Note 424:1 — Chapter IX

There is an amusing traditional anecdote, with which this periodical has some connexion. Dr. Walter Anderson, minister of Chirnside, having caught the fire of literary ambition, made the remark to Hume, one afternoon when they had been enjoying the hospitalities of Ninewells: "Mr. David, I daresay other people might write books too; but you clever fellows have taken up all the good subjects. When I look about me, I cannot find one unoccupied."—"What would you think, Mr. Anderson," said Hume, in reply, "of a History of Crœsus, king of Lydia? This has never yet been written." Dr. Anderson was a man who understood no jesting, and held no words as uttered in vain; so away he goes, pulls down his Herodotus, and translates all the passages in the first book relating to Crœsus, with all the consultations of the oracles, and all the dreams; only interweaving with them, from his own particular genius, some very sage and lengthy remarks on the extent to which there was real truth in the prophetic revelations of the Pythoness. This book, which is now a great rarity, was reviewed with much gravity and kindness in The Edinburgh Review. It was more severely treated in The Critical Review, edited by Smollett, where it is said, "There is still a race of soothsayers in the Highlands, derived, if we may believe some curious antiquaries, from the Druids and Bards that were set apart for the worship of Apollo. The author of the History before us may, for aught we know, be one of these venerable seers, though we rather take him to be a Presbyterian teacher, who has been used to expound apothegms that need no explanation."