236 HUME. 



disposition into those controversies which are most 

 apt to ruffle or to sour the temper ; and even under 

 disappointments which would have embittered the 

 existence of most men, and disheartened almost all, 

 neither losing his general good will towards others, 

 nor suffering himself to be cast down. The party 

 violence and delusions to which the failure of his 

 ' History' was in part owing, he often has exposed, 

 but certainly in no other terms than he would have 

 used had his work succeeded : for he employed the 

 same language in writing the portion first published 

 at a time when he made sure of its success ; and he 

 never afterwards troubled himself with doing more 

 than uttering a good-humoured exclamation, or, per- 

 haps, passing a joke at the expense of those who make 

 themselves the tools of others by being the slaves to 

 their own factious prejudices or propensities. But the re- 

 ception of the < History' was not his only disappoint- 

 ment, though it was the most severe. It would not be 

 easy to find any instance of conduct more truly worthy 

 of a philosopher than his bearing up against the repeated 

 failures of the works he most esteemed, and the 

 mortifying neglect which at first all his writings ex- 

 perienced, with but one exception. He looked steadily 

 forward, with a confidence truly surprising and amply 

 justified by the event, to the time when, probably after 

 his course was run, his fame would shine out with 

 surpassing lustre. Even in his latter hours, when he 

 had, in some measure, seen the failure of the injustice 

 under which he originally suffered, he retained a 

 confident belief that his renown had not yet nearly 

 reached its highest pitch ; and that most admirable 



