David Hume
1740s

After the publication of Essays Moral and Political in 1741 — included in the later edition as Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary — Hume applied for the Chair of Pneumatics and Moral Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. However, the position was given to William Cleghorn after Edinburgh ministers petitioned the town council not to appoint Hume because he was seen as an atheist.

In 1745, during the Jacobite risings, Hume tutored the Marquess of Annandale, an engagement that ended in disarray after about a year. The Marquess could not follow with Hume's lectures, his father saw little need for philosophy, and on a personal level, the Marquess found Hume's dietary tendencies to be bizarre. Hume then started his great historical work, The History of England, which took fifteen years and ran to over a million words. During this time, he was also involved with the Canongate Theatre through his friend John Home, a preacher.

In this context, he associated with Lord Monboddo and other thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment in Edinburgh. From 1746, Hume served for three years as secretary to General James St Clair, who was envoy to the courts of Turin and Vienna. At that time Hume wrote Philosophical Essays Concerning Human Understanding, later published as An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Often called the First Enquiry, it proved little more successful than the Treatise, perhaps because of the publication of his short autobiography My Own Life, which "made friends difficult for the first Enquiry". By the end of this period Hume had attained his well-known corpulent stature; "the good table of the General and the prolonged inactive life had done their work", leaving him "a man of tremendous bulk".

In 1749 he went to live with his brother in the countryside, although he continued to associate with the aforementioned Scottish Enlightenment figures.
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