ABSTRACT
David Hume had not long settled in his new home when he experienced, with unconcealed delight, the first stirring of his creative powers, a moment for which he had waited so long as almost to have despaired of its arrival. After the publication of the Treatise of Human Nature, Hume produced a number of shorter works which were later assembled under the title of Essays Moral and Political. An application for a Professorship at Edinburgh was unsuccessful. Being in need of employment, he obtained in 1745 the lucrative but otherwise not very satisfactory position of tutor in the family of the Marquis of Annandale. In the course of his travels abroad, as well as in his own country, Hume had developed an interest in public affairs. Being hardly at all adulterated by motives of ambition, this interest was on the whole sincere.
