65
“HUME AND BURNET,” The Philadelphia Repository, vol. 5 (9 March 1805), p. 76.
Anonymous
Published by David Hogan and E. Conrad, The Philadelphia Repository, and Weekly Register was a weekly, edited by Hogan, John Welwood Scott, and Thomas Irwin. It contained mostly original material and was continued as The Repository and Ladies’ Weekly Museum. The anecdote reprinted below compares Hume to Gilbert Burnet (1643–1715) who was the author of a three volume History of the Reformation. On The Philadelphia Repository see API, p. 193; BAP, pp. 136–7; 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.