Transcriber’s Note:
The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
MARY TUDOR, QUEEN OF ENGLAND AND SPAIN.
After a Painting by Sir Antonio More.
Queens
of
Old Spain
TO THE SEVERE BUT HONEST PUBLIC
The books left by a man whose every thought wasabout books, are even more himself than were hisactions during life. In fact, at times, I think it isthe case with all who write; for, after all, what aman writes is really far more important than anythinghe does.
Most of us in wandering through a churchyardwhere we come upon a friend’s name, on a tombstone,feel a spirit of revolt. It is no good to tellus death is as natural as life. We all know that, andstill feel that in some strange way we have beendefrauded by the death of a dear friend. Nothingis more unjust than is a natural cause.
Even the Greeks, with all their joyousness, musthave felt this when they invented Nemesis.
We Caledonians, who took our faith from Hippo(nane o’ yer Peters, gie me Paul), perhaps stand upagainst the stabs of Fate better than those nurturedin the most damnable doctrine of freewill. Onceallow it, and life becomes a drunken whirligig onwhich sit grave and reverend citizens playing onpenny whistles, all attired in black.
If though the name upon the tombstone strikes achill to the heart, half of regret and half of fear—forwhat, when all is said and done, is your mementomori but blue funk?—when we pick up a dead friend’sbook upon a stall, published at twelve-and-sixpenceand ticketed a penny, we must reflect—that is, thevimost of us—that to that favour we shall come, andall the pages, that cost us so much thought in thewriting, to be tied together with a piece of stringand sold with the base trash of Smith and Jones andBrown, fellows who had no style, nor knew the differencebetwixt invention and imagination, humouror wit, and did not know a colophon from an illuminatedcapital, and sold all in a lot.
Therefore I am glad that this edition of one ofHume’s best works is coming out, and I who sawhim laid to rest in the dry, marly earth of that drearEast End cemetery only a year ago—or was it ten,for when a man is dead time ceases for him and forourselves in thinking of him—am writing these fewlines to do my best to keep his memory