i EARLY LIFE 7 



tion. Nevertheless, as a very competent author- 

 ity * wisely remarks: 



" There appear to have been in Hume all the elements of 

 which a good lawyer is made : clearness of judgment, power 

 of rapidly acquiring knowledge, untiring industry, and dia- 

 lectic skill : and if his mind had not been preoccupied, he 

 might have fallen into the gulf in which many of the 

 world's greatest geniuses lie buried professional emi- 

 nence ; and might have left behind him a reputation lim- 

 ited to the traditional recollections of the Parliament 

 house, or associated with important decisions. He was 

 through life an able, clear-headed man of business, and I 

 have seen several legal documents written in his own hand 

 and evidently drawn by himself. They stand the test of 

 general professional observation ; and their writer, by pre- 

 paring documents of facts of such a character on his own 

 responsibility, showed that he had considerable confidence 

 in his ability to adhere to the forms adequate for the occa- 

 sion. He talked of it as ' an ancient prejudice industriously 

 propagated by the dunces in all countries, that a man of 

 genius is unfit for business^ and he showed, in his general 

 conduct through life, that he did not choose to come volun- 

 tarily under this proscription." 



Six years longer Hume remained at Ninewells 

 before he made another attempt to embark in a 

 practical career this time commerce and with a 

 like result. For a few months' trial proved that 

 kind of life, also, to be hopelessly against the 

 grain. 



It was while in London, on his way to Bristol, 

 where he proposed to commence his mercantile 



* Mr. John Hill Burton, in his valuable Life of Hume, 

 on which, I need hardly say, I have drawn freely for the 

 materials of the present biographical sketch. 



