Life and Correspondence of David Hume (Complete)

John Hill Burton

Library of Alexandria

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The scenes amidst which Hume passed his boyhood, and many of the years of his later life, have subsequently, in the light of a national literature, become a classic land, visited by strangers, with the same feeling with which Hume himself trod the soil of Mantua. In his own days, the elements of this literature were no less in existence; but it was not part of his mental character to find any pleasing associations in spots, remarkable only for the warlike or adventurous achievements they had witnessed. Intellect was the material on which his genius worked: with it were all his associations and sympathies; and what had not been adorned by the feats of the mind had no charm in his eye. Had he been a stranger of another land, visiting at the present, or some later day, the scenes of the Lay and of Marmion, they would, without doubt, like the land of Virgil, have lit in his mind some sympathetic glow; but the scenes illustrated solely by deeds of barbarous warfare, and by a rude illiterate minstrelsy, had nothing in them to rouse a mind, which was yet far from being destitute of its own peculiar enthusiasm. He had often, in his history, to mention great historical events that had taken place in the immediate vicinity of his paternal residence, and in places to which he could hardly have escaped, if he did not court occasional visits. About six miles from Ninewells, stands Norham castle. Three or four miles farther off, are Twisel bridge, where Surrey crossed the Till to engage the Scots, and the other localities connected with the battle of Flodden. In the same neighbourhood is Holiwell Haugh, where Edward I. met the Scottish nobility, when he professed himself to be the arbiter of the disputes between Bruce and Baliol. In his notices of these spots, in connexion with the historical events which he describes, he betrays no symptom of having passed many of his youthful days in their vicinity, but is as cold and general as when he describes Agincourt or Marston Moor; and it may safely be said, that in none of his historical or philosophical writings does any expression used by him, unless in those cases where a Scoticism has escaped his vigilance, betray either the district or the country of his origin.Hume tells us, in his short autobiography, "My family was not rich, and being myself a younger brother, my patrimony, according to the mode of my country, was of course very slender. My father, who passed for a man of parts, died when I was an infant, leaving me, with an elder brother and a sister, under the care of our mother, a woman of singular merit, who, though young and handsome, devoted herself entirely to the rearing and education of her children." He says no more of his education, than that he "passed through the ordinary course of education with success." In a document which will be immediately quoted at length, we find him speaking of having received the usual college education of Scotland, which terminates when the student is fourteen or fifteen years old. It is probable that he studied at the University of Edinburgh, in the matriculation book of which the name of "David Home" appears, as intrant of the class of William Scott, Professor of Greek, on 27th February, 1723. Holding the year to commence on 1st January, which was then the practice in Scotland, though not in England, he would be at that time nearly twelve years old. The name does not appear in any of the subsequent matriculation lists: it was probably not then the practice for the student to be entered more than once, at the commencement of his curriculum; and neither the name of Hume, nor of Home, occurs in the list of graduates.