121
“A NEW EDITION OF HUME’S HISTORY,” The American Literary Magazine, vol. 5, no. 2 (August 1849), pp. 127–8.
Anonymous
On The American Literary Magazine, see selection #118. This short review captures much about Hume’s reputation at the mid-point of the nineteenth century.
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A NEW EDITION OF HUME’S HISTORY.*
No one would think of writing about Hume’s History of England within the space ordinarily allotted to a literary notice. To announce the new edition is enough, without saying anything of the book. To tell the world in 1849 that Hume’s History is a work entitled to their favorable regard, would be like informing the public what are the peculiar features that render Niagara Falls a highly agreeable spectacle, or that George Washington was certainly a great patriot.
One cannot take hold of a copy of Hume’s History in a new form, without being reminded of what it is to be a really great genius: to find favor in a distant future age: to be the fashion in spite of all the changes of empire or of costume: to be treated with consummate respect, while every new pretender to kindred rank, no matter how splendid his prestige, is subjected to damning censure or equally damning adulation, as he steps upon the stage. If David Hume’s spirit is now conscious of the affairs of the world, and has any sympathy with them, he must enjoy this exquisite satisfaction of admitted superiority to the very full.
Never did human author stand out in such grand and successful defiance of prejudice as Hume. No one dares to be his rival. Men of the highest talents for writing history, who do not scruple to enter into competition with the Millers and Smolletts and Hughes’ — the historians of the period subsequent to that which Hume has handled — hesitate to travel over the ground which he has adorned with his footsteps. We have hosts of writers of English History, who confine their researches to the times commencing with the Restoration: comparatively few, who have written the earlier annals of England. Macaulay even — the last and noblest of the line, and one, who has received higher assurances of public admiration than any other author ever did during his own life — prefers to write a continuation of Hume’s History rather than to expose himself to comparison with his predecessor. One may well ask, who is this wonderful historian who thus frightens down rivalry and stands facile princeps in his art? The answer makes him appear yet more wonderful.
Hume has acquired and kept his fame by mere skill and genius. Lingard is treated coldly, because he was a zealous Papist and his work is a Romanist history. Hallam is not universally popular on account of his chilling impartiality — the total absence of partisanship or zeal. But Hume, an infidel historian, — who does not hesitate to exclude God from history and Christianity from among the virtues of human character, — is applauded by the world. He not only overlooks, but attacks the views and feelings, which are most precious and deeply-seated in the vast majority of intelligent minds. Yet no Christian writer of history has usurped the place of the sceptical philosopher. It can be proved that he has warped facts, neglected important researches, even been glaringly inconsistent with himself — thus as it were sapping the very foundations of the historian’s fame and shaking the confidence of his readers by wholesale — and yet what truth is so charming as Hume’s falsehood? His marvellous facility and variety of style, his generous warmth of sympathy, his unequalled skill in grouping and selecting, are too much for the prejudices of mankind. His work is not thrown away as barbarian or excommunicated as heretical. Year by year, perhaps age by age, honest men will sigh to think, that they must find their most delightful treasures of historical knowledge in the keeping of one, who offends with his philosophy their most cherished belief and sees events and characters through a medium, which to them is despicable.
Some people, we are told, find Hume dull. It must be, not that Hume is dull, but that history is dull. Persons, who cannot read his volumes with pleasure, would skip over the historical chapters of Walter Scott’s novels.
*Philips, Sampson & Co. of Boston, are the publishers of the edition referred to. It is designed to match their edition of Macaulay’s Continuation.