which yesterday he knew with intuitive readiness, and which will come uncalled into his thoughts to-morrow.

In this work, when it shall be found that much is omitted, let it not be forgotten that much likewise is performed; and though no book was ever spared out of tenderness to the author, and the world is little solicitous to know whence proceeded the faults of that which it condemns, yet it may gratify curiosity to inform it that the English Dictionary was written with little assistance of the learned, and without any patronage of the great; not in the soft obscurities of retirement or under the shelter of academic bowers, but amidst inconvenience and distraction, in sickness and in sorrow. It may repress the triumph of malignant criticism to observe that if our language is not here fully displayed, I have only failed in an attempt no human powers have hitherto completed. If the lexicons of ancient tongues, now immutably fixed, and comprised in a few volumes, be yet, after the toil of successive ages, inadequate and delusive; if the aggregated knowledge and cooperating diligence of the Italian academicians did not secure them from the censure of Beni; if the embodied critics of France, when fifty years had been spent upon their work, were obliged to change its economy and give their second edition another form, I may surely be contented without the praise of perfection, which, if I could obtain in this gloom of solitude, what would it avail me? I have protracted my work till most of those whom I wished to please have sunk into the grave, and success and miscarriage are empty sounds: I therefore dismiss it with frigid tranquillity, having little to fear or hope from censure or from praise.

(From Preface to Dictionary.)

LETTER TO LORD CHESTERFIELD

7th February 1755.

MY LORD-I have been lately informed, by the proprietor of The World, that two papers, in which my Dictionary is recommended to the public, were written by your lordship. To be so distinguished is an honour, which, being very little accustomed to favours from the great, I know not well how to receive, or in what terms to acknowledge.

When, upon some slight encouragement, I first visited your

lordship, I was overpowered, like the rest of mankind, by the enchantment of your address, and could not forbear to wish that I might boast myself Le vainqueur du vainqueur de la terre ;— that I might obtain that regard for which I saw the world contending; but I found my attendance so little encouraged, that neither pride nor modesty would suffer me to continue it. When I had once addressed your Lordship in public, I had exhausted all the art of pleasing which a retired and uncourtly scholar can possess. I had done all that I could; and no man is well pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever so little.

Seven years, my lord, have now past, since I waited in your outward rooms, or was repulsed from your door; during which time I have been pushing on my work through difficulties, of which it is useless to complain, and have brought it, at last, to the verge of publication, without one act of assistance, one word of encouragement, or one smile of favour. Such treatment I did

not expect, for I never had a patron before.

The shepherd in Virgil grew at last acquainted with Love, and found him a native of the rocks.

Is not a patron, my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and, when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help? The notice which you have been pleased to take of my labours, had it been early, had been kind; but it has been delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it till I am solitary, and cannot impart it; till I am known, and do not want it. I hope it is no very cynical asperity not to confess obligations where no benefit has been received, or to be unwilling that the public should consider me as owing that to a patron, which providence has enabled me to do for myself.

Having carried on my work thus far with so little obligation to any favourer of learning, I shall not be disappointed though I should conclude it, if less be possible, with less; for I have been long wakened from that dream of hope, in which I once boasted myself with so much exultation.

My Lord,

Your lordship's most humble, most obedient servant,

SAM. JOHNSON.

DAVID HUME

[David Hume was born in 1711, and died in 1776. He wrote many essays upon the topics which philosophy, morals, and politics supply; and was, besides, the author of a History of England. His most striking and considerable performance is, perhaps, the Treatise of Human Nature.]

HUME's pre-eminence in the field of speculation has somewhat thrown into the shade his merits as a man of letters; and, in truth, he has been surpassed by none of his countrymen in the acuteness, the penetration, and the intrepidity with which he treated the problems of philosophy. While his opponents must concede that he possessed the courage of his opinions in no ordinary degree, and that he never shrank from following whither the argument seemed to lead, but, on the contrary, applied his canons with a consistency as admirable as it was singular, his supporters would find it hard to point to any subsequent writer who has presented the case for the philosophy of Experience with greater or even with equal-thoroughness and cogency. The discoveries of modern science have supplied the empirical philosopher with no weapon which may not be found in Hume's wellstocked armoury; while, as a political enquirer, he attained a position second only to that of his close friend, Adam Smith.

A studied and artful-sometimes a strained-simplicity is the chief characteristic of his style. He never attempts the majestic periods of Johnson or Gibbon; while a certain air of stiffness and precision effectually prevents his being spirited on the one hand, or colloquial on the other. His prose flows on with a steady and even motion, which no obstacle ever retards, nor any passion ever agitates. In the whole of his writings there is scarce one of those outbursts of emotion which at times animate the pages even of the coolest metaphysicians. Scorn there is in abundance; but it is the amused and pitying contempt of a superior being who watches from afar the frailties and vices

from which himself is consciously exempt. Enthusiasm, or righteous indignation, was a total stranger to Hume's cast of mind. But his sneer and his sarcasm, though by far less elaborate and less diligently sustained, are hardly less effective and pointed than Gibbon's. As a historian, he makes little pretence to absolute impartiality, but his opinions are insinuated with the utmost delicacy and address; and at least he never wilfully falsifies his facts. He appeals little to the modern taste in the capacity either of the pedant or the journalist; yet his judgment of character is at once cautious and discriminating, and he interjects many shrewd and dry remarks. Such, for example, is the observation that to inspire the Puritans with a better humour was, both for their own sake and that of the public, a laudable intention of the Court; "but whether pillories, fines, and prisons were proper expedients for that purpose may admit of some question"; or the description of the Solemn League and Covenant as composed of many invectives, fitted to inflame the minds of men against their fellow-creatures, whom Heaven has enjoined them to cherish and to love."

Hume's vocabulary is copious and well chosen, but never picturesque. He compiled for his own guidance a list of Scotticisms; and it argues a nice literary sense and an attentive study of the best models that, having in him a strong dash of the provincial, he should have not only sought but contrived to avoid these not unnatural solecisms. Many men have written English prose with greater ease, fluency, and freedom, and many with greater dignity and effect; but few with more accuracy, purity, and elegance of diction than David Hume.

J. H. MILLAR.