53
“HUME, AS A HISTORIAN,” The American Quarterly Observer, vol. 1, no. 2 (October 1833), pp. 189–205 [pp. 190–91 skipped in numbering of original].
Leonard Withington
Leonard Withington (1789–1885), an author of miscellaneous essays and books, was a Yale graduate who had studied at Andover Theological Seminary and was ordained in 1816 as a Congregational minister. When the essay reprinted below was published, Withington was a pastor at Newbury, Massachusetts. The American Quarterly Observer was published in Boston by Perkins & Marvin. There were three volumes from July 1833 to October 1834. In 1835 the American Quarterly Observer was merged into the Biblical Repository and Classical Review. The magazine’s editor was Bela B. Edwards of Andover. On Withington see The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography (New York, 1907), vol. 5; Evert A. Duyckinck and George L. Duyckinck, eds., Cyclopaedia of American Literature (reprinted Philadelphia, 1965), vol. 2, pp. 45–6; James Grant Wilson and John Fiske, eds., Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography (New York, 1889), vol. 6, p. 586. On the American Quarterly Observer see API, p. 25; BAP, p. 13; Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines, 1741–1850 (Cambridge, 1938), p. 367.
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HUME, AS A HISTORIAN
IT may be a prejudice, but I have always regarded it as a matter of gratitude, that I was born and educated under the influence of English literature. Books are destined to have a powerful influence over men; they are the only weapons which achieve the permanent victories that alter the face of our globe; and, on the whole, English literature is the purest, and most impregnated with the spirit of the gospel, of any which has existed. In Germany, the human mind wanders in vagaries; every thing is pushed to extravagance; and they seem to have no sense of the absurd or ridiculous, either in forming theories, or painting characters. They seem to need the lash of such satirists as Swift and Pope, to tame them from the vagaries of enthusiasm, to the plain realities of common sense.* In France, they are all economists and sensualists; never unlocking the secrets of our spiritual nature; never soaring into the regions of moral grandeur and beauty; and their literati still write and act as if they half believed, what no man can entirely believe, that death is an eternal sleep. Italy has her pastorals, and Spain has her ballads; but England, blessed old England, has poured on us the treasures of some of the greatest geniuses, combined with the purest hearts, that ever wrote. It is a privilege to say, that the language of Milton is your mother tongue; that the songs of Watts were sung over your cradle; and that your religious sentiments were formed by such writers as Hooker, and Owen, and Baxter, and Edwards, and Butler, who often combine the warmest piety with the most rigid demonstration, and sometimes with the most persuasive eloquence. These are stars, whose lustre I never look to see surpassed; and I repeat it, it is the richest blessing to be born under the beneficent influence of these constellations of our northern sky.
There was one department of literature, which, for a long time, the English were supposed to be deficient in, and that is, historical composition. It is now believed, however, since Hume, and Gibbon, and Dr. Robertson, of Scotland, have produced their elaborate performances, that this reproach has been wiped away. Each of these authors have a high name, not certainly to be acquired without great merit; but I am afraid, if the removing of the reproach of our historical deficiency depends on them, it must still remain. If the merit of history depends upon holding up an unwrinkled mirror, to reflect, in perfection, past events, it is certain this praise must be withheld from two of them, at least. Besides, the whole style and character which they have given to historical writing, in my opinion, is wrong. Written history should flow over the events of time, like a silver current over the pebbles of its bed, without a shaking of the water, to make it turbid, and almost without a refraction. The language should glide with the sweetest simplicity; proper words in proper places; for the object of history is not to color or magnify, but, like a glass window, to convey the conception of the landscape as it is, with all its beauties and imperfections. It is the last place in the world to indulge in what is erroneously called fine writing, which is but another name for fine deceiving. I wish to see Old Time arrayed in the multician and coan garments of antiquity,* and not wrapped in surplices and robes, like a bishop at the altar, or a lord on a court day, when the dress and the ceremony hide the shape and the character which we are most curious to see.
History professes to give us facts; and, therefore, if it misstates or misinterprets those facts, it becomes tenfold more deceiving. All our wisdom comes from experience; and whatever is not within the compass of our own experience, comes from the testimony of others. The Ruler of the world is constantly reading us a lesson, in the execution of his providential laws. Now the transmission of this lesson depends upon the faithfulness of the record; and, had history always been written as it ought, had moral causes and effects been always brought up before the mind, just as God, in his eternal laws, has connected them, I can conceive nothing more calculated to give the mind all the instruction that this world can afford. Unhappily, however, we are compelled, except in the pages of revelation, to see past time through a fallible medium. The objects surveyed are the works of God, performed indeed through the agency of man, but the medium is always artificial; we see them enlarged, diminished, distorted, through the prejudices of the writer — or, what is the greatest source of deception, we often have the truth, but not the whole truth. In such cases, truth itself has the effect of falsehood.
It is a melancholy circumstance, that history has so often fallen into the hands of men acute, rather than wise; willing rather to show their own intellectual omnipotence, than to give us a fair representation of real events; men of perverted intellects and depraved hearts. Such men will certainly never reach the sublime and beautiful of history. No man can write well, unless his soul speaks; unless his passions prompt his pen. He may be master of a very fine style; he may draw his characters with much delicacy and discrimination; he may satirize folly, and sometimes make truth ridiculous; he may show great intellectual power; power which we should admire in an ancient orator, or a modern lawyer. But, after all, he is not a good historian. He misleads the world, and perhaps himself.
Of all the men who have led the way in this perverted style of history, perhaps none have been more popular and successful than DAVID HUME. The remark of Dr. Johnson, that no man ever became great by imitation, is not always true; for when a great genius condescends to imitate an inferior model, he only shows how surprizingly he can surpass his pattern. Hume, in the general tenor of history, was an imitator of Voltaire; and, although he wanted Voltaire’s varied talents—
Grammaticus, rhetor, geometres, pictor, aliptes
Augur, schænobates, medicus, magus: omnia novit.
Greculous esuriens in cœlum, jusseris, ibit.
—Yet, in every requisite of a historian, he was greatly his superior. Seizing on the most enchanting period of English history, and writing in the careless and graceful style of a man of the world, he has produced a work which must always be read, and is calculated to have no small power over the public mind. This book is in all our libraries; is read by the young, in the course of their education; and, though the errors of the book have been elaborately pointed out by acute reviewers, yet something, perhaps, may be said, profitable to our own country. It would be a matter of sorrow, in this late day, if one mind should be misled by sophistry so flimsy, though produced by abilities so great.
The happiest literary productions are, when a peculiar man is brought to the execution of a task peculiarly fitted to his genius. There is an affinity between some minds and some subjects; they seem to revel on them, as congenial themes; there is an exquisite harmony between the author and his book; and we close the volume, saying, ‘This man was born for this purpose, and no other.’ The words flow as unlaboriously from his pen, as water from a fountain; and every impression we receive, is a picture transmitted from soul to soul. Thus every reader rejoices that Milton’s mind lighted on such a theme as Paradise Lost. Cervantes tells that he held that Don Quixote was born for him, and he for Don Quixote; and all can see, that no matter ever more completely matched the mind that produced it. As the blossoms of some plants effuse the very smell of the root, so does every page of that unrivalled production savor of the character of its author’s mind. But every one sees that Pope was not at home in translating Homer — it was a forced marriage between discordant parties. Trace the whole circle of literature, and you will find, that those books which are pure honey — which touch the very centre of delight and profit in our bosoms — are formed, when some peculiar mind lights on some congenial theme. In such cases, invention riots in her task, and accomplishes her work with the least labor, and the greatest success.
The history of England, from the days of Henry VIII. down to the passing the reform bill, is very peculiar, and calls for an author of peculiar powers to represent it. It presents the grandest spectacle ever witnessed on our globe. Greater battles may have been fought; broader kingdoms may have been established, or melted into air; more conquerors may have appeared, and rolled to richer thrones on more splendid cars; but I take it, as no tragedy is estimated by the size of the stage on which it is acted, or the splendor of the scenery, but wholly by the excellence of the dialogue, so it is the conflict of mind with mind, which gives the sublimest interests to the records of time. This is the very character of the period to which I have alluded. I know not how better to designate it, than by using the language of Scripture in the visions of the prophet: The four winds of heaven strove on the great sea. It is a conflict of principle — it is a debate, in which the great interests of mankind are at stake. Every thing to be sure, is thrown into commotion; the old foundations of society are torn up from their bottom, and cast about in every direction. The mind seems to wake from the slumber of ages; to catch new ideal images; to gaze on a new sun; to breathe a new air; and to form the bright conception of a higher and holier state. It is true, the path to the prize lies through suffering, and every furlong of the journey is dyed with blood. It is not a measurement of corporeal strength; it is not a conflict which may be settled by powder and ball — but the invisible nature of man steps forth on the scene, religion combines with politics, and liberty asserts her long forgotten and disregarded claims. On the one side, there is a set of tyrants, who have established their thrones on the ignorance of mankind; and suck their nourishment from the secondary vices which their own primary ones have helped to foster. On the other hand, there springs up a little band of Christian patriots, determined to be free. The press begins to be unshackled, the Bible is translated, and the conflict commences. Truth blows her trumpet, and flashes her torch over the caves and palaces where the giants of superstition have long enjoyed their repose. They start; they rise; they roar; they attempt to open the bottomless pit, and fill the whole atmosphere with the locusts, and the smoke. In the language of the old Gnostics, we may say it is a conflict between light and darkness; between the demon of matter and the god of light. The heart is kept in constant agitation, by the long and doubtful struggle of the balanced powers. Now the sun of truth seems breaking from the clouds; now the darkness returns, and the storm redoubles its violence; wind meets wind; wave crosses wave; and the whole surface ferments, and foams, and heaves, with the dreadful agitation. The cause of Protestantism seems to make some incipient struggles in the days of Henry VIII. It seems to be fully established in the days of Edward VI. The blackest night of popery and persecution returns with Queen Mary. A doubtful struggle is maintained in the days of Queen Elizabeth. Then arose the puritans — noble minds — men who knew how to act and suffer, as well as to write and preach. A systematic attempt is made to oppress the liberties of the nation and the rights of conscience, under the Stuarts. Then the human mind puts on all its armor, and bursts forth in all its grandeur and importance. Never was there a greater age. The stage almost seems peopled with a different order of beings from common men. It was an age of delusion, to be sure, and of enthusiasm; but it was an age of greatness. Even the torpid feelings of Hume, who can see martyred liberty and religion led to the stake without a tear, and speculate on their tombs — even he seems to kindle for a moment at the thrilling sight. “Now was the time when genius and capacity, of all kinds, freed from the restraint of authority, and nourished by unbounded hopes and projects, began to exert themselves, and be distinguished by the public. Then was celebrated the sagacity of Pym, more fitted for use than ornament; matured, not chilled, by his advanced age and long experience. Then was displayed the mighty ambition of Hampden, taught disguise, not moderation, from former constraint; supported by courage, conducted by prudence, embellished by modesty; but whether founded in love of power, or zeal for liberty, is still, from his untimely end, left doubtful and uncertain. Then, too, were known the dark, ardent, and dangerous character of St. John; the impetuous spirit of Hollis, violent and sincere, open and entire, in his enmities and in his friendships; the enthusiastic genius of young Vane, extravagant in the ends which he pursued, sagacious and profound in the means which he employed, incited by the appearances of religion, negligent of the duties of morality.”*
It is impossible to write the history of this period with fidelity, without an extensive acquaintance with the books and pamphlets of that day. In these, we trace the causes of the movements which shook the throne, and emancipated for a time the nation. It is true, there was much rubbish; much enthusiasm; much unintelligible nonsense. But there was also the deepest wisdom, the fruit and the evidence of the deepest feeling. I hardly ever opened an author of that period, without tracing the effect of the excitement of that day, in the amazing fertility and eloquence of the animated page. Pope, Swift, Addison, write well; but they are at their ease; their faculties are tranquillized by the repose of an elbow-chair. Not so, Milton, Harrington, Taylor, South, &c. It is doubtful whether a mariner can bring forth all his faculties, until the storm comes. So it is with respect to the dormant powers of the human mind. “Behold,” says Milton, “this vast city; a city of refuge; the mansion house of liberty; encompassed and surrounded with his protection; the shops of war hath not more anvils and hammers waking, to fashion out the plates of armed justice in defence of beleaguered truth, than there be pens and heads there, sitting by their studious lamps, musing, searching, revolving new notions and ideas, wherewith to present, as with their homage and their fealty, the approaching reformation; others are fast reading, trying all things, apparently, to the force of reason and convincement. What can a man require more from a nation, so pliant, and so prone to seek after knowledge? What wants there to such a towardly and pregnant soil, but wise and faithful laborers, to make a knowing people, a nation of prophets, of sages, and of worthies? We reckon more than five months yet to harvest; there need not be five weeks, had we but eyes to lift up; the fields are white already”.*
It is true, the waves of darkness rolled back, and seemed, to a superficial eye, to cover the land. But liberty, after all, liberty of thought, is the very genius of our ancestors. It flows in the blood of English and Americans. As Webster says, it is imbedded in our soil; and it is a sober liberty, because it has always walked hand in hand with religion. After many trepidations, and ebbings and flowings of the public tide of oppression and independence, we may consider liberty as established in the reign of King William.
Now I say there never was a time when such an interesting conflict was exhibited. The history of most ancient nations is the history of oppression. Mind is sunk — there is nothing like principle — the internal nature of man is subjected to outward force. Even the liberty of Greece and Rome, so often vaunted, was a very partial and defective liberty. It was combined with no high moral principle; it was the ambition of a selected corps against one, while, at the same time, both parties should combine to crush the many. When Christianity woke the world from the slumbers of paganism, it seemed for a while as if great scenes were to be exhibited, and great principles were to be discussed; and, true enough, the Christian religion did for a while struggle with the torporific tendency of the age; it kept alive whatever was great and good in the character of the times. But Christianity, instead of inspiring the world, sunk under its corruptions. It burst on mankind healthful and fresh, like a mountain stream, rolling down the rock, scattering coolness and freshness in its path; but, as that same stream, however fresh and pure at its origin, may roll into the level plain, and, amidst its saline and bituminous sands, become calm, polluted and sluggish, so did Christianity linger and languish in our world, until the days of Luther. Then she started from her sleep; and England has been the spot of her most genuine operations. RELIGION and LIBERTY! these are the greatest names that ever arrested the attention of mankind; and such are the themes of our history, since the days of Henry the VIII. Say, then, was there ever a subject more worthy of an eloquent pen — the organ of a just and glowing heart!
All this requires a historian to relate it, who should be, whatever David Hume was not. Sometimes I have felt a transient wish that Milton had completed his design, and given us a full body of English history. He had all the glow of soul, all the high conception of the sublime and beautiful in morals, which was necessary. But Milton was born for a poet, and not for a historian. His prose is poetry; and his diction is too ponderous and encumbered for common readers. He might have given a good narrative for those who would have studied it out; but that number would have been small. Besides, Milton, though having a strong intuitive insight into truth, yet was no reasoner; his deductions are perfect, but his premises are often laid in the imagination. He was not the man to balance probabilities, to sum up the argument, and to lead the reader’s mind through a narrow path, to retiring truth. The same subject was attempted by Burke. His vast capacity and his unbounded eloquence would no doubt have left us an English history of great value. No man knew, better than he, how to seize hold of a leading fact, or principle, which should shed light on all the complex entanglements of annexed events. Thus, in his speech on American affairs, he has thrown out a thought, which goes farther to explain why Britain could not conquer America, than all the narratives and speculations which may be found in the professed historians. He just asks the ministry to state to themselves, what it would be to conquer America? Taking a town, was not conquering America; marching through the country, was not; surveying it, was not; and as for occupying a space of so many millions of square miles, it was out of the question. There was not one vital spot, at which they could strike, and say that the provincials would be subdued. Now this was the true secret, notwithstanding all the flattering unctions addressed to our vanity, on the fourth of July, about our invincible arms — this is the true secret why we were not conquered. The wide surface of our country, and the intelligent yeomanry spread over it, was, under God, our salvation. No man, therefore, had more of some of the most splendid requisites of a historian, than the bright-minded Edmund Burke. But, after all, this orator hardly answers to one’s conception of a historian. His diction is too splendid, and his mind roves too far after the gaudy images of his own fertile conception, to pursue the beaten path of narrative. It is dangerous to say what a great man can do, or to attempt to limit his power; but it is not, perhaps, superfluous superstition, to express a fear that Burke’s history, like Homer’s Fame, would not even have walked the ground, without sometimes hiding its head in the clouds.
But never was there a mind, of equal power, less fitted for the task, than that of David Hume. I can imagine Sir Isaac Newton writing novels, in the style of Richardson; I can imagine Thomas Moore writing pious hymns, as he did, though it must be confessed he makes sad work of it; I can imagine Mr. Locke translating the epigrams of Martial; I can almost imagine Milton, (horresco referens,) writing a comedy, in the style of Congreve — I say I can imagine all these things, more easily than I could imagine the supersensuous and high-principled history of England, with all its spiritual lights and shades, falling into the grasp of such an animalized being as David Hume — if it had not actually taken place. What is it? It is the serpent of seduction, crawling beneath the flowers of paradise.
In the first place, his unfitness for the task was seated in the very tissue of his soul. He had no perception of the sublime and beautiful in morals. He could follow the patriot to his agony of glory, and the martyr to his stake, without one touch of sympathy with the generosity of the one, or the devotion of the other. His conception, as well as his heart, seems to have been defective. We often find that men of very imperfect lives, and gross in their pleasures, still preserve a bright apprehension of moral beauty. Thomson, the poet, if his biographers have not been unjust to his memory, was on the whole a luxurious and sensual man, loving a good supper better than the morning landscape, which he so finely describes. However low his pleasures might have been, (and I am afraid they were much lower than we should be willing to remember, while reading the Seasons,) he still preserved in his mind the bright ideal of moral beauty. There was a discord and divorce between his fancy and his heart. But it was not so with Hume. There was a dreadful harmony between them. No glowing forms of spiritual life flitted before his mind; no high conceptions of man’s final destiny and social improvement visited his waking or sleeping dreams. He was the most impassive being that ever crawled among the reptiles of lower life. It was said by Rosseau, that when a man begins to reason, he ceases to feel; and I believe it is strictly true, that when a man begins to reason sophistically, he loses his heart in his sophistry. Hume never seems to sympathize with the self-sacrifices which the patriot makes; he sees men pleading, suffering, dying, in the cause of the best interests of mankind, and never catches one spark of the flame. He puts down, with a caustic satire, some of the most generous hearts that ever beat and bled for the elevation or felicity of the human race. He loves repose; he wants all things to continue as they were; he is always ready to make a treaty with bigots and tyrants, on the terms of uti possidetis. Now such a man has abilities, and is fit for something. Let him go and write his metaphysical essays; let him prove to his own satisfaction, if he can, that it is doubtful whether bread will nourish, or the next morsel of meat, however, well killed and cooked, may not prove rank poison; let him raise his skeptical doubts, until he doubts his own being; and give a skeptical solution of these doubts, until he begins to think he does exist — all this is legitimate quarry for such a mind — but oh, let him not come within the awful limits of English history! It is consecrated ground. There are suns which he never saw, and flowers which he cannot smell. He can scarce write a line, without satirizing the subject, and throwing a deeper satire on his own heart.
In the second place, Hume was, by nature and disposition, a sophist — a race of men who have always existed, but the last men who ought to deal in facts. The sophists are a sort of men, who arose in Greece, and are often alluded to by the best writers of antiquity. A sophist is not a man who, misled by subtleties and the darkness of his own mind, falls into error because he honestly mistakes it for truth. Such a man is the dupe of sophistry. But he is one, who considers words as counters, to prove any sum which he may wish to pass current. He is one, who has no object but to excite admiration by showing his ingenuity. He purposely chooses the wrong side, and defends it with all the plausibility in his power. A paradox is his delight; he covets and purloins the robes of truth, only to polish them, and fit them, with the nicest adjustment, to the wen-spotted and distorted limbs of delusion. An idea of the sophist may be obtained from the speeches of Hippias, in the 5th book of the Memorabila of Xenophon, 4 c. When Hippias came to Athens, Socrates was, as usual, discoursing on moral subjects; and was lamenting that, while every man knew where to send his son to learn to make a shield, or tame a horse, yet it was so very hard to know where to go to learn righteousness. O, said Hippias, laughing and jeering at him, you are sawing on the same old string; I think I have heard all this before. Yes, said Socrates, and what is worse, O Hippias, when my subject is the same, I always treat it in the same manner, that is, I always use the same arguments to accomplish the same conviction. But you, Hippias, are an original genius. You, I suppose, never support the same truth by the same arguments.* No, by no means, replied Hippias, I always try to say something new. Πειοωμαι χαινον Τι λεγειν δει. Well, now, said Socrates, let us take a subject most level to our faculties. Suppose, now, a painter were to ask you how big I am, and what is my color and shape. Would you answer one thing at one time, and another at another? Or, suppose an arithmetician were to ask you how much twice five is. Would you say to-day it is ten, and to-morrow fifteen? O, said Hippias, on these subjects, to be sure, I always say the same thing. But when I come to the essence of morals, I think I can show you that it is right to vary. Socrates goes on to show him, by irresistible induction, that here, too, truth is immutable. He appeals to the laws of all nations, and especially to the unwritten laws of eternal justice. I quote this, to show, from the mouth of Hippias, the very spirit of a sophist — χαινον Τι— that is his sole object. He is a kind of intellectual rope-dancer, whose only aim is to astonish mankind at the feats he can perform.
Now, this propensity was engraved in the very genius of Hume. It was an impulse, which, though sometimes he tries to suppress it, is always rising to overpower his resolution, and fill the channel of his favorite passion. Now sophistry, on some subjects, is harmless and amusing. It is pleasant to trace the vagaries of the human mind, and to see to what startling conclusions our deductions may lead us. I, for my part, never read a novel, with half the interest that I have some of the dialogues of Bishop Berkley, who was a sophist, with an honest heart. But the sophist and the historian are incompatible characters. Facts are plain things; the moment you throw fine-spun speculation around them, they cease to be facts. What a broad, plain, round-about mind had Thucydides and Xenophon; and this constitutes their excellence. They seem to talk like an honest witness on the stand in a court of law; and the chief elegance of their language is its simplicity. Hume was a different man; he was used to refining; and if he had tried to be honest, I doubt whether it would have been possible.
The last fault in Hume was, his want of diligence. He had not the spirit of an antiquarian. His mind was too acute and mercurial for that. It is very rare, that a man of genius is a good searcher. Hume differed from Gibbon, in this respect. He supplied, by rapid surmises, the place of that knowledge which only investigation can bestow. It is not my intention to enter into detail;† but his partial statements and his absurd omissions have, by recent abler writers, been fully exposed.
Yet, after all, there are few books which contain their own confutation more fully than Hume’s history. He admits on one page, what would require all his acute powers to reconcile with what he says on another. Thus he says, in drawing the character of Charles the First, that the most malignant scrutiny will find no reason to question his sincerity and good faith. In short, that he was a man who always kept his word. Yet, on another page, he acknowledges* that he only intended to comply with his engagements, as far as he easily could. A fine instance of good faith in a monarch, whose throne might have been preserved, if his people could have had confidence in his keeping his word! On one page, he laughs at the parliament, “for pretending to handle questions, for which the greatest philosophers, in the tranquillity of retreat, had never been able to find a satisfactory solution.” But, on another page, we find there never were greater men than the leaders of this very parliament.† Sometimes the people are actually aggrieved, and have reason to suppose their liberties are snatched from them; and anon, these grievances amount to nothing. Sometimes the ancient charters are sufficiently clear in favor of liberty; and then again all pretences to a free constitution are innovations. It is not necessary, here, to enter into the thorny question, so much debated in England, and so useless in this country, whether English liberty can be supported by precedents. I have always supposed, that consulting their ancient statues and precedents, is very much like consulting the ante-nicene fathers, in supporting a doctrine. You are always sure to seek successfully what you are determined to find; and, thanks to God, liberty rests on reason and religion, and not on the parliaments of a half enlightened age. But, however this may be, we lose some of our confidence in the historian who crosses his own track, and admits of facts at war with his own conclusions.
Like Buonaparte, Hume’s tactics depend on one great manœuvre; and it would be easy to give a recipe for writing history on his plan, which, whenever it is understood, ceases to deceive. Set up an unfounded hypothesis; then admit half a dozen facts, which overthrow that hypothesis; and then go on and reason as if the hypothesis must be true, and you are totally unconscious of your own concessions.
For example: the death of Stephen M. Clark, the boy who fired the town of Newburyport, is well known; and no one, in that vicinity, I suppose, doubts his guilt, or that he was legally and justly executed. Now, suppose I should wish to impress on my readers the conviction that he was unjustly hanged, and should imitate the style of Hume — I should write thus:
‘It was about this time that this youthful and unfortunate victim was sacrificed to the absurd bigotry and groundless fears of the inhabitants of Newburyport. He was led, a sad and silent spectacle, to the place of execution, in despite of his blooming youth, his fine talents, his enterprising abilities, and the tears and agonies of his afflicted parents and friends. We may venture to say, there has seldom been committed a greater outrage on the feelings of justice and humanity. His guilt is more than doubtful. Indeed, the only evidence we have that he committed the crime at all, is the sentence of the court; and though no open bribery was there proved, yet when we consider the defenceless condition of the boy, the uncertainty of the law, and the chicanery of the lawyers, together with the strength of the popular odium, there can scarcely remain a doubt on the reader’s mind, that this unhappy youth died to appease those passions which demand an atonement, but are careless to find the right victim.’
Yet this book, with all the talents and malignity with which it is written, may be made one of the most harmless volumes that was ever delivered by hoary wisdom into the hands of unsuspecting youth. The bubbles of Hume’s history vanish at a touch; and a single note, at the bottom of a page, might blow them into the air of which they were originally made. Thus, when he makes us pity the innocent Mary, weeping before the brutal Knox, it is only necessary to state a few facts of which that innocence was composed, (facts of the historian’s own concession,) and the scene may safely be left to speak for itself. The tears of a beautiful young queen, are of great account, no doubt, in romance and tragedy. But when we remember that a woman’s tears are sometimes her most effectual weapons; that Mary was a papist, and in league with her uncles, the Guises, the most determined papists Europe ever saw, in a plot actually to put down the protestants; that they even went so far as to think of dethroning Elizabeth; that power, and wealth, and treachery, and arms, are on one side, and that a solitary and intrepid spirit, in the form of a Christian minister, stands on the other — the griefs of Mary, though a youthful queen, will not be thought very pathetic, except by those who have chivalry enough to place the tears of a woman above the destinies of mankind. How potent is truth, when the sophistry of Hume only serves at last more clearly to reveal it!
*It may be a dream of mine, but it has always appeared to me, that such writers as Swift, Pope, and Addison, with all their faults, have had a powerful influence in giving to the English nation that common sense character, for which they have been distinguished, and the more distinguished, the more they are compared with some of their neighbors. Other causes have indeed co-operated. The manner in which many of the high-flying dreams in politics and religion, in the days of Cromwell, terminated; their commercial character, and their government; have tended to make them calculators of the earth, rather than soarers into the clouds. But certainly their satirists, though, in swinging their promiscuous scythes, they have cut down many a fair flower as well as many a hurtful weed, have had a hand in keeping them from that wild spirit of theory and speculation, which prevail in Germany. It seems to me, that the value of German literature has been vastly overrated. No doubt their biblical critics have brought some new lights to illustrate the Scriptures. But strip them of their extravagant theories, and how little will remain. The same erudition, brought to a subject, when it is shown enlarged through the mists of some ingenious hypothesis, appears much greater than when arranged to establish the antiquated dictates of common sense. Whatever value these German geniuses may have, it has always been lost in the importing. Their worth is too fugitive to endure the ordeal of a translation. Whatever is their own, is false; and whatever is true, we have heard before. Their dramatic writers are too little like Shakspeare, and their critics and commentators too much like Warburton. As I am somewhat an enemy to their reputation, I have malice enough to wish they might all be translated.
*Juvenal, Sat. II. 65 line.
*Hist. of Great Britain, Charles I. ch. v.
*Areopagitica.
*It will be seen by the Greek scholar, who chooses to consult the original, that my translation is intentionally free.
†It is well known, that his history of the Stuarts was written before the previoius narrative. He ran it over very hastily — wrote it merely to help out his other work. Cretan against Cretan; Gibbon despatches his critique on Hume in three words: Ingenious, but superficial.
*See Hist. Great Britain, chap. ii. page 180, London ed. 1769.
†See page 136, London ed. 1769.