Immediately after Hume's death, there appeared in _The London Review_, the following account of the manner in which he had acknowledged the article in _The Works of the Learned_: "It does not appear our author had acquired, at this period of his life, that command over his passions of which he afterwards makes his boast. His disappointment at the public reception of his 'Essay on Human Nature,' had, indeed, a violent effect on his passions in a particular instance; it not having dropped so dead born from the press but that it was severely handled by the reviewers of those times, in a publication entitled _The Works of the Learned_. A circumstance this which so highly provoked our young philosopher, that he flew in a violent rage to demand satisfaction of Jacob Robinson, the publisher, whom he kept, during the paroxysm of his anger, at his sword's point, trembling behind the counter lest a period should be put to the life of a sober critic by a raving philosopher."[110:1] This statement is in a note to a Review of Hume's "own life," and it has after it the letters "Rev." which serve to give it the attestation of William Shakespeare Kenrick, the editor of _The London Review_, and a man whose sole title to literary remembrance rests on the hardy effrontery and deadly spite of his falsehoods. There is nothing in the story to make it in itself incredible--for Hume was far from being that docile mass of imperturbability, which so large a portion of the world have taken him for. But the anecdote requires authentication; and has it not. Moreover, there are circumstances strongly against its truth. Hume was in Scotland at the time when the criticism on his work was published: he did not visit London for some years afterwards; and, to believe the story, we must look upon it not as a momentary ebullition of passion, but as a manifestation of long-treasured resentment,--a circumstance inconsistent with his character, inconsistent with human nature in general, and not in keeping with the modified tone of dissatisfaction with the criticism, evinced in his correspondence.