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APPENDIX. 



I HAVE been favoured with some unpublished letters of Mr. 

 Hume by the kindness of my learned kinsman Lord Meadow- 

 bank and other friends. By the following part of a letter to Dr. 

 Clephane, we may perceive that he had once, at least, gone out 

 of his line, and attempted something purely fanciful, apparently 

 in verse. From the sample of his imaginative writing in the 

 Essays, the ' Epicurean' especially, little room is left for lament- 

 ing that he did not further pursue this deviation from his ap- 

 pointed walk. The letter is dated 18th February, 1751. His 

 low estimate of Shakspeare breaks out in this letter ; but he 

 became convinced in the sequel, that his kinsman's tragedy, 

 ' Douglas,' to which he alludes, deserved the success which he 

 justly predicts ; for we find him afterwards, to the same friend, 

 giving his opinion, after reading the tragedy, and he terms it 

 " a singular as well as fine performance, steering clear of the 

 spirit of the English theatre, not devoid of Attic and French 

 elegance." He seems to have formed a very low estimate of the 

 English genius in those days ; for, speaking of Lord Lyttelton's 

 ' Henry III.,' which he hears is to be in three quarto volumes, 

 he exclaims, " O magnum, horribile, et sacrum libellum ! 

 the last epithet probably applicable to it in more senses than 

 one" and adds, " however, it cannot well fail to be readable, 

 which is a great deal for an English book now-a-days." 



"Ninewells, near Berwick, 18th February, 1751. 

 . . . " But since I am in the humour of displaying my wit, 

 I must tell you that lately, at our idle hours, I wrote a sheet 

 called the * Bellman's Petition,' wherein (if I be not partial, 



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