35
“HUME AND BURNET,” The Philadelphia Repository, vol. 5, no. 10 (9 March 1805), p. 76.
Anonymous
The Philadelphia Repository was an eight-page weekly. It was edited first by D[avid] Hogan and later by John. W. Scott, surviving for almost 6 years. One of its early historians described it as being both “popular and original.” On the Philadelphia Repository see API, p. 193; BAP, pp. 136–7; Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines, 1741–1850 (Cambridge, 1938), p. 127; Albert H. Smyth, The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors, 1741–1850 (1892; reprinted Freeport, 1970), p. 152.
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I am no admirer of Hume. In conversation he was very thick; and I do believe hardly understood a subject till he had written upon it.
Burnet I like much. It is observable, that none of his facts has been controverted, except his relation of the birth of the Pretender, in which he was certainly mistaken — but his very credulity is a proof of his honesty. Burnet’s style and manner are very interesting. It seems as if he had just come from the king’s closet, or from the apartments of the men whom he describes, and was telling his reader, in plain honest terms, what he had seen and heard.