ful admonition from you, in case I ever produce any thing that merits your attention. And am, with the greatest respect, dear sir, your most obliged, and most humble servant, ADAM FERGUSON. LXXII.-EXTRACT OF A LETTER FROM MR. DAVID HUME TO MR. STRAHAN, DATED EDINBURGH, APRIL 8th, 1776. *** * I am very much taken with Mr. Gibbon's Roman History, which came from your press, and am glad to hear of its success. There will no books of reputation now be printed in London but through your hands and Mr. Cadell's. The author tells me, that he is already preparing a second edition. I resolved to have given him my advice with regard to the manner of printing it; but as I am now writing to you it is the same thing. He ought certainly to print the number of the chapter at the head of the margin; and it would be better if something of the contents could also be added. One is also plagued with his notes, according to the present method of printing the book; when a note is announced, you turn to the end of the volume; and there you often find nothing but a reference to an authority. All these authorities ought only to be printed at the margin, or the bottom of the page. I desire a copy of my new edition should be sent to Mr. Gibbon; as wishing that gentleman, whom I highly value, should peruse me in a form the least imperfect to which I can bring my work. * * * * * Dr. Smith's performance is another excellent work that has come from your press this winter; but I have ventured to tell him, that it requires too much thought to be as popular as Mr. Gibbon's. LXXIII.-MR. FERGUSON TO MR. GIBBON. Edinburgh, April 18th, 1776. Dear Sir, I should make some apology for not writing you sooner an answer to your obliging letter: but if you should honour me frequently with such requests, you will find, that, with very good intentions, I am a very dilatory and irregular correspondent. I am sorry to tell you, that our respectable friend is still declining in his health; he is greatly emaciated, and loses strength. He talks familiarly of his near prospect of dying. His mother, it seems, died under the same symptoms; and it appears so little necessary or proper to flatter him, that no one attempts it. I never observed his understanding more clear, or his humour more pleasant and lively. He has a great aversion to leave the tranquillity of his own house, to go in search of health among inns and hostlers. And his friends here gave way to him for some time; but now think it necessary that he should make an effort to try what change of place and air, or any thing else Sir John Pringle may advise, can do for him. I left him this morning in the mind to comply in this article, and I hope he will be prevailed on to set out in a few days. He is just now sixty-five. * Mr. Hume. I am very glad that the pleasure you give us recoils a little on yourself, through our feeble testimony. I have, as you suppose, been employed, at any intervals of leisure or rest I have had for some years, in taking notes, or collecting materials, for a History of the distractions that broke down the Roman Republic, and ended in the establishment of Augustus and his immediate successors. The compliment you are pleased to pay, I cannot accept of, even to my subject. Your subject now appears with advantages it was not supposed to have had; and I suspect that the magnificence of the mouldering ruin will appear more striking than the same building when the view is perplexed with scaffolding, workmen, and disorderly lodgers, and the ear is stunned with the noise of destructions and repairs, and the alarms of fire. The night which you begin to describe is solemn, and there are gleams of light superior to what is to be found in any other time. I comfort myself, that as my trade is the study of human nature, I could not fix on a more interesting corner of it than the end of the Roman Republic. Whether my compilations should ever deserve the attention of any one besides myself, must remain to be determined after they are further advanced. I take the liberty to trouble you with the inclosed for Mr. Smith, whose uncertain stay in London makes me at a loss how to direct for him. You have both such reason to be pleased with the world just now, that I hope you are pleased with each other. I am, with the greatest respect, dear sir, your most obedient and most humble servant, ADAM FERGUSON. LXXIV. EDWARD GIBBON, ESQ. TO J. HOLROYD, ESQ. London, May 20th, 1776. I am angry that you should impede my noble designs of visiting foreign parts, more especially as I have an advantage which Sir Wilful had not, that of understanding your foreign lingos. With regard to Mrs. Gibbon, her intended visit, to which I was not totally a stranger, will do me honour; and, though it should delay my emigration till the end of July, there will still remain the months of August, September, and October. Above all, abstain from giving the least hint to any Bath correspondent, and, perhaps, if I am not provoked by opposition, the thing may not be absolutely certain. At all events, you may depend on a previous visit. At present, I am very busy with the Neckers. I live with her, just as I used to do twenty years ago, laugh at her Paris.varnish, and oblige her to become a simple, reasonable Suissesse. The man who might read English husbands lessons of proper and dutiful behaviour, is a sensible, good-natured creature. In about a fortnight I launch again into the world in the shape of a quarto volume. Cadell assures me, that he never remembered so eager and impatient a demand for a second edition. The town is beginning to break up; the day after to-morrow we have our last day in the House of Commons, to inquire into the instructions of the commissioners. I like the man, and the motion appears plain. Adieu. I dined with Lord Palmerstone today; great dinner of catches. I embrace my lady and the Maria. LXXV. EDWARD GIBBON, ESQ. TO J. HOLROYD, ESQ. To tell you any thing of the change, or rather changes, of governors, I must have known something of them myself; but all is darkness, confusion, and uncertainty, to such a degree, that people do not even know what lies to invent. The news from America have indeed diverted the public attention into another, and far greater, channel. All that you see in the papers, of the repulse of Quebec, as well as the capture of Lee, rests on the authority (a very unexceptionable one) of the provincial papers, as they have been transmitted by Governor Tryon from New York. Howe is well, and eats plentifully; and the weather seems to clear up so fast, that, according to the English custom, we have passed from the lowest despondency to a full assurance of success. My new birth happened last Monday; seven hundred of the fifteen hundred were gone yesterday. I now understand, from pretty good authority, that Dr. ****, the friend and chaplain of * * * *, is actually sharpening his goose quill against the last two chapters. Adieu. June the 6th, 1776, from Almack's, where I was chosen last week. LXXVI. THE SAME TO THE SAME. Almack's, June 24th, 1776. Yes, yes, I am alive, and well; but what shall I say? Town grows empty, and this house, where I have passed very agreeable hours, is the only place which still unites the flower of the English youth. The style of living, though somewhat expensive, is exceedingly pleasant, and, notwithstanding the rage of play, I have found more entertaining, and even rational society here, than in any other club to which I belong. Mrs. Gibbon still hangs in suspense, and seems to consider a town expedition with horror. I think, however, that she will be soon in motion; and when I have her in Bentinckstreet, we shall perhaps talk of a Sheffield excursion. I am now deeply engaged in the reign of Constantine, and, from the specimens which I have already seen, I can venture to promise, that the second volume will not be less interesting than the first. The fifteen hundred copies are moving off with decent speed, and the obliging Cadell begins to mutter something of a third edition for next year. No news of Deyverdun, or his French translation. What a lazy dog! Madame Necker has been gone a great while. I gave her, en partant, the most solemn assurances of following her paws in less than two months; but the voice of indolence begins to whisper a thousand difficulties, and unless your absurd policy should thoroughly provoke me, the Parisian journey may possibly be deferred. I rejoice in the progress of*** towards light. We are in expectation of American news. Carleton is made a Knight of the Bath. The old report of Washington's resignation, and quarrel with the Congress, seems to revive. Adieu. LXXVII.—EXTRACT OF A LETTER FROM DR. GEORGE CAMPBELL, PROFESSOR AT ABERDEEN, TO MR. STRAHAN, DATED ABERDEEN, JUNE 25, 1776. I have lately read over one of your last winter's publications with very great pleasure, and I hope some instruction. My expectations were indeed high when I began it; but, I assure you, the entertainment I received greatly exceeded them. What made me fall to it with the greater avidity was, that it had in part a pretty close connexion with a subject I had occasion to treat sometimes in my Theological Lectures; to wit, the Rise and Progress of the Hierarchy and you will believe that I was not the less pleased to discover, in an historian of so much learning and penetration, so great a coincidence with my own sentiments, in relation to some obscure points in the Christian antiquities. I suppose I need not now inform you, that the book I mean is Gibbon's History of the Fall of the Roman Empire; which, in respect of the style and manner, as well as the matter, is a most masterly performance. LXXVIII.—EDWARD GIBBON, ESQ. TO J. HOLROYD, ESQ. Saturday, August, 1776. We expect you at five o'clock, Tuesday, without a sore throat. You have ere this heard of the shocking accident which takes up the attention of the town. Our old acquaintance ****. By his own indolence, rather than extravagance, his circumstances were embarrassed, and he had frequently declared himself tired of life. No public news, nor any material expected, till the end of this, or the beginning of the next month, when Howe will probably have collected his whole force. A tough business indeed. You see by their declaration, that they have now passed the Rubicon, and rendered the work of a treaty infinitely more difficult. You will perhaps say, so much the better; but I do assure you, that the thinking friends of government are by no means sanguine. I take the opportunity of eating turtle with Garrick at Hampton. Adieu. LXXIX. THE SAME TO THE SAME. Saturday, past eleven, 1776. For the present I am so deeply engaged, that you must renounce the hasty apparition at Sheffield-place; but if you should be very impatient, I will try (after the meeting) to run down, between the Friday and Monday, and bring you the last editions of things. At present nought but expectation. The attack on me is begun; an anonymous eighteen-penny pamphlet, which will get the author more glory in the next world than in this. The heavy troops, Watson and another, are on their march. Adieu. LXXX. EXTRACT OF A LETTER FROM MR. WALLACE TO MR. STRAHAN, DATED EDINBURGH, AUGUST 30, 1776. Alas, for David Hume !* His friends have sustained a great loss in his death. He was interred yesterday, at a place he lately purchased in the burying ground on the Calton. "For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey, This pleasing, anxious being, e'er resign'd, A monument on that airy elevated cemetery, which, on account of a magnificent terrace now carried round the hill, is greatly frequented, will be extremely conspicuous, and must often call his name to remembrance. It has been remarked, that the same day on which Lucretius died, gave birth to Virgil; and amidst their late severe loss, philosophy and literature will probably find themselves not wholly disconsolate, on reflecting that the same year in which they were deprived of Hume, Gibbon arose; his superior in some respects. This gentleman's History of the Decline of the Roman Empire appears to me, in point of composition, incomparably the finest production in English, without any exception. I hardly thought the language capable of arriving at his correctness, perspicuity, and strength. LXXXI. EDWARD GIBBON, ESQ. TO J. HOLROYD, ESQ. 1776. I hope you bark and growl at my silence; growl and bark. This is not a time for correspondence. Parliament, visits, dinners, suppers, and an hour or two stolen with difficulty for the Decline, leave but very little leisure. I send you the Gazette, and have scarcely any thing to add, except that about five hundred of them have deserted to us, and that the New York incendiaries were immediately, and very justifiably, destined to the cord. Lord G. G., with whom I had a long conversation last night, was in high spirits, and hopes to reconquer Germany in America. On the side of Canada, he only fears Carleton's slowness, but entertains great expectations that the light troops and Indians, under Sir William Johnson, who are sent from Oswego down the Mohawk River to Albany, will oblige the Provincials to give up the defence of the Lakes, for fear of being cut off. The report of a foreign war subsides. House of commons dull, and opposition talk of suspending hostilities from despair. An anonymous pamphlet and Dr. Watson out against me; (in my opinion,) the former feeble, and very illiberal; the latter uncommonly genteel. At last I have had a letter from Deyverdun ; wretched excuses; nothing done; vexatious enough. To-morrow I write to Suard, a very skilful translator of Paris, who was here in the spring with the Neckers, to get him (if not too late) to undertake it. Adieu. * Mr. Hume died at Edinburgh, August 25, 1776. |