ject was suited to every capacity, I
expected proportional applause. But miserable was my disappointment!
All classes of men and readers united in their rage against him who
had presumed to shed a generous tear for the fate of Charles I. and
the Earl of Strafford." "What was still more mortifying, the book
seemed to sink into oblivion, and in a twelvemonth not more than
forty-five copies were sold."

Even Hume, a stoic hitherto in his literary character, was struck
down, and dismayed--he lost all courage to proceed--and, had the war
not prevented him, "he had resolved to change his name, and never more
to have returned to his native country."

But an author, though born to suffer martyrdom, does not always
expire; he may be flayed like St. Bartholomew, and yet he can breathe
without a skin; stoned, like St. Stephen, and yet write on with a
broken head; and he has been even known to survive the flames,
notwithstanding the most precious part of an author, which is
obviously his book, has been burnt in an _auto da fe_. Hume once
more tried the press in "The Natural History of Religion." It proved
but another martyrdom! Still was the _fall_ (as he terms it) of
the first volume of his History haunting his nervous imagination,
when he found himself yet strong enough to hold a pen in his hand,
and ventured to produce a second, which "helped to buoy up its
unfortunate brother." But the third part, containing the reign of
Elizabeth, was particularly obnoxious, and he was doubtful whether he
was again to be led to the stake. But Hume, a little hardened by a
little success, grew, to use his own words, "callous against the
impressions of public folly," and completed his History, which was
now received "with tolerable, and but tolerable, success."

At length, in the sixty-fifth year of his age, our author began, a
year or two before he died, as he writes, to see "many _symptoms_ of
my literary reputation breaking out _at last_ with additional lustre,
though I know that I can have but few years to enjoy it." What a
provoking consolation for a philosopher, who, according to the result
of his own system, was close upon a state of annihilation!

To Hume, let us add the illustrious name of DRYDEN.

It was after preparing a second edition of Virgil, that the great
Dryden, who had lived, and was to die in harness, found himself still
obliged to seek for daily bread. Scarcely relieved from one heavy
task, he was compelled to hasten to