HAMISH RILEY-SMITH Rare Books and Manuscripts SWANTON ABBOT HALL, SWANTON ABBOT, NORFOLK, ENGLAND NR10 5DJ TEL: +44 (0) 7771 552509 E-MAIL: [email protected] WEB SITE: www.riley-smith.com

THE DAVID HUME AUTOGRAPH LETTERS TO WILLIAM MURE with a contemporary copy of a letter to the Rev John Home

William Mure of Caldwell David Hume

1

HAMISH RILEY-SMITH Rare Books and Manuscripts SWANTON ABBOT HALL, SWANTON ABBOT, NORFOLK, ENGLAND NR10 5DJ TEL: +44 (0) 7771 552509 E-MAIL: [email protected] WEB SITE: www.riley-smith.com

The Baron was the oldest and best friend I had in the World. [David Hume to John Home April 12th 1776]

David Hume (1711-1776) is regarded by many as the greatest philosopher to write in English and one of the greatest and most influential philosophers of the western world. He is best known for his views on causation, and the nature of morality. In 1739 and 1740 his most famous philosophical work A Treatise of Human Nature was published anonymously proposing ‘a complete system of the sciences built on a foundation almost entirely new’. In 1741 and 1742 Hume published two more volumes entitled Essays, Moral and Political. In 1748 Philosophical Essays concerning human understanding was a revision of his Treatise. His Political Discourses of 1752 are essays on political and economic subjects. Between 1754 and 1762 his six volume History of England established itself as a classic in its field and brought Hume financial security.

2

HAMISH RILEY-SMITH Rare Books and Manuscripts SWANTON ABBOT HALL, SWANTON ABBOT, NORFOLK, ENGLAND NR10 5DJ TEL: +44 (0) 7771 552509 E-MAIL: [email protected] WEB SITE: www.riley-smith.com

William Mure of Caldwell [1718-1776], M.P. for Renfrewshire, 1742-1761, Baron of the Scottish Exchequer 1761-1776, Lord Rector of Glasgow University 1764-1765, was educated at home by Rev William Leechman, and later studied law at Edinburgh and Leiden. He married Catherine Graham (died 1820), the daughter of Lord Easdale. His friends included Sir Thomas Miller, Sir Gilbert Elliot, Earl of Minto, his first cousin Sir James Steuart the political economist, David Hume, James Oswald, Earl of Glasgow, James Duke of Hamilton, and the Prime Minister and statesman the Earl of Bute. He helped Bute with the management of his estates and became a close friend and adviser and one of the most influential men in . Mure was one of the guardians of the Duke of Hamilton’s children on the death of the Duke in 1758 and this responsibility devolved upon him during the period of the great Douglas cause.

“But the most remarkable of Mr Mure’s intimate associates was David Hume...being the oldest and dearest private friend of that remarkable personage... “the compiler has also had access to a document which places the relations between the two in a still clearer light, and in its self of some curiosity. It is a letter addressed to John Home, the author of Douglas, shortly after the Baron’s death, and while the writer himself was labouring under the incurable disease which carried him off a few months afterwards...[no.7 in this collection] “The friendship between the historian and the Baron extended to Mrs Mure...Mrs Mure’s correspondence, comprising letters...from Hume...were unfortunately destroyed immediately after her death...also probably contained some of Hume’s letters to her husband, only a small portion of which have been preserved. The originals of eight...are now in the possession of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, having been made over by the compiler’s father...and bequeathed by the latter to the Society...” [Greig nos.18,20,22,24,102,128,510, Klibansky 6] Caldwell Papers.

Greig, the editor, in his introduction to The Letters of David Hume has written: “The letters...reveal most sides of David Hume the man – his precocity of intellect, his independent spirit, his kindliness of heart, his love of fun,...his pleasant vanities, the laziness that grew upon him after 1759, his readiness to think too highly of his friends and any books they happened to produce, his admiration for the French, his prejudice against the Churches, all ‘enthusiasts’, the Whigs, and Englishmen, his general but not unbroken equanimity of temper, and his fine common sense.”

This is reflected in the six surviving letters from David Hume to William Mure, that have been passed down through the Mure family, and have never before been for sale. They are here

3

HAMISH RILEY-SMITH Rare Books and Manuscripts SWANTON ABBOT HALL, SWANTON ABBOT, NORFOLK, ENGLAND NR10 5DJ TEL: +44 (0) 7771 552509 E-MAIL: [email protected] WEB SITE: www.riley-smith.com described, together with the only surviving record of a letter Hume wrote to his friend the Rev John Home about the death of William Mure. The location of the original is assumed lost. Eight letters to William Mure are preserved in the National Library of Scotland [they had been gifted to the Royal Society of Edinburgh by William Mure’s eldest son after his father’s death]. The NLS also has a copy only of another, presumed lost, letter. In addition there are a further four letters whose location are unknown. All the known letters to William Mure are detailed in the census below.

FOR DETAILS AND IMAGES AND TRANSCRIPTS CONTACT US.

4