Contemporary and Historical Comments

The following lines were written by an Edinburgh student, in pencil, on the circular tomb in the Calton Burial-Ground, to the memory of David Hume, the celebrated idealist. Hume believed that there existed in the world nothing real whatever, but that all we beheld and felt was but an idea. The epitaph is somewhat satirical: -

"Beneath the circular idea,
Vulgarly called a tomb,
Ideas and impressions rest,
Which constituted Hume."

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