r at this age, than fathers and mothers, busy with the cares of
practical life, are apt to imagine.

About a year later, Hume's family tried to launch him into the
profession of the law; but, as he tells us, "while they fancied I was
poring upon Voet and Vinnius, Cicero and Virgil were the authors which I
was secretly devouring," and the attempt seems to have come to an abrupt
termination. Nevertheless, as a very competent authority[2] wisely
remarks:--

"There appear to have been in Hume all the elements of which a good
lawyer is made: clearness of judgment, power of rapidly acquiring
knowledge, untiring industry, and dialectic skill: and if his mind
had not been preoccupied, he might have fallen into the gulf in
which many of the world's greatest geniuses lie
buried--professional eminence; and might have left behind him a
reputation limited to the traditional recollections of the
Parliament house, or associated with important decisions. He was
through life an able, clear-headed, man of business, and I have
seen several legal documents, written in his own hand and evidently
drawn by himself. They stand the test of general professional
observation; and their writer, by preparing documents of facts of
such a character on his own responsibility, showed that he had
considerable confidence in his ability to adhere to the forms
adequate for the occasion. He talked of it as 'an ancient prejudice
industriously propagated by the dunces in all countries, that _a
man of genius is unfit for business_,' and he showed, in his
general conduct through life, that he did not choose to come
voluntarily under this proscription."

Six years longer Hume remained at Ninewells before he made another
attempt to embark in a practical career--this time commerce--and with a
like result. For a few months' trial proved that kind of life, also, to
be hopelessly against the grain.

It was while in London, on his way to Bristol, where he proposed to
commence his mercantile life, that Hume addressed to some eminent London
physician (probably, as Mr. Burton suggests, Dr. George Cheyne) a
remarkable letter. Whether it was ever sent seems doubtful; but it shows
that philosophers as well as poets have their Werterian crises, and it
presents an interesting parallel to John Stuart Mill's record of the
corresponding period of his youth. The letter is too long to