Customer Reviews

History of England: Volume VI, The (History of England, The)

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This is only Vol 1 and its appendices. And no, you can't tell that from the sample. Amazon needs to apply some discipline to the descriptions and metadata on re-publications of old multivolume public domain works. We shouldn't have to buy a pig-in-a-poke. It happens much too frequently.

This is a review of the Liberty Press edition, which is properly typeset and should be distinguished from the numerous print-on-demand versions currently (2011) advertised.

This is the fifth of six volumes of Hume's History of England, though it was the first published, as it is the first of the two volumes of the History of the Stuarts that was the first part to be completed. The first edition contained a remark summarising the theme as opposition to 'superstition and fanaticism', by which Hume meant Anglo-Catholicism and Puritanism. He was persuaded to remove this from later editions, but it summarises his 'plague on both their houses' approach to the conflict between King and Parliament of which the English Civil War and 'Glorious Revolution' are the best known parts. The Whig reply was John Millar's Historical View of the English Government.

The book also has chapters on the development of literature and trade and is almost Shakespearian in the variety of characters who pass before us on the stage of Hume's imagination. Some argue that Hume's sympathies are too secular to do justice to such a religious epoch, but one certainly learns a lot on the way from his even-handedness. For example, I admired the Quaker's greeting the King as 'Friend Charles'. One point to bear in mind is that volumes five and six are a single story, so even if you start here you are in for a long, though rewarding read. The concluding History Of England Vol 6 ends the series with a hymn of praise to Butler's Hudibras, a poem of classic 17th century Anglican sensibility.

The Liberty Press edition is part of a series of cheap, good quality American reprints of out of copyright classics from the 'Scottish Enlightenment'. I'd recommend that if you're interested in the time or place, or in David Hume himself, you take advantage of it.

With a Kindle book you can't tell from the sample if it includes the whole work. The free ones just happen to leave out James I(Chapters XLV-XLIX and appendix for James 1)! Project Gutenberg forgot it too. So, I am looking for a Kindle Edition that has this included. I give it a one star because the product review doesn't tell you, and the sample doesn't have a Table of Contents!

The best work I've seen on the subject yet. A must read.