David Hume: Prophet of the Counter-Revolution

4. Papist or Pyrrhonian?

Prophet_001-050.indd 15 3/2/12 10:27 PM PAPIST OR PYRRHONIAN? knowledges the fact with regard to England and this admission does honour to his impartiality. In contrast, we are roused to indignation when we encounter on every page of the writings ofHelvetius those bitter ironies, those derisive and almost always furious sorties against a clergy that certainly deserved his consideration and who became the target of his displeasure only because they attempted to protect France from the venom of his doctrine.41 The section Histoireofthe t .1u:yclopedie Methodiquein 1788 gave perhaps the ultimate in praise to the impartiality ofHume's History ofEngland: "One ofthe finest pieces ofhistory and philosophy that exists in any language, and perhaps the most impartial and most reasonable work that has come from the hand of man."42 It is obviously impossible to say more! 4 PAPIST OR PYRRHONIAN? It is well known that the English at this time did not agree with the French about Hume's impartiality. The strange combination oftwo reputations which Hume enjoyed in England, one as a foolish atheist , the other as a perverse Jacobite, was scarcely of a nature to please any large group in that country. In My Own Life Hume speaks ofhis disappointment at the domestic reception given the Stuarts: I was, I own, sanguine in my expectations of the success ofthis work. I thought that I was the only historian that had at once neglected present power, interest, and authority, and the cry of popular prejudices ; and as the subject was suited to every capacity, I expected proportional applause. But miserable was my disappointment: I was assailed by one cry of reproach, disapprobation, and even detesta41 . "Examen de Ia question si toutes les vcrites sont bonnes adire?" in Nouveaux A1emoires de l'Acadernie Royale des Sciences et Belles-Lettres, Berlin, 1777, XXXIII. 336. 42. Enryclopedie J'vliithodique: Histoire ( 1788), Ill. III. Prophet_001-050.indd 16 3/2/12 10:27 PM BEFORE 1789 tion; English, Scotch, and Irish; Whig and Tory; churchman and sectary, freethinker and religionist; patriot and courtier, united in their rage against the man who had presumed to shed a generous tear for the fate of Charles I and the Earl of Strafford; and after the first ebullitions of this fury were over, what was still more mortifying, the book seemed to sink into oblivion. Mr. Millar told me, that in a twelvemonth he sold only forty-five copies of it. I scarcely, indeed, heard of one man in the three Kingdoms, considerable for rank or letters, that could endure the book. I must only except the Primate of England, Dr. Herring, and the Primate of Ireland, Dr. Stone; which seem two odd exceptions. These dignified prelates separately sent me messages not to be discouraged. Hume was, nevertheless, discouraged and he tells us in this same brief autobiographical sketch that, had not the war at that time been breaking out between France and England, he would have retired forever from England to some provincial French town. Horace Walpole clearly reflects the typical attitude to the History in England in a letter to Montague from Paris in 1765. Parisians, he affirmed, were totally lacking in literary taste: "... could one believe that when they read our authors, Richardson and Mr. Hume should be their favourites? The latter is treated here with perfect veneration. His History, so falsified in many points, so partial in as many, so very unequal in its parts, is thought the standard of writing...."43 The French were fully aware of the discrepancy between their own estimates of Hume's worth and those of the English. We read, for example, in the Journal Etranger of 1760 the following statement on that subject: Mr. Hume has been accused by his compatriots of striving too eagerly after singular opinions; it is not our function to debate this reproach . We will note only that, although Mr. Hume is English, a republican, and a Protestant, he has always spoken of the French with esteem, and of kings and Catholics with moderation; and it is possible that this singularity has offended a nation that is too much in the habit of seeing in monarchies only a herd of slaves and in pa43 · W. S. Lewis and R. S. Brown, Horace Walpole's Correspondence with George Montague, New Haven, 1941, II. 176, letter of 22 September 1765. Prophet_001-050.indd 17 3/2...