Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects. - 1770

London: for T. Cadell and A. Kincaid and A. Donaldson, at Edinburgh,, 1770. An attractive set of the collection that had its origin in the cheap, four-volume duodecimo edition of Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects assembled by Hume's publisher, Andrew Millar, first published in 1753, in which the Philosophical Essays and the Enquiry Concerning Morals were placed between the Essays, Moral and Political and the Political Discourses. Though Hume had not originally authorized the edition, he took charge of later changes to its contents, and the impact of printing his political and philosophical essays together finally brought him popular acclaim and commercial success. The contents of the present edition, the seventh, is based on the 1764 fourth edition, "except that in Essays Pt. I, no. 13, 'Of avarice', and the note on Walpole (originally 12 in 1742 ed.) are omitted, and 14 is re-entitled 'of the dignity or meanness of human nature'; and the longer notes are for the first time collected at the end of each volume and lettered" (Jessop). Four volumes, octavo (153 x 95 mm). Contemporary sprinkled calf, flat spines elaborately decorated in gilt, red morocco labels, green numbering roundels, marbled endpapers. Spines lightly rubbed, numbering labels missing, small chip to spine of volume II, headcaps and corners a little worn; still an attractive set. Chuo 9; ESTC T33491; Jessop, p. 6.