195 HUME. 



merit of the country mainly rests (for he had neither 

 the impartiality nor the patience of the historical 

 office), yet he is decidedly to be praised as having been 

 the first to enter the field with the talents of a fine 

 writer, and the habits of a philosophic inquirer. 



David Hume was born at Edinburgh, in April, 

 1711. He was the younger son of Mr. Hume of 

 Ninewells, in the county of Berwick, and related to 

 Earl Hume's, or Home's, family ; his mother was the 

 daughter of Sir David Falconer, Lord President, and 

 niece of Lord Halkerston, one of the Judges, of the Court 

 of Session. His father dying soon after his birth, his 

 guardians intended him for the bar ; but he tells us that 

 while " he was supposed to be poring over Voet and Vin- 

 ning, he was secretly devouring the pages of Cicero and 

 Virgil." He neglected Greek in his early years, and had 

 to make up for this deficiency, with some labour, in alter 

 life. 



The fortune of his father, to which his eldest bro- 

 ther Joseph succeeded, was inconsiderable ; and his own 

 portion being necessarily very small, it was deemed expe- 

 dient, as he refused to be a lawyer, that he should exert 

 himself in some other way to provide for his support. 

 He was therefore sent to a mercantile house at Bristol, 

 in 1734 ; but he found the drudgery of this employ- 

 ment intolerable, and he retired to Rheims, in the 

 north of France, determined, while he prosecuted his 

 favourite studies, to supply, by rigorous economy and 

 a life of abstinence, the want of fortune. From 

 Rheims he removed to La Fleche, in Anjou, and there 

 wrote his ' Treatise on Human Nature.' It was pub- 

 lished in 1737, and fell, as he says, still-born from the 



