John Hill Burton

“ Stand this ridicule, expose his brutal letter, but without giving it out of your own hand, so that it may never be printed; and if you can, laugh at yourself, and I shall pawn my life, that before three weeks are at an end, this little affair, which at present gives you so much uneasiness, shall be understood to do you as much honour as any thing that has ever happened to you. By endeavouring to unmask before the public this hypocritical pedant, you run the risk of disturbing the tranquillity of your whole life. By letting him alone, he cannot give you a fortnight's uneasiness. ”

“ And why should you think with reluctance on a private life at Paris? It is the situation for which I thought you best fitted, ever since I had the happiness of your acquaintance. The inexpressible and delicate graces of your character and conversation, like the soft notes of a lute, are lost amid the tumult of company, in which I commonly saw you engaged. A more select society would know to set a juster value upon your merit. Men of sense, and taste, and letters, would accustom themselves to frequent your house. Every elegant society would court your company. ”

“ I cannot too often repeat, what I inculcated on you with great earnestness, that, even if your friend should fix his resolution on the side least favourable to you, you ought to receive his determination without the least resentment. You know that princes, more than other men, are born slaves to prejudices, and that this tax is imposed on them, as a species of retaliation by the public. This prince in particular is in every view so eminent, that he owes some account of his conduct to Europe in general, to France, and to his family, the most illustrious in the world. ”

“ It is expected, that men, in his station, shall not be actuated by private regards. It is expected, that with them friendship, affection, sympathy, shall be absorbed in ambition, and in the desire of supporting their rank in the world; and, if they fail in this duty, they will meet with blame from a great part of the public. Can you be surprised, that a person covetous of honour, should be moved by these considerations? If he neglected them, would not your grateful heart suggest to you, that he had taken an extraordinary step in your favour? ”

“ The correspondence was of the lady's seeking and pursuing. Frequently, when there is a pause, an impassioned letter from her rouses up the philosopher; who starts into a sort of artificial excitement, and, when it is over, sinks into lethargy again. Yet it must be admitted that Hume acted his part pretty well, and that the fat philosopher was not far behind the vivacious Frenchwoman. But with him it is visibly all acting; and there is a total absence of the playful ease which adorns those letters to his own chosen friends, with whom he was in heart and habits at ease. ”

“ It was natural that Rousseau, a man of great genius, whose writings had produced a prodigious influence on his age,—one who had shown, in many instances, the outward manifestations of a kind unselfish disposition, and who had discarded, with an air of magnanimous scorn, all the grovelling ties that bind the human creature to the earth on which he crawls,—should have champions and supporters in any dispute in which he might be involved, be his conduct what it might. ”

“ I dare only add, that in all which issues from your pen, you show yourself a perfect philosopher, a statesman, a historian full of genius, an enlightened politician, a genuine patriot. All these sublime qualities are so far above the understanding of a woman, that it is fitting I should say little on the subject; and I have already great need of your indulgence for the faults I have committed against discretion and decorum, by the excess of my veneration for your merit. ”

“ David Hume was a man of parts, natural and acquired, far superior to most of mankind; of a benevolent heart, a friendly, kind disposition, and a real affection for all his connexions. No man is without his failings; and his great views of being singular, and a vanity to show himself superior to most people, led him to advance many axioms that were dissonant to the opinions of others, and led him into sceptical doctrines only to show how minute and puzzling they were to other folk ”

“ After all the testimonies of affection I have received from you, I reward you at last with this folly and ill behaviour: but I have notwithstanding a heart worthy of your friendship; I love you, I esteem you, and not an instance of your kindness is thrown away upon me." I hope you have not so bad an opinion of me as to think I was not melted on this occasion; I assure you I kissed him and embraced him twenty times, with a plentiful effusion of tears. I think no scene of my life was ever more affecting. ”

“ For my part, I can scarce acknowledge any other ground of distinction between one age and another, between one nation and another, than their different progress in learning and the arts. I do not say between one man and another, because the qualities of the heart and temper, and natural understanding, are the most essential to the personal character; but being, I suppose, almost equal among nations and ages, do not serve to throw a peculiar lustre on any. You blame France for its fond admiration of men of genius ”

“ That principle is always the more pure and genuine, the less figure it makes in the annals of war, politics, intrigues, and revolutions, quarrels, and convulsions; which it is the business of an historian to record and transmit to posterity.
It ought as little to be matter of offence, that no religious sect is mentioned in this work without being exposed sometimes to some note of blame and disapprobation. The frailties of our nature mingle themselves with every thing in which we are employed, and no human institutions will ever reach perfection, the idea of an infinite mind. ”

“ What between public business, the company of the learned and that of the great, especially of the ladies, I find all my time filled up, and have no time to open a book, except it be some books newly published, which may be the subject of conversation. I am well enough pleased with this change of life, and a satiety of study had beforehand prepared the way for it: however, time runs off in one course of life as well as another, and all things appear so much alike, that I am afraid of falling into total Stoicism and indifference about every thing. ”

“ Licentiousness, or rather the frenzy of liberty, has taken possession of us, and is throwing every thing into confusion. How happy do I esteem it, that in all my writings I have always kept at a proper distance from that tempting extreme, and have maintained a due regard to magistracy and established government, suitably to the character of an historian and a philosopher! I find, on that account, my authority growing daily; and indeed have now no reason to complain of the public, though your partiality to me made you think so formerly. ”

“ There is a very remarkable difference between London and Paris; of which I gave warning to Helvétius, when he went over lately to England, and of which he told me, on his return, he was fully sensible. If a man have the misfortune, in the former place, to attach himself to letters, even if he succeeds, I know not with whom he is to live, nor how he is to pass his time in a suitable society. The little company there that is worth conversing with, are cold and unsociable; or are warmed only by faction and cabal; so that a man who plays no part in public affairs becomes altogether insignificant ”

“ My Dear Sir,—I believe I need not inform you how little I have been inclined to solicit the great, or even my own friends, for any thing that regards my own fortune. I may venture to say, that, hitherto, I have never once made any application of this nature: and you may wonder that now, at my years, when the greatest part of life is past, and I may esteem myself, in other respects, pretty much at my ease, I should submit to prefer requests which I declined at an age when ambition ought naturally to be stronger, and when my circumstances much more powerfully called for assistance. ”

“ You are sufficiently acquainted with the merit of this work; and really it is admirable how many men of genius this country produces at present. Is it not strange that, at a time when we have lost our princes, our parliaments, our independent government,—even the presence of our chief nobility; are unhappy, in our accent and pronunciation; speak a very corrupt dialect of the tongue we make use of,—is it not strange, I say, that, in these circumstances, we should really be the people most distinguished for literature in Europe? ”

“ If one nation is far beyond another in arts, arms, civilization, or wealth, the facts cannot be denied; but when he looks back into past ages, the pliability of the evidence admits the influence of the levelling principle of scepticism, the tendency of which is to make all mankind seem much alike; and Hume, who would not have ventured to say that in his own day the constitutions of France and England were very much alike, considered it but a piece of proper caution to discard as fallacious the evidence that there was any great difference between them in former times. ”

“ One cannot too much clear their mind of all little prejudices, but partiality to one's country is not a prejudice. Love the French as much as you will. Many of the individuals are surely the proper objects of affection; but, above all, continue still an Englishman. You know, better than any body, that the active powers of our mind are much too limited to be usefully employed in any pursuit more general than the service of that portion of mankind which we call our country. General benevolence and private friendship will attend a generous mind and a feeling heart, into every country ”

“ His friend John Home was somewhat renowned for a warlike and romantic pomp in his ideas, like those which pervade his own tragic personations. In Hume's conversation we may believe that there was nothing either heroic or enthusiastic. A good humoured sly application of the fugitive subjects of discussion, to the peculiarities of the guests; an occasional vigorous and apt remark; a fantastic wit sometimes let loose to wander where it pleased, and choose whatever it thought fit for its object,—seem to have constituted the charm of his society. ”

“ We read spirited translations, because they are an attempt to represent to us, in our own tongue, that which is grand in another language; and our interest is like that with which we view the portrait of a great man. We thus encounter Ulysses, Agamemnon, and Menelaus in the Iliad, with the interest of excited curiosity; and those who cannot read the original, are content to make acquaintance with persons whom a great genius has made so famous, even through a rude translation. ”

“ I am diverting myself with the notion how much you will profit by the applause of my enemies in Scotland. Had you and I been such fools as to have given way to jealousy, to have entertained animosity and malignity against each other, and to have rent all our acquaintance into parties, what a noble amusement we should have exhibited to the blockheads, which now they are likely to be disappointed of. All the people whose friendship or judgment either of us value, are friends to both, and will be pleased with the success of both, as we will be with that of each other. ”

“ I remember that, in spite of vain philosophy, of dark doubts, of toilsome learning, God had stamped his image of benignity so strong upon thy heart, that not all the labours of thy head could efface it. Idol of a foolish people, be not puffed up; it is easy to overturn the faith of a multitude that is ready to do evil: an apostle of less sense might bring to that giddy nation—libertinism; liberty they are not born to. ”

“ But you do not expect surely, that so great an event will pass without censure. It would ill become my friendship to flatter you on this head. The envy and jealousy of the world would alone account for a repugnance in many. Nobody has been more generally known than you; both of late and in your early youth. Will so numerous an acquaintance be pleased to see you pass, from being their equal, to be so much their superior? Will they bear your uniting the decisive elevation of rank to the elevation of genius, which they feel, and which they would in vain contest? ”

“ Fallacies may be the brilliant insects of a day, but truth is eternal; and when the searcher in philosophy groping amid the darkness of man's imperfect reason, produces falsehoods, they are speedily forgotten; but if he develop great truths, they live to bless his species for ever. There are few who will now deny that mankind have learned many valuable truths of David Hume. ”

“ Dear Sir,—To show you that I am not such an affecter of singularity as to entertain prejudices against ministers of state, [25:2] I am resolved to congratulate you on your return to power, and to express my wishes, that, both for your sake and the public's, your ministry, and that of your friends, may be more durable than it was before. We even hope it will, though the strange motley composition which it consists of, gives us some apprehensions. However, we are glad to find, from past experience, that you can neither rise nor fall, without credit and reputation. ”

“ He read me part of his History, and I had an opportunity of reading another part of it in manuscript above a twelvemonth ago. Upon the whole, my expectations, both from what I saw, and from my knowledge of the author, were very much raised, and I consider it as a work of uncommon merit. I know that he has employed himself with great diligence and care in collecting the facts: his style is lively and entertaining; and he judges with temper and candour. He is a man generally known and esteemed in this country: and we look upon him very deservedly as inferior to nobody in capacity and learning. ”

“ This city can justly boast of other signal characters of the same kind, whom learning and piety, taste and devotion, philosophy and faith, joined to the severest morals and most irreproachable conduct, concur to embellish. One in particular, with the same hand by which he turns over the sublime pages of Homer and Virgil, Demosthenes and Cicero, is not ashamed to open with reverence the sacred volumes; and with the same voice by which, from the pulpit, he strikes vice with consternation, he deigns to dictate to his pupils the most useful lessons of rhetoric, poetry, and polite literature. ”

“ I not only find a lady, who, in the bloom of beauty and height of reputation, can withdraw herself from the pleasures of a gay court, and find leisure to cultivate the sciences; but deigns to support a correspondence with a man of letters in a remote country, and to reward his labours by a suffrage the most agreeable of all others, to a man who has any spark of generous sentiments or taste for true glory. ”

“ Although a woman, and of no very advanced age, despite the dissipation attendant on the life one leads in this country, having always loved reading, there are few good books in any language, or of any kind, that I have not read, either in the original, or in translations; and I can assure you, sir, with a sincerity which cannot be questioned, that I have found none which, to my judgment, unites so many perfections as your own. ”

“ And, perhaps, your esteem for the entire impartiality which I aim at, and which, to tell the truth, is so unusual in English historians, has made your ladyship overlook many defects, into which the want of art or genius has betrayed me.
In this particular, madam, I must own, that I am inclined to take your civilities in their full latitude, and to hope that I have not fallen much short of my intentions. The spirit of faction, which prevails in this country, and which is a natural attendant on civil liberty, carries every thing to extremes on the one side, as well as on the other ”