Anna Hume was the daughter of David Hume of Godscroft

David Hume of Godscroft

David Hume was a Scottish historian and political theorist, poet and controversialist, a major intellectual figure in Jacobean Scotland. He also spent a decade as pastor of a Protestant congregation in France.-Life:...

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Anna superintended the publication of her father's 'History of the House and Race of Douglas and Angus.' William Douglas, 11th Earl of Angus, and first marquis of Douglas, who was dissatisfied with Hume's work, consulted Drummond of Hawthornden. Drummond admitted various defects and extravagant views in Hume, adding, however, that the suppression of the book would ruin the gentlewoman, 'who hath ventured, she says, her whole fortune' on its publication.

For nearly two years the dispute delayed the publication of the work, which had been printed in 1644 by Evan Tyler, the king's printer. Tyler published in that year `The Triumphs of Love, Chastitie, Death: translated out of Petrarch by Mrs. Anna Hume.' A copy of this is in the British Museum

British Museum

The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...

, and there is a reprint in Bonn's translation of `Petrarch, by various Hands' (1859). The translation is, on the whole, faithful and spirited. The second half of the `Triumph of Love, Part iii.,' descriptive of the disappointed lover, and the bright account of the fair maids in the 'Triumph of Chastitie,' are admirably rendered. Mrs. Hume is also said to have translated her father's Latin poems; and Drummond of Hawthornden, acknowledging certain commendatory verses at her hand, writes to her as `the learned and worthy gentlewoman, Mrs. Anna Hume,' and declares himself unworthy of 'the blazon of so pregnant and rare a wit.'