He led a
studious, systematic, and consistent life.
Although of good family,--being a descendant of the Earl of Home,--he was
in poor circumstances, and after some study of the law, and some
unsuccessful literary ventures, he was obliged to seek employment as a
means of livelihood. Thus he became tutor or keeper to the young Marquis
of Annandale, who was insane. Abandoning this position in disgust, he was
appointed secretary to General St. Clair in various embassies,--to Paris,
Vienna, and Turin; everywhere hoarding his pay, until he became
independent, "though," he says, "most of my friends were inclined to smile
when I said so; in short, I was master of a thousand pounds."
His earliest work was a _Treatise on Human Nature_, published in 1738,
which met with no success. Nothing discouraged thereat, in 1741 he issued
a volume of _Essays Moral and Political_, the success of which emboldened
him to publish, in 1748, his _Inquiry Concerning the Human Understanding_.
These and other works were preparing his pen for its greater task, the
material for which he was soon to find.
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