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• The Life of David Hume , Esq.
• Letter From Adam Smith , Ll.d. to William Strahan , E Sq. 2.
• A Brief Account of William Strahan.
• Letters of Hume
• Letter I.: The History of England Under the Stuarts.
• Letter II.: On the Reception of Vol. Ii of the History.
• Letter III.: Bargaining With Millar the Bookseller.
• Letter IV.: The Quarto Edition of the Essays.
• Letter V.: The Bargain With Millar Concluded.
• Letter VI.: Dr. Hurd's Artifices.
• Letter VII.: Errata In the Essays.
• Letter VIII.: Millar Suspected of Extortion.
• Letter IX.: Second Edition of the History of England Under the Stuarts.
• Letter X.: The New Method of Spelling.
• Letter XI.: The History of England Under the Tudors Completed.
• Letter XII.: Dr. Robertson's History of Scotland.
• Letter XIII.: The Early History, and the Accession of George III.
• Letter XIV.: James Macpherson Introduced to Mr. Strahan.
• Letter XV.: On‘accommodating’ the Different Parts of the History.
• Letter XVI.: Hume's Departure For France.
• Letter XVII: French Works For Translation Into English.
• Letter XVIII.: Madame Riccoboni's Novel.
• Letter XIX.: The Printing-presses In London: Medicine For the Dutch Ambassador.
• Letter XX.: Madame Riccoboni's Novel.
• Letter XXI.: Session of 1765: Rage Against the Scots.
• Letter XXII.: The King's Birth-day Kept In Paris.
• Letter XXIII.: Faction In England.
• Letter XXIV.: The Arrival of Hume and Rousseau In London.
• Letter XXV.: Hume's Quarrel With Rousseau.
• Letter XXV.: Hume's Quarrel With Rousseau.
• Letter XXVI.: Hume's Account of His Quarrel With Rousseau.
• Letter XXVII.: Further Directions About Printing the Pamphlet.
• Letter XXVIII.: Millar's Complaint of Neglect.
• Letter XXIX.: Further Directions About Printing the Pamphlet.
• Letter XXX.: Complaints of Strahan's Negligence.
• Letter XXXI.: Hume's Occupations As Under Secretary.
• Letter XXXII.: An Appointment Sought For Strahan.
• Letter XXXIII.: An Application to Lord Hertford.
• Letter XXXIV.: Applications to Lord Hertford and General Conway.
• Letter XXXV.: An Apology For Not Keeping an Engagement.
• Letter XXXVI.: Hume In Edinburgh: Tempests Brewing In Public Affairs.
• Letter XXXVII.: The Opening of the Session of 1770.
• Letter XXXVIII.: The City Address: the ‘detestable’ Edition of the History.
• Letter XXXIX.: Lord Home: End of the Session: Lady Grant.
• Letter Xl.: Cadell Disbelieved: Sir Archibald Grant's Plantations.
• Letter Xli.: Complaints of the 1763 Edition of the History.
• Letter Xlii.: the Historical Age: Dr. Henry's History.
• Letter Xliii.: Dr. Henry's Introduction to Strahan.
• Letter Xliv.: a New Edition of the Philosophical Pieces.
• Letter Xlv.: the Ohio Scheme: Threat of War With Spain.
• Letter Xlvi.: the ‘detested Edition’: Lord North: the National Debt: Dalrymple's History.
• Letter Xlvii.: the Art of Printing: Revised Editions: Dr. Johnson's Pamphlet: the Earl of Chatham: Sir John Dalrymple.
• Letter Xlviii.: Correcting Books: Warburton and His Gang: Lord North's Timidity: Powers of Government Lost.
• Letter Xlix.: New Edition of the History.
• Letter L.: the Principles of Penal Law: Landholders Versus Stockholders.
• Letter Li.: Miscarriage of Presentation Copies of the History.
• Letter Lii.: the New Edition of the History.
• Letter Liii.: the Revision of the History a Great Amusement.
• Letter Liv.: Dr. Franklin Hume's Guest.
• Letter Lv.: Variety In Folly: Pitt's Gout: Posterity.
• Letter Lvi.: Hume's Suppressed Essays.
• Letter Lvii.: the Suppressed Essays: a Note to Be Added to the History.
• Letter Lviii.: a Missing Sheet of the History.
• Letter Lix.: Learned Printers: Princess Dowager: George Iii and the East India Company.
• Letter Lx.: Life Tolerable Only By Labour: the Princess Dowager: Bengal.
• Letter Lxi.: the Licentiousness of Patriots.
• Letter Lxii.: the Proposed Continuation of the History.
• Letter Lxiii.: Captain Brydone: Hume's House In St. Andrew's Square.
• Letter Lxiv.: the New Editions of the Essays and History.
• Letter Lxv.: Dr. Percy Offended By a Passage In the History.
• Letter Lxvi.: Brydone's Travels: Hume's Continuators: Tristram Shandy: Andrew Stuart.
• Letter Lxvii.: Proposed Continuation of the History.
• Letter Lxviii.: All Faith Lost In Cadell and Strahan.
• Letter Lxix.: Dalrymple's Memoirs: Memoirs of King James II.
• Letter Lxx.: Strahan's Indignation At Hume's Attack On His Truthfulness.
• Letter Lxxi.: an Apology to Strahan.
• Letter Lxxii.: Colonel Stuart and the India House.
• Letter Lxxiii.: the Law of Copyright.
• Letter Lxxiv.: Dr. Wallace's Manuscript: Lord Kames's Sketches.
• Letter Lxxv.: Bargains Between Authors and Booksellers.
• Letter Lxxvi.: Dr. Wight and Dr. Trail: Folly of the War With the Colonies: Dr. Reid and Dr. Beattie.
• Letter Lxxvii.: the War With the Colonies: the Rousing of the British Lion.
• Letter Lxxviii.: Hume's Anxiety For the Correctness of His Works: the Effects of the Loss of America.
• Letter Lxxix.: Last Corrections of the History: Smith's Wealth of Nations: Gibbon's Decline and Fall.
• Letter Lxxx.: Publication of the Wealth of Nations and of the Decline and Fall: the Armament For America.
• Letter Lxxxi.: Hume's Departure For London.
• Letter Lxxxii.: Hume's Arrival In London.
• Letter Lxxxiii.: the Bath Waters: Journey to Bath: First Lord of the Admiralty At Speen Hill.
• Letter Lxxxiv.: the Bath Waters Injurious: Complaints of Injustice: Hume's Autobiography: Dialogues On Natural Religion.
• Letter Lxxxv.: the Cause of Hume's Illness Discovered.
• Letter Lxxxvi.: Return to Edinburgh: a Dying Man's Corrections.
• Letter Lxxxvii.: a Further Correction: Hume's Physicians Report a Cure.
• Letter Lxxxviii.: the Last Correction: Life a Burthen.
• Letter Lxxxix.: Hume's Will: Disposition About His Unpublished Works.
• Letter XC.: Hume's Life and Dialogues On Natural Religion.
• Letter XCI.: Proposed Publication of a Selection of Hume's Letters.
• Letter XCII.: Hume's Injunction About His Papers.
• Letter XCIII.: Hume's Life to Be Published Separately From the Dialogues.
• Letter XCIV.: Information Asked For About the Proposed Publication of Hume's Manuscripts.
• Letter XCV.: Copies of the History Asked For: the Dialogues: Hume's Sentiments With Regard to Futurity.
• Letter XCVI.: The Separate Publication of Hume's Life.
• Letter XCVII.: David Hume the Nephew: the Publication of the Dialogues.
• Letter XCVIII.: Request to Show Some of Hume's Letters to the King.
• Letter XCIX.: Hume's Letters Shown to the King and Queen.

LETTER LX.

Life tolerable only by Labour: the Princess Dowager: Bengal.

Dear Sir

The approbation of those whose praise is real fame is, in the very nature of the thing, extremely desireable. Judge then how very acceptable your last kind letter was to me; in which you acknowledge my small merits in a very generous and good-natured way, and much above what they have any title to.... The reading a sheet of your History every day with care and precision, though I at first imposed it upon myself as a task, soon became a most agreeable amusement....

You say the correcting the sheets has been an amusement to yourself, and an occupation which you will now find a difficulty to supply. This I can easily believe. And here let me make one observation, which I dare say has frequently occurred to yourself, because it is founded on experience and a knowledge of the human mind.—To render life tolerable, and to make it glide away with some degree of satisfaction, it is necessary that a small part at least of almost every day be employed in some species of real or imaginary business. To pass our whole time in amusement and dissipation leaves a depression upon the spirits infinitely less bearable than perhaps the hardest labour1 . The sentence of, In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, pronounced against Adam after his fall, as a punishment, is an apparent mistake, which I am not scholar enough to rectify, but which I hope will not escape future commentators2 .—My application of this doctrine you will easily guess, which is no other than to add this to the other motives I have formerly taken the liberty to urge, to persuade you to the continuation of your History; in which, if you will make some progress, however trifling, every day, I will venture to say you will find your immediate account in it, in point of ease and cheerfulness and general flow of spirits. Fame which in some sense may be considered as a future reward, I will not mention. The various and complicated miseries to which mankind are subjected, the loss of those who are deservedly dear to us, the precariousness of our own existence; in short the contemplation of every thing around us, demands a constant diversion of our attention to some object or other3 . As far as my experience goes I have generally, if not always found happiness to dwell not with men of much leisure and retirement, but with those who had a little less time than they had employment for.—But if after all I can’t persuade you to betake yourself to this kind of composition, I am sincerely sorry for it; but will not venture, by still further urging it, which I could easily do, to trespass upon your patience any longer.

The half dozen of your Philosophical Pieces shall soon be sent you; and a dozen of your History, as you desire, as soon as it is finished; which will not be for some time, having hitherto made little progress in the four last vols., as almost the whole fount, and a very large one it is, has been occupied in the four first. For to keep them going, it was necessary, not only to have the sheets constantly passing to and fro, but some composing, and some printing off, which all together engrossed a vast quantity4 . However, I will dispatch them as soon as I can.

I am very happy that you approve of what I said of the Pr. Dowager. It was written in a great hurry upon slips of paper just as the Chronicle was going to press. The reprehension it contains of our worthy5 Patriots is surely well merited.—But to show you the obstinacy of John Bull, hardly any other newspaper copied it, nor has a sentence in her favour been written in any of them by any other person6 . Though I am far from being of a desponding disposition, I almost begin to think, that if we go on at home vilifying and abusing all order and government, and abroad spreading famine and pestilence among those whom chance has subjected to our dominion7 , we shall soon become ripe for destruction.

What you have heard of the King is very true, so I have taken the hint, and inserted it, as you will see by the enclosed, in to-night's Chronicle8 . I have also taken occasion to do justice to the character of Mr. Stuart9 . What I say of him I know to be true.—And they say he certainly goes to India in that capacity. I have not heard Professor Ferguson named; nor am I acquainted with him, else I should have paid my respects to him at the same time,—and which, if you will enable me, I can with rather more propriety do upon a future occasion. For John Bull would not fail commenting upon two Scotchmen being praised at once in a paper printed by a Scotchman.—My vote10 and any little interest I have, you may be assured shall be employed in behalf of a gentleman so warmly recommended by you. Our operations in Bengal demand a strict and speedy scrutiny. The barbarities committed upon that unhappy people are really unexampled in the history of all civilized nations, that of the Spaniards on the discovery of America11 only excepted.—You see how little efficacy the purest precepts of Christianity itself have with mankind, when opposed to the Auri sacra fames12 .

I beg the continuance of your Friendship, which I prize above many Lacks of Rupees, and am with unalterable Esteem and Attachment,

Dear Sir Your faithful & obedient Serv^t

Will. Strahan.

• London,

Feby. 27, 1772.

[1]Note 1. Boswell records an anecdote of a tradesman ‘who having acquired a large fortune in London retired from business, and went to live at Worcester. His mind being without its usual occupation, and having nothing else to supply its place, preyed upon itself, so that existence was a torment to him. At last he was seized with the stone; and a friend who found him in one of its severest fits having expressed his concern, “No, no, Sir,” said he, “don’t pity me; what I now feel is ease compared with that torture of mind from which it relieves me.”’ Boswell's Johnson, iii. 176. See ib. ii. 337 for Johnson's story of an ‘eminent tallow-chandler’ in retirement.

[2]Note 2. Strahan was like the old lieutenant in Tom Jones who, when asked by Tom how the practice of duelling could be reconciled with the precepts of Christianity, replied:—‘I remember I once put the case to our chaplain over a bowl of punch, and he confessed there was much difficulty in it; but he said, he hoped there might be a latitude granted to soldiers in this one instance; and to be sure, it is our duty to hope so; for who would bear to live without his honour? No, no, my dear boy, be a good Christian as long as you live; but be a man of honour too, and never put up an affront; not all the books, nor all the parsons in the world shall ever persuade me to that. I love my religion very well, but I love my honour more. There must be some mistake in the wording of the text, or in the translation, or in the understanding it, or somewhere or other. But however that be, a man must run the risk, for he must preserve his honour.’ Tom Jones, Bk. vii. ch. 13.

[3]Note 3. Strahan is perhaps repeating the advice which his friend Johnson so often enforced. ‘To have the management of the mind is a great art,’ he said, and he often showed Boswell how it was to be done. Boswell's Johnson, ii. 440.

[4]Note 4. As Strahan was to forward to Hume five sheets of proofs every week, there could not have been less than ten sheets, or 160 pages, always ‘passing to and fro.’ At the same time there were the perfect sheets which the printers were striking off, as well as those at which the compositors were still at work.

[5]Note 5. Perhaps Strahan by italicising ‘worthy’ implies those of the London Aldermen who were among ‘the Patriots’; for worthy was the honourable appellation generally applied to them. See ante, p. 178, n. 7.

[6]Note 6. The Gentleman's Magazine in the number for March, p. 122, praised her in terms not less extravagant than Strahan's. Nay it went farther, and spoke of Frederick Prince of Wales as ‘the best of husbands.’

[7]Note 7. See ante, p. 238, n. 8. Horace Walpole, writing on April 9 of this year about Charles Fox's dissolute life and ‘manly reason,’ says:—‘We beat Rome in eloquence and extravagance; and Spain in avarice and cruelty; and, like both, we shall only serve to terrify schoolboys, and for lessons of morality!. “Here stood St. Stephen's Chapel; here young Catiline spoke; here was Lord Clive's diamond-house; this is Leadenhall Street, and this broken column was part of the palace of a company of merchants who were sovereigns of Bengal! They starved millions in India by monopolies and plunder, and almost raised a famine at home by the luxury occasioned by their opulence, and by that opulence raising the price of everything, till the poor could not purchase bread.” Conquest, usurpation, wealth, luxury, famine—one knows how little farther the genealogy has to go!’ Walpole's Letters, v. 381.

[8]Note 8. ‘We are assured that a parliamentary enquiry into the conduct of the East India Company in Bengal was originally proposed by his Majesty himself, who was greatly shocked with the accounts he received of the oppressions exercised over the poor natives. It is indeed abundantly notorious that the behaviour of our countrymen in that extensive and once rich and populous region has been for some years past so cruel and barbarous as to call aloud to Heaven itself for a most speedy and effectual remedy.’ London Chronicle, Feb. 27, 1772.

[9]Note 9. ‘We hear that all parties who have any influence in the conduct of our India affairs are unanimous in their choice of Andrew Stuart, Esq. of Berkeley-square to be one of the Supervisors. A Gentleman every way well qualified for that most important office; as he possesses &c.’ Ib. We may be reminded by Strahan's puff of his countrymen of what Johnson says in his Life of Mallet:—‘It was remarked of Mallet that he was the only Scot whom Scotchmen did not commend.’ Works, viii. 464.

[10]Note 10. Strahan must be speaking of his vote at the India House, for he was not in Parliament till November, 1774.

[11]Note 11. ‘In the same year, in a year hitherto disastrous to mankind, by the Portuguese was discovered the passage of the Indies, and by the Spaniards the coast of America.’ Johnson's Works, vi. 233.

[12]Note 12. Virgil, Æneid, iii. 57.

‘Gold-hunger cursed.’ Morris.