Hume’s Last Book Review? A New Attribution

Abstract:This essay argues for a new Hume attribution. It does so by pursuing an endnote—related to the Rev. Thomas Percy’s The Regulations and Establishment of the Household of Henry Algernon Percy, the Fifth Earl of Northumberland—that Hume added to the 1773 edition of his History of England. Establishing the contexts of Hume’s elaborate endnote—including his later revisions to it and his correspondence with Percy, Adam Smith, William Strahan, and others—leads us to an anonymous book review of Percy’s volume, published in Gilbert Stuart’s Edinburgh Magazine and Review. If the argument presented here is right, that review is Hume’s. Appearing in January 1774, it is also the last known book review that Hume published.