io Apophthegms, Sentiments
mezzotinto by Doughty, is extremely like him ; there is in it that appearance of a labouring working mind, of an indolent reposing body, which he had to a very great degree. Beauclerk wrote under his picture,
l ingenium ingens
Inculto habet hoc sub corpore*.'
Indeed, the common operations of dressing, shaving, &c., were a toil to him ; he held the care of the body very cheap 2 . He used to say, that a man who rode out for an appetite consulted but little the dignity of human nature.
He was much pleased with an Italian improvvisatore, whom he saw at Streatham, and with whom he talked much in Latin. He told him, if he had not been a witness to his faculty himself, he should not have thought it possible. He said, Isaac Hawkins Browne 3 had endeavoured at it in English, but could not get beyond thirty verses.
When a Scotsman was one day talking to him of the great writers of that country that were then existing, he said : * We have taught that nation to write 4 , and do they pretend to be our teachers ? let me hear no more of the tinsel of Robertson, and the foppery of Dalrymple V He said, Hume has taken his style from Voltaire 6 . He would never hear Hume mentioned with any temper: 'A man,' said he, 'who endeavoured to persuade his friend who had the stone to shoot himself 7 .'
��1 Ante, i. 458; Life, iv. 180. rymple.' Life, ii. 236.
2 Ante, i. 241 ; Life, i. 396 ; ii. 406. 6 'When I talked of our advance-
3 Ante, i. 266. ment in literature, " Sir, (said he,)
4 Dr. Beattie wrote on Jan. 5, you have learnt a little from us, and 1778: 'We who live in Scotland you think yourselves very great men. are obliged to study English from Hume would never have written books, like a dead language, which History, had not Voltaire written it we understand, but cannot speak.' before him. He is an echo of Vol- He adds : ' I have spent some years taire." ' Ib. ii. 53.
in labouring to acquire the art of Wordsworth said : 'the Scotch hi s-
giving a vernacular cast to the Eng- torians did infinite mischief to style,
lish we write.' Forbes's Beattie, with the exception of Smollett, who
P- 243. wrote good pure English.' Words-
5 * Doubtless Goldsmith's His- worth's Life, ii. 459. See Life, i. 439, tory is better than the verbiage of for Hume's style.
Robertson or the foppery of Dal- 7 Seven years after Hume's death
Upon
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