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LETTER LXX.: Strahan's Indignation at Hume's attack on his Truthfulness. - 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 LXX.

Strahan's Indignation at Hume's attack on his Truthfulness.

  • London,

March 19, 1773.

Dear Sir

Yours of the 15th I received today, which does not a little surprise me. After having been most unfeignedly attached to you ever since I had the pleasure of your acquaintance; after having done every thing in my power to oblige you; after having given the most careful attention to your works when under my press, for which I received your repeated ackowledgements; and after having behaved to you in the most open, candid, and ingenuous manner upon every occasion since I became a proprietor in your works; I did not, I could not expect to be told by you, after all, that I was a lying scoundrel, who had constantly deceived you, to whom you could give no manner of credit.

Such it seems, is now your deliberate opinion both of Mr. Cadell and myself. Produce, I call upon you, and have a right so to do, one single instance to support the heavy charge you bring against us; concealing from you, at the desire of the late Mr. Millar, the number of the 8vo. edition of your History alone excepted1 ; which we did purely at his request, having then no interest, nor the least shadow of interest, to deceive you in that or any other particular.

I own that I am quite astonished at the style of your last letter, which is such as should be directed to one of the most worthless of the human race, and to such only.

Do not imagine, however, that I mean to enter into a laboured defence of myself. Far from it. I have nothing to apologize for; nothing have I said or done respecting you, that I now wish unsaid or undone.—Some recent cause of disgust, however groundless, you have conceived; but as my whole conduct respecting you has all along be so more than blameless, this cause, whatever it may be, is to me a perfect mystery.—I told you faithfully, from time to time, how many were left on hand of the 8vo. edition. You told me in a late letter that we had better submit to some loss, than allow the book to be discredited by that abominable edition2 .—All proper haste was made to finish and publish it. In my last I told you not above 100 Copies were left; this was so very true, that upon enquiry today, I find they are exactly 76, which we can either destroy, or sell abroad; they are no object3 . But why do I trouble either you or myself to give you any detail upon this or any other subject; which, as you very politely tell me, is entirely vain and fruitless, as you can give no manner of credit to my answers.

Had not Mr. Cadell and I, from the moment we were free agents4 and concerned in your works, done everything we could devise for your satisfaction and honour; had we not invariably refused to have any interest in any thing that had a tendency to discredit or displease you; in particular Dr. Beattie's book5 ; had we not on many occasions—But I scorn to instance more particulars—we might have looked for this treatment from you, from which the most blameless conduct on our part has not been able to defend us.

True it is (and this does not depend on my veracity else I would not have mentioned it) that I have said and done every thing in my power to persuade (or, if you please, to seduce6 ) you to continue your History, from a full conviction, as you express it in your last, that it would have been for your own advantage in more respects than one7 .—Your answer was constantly in the negative; of late, that such an absurd and extravagant idea never entered your head8 ; and that you had thrown your pen aside for ever9 .—Whether I did well in thus repeatedly obtruding my advice upon you, and you in as repeatedly rejecting it, time only can discover. I know I meant well; that to me is great cause of satisfaction.—And now I cease to trouble you on this head for ever.

I had forgot that you desired 12 copies of this edition. They shall be directly sent you; and as many more as you shall hereafter desire are at your service. Your request respecting future editions of your Works shall be duly attended to. I shall only add, that at no period of my life could I have patiently borne the unmerited treatment you have given me; you will not therefore wonder, that having now, by my own industry, attained to a state of independence, and I will venture to say by a conduct umimpeachable, it should not sit very easy upon my stomach10 .

Some time or other you will perhaps discover with certainty, whether I am or not

Your faithful and Obedt Servt

W. S.

[1]Note 1. Strahan wrote to Hume on May 14, 1769, in answer to a letter which I have not seen:—‘I received your note yesterday. You are in truth the greatest sceptic I ever met with. I have again and again assured you (as I hereby do once more) that you shall most certainly have as many copies of this 4to. edition of your History as you choose to have. Not one of them shall go out of my hands till you are satisfied. The moment the index and titles are printed off the six copies you now ask for shall be sent you. But to send you them before that, would only be a needless incumbrance. If you had a single grain of faith in my promise, you would not only believe this, but believe also, what I have often told you, that everything regarding your Works in future shall be regulated by your own will and directions;—in the manner of printing;—in the number of impressions;—and in everything wherein your interest or fame may be affected. Do learn to put a little confidence in me; nor imagine that because I was induced to deceive you a little in regard to the number printed of the last 8vo. edition, that I am to make a practice of doing so. In that I was only the mouth of another person, who was afterwards sorry he had occasion to conceal the number of the impression from you.’ M. S. R. S. E.

[2]Note 2. See ante, p. 256.

[3]Note 3. This is perhaps one of the earliest instances that can be found of this use of the word object; a use sanctioned, so far as I know, by no correct writer.

[4]Note 4. They had become free agents when Millar in 1767, retiring from business, left Cadell as his successor. Cadell and Strahan were not, I think, partners in business generally, though they undertook many publications in common.

[5]Note 5. Beattie's book is his Essay on Truth, in which that amiable poet was supposed to have confuted Hume. The University of Oxford rewarded him by the degree of Doctor of Civil Law, and Reynolds painted him in his Doctor's gown, with his Essay under his arm, preceded by the Angel of Truth who is beating down the vices, Envy, Falsehood, etc. These were represented by a group of figures, among whom, it was said, could be discovered the likenesses of Hume and Voltaire. Goldsmith reproached the painter with ‘degrading so high a genius as Voltaire before so mean a writer as Dr. Beattie; for Dr. Beattie and his book together will, in the space of ten years, not be known ever to have been in existence, but your allegorical picture and the fame of Voltaire will live for ever to your disgrace as a flatterer.’ Northcote's Life of Reynolds, ed. 1819, i. 300.

Sir William Forbes in his Life of Beattie, ed. 1824, p. 81, says that he and Mr. Arbuthnot were commissioned by Beattie to sell the manuscript of the Essay. They were met by a positive refusal from the bookseller to whom they applied (no doubt Cadell); who offered however to publish it at the author's risk. To this they knew that Beattie would never agree. They thereupon, resorting to a friendly artifice, became themselves the purchasers of the copyright of the first edition, giving fifty guineas for it, but concealing the fact from the author. ‘Had it not been,’ writes Forbes, ‘for this interference of ours, perhaps the Essay on Truth, on which all Dr. Beattie's future fortunes hinged, might never have seen the light. It also strongly marks the slender opinion entertained by the booksellers at that period of the value of a work which has since risen into such wellmerited celebrity.’ Beattie, on receiving a draft for the money, wrote to Forbes on Oct. 26, 1769:—‘The price does really exceed my warmest expectations; nay I am much afraid that it exceeds the real commercial value of the book; and I am not much surprised that—[Cadell or Strahan] refuses to have a share in it, considering that he is one of the principal proprietors of Mr. Hume's works, and in consequence of that may have such a personal regard for him as would prevent his being concerned in any work of this nature.’ Ib. p. 83. In less than four years Beattie's defence of orthodoxy was rewarded by a pension of £200 a year (ib. p. 151); just half what his antagonist ‘the infidel pensioner Hume1 ’ received from the same Court. So rapid was the sale of the Essay that Cadell and Strahan must have felt that, in refusing it, they had made a great sacrifice to their friendship for Hume. It reached a fourth edition in two years and a half. Forbes's Beattie, p. 134. Strahan in 1783, when Hume was no longer living, published Beattie's Dissertations. Ib. p. 301.

[6]Note 6. This is the word that Hume had used (ante, p. 263).

[7]Note 7. See ante, p. 263.

[8]Note 8. See ante, p. 253.

[9]Note 9. See ante, p. 256.

[10]Note 10. Just one month later Boswell records:—‘On Monday, April 19, Dr. Johnson called on me with Mrs. Williams, in Mr. Strahan's coach, and carried me out to dine with Mr. Elphinston [Strahan's brother-in-law] at his academy at Kensington. A printer having acquired a fortune sufficient to keep his coach was a good topic for the credit of literature.’ Boswell's Johnson, ii. 226.

[5]Note 5. Beattie's book is his Essay on Truth, in which that amiable poet was supposed to have confuted Hume. The University of Oxford rewarded him by the degree of Doctor of Civil Law, and Reynolds painted him in his Doctor's gown, with his Essay under his arm, preceded by the Angel of Truth who is beating down the vices, Envy, Falsehood, etc. These were represented by a group of figures, among whom, it was said, could be discovered the likenesses of Hume and Voltaire. Goldsmith reproached the painter with ‘degrading so high a genius as Voltaire before so mean a writer as Dr. Beattie; for Dr. Beattie and his book together will, in the space of ten years, not be known ever to have been in existence, but your allegorical picture and the fame of Voltaire will live for ever to your disgrace as a flatterer.’ Northcote's Life of Reynolds, ed. 1819, i. 300.

Sir William Forbes in his Life of Beattie, ed. 1824, p. 81, says that he and Mr. Arbuthnot were commissioned by Beattie to sell the manuscript of the Essay. They were met by a positive refusal from the bookseller to whom they applied (no doubt Cadell); who offered however to publish it at the author's risk. To this they knew that Beattie would never agree. They thereupon, resorting to a friendly artifice, became themselves the purchasers of the copyright of the first edition, giving fifty guineas for it, but concealing the fact from the author. ‘Had it not been,’ writes Forbes, ‘for this interference of ours, perhaps the Essay on Truth, on which all Dr. Beattie's future fortunes hinged, might never have seen the light. It also strongly marks the slender opinion entertained by the booksellers at that period of the value of a work which has since risen into such wellmerited celebrity.’ Beattie, on receiving a draft for the money, wrote to Forbes on Oct. 26, 1769:—‘The price does really exceed my warmest expectations; nay I am much afraid that it exceeds the real commercial value of the book; and I am not much surprised that—[Cadell or Strahan] refuses to have a share in it, considering that he is one of the principal proprietors of Mr. Hume's works, and in consequence of that may have such a personal regard for him as would prevent his being concerned in any work of this nature.’ Ib. p. 83. In less than four years Beattie's defence of orthodoxy was rewarded by a pension of £200 a year (ib. p. 151); just half what his antagonist ‘the infidel pensioner Hume1 ’ received from the same Court. So rapid was the sale of the Essay that Cadell and Strahan must have felt that, in refusing it, they had made a great sacrifice to their friendship for Hume. It reached a fourth edition in two years and a half. Forbes's Beattie, p. 134. Strahan in 1783, when Hume was no longer living, published Beattie's Dissertations. Ib. p. 301.

[1]Boswell's Johnson, ii. 317.