We have now followed the personal history of David Hume through nearly twenty years of authorship. We have seen him approach the tribunal of public opinion with the strongest internal assurance of success, and in a form so different from that of his predecessors, as a high reliance on his own powers could alone have prompted. Baffled in the first, and in the second, and in the third attempt, he still persevered; and while the coldness of each reception showed him that his last effort had proved a failure, it never extinguished the fire of literary ardour which he felt burning within him, or quenched the hope, that it would one day blaze forth before the world. It is only towards the termination of this long period of laborious authorship that we find the philosopher's early visions of intellectual greatness beginning to be fulfilled. At the period at which we have now arrived, his name was famous over Europe. It was a fame that, once spread abroad, was not soon to die; for those to whom his name was first made known in his new popular work, speedily discovered that, in his earliest neglected effort, he had laid the foundation of a still surer claim on their admiration, and justified the sagacity with which, in the pride and strength of youthful genius, he had thrown its first fruits before the world unaided and unadvised. The year 1756 seems to have been in a great measure devoted by Hume to the printing of the second volume of his History, to which the following letters to Millar refer. A great part of the correspondence with this sagacious publisher relates to minute business arrangements. It is presumed, that the reader may wish to see some specimens of the manner in which Hume transacted such matters, but that he will not care to have the whole of the arrangements between the author and publisher laid before him. A few specimens of the business part of the letters are accordingly selected, while those portions which have any general interest, literary, philosophical, or political, are given in full. The reader will see, perhaps, with some surprise, that he was very anxious to subject his style to the critical eye of Mallet. We shall hereafter have to disclose some curious features of his literary intercourse with this extraordinary person. HUME _to_ ANDREW MILLAR. "_Edinburgh, 22d September, 1756._ "Mr. Strahan, in a few days, will have finished the printing this volume; and I hope you will find leisure, before the hurry of winter, to peruse it, and to write me your remarks on it. I fancy you will publish about the middle of November. I must desire you to take the trouble of distributing a few copies to my friends in London, and of sending me a few copies here. The whole will be fifteen copies.