This article alleges that two letters attributed to the philosopher David Hume (1711–1776) were forged in the twentieth century. The letters were first published in 1972 and 1973 by Michael Morrisroe, an assistant professor of English in the University of Illinois, Chicago Circle, after which they became monuments of conventional scholarship on Hume's life and writings. Both letters are cited without qualification by scholars of Hume's thought in dozens of publications, including Ernest Campbell Mossner's celebrated Life of David Hume (1980), and John Robertson's entry for Hume in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004). This article reconstructs the history and transmission of Hume's extant letters and attempts to account for why the forgeries published by Morrisroe were accepted as genuine. It makes a systematic case against the authenticity of the letters, and focuses in particular on the question of whether Hume met the Jansenist homme de lettres Noël-Antoine Pluche (1688–1761) and had access to his library, in Reims, in 1734. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of the exposé for modern editorial scholarship and intellectual history.

中文翻译：

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芝加哥的大卫休谟：二十世纪的骗局

这篇文章声称两封归因于哲学家大卫休谟（1711-1776）的信件是在 20 世纪伪造的。这些信件于 1972 年和 1973 年由伊利诺伊大学芝加哥分校的英语助理教授迈克尔·莫里斯罗（Michael Morrisroe）首次出版，之后它们成为有关休谟生平和著作的传统学术纪念碑。两封信都被休谟思想的学者在数十种出版物中无条件引用，其中包括欧内斯特·坎贝尔·莫斯纳（Ernest Campbell Mossner）的著名著作大卫休谟生平（1980 年），以及约翰·罗伯逊（John Robertson）在牛津国家传记词典（2004 年）。本文重构了休谟现存信件的历史和传播，并试图解释为什么莫里斯罗出版的赝品被认为是真实的。它对信件的真实性进行了系统论证，并特别关注休谟是否遇到了詹森主义者的问题文人Noël-Antoine Pluche (1688–1761) 并于 1734 年进入了他在兰斯的图书馆。文章最后讨论了曝光对现代编辑学术和思想史的影响。