HUME. 221 



received in England ; and the contempt with which he 

 treats the political writings of Locke and Sidney in his 

 concluding chapter is a sacrifice of his own taste as 

 well as of his reader's feelings to the prejudices of his 

 party. It must be added because great mistakes 

 have been committed in this matter that though the 

 whole work was written in too short a time to give an 

 opportunity for investigating the subject, yet the com- 

 position was exceedingly careful, and anything rather 

 than hasty. He is represented as having written with 

 such ease that he hardly ever corrected. Even Mr. 

 Stewart has fallen into the error ;* and Mr. Gibbon 

 commends as a thing admitted the "careless, inimi- 

 table beauties " of Hume's style. It was exactly the 

 reverse, of which evidence remains admitting of no 

 doubt and no appeal. The manuscript of his reign 

 before that of Henry VI., written after the c History 

 of the Stuarts and the Tudors,' is still extant, and bears 

 marks of composition anxiously laboured, words being 

 written and scored out, and even several times changed, 

 until he could find the expression to his mind. The 

 manuscript of his ' Dialogues ' also remains, and is 

 written in the same manner. Nay, his very letters 

 appear by this test to have been the result of care and 

 labour. The rnaxim of Quinctilian " Quseramus op- 

 timum, nee protinus offerentibus gaudeamus" seems 

 always to have been his rule as to words ; and his own 

 testimony to the same effect is to be found in a letter 

 which I have obtained. f Certainly it would have been 

 well if he had not adopted the opposite principle as to 



* Life of A. Smith. f See Appendix. 



