I have ventured to call this the Sceptical Age.  It had other characteristics:  this was one.  We use the word sceptical in its etymological sense:  it was an age of inquiry, of doubt to be resolved.  Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau, D’Alembert, and Diderot had founded a new school of universal inquiry, and from their bold investigations and startling theories sprang the society of the illuminati, and the race of thinkers.  They went too far:  they stabbed the truth as it lay in the grasp of error.  From thinkers they became free-thinkers:  from philosophers they became infidels, and some of them atheists.  This was the age which produced “the triumvirate of British historians who,” in the words of Montgomery, “exemplified in their very dissimilar styles the triple contrast of simplicity, elegance, and splendor.”

Imbued with this spirit of the time, Hume undertook to write a History of England, which, with all its errors and faults, still ranks among the best efforts of English historians.  Like the French philosophers, Hume was an infidel, and his scepticism appears in his writings; but, unlike them—­for they were stanch reformers in government as well as infidels in faith—­he who was an infidel was also an aristocrat in sentiment, and a consistent Tory his life long.  In his history, with all the artifices of a philosopher, he takes the Jacobite side in the civil war.

HUME.—­David Hume was born in Edinburgh on the 26th of April (O.S.), 1711.  His life was without many vicissitudes of interest, but his efforts to achieve an enduring reputation on the most solid grounds, mark him as a notable example of patient industry, study, and economy.  He led a studious, systematic, and consistent life.

Although of good family,—­being a descendant of the Earl of Home,—­he was in poor circumstances, and after some study of the law, and some unsuccessful literary ventures, he was obliged to seek employment as a means of livelihood.  Thus he became tutor or keeper to the young Marquis of Annandale, who was insane.  Abandoning this position in disgust, he was appointed secretary to General St. Clair in various embassies,—­to Paris, Vienna, and Turin; everywhere hoarding his pay, until he became independent, “though,” he says, “most of my friends were inclined to smile when I said so; in short, I was master of a thousand pounds.”

His earliest work was a Treatise on Human Nature, published in 1738, which met with no success.  Nothing discouraged thereat, in 1741 he issued a volume of Essays Moral and Political, the success of which emboldened him to publish, in 1748, his Inquiry Concerning the Human Understanding.  These and other works were preparing his pen for its greater task, the material for which he was soon to find.

In 1752 he was appointed librarian to the Faculty of Advocates, not for the emolument, but with the real purpose of having entire control of the books and material in the library; and then he determined to write the History of England.