Note 14:2 — Chapter I

Virg. Georg. ii. 467 et seq.

In the course of the correspondence which follows, there will be found several quotations from the Latin classics. Hume's handwriting is so distinct, that we can seldom have any doubt of the individual letters written by him. At the same time, as he appears to have always quoted from memory, there is sometimes a greater difference than even that exhibited above, between the original and his version of it. I have thought, that were I to attempt to correct his quotations, I would be removing valuable data from which the reader may form an estimate of his mental powers and his education. It will perhaps be allowed, that in some instances he shows a fertile invention in substituting words for those which his memory has failed to retain; while in others, as in the above quotation, the fastidious critics of England will perhaps detect traces of the more slovenly classical education of Scotland. In his published works, Hume appears to have anxiously collated his quotations. But in his letters he seems to have been always more anxious about the judicious choice of his own expressions, than the accurate transcription of the words of others. His letters appear to have been carefully composed. He wrote in constant dread of falling into slovenly colloquialisms of style, and was not ashamed to leave on his letters the marks of this anxiety, in corrections and interlineations. This peculiarity must be admitted to be at variance with the received canon of the learned world, which excuses mistakes and clumsy expressions in the vernacular language of a writer, but has no mercy for irregularities in the use of the dead languages.