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LETTER LV.: Variety in Folly: Pitt's Gout: Posterity. - 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 LV.

Variety in Folly: Pitt's Gout: Posterity.

Dear Sir

I have writ this Post to Fraser1 , whose Conduct has very much dissappointed me. But if he delays a moment, we can easily do without him. You need only send me the Proof Sheet under any Frank2 , Dr. Franklin's3 or Mr. Pulteneys or Mr. Wedderburn's or Lord Beauchamps or Mr. Conway's4 (Who I hope, by the bye, has receivd the Copy of my History). The other Sheets, are in a great measure superfluous: Especially as I have a Copy of the Edition, from which this is taken.

I am glad to find, that the abominable Faction in England is declining5 . The People never tire of Folly, but they tire of the same Folly6 : And if their Leaders fall into the Contempt they deserve, it will be very great indeed. I hope that Pitt will have the Gout this whole Session and I pray it may be a hearty and sincere one7 .

I do not think, that you will be able to publish this Season; unless the printing of the four last Volumes be well advancd. But as I have at last been able to get one correct Edition of that work, I am more indifferent. I am sensible, it is an idle Amusement; but still it is an Amusement to think that Posterity will do me more Justice than the present Age8 , whose Suffrage indeed coud not have given me great Vanity.

I wish you saw (as I hope you will) my new House and Situation in St Andrews Square9 : You woud not wonder that I have abjurd London for ever.

I am Dear Sir Yours sincerely

David Hume.

2d Jany., 1772.

P.S.—Lord Lyttleton has been so good as to send me the two last Volumes of his Henry II10 . It woud flatter his Lordship to say that it is truly a Christian Performance11 .

[1]Note 1. See ante, p. 188, n. 11.

[2]Note 2. If only the proof sheet were sent the packet would not exceed two ounces—the limit of weight for an ordinary frank (ante, ib.).

[3]Note 3. Franklin, I conjecture, had the right of franking either as Deputy Postmaster-General for the Colonies, or as Provincial Agent in England for several of the Colonies.

[4]Note 4. For these names, see ante, p. 200. It is curious to see Franklin and Wedderburne, who in two years were to be opposed to each other in so memorable a scene, thus brought together.

[5]Note 5. Burke wrote on July 31, 1771:—‘As to news, we have little. After a violent ferment in the nation, as remarkable a deadness and vapidity has succeeded. The Court perseveres in the pursuit, and is near to the perfect accomplishment of its project; but when the work is perfected, it may be nearest to its destruction, for the principle is wrong, and the materials are rotten.’ Burke's Corres. i. 256. In the Ann. Reg. for 1772, i. 82, describing the autumn, he says that the general apathy had not yet much pervaded London. ‘The citizens said that Government had set its face particularly against the City of London, in a manner that had been unknown since the Revolution.... That it had for some time acted, as if they were in an actual state of warfare with her.’

Horace Walpole wrote on Dec. 15:—‘We are so much accustomed to politics, that people do not know how to behave under the present cessation. We can go into the City without being mobbed, and through Brentford without “No. 45” on one's coach-door. Wilkes is almost as dead as Sacheverell, though Sheriff.’ Letters, v. 359. On Jan. 14, 1772, he wrote:—‘The Parliament meets next week. There will, I think, be little to do, unless an attempt to set aside the subscription of the clergy to the Thirty-nine Articles should stir up a storm. Religious disputes are serious; and yet can one care about shades of nonsense?’ Ib. p. 369.

[6]Note 6. See ante, p. 187, n. 4.

[7]Note 7. Lord Chatham, writing eight days after the date of Hume's letter, mentions ‘some sensations which begin to remind me of a winter account of gout to be balanced after a summer of more health than I have known these twenty years.’ Chatham Corres. iv. 186. Hume's prayer was only partly granted: Chatham was this session troubled with gout, but not so severely as in many other years. Ib. pp. 201, 3, 8, 217, 8. Burke in his Speech on American Taxation, on April 19, 1774, describing Chatham's second Ministry, says:—‘If ever he fell into a fit of the gout, or if any other cause withdrew him from public cares, principles directly the contrary [of his own] were sure to predominate.’ Payne's Burke, i. 145. In a letter dated Sept. 14, 1775, Burke doubts like Hume whether all Lord Chatham's attacks of gout were sincere. ‘Acquainted as I am,’ he writes, ‘with the astonishing changes of Lord Chatham's constitution (whether natural or political) I am surprised to find that he is again perfectly recovered. But so it is. He will probably play more tricks.’ Burke's Corres. ii. 63.

[8]Note 8. Hume wrote to Elliot on May 11, 1758:—‘Vanitas vanitatum, atque omnia vanitas, says the Preacher; the great object of us authors, and of you orators and statesmen, is to gain applause; and you see at what rate it is to be purchased. I fancy there is a future state to give poets, historians, philosophers their due reward, and to distribute to them those recompenses which are so strangely shared out in this life. It is of little consequence that posterity does them justice, if they are for ever to be ignorant of it, and are to remain in perpetual slumber in their literary paradise.’ Burton's Hume, ii. 44. ‘Posterity,’ wrote Johnson, ‘is always the author's favourite.’ Piozzi Letters, ii. 14.

[9]Note 9. Hume had not yet moved into his new house. See post, p. 250, n. 3.

[10]Note 10. The first three volumes of Lyttelton's Henry II appeared in 1764, and the conclusion in 1771. Lyttelton had begun to print it in 1755. Johnson's Works, viii. 492. It was said that ‘it was kept back several years for fear of Smollett.’ Boswell's Johnson, iii. 33. Hume, writing on April 20, 1756, says:—‘We hear of Sir George Lyttelton's History, from which the populace expect a great deal; but I hear it is to be three quarto volumes. “O, magnum, horribilem et sacrum Libellum1 ” This last epithet of sacrum will probably be applicable to it in more senses than one. However, it cannot well fail to be readable, which is a great deal for an English book now-a-days.’ Burton's Hume, i. 433.

[11]Note 11. ‘Lyttelton had, in the pride of juvenile confidence, with the help of corrupt conversation, entertained doubts of the truth of Christianity; but he thought the time now come when it was no longer fit to doubt or believe by chance, and applied himself seriously to the great question. His studies, being honest, ended in conviction.’ Johnson's Works, viii. 490. Horace Walpole, describing on Oct. 19, 1765 the dulness of Parisian society, says:—‘Good folks, they have no time to laugh. There is God and the King to be pulled down first; and men and women, one and all, are devoutly employed in the demolition. They think me quite profane for having any belief left. But this is not my only crime; I have told them, and am undone by it, that they have taken from us to admire the two dullest things we had, Whisk (whist) and Richardson.—It is very true, and they want nothing but George Grenville to make their conversations, or rather dissertations, the most tiresome upon earth. For Lord Lyttelton, if he would come hither, and turn free-thinker once more, he would be reckoned the most agreeable man in France—next to Mr. Hume, who is the only thing in the world that they believe implicitly; which they must do, for I defy them to understand any language that he speaks.’ Letters, iv. 425.

Hume wrote to Adam Smith on July 14, 1767:—’Have you read Lord Lyttleton? Do you not admire his Whiggery and his Piety; Qualities so useful both for this World and the next?’ M. S. R. S. E. Hume could hardly have meant that Whiggery was good for the next world; for Johnson ‘always said that the first Whig was the devil’; and Boswell, after mentioning the altercation that passed between that stout old Whig, his father, and the Tory Johnson, continues:—‘I must observe, in justice to my friend's political principles, and my own, that they have met in a place where there is no room for Whiggism.’ Boswell's Johnson, iii. 326, v. 385.

[10]Note 10. The first three volumes of Lyttelton's Henry II appeared in 1764, and the conclusion in 1771. Lyttelton had begun to print it in 1755. Johnson's Works, viii. 492. It was said that ‘it was kept back several years for fear of Smollett.’ Boswell's Johnson, iii. 33. Hume, writing on April 20, 1756, says:—‘We hear of Sir George Lyttelton's History, from which the populace expect a great deal; but I hear it is to be three quarto volumes. “O, magnum, horribilem et sacrum Libellum1 ” This last epithet of sacrum will probably be applicable to it in more senses than one. However, it cannot well fail to be readable, which is a great deal for an English book now-a-days.’ Burton's Hume, i. 433.

[1]’dii magni, horribilem et sacrum libellum.’ Catullus, xiv. 12. ‘Gods! an horrible and deadly volume!’ Ellis.