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Hume and Bishop Horne

“ANECDOTES,” The Connecticut Evangelical Magazine; and Religious Intelligencer, vol. 1 (July 1800), pp. 38–9.

Anonymous

The Connecticut Evangelical Magazine; and Religious Intelligencer was published in Hartford from 1800 to 1815, and then was superseded by the Religious Ingelligencer. Its monthly numbers contained a variety of religious pieces, essays, and anecdotes. The anecdote concerning Hume and Bishop George Horne (1730–92) reprinted below was a popular one in early American periodicals, being reprinted often. Horne was the author of A Letter to Dr. Adam Smith LL.D. on the Life, Death, and Philosophy of his friend David Hume Esq. By one of the People called Christians (1777, London). On the Connecticut Evangelical Magazine see Gaylord P. Albaugh, History and Annotated Bibliography of American Religious Periodicals and Newspapers (Worcester, 1994), vol. 1, pp. 294–9; API, p. 68.

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DAVID HUME, observed, that all the devout persons he had ever met with were melancholy. On this Bishop Horne remarked; This might very probably be: for in the first place, it is most likely that he saw very few, his friends and acquaintance being of another sort; and, secondly, the sight of him would make a devout man melancholy at any time.