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.
In 1752 he was appointed librarian to the Faculty of Advocates, not for the emolument, but with the real purpose of having entire control of the books and material in the library; and then he determined to write the _History of England_.
HISTORY OF ENGLAND.--He began with the accession of the Stuarts, in 1603, the period when the popular element, so long kept tranquil by the power and sex of Queen Elizabeth, was ready first to break out into open assertion. Hume's self-deception must have been rudely discovered to him; for he tells us, in an autobiography fortunately preserved, that he expected so dispassionately to steer clear of all existent parties, or, rather, to be so just to all, that he should gain universal approbation. "Miserable," he adds, "was my disappointment. I was assailed by one cry of reproach, disapprobation, and even detestation. English, Scotch, Irish, Whig and Tory, churchman and sectary, free-thinker and religionist, patriot and courtier, united, in their rage, against the man who had presumed to shed a generous tear for the fate of Charles I. and the Earl of Strafford." How far, too, this was ignorant invective, may be judged from the fact that in twelve months only forty-five copies of his work were sold.
However, he patiently continued his labor. The first volume, containing the reigns of James I. and Charles I, had been issued in 1754; his second, published in 1756, and containing the later history of the Commonwealth, of Charles II., and James II., and concluding with the revolution of 1688, was received with more favor, and "helped to buoy up its unfortunate brother." Then he worked backward: in 1759 he produced the reigns of the house of Tudor; and in 1761, the earlier history, completing his work, from the earliest times to 1688. The tide had now turned in his favor; the sales were large, and his pecuniary rewards greater than any historian had yet received.