David Hume

David Hume was born in Edinburgh in 1711 into a family of minor gentry and entered the University of Edinburgh at twelve. His family wanted him to study law, but he cared only for philosophy and letters, and at eighteen he broke down from overwork. At twenty-three he went to France for three years and wrote A Treatise of Human Nature, which on publication 'fell dead-born from the press', almost unnoticed. Twice he applied for a university chair and twice was refused as an atheist; he later served as a librarian, as secretary to a general and to the embassy in Paris, and won fame and fortune with his six-volume History of England. Mild and cheerful, he was known in the Paris salons as 'le bon David', and he faced death with a calm that astonished his visitors.