The History of England - Vols. 1 to 6 (3 page)

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more cultivated and humanized, inclined them to every decent pleasure and indulgence. Like all other species of superstition, it rouses the vain fears of unhappy mortals; but it knows also the secret of allaying these fears, and by exterior rites, ceremonies, and abasements, tho’ sometimes at the expence of morals, it reconciles the penitent to his offended deity.

Employing all these various arts, along with a restless enterprize, the catholic religion has acquired the favor of many monarchs, who had received their education from its rival sect; and Sweden, as well as England, has felt the effect of its dangerous insinuations.

However one may regard these two influential religious movements, it must be conceded that Hume here betrays no unwonted partiality and is quite even-handed in his censure. To all sectarian objections then, both political and clerical, he may be allowed the rejoinder that, while his book had been “extremely run down by Faction .

. . it has been met with such Indulgence by good Judges, that I have no Reason to repent of my Undertaking.” In later time the critics could be more than indulgent, indeed lavish in their praise, for upon completion of the work, essentially, in 1762, it had been greatly improved in many respects: incidentally by more precise and extensive footnoting, as well as by more careful typography; in its text by the gradual elimination of peculiarly Scottish spelling and idioms; in its authorities by reference to other historical archives, especially those at the British Museum; and in its scope by extending now, in other volumes, to less controversial matters. All this achieved, the work received an extensive review by Voltaire, himself an accomplished
philosophe
and historian, who considered this English account to be “perhaps the best written in any language.” Moreover, he continued, the author thereof “is neither parliamentarian, nor royalist, nor Anglican, nor Presbyterian—he is simply judicial,”

one obviously of a “mind superior to his materials; he speaks of weaknesses, blunders, cruelties as a physician speaks of epidemic diseases.” No less effusive was the Earl of Chesterfield, who rightly predicted that this was “the only History of England that will go down to Posterity.”

Still another way of assessing, now statistically, the continued acceptance of the
History
may be discovered in the printers’ own accounts. Confronted by six massive quarto books, gradually appearing one or two at a time, even the most assiduous readers, as Hume anticipated, would become less and less interested, especially when each succeeding volume took them backward to epochs of lesser concern.

Nonetheless, the complex printing records, when reduced to tabular form, disclose a total quarto issue hardly surpassed, in this period, for work of any kind.

Printed

1754 1757 1759 1761 1762 1763 1764 Total

“Stuarts”

1 [5]

2,000

750

800 [225?]

3,775

2 [6]

1,750 750

750 255

3,475

“Tudors”

1–2 [3–4]

2,250

750

250 3,225

“Ancient”1–2 [1–2]

2,000 750

2,750

Before the long-produced, expensively priced but highly successful quarto issue had run its course, the
History
was already destined to appear in a more economical PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011)

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format designed for an even wider audience—and ultimately in a radical transformation of the text. The first hint of this new enterprise appears in a letter from Hume to his publisher concerning the full quarto edition then pending for 1762.

I am very glad, that you are in so good a way, and that you think so soon of making a new Edition. I am running over both the antient History & the Tudors, and shall send you them up by the Waggon as soon as they are corrected. Please tell Mr Strahan [the printer] to keep carefully this Copy I send up, as well as that which I left of the Stuarts: For if you intend to print an Octavo Edition next Summer, it will be better to do it from these Copies which are corrected, than from the new Edition, where there will necessarily be some Errors of the Press.

Actually the octavo edition, a smaller format in eight volumes, did not appear until 1763 and then, effective 1 November, was sold either as a complete set leather bound for £2.8s., or under an ingenious installment plan of one volume a month unbound for 5s. Acting on what he believed to be sufficient warrant from the quarto sales, still continuing at £4.10s. a set, the publisher enthusiastically ordered five thousand copies of this cheaper issue, a printing far exceeding total production of all preceding editions. About this extraordinary venture Hume soon voiced nothing but contempt: Andrew Millar, the publisher, had been “rapacious”; the book was “ill-printed”; misleading statements about its lagging sales were quite “detestable”; and such an enormous issue effectively prevented him from introducing, in another, still further revisions.

To promote these sales Millar eventually resorted to a deceptive technique which, it seems, went quite unnoticed by Hume at the time and has gone undetected ever since.

Beginning with the quarto issue of 1762 all titles uniformly read
A New Edition,
Corrected
, excepting only an octavo issue now appearing in 1767, which suggestively announced
A New Edition, With Corrections, and some Additions.
Close inspection of this “edition” discloses, however, that it is merely a reissue of the 1763 octavo with substitute titles.

Quite undeterred by his cheap 1763–1767 fiasco, Millar next imagined that he might profit still further from his more affluent clientele, and accordingly produced in 1770, under the imprint of Thomas Cadell, a magnificent “Royal Paper” quarto edition priced at £7.7s. Copies of this as well as the earlier £4.10s. quarto issue, then designated as “Small Paper,” were still being advertised in 1778, a clear indication that the quality market had been saturated long before. Even so, the luxurious 1770

edition is not without merit, textually for the inclusion of numerous substantive revisions, many of them based on materials found 1763–65 during Hume’s travels in France, and typographically for the transfer, to the end of the volumes, of all the longer footnotes. Almost from the outset certain of Hume’s subtended commentaries had threatened to overwhelm the text; now as separate “Additional Notes” they could be steadily augmented, or occasionally increased in number, all without any restraint.

Eventually, when the supply of “that abominable Octavo Edition” had diminished, and the sale of the sumptuous quarto was “pretty well advanced,” Hume on 20 July 1771 submitted to press yet another corrected copy, this now containing, as he PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011)

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advised printer Strahan, “many considerable Improvements, most of them in the Style; but some also in the matter.” Stylistic refinements of old material variously introduced in times past admittedly would not be much appreciated; yet, Hume confesses, “I cannot help it, and they run mostly upon Trifles; at least they will be esteemd such by the Generality of Readers, who little attend to the extreme Accuracy of Style. It is one great advantage that results from the Art of printing, that an Author may correct his works, as long as he lives.” The words are somewhat prophetic, for the edition then under way, and published in 1773, was the last in Hume’s lifetime, though not the last to exhibit his continuing effort toward perfection.

Hume’s final endeavor, appearing in 1778, was appropriately designated
A New
Edition, with the Author’s last Corrections and Improvements.
Amendments for this, first mentioned 13 November 1775, continued to be sent forward through 27 July 1776, when Hume asked Strahan to delete three passages relating to the Scottish clergy (1617), Philip IV of Spain (1624), and a message from Charles I to the House of Commons (1628). So at the first, on Protestants and Catholics, now also at the last on these other matters, careful excision of unnecessary parts generally improved the total performance.

Also directed in the revised copy and immediately evident upon a cursory review, are many other 1778 adjustments, among them these alterations in the “Additional Notes”

to volumes VI–VII (volume V of this reprint):

D. Adds final clause, “who . . .
divine
right.”

K. Adds paragraph in italics

another reading

Substitutes for final sentence “the period . . .

Q.

“Machiavel . . . Europe.”

Malherbe”

in

Adds first introductory sentence and last sentence in

Z. italics.

Deletes 1773 note DD “In a Parliament . . .

— .
parliament,
p. 61"; succeeding 1778 notes

accordingly relettered.

DD. Adds second paragraph “with regard . . .
of the text.
”

GG. Adds final sentence “His intended . . . in him”

Adds last three sentences “In reality . . . enlarged

HH. views.”

Adds final paragraph “What a paradox . . .

NN. enterprize.”

It is truly remarkable that, twenty-five years after he had begun writing on the early Stuart reigns, and on this eighth comprehensive revision of his work, Hume should find so much to amend.

Apart from these substantive revisions, the 1778 edition also displays throughout Hume’s fastidious concern over insignificant “trifles”—as seen, for example, in the single leaf in the set (volume II, signature I8, pages 127–28) cancelled and replaced, PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011)

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probably at Strahan’s direction, to represent some authorial correction overlooked on first printing. (Reference here is to the paragraph introducing the variant, volume I, pages 476–477 of this reprint).

Paragraph 1773

1778

Such was

granted by his laws ordained

The king

intitled

entitled

The escheats revenue to the king revenue

But besides lands

land

″ ″

Where he sold

If he sold

Passing over the subtleties involved in this phraseology, we may agree that the minuscule specimen here scrutinized sufficiently establishes the general practice.

With this demonstration there can be little doubt that the present issue necessarily must reproduce the posthumous 1778 edition. The reprint here presented, from copies at the Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, and the Boston Public Library, now however extends to six volumes only: an arrangement which for the first time allows the final text to be recast according to Hume’s original design of three

“epochs.” When for merely commercial reasons that grand concept was abandoned in the eight-volume 1763–1778 editions, all semblance of Hume’s construction was lost.

There Henry VII entirely and the initial chapter of Henry VIII were abruptly cut away from the Tudors and huddled in with the last of the Ancients. There too, among the Stuarts, both Charles I and Charles II were also dismembered, each being split between two volumes. Hume reluctantly acquiesced in this typographical butchery, insisting only that the divisions not occur within a chapter. Were he present now to witness his best text in its best form, an ideal state unobtainable in his own day, he would surely commend what the Liberty Fund has here accomplished. The only difficulty would be to restrain him from transforming this classic in historiography into yet another version!

william b. todd

26 April 1982

William B. Todd is The Mildred Caldwell and Baine Perkins Kerr Centennial
Professor in English History and Culture at the University of Texas at Austin.

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[Back to Table of Contents]

THE LIFE OF DAVID HUME, ESQ.

WRITTEN BY HIMSELF

MY OWN LIFE

It is difficult for a man to speak long of himself without vanity; therefore, I shall be short. It may be thought an instance of vanity that I pretend at all to write my life; but this Narrative shall contain little more than the History of my Writings; as, indeed, almost all my life has been spent in literary pursuits and occupations. The first success of most of my writings was not such as to be an object of vanity.

I was born the 26th of April 1711, old style, at Edinburgh. I was of a good family, both by father and mother: my father’s family is a branch of the Earl of Home’s, or Hume’s; and my ancestors had been proprietors of the estate, which my brother possesses, for several generations. My mother was daughter of Sir David Falconer, President of the College of Justice: the title of Lord Halkerton came by succession to her brother.

My family, however, was not rich, and being myself a younger brother, my patrimony, according to the mode of my country, was of course very slender. My father, who passed for a man of parts, died when I was an infant, leaving me, with an elder brother and a sister, under the care of our mother, a woman of singular merit, who though young and handsome, devoted herself entirely to the rearing and educating of her children. I passed through the ordinary course of education with success, and was seized very early with a passion for literature, which has been the ruling passion of my life, and the great source of my enjoyments. My studious disposition, my sobriety, and my industry, gave my family a notion that the law was a proper profession for me; but I found an unsurmountable aversion to every thing but the pursuits of philosophy and general learning; and while they fancied I was poring upon Voet and Vinnius, Cicero and Virgil were the authors which I was secretly devouring.