But while it does not follow that the one occupation is less dignified than the other, it is pretty clear that they cannot, to any great extent, be both followed by the same person. The limits of human capacity, and the shortness of human life, seem to forbid such an union; for literature has produced no one who unites the qualities of a Camden, a Mabillon, and a Montfouçon, with those of a Hume and a Montesquieu, though Gibbon and Niebuhr have perhaps come nearest to the union. Mr. D'Israeli says, (Curiosities of Literature, ii. 182,) "The time has perhaps arrived, when antiquaries may begin to be philosophers, and philosophers antiquaries. The unhappy separation of erudition from philosophy, and of philosophy from erudition, has hitherto thrown impediments in the progress of the human mind, and the history of man." But unless that author has himself achieved the united title, by showing that James I. was a man of great mind, and by characterizing political economy as a mere "confusion of words," the combination appears not to have yet been accomplished; and indeed the simple physical impossibility of the same person who brings the fabric to perfection, having time to produce the raw materials, seems to render it necessary that in all such histories as that which Hume undertook, the antiquary shall precede the historian.
[129:1] It does not appear that even the surreptitious fragments of Voltaire's work were printed earlier than the year in which the first volume of the "History of the Stuarts" was published--1754. In the Essai, Voltaire thus contrasts Hume's sagacity as an historian with the propagators of monkish legends. "Les moines Frédegaire et Aimoin le disent: mais ces moines, sont-ils des De Thou et des Humes?" Edit. 1785, vol. i. p. 235.
[133:1] It must be observed, that this method of referring to authorities and collating them, is, even by Hume's account of it, one which a scrupulous investigator would call slovenly. The admission of any authorities at second hand is, to the extent to which it may be carried, a breach of the historian's duty. To make sure that he had rightly estimated their meaning on a first perusal, he should have collated all his references in proof.