnson said, with reference to the man and the book, that "he was himself the great polite he drew;" and if it did not happen that his coxcombry excited the poor invalid's irritable nerves to distraction, he was probably an infinitely more suitable man for the office of companion to the Marquis of Annandale, than David Hume.

The overtures to Hume were made by the Marquis himself; who was, according to an expression used by Sir James Johnstone, when writing to Hume, "charmed with something contained in his Essays." The place of residence of the Marquis was Weldhall, near St. Alban's, in Hertfordshire. Hume had to go to London to make the anticipatory arrangements, and he commenced his companionship on 1st April, 1745. The insurrection, headed by Prince Charles Edward in Scotland, commenced four months afterwards; and there is perhaps nothing more curious in the whole dispute than the indifference with which this matter, fraught with so much importance to his countrymen, is spoken of by Hume; while there could not probably be a better answer to those who afterwards insinuated that he was a Jacobite, than an account of the manner in which his thoughts were occupied during that struggle. He occasionally complains that he is prevented from personally discussing, with the individuals interested, the matters he is writing about, on account of "the present unhappy troubles;" and the following portion of a letter to Sir James Johnstone of Westerhall, the brother of the Marquis's stepfather, written immediately after he had left his attendance on the Marquis, is the only occasion in which he appears to show the least sympathy in the conflict or its results.

It is now necessary to enter on a subject, which one feels a natural inclination to postpone, as long as the order of events will afford any excuse for looking at other things: the treatment Hume experienced in this his self-adopted slavery. He had to deal with a capricious unreasonable employer; to that he would, in the circumstances, philosophically reconcile himself. He states in one of his letters, that he lived with him "in a more equal way of complaisance and good humour than could well have been expected. Some little disgusts and humours could not be prevented, and never were proposed to be of any consequence." But he had another and a far more unpleasant person to deal with, in a certain Philip Vincent, a captain in the navy,[178:1] a relation of the Dowager-marchioness of Annandale. For some months matters appear to have gone smoothly with all concerned. The following letter to one of his esteemed friends, shows that Hume was consoling himself for the probable dissipation of his hopes of a professorship, by reflecting on his good fortune in being connected with so amiable and excellent a man as Captain Vincent:—

On the other hand, we find Captain Vincent, when he speaks of Hume, saying, "I think it very happy that he is with my lord, and still more so if he is constantly to remain with him, which I do not foresee but that he may; and I must do him the justice to say, that after having had time enough to weigh the temper, situation, and circumstances of the person he has to deal with, he very candidly owned that it was what he could cheerfully abide with." And again in August, "Mr. Hume is almost wholly taken up with our friend personally, so that he can scarce have the resource of amusement, or even of business, which is somewhat hard upon a man of erudition and letters, whom indeed I think very deserving and good natured; and whilst he can be his companion, there could not be a better made choice of." The captain, in other letters, speaks of Hume as "a very worthy and knowing man," and as "My friend Mr. Hume;" and seems at one time to have wished that an annuity of £100 a-year should be settled upon him, without reference to his continuance in his office, and in addition to the salary he might receive while he did so. But the dawn was soon afterwards overcast.

Hume, in the first place, disliked some of Captain Vincent's proposed arrangements, as to the disposal of the person of the Marquis, and seems to have soon suspected him of wishing to carry through designs which would materially affect the interest of some of the Marquis's relations. It is probable that a feeling of friendliness, or of duty, may have prompted him to interfere. It may be so, and he may in reality have done good; but the impression produced by the correspondence is, regret that Hume did not at once retire in lofty scorn from the scene of these paltry cabals.

Captain Vincent held a commission from the Marquis to "hire and dismiss servants," and perform other like functions. It was in virtue of this authority that he dealt with Hume; and he seems at first to have thought, that in the person of the philosopher he had met with a sort of superior and valuable member of the fraternity of upper-servants. Though Hume had then written the works on which a large portion of his European reputation was afterwards built, this man seems to have regarded his literary abilities as merely an enhancement of the qualities which suited him for his servile office. Looking upon himself as a member of the family, he appears to have had much the same disposition to admit that Hume's literary distinction put them on a par with each other, as he might have had to admit that the display of an unexpected degree of musical talent in the servants' hall would qualify one of its frequenters to be hail-fellow well met with him in the dining-room. Whether Hume was right or wrong in the suspicions he entertained of Vincent, the conduct of Vincent to Hume was brutal, and that on his own showing.

One of Hume's views, as to the proper treatment of the Marquis, was, that the isolation of Weldhall was unsuitable to his condition: that he should be in a a more cheerful residence, and one in other respects more suitable; and the dispute appears to have been for some time suspended on this peg. On the 31st October, Hume writes:—

"What is the mighty matter in dispute? Only about hiring a few carts to remove the family to another house, in order to quit this; which, for very good reasons, is infinitely disagreeable to your friend, very dangerous, will be uninhabitable for cold during the winter season, and costs £300 to £400 a-year, at least, to the family, more than is requisite." And afterwards he says of Vincent:—"He said, when he was here, that we shall live in this house till the lease was out, in spite of all opposition."

In the letter from which the preceding passage is taken, he says to Sir James Johnstone,—