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LETTER XXX.: Complaints of Strahan's Negligence. - David Hume, Letters of David Hume to William Strahan [1756]

Edition used:

Letters of David Hume to William Strahan, ed. G. Birkbeck Hill (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1888).

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LETTER XXX.

Complaints of Strahan's Negligence.

Nothing coud more surprize me, Dear Strahan, than your Negligence with regard to this silly Pamphlet I sent you. You have never been at the Pains once to answer one of my Letters with regard to it; tho’ certainly I intended you a Friendship by sending it to you: You never informd me, that Becket had got over a Copy from Paris: You have never conveyd any of my Directions to the English Translator; but the greatest Enormity of all, and what covers me with Shame and Confusion, is your printing the Name of two Ladies, who had expressly forbid it; and that under Pretence, that the same Reason did not hold for concealing them in London as in Paris: As if it were impossible, that any Piece of Intelligence coud pass from the one Place to the other. How your Compositor came so much as to know the Name of Mde de Boufflers I cannot so much as imagine: He has surely read it thro my Razure and so has inserted it. What do you think of that Practice? I have scarce met with anything that has given me more Displeasure1.

I am Dear Sir Your most obedient Servant

David Hume.

  • Edinburgh,

[1.]Note 1. Rousseau in his letter of Dec. 4, 1765, quoted in Hume's narrative, says:—‘It is the advice also of Madam….’ On which there is the following footnote:—‘The person here mentioned desired her name might be suppressed. French editor. As the motive to the suppression of the lady's name can hardly be supposed to extend to this country, the English translator takes the liberty to mention the name of the Marchioness de Verdelin.’ A Concise Account, p. 6. Mde. de Boufflers is mentioned on p. 86 as one of Hume's correspondents. Writing to her on Dec. 2, 1766, he says:—‘I had erased your name; but it seems not so but that it was legible; and it is accordingly printed. The bookseller, the printer, and the compositor all throw the blame on each other for this accident.’ Private Corres. p. 230.

Grimm writing on Oct. 15, 1766 says:—‘Les personnes dont les noms sont supprimés dans ce procès sont madame la comtesse de Boufflers et madame la marquise de Verdelin.’ Corres. Lit. v. 197.