26 HUME I 



enough to form true ones, or correct any prejudices that they 

 may have imbibed. And it is among the middling rank of 

 people that Tory principles do at present prevail most in 

 England." (III. 80, note.} 



Considering that the Jacobite rebellion of 1745 

 broke out only four years after this essay was 

 published, the assertion that the Jacobite party 

 had "almost entirely vanished in 1741 " sounds 

 strange enough : and the passage which contains 

 it is omitted in the third edition of the " Essays," 

 published in 1748. Nevertheless, Hume was 

 probably right, as the outbreak of '45 was little 

 better than a Highland raid, and the Pretender 

 obtained no important following in the Lowlands. 



No less curious, in comparison with what would 

 be said nowadays, is Hume's remark in the essay 

 on the " Rise of the Arts and Sciences " that 



"The English are become sensible of the scandalous licen- 

 tiousness of their stage from the example of the French decency 

 and morals." (III. 135.) 



And it is perhaps as surprising to be told, by a 

 man of Hume's literary power, that the first polite 

 prose in the English language was written by 

 Swift. Locke and Temple (with whom Sprat is 

 astoundingly conjoined) "knew too little of the 

 rules of art to be esteemed elegant writers," and 

 the prose of Bacon, Harrington, and Milton is 

 "altogether stiff and pedantic." Hobbes, who 

 whether he should be called a " polite " writer or 



