on an income of £50 a year; and now he lives in the new with an income of £1,000 a year. In the old times he had hardly secured place as Custodian of the mouldy Library of the Advocates; now he is the marked potentate in the literary world of Scotland. Stanch Presbyterians do indeed look at him askance, and shake their heads at his uncanny beliefs, or rather lack of beliefs. Old nurses put hobgoblin wings upon him to frighten good children; but he has stanch, loving friends among the best and the clearest-sighted. Dr. Blair is his friend; excellent Dr. Robertson is his friend; his good nature, his kindness of heart, his rectitude of life, his intellectual charities, won even those who shuddered at his disbeliefs; that sceptical miasma-born in his blood -and harmful to many (as it was to himself), seemed to lose its malarious taint in the large, free, intellectual atmosphere in which the philosopher lived. Honest doubts were then, and always will be, better than dishonest beliefs; just as honest beliefs are a thousand fold better than dishonest doubts. It was in our year of 1776-when his reputation was brightening and widening month by month, that David Hume, the author of the first scholarly History of England, died, and was buried on a shoulder of the Calton Hill, from which one may look eastward across the valley (where lies Holyrood Palace) to the Salisbury Crags on the left and to the Castle Rock on the right. It is probable that his History will long hold place on our library shelves; its style might almost be counted a model historic style—if we were to have models (of which the wisdom is doubtful). It is clear, it is precise, it is perspicuous, it is neat to a fault. It might almost be called a reticent style, in its neglect of those wrappings of wordy illustration and amplification which so many historians employ. He makes us see his meaning as if we looked through crystal; and if the crystal is toned by his prejudices-as it is and very largely—it is altogether free from the impertinent decorative arabesques of the rhetorician. Many of the periods of which he gives the record, have had new light thrown upon them by the searching inquiries of late days. Old reputations with which he dealt reverently have suffered collapse; political horizons which were limited and gave smallness consequence, have widened; but for good, straightforward, lucid, logical setting forth of the main facts of which he undertook the record, Hume will long remain the reference book. There will be never a time when lovers of good literature will not be attracted by his pathetic picture of the career of Charles I.; and never a time when the judicious reader will accept it as altogether worthy of trust. The life of the historian-by Dr. Huxleyis rather a history of his philosophy than of his life; in which the eminent scientist-with due apology for intrusion upon literary ground -sets his logic to an easy canter all around the soberer paces of the great Scotch chargershowing nice agreement in the paces of the two, and commending and illustrating the metaphysics of the Historian with a pretty fanfaronade of Exposition and Applause. A PAIR OF POETS WERE it only to change the current of our talk, I bring now a brace of poets to your notice; not well paired indeed, as you will find: but each one in his own way giving us music that strongly contrasts with The Deserted Village, and the ponderous Satires of Johnson. Shenstone1 is a name not very much known 1 William Shenstone, b. 1714; d. 1763. His works (verse and prose) were published in 1764-69. -not very much worth knowing: he was a big, somewhat scholarly, fastidious, indolent, rhyme-haunted man, who had studied at Oxford, and who, when the muses were buzzing about his ears, came into possession of a pretty farm in that bit of Shropshire which (by queer English fashion) is planted within the northern borders of Worcestershire; and it was there that he wrote-what is typical of all that he ever wrote, and what has his current and favorite sing-song in it: "Since Phyllis vouchsafed me a look I never once dreamt of my vine. May I lose both my pipe and my crook If I knew of a kid that was mine! I prized every hour that went by Beyond all that had pleased me before; But now they are past, and I sigh; And I grieve that I prize them no more." And again— "When forced the fair nymph to forego So sweetly she bade me Adieu I thought that she bade me return!" What should we think of that if we encountered it fresh in a corner of one of our Sunday newspapers? We should hardly reckon its author among our boasted treasures; yet Burns says "his elegies do honor to our language," and a great deal of the same guileless tintinnabulum did have its admirers all over England a century ago; and some of Shenstone's pretty wares have come drifting down on the wings of albums and anthologies fairly into our day. Yet I should rather have encountered him in his fields, than in his garret; for he made those fields very beautiful. He was a bad farmer, to be sure; and sacrificed turnips to marigolds; and wheat to primroses and daisies, fast as the season went round; but his home at Leasowes was a place worth visiting for its charming graces of every rural sort; even our staid John Adams, when he was in England in those days, looking after American colonial interests must needs coach it in company with Jefferson from Cirencester to Leasowes, for a sight of this charming homestead. Goldsmith too gave its beauties the embalmment of his language; and Dr. Johnson sat down upon it, with the weight of his ponderous sentences. One echo more we will have of him, as it comes |