I've been making my way through Hume's History of England. As I had previously read the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, I can definitely see where Hume was an influence on Gibbon. On the other hand, I can also see why Gibbon, and not Hume, is considered the first truly modern historian. Hume is sometimes careful to be skeptical of his sources, but I think not quite often enough. He appears to be much too trusting of Tudor propaganda about Richard III, for example, and to give a more general complaint while he sometimes questions the estimates of early sources about the size of armies, he does not do so consistently enough; it's generally safe to assume that they're always exaggerated.
His account of the English Civil War was also quite interesting. He seemed to have a very high opinion of Charles I, and his portrayal of Cromwell makes Cromwell seem like he would have been Napoleon if he'd only lived a little longer (and maybe been a little more charismatic). That is not the general impression I'd had of the era before, though I admit I hadn't studied it much. Of course, that is a period of time I knew Hume had a reputation for being biased about. I should really look up some other histories of that period at some point.
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