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LETTER XXXVIII.: The City Address: the ‘detestable’ Edition of the History. - 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 XXXVIII.

The City Address: the ‘detestable’ Edition of the History.

Dear Strahan

Tho’ I have renouncd the World, I cannot forbear being rouzd with Indignation at the Audaciousness, Impudence, and Wickedness of your City Address1. . To punish it as it deserves woud certainly produce a Fray; but what signifies a Fray, in comparison of losing all Authority to Government. There must necessarily be a Struggle between the Mob and the Constitution; and it cannot come on at a more favourable time nor in a more favourable Cause. I wish therefore, (I cannot say I hope) that vigorous Measures will be taken; an impeachment immediately voted of the Mayor and his two Sherriffs for high Crimes and Misdeamenours, and the Habeas Corpus suspended till next meeting of Parliament2. . Good God! what abandon’d Madmen there are in England!

You have suspended my Chronicle on account of Sir Gilberts vacating his seat3. . I am of a Club4. here that get down News papers and Pamphlets from London regularly: So that you wont need to send me the Chronicle any more. Please only to let me know the Charge of it, together with other Articles I owe you.

I am sorry to hear that Dr. Armstrong has printed his Tragedy among his Miscellanies5. . It is certainly one of the worst pieces I ever saw; and totally unworthy of his other Productions. I shoud have endeavourd to dissuade him from printing it, had he been a man advisable. But I knew, that he keeps an Anger against Garrick for above twenty Years for refusing to bring it on the Stage; and he never since woud allow him to be so much as a tolerable Actor6. . I thought therefore it was wiser not to meddle in the Affair.

I have had a Letter from Mr. Cadell, which is very obliging: I agree to the reprinting in any form you and he please, and I believe ten volumes in large Octavo will be best. But I find, that I have been cutting a great way before the point, and that I am scarce ever likely to see an End of that detestable Edition7. . I really have no reason to believe seriously, that the half of it is yet sold, or that the Book has at present any sale at all worth speaking of: Such a habit you and he have got during seven Years past of deceiving me by false Intelligence, that I am determind never to believe a word either of you says on that head8. . For Instance you both told me when I left London, that there remaind not 700 Copies: He has since wrote me that before the meeting of Parliament he had disposd of 200 of these: In his last Letter he says, that the Sale still continues rapid. I must therefore suppose that before the month of May next, there woud not be 300 in your Warehouses, which is a little enough Number (or too little) for a Book which woud take near a twelvemonth in reprinting. But he speaks still of a distant Period for beginning the new Edition. You see, therefore, that these Stories are totally inconsistent. I need only say, that I have a Copy corrected, and I believe considerably improvd at your Service, whenever you please to call for it. I am nowise impatient to have another Edition: I only show you that I had taken my Measures, in consequence of the Intelligence conveyd to me; and I shall add, that, if the Book has really any Sale, it woud probably be the Interest of the Proprietors to run the Risque of losing some of that odious Edition rather than encumber the Market any longer with it. But of this you are the best Judges.

I am Dear Strahan Yours sincerely

David Hume.

  • Edinburgh,

13 March, 1770.

[1.]Note 1. On July 5, 1769, the City presented a petition to the King, ‘to which he made no answer, and immediately turned about to the Danish Minister, and delivered the petition to the Lord in Waiting.’ Ann. Reg. 1769, i. 113. On March 14, 1770, the City, indignant at receiving no answer, presented ‘a Remonstrance and Petition praying for the dissolution of Parliament and the removal of evil Ministers.’ Ann. Reg. 1770, i. 79, 80. Horace Walpole, writing to Mann the next day, says:—‘The manifesto on which all seems to turn is the Remonstrance from the City. You will have seen it in the public papers, and certainly never saw a bolder declaration both against King and Parliament. Sixteen aldermen have protested against it, but could not stop it. The King, after some delay, received it yesterday on his throne…. The crisis is now tremendous. Should the House of Commons, or both Houses, fall on the Remonstrance, as it in a manner dares them to do, it is much to be apprehended that not only the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs will uphold their act, but that many lords and members will avow them, and demand to be included in the same sentence. The Tower, crammed with such proud criminals, will be a formidable scene indeed. The petitioning counties will certainly turn remonstrants. An association among them is threatened, and a general refusal by the party of paying the land-tax. In short rebellion is in prospect and in everybody's mouth…. It is not yet, I hope, too late for wisdom and temper to step in. I sigh when I hear any other language. The English may be soothed—I never read that they were to be frightened.’ Letters, v. 229.

In a debate on May 4 Lord Chatham made a remarkable contribution to English history. ‘My Lords,’ he said, ‘when I mentioned the Livery of London, I thought I saw a smile of ridicule upon some faces…. The Livery of London, my Lords, were respectable at the time of Caesar's invasion.’ Parl. Hist. xvi. 968.

[2.]Note 2. Horace Walpole wrote on March 20 (Letters, v. 230, where the date March 16 is wrong):—'sir T. Clavering moved to address the King…. The House, you may imagine, was full of resentment, and at eleven at night the Address was carried by 271 to 108…. The great point is still in suspense—what to do with the offenders. The wisest, because the most temperate method that I have heard suggested is, to address the King to order a prosecution by the Attorney-General. Two others that have been mentioned are big with every mischief—the Tower or expulsion. Think of the three first magistrates of the City1 in prison, or of a new election for London! I pray for temper, but what can one expect when such provocation is given? … March 23. Lord North's temper and prudence has prevailed over much rash counsel; and will, I hope, at last defeat the madness of both sides.’

[3.]Note 3. Sir Gilbert Elliot, third Baronet and father of the first Earl of Minto, was Hume's correspondent for many years. He is described in Scotland and Scotsmen of the Eighteenth Century, i. 364. Boswell, when considering the English accent which a Scotch gentleman should aim at attaining, says:—‘I would give as an instance of what I mean to recommend to my countrymen the pronunciation of the late Sir Gilbert Elliot.’ Boswell's Johnson, ii. 160.

In Elliot's MS. Journal for 1770 is the following entry:—‘Feb. 3, Went to Court…. Lord North made me the offer of the Treasurership of the Navy; said the King wished I might accept, as many persons were doubtful. Though hazardous, I did accept on the spot.’ Walpole's Memoirs of George III, iv. 87, n. 1. By his appointment he vacated his seat for Roxburgh, but a new writ being ordered on March 8, he was re-elected. Parl. Hist. xvi. 452. No doubt Hume's Chronicle had been franked by Elliot. Till his re-election he lost his privilege, but I am surprised that he could not frank as a Minister.

[4.]Note 4. I am afraid that this cannot be the famous Poker Club, ‘of which Andrew Crosbie was chosen Assassin, in case any officer of that sort should be needed; but David Hume was added as his Assessor, without whose assent nothing should be done, so that between plus and minus there was likely to be no bloodshed.’ Dr. A. Carlyle's Auto. p. 420. These ‘Poker men’ met, I think, only for conviviality.

[5.]Note 5. Dr. Armstrong's Miscellanies were published in 1770, in 2 vols. 12mo. His tragedy was The Forced Marriage. Churchill attacked him in the last lines that he wrote. Speaking of the Muses he says:—

  • ‘Let them with Armstrong, taking leave of sense,
  • Read musty lectures on Benevolence,
  • Or con the pages of his gaping Day,
  • Where all his former fame was thrown away,
  • Where all but barren labour was forgot;
  • And the vain stiffness of a Letter‘d Scott.’

Churchill's Poems, ed. 1766, ii. 329.

[6.]Note 6. See Boswell's Johnson, i. 75, n. 2, for the anger of ‘Mr. Hawkins, the Poetry Professor,’ against Garrick. A much better poet, W. J. Mickle, the author of the Ballad of Cumnor Hall, ‘inserted in the Lusiad an angry note against Garrick, who had rejected a tragedy o his.’ Shortly afterwards he saw him act for the first time. The play was Lear. ‘During the first three acts he said not a word. In a fine passage of the fourth he fetched a deep sigh, and turning to a friend, “I wish,” said he, “the note was out of my book.”’ Bishop Horne's Essays, ed. 1808, p. 38. See also Boswell's Johnson, v. 349, n. 1.

[7.]Note 7. The ‘detestable edition’ was that of 1763 in 8 vols. 8vo. When it came out, Hume showed no dissatisfaction with it. On March 12, 1763, he wrote to Elliot:—‘In this new edition I have corrected several mistakes and oversights, which had chiefly proceeded from the plaguy prejudices of Whiggism, with which I was too much infected when I began this work.’ Burton's Hume, ii. 144. On Sept. 3, 1764, he wrote to Millar that he thought the edition very correct. Ib. p. 232. Six years later his tone was changed. On June 21, 1770, he wrote of it to Strahan:— ‘I suppose you will not find one book in the English language of that size and price so ill printed.’ Mr. Fortescue, of the British Museum, informs me, that ‘it is printed in a small worn-out-looking type on a yellow thin blotting-paper; it is bad, but not so strikingly bad as Hume's language implies.’ His discontent would not have shown itself—perhaps would not have been felt—had the edition been a small one or been rapidly sold. He was never weary of correcting his own writings. ‘I am,’ he wrote to Strahan (post, Letter of March 25, 1771), ‘perhaps the only author you ever knew, who gratuitously employed great industry in correcting a work, of which he has fully alienated the property.’ His last corrections he made less than a fortnight before his death (post, Letter of Aug. 12, 1776). Millar, whom Johnson praised as ‘the Maecenas of the age’ (Boswell's Johnson, i. 278, n. 1), in his ‘rapaciousness’ had printed so large a number of copies of this edition of 1763 that they were not all sold ten years later (post, Letter of March 19, 1773). He deceived Hume not only as to the number printed, but also sold. In this concealment, though not apparently in any actual deception, he induced Cadell and Strahan to share (post, ib.). He overreached himself, for Hume would write no more. ‘That abominable edition,’ he writes (post, Letter of Jan. 30, 1773), ‘has been one cause why I have thrown my pen aside for ever.’ Soon after it was brought out he had begun to prepare for its successor, but he grew angry in his impatience long before his publishers were willing to print an octavo edition. On April 24, 1764, Millar had written to him:—‘I have just reprinted the Tudors in small 4to., and I believe I shall the Stewarts in that size soon.’ M. S. R. S. E. To this Hume, replying in a letter dated ‘Paris, April [? May] 23, expressed his displeasure at the news:—‘You were in the wrong to make any edition without informing me; because I left in Scotland a copy very fully corrected, with a few alterations1 , which ought to have been followed. I shall write to my sister to send it you, and I desire you may follow it in all future editions, if there be any such.’ He goes on to mention one important alteration, and adds:—‘I have some scruple of inserting it on your account, till the sale of the other editions be pretty considerably advanced.’ Burton's Hume, ii. 201. It must have been, I suppose, this same scruple which kept him from making all these corrections in the fine edition in 8 vols. quarto which was published in 1770. That some corrections were made is shown post in his Letter of June 21, 1770.

On Nov. 26, 1764, Millar wrote to him:—‘The sale of the Stewarts has been more than the others. They came out first, and the rest some years after, which was the cause; but there are above 2500 complete sets sold in 4to. of the lowest sale [?] vols. [?], but upwards of 3000 of the Stewarts; of the 8vo. history near 2000, and of the 8vo. Essays, 400. They were only published in May last. I was asked the question [how many editions had been published] at St. James's the other day, when I said I considered your Works as Classics; that I never numbered the editions as I did in books we wished to puff. This I said before many clergy.’ M. S. R. S. E.2 Hume, who a year and a-half before had complained of ‘the languishing sale’ (Burton's Hume, ii. 148), was so much pleased with the news, false as it undoubtedly was, that he told Millar that he would write the continuation. On Oct. 19, 1767, he wrote to him:—‘I intend to give up all my leisure time to the correction of my History, and to contrive more leisure than I have possessed since I came into public office. I had run over four volumes; but I shall give them a second perusal, and employ the same, or greater accuracy, in correcting the other four.’ Ib. p. 409. On Feb. 21, 1770, he wrote to Elliot:—‘I am running over again the last edition of my History, in order to correct it still further. I either soften or expunge many villainous, seditious Whig strokes, which had crept into it. I wish that my indignation at the present madness, encouraged by lies, calumnies, imposture, and every infamous act usual among popular leaders, may not throw me into the opposite extreme. I am however sensible that the first editions were too full of those foolish English prejudices, which all nations and all ages disavow.’ Ib. p. 434.

It must be allowed that Hume's expectations of the sale of a work in eight volumes octavo were by no means low. He wrote to Millar on Oct. 8, 1766:—‘I own that the quick sale of my Philosophy surprizes me as much as the slow sale of my History. You have scarce dispos’d of 2000 copies in three years.’ M. S. R. S. E. The population of England and Wales is about three and a-half times as large as it was when Hume wrote this. It is as if an historian of the present day should expect to sell 2,300 copies of an equally extensive work every year.

[8.]Note 8. See post, Letters of March 15, 19, 24, 1773.

[2.]Note 2. Horace Walpole wrote on March 20 (Letters, v. 230, where the date March 16 is wrong):—'sir T. Clavering moved to address the King…. The House, you may imagine, was full of resentment, and at eleven at night the Address was carried by 271 to 108…. The great point is still in suspense—what to do with the offenders. The wisest, because the most temperate method that I have heard suggested is, to address the King to order a prosecution by the Attorney-General. Two others that have been mentioned are big with every mischief—the Tower or expulsion. Think of the three first magistrates of the City1 in prison, or of a new election for London! I pray for temper, but what can one expect when such provocation is given? … March 23. Lord North's temper and prudence has prevailed over much rash counsel; and will, I hope, at last defeat the madness of both sides.’

[7.]Note 7. The ‘detestable edition’ was that of 1763 in 8 vols. 8vo. When it came out, Hume showed no dissatisfaction with it. On March 12, 1763, he wrote to Elliot:—‘In this new edition I have corrected several mistakes and oversights, which had chiefly proceeded from the plaguy prejudices of Whiggism, with which I was too much infected when I began this work.’ Burton's Hume, ii. 144. On Sept. 3, 1764, he wrote to Millar that he thought the edition very correct. Ib. p. 232. Six years later his tone was changed. On June 21, 1770, he wrote of it to Strahan:— ‘I suppose you will not find one book in the English language of that size and price so ill printed.’ Mr. Fortescue, of the British Museum, informs me, that ‘it is printed in a small worn-out-looking type on a yellow thin blotting-paper; it is bad, but not so strikingly bad as Hume's language implies.’ His discontent would not have shown itself—perhaps would not have been felt—had the edition been a small one or been rapidly sold. He was never weary of correcting his own writings. ‘I am,’ he wrote to Strahan (post, Letter of March 25, 1771), ‘perhaps the only author you ever knew, who gratuitously employed great industry in correcting a work, of which he has fully alienated the property.’ His last corrections he made less than a fortnight before his death (post, Letter of Aug. 12, 1776). Millar, whom Johnson praised as ‘the Maecenas of the age’ (Boswell's Johnson, i. 278, n. 1), in his ‘rapaciousness’ had printed so large a number of copies of this edition of 1763 that they were not all sold ten years later (post, Letter of March 19, 1773). He deceived Hume not only as to the number printed, but also sold. In this concealment, though not apparently in any actual deception, he induced Cadell and Strahan to share (post, ib.). He overreached himself, for Hume would write no more. ‘That abominable edition,’ he writes (post, Letter of Jan. 30, 1773), ‘has been one cause why I have thrown my pen aside for ever.’ Soon after it was brought out he had begun to prepare for its successor, but he grew angry in his impatience long before his publishers were willing to print an octavo edition. On April 24, 1764, Millar had written to him:—‘I have just reprinted the Tudors in small 4to., and I believe I shall the Stewarts in that size soon.’ M. S. R. S. E. To this Hume, replying in a letter dated ‘Paris, April [? May] 23, expressed his displeasure at the news:—‘You were in the wrong to make any edition without informing me; because I left in Scotland a copy very fully corrected, with a few alterations1 , which ought to have been followed. I shall write to my sister to send it you, and I desire you may follow it in all future editions, if there be any such.’ He goes on to mention one important alteration, and adds:—‘I have some scruple of inserting it on your account, till the sale of the other editions be pretty considerably advanced.’ Burton's Hume, ii. 201. It must have been, I suppose, this same scruple which kept him from making all these corrections in the fine edition in 8 vols. quarto which was published in 1770. That some corrections were made is shown post in his Letter of June 21, 1770.

On Nov. 26, 1764, Millar wrote to him:—‘The sale of the Stewarts has been more than the others. They came out first, and the rest some years after, which was the cause; but there are above 2500 complete sets sold in 4to. of the lowest sale [?] vols. [?], but upwards of 3000 of the Stewarts; of the 8vo. history near 2000, and of the 8vo. Essays, 400. They were only published in May last. I was asked the question [how many editions had been published] at St. James's the other day, when I said I considered your Works as Classics; that I never numbered the editions as I did in books we wished to puff. This I said before many clergy.’ M. S. R. S. E.2 Hume, who a year and a-half before had complained of ‘the languishing sale’ (Burton's Hume, ii. 148), was so much pleased with the news, false as it undoubtedly was, that he told Millar that he would write the continuation. On Oct. 19, 1767, he wrote to him:—‘I intend to give up all my leisure time to the correction of my History, and to contrive more leisure than I have possessed since I came into public office. I had run over four volumes; but I shall give them a second perusal, and employ the same, or greater accuracy, in correcting the other four.’ Ib. p. 409. On Feb. 21, 1770, he wrote to Elliot:—‘I am running over again the last edition of my History, in order to correct it still further. I either soften or expunge many villainous, seditious Whig strokes, which had crept into it. I wish that my indignation at the present madness, encouraged by lies, calumnies, imposture, and every infamous act usual among popular leaders, may not throw me into the opposite extreme. I am however sensible that the first editions were too full of those foolish English prejudices, which all nations and all ages disavow.’ Ib. p. 434.

It must be allowed that Hume's expectations of the sale of a work in eight volumes octavo were by no means low. He wrote to Millar on Oct. 8, 1766:—‘I own that the quick sale of my Philosophy surprizes me as much as the slow sale of my History. You have scarce dispos’d of 2000 copies in three years.’ M. S. R. S. E. The population of England and Wales is about three and a-half times as large as it was when Hume wrote this. It is as if an historian of the present day should expect to sell 2,300 copies of an equally extensive work every year.

[1]The Lord Mayor and the two Sheriffs.

[1]By ‘corrections’ he seems to mean changes in words, and by ‘alterations’ changes in statements. Millar does not seem to have made any use of this corrected volume. See ante, p. 85.

[2]Dr. Blair, writing to Strahan on April 10, 1778, about his Sermons, says:— ‘ In some late publications you have a way of saying on the title-page, A New Edition; but I would much prefer your going on with the succession of editions, which certainly tends to buoy up a volume of Sermons.’ Rosebery MSS.