Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

Description of his personal appearance.

557

was a relation of the Marchioness, a man of coarse manners and vulgar mind, if one may judge of him from the traces preserved of him in these volumes. It may be easily supposed that the position soon became one which all Hume's philosophy could hardly enable him to endure. The Marquis grew more mad, and the brother-in-law more intolerable, as the year went on; and at the end of the year he was dismissed after a quarrel with Vincent, and brought an action against the Marquis for £75 of arrears of salary-a most inglorious ending of an inglorious servitude. The correspondence on the subject is curious, and more creditable to Hume's temper than to his independence.

The scene shifts again, and we find our philosophical hero secretary to General Sinclair, in his expedition to the coast of France-a scheme which turned out thoroughly abortive, and which had no result worth mentioning, excepting that it gave the future historian some insight into military operations, such as they were at that day. Hume appears to have thought, however, that this brilliant service entitled him to be put on half-pay-a claim which he did not abandon till 1763. Indeed, obstinacy seems to have been a considerable element in his character. It would also seem that he had serious thoughts of laying aside the pen for more warlike weapons, and accepting a company, if one could be procured: he says, however, this I build not on: nor indeed am I very fond of it."

In the course of the succeeding year he accompanied General Sinclair on his embassy to Turin-was near the scene of that most paltry of engagements the battle of Dettingen, and visited the plains of Mantua and the Eternal City, with much interest and enthusiasm. Lord Charlemont's description of him while there is worth transcribing.

"Nature, I believe, never formed any man more unlike his real character than David Hume. The powers of physiognomy were baffled by his countenance; neither could the most skilful in that science pretend to discover the smallest trace 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. His speech in English was rendered ridiculous by the broadest Scotch accent, and his French was, if possible, still more laughable; so that wisdom most certainly never disguised herself before in so uncouth a garb. Though now near fifty years old, he was healthy and strong; but his health and strength, far from being advantageous to his figure, instead of manly comeliness, had only the appearance of rusticity. His wearing an uniform added greatly to his natural awkwardness, for he wore it like a grocer of the trained bands. Sinclair was a lieutenant-general, and was sent to the courts of Vienna and Turin, as a military envoy, to see

that their quota of troops was furnished by the Austrians and Piedmontese. It was therefore thought necessary that his secretary should appear to be an officer, and Hume was accordingly disguised in scarlet.'"-Vol. i. pp. 270, 271.

During his absence the Inquiry into the Human Understanding had been published, with no great popularity at first. Had we space, we should be inclined to discuss at some little length Mr. Burton's observations on free-will and necessity, as well as on miracles—a subject on which we own we do not very well understand him. But the field is too wide to admit of our entering on it at present.

Our limits will not permit us to do more than conclude this hasty sketch, by simply alluding to the remainder of Hume's career. It was at this period of his life that he formed the design of writing, and began to collect the materials for his History, the first volume of which was published in the year 1762. Attention was soon attracted to the pure style and masterly ability of the work; but still it had not all the success he expected. The star of Robertson was beginning to ascend, and to outshine him in the eyes of his contemporaries; and the only indications we find in Hume of jealousy of a friend, occur in his letters on this mortifying topic. These things soured his feelings towards his countrymen-at least those of the south. He never speaks of an Englishman in his correspondence without some epithet of contempt or disgust; and his hatred of popular government seems to have been nearly increased to monomania by the exasperated state of his feelings towards an undiscriminating public. Accordingly, in the succeeding editions of his history, he carefully expunged all phrases which might seem to savour, in the most remote degree, of whiggery: and in the mighty influence which that classic and polished work has had in forming the minds, and warping the views of the succeeding generation, he had a most unphilosophical but triumphant revenge on the neglect of his contemporaries.

In 1763 he went to Paris with Lord Hertford, then our Ambassador at that Court; and certainly if French empressement could atone for English rudeness, the balm was most copiously applied. "He was," Horace Walpole says, grudgingly enough, "quite the mode;" though the cynical Englishman cannot withhold an expression of sneering wonder that a fat Scotchman should have been so much honoured. His reputation had travelled before him; and kings, queens, and princes, grave ministers and gay ladies of quality, wits and men of science, in short all the component parts of that motley Vanity Fair, joined in incessant adulation and devotion to the great champion of infidelity. Unused as he was to such a scene, Hume stood his new-born honours with singular equanimity. It was indeed a circle of great

His merits as a Man of Letters.

559

names in which he moved-D'Alembert, Turgot, Conti-stars of the first magnitude in science and in society. Yet there is 'something awful to think that in this gay and thoughtless assemblage it was not so much the genius as the infidelity of the philosopher which established his popularity; and in contemplating the utter impiety and blasphemy of these polished circles, it is not difficult to descry the seeds which so soon afterwards ripened into appropriate but fearful convulsion.

Hume returned to England in 1766, bringing with him the eccentric madman Rousseau, for whose fancied wrongs Hume's honest sympathy had been excited. But, morbid and ungrateful, Rousseau turned on his benefactor before many months were over; and the baseness and ingratitude of his protégé seem to have roused Hume to more genuine anger than his correspondence anywhere previously betrays. He was not fortunate in his dealings with literary lunatics.

Hume's fortune had been improved by his later occupations, and in 1766 he was appointed Under-Secretary of State, and discharged the duties of the office with a clearness and despatch which showed that he had as much practical ability as power of abstract thought and logical discrimination. His appointment terminated by the ministerial convulsions of the day, and Hume once more retired, with a decent competence, to private life. He resided in Edinburgh till the year 1776, when, compelled by ill health to seek for advice in England, he died at Bath, on the 25th of August of that year, in the 66th year of his age.

Of Hume's merits as a man of letters it is high and deserved praise to say, that himself a Scotchman, speaking the vernacular in all its Doric breadth, his style is purer and more faultless than that of any writer of that century, at least of the latter half of it. It is not such English as Dryden's, nor is it as flowing and florid as Bolingbroke's. It has a little of the constraint of a man writing in a language not quite familiar; still we have no English work of philosophy, the language of which is so purely philosophic, and no history, the style of which is so eminently historical.

His History, however, will not be the lasting memorial of his name. The far-reaching stretch of his philosophy has engraven his name deep in the records of human thought; and melancholy as it may be to think that all the consolation it afforded its author was the conclusion that all was darkness and uncertainty; and many as the minds have been whose steadfastness have been shaken by the daring infidelity of this great master, we yet venture to think that his searching spirit of inquiry has only tended to strengthen those pillars of faith which he intended to shake, and to elucidate in still greater brightness those great truths at which his darts were so unavailingly hurled.

"

ART. XI.-1. Man's best Eulogy after Death. A Sermon preached in the Assembly Hall, Canonmills, June 6, 1847, being the Sabbath immediately after the Funeral of Thomas Chalmers, D.D., LL.D., &c. &c. By JAMES SIEVERIGHT, D.D., Markinch, Moderator of the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland.

2. A Sermon preached in Morningside Free Church, June 6, 1847, being the Sabbath immediately following the Funeral of Thomas Chalmers, D.D., LL.D. By the Rev. JOHN BRUCE, A.M., Free St. Andrew's Church, Edinburgh.

3. "He being dead yet speaketh." A Sermon preached in the Territorial Church, West Port, Edinburgh, June 6, 1847, being the Sabbath immediately following the Funeral of Thomas Chalmers, D.D., LL.D. By the Rev. W. K. TWEEDIE, Free Tolbooth Church, Edinburgh.

4. Elijah's Translation. A Sermon preached in Chalmers' Territorial Church, West Port, on June 6, 1847, being the Sabbath immediately after the Funeral of Thomas Chalmers, Ď.D., LL.D., &c. &c. By the Rev. WM. TASKER, Minister of that Church. 5. Dying in the Lord. Being the Substance of two Discourses preached in the Free Church of Burntisland, on the Sabbath after the Funeral of Thomas Chalmers, D.D., LL.D., &c. &c. By the Rev. DAVID COUPER, Burntisland.

6. The Chariot of Israel and the Horsemen thereof. A Discourse delivered by the Rev. J. A. WALLACE, in the Free Church, Hawick, after the Funeral of Thomas Chalmers, D.D., LLD. 7. Sermon on the Death of Dr. Chalmers. By the Rev. WM. GIBSON, Belfast.

A

8. The Righteous Man taken away from the Evil to come. Tribute to the Memory of the Rev. Thomas Chalmers, D.D., LL.D., &c. &c. By the Rev. JOHN G. LORIMER, Glasgow. 9. A Discourse of the Qualities and Worth of Thomas Chalmers, D.D. By W. L. ALEXANDER, D.D.

10. The Rev. Dr. Chalmers; his Character, Life, and Labours. A Sermon preached in Hanover Presbyterian Church, Brighton, on Sabbath, June 13, 1847. By the Rev. ALEXANDER J. Ross. Brighton.

11. The late Dr. Chalmers. By A. S. P., Glasgow. 12. Dr. Chalmers. Extracted from the "Presbyterian Review.”

To these powerful and affectionate tributes we would gladly refer our readers, and ourselves keep silence. By and by the grief and panic so lately felt in our Northern Capital will subside into historic veneration, and legitimate Biography will bring to light the details of Dr. Chalmers' interior and most

[blocks in formation]

instructive life. And then it may be possible for most admiring and indebted friends to sketch his character with a pen that does not falter and an eye that does not fill. He was too closely connected with this Review, and it owes him too much to permit his decease to pass without the earliest record; but so close was that connexion and so great were these obligations that our readers will not wonder if the earliest notice is but short.

THOMAS CHALMERS was born at Anstruther, in Fife, on the 17th of March 1780, and was early sent to study at St. Andrew's University. From traditions still plentiful in the North, his college career must have been distinguished by some of his subsequent peculiarities-energy, good humour, companionableness, and ascendancy over others. And it was then that his passion for the physical sciences was first developed. He studied mathematics, chemistry, and some branches of natural history with more than youthful enthusiasm, and with such success that besides assisting his own professor he made a narrow escape from the mathematical chair in Edinburgh. For these early pursuits he never lost a lingering taste, and in the summer holidays of his mellow age it was his delight to give lectures to youthful audiences on electricity and the laws of chemical combination.. His attainments in these fields of knowledge were not those of a mere amateur; but in earlier life had all the system and security of an accomplished philosopher. And though for some years they engrossed him too much, they afterwards helped him amazingly. Mathematics especially gave him the power of severe and continuous thinking; and enabled him, unseduced by a salient fancy, to follow each recondite speculation to its curious landing-place, and each high argument to its topmost stronghold. And whilst this stern discipline gave a stability to his judgment and a steadiness to his intellect, such as few men of exuberant imagination have ever enjoyed, the facts and laws of the natural sciences furnished that imagination with its appropriate wealth. They supplied the imagery often gorgeous and august, sometimes brilliant and dazzling, by which in after days he made familiar truths grander or clearer than they had ever been before; and, linked together by a genius mighty in analogies, they formed the rope-ladder by which he scaled pinnacles of dazzling elevation, and told down to wondering listeners the new panorama which stretched around him. Consecrated and Christianized, his youthful science reappeared and was laid on the altar of religion in the Astronomical Discourses and Natural Theology.

The first place where he exercised his ministry was Cavers, in the South of Scotland, where he was helper to the aged minister. It was here that he made the acquaintance of Charters of Wilton-a minister remarkable for this, that he did not preach any

VOL. VII. NO. XIV.

2 N

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »