character than David Hume. The powers of physiognomy were baffled by his countenance; neither could the most skilful in that scicence pretend to discover the smallest trace of the faculties of his mind in the unmeaning features of his visage. His face was broad and flat, his mouth wide, and without any other expression than that of imbecility. His eyes vacant and spiritless, and the corpulency 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 train 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 fur nished by the Austrians and Piedmontese. It was, therefore, thought necessary that bis secretary should : appear to be an officer, and Hume was accordingly disguised in scarlet. Having thus given an account of his exterior, it is but fair that I should state my good opinion of his character. Of all the philosophers of his sect, none, I believe, ever joined more real benevolence to its mischievous principles than my friend Hume. His love to mankind was universal and vehement; and there was no service he would not cheerfully have done to his fellow creatures, excepting only that of suffering them to save their souls in their own way. He was tender-hearted, friendly, and charitable in the extreme, as will appear from a fact, which I have from good authority. When a member of the university of Edinburgh, and in great want of money, having little or no paternal fortune, and the collegiate stipend being very inconsiderable, he had procured, through the interest of some friend, an office in the university, which was worth about forty pounds a year. On the day when he had received this good news, and just when he had got into his possession the patent or grant entitling him to his office, he was visited by his friend Blacklock, the poet, who is much better known by his poverty and blindness, than by his genius. This poor man began a long descant on bis misery, bewailing his want of sight, his large family of children, and his utter inability to provide for them, or even to procure them the necessaries of life. Hume, unable to bear his complaints, and destitute of money to assist him, ran instantly to his desk, took out the grant, and presented it to his miserable friend, who received it with exultation, and whose name was soon after, by Hume's interest, inserted instead of his own. After such a relation, it is needless that I should say any more of his genuine philanthropy, and generous beneficence; but the difficulty will now ⚫occur, ●ccur, how a man, endowed with such qualities, could possibly consent to become the agent of so much mischief, as undoubtedly has been done to mankind by his writings; and this difficulty can only be solved by having recourse to that universal passion, which has, I fear, a much more general influence over all our actions than we are willing to confess. Pride, or vanity, joined to a sceptical turn of mind, and to an education which, though learned, rather sipped knowledge than drank it, was, probably, the ultimate cause of this singular phænomenon ; and the desire of being placed at the head of a sect, whose tenets controverted and contradicted all received opinions, was too strong to be resisted by a man, whose genius enabled him to find plausible arguments, sufficient to persuade both himself and many others, that his own opinions are true. A philosophical knight-errant was the dragon he had vowed to vanquish, and he was careless, or thoughtless, of the consequences which might ensue from the achievement of the ad⚫ venture to which he had pledged himself. He once professed himself the admirer of a young, most beautiful, and accomplished lady, at Turin, who only laughed at his passion. One day he addressed her in the usual common-place strain, that he was abimè, anéanti.'-Oh! pour anéanti,' replied the lady; ce n'est en effet qu'une operation très naturelle de votre systéme. In London, where he often did me the honour to communicate the manuscripts of his additional essays, before their publication, I have sometimes, in the course of our intimacy, asked him whether he thought that, if his opinions were universally to take place, mankind would not be rendered more unhappy than they now were; and whether he did not suppose that the curb of religion was necessary to human nature? The objections,' answered he, are not without weight; but error can never produce good, and truth ought to take place of all considerations.' He never failed, in the midst of any controversy, to give its due praise to every thing tolerable that was either said or written against him. One day that he visited me in London, he came into my room laughing, and apparently well pleased. What has put you into this good humour, Hume? said I, Why, man,' replied he, 'I have just now had the best thing said to me I ever heard. I was complaining in a company, where I spent the morning, that I was very ill treated by the world, and that the censures past upon me were hard and unreasonable. That I had written many volumes, throughout the whole of which there were but few pages that contained any reprehensible matter, and yet, for those few pages, I was abused and torn to pieces.'-'You put me in mind,' said an honest fellow in the company, whose name I did not know, of an acquaintance of mine, a notary public, who, having been condemned to be hanged for forgery, lamented the hardship of his case; that, after having written many thousand inoffensive sheets, he should be hanged for one line.' Hume; and never was there, I am convinced, a more thorough and sincere sceptic. He seemed not to be certain even of his own existence, and could not therefore be expected to entertain any settled opinion respecting bis future state. Once I asked him what he thought of the immortality of the soul? Why troth, man," said he, it is so pretty and so comfortable a theory, that I wish I could be convinced of its truth, but I canna help doubting.' Hume's fashion at Paris, when he was there as secretary to Lord Hertford, was truly ridiculous;, and nothing ever marked, in a more striking manner, the whimsical genius of the French. No man, from his manners, was surely less formed for their society, or less likely to meet with their approbation; but that flimsy philosophy, which pervades and deadens even their most licentious novels, was then the folly of the day. Free thinking and English frocks were the fashion, and the Anglomanie was the ton du pais. Lord Holland, though far better calculated than Hume to please in France, was also an instance of this singu lar predilection. Being about this time on a visit to Paris, the French concluded, that an Englishman of bis reputation must be à philosopher, and must be admired. It It was customary with him to doze after dinner, and one day, at a great entertainment, he happened to fall asleep; Le voilà!' says a Marquis, pulling his neighbour by the sleeve; La voilà, qui pense!' But the madness for Hume was far more singular and extravagant. From what has been already said of him, it is apparent that his con น * versation to strangers, and particularly to Frenchmen, could be little delightful, and still more particularly, one would suppose, to French women; and yet, no lady's toilette was complete without Hume's attendance. At the opera, his broad, unmeaning face was usually seen entre deux jolis minois. The lauies in France give the ton, and the ton was deism; a species of philosophy ill suited to the softer sex, in whose delicate frame weakness is interesting, and timidity a charm. But the women in France were deists, as with us they were charioteers. The tenets of the new philosophy were à portie de tout le monde; and the perusal of a wanton novel, such, for example, as Therese Philosophe, was amply sufficient to render any fine gentleman, or any-fine lady, an accomplished, nay, a learned deist. How my friend Hume was able to endure the encounter of these French female. Titans, I know not. In England, either his philosophic pride, or his conviction that infidelity was ill suited to women, made him perfectly averse from the initiation of ladies into the mysteries of his doctrine. I never saw him se.. much displeased, or so much disconcerted, as by the petulance of Mrs. Mallet, the conceited wife of Bolingbroke's editor. This lady, who was not acquainted with Hume, meeting him one night at an assembly, boldly accosted hina in these words: - Mr. Hume, give me leave to introduce myself to you; we deists ought to know each other.'-' Madame,' replied he, I am no deist. I do not style myself so, neither do I desire to be known by that appellation." Nothing port; and his understanding was so far warped and bent by this unfortunate pred lection, that he had well nigh lost that best faculty of the mind, the almost intuitive per ception of truth, His sceptical. turn made him doubt, and consequently dispute every thing; yet was he a fair and pleasant disputant. He heard with patience, and answered without acrimony. Neither was his conversation at any time offensive, even to his more scrupulous companions: his good sense, and good nature, prevented his saying any thing that was likely to shock; and it was not till he was provoked to argument, that, in mixed companies, he entered into his favourite topics. Where, indeed, as was the case with me, his regard for any individual rendered him desirous of making a proselyte, his efforts were great, and anxiously inces sant. Nothing ever gave Hume more real vexation, than the strictures made upon his history in the House of Lords by the great Lord Chatham. Soon after that speech I met Hume, and ironically wished him joy of the high honour that had been done him. Zounds, man,' said he, with more peevishness than I had ever seen him express, he's a Goth! he's a Vandal!'Indeed, his History is as dangerous in politics, as his Essays are in religion: and it is somewhat extraordinary, that the same man who labours to free the mind from what he supposes religious prejudices, should as zealously endeavour to shackle it with the servile ideas of despotism. But he loved the Stuart family, and his history is, of course, their apology. All his prepossessions, however, could never induce him absolutely to falsify history; and though he endeavours to soften the failings of his favourites, even in their actions, yet it is on the characters which he gives to them, that he principally depends for their vindication: and from hence frequently proceeds, in the course of his history, I have frequently met him in this singular incongruity, that it is company with ladies, and have morally impossible that a man, been as often astonished at the popossessed of the character which liteness, the gallantry, and sprightthe historian delineates, should in liness of his behaviour. In a word, certain circumstances have acted the most accomplished, the most the part which the same historian refined petit-maitre of Paris, could narrates and assigns to him. But not have been more amusing, from now to return to his philosophical the liveliness of his chat, nor could principles, which certainly consti- have been more inexhaustible in tute the discriminating feature of that sort of discourse which is best his character. The practice of suited to women, than this venercombating received opinions had able philosopher of seventy years one unhappy, though not unusual, old. But at this we shall not be effect on his mind. He grew fond surprised, when we reflect, that of paradoxes, which his abilities the profound author of L'Esprit nabled him successfully to sup-des Loix was also author of the MONTESQUIEU. (By Lord Charlemont.) Persian . Persian Letters, and of the truly gallant Tempie de Gnide. He had, however, to a great degree, though not among women, one quality which is not uncommon with abstracted men, I mean absence of mind. I remember dining in company with him at our ambassador's, Lord Albemarle, where, during the time of dinner, being engaged in a warm dispute, he gave away to the servant, who stood behind him, seven clean plates, supposing that he had used them all. But this was only in the heat of controversy, and when he was actuated by that lively and impetuous earnestness, to which, though it never carried him beyond the bounds of good breeding, he was as liable as any man I ever knew. At all other times he was perfectly collected, nor did he ever seem to think of any thing out of the scope of the present conversation. In the course of our conversations, Ireland, and its interests, have often been the topic; and, upon these occasions, I have always found him an advocate for an union between that country and England. • Were I an Irishman,' said he, I should certainly wish for it; and, as a general lover of liberty, I sincerely desire it; and for this plain reason, that an inferior country, connected with one much her superior in force, can never be certain of the permanent enjoyment of constitutional freedom, unless she has, by her representatives, a proportional share in the legislature of the superior kingdom.' A few days before I left Paris, to return home, this great man fell sick, and, though I did not imagine, from the nature of his complaint, that it was likely to be fatal, I quitted him, however, with the utmost regret, and with that sort of foreboding which sometimes precedes misfortunes. Scarcely was I arrived in England, when I received a letter from one whom I had desired to send me the most particular accounts of him, communicating to me the melancholy news of his death, and assuring me, what I never doubted, that he had died as he lived, like a real philosopher; and what is more, with true christian resignation. What his real sentiments, with regard to religion, were, I cannot exactly say. He certainly was not a Papist; but I have no reason to believe that he was not a Christian: in all our conversations, which were perfectly free, I never heard him utter the slightest hint, the least word, which savoured of f profaneness; but, on the contrary, whenever it came in his way to mention christianity, he always spoke of its doctrine and of its precepts with the utmost respect and reverence; so that, did I not know that he had too much wisdom and goodness to wish to depreciate the rul ing religion, from his general manner of expressing himself, I should make no scruple freely to declare him a perfect christian. At his death the priests, as usual, tormented him, and he bore their exhortations with the greatest patience, good humour, and decency; till at length fatigued, by their obstinate and tiresome pertinacity, he told them that he was much obliged for their comfort, but that, having now a very short time to live, he wished to have those few minutes to himself, as he had lived long. |