"Indeed, the prospect of affairs here is so strange and melancholy, as would make any one desirous of withdrawing from the country at any rate. Licentiousness, or rather the frenzy of liberty, has taken possession of us, and is throwing every thing into confusion. How happy do I esteem it, that in all my writings I have always kept at a proper distance from that tempting extreme, and have maintained a due regard to magistracy and established government, suitably to the character of an historian and a philosopher! I find, on that account, my authority growing daily; and indeed have now no reason to complain of the public, though your partiality to me made you think so formerly. Add to this, that the king's bounty puts me in a very opulent situation. I must, however, expect that, if any great public convulsion happen, my appointments will cease, and reduce me to my own revenue: but this will be sufficient for a man of letters, who surely needs less money both for his entertainment and credit, than other people."--_Private Correspondence_, p. 266.
Alterations of the History in the direction of Despotic Principles--Specimens--Alterations in Style--Specimens--His Elaboration--Ossian's Poems--Labours at the early part of the History--Ferguson's "Sister Peg"--Acquaintance with Madame de Boufflers--Account of that lady--First intercourse with Rousseau--Rousseau's position--The exiled Earl Marishal-- Campbell and his Dissertation on Miracles.
We have seen, from various indications in Hume's letters to his friends, that he employed himself occasionally in corrections and alterations of the published volumes of his History. In these revisals, and especially in that of the "History of the Stuarts," his alterations were not limited to the style. He tells us, with a sort of scornful candour, in his "own life," "Though I had been taught by experience that the Whig party were in possession of bestowing all places, both in the state and in literature, I was so little inclined to yield to their senseless clamour, that in above a hundred alterations which farther study, reading, or reflection engaged me to make in the reigns of the two first Stuarts, I have made all of them invariably to the Tory side. It is ridiculous to consider the English constitution, before that period, as a regular plan of liberty."
