Jump to content

Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 28.djvu/219

From Wikisource
This page has been validated.
Hume
213
Hume

was shot by bushrangers at Gunning, New South Wales, in January 1840.

[Gent. Mag. April 1850, pp.434-6; Labillière's Hist. of Victoria, 1878, i. 188-232; Sturt's Two Expeditions into Interior of Southern Australia, 1833, pp. 5-150; Bonwick's Port Phillip Settlement, 1883, pp. 80-93, with portrait; Heaton's Australian Dict. of Dates, 1879, p. 98; Lang's New South Wales, 1875, i. 164, 182-4 ,233, 237; Proc. Roy. Geogr. Soc. 22 June 1874, pp. 532-3.]


HUME, ANNA (fl. 1644), daughter of David Hume of Godscroft (1560?–1630?) [q. v.], superintended the publication of her father's 'History of the House and Race of Douglas and Angus.' William Douglas, eleventh earl of Angus, and first marquis of Douglas [q. v.], who was dissatisfied with Hume's work, consulted Drummond of Hawthornden. Drummond admitted various defects and extravagant views in Hume, adding, however, that the suppression of the book would ruin the gentlewoman, 'who hath ventured, she says, her whole fortune' on its publication (Arch. Scot. iv. 95). For nearly two years the dispute delayed the publication of the work, which had been printed in 1644 by Evan Tyler, the king's printer. Tyler published in that year 'The Triumphs of Love, Chastitie, Death: translated out of Petrarch by Mrs. Anna Hume.' A copy of this is in the British Museum, and there is a reprint in Bonn's translation of 'Petrarch, by various Hands' (1859). The translation is, on the whole, faithful and spirited. The second half of the 'Triumph of Love, Part iii.,' descriptive of the disappointed lover, and the bright account of the fair maids in the 'Triumph of Chastitie,' are admirably rendered. Mrs. Hume is also said to have translated her father's Latin poems; and Drummond of Hawthornden, acknowledging certain commendatory verses at her hand, writes to her as 'the learned and worthy gentlewoman, Mrs. Anna Hume,' and declares himself unworthy of 'the blazon of so pregnant and rare a wit.'

[Introduction to De Familia Humia Wedderburnensi Liber, cura Davidis Humii, published by the Abbotsford Club in 1839; Masson's Drummond of Hawthornden; Irving's Scotish Poetry; Add. MS. 24488, pp. 412-13.]


HUME, DAVID (1560?–1630?), controversialist, historian, and poet, born about 1560, was the second son of Sir David Hume or Home, seventh baron of Wedderburn, Berwickshire. Receiving preliminary training at Dunbar public school, he seems to have entered St. Andrews University in 1578, and after a course of study there to have gone to the continent. From France he proceeded to Geneva, intending to go to Italy, but he was recalled by the serious illness of his elder brother. He returned about 1581. On the recovery of his brother, Hume for a time continued to manage his affairs, but in 1583 he was residing as private secretary with his relative, Archibald Douglas, eighth earl of Angus [q.v.], who was ordered, after James withdrew his confidence from the Ruthven lords, to remain in the north of Scotland. During the exile of the Ruthven party at Newcastle, Hume was in London, ostensibly studying, but actively interesting himself in Angus and his cause. The lords returned to Scotland in 1585, and between that date and 1588, when Angus died, Hume supported his patron's policy in a series of letters (preserved in the ‘History of the Houses of Douglas and Angus’) on the doctrine of obedience to princes. A discussion of a sermon on the same theme by the Rev. John Craig (1512?–1600) [q. v.] is the subject of an elaborate ‘Conference betwixt the Erle of Angus and Mr. David Hume,’ which is printed in Calderwood's ‘History of the Kirk of Scotland.’ He was probably in France again in 1593. According to the ‘True Travels’ of Captain John Smith, governor of Virginia (chap. i.), Smith about that year grew ‘acquainted (at Paris) with one Master David Hume, who, making some use of Smith's purse, gave Smith letters to his friends in Scotland to preferre him to King James.’ His authorship of French tracts and the publication of his Latin works at Paris imply that he maintained close relations with France.

In middle life Hume seems to have devoted himself to literature on his property of Gowkscroft in Berwickshire, which he renamed Godscroft, and thence styled himself Theagrius when he figured as a Latin poet. In 1605 a work on the union of the kingdoms, by Robert Pont, a clergyman, suggested his treatise, ‘De Unione Insulæ Britanniæ.’ Of this he published only the first part, ‘Tractatus I.’ (London, 1605), but the second part is in the collections of Sibbald and Wodrow. Akin to the question of union was that of the relative values of episcopacy and presbytery, and Hume showed himself a spirited and persistent polemic in discussing the theme, first with Law, bishop of Orkney (afterwards archbishop of Glasgow), from 1608 to 1611, and secondly, in 1613, with Cowper, bishop of Galloway (Calderwood, History of the Kirk of Scotland, vols. vi. and vii., Wodrow Society's ed.) He was also responsible about the same time for ‘De Episcopatu, May 1, 1609, Patricio Simsono.’

His sense of the historical importance of his house led to Hume's ‘History of the