David's Street." Hume's
servant complained to her master, who replied, "Never mind, lassie, many
a better man has been made a saint of before," and the street retains
its title to this day.
In the following six years, the house in St. David's Street was the
centre of the accomplished and refined society which then distinguished
Edinburgh. Adam Smith, Blair, and Ferguson were within easy reach; and
what remains of Hume's correspondence with Sir Gilbert Elliot, Colonel
Edmonstone, and Mrs. Cockburn gives pleasant glimpses of his social
surroundings, and enables us to understand his contentment with his
absence from the more perturbed, if more brilliant, worlds of Paris and
London.
Towards London, Londoners, and indeed Englishmen in general, Hume
entertained a dislike, mingled with contempt, which was as nearly
rancorous as any emotion of his could be. During his residence in Paris,
in 1764 and 1765, he writes to Blair:--
"The taste for literature is neither decayed nor depraved here, as
with the barbarians who inhabit the banks of the Thames."
And he speaks of the "general regard paid to genius and learning" in
France as one of the points in which it most differs from England. Ten
years later, he cannot even thank Gibbon for his History without the
left-handed compliment, that he should never have expected such an
excellent work from the pen of an Englishman. Early in 1765, Hume writes
to Millar:--
"The rage and prejudice of parties frighten me, and above all, this
rage against the Scots, which is so dishonourable, and indeed so
infamous, to the English nation.
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