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“The History of England, from the invasion of Julius Caesar to the abdication of James the Second, 1688. By David Hume, Esq. A new edition, with the Author’s last corrections and improvements. To which is prefixed a short account of his Life, written by himself. Vol. I. Boston: Phillips, Sampson, & Co. 1849. Sold in New York by M. H. Newman, 199 Broadway,” The Independent, vol. 1, no. 37 (16 August 1849), p. 148.
Anonymous
A Boston publication, The Independent was long-running. In its first years it was edited by the Reverends Leonard Bacon (1802–81), J. P. Thompson, and R. S. Storrs (1821–1900). Later years would see a particular focus on slavery (it published Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin) and always it was “devoted to the consideration of politics, social and economic tendencies, history, literature, and the arts.”
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The singular merit of Hume’s History is its sufficient guaranty against being forgotten. That it is not impartial, in the high historic sense, that it is, rather, imbued and penetrated to a remarkable degree by his peculiarities of character and of opinion, — all who have in turn assailed it have in turn announced. Yet Hume’s is by no means the partiality of the mere paid advocate, who for the stipulated fee, of reputation or of money, suppresses authorities which bear against his party, and falsifies those which he cannot suppress, and gives an undue and exaggerated prominence to those which suit his purpose. The equable and philosophic Librarian at Edinburgh would have shrunk we doubt not from such a deliberate treachery to the truth. His partiality was of a subtler and more spiritual character. It originated in his strong self-consciousness, and his ardent attachment to the tenets which he maintained. Instead of throwing himself with the force of a fervent imagination into the minds of the actors as well as the midst of the scenes which had illustrated the Past, with the tenacity of a stubborn Scotchman addicted to toryism and infidelity, he held his own rules, measured all things by his own rules, and let the faiths and the follies of the Past, the noble efforts for liberty and truth, the desperate conflicts for present supremacy, the battles and the martyrdoms, the triumphs of right and the conquests of power — all pass like shadows before his calm unkindling eye. His partiality therefore, though real, is for the most part unconscious. It penetrates his work in its entire structure; in its very phraseology. It is sunken into it, like the blue into steel. And it would be impossible to eliminate it, by any expurgation of passages. Yet it rarely affronts one, as does that of the bald political partisan; and we may obviate its effects by bearing its existence continually in mind.
But with what grace and beauty and dignity of style this work is written, who needs be told; how charming is the narrative; how acute and discriminating are the remarks on society; how clear and comprehensive are the views presented of literature or of gov erment [sic]. Never while England stands can this history be forgotten. It will be a memorial of her progress more durable than her cities. And never can it be read without admiration for the talents and the temper, the vast acquisition and the unruffled good humor, of him who produced it; admiration mingled with constant regret that the whole frame and spirit of his mind had not been subdued by the Gospel, and glorified by its life. Alas, if Christianity had had to him other representatives than those cool and witty moralists with whom he mingled, if it had been presented to him by personal intercourse with Howard or Henry Martyn, or in the earnest appeals of preachers like Chalmers or Hall, this might have been!
Messrs. Phillips and Sampson, the enterprising publishers, have issued this edition in a style uniform with that of their edition of Macaulay; and the two together, — if two such different works will bear to be put in the same style of binding, and to be arranged together on contiguous book-shelves — will make a complete and most readable history of the career of the English nation. Hume will be comprised in six volumes.