Norman Kemp Smith, The Philosophy of David Hume: A Critical Study of its Origins and Central Doctrines. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005),
Concerning the term experimental, Smith claims that Hume used it in terms of the deliberate consulting of experience, with due regard to the particular and varying circumstances in which phenomenon can appear (61).
Hume combines reliance on experiment with the conviction that the ultimate secrets of nature cannot be discovered by our enquiries (62). Smith, then, apparently supports the Skeptical Realist interpretation of Hume.
As the noted translator Selby-Bigge indicates in his introduction to Hume’s Enquiries (1894), “Hume’s philosophic writings are to be read with great caution. His pages, especially those of the Treatise, are so full of matter, he says so many different things in so many different ways and different connexions, and with so much indifference to what he has said before, that it is very hard to say positively that he taught, or did not teach, this or that particular doctrine. He applies the same principles to such a great variety of subjects that it is not surprising that many verbal, and some real inconsistencies can be found in his statements… This makes it easy to find all philosophies in Hume, or, by setting up one statement against another, none at all” (Selby-Bigge, 1894, pg. vii GET FULL CITATION).