Note 1. Grimm, writing on Jany. 1, 1766, says that Rousseau came to Paris on Dec. 17, and was to leave for England with Hume on Jany. 4. Corres. Lit. v. 3. The travellers were detained some days at Calais by contrary winds. They arrived in London on the 14th. In the London Chronicle the following notices are given of their arrival.‘Jan. 14. Yesterday [Monday] David Hume Esq., arrived in London from Paris.’ p. 48.‘Jan. 16. Monday last arrived in town the celebrated Jean Jacques Rousseau.’ p. 50. It seems highly probable, as Strahan the printer of the paper was Hume's friend, that it was by Hume's own wish that it was not made known that they came together.
Note 2. Perhaps Hume paid the visit which he thus describes:—’I had accompanied Mr. Rousseau into a very pleasant part of the county of Surrey, where he spent two days at Colonel Webb's; Mr. Rousseau seeming to me highly delighted with the natural and solitary beauties of the place. Through the means of Mr. Stewart therefore I entered into treaty with Colonel Webb for the purchasing the house, with a little estate adjoining, in order to make a settlement for Mr. Rousseau.’ A Concise Account of the Dispute between Mr. Hume and Mr. Rousseau , p. 11.
Note 3.‘York Buildings, in the Strand, so denominated from the Archbishop of York's house there, purchased by Nicholas Heath the Archbishop, about the year 1556, of the Bishop of Norwich; but afterwards coming to John, Duke of Buckingham, he demised the house and garden to several builders, and they erected there several handsome streets and alleys, in which his name and title are recorded, viz. , John Street, Villars Street, Duke Street, Off (? Of) Alley, and Buckingham Street. However these streets together are still denominated York Buildings.’ Dodsley's London and its Environs , ed. 1761, vi. 369.
Note 1. The fifteen Scotch judges, or Lords of Session,‘have,’ writes Boswell,‘both in and out of Court the title of Lords from the name of their estates.’ Boswell's Johnson , ii. 291, n. 6. Lord Cock-burn, writing in 1852, says:—’This assumption of two names, one official and one personal, and being addressed by the one and subscribing by the other, is wearing out, and will soon disappear.’ Cock-burn's Jeffrey , i. 365. Dalrymple took the title of Lord Hailes. His grandfather, who had bought the family mansion, then lately erected, had given it the name of New Hailes, to distinguish it, no doubt, from some older house. See Scotland and Scotsmen , i. 411 note. Boswell informed Johnson of‘Sir David's eminent character for learning and religion.’ Johnson thereupon ’drank a bumper to him, “as a man of worth, a scholar, and a wit.” “I have,” said he, “never heard of him except from you; but let him know my opinion of him; for as he does not shew himself much in the world, he should have the praise of the few who hear of him.”’ Boswell's Johnson , i. 432, 451. When Johnson visited Scotland he met Dalrymple and was highly pleased with him. Ib. v. 48. Later on he revised at his request the proofs of his Annals of Scotland , which he described as‘a new mode of history…. The exactness of his dates raises my wonder.’ Ib. ii. 383.
Note 2. Hume, in his Scriptural phrases, apparently has in mind Job ii. 3, and Philippians ii. 12. Dalrymple was one of‘the malicious fellows,’ who, as Curators of the Advocates’ Library, had‘struck out of the catalogue, and removed from the shelves as indecent books, and unworthy of a place in a learned library,’ three French works which Hume, when Librarian, had purchased. See ante , my note on Hume's Autobiography.
Note 3. ’dr. Johnson had last night [Aug. 15, 1773] looked into Lord Hailes's Remarks on the History of Scotland. Dr. Robertson and I said it was a pity Lord Hailes did not write greater things. His Lordship had not then published his Annals of Scotland. ’ Boswell's Johnson , v. 38. Hume wrote from London to Sir Gilbert Elliot, on July 5, 1768:—’I have seen a book newly printed at Edinburgh, called Philosophical Essays ; it has no manner of sense in it, but is wrote with tolerable neatness of style; whence I conjecture it to be our friend, Sir David's.’ Burton's Hume , ii. 414. Elliot having informed him that James Balfour was the author, Hume replied:—’I thought Sir David had been the only Christian that could write English on the other side of the Tweed.’ Ib. p. 418.
Note 4. Hume wrote to Dr. Blair on July 15, 1766:—’I go in a few hours to Woburn’ [the seat of the Duke of Bedford]. Burton's Hume , ii. 345. He had been introduced by the Countess de Boufflers to the Duke and Duchess,‘who have,’ he wrote,‘been essentially obliged to her in their family concerns. She wrote the Duke about a fortnight ago that the time was now come, and the only time that probably ever would come, of his shewing his friendship to her by assisting me in my applications [to be made Secretary to the Embassy]; and she would rest on this sole circumstance all his professions of regard to her. He received her letter while in the country, but he wrote her back that he would immediately hasten to town, and if he had any credit with the King or Ministry, her solicitations should be complied with.’ Ib. p. 279. Hume, in his last illness, complained to John Home of the design of the Whigs to ruin him as an author.‘Amongst many instances of this he told me one which was new to me. The Duke of Bedford (who afterwards conceived a great affection for him) by the suggestions of some of his party friends ordered his son, Lord Tavistock, not to read his History of England. ’ Ib. ii. 500.
Note 5. So early as the summer of 1762, Hume touched with pity for Rousseau,‘who was obliged to fly France on account of some passages in his Emile , had offered him a retreat in his own house, so long as he should please to partake of it.’ At the same time he tried to procure him a pension from George III.‘It would,’ he wrote to Gilbert Elliot,‘be a signal victory over the French worth a hundred of our Mindens 1 , to protect and encourage a man of genius whom they had persecuted 2. ’ At this same time Rousseau was writing to the Countess de Boufflers:—’Ainsi successivement on me refusera partout l’air et l’eau…. Dans l’état où je suis, il ne me reste qu’à me laisser chasser de frontière en frontière, jusqu’à ce que je ne puisse plus aller. Alors le dernier fera de moi ce qu’il lui plaira 3. ’ To Hume he wrote on Feb. 19, 1763 from Motiers Travers, where he was under the protection of the exiled Earl Marischal of Scotland:—’Que ne puis-je espérer de nous voir un jour rassemblés avec Milord dans votre commune patrie, qui deviendrait la mienne! Je bénirais dans une société si douce les malheurs par lesquels j’y fus conduit, et je croirais n’avoir commencé de vivre que du jour qu’elle aurait commencé. Puissé-je voir cet heureux jour plus désiré qu’espéré! Avec quel transport je m’écrierais, en touchant l’heureuse terre où sont nés David Hume et le Maréchal d’Écosse ,
Note 6. Hume writing to Blair on July 15, 1766, expresses himself in almost the same words. He writes:—’To-day I received a letter from Rousseau, which is perfect frenzy. It would make a good eighteen-penny pamphlet; and I fancy he intends to publish it…. I own that I was very anxious about this affair, but this letter has totally relieved me.’ Burton's Hume , ii. 345–6. Rousseau thus describes his letter to Lord Marischal:—’Je voudrais vous envoyer copie des lettres, mais c’est un livre pour la grosseur.’ Œuvres de Rousseau , xxiv. 382.
Note 7. How little his mind was at ease is shewn by the very long account of the affair which he wrote on this same 15th of July to the Countess De Boufflers. In it he says:—’I must now, my dear friend, apply to you for consolation and advice in this affair, which both distresses and perplexes me…. It is extremely dangerous for me to be entirely silent. He is at present composing a book, in which it is very likely he may fall on me with some atrocious lie…. My present intention therefore is to write a narrative of the whole affair…. But is it not very hard that I should be put to all this trouble, and undergo all this vexation, merely on account of my singular friendship and attention to this most atrocious scélérat? … I know that I shall have Mme. de Barbantane's sympathy and compassion if she be at Paris.’ Hume's Private Corres. p. 181.
Note 1. The fifteen Scotch judges, or Lords of Session, ‘have,’ writes Boswell, ‘both in and out of Court the title of Lords from the name of their estates.’ Boswell's Johnson , ii. 291, n. 6. Lord Cock-burn, writing in 1852, says:—‘This assumption of two names, one official and one personal, and being addressed by the one and subscribing by the other, is wearing out, and will soon disappear.’ Cock-burn's Jeffrey , i. 365. Dalrymple took the title of Lord Hailes. His grandfather, who had bought the family mansion, then lately erected, had given it the name of New Hailes, to distinguish it, no doubt, from some older house. See Scotland and Scotsmen , i. 411 note. Boswell informed Johnson of ‘Sir David's eminent character for learning and religion.’ Johnson thereupon ‘drank a bumper to him, “as a man of worth, a scholar, and a wit.” “I have,” said he, “never heard of him except from you; but let him know my opinion of him; for as he does not shew himself much in the world, he should have the praise of the few who hear of him.”’ Boswell's Johnson , i. 432, 451. When Johnson visited Scotland he met Dalrymple and was highly pleased with him. Ib. v. 48. Later on he revised at his request the proofs of his Annals of Scotland , which he described as ‘a new mode of history…. The exactness of his dates raises my wonder.’ Ib. ii. 383.
Note 2. Hume, in his Scriptural phrases, apparently has in mind Job ii. 3, and Philippians ii. 12. Dalrymple was one of ‘the malicious fellows,’ who, as Curators of the Advocates’ Library, had ‘struck out of the catalogue, and removed from the shelves as indecent books, and unworthy of a place in a learned library,’ three French works which Hume, when Librarian, had purchased. See ante , my note on Hume's Autobiography.
Note 3. ‘Dr. Johnson had last night [Aug. 15, 1773] looked into Lord Hailes's Remarks on the History of Scotland. Dr. Robertson and I said it was a pity Lord Hailes did not write greater things. His Lordship had not then published his Annals of Scotland. ’ Boswell's Johnson , v. 38. Hume wrote from London to Sir Gilbert Elliot, on July 5, 1768:—‘I have seen a book newly printed at Edinburgh, called Philosophical Essays ; it has no manner of sense in it, but is wrote with tolerable neatness of style; whence I conjecture it to be our friend, Sir David's.’ Burton's Hume , ii. 414. Elliot having informed him that James Balfour was the author, Hume replied:—‘I thought Sir David had been the only Christian that could write English on the other side of the Tweed.’ Ib. p. 418.
Note 4. Hume wrote to Dr. Blair on July 15, 1766:—‘I go in a few hours to Woburn’ [the seat of the Duke of Bedford]. Burton's Hume , ii. 345. He had been introduced by the Countess de Boufflers to the Duke and Duchess, ‘who have,’ he wrote, ‘been essentially obliged to her in their family concerns. She wrote the Duke about a fortnight ago that the time was now come, and the only time that probably ever would come, of his shewing his friendship to her by assisting me in my applications [to be made Secretary to the Embassy]; and she would rest on this sole circumstance all his professions of regard to her. He received her letter while in the country, but he wrote her back that he would immediately hasten to town, and if he had any credit with the King or Ministry, her solicitations should be complied with.’ Ib. p. 279. Hume, in his last illness, complained to John Home of the design of the Whigs to ruin him as an author. ‘Amongst many instances of this he told me one which was new to me. The Duke of Bedford (who afterwards conceived a great affection for him) by the suggestions of some of his party friends ordered his son, Lord Tavistock, not to read his History of England. ’ Ib. ii. 500.
Note 5. So early as the summer of 1762, Hume touched with pity for Rousseau, ‘who was obliged to fly France on account of some passages in his Emile , had offered him a retreat in his own house, so long as he should please to partake of it.’ At the same time he tried to procure him a pension from George III. ‘It would,’ he wrote to Gilbert Elliot, ‘be a signal victory over the French worth a hundred of our Mindens 1 , to protect and encourage a man of genius whom they had persecuted 2 . ’ At this same time Rousseau was writing to the Countess de Boufflers:—‘Ainsi successivement on me refusera partout l’air et l’eau…. Dans l’état où je suis, il ne me reste qu’à me laisser chasser de frontière en frontière, jusqu’à ce que je ne puisse plus aller. Alors le dernier fera de moi ce qu’il lui plaira 3 . ’ To Hume he wrote on Feb. 19, 1763 from Motiers Travers, where he was under the protection of the exiled Earl Marischal of Scotland:—‘Que ne puis-je espérer de nous voir un jour rassemblés avec Milord dans votre commune patrie, qui deviendrait la mienne! Je bénirais dans une société si douce les malheurs par lesquels j’y fus conduit, et je croirais n’avoir commencé de vivre que du jour qu’elle aurait commencé. Puissé-je voir cet heureux jour plus désiré qu’espéré! Avec quel transport je m’écrierais, en touchant l’heureuse terre où sont nés David Hume et le Maréchal d’Écosse ,
No further correspondence passed between the two philosophers till the middle of the year 1765, when Hume who was at Paris was informed that Rousseau wished to seek under his protection an asylum in England. ‘I could not,’ writes Hume, ‘reject a proposal made to me under such circumstances by a man so celebrated for his genius and misfortunes 5 . ’ He brought him over to England, and treated him with the greatest kindness. ‘I must own,’ he wrote, ‘I felt an emotion of pity mixed with indignation, to think a man of letters of such eminent merit should be reduced, in spite of the simplicity of his manner of living, to such extreme indigence; and that this unhappy state should be rendered more intolerable by sickness, by the approach of old age, and the implacable rage of persecution. I knew that many persons imputed the wretchedness of Mr. Rousseau to his excessive pride, which induced him to refuse the assistance of his friends; but I thought this fault, if it were a fault, was a very respectable one. Too many men of letters have debased their character in stooping so low as to solicit the assistance of persons of wealth or power, unworthy of affording them protection; and I conceived that a noble pride, even though carried to excess, merited some indulgence in a man of genius, who, borne up by a sense of his own superiority and a love of independence, should have braved the storms of fortune and the insults of mankind 1 . ’
Hume was generous and even delicate in more than one scheme which he formed to help his friend. But while he was still planning, Mr. Davenport, ‘a gentleman of family, fortune, and worth,’ offered his house at Wooton in the County of Derby. That Rousseau's dignity might be saved, he consented to receive thirty pounds a year for his board and that of his housekeeper 2 .
Through Hume's intercession, the King moreover agreed to grant him a pension on condition that it should not be made public. To this Rousseau at first willingly assented 3 . But all the while the black clouds of suspicion were once more gathering in his mind. In the St. James's Chronicle was published a letter, as malicious as it was witty, addressed to him in the name of Frederick the Great, but really written by Horace Walpole. The Prussian King is made to offer him a shelter, and to conclude:—'si vous persistez à vous creuser l’esprit pour trouver de nouveaux malheurs, choisissez les tels que vous voudrez. Je suis roi, je puis vous en procurer au gré de vos souhaits: et ce qui sῦrement ne vous arrivera pas vis-à-vis de vos ennemis, je cesserai de vous persécuter quand vous cesserez de mettre votre gloire à l’être 4 . ’ Rousseau suspected Hume of having had a hand in its publication. He became sullen even before he left London for Wooton. In a letter dated April 3, Hume describes a curious scene with him ‘which proves,’ he says, ‘his extreme sensibility and good heart.’ Rousseau had charged him with sharing in a good-natured contrivance, by which Mr. Davenport hoped to save him part of the expense of the journey to Derbyshire. Hume in vain protested his ignorance. ‘Upon which M. Rousseau sat down in a very sullen humour, and all attempts which I could make to revive the conversation and turn it on other subjects were in vain. After near an hour, he rose up, and walked a little about the room. Judge of my surprise when, all of a sudden, he sat down upon my knee, threw his arms about my neck, kissed me with the greatest ardour, and bedewed all my face with tears! “Ah! my dear friend,” exclaimed he, “is it possible you can ever forgive my folly? This ill-humour is the return I make you for all the instances of your kindness towards me. But notwithstanding all my faults and follies, I have a heart worthy of your friendship, because it knows both to love and esteem you 1 . ”’
Hume referring to this outburst of feeling in a letter to Rousseau says:—‘I was very much affected, I own; and, I believe, there passed a very tender scene between us. You added, by way of compliment, that though I had many better titles to recommend me to posterity, yet perhaps my uncommon attachment and friendship to a poor unhappy persecuted man would not altogether be overlooked 2 . ’
The following day Rousseau went to Wooton, while Hume, who remained in London, went on busying himself about the pension. Rousseau had suddenly objected to its being kept secret, and had written a letter to General Conway in which he seemed to decline it altogether. To Hume's letters he returned no answers. ‘I thought,’ said the complacent philosopher, ‘that my friend, conscious of having treated me ill in this affair, was ashamed to write to me 3 . ’ What were the feelings which up to this time he had entertained of Rousseau, is shewn in the following extracts from his correspondence.
Hume to the Countess de Boufflers.
‘Edinburgh, July 1, 1762.’ After speaking of ‘my esteem, I had almost said veneration, for the virtue and genius of M. Rousseau,’ he continues:—‘I assure your Ladyship there is no man in Europe of whom I have entertained a higher idea, and whom I would be prouder to serve; … I revere his greatness of mind, which makes him fly obligations and dependance; and I have the vanity to think, that through the course of my life I have endeavoured to resemble him in those maxims 4 . ’
Hume to Elliot.
‘Edinburgh, July 5, 1762.’ Speaking of Rousseau's writings he says:—‘For my part, though I see some tincture of extravagance in all of them, I also think I see so much eloquence and force of imagination, such an energy of expression and such a boldness of conception, as entitles him to a place among the first writers of the age 5 . ’
Hume to the Countess de Boufflers.
‘Edinburgh, Jan. 22, 1763.’ After pointing out some faults in Rousseau's Treatise of Education , he continues:—‘However it carries still the stamp of a great genius; and what enhances its beauty, the stamp of a very particular genius. The noble pride and spleen and indignation of the author bursts out with freedom in a hundred places, and serves fully to characterize the lofty spirit of the man 6 . ’
Hume to the Countess de Boufflers.
‘London, Jan. 19, 1766. My companion is very amiable, always polite, gay often, commonly sociable. He does not know himself when he thinks he is made for entire solitude…. He has an excellent warm heart; and in conversation kindles often to a degree of heat which looks like inspiration. I love him much, and hope that I have some share in his affections 1 . ’
Hume to the Marchioness de Barbantane.
‘Feb. 16, 1766. M. Rousseau's enemies have sometimes made you doubt of his sincerity, and you have been pleased to ask my opinion on this head. After having lived so long with him, and seen him in a variety of lights, I am now better enabled to judge; and I declare to you that I have never known a man more amiable and more virtuous than he appears to me: he is mild, gentle, modest, affectionate, disinterested; and above all, endowed with a sensibility of heart in a supreme degree. Were I to seek for his faults, I should say that they consisted in a little hasty impatience, which, as I am told, inclines him sometimes to say disobliging things to people that trouble him: he is also too delicate in the commerce of life: he is apt to entertain groundless suspicions of his best friends; and his lively imagination working upon them feigns chimeras, and pushes him to great extremes. I have seen no instances of this disposition, but I cannot otherwise account for the violent animosities which have arisen between him and several men of merit, with whom he was once intimately acquainted; and some who love him much have told me that it is difficult to live much with him and preserve his friendship; but for my part, I think I could pass all my life in his company without any danger of our quarrelling 2 . ’
Hume to his brother John Home.
‘Lisle Street, March 22, 1766. Rousseau left me four days ago…. Surely he is one of the most singular of all human Beings, and one of the most unhappy. His extreme Sensibility of Temper is his Torment; as he is much more susceptible of Pain than Pleasure. His Aversion to Society is not Affectation as is commonly believd. When in it, he is commonly very amiable, but often very unhappy. And tho’ he be also unhappy in Solitude, he prefers that Species of suffering to the other. He is surely a very fine Genius. And of all the Writers that are or ever were in Europe, he is the Man who has acquird the most enthusiastic and most passionate Admirers. I have seen many extraordinary Scenes of this Nature 3 . ’
Hume to the Countess de Boufflers.
‘Lisle Street, April 3, 1766. The chief circumstance which hinders me from repenting of my journey is the use I have been to poor Rousseau, the most singular, and often the most amiable man in the world…. Never was man who so well deserves happiness so little calculated by nature to attain it. The extreme sensibility of his character is one great cause; but still more the frequent and violent fits of spleen and discontent and impatience, to which, either from the constitution of his mind or body, he is so subject. He is commonly, however, the best company in the world, when he will submit to live with men…. For my part I never saw a man, and very few women, of a more agreeable commerce…. It is one of his weaknesses that he likes to complain. The truth is, he is unhappy, and he is better pleased to throw the reason on his health and circumstances and misfortunes than on his melancholy humour and disposition 1 . ’
Hume to M.—. (A French friend.)
‘Lisle Street, ce 2 de Mai, 1766. Il a un peu la faiblesse de vouloir se rendre intéressant, en se plaignant de sa pauvreté et de sa mauvaise santé; mais j‘ai découvert par hasard qu’il a quelques ressources d’argent, petites à la vérité, mais qu’il nous a cachées, quand il nous a rendu compte de ses biens. Pour ce qui regarde sa santé, elle me paraît plutôt robuste qu’infirme, à moins que vous ne vouliez compter les accès de mélancolie et de spleen auxquels il est sujet. C‘est grand dommage: il est fort aimable par ses manières; il est d’un cœur honnête et sensible; mais ces accès l’éloignent de la société, le remplissent d’humeur, et donnent quel-quefois à sa conduite un air de bizarrerie et de violence, qualités qui ne lui sont pas naturelles 2 . ’
Hume to the Countess de Boufflers.
‘Lisle Street, May 16, 1766. I am afraid, my dear Madam, that notwithstanding our friendship and our enthusiasm for this philosopher, he has been guilty of an extravagance the most unaccountable and most blamable that is possible to be imagined.’ After describing Rousseau's letter to General Conway, in which he declined to receive a pension unless it were made public, Hume continues:—‘Was ever anything in the world so unaccountable? For the purposes of life and conduct and society a little good sense is surely better than all this genius, and a little good humour than this extreme sensibility 3 . ’
Not a whit discouraged by Rousseau's extravagance and sullen silence, he went on doing his best to overcome the only difficulty that remained about the pension, by getting the condition of secrecy removed 4 . In the midst of his self-complacency, while he was, no doubt, flattering himself with the thought that he had attained the highest degree of merit which can be bestowed on any human creature, by possessing ‘the sentiment of benevolence in an eminent degree 5 ,’ the fat good-humoured Epicurean of the North received, one day in June, a ruder shock than has perhaps ever tried a philosopher's philosophy. A letter was brought to him from Rousseau. The postage, in spite of his early training in ‘a very rigid frugality 1 ,’ he paid no doubt with cheerfulness and even with alacrity. His friend's prolonged silence ‘he still accounted for by supposing him ashamed to write to him 2 . ’ That feeling of shame must surely at last have given way to an outburst of gratitude, when he had learnt of the generous efforts which had been made, and successfully made, in his behalf. ‘Je vous connais, Monsieur,’ wrote his brother philosopher, ‘et vous ne l’ignorez pas … Touché de votre générosité, je me jette entre vos bras; vous m’amenez en Angleterre, en apparence pour m’y procurer un asyle, et en effet pour m’y déshonorer. Vous vous appliquez à cette noble œuvre avec un zèle digne de votre cœur, et avec un art digne de vos talens. Il n’en fallait pas tant pour réussir; vous vivez dans le grand monde, et moi dans la retraite; le public aime à être trompé et vous êtes fait pour le tromper. Je connais pourtant un homme que vous ne tromperez pas, c‘est vous-même 3 . ’
Hume, startled from his pleasing dreams, replied in a letter of manly indignation. ‘You say that I myself know that I have been false to you; but I say it loudly, and will say it to the whole world, that I know the contrary, that I know my friendship towards you has been unbounded and uninterrupted, and that though instances of it have been very generally remarked both in France and England, the smallest part of it only has as yet come to the knowledge of the public. I demand that you will produce me the man who will assert the contrary; and above all, I demand that he will mention any one particular in which I have been wanting to you. You owe this to me; you owe it to yourself; you owe it to truth and honour and justice, and to everything that can be deemed sacred among men 4 . ’ Rousseau took three weeks to rejoin, and then sent Hume his justification in an ‘enormous letter 5 . ’ He thus describes ‘the very tender scene’ that had passed between them 6 . ‘Après le souper, gardant tous deux le silence au coin de son feu, je m’aperçois qu’il me fixe, comme il lui arrivait souvent, et d’une manière dont l’idée est difficile à rendre. Pour cette fois, son regard sec, ardent, moqueur, et prolongé devint plus qu’inquiétant. Pour m’en dé-barrasser, j‘essayai de le fixer à mon tour; mais en arrêtant mes yeux sur les siens, je sens un frémissement inexplicable, et bientôt je suis forcé de les baisser. La physionomie et le ton du bon David sont d’un bon homme, mais où, grand Dieu! ce bon homme emprunte-t-il les yeux dont il fixe ses amis? l’impression de ce regard me reste et m’agite; mon trouble augmente jusqu’au saisissement: si l’épanchement n’eῦt succédé, j‘étouffais. Bientôt un violent remords me gagne; je m’indigne de moi-mème; enfin dans un transport que je me rappelle encore avec délices, je m’élance à son cou, je le serre étroitement; suffoqué de sanglots, inondé de larmes, je m’écrie d’une voix entrecoupée: Non, non, David Hume n’est pas un traître; s‘il n’était le meilleur des hommes, il faudrait qu’il en fῦt le plus noir. David Hume me rend poliment mes embrassemens, et tout en me frappant de petits coups sur le dos, me répète plusieurs fois d’un ton tranquille: Quoi, mon cher Monsieur! Eh, mon cher Monsieur! Quoi donc, mon cher Monsieur! Il ne me dit rien de plus; je sens que mon cœur se resserre; nous allons nous coucher, et je pars le lendemain pour la province 1 . ’
Hume, in that he had brought him to England, had been, Rousseau says, in some sort his protector and his patron. How he treated this patron, when once he had seen through his malicious tricks, he next shews. In this part of his narrative he closes each paragraph with words which Marmontel justly describes as ‘Cette tournure de raillerie qui est le sublime de l’insolence 2 . ’
‘Premier soufflet sur la joue de mon patron. Il n’en sent rien.’
‘Second soufflet sur la joue de mon patron. Il n’en sent rien.’
‘Troisième soufflet sur la joue de mon patron, et pour celui-là, s‘il ne le sent pas, c‘est assurément sa faute; il n’en sent rien 3 . ’
Voltaire in Les honnêtetés littéraires , published in 1767, thus ridicules this passage:—‘Ah! Jean-Jacques! trois soufflets pour une pension! c‘est trop!
( Amphitryon , acte 1 er. )
‘Un Génevois qui donne trois soufflets à un Écossais! cela fait trembler pour les suites. Si le roi d’Angleterre avait donné la pension, sa majesté aurait eu le quatrième soufflet. C‘est un homme terrible que ce Jean-Jacques 4 . ’
It seems astonishing to us, perhaps because we have the key to Rousseau's character, that Hume did not see that this narrative, if it bore the marks of genius, bore quite as much the marks of madness. He should have remembered old Bentley's saying:—‘Depend upon it, no man was ever written down but by himself 5 . ’ ‘Que craindriezvous?’ wrote to him the Countess de Boufflers. ‘Ni Rousseau, ni personne ne peut vous nuire. Vous êtes invulnérable, si vous ne vous blessez pas vous-même 6 . ’ But Hume was wanting in that happy humour which enables a man, in the midst of the most violent attacks, to laugh at the malicious rage of his adversary. It was the same want of humour which made him take so much to heart the coarse abuse which Lord Bute's ministry brought upon the Scotch. Johnson with half a dozen strong words would have rent the fine but flimsy web of suspicion which Rousseau had woven; and would never have troubled his head about it again. But Hume was too much troubled by his ‘love of literary fame—his ruling passion,’ as he himself avowed it. He and his enemy were in the very front rank of European writers; Voltaire perhaps alone equalled them in fame. Rousseau, in the days of their friendship, had addressed him as ‘le plus illustre de mes contemporains dont la bonté surpasse la gloire 1 . ’ And now, to use the words of Hume's champions, ‘the news of this dispute had spread itself over Europe 2 . ’ There was a fresh terror added. Rousseau, he says, ‘who had first flattered him indirectly with the figure he was to make in his Memoirs , now threatened him with it.’ ‘A work of this nature,’ Hume continues, ‘both from the celebrity of the person, and the strokes of eloquence interspersed, would certainly attract the attention of the world; and it might be published either after my death, or after that of the author. In the former case, there would be nobody who could tell the story, or justify my memory. In the latter, my apology, wrote in opposition to a dead person, would lose a great deal of its authenticity 3 . ’ The Apology was accordingly published. The justification was complete, but the end was missed. For Hume's memory, which would have proved invulnerable to the attack, has suffered from the vanity which prompted the defence. In the brief memoir which he has left us of his life we observe without surprise that he passes over in silence his quarrel with Rousseau. It may be that he was unwilling to give his enemy a chance of escaping that ‘perpetual neglect and oblivion’ to which he maintained that he had been consigned 4 . It is far more probable however that, like some other conquerors, he grew to be ashamed of the quarrel into which he had entered, and of the victory which he had won.
The French were beaten at Minden by the English and Hanoverian army on Aug. 1, 1759. ‘All we know is,’ wrote Horace Walpole on the 9th, ‘that not one Englishman is killed, nor one Frenchman left alive.’ Letters , iii. 244.
A Concise Account , p. 2, and Stewart's Robertson , p. 359.
Hume's Private Corres. p. 11.
Ib. p. 59. The quotation is from the Æneid , vii. 120–2.
A Concise Account , p. 5.
A Concise Account , p. 9.
Ib. p. 13, and Private Corres. p. 161.
A Concise Account , p. 18.
Walpole's Letters , iv. 463. A translation is given in the London Chronicle of April 5, 1766.
Private Corres. p. 151.
A Concise Account , p. 85.
Ib. p. 26.
Private Corres. p. 8.
Stewart's Robertson , p. 358.
Private Corres. p. 56.
Private Corres. p. 125.
Ib. p. 142.
M. S. R. S. E.
Private Corres. pp. 148–153.
Ib. p. 161.
Ib. p. 169.
A Concise Account , p. 28.
Hume's Phil. Works , ed. 1854, iv. 243.
Ante, Autobiography.
A Concise Account , p. 26.
Œuvres de Rousseau , ed. 1782, xxiv. 337.
A Concise Account , p. 31.
A Concise Account , p. 33.
Ante , p. 77.
Œuvres de Rousseau , xxiv. 354.
Œuvres de Marmontel , ed. 1807, iii. 12.
Œuvres de Rousseau , xxiv. 365, 367.
Œuvres de Voltaire , ed. 1819–25, xxv. 92.
Boswell's Johnson , v. 274.
Private Corres. p. 194.
Œuvres de Rousseau , xxiv. 317.
A Concise Account , p. vii.
Ib. p. 92.
Hume wrote to Adam Smith on Oct. 8, 1767:—‘Thus Rousseau has had the satisfaction during a time of being much talked of for his late transactions; the thing in the world he most desires; but it has been at the expense of being consigned to perpetual neglect and oblivion.’ Burton's Hums , ii. 378.
Note 6. Hume writing to Blair on July 15, 1766, expresses himself in almost the same words. He writes:—‘To-day I received a letter from Rousseau, which is perfect frenzy. It would make a good eighteen-penny pamphlet; and I fancy he intends to publish it…. I own that I was very anxious about this affair, but this letter has totally relieved me.’ Burton's Hume , ii. 345–6. Rousseau thus describes his letter to Lord Marischal:—‘Je voudrais vous envoyer copie des lettres, mais c’est un livre pour la grosseur.’ Œuvres de Rousseau , xxiv. 382.
Note 7. How little his mind was at ease is shewn by the very long account of the affair which he wrote on this same 15th of July to the Countess De Boufflers. In it he says:—‘I must now, my dear friend, apply to you for consolation and advice in this affair, which both distresses and perplexes me…. It is extremely dangerous for me to be entirely silent. He is at present composing a book, in which it is very likely he may fall on me with some atrocious lie…. My present intention therefore is to write a narrative of the whole affair…. But is it not very hard that I should be put to all this trouble, and undergo all this vexation, merely on account of my singular friendship and attention to this most atrocious scélérat? … I know that I shall have Mme. de Barbantane's sympathy and compassion if she be at Paris.’ Hume's Private Corres. p. 181.
Note 1. Hume returned to Edinburgh late in this summer. Millar writing to him from Kew Green, on Oct. 4, says:—‘I could scold you most heartily if you were here, and so could Mrs. Millar, for breaking your appointment with friends that love you sincerely, when they had provided a turtle, and a fine haunch of forest venison for your entertainment, and to be disappointed of you and Geo. Scott two such heroes was too much, though we had tolerable heroes: both your losses was very mortifying, and I am sure to more cordial friends you could not go, though perhaps to more powerful.’ Hume replied from Edinburgh, on Oct. 21:—‘I hope to be often merry with you and Mrs. Millar in your House in Pall Mall; and I wish both of you much Health and Satisfaction in enjoying it.’ M. S. R. S. E.
A son of Hume's friend, Baron Mure, gives the following description of the historian and Sir James Stewart on their return to Edinburgh. ‘They came home from Paris about the same time. I remember, as a boy of five or six years old, being much struck with the French cut of their laced coats and bags 1 , and especially with the philosopher's ponderous uncouth person equipped in a bright yellow coat spotted with black.’ Caldwell Papers , i. 38.
Johnson defines Bag as An ornamental purse of silk tied to men's hair.
Note 2. The following extracts shew the opinions formed by Hume and others as to the expediency of publication:—
Hume to Blair.
‘London, July 1, 1766. I know you will pity me when I tell you that I am afraid I must publish this to the world in a pamphlet, which must contain an account of the whole transaction between us. My only comfort is that the matter will be so clear as not to leave to any mortal the smallest possibility of doubt. You know how dangerous any controversy on a disputable point would be with a man of his talents. I know not where the miscreant will now retire to, in order to hide his head from this infamy.’ Burton's Hume , ii. 344.
Adam Smith to Hume.
‘Paris, July 6. I am thoroughly convinced that Rousseau is as great a rascal as you and as every man here believes him to be; yet let me beg of you not to think of publishing anything to the world…. Expose his brutal letter, but without giving it out of your own hand, so that it may never be printed; and if you can, laugh at yourself, and I shall pawn my life that before three weeks are at an end this little affair, which at present gives you so much uneasiness, shall be understood to do you as much honour as anything that has ever happened to you…. M. Turgot and I are both afraid that you are surrounded with evil counsellors, and that the advice of your English literati , who are themselves accustomed to publish all their little gossiping stories in newspapers, may have too much influence upon you.’ Ib. p. 350.
Hume to the Countess de Boufflers.
‘Lisle Street, July 15. This is a deliberate and a cool plan to stab me…. Should I give the whole account to the public, as I am advised by several of my friends, particularly Lord Hertford and General Conway, I utterly ruin this unhappy man…. Notwithstanding his monstrous offences towards me, I cannot resolve to commit such a piece of cruelty even against a man who has but too long deceived a great part of mankind. But on the other hand it is extremely dangerous for me to be entirely silent. He is at present composing a book in which it is very likely he may fall on me with some atrocious lie. I know that he is writing his memoirs, in which I am sure to make a fine figure…. My present intention is to write a narrative of the whole affair…. to make several copies … to send a copy to Rousseau, and tell him in what hands the other copies are consigned; that if he can contradict any one fact he may have it in his power.’ Hume ends by calling him ‘this most atrocious scélérat.’ Private Corres. p. 180.
d’Alembert to Voltaire.
‘[Paris] 16 de juillet. Il [Hume] se prépare à donner toute cette histoire au public. Que de sottises vont dire à cette occasion tous les ennemis de la raison et des lettres! les voilà bien à leur aise; car ils déchireront infailliblement ou Rousseau, ou M. Hume, et peut-être tous les deux. Pour moi, je rirai, comme je fais de tout, et je tâcherai que rien ne trouble mon repos et mon bonheur.’ Œuvres de Voltaire (ed. 1819–25), lxii. 383.
d’Alembert to Hume.
‘Paris, July 21. [d’Alembert sends Hume the opinion of Turgot, Morellet, Marmontel and other friends who had met at the house of Mlle. de l’Espinasse.] ‘Tous unanimement, ainsi que Mlle. de l’Espinasse et moi, sommes d’avis que vous devez donner cette histoire au public avec toutes ses circonstances.’ Burton's Hume , ii. 354.
Horace Walpole.
‘Then [towards the middle of July] arrived Rousseau's long absurd letter to Mr. Hume, which most people in England, and I amongst the rest, thought was such an answer to itself that Mr. Hume had no occasion to vindicate himself from the imputations contained in it. The gens de lettres at Paris, who aim at being an order , and who in default of parts raise a dust by their squabbles, were of a different opinion, and pressed Mr. Hume to publish on the occasion. Mr. Hume however declared he was convinced by the arguments of his friends in England, and would not engage in a controversy. Lord Mansfield told me he was glad to hear I was of his opinion, and had dissuaded Mr. Hume from publishing.’ Walpole's Works , ed. 1798, iv. 253.
Favart to Garrick.
‘Paris, Ce 24 juillet. Tout le monde littéraire se déchaine contre le philosophe de Genève.’ Garrick Corres. ii. 484.
The Countess de Boufflers to Hume.
‘Ce 25 [Juillet] à Paris. Votre douceur, votre bonté, l’indulgence que vous avez naturellement, font attendre et désirer de vous des efforts de modération qui passent le pouvoir des hommes ordinaires. Pourquoi se hâter de divulguer les premiers mouvements d’un cœur grièvement blessé, que la raison n’a pu encore dompter? … Mais vous, au lieu de vous irriter contre un malheureux qui ne peut vous nuire, et qui se ruine entièrement lui-même, que n’avez-vous laissé agir cette pitié généreuse, dont vous êtes si susceptible? Vous eussiez évité un éclat qui scandalise, qui divise les esprits, qui flatte la malignité, qui amuse aux dépens de tous deux les gens oisifs et inconsidérés, qui fait faire des réflexions injurieuses, et renouvelle les clameurs contre les philosophes et la philosophie…. Vous ne serez pas son délateur après avoir été son protecteur. De semblables examens doivent précéder les liaisons, et non suivre les ruptures.’ Hume's Private Corres. pp. 188–194.
Horace Walpole to Hume.
‘London, July 26. Your set of literary friends are what a set of literary men are apt to be, exceedingly absurd. They hold a consistory to consult how to argue with a madman; and they think it very necessary for your character to give them the pleasure of seeing Rousseau exposed, not because he has provoked you, but them. If Rousseau prints you must; but I certainly would not till he does.’ Walpole's Works , ed. 1798, iv. 258, and Letters , v. 7.
Mme. Riccoboni to Garrick.
‘Paris, Ce 10 Aoῦt. La rupture de M. Hume et de Jean-Jacques a fait un bruit terrible ici. Les gens de lettres sont pour M. Hume; et les personnes sensées ne le soupçonnent point d’avoir tort.’ Garrick Corres. ii. 488.
Hume to the Abbé Le Blanc.
‘Lisle Street, Leicester Fields, 12 of Aug. 1766. I am as great a Lover of Peace as he [Fontenelle], and have kept myself as free from all literary Quarrels: But surely, neither he nor any other Person was ever engaged in a Controversy with a Man of so much Malice, of such a profligate Disposition to Lyes, and such great Talents. It is nothing to dispute my style or my Abilities as an Historian or a Philosopher: My Books ought to answer for themselves, or they are not worth the defending. To fifty Writers, who have attacked me on this head, I never made the least Reply: But this is a different Case: Imputations are here thrown on my Morals and my Conduct; and tho’ my Case is so clear as not to admit of the least Controversy, yet it is only clear to those who know it.’ Morrison Autographs , ii. 318.
Lord Marischal to Hume.
‘Potsdam, Aug. 15. You did all in your power to serve him; his écart afflicts me on his account more than yours, who have, I am sure, nothing to reproach yourself with. It will be good and humane in you, and like Le Bon David , not to answer.’ Burton's Hume , ii. 354.
Hume to Adam Smith.
[No date, probably London, about the middle of August.] ‘I shall not publish them unless forced, which you will own to be a very great degree of self-denial. My conduct in this affair would do me a great deal of honour, and his would blast him for ever, and blast his writings at the same time; for, as these have been exalted much above their merit, when his personal character falls they would of course fall below their merit. I am however apprehensive that in the end I shall be obliged to publish.’ Ib. ii. 349.
Hume to the Marchioness de Barbantane.
‘Lisle Street, Aug. 29, 1766. You will see that the only possible alleviation of this man's crime is that he is entirely mad; and even then he will be allowed a dangerous and pernicious madman, and of the blackest and most atrocious mind. The King and Queen of England expressed a strong desire to see these papers, and I was obliged to put them into their hand. They read them with avidity, and entertain the same sentiments that must strike every one. The king's opinion confirms me in the resolution not to give them to the public, unless I be forced to it by some attack on the side of my adversary, which it will therefore be wisdom in him to avoid.’ Private Corres. p. 210.
Rousseau to Lord Marischal.
‘[Wooton] 7 Septembre. Il [Hume] a marché jusqu’ici dans les ténèbres, il s‘est caché, mais maintenant il se montre à découvert. Il a rempli l’Angleterre, la France, les gazettes, l’Europe entière, de cris auxquels je ne sais que répondre, et d’injures dont je me croirais digne si je daignais les repousser.’ Œuvres de Rousseau , xxiv. 393.
Voltaire to Damilaville.
‘[Ferney] 15 Octobre. Il [Hume] prouve que Jean-Jacques est un maître fou, et un ingrat pétri d’un sot orgueil; mais je ne crois pas que ces vérités méritent d’etre publiées; il faut que les choses soient ou bien plaisantes, ou bien intéressantes pour que la presse s‘en mêle…. Je pense que la publicité de cette querelle ne servirait qu’à faire tort à la philosophie. J‘aurais donné une partie de mon bien pour que Rousseau eῦt été un homme sage; mais cela n’est pas dans sa nature; il n’y a pas moyen de faire un aigle d’un papillon: c‘est assez, ce me semble, que tous les gens de lettres lui rendent justice, et d’ailleurs sa plus grande punition est d’être oublié.’ Œuvres de Voltaire , liii. 492.
Baron Grimm.
‘Paris, 15 Octobre, 1766. Il y a environ trois mois qu’on reçut à Paris les premières nouvelles de la brouillerie de J.-J. Rousseau avec M. Hume. Excellente pâture pour les oisifs ! Aussi une déclaration de guerre entre deux grandes puissances de l’Europe n’aurait pu faire plus de bruit que cette querelle. Je dis à Paris; car à Londres, où il y a des acteurs plus importans à siffler, on sut à peine la rupture survenue entre l’ex-citoyen de Genève et le philosophe d’Écosse; et les Anglais furent assez sots pour s‘occuper moins de cette grande affaire que de la formation du nouveau ministère et du changement du grand nom de Pitt en celui de Comte de Chatam (sic).’ Correspondance Littéraire de Grimm et de Diderot , ed. 1829, v. 191. (Grimm adds that several of Hume's friends in France wrote to him for no other purpose but to dissuade him from making the quarrel public. Ib. p. 193.)
Voltaire to Hume.
‘Ferney, 24 Octobre. A dire vrai, monsieur, toutes ces petites misères ne méritent pas qu’on s‘en occupe deux minutes; tout cela tombe bientôt dans un éternel oubli…. Il y a des sottises et des querelles dans toutes les conditions de la vie…. Tout passe rapidement comme les figures grotesques de la lanterne magique…. Les détails des guerres les plus sanglantes périssent avec les soldats qui en ont été les victimes. Les critiques mêmes des pièces de théâtre nouvelles, et surtout leurs éloges sont ensevelis le lendemain dans le néant avec elles et avec les feuilles périodiques qui en parlent. Il n’y a que les dragées du sieur Kaiser qui se soient un peu soutenues.’ Œuvres de Voltaire , liii. 503.
Hume to Horace Walpole.
‘Edinburgh, Nov. 4. I would give anything to prevent a publication in London (for surely the whole affair will appear perfectly ridiculous); but I am afraid that a book printed at Paris will be translated in London, if there be hopes of selling a hundred copies of it. For this reason, I fancy it will be better for me to take care that a proper edition be published.’ Walpole's Works , iv. 262.
Horace Walpole to Hume.
‘[London] Nov. 6. You say your Parisian friends extorted your consent to this publication. I believe so. Your good sense could not approve what your good heart could not refuse. You add, that they told you Rousseau had sent letters of defiance against you all over Europe. Good God! my dear Sir, could you pay any regard to such fustian? All Europe laughs at being dragged every day into these idle quarrels, with which Europe only [the rest of the sentence is too coarse for quotation]. Your friends talk as loftily as of a challenge between Charles the Fifth and Francis the First. What are become of all the controversies since the days of Scaliger and Scioppius of Billingsgate memory? Why they sleep in oblivion, till some Bayle drags them out of their dust, and takes mighty pains to ascertain the date of each author's death, which is of no more consequence to the world than the day of his birth. Many a country squire quarrels with his neighbour about game and manors, yet they never print their wrangles, though as much abuse passes between them as if they could quote all the Philippics of the learned 1 . ’ Walpole's Letters , v. 23.
Bishop Warburton to Hurd.
‘Prior Park, Nov. 15, 1766. As to Rousseau I entirely agree with you that his long letter to his brother philosopher, Hume, shews him to be a frank lunatic. His passion of tears—his suspicion of his friends in the midst of their services—and his incapacity of being set right, all consign him to Monro 2 . You give the true cause too of this excess of frenzy, which breaks out on all occasions, the honest neglect of our countrymen in their tribute to his importance…. The merits of the two philosophers are soon adjusted. There is an immense distance between their natural genius; none at all in their excessive vanity…. However the contestation is very amusing; and I shall be very sorry if it stops now it is in so good a train. I should be well pleased particularly to see so seraphic a madman attack so insufferable a coxcomb as Walpole; and I think they are only fit for one another.’ Letters from a late Eminent Prelate , p. 385.
Hume to Horace Walpole.
‘Edinburgh, Nov. 20. I readily agree with you that it is a great misfortune to be reduced to the necessity of consenting to this publication; but it had certainly become necessary. Even those who at first joined me in rejecting all idea of it wrote to me and represented that this strange man's defiances had made such impression, that I should pass universally for the guilty person, if I suppressed the story…. I never consented to anything with greater reluctance in my life. Had I found one man of my opinion I should have persevered in my refusal…. I am as sensible as you are of the ridicule to which men of letters have exposed themselves by running every moment to the public with all their private squabbles and altercations; but surely there has been something very unexpected and peculiar in this affair. My antagonist by his genius, his singularities, his quackery, his misfortunes and his adventures, had become more the subject of general conversation in Europe (for I venture again on the word) than any person in it. I do not even except Voltaire, much less the King of Prussia and Mr. Pitt.’ Walpole's Works (ed. 1798), iv. 266.
Hume to the Countess de Boufflers.
‘Edinburgh, Dec. 2. It was with infinite reluctance I consented to the last publication. I lay my account that many people will condemn me for it, and will question the propriety or necessity of it; but, if I had not published, many people would have condemned me as a calumniator and as a treacherous and false friend. There is no comparison between these species of blame; and I underwent the one to save me from the other.’ Private Corres. p. 229.
Walpole, writing from Paris on Nov. 21, 1765, had spoken with scorn both of Hume and Rousseau. ‘I desire,’ he says, ‘to die when I have nobody left to laugh with me. I have never yet seen or heard anything serious that was not ridiculous. Jesuits, Methodists, philosophers, politicians, the hypocrite Rousseau, the scoffer Voltaire, the encyclopedists, the Humes, the Lytteltons, the Grenvilles, the atheist tyrant of Prussia, and the mountebank of history, Mr. Pitt, all are to me impostors in their various ways.’ Walpole's Letters , iv. 441.
Note 3. Strahan, I think, had no shop. His chief business was that of a printer, but he was also a publisher. In that capacity he would need to ‘take in a Bookseller’ as his partner in the venture. Thus Johnson's Political Tracts bear at the foot of the title page:—‘Printed for W. Strahan; and T. Cadell in the Strand.’ While Cadell's address is given, Strahan's is not.
Note 4. It was published by Becket and his partner under the following title:— A Concise and Genuine Account of the Dispute between Mr. Hume and Mr. Rousseau; with the Letters that passed between them during their Controversy. As also the Letters of the Hon. Mr. Walpole and Mr. d’Alembert, relative to this extraordinary Affair. Translated from the French. London. Printed for T. Becket and P. A. De Hondt, near Surry-street, in the Strand. MDCCLXVI. Becket was the publisher of Ossian , and, it should seem, not over-scrupulous. ‘What does Becket mean,’ wrote Boswell, ‘by the Originals of Fingal and other poems of Ossian, which he advertises to have lain in his shop?’ Boswell's Johnson , ii. 294.
Note 5. Thomas Cadell was born at Bristol in 1742. In 1758 he was apprenticed to Andrew Millar. In 1765 he became his partner, and in 1767 his successor, In conjunction with Strahan he published the Histories of Robertson and Gibbon, the later editions of Hume's Works , and some of the later Works of Johnson. They were part proprietors also of Blackstone's Commentaries. Gibbon described him as ‘that honest and liberal bookseller.’ Stewart's Robertson , p. 366. It was at his house that the dinner was given, at which Hume, by his own request, met ‘as many of the persons who had written against him as could be collected.’ Rogers's Table Talk , p. 106. In 1793 he retired, ‘leaving the business which he had established, as the first in Great Britain,’ to his son Thomas, and to William Davies. In 1798 he was elected Alderman of Walbrook Ward. He died on Dec. 27, 1802. See Nichols's Lit. Anec. iii. 388, 696; vi. 441; and Dict. of Nat. Biog. viii. 179. He was not related to Scott's publisher, Robert Cadell of Edinburgh, though it was ‘from the respectable house of Cadell and Davies in the Strand, that appeared in the course of January 1802, the first two volumes of the Minstrelsy , which may be said to have first introduced Scott as an original writer to the English public.’ Lockhart's Scott , ed. 1839, ii. 79.
Note 6. James Coutts, a banker in the Strand, was member for Edinburgh City ( Parl. Hist. xv. 1099), and so could frank letters. He wrote to Hume, probably soon after his election in 1762, a modest letter in which he complains of his unfitness for his new position. He says:—‘With all pleasures there are great mixtures of mortification, and every instant my limited education stares me more and more in the face. I have hardly lookt on any but Manuscript folios since I was 14. You’ll say from idleness or want of taste. I say no, but from too much business and bad health. My constitution will probably be always unfit for deep study; but pray is there no remedying this great defect a little without much study, for rather as ( sic ) suffer such mortifications I had better continue a Banker still, which I‘m convinced would enable me better to purchase Merse Acres. But seriously I wish you would give me some advice on this head, what abridgements to read, &c.’ In another letter to Hume (also undated) he writes:—‘Coll. Graeme and Mr. Drummond Blair are candidates for Perthshire; the former will carry it unless the Pretender dies, and leaves some old fools at liberty to take the oaths.’ M. S. R. S. E.
Note 7. Hume sent Strahan a copy of the manuscript which he had placed in the hands of his French friends for publication in France. It contained his own narrative, and such part of his correspondence with Rousseau as he had preserved. Rousseau's letters to him were in French, and his to Rousseau in English. Each of the translators therefore had but a portion of the document to translate. The French editors, however, had his leave to make whatever alterations in his account they pleased. All these alterations are, he says, to be adopted, and his own narrative in such passages is not to be followed. In his next letter he gives contrary directions; for by that time he had seen the Paris editions and been displeased with some of the changes. His French translator was Suard, who translated Robertson's Charles V (Stewart's Robertson , p. 218). Gibbon, writing in 1776 about the first volume of his Decline and Fall , which had lately appeared, says:—‘To-morrow I write to Suard, a very skilful translator of Paris, who was here in the spring with the Neckers, to get him (if not too late) to undertake it.’ Gibbon's Misc. Works , ii. 176. It was, no doubt, at this visit to London that ‘Suard at Reynolds's saw Burke for the first time, when Johnson touched him on the shoulder, and said, “Le grand Burke.”’ Boswell's Johnson , iv. 20, n. 1. When in 1774 he was admitted into the French Academy, Voltaire wrote to him:—‘Je vais relire votre Discours pour la quatrième fois.’ Œuvres de Voltaire , lvi. 387. It was to him that Mrs. Montagu made her clever reply, when Voltaire's ‘invective’ against Shakespeare was read at the Academy. He said to her:—‘Je crois, Madame, que vous êtes un peu fâchée de ce que vous venez d’entendre.’ She replied, ‘Moi, Monsieur, point du tout! Je ne suis pas amie de M. Voltaire.’ Walpole's Letters , vi. 394.
Note 8. ‘I shall lodge in Miss Elliot's, Lisle Street, Leicester Fields,’ Hume wrote on June 29, 1761. Burton's Hume , ii. 90. She was, I fancy, the lady for whose creature comforts he wished to provide in a letter written from London on May 15, 1759. ‘If you pass by Edinburgh, please bring me two pounds of rapee, such as Peggy Elliot uses to take. You will get it at Gillespy's near the Cross.’ The letter which thus begins with Peggy Elliot and her snuff ends with compliments to Adam Smith, and from Dr. Warburton. Ib. p. 62. She is again mentioned in an amusing letter dated July 6 of the same year, in which Hume shows his imagination in inventing extravagant news. ‘Miss Elliot,’ he writes, ‘yesterday morning declared her Marriage with Dr. Armstrong [the Poet]; but we were surprised in the afternoon to find Mr. Short, the Optician, come in and challenge her for his Wife. It seems she has been married privately for some time to both of them.’ M. S. R. S. E. No doubt she was a decent elderly body, the last person to give grounds for any scandal.
Note 9. The English translator was scarcely up to his work, as the following passages show.
‘Comme tout est mêlé d’inconvéniens dans la vie, celui d’être trop bien est un de ceux qui se tolèrent le plus aisément.’ Œuvres de Rousseau , xxiv. 323.
‘As there is nothing in life without its inconvenience, that of being too good is one of those which is the most tolerable.’ A Concise Account , p. 15.
‘Peu de temps après notre arrivée à Londres, j‘y remarquai dans les esprits à mon égard un changement sourd qui bientôt devint très-sensible.’ Œuvres de Rousseau , xxiv. 348.
‘A very short time after our arrival in London I observed an absurd change in the minds of the people regarding me, which soon became very apparent.’ A Concise Account , p. 42.
Note 10. With some of these alterations Hume was displeased. Writing to Horace Walpole he says:—'several passages in my narrative in which I mention you are all altered in the translation, and rendered much less obliging than I wrote them.’ He suspected d’Alembert of having had this done through malevolence towards Walpole. Walpole's Works , ed. 1798, iv. 262, 7.
Note 11. Hume wrote to the Librarian of the British Museum on Jany. 23, 1767:—‘I was obliged to say in my Preface that the originals would be consigned in the Museum. I hope you have no objection to the receiving them. I send them by my friend Mr. Ramsay. Be so good as to give them the corner of any drawer. I fancy few people will trouble you by desiring a sight of them.’ The Trustees refused to accept them. Dr. Maty wrote to Hume on April 22:—‘I longed to have some conversation with you on the subject of the papers, which were remitted to me by the hands of Mr. Ramsay, and, as our Trustees did not think proper to receive them, to restore them into yours.’ They are in the possession of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Burton's Hume , ii. 359–360. Dr. Maty was Under-Librarian of the Museum. He became Principal Librarian in 1772. Knight's Eng. Cyclo. of Biog. iv. 153. Perhaps the refusal to receive the papers was due to idleness. The Librarian may have dreaded troublesome visitors. How badly the Museum was managed eighteen years later is shown by W. Hutton in his Journey to London , p. 114. He paid two shillings for a ticket of admission, and was then ‘hackneyed through the rooms with violence,’ being allowed just thirty minutes to see everything.
Note 12. ‘Wooton, le 2 Aoῦt. M. Hume écrit, dit-on, qu’il veut publier toutes les pièces relatives à cette affaire. C‘est, j‘en réponds, ce qu’il se gardera de faire, ou ce qu’il se gardera bien au moins de faire fidèlement…. Plus je pense à la publication promise par M. Hume, moins je puis concevoir qu’il l’exécute. S‘il l’ose faire, à moins d’énormes falsifications, je prédis hardiment, que malgré son extrême adresse et celle de ses amis, sans même que je m’en mêle, M. Hume est un homme démasqué. Rousseau to M. Guy. Œuvres de Rousseau , ed. 1782, xxiv. 387.
The following is the note which was added to the translation of the pamphlet:—‘The original letters of both parties will be lodged in the British Museum; on account of the above-mentioned defiance of Mr. Rousseau, and his subsequent insinuation that if they should be published they would be falsified.’ A Concise Account , p. viii.
Note 13. It was published under the title of Exposé succinct de la contestacion qui s‘est élevée entre M. Hume et M. Rousseau, avec les pièces justificatives. Londres, 1766, 12°. British Museum Catalogue.
Note 14. ‘I was born,’ writes Horace Walpole, ‘in Arlington Street, near St. James's, London, September 24, 1717, O. S.’ Letters , i. lxi. Writing on Dec. 1, 1768, he says:—‘From my earliest memory Arlington Street has been the ministerial street. The Duke of Grafton is actually coming into the house of Mr. Pelham, which my Lord President is quitting, and which occupies too the ground on which my father lived; and Lord Weymouth has just taken the Duke of Dorset's.’ lb. v. 136. On Nov. 6, 1766, having received Hume's pamphlet, he wrote to him:—‘You have, I own, surprised me by suffering your quarrel with Rousseau to be printed, contrary to your determination when you left London, and against the advice of all your best friends here; I may add, contrary to your own nature, which has always inclined you to despise literary squabbles, the jest and scorn of all men of sense…. You have acted, as I should have expected if you would print, with sense, temper, and decency; and, what is still more uncommon, with your usual modesty. I cannot say so much for your editors. But editors and commentators are seldom modest. Even to this day that race ape the dictatorial tone of commentators at the restoration of learning, when the mob thought that Greek and Latin could give men the sense which they wanted in their native languages. But Europe 1 is grown a little wiser, and holds these magnificent pretensions now in proper contempt.’ Ib. v. 23.
Walpole in italicising Europe refers to Hume's statement that ‘Roussean had sent letters of defiance all over Europe.’ Aute , pp. 90, 91.
Note 15. Lady Hervey was the widow of John, Lord Hervey, whom Pope, in the Prologue to the Satires (l. 305), attacked as Sporus with a brutality that defeated itself. Her brother-in-law was ‘Harry Hervey,’ of whom Johnson said:—‘He was a vicious man, but very kind to me. If you call a dog Hervey I shall love him.’ Boswell's Johnson , i. 106. She was the Mary Lepell whom Pope introduces in his Answer to the Question of Mrs. Howe, What is prudery ?
Elwin and Courthorpe's Pope , iv. 447.
Mr. Croker ( Memoirs of Lord Hervey , i. xxiv.) quotes the following verse from a ballad on her:—
Swift wrote to Arbuthnot on Nov. 8, 1726:—‘I gave your service to Lady Harvey. She is in a little sort of a miff about a ballad that was writ on her to the tune of Molly Mogg , and sent to her in the name of a begging poet.’ Swift's Works , ed. 1803, xvii. 97.
Horace Walpole, writing to her from Paris on Sept. 14, 1765, says:—‘Mr. Hume, that is the Mode , asked much about your Ladyship.’ Letters , iv. 405. It was Hume very likely who lent her Home's tragedy over which she wept, as Scott tells us in his review of that poet's Works :—‘We have the evidence of the accomplished Earl of Haddington, that he remembers the celebrated Lady Hervey (the beautiful Molly Lapelle of Pope and Gay) weeping like an infant over the manuscript of Douglas.’ Quarterly Review , lxxi. 204. On Sept. 22, 1768, Walpole mentioning her death, says:—'she is a great loss to several persons; her house was one of the most agreeable in London; and her own friendliness, good breeding and amiable temper had attached all that knew her. Her sufferings with the gout and rheumatism were terrible, and yet never could affect her patience or divert her attention to her friends.’ Letters , v. 129.
Note 16. Alexander Kincaid, Printer and Stationer to his Majesty for Scotland, died on Jany. 21, 1777, in his year of office as Lord Provost of Edinburgh. Gent. Mag. 1777, p. 48. Dr. Blair wrote to Strahan on Jany. 28, 1777:—‘I am just come from the burials of our friend poor Kincaid. He was interred with all the public honours which could be given him; and his funeral was indeed the most numerous and magnificent procession I ever saw here. The whole inhabitants were either attendants or spectators.’ Barker MSS.
Sir Alexander Dick, writing to Joseph Spence in 1762, says that Kincaid, who had been dining at his house, ‘mentioned freely that the bulk of the clergy of this country [Scotland] buy few books, except what they have absolute necessity for.’ Spence's Anecdotes , ed. 1820, p. 463. This is some confirmation of Johnson's attack on ‘the ignorance of the Scotch clergy.’ Boswell's Johnson , v. 251.
Note 17. Hume, writing to Millar from Paris on April 23, 1764, about a new edition of his History , says:—‘You were in the wrong to make any edition without informing me; because I left in Scotland a copy very fully corrected with a few alterations, which ought to have been followed. I shall write to my sister to send it to you.’ Burton's Hume , ii. 201. On Oct. 21, 1766, he wrote to him:—‘Kincaid sent you the corrected copy in a parcel of Strahan's. This circumstance is entered by Kincaid in his minute book of 16 of Oct. 1764. When in London I asked you about this copy, and you told me that you had never heard of it. I suppose this is only a defect of memory…. If you recover it, be so good as to send it me by the wagon.’ M. S. R. S. E. Hume seems to imply that Millar was not telling the truth. Later on he learnt that on another matter he had lied to him ( post , Letter of March 19, 1773). On Nov. 2 Millar replied that he had the corrected copy. M. S. R. S. E.
Note 1. He used the same words in the letter that he wrote to Horace Walpole on the same day. See ante , p. 90.
Note 2. He apologises to Walpole for the omission in the Paris edition of a compliment to his ‘usual politeness and humanity.’ He continues:—‘I have wrote to Becket the bookseller to restore this passage, which is so conformable to my real sentiments; but whether my orders have come in time, I do not know as yet.’ Walpole's Works , iv. 267.
Note 3. See ante , p. 77.
Note 4. Hume was at that time in London, and Rousseau at Wooton in Derbyshire.
Note 5. This insertion was not made.
Note 6. Rousseau had charged Hume with opening his letters. Œuvres de Rousseau , xxiv. 354. Hume, in a note on this, says:—‘The story of M. Rousseau's letters is as follows. He had often been complaining to me, and with reason, that he was ruined by postage at Neuf-chatel, which commonly cost him twenty-five or twenty-six louis d’ors a year, and all for letters which were of no significance, being wrote, some of them by people who took that opportunity of abusing him, and most of them by persons unknown to him. He was therefore resolved, he said, in England to receive no letters which came by the post…. When he went to Chiswick the postman brought his letters to me. I carried him out a cargo of them. He exclaimed, desired me to return the letters and recover the price of postage. I told him that, in that case, the clerks of the Post Office were entire masters of his letters. He said he was indifferent, they might do with them what they pleased. I added that he would by that means be cut off from all correspondence with all his friends. He replied, that he would give a particular direction to such as he desired to correspond with. But till his instructions for that purpose could arrive, what could I do more friendly than to save at my own expense his letters from the curiosity and indiscretion of the clerks of the Post Office? I am indeed ashamed to find myself obliged to discover such petty circumstances.’ A Concise Account , p. 51. In the French translation, instead of this note the following is given:—‘Ces imputations d’indiscrétion et d’infidélité sont si odieuses, et les preuves eñ sont si ridicules, que je me crois dispensé d’y répondre.’ P. 68.
Note 1. Millar wrote to Hume on Nov. 2:—‘I will tell you honestly that I was much hurt yesterday with yours to Mr. Strahan which he showed me when in Town about Messrs. Beckett or Cadell being employed by you in publishing this absurd dispute of Rousseau with you, as you imagined it would not be worth my while. Can you imagine anything however so trifling in which your name is concerned not worth my while? Surely [?] I never did. Dr. Lowth thought differently in a more delicate affair and even one less in point of value 1 In truth the money that will be got I do not value but in the the eye of the World where I have so cordial a friendship, to see others names and not mine looks as you were offended.’
Hume sent the following reply; misdating it Oct. 8; it is endorsed by Millar, ‘David Hume's 8 Nov. 1766‘:—
‘Your letter gave me a great deal of Uneasyness, by letting me see, that I had, innocently and undesignedly given you Uneasyness. I assure you, that I believe I have made a very trifling Present to Mr. Strahan and what will scarce be worth his Acceptance. I fancy, that 500 Copies of the Account of that ridiculous Affair between Rousseau and me will be more than sufficient to satisfy the Curiosity of the Public at London. The Pamphlet will not appear as coming from my hand but as a Translation of the Paris Edition; and as Becket has commonly the first Copies of French Books, it will be thought quite natural to come from his Press. If I had imagin’d, that it woud have given you the least satisfaction to be the Publisher it shoud never have been sent to any other hand.’
On Nov. 22, Millar wrote that he ‘had asked Strahan to have his name put to the translation of the pamphlet, as people thought that there was some difference between himself and Hume. Strahan agreed, but Becket refused.’ He adds that 3000 copies of the History had been sold in the last three years, and ‘between 20 and 30 sets this and last week.’ M. S. R. S. E.
Millar published for Lowth in 1759 An Answer to an Anonymous Letter to Dr. Lowth, concerning the Late Election of a Warden of Winchester College.
Note 2. The pamphlet is in the list of books published in November of this year, Gent. Mag. 1766, p. 545. I cannot find that it reached a second edition.
Note 3. Rousseau, after describing how well he had been received on his arrival in England, continues:—‘Tout-à-coup, et sans aucune cause assignable, ce ton change, mais si fort et si vite que dans tous les caprices du public, on n’en voit guères de plus étonnant. Le signal fut donné dans un certain Magasin , aussi plein d’inepties que de mensonges, où l’Auteur bien instruit, ou feignant de l’être, me donnait pour fils de Musicien. Dès ce moment les imprimés ne parlèrent plus de moi que d’une manière équivoque ou malhonnête.’ He goes on to hint that the change was due to Hume. Œuvres de Rousseau , xxiv. 348. According to Lord Charlemont the change was due to a very simple and natural cause:—‘When Rousseau first arrived in London, he and his Armenian dress were followed by crowds, and as long as this species of admiration lasted he was contented and happy. But in London such sights are only the wonder of the day, and in a very short time he was suffered to walk where he pleased, unattended, unobserved. From that instant his discontent may be dated.’ Memoirs of the Earl of Charlemont , i. 230.
Note 4. It was printed as an erratum.
Note 1. They were distinguished, not by italics, but by the author's name at the end of each note.
Note 2. Rousseau had accused d’Alembert of being the author of the letter from the King of Prussia and of maintaining a secret correspondence with Hume. d’Alembert denied both one and the other. A Concise Account , p. 94.
Note 3. ‘Perdidi beneficium. Numquid quae consecravimus per-didisse nos dicimus? Inter consecrata beneficium est; etiamsi male respondit, bene collocatum. Non est ille qualem speravimus; simus nos quales fuimus ei dissimiles.’ Seneca, De Beneficiis , lib. vii. cap. 19. Ib. p. 93.
Note 1. Rousseau in his letter of Dec. 4, 1765, quoted in Hume's narrative, says:—‘It is the advice also of Madam….’ On which there is the following footnote:—‘The person here mentioned desired her name might be suppressed. French editor. As the motive to the suppression of the lady's name can hardly be supposed to extend to this country, the English translator takes the liberty to mention the name of the Marchioness de Verdelin.’ A Concise Account , p. 6. Mde. de Boufflers is mentioned on p. 86 as one of Hume's correspondents. Writing to her on Dec. 2, 1766, he says:—‘I had erased your name; but it seems not so but that it was legible; and it is accordingly printed. The bookseller, the printer, and the compositor all throw the blame on each other for this accident.’ Private Corres. p. 230.
Grimm writing on Oct. 15, 1766 says:—‘Les personnes dont les noms sont supprimés dans ce procès sont madame la comtesse de Boufflers et madame la marquise de Verdelin.’ Corres. Lit. v. 197.
Note 1. Hume wrote to the Countess de Boufflers from London on March 1, 1767:—‘There has happened, dear Madam, a small change in my situation and fortune since I wrote to you. I was then very deeply immersed in study, and thought of nothing but of retreat and indolence for the rest of my life, when I was surprised with a letter from Lord Hertford, urging me to come to London, and accept of the office of Depute-Secretary of State under his brother [General Conway]. As my Lord knew that this step was contrary to the maxims which I had laid down to myself, he engaged my Lady Hertford to write me at the same time, and to inform me how much she and my Lord desired my compliance. I sat down once or twice to excuse myself; but I own, I could not find terms to express my refusal of a request made by persons to whose friendship I had been so much obliged…. I do not suspect myself at my years, and after such established habits of retreat, of being ensnared by this glimpse of Court favour to commence a new course of life, and relinquish my literary ambition for the pursuit of riches and honours in the state. On the contrary, I feel myself at present like a banished man in a strange country; I mean, not as I was while with you at Paris, but as I should be in Westphalia or Lithuania or any place the least to my fancy in the world.’ Private Corres. p. 235. Horace Walpole writes in his Memoirs of the Reign of George III , ii. 414:—‘It happened at this period [Feb. 1767] that Mr. Conway, who talked of nothing but resigning, became in want of a secretary, William Burke quitting his service to follow his cousin Edmund into Opposition. My surprise was very great when Mr. Conway declared his resolution of making David Hume, the historian, who had served his brother, Lord Hertford, in the same capacity at Paris, his secretary. [Walpole's surprise was not so much at the appointment of Hume, as at the indication it gave that Conway had no intention to resign.]… I was pleased with the designation of Hume, as it would give jealousy to the Rockinghams, who had not acted wisely in letting Burke detach himself from Mr. Conway; and I prevailed on Lady Hertford to write a second letter, more pressing than her lord's, to Mr. Hume to accept. The philosopher did not want much entreaty.’
Hume in a letter to Blair dated April 1, 1767, thus describes his occupations:—‘My way of life here is very uniform, and by no means disagreeable. I pass all the forenoon in the Secretary's house from ten till three, where there arrive from time to time messengers that bring me all the secrets of the Kingdom, and indeed of Europe, Asia, Africa and America. I am seldom hurried; but have leisure at intervals to take up a book, or write a private letter, or converse with any friend that may call for me; and from dinner to bed-time is all my own. If you add to this that the person [General Conway] with whom I have the chief, if not only transactions, is the most reasonable, equal-tempered, and gentleman-like man imaginable, and Lady Aylesbury [the General's wife] the same, you will certainly think I have no reason to complain; and I am far from complaining. I only shall not regret when my duty is over, because to me the situation can lead to nothing, at least in all probability; and reading and sauntering and lounging and dosing, which I call thinking, is my supreme happiness. I mean my full contentment.’ Burton's Hume , ii. 384. The cup of his philosophic happiness was never destined to be full. Like ordinary men he had his unsatisfied longings. His ‘full contentment,’ should have come in the following year, when he was consoled for the loss of the easy dignity and the emoluments of an English Under-Secretary of State by a handsome pension conferred by the English King, and paid by the English people. It was then that his ‘lounging and dosing, which he called thinking,’ his ‘supreme happiness,’ thus found expression. ‘22nd July, 1768. There are fine doings in America. O! how I long to see America and the East Indies revolted, totally and finally,—the revenue reduced to half,—public credit fully discredited by bankruptcy,—the third of London in ruins, and the rascally mob subdued! I think I am not too old to despair of being witness to all these blessings.’ Burton's Hume , ii. 417.
Note 2. Boswell, who was careful to clear his writings of Scotticisms, in the third edition of his Life of Johnson in at least four places changed forenoon into morning. Boswell's Johnson , ii. 283, n. 3. Hume in one of his early letters says:—‘I last summer undertook a very laborious task which was to travel eight miles every morning, and as many in the forenoon to and from a mineral well.’ Burton's Hume , i. 34.
Note 3. Little Warwick Street opened out of Cockspur Street, Pall Mall.
Note 4. This letter must have been written soon after Hume's arrival in London, at the end of February, 1767. Adam Smith, writing to him on the following June 7, addresses his letter:—‘To David Hume Esq. Under Secretary for the Northern Department, at Mr. Secretary Conway's house, London.’ M.S.R.S.E. In the Court and City Register for 1765, p. 108, is a list of Ambassadors and Ministers which shews how the business with foreign countries was divided between the two Secretaries of State:—
| Southern Province . | Northern Province . |
|---|---|
| France. | Vienna. |
| Spain. | Copenhagen. |
| Sardinia. | Poland. |
| Constantinople. | Prussia. |
| Naples. | Hague. |
| Florence. | Russia. |
| Venice. | Hamburg, Bremen and Lubeck. |
| Swiss Cantons. | Diet of the Empire at Ratisbon. |
| Portugal. | Brussels. |
| Elector of Cologne and Circle of Westphalia. | |
| Stockholm. |
Note 1. Hugh, third Earl of Marchmont, the friend and executor of Pope. He is the ‘Polwarth’ in Pope's Seventeen Hundred and Thirty Eight (ii. 130), and the ‘Marchmont’ of his Grotto. ‘Were there no other memorials,’ writes Boswell, ‘ he will be immortalised by that line of Pope in the verses on his Grotto :—
“And the bright flame was shot through Marchmont's soul.”’ Life of Johnson , iv. 51. See ib. iii. 392 for Johnson's interview with him. He was at this time Keeper of the Great Seal for Scotland. Court and City Register , 1765, p. 140. Boswell recommends his pronunciation of English as a proper model for a Scotch gentleman. ‘His Lordship told me,’ he says, ‘with great good humour that the master of a shop in London, where he was not known, said to him, “I suppose, Sir, you are an American.” “Why so, Sir?” said his Lordship. “Because, Sir,” replied the shopkeeper, “you speak neither English nor Scotch, but something different from both, which I conclude is the language of America.”’ Ib. ii. 160. Boswell's recommendation contrasts oddly with Colonel Barré's ‘ridiculous description’ of Marchmont's pronunciation. In a debate on Dec. 13, 1770, on a difference between the two Houses, the Members of the House of Commons having been turned out of the House of Lords, Barré said:—‘It seemed as if the mob had broke in; and they certainly acted in a very extraordinary manner. One of the heads of this mob—for there were two—was a Scotchman. I heard him call out several times, “Clear the Hoose! Clear the Hoose.” The face of the other was hardly human; for he had contrived to put on a nose of an enormous size, that disfigured him completely, and his eyes started out of his head in so frightful a way, that he seemed to be undergoing the operation of being strangled.’ The Scotchman was the Earl of Marchmont and the other peer the Earl of Denbigh. Cavendish Debates , ii. 162. See also Chatham Corres. iv. 58. For Lord Denbigh see post , Letter of May 10, 1776.
Note 2. Samuel Sandys, first Baron Sandys, who was known in his House of Commons days as ‘the Motion-maker.’ Smollett's History of England , ed. 1800, iii. 16. Horace Walpole describes him as ‘a republican, raised on the fall of Sir Robert Walpole to be Chancellor of the Exchequer, then degraded to a peer and cofferer 1 ,and soon afterwards laid aside.’ Letters , i. 104. Sir Denis Le Marchant, in a note on Walpole's Memoirs of George III , iv. 119, says that Sandys ‘had been placed at the Board of Trade in 1760. He seems to have regarded the post as a sinecure—as indeed it in a great measure became by the withdrawal of the West Indies from the department.’
‘A principal officer of his majesty's Court, next under the Comptroller.’ Johnson's Dictionary.
Note 3. Norborne Berkeley, Lord Bottetourt. Horace Walpole, writing on Aug. 9, 1768, about a visit to London, says:—‘I saw nothing there but the ruins of 100, Lady Hertford's cribbage, and Lord Bottetourt, like patience on a monument, smiling in grief. He is totally ruined and quite charmed. Yet I heartily pity him. To Virginia he cannot be indifferent; he must turn their heads somehow or other. If his graces do not captivate them, he will enrage them to fury, for I take all his douceur to be enamelled on iron.’ Letters , v. 116. On Aug. 14, Walpole wrote :—‘There is a disagreeable affair at home, resulting from the disquiets in America. Virginia, though not the most mutinous, contains the best heads and the principal boutes-feux 1 . It was thought necessary that the Governor should reside there. It was known that Sir Jeffery Amherst [the governor] would not like that…. At the same time, Lord Bottetourt, a court favourite, yet ruined in fortune, was thought of by his friend, Lord Hillsborough. This was mentioned to Sir Jeffery with the offer of a pension. He boggled at the word pension ; but neither cared to go to his government, nor seemed to dislike giving it up.’ Ib. p. 120. Walpole in his Memoirs of George III , iii. 151, describes Bottetourt as ‘of the Bedchamber and a kind of second-rate favourite. He had engaged in an adventure with a company of copper-workers at Warmley. They broke. In order to cover his estate from the creditors he begged a privy seal, to incorporate the Company, as private estates would not then be answerable. The King granted his request, but Lord Chatham, aware of the deception, honestly refused to affix the Seal to the Patent.’ In the end ‘he did acquiesce in resigning the Seal for a short time, that, being put into commission, it might be set to the grant.’ (See also the Chatham Corres. iii. 306–322.) Such was the swindler who on the eve of the outbreak with America was sent there as Lieutenant and Governor-General of Virginia. ‘Whom,’ asked Burke, ‘have they selected in these perilous times to soothe the animosity, and reconcile the differences that now unhappily subsist between our colonies and the mother-country? I need not name the man; everybody knows him as a projector, as one who by wild and chimerical schemes has not only so embarrassed his own affairs as to render his stay in this country impracticable, but brought irretrievable ruin upon many others.’ Parl. Hist. xvi. 723. He died in Virginia on Nov. 9, 1770, ‘greatly lamented by the whole colony.’ Ann. Reg. xiii. 191. Junius described him as ‘a cringing, bowing, fawning, sword-bearing courtier who had ruined himself by an enterprise, which would have ruined thousands if it had succeeded.’ Letters of Junius , ed. 1812, iii. 109. He it is, I believe, whom Churchill introduces in the following couplet:—
I have little doubt that ‘the affair’ which these three Lords were ‘conducting’ was connected with the printing of the Rolls of Parliament, and the Journals of the House of Lords. Nichols says that in 1767 William Bowyer was made printer, being ‘principally indebted for the appointment to the Earl of Marchmont.’ Lit. Anec. iii. 39. In a curious inscription written by Bowyer under his own bust in Stationers’ Hall it is stated, that ‘he was appointed to print the Journals of the House of Lords, at near LXX Years of age, by the patronage of a noble Peer.’ Ib. p. 293. In the Journals of the House of Lords , xxxi. 509, there is an order on March 9, 1767, to leave to a Sub-committee, to which these three Lords belonged, the question of printing the Rolls and the Journals. Ib. p. 429.
Boute-feux, Incendiaries.
Note 4. Gibbon describing his student days at Lausanne, says of the writings of Cicero:—‘The most perfect editions, that of Olivet, which may adorn the shelves of the rich, that of Ernesti, which should lie on the table of the learned, were not within my reach.’ Gibbon's Misc. Works , i. 89.
Note 5. A new edition of Hume's Essays and Treatises in 2 vols. quarto was published by A. Millar, London, and A. Kincaid and A. Donaldson, Edinburgh, in 1768. A quarto edition of his History in 8 vols. was published in 1770.
Note 6. See ante , p. 64, n. 9.
Note 7. This paper, I have little doubt, is one quoted in Burton's Hume , ii. 340. Voltaire is only once mentioned. It begins:—
‘Heads of an Indictment laid by J. J. Rousseau, philosopher, against D. Hume, Esq.
‘1. That the said David Hume, to the great scandal of philosophy, and not having the fitness of things before his eyes, did concert a plan with Mess. Tronchin, Voltaire and d’Alembert to ruin the said J. J. Rousseau for ever, by bringing him over to England, and there settling him to his heart's content.
‘2. That the said David Hume did, with a malicious and traitorous intent, procure, or cause to be procured, by himself, or somebody else, one pension of the yearly value of £100 or thereabouts, to be paid to the said J. J. Rousseau, on account of his being a philosopher, either privately or publicly, as to him the said J. J. Rousseau should seem meet.
‘3. That the said David Hume did, one night after he left Paris, put the said J. J. Rousseau in bodily fear, by talking in his sleep; although the said J. J. Rousseau doth not know whether the said David Hume was really asleep, or whether he shammed Abraham 1 , or what he meant.’
Dr. Burton adds that this paper ‘has the appearance of having been written by a Scottish lawyer.’
‘ To sham Abram : to feign sickness, a phrase in use among sailors.’ Murray's New Eng. Dict.
Note 8. Dr. Burton thinks that this letter only reached Hume through the press. At all events there is no trace of it among his manuscripts. Life of Hume , ii. 358. Rousseau had accused Voltaire of having written a letter against him, which was published as Voltaire's at London, under the title of Lettre au docteur Jean-Jacques Pansophe. The author was M. Bordes, of Lyons. Œuvres de Voltaire , liii. 497. An English translation, published by Payne, is in the list of publications in the Gent. Mag. for April, 1766, p. 192. See also Ib. p. 563. Hume himself at first had no doubt of its authenticity. On May 16, 1766, some weeks before Rousseau's outbreak against him, he wrote to the Countess de Boufflers:—‘You have probably seen Voltaire's letter to our exotic philosopher. I fancy it will rouse him from his lethargy. These two gladiators are very well matched; it is like the combat of Dares and Entellus in Virgil [ Æneid. v. 362–484]. The sprightliness and grace, and irony and pleasantry of the one will be a good contrast to the force and vehemence of the other.’ Private Corres. p. 171. Rousseau, after charging Voltaire with being the author of the letter, continues:—‘Le noble objet de ce spirituel ouvrage est de m’attirer le mépris et la haine de ceux chez qui je me suis réfugié.’ Œuvres de Rousseau , ed. 1782, xxiv. 368. Voltaire replied to this accusation in a letter addressed to Hume, dated ‘Ferney, 24 Octobre.’ He says:—‘Il m’a fait l’honneur de me mettre au nombre de ses ennemis et de ses persécuteurs. Intimement persuadé qu’on doit lui élever une statue … il pense que la moitié de l’univers est occupée à dresser cette statue sur son piédestal, et l’autre moitié à la renverser.’ Œuvres de Voltaire , liii. 497. See ante , p. 90, for another extract from this letter. Grimm, writing on Nov. 1, 1766, says:—‘M. de Voltaire a fait imprimer une petite lettre adressée à M. Hume, où il a, pour ainsi dire, donné le coup de grace à ce pauvre Jean-Jacques. Cette lettre a eu beaucoup de succès à Paris, et elle a peutêtre fait plus de tort à M. Rousseau que la brochure de M. Hume.’ Corres. Lit. v. 211. An English translation was published by S. Bladon in Paternoster Row, 1766. It is curious in all the translations to find Jean Jacques turned into John James. ‘The great soul of John James’ reads as comically as ‘la grande âme de Jean-Jacques’ reads naturally.
We find no more mention of Rousseau in Hume's letters to Strahan. On Oct. 8 of this year (1767) he wrote to Adam Smith:—‘Thus you see, he is a composition of whim, affectation, wickedness, vanity, and inquietude, with a very small, if any, ingredient of madness. He is always complaining of his health; yet I have scarce ever seen a more robust little man of his years…. The ruling qualities above mentioned, together with ingratitude, ferocity, and lying,—I need not mention eloquence and invention—form the whole of the composition.’ Burton's Hume , ii. 377. When we consider the judgments, wide as the poles asunder, which Hume passed on Rousseau, we are the more ready to allow that, as regards him at all events, Dr. Carlyle was right when he said:—‘David Hume, like Adam Smith, had no discernment at all of characters.’ Dr. A. Carlyle's Auto. p. 278.
Note 1. Dr. Alexander Carlyle gives us a glimpse of Hume as an Under-Secretary of State. He met him at a dinner where there were some people connected with the Court. He says:—‘The conversation was lively and agreeable, but we were much amused with observing how much the thoughts and conversation of all those in the least connected were taken up with every trifling circumstance that related to the Court…. It was truly amusing to observe how much David Hume's strong and capacious mind was filled with infantine anecdotes of nurses and children.’ Carlyle's Auto. p. 518.
Fox wrote of Hume:—‘He was an excellent man, and of great powers of mind; but his partiality to kings and princes is intolerable: Nay, it is in my opinion quite ridiculous; and is more like the foolish admiration which women and children sometimes have for Kings than the opinion, right or wrong, of a philosopher.’ Edinburgh Review , No. xxiv, p. 277.
Note 1. Hume took advantage of his position to pay a compliment to an old friend. Writing to Dr. Blair on May 27, 1767 he says:—‘Tell Robertson that the Compliment at the End of General Conway's Letter to him was of my composing without any Orders from him. He smild when he read it; but said it was very proper and sign’d it. These are not bad Puffs from Ministers of State, as the silly World goes.’ M. S. R. S. E. Robertson earlier in the year had asked Hume to use his influence with General Conway about an appointment to some military chaplaincy. Stewart's Life of Robertson , ed. 1811, p. 355.
Note 2. Charles Townshend was Chancellor of the Exchequer when this letter was written, and, to use Burke's words, still ‘lord of the ascendant.’ (Payne's Burke , i. 146.) He died in office on Sept. 4, 1767.
Note 3. Hume is referring to the proposed new editions of his works. See ante , p. 106.
Note 1. By Conway's resignation (Jan. 20, 1768), Hume lost his office. ‘I returned to Edinburgh in 1769,’ he writes in his Autobiography , ‘very opulent, for I possessed a revenue of £1000 a year, healthy, and though somewhat stricken in years, with the prospect of enjoying long my ease, and of seeing the increase of my reputation.’ He had stayed on in London till the summer of 1769. Writing on Dec. 23, 1768 to the Countess de Boufflers to apologise for not paying a visit to Paris, he said:—‘The truth is, I have, and ever had, a prodigious reluctance to change my place of abode.’ Private Corres. p. 263. On March 28, 1769, he wrote to Dr. Blair at Edinburgh:—‘I intend to visit you soon, and for good and all. Indeed I know not what detains me here, except that it is so much a matter of indifference where I live; and I am amused with looking on the scene, which really begins to be interesting.’ Burton's Hume , ii. 424. It was during this stay in London that he called on Boswell in Half-Moon Street, Piccadilly. ‘I am really the great man now,’ wrote Boswell to the Rev. W. J. Temple, on May 14, 1768. ‘I have had David Hume in the forenoon, and Mr. Johnson in the afternoon of the same day visiting me…. David Hume came on purpose the other day to tell me that the Duke of Bedford was very fond of my book, and had recommended it to the Duchess. David is really amiable; I always regret to him his unlucky principles, and he smiles at my faith; but I have a hope which he has not, or pretends not to have. So who has the best of it, my reverend friend?’ Letters of Boswell , p. 151. On Aug. 20, 1769, Hume wrote to Adam Smith from Edinburgh:—‘ I am glad to have come within sight of you, and to have a view of Kirkaldy from my windows; but as I wish also to be within speaking terms of you, I wish we could concert measures for that purpose. I am mortally sick at sea, and regard with horror and a kind of hydrophobia the great gulf [The Firth of Forth] that lies between us.’ Burton's Hume , ii. 429. In Humphry Clinker (letter of Aug. 8), Matthew Bramble's sufferings are described in his sail across this ‘great gulf’ of seven miles. ‘I am much of the honest Highlander's mind (said he) after he had made such a passage as this: his friend told him he was much indebted to Providence. “Certainly (said Donald), but by my saul, mon, I'se ne‘er trouble Providence again, so long as the brig of Stirling stands.”’
Note 2. On Oct. 16, 1769, nine days earlier than the date of the letter in the text, Hume had written to Sir Gilbert Elliot:—‘I live still, and must for a twelvemonth, in my old house in James's Court, which is very cheerful, and even elegant, but too small to display my great talents for cookery, the science to which I intend to addict the remaining years of my life! I have just now lying on the table before me a receipt for making soupe à la reine , copied with my own hand; for beef and cabbage (a charming dish), and old mutton and old claret nobody excels me. I make also sheep-head broth in a manner that Mr. Keith speaks of it for eight days after; and the Duc de Nivernois 1 would bind himself apprentice to my lass 2 to learn it.’ Stewart's Robertson , p. 361. Gibbon wrote to Holroyd at Edinburgh on Aug. 7, 1773:—‘You tell me of a long list of dukes, lords, and chieftains of renown to whom you are introduced; were I with you, I should prefer one David to them all. When you are at Edinburgh, I hope you will not fail to visit the stye of that fattest of Epicurus's hogs, and inform yourself whether there remains no hope of its recovering the use of its right paw.’ Gibbon's Misc. Works , ii. 110.
Boswell writing on June 19, 1775, says:—‘On Thursday I supped at Mr. Hume's, where we had the young Parisian, Lord Kames, and Dr. Robertson, an excellent supper, three sorts of ice-creams. What think you of the northern Epicurus style? I can recollect no conversation. Our writers here are really not prompt on all occasions, as those of London.’ Letters of Boswell , p. 203. The ‘three sorts of ice-creams’ were in those days a great luxury; for Lord Cockburn, writing of Edinburgh twenty or thirty years later, says:—‘ Ice, either for cooling or eating, was utterly unknown, except in a few houses of the highest class.’ Hume's old claret would not have been so costly as in England, for in Scotland claret was exempted from duty till about 1780. Cockburn's Memorials , p. 35. On April 17, 1775, Hume wrote to the Countess de Boufflers:—‘I have been always, and still am, very temperate. The only debauches I ever was guilty of were those of study; and even these were moderate; for I was always very careful of my health by using exercise.’ Private Corres. , p. 282.
The house in James's Court he had bought in 1762. On July 5 of that year he wrote to Elliot:—‘I have hitherto been a wanderer on the face of the earth, without any abiding city: But I have now at last purchased a house which I am repairing; though I cannot say that I have yet fixed any property in the earth, but only in the air: For it is the third storey of James's Court, and it cost me 500 pounds. It is some-what dear, but I shall be exceedingly well lodged.’ Stewart's Robertson , p. 360. During his residence in France, more than once, in the midst of all his good fortune and his grand society, he regretted his snug quarters. From Fontainebleau, where he suffered, he says, more from flattery than Lewis XIV ever had in any three weeks of his life, he wrote to Dr. Ferguson:—‘Yet I am sensible that I set out too late, and that I am misplaced; and I wish twice or thrice a day, for my easy chair and my retreat in James's Court.’ Burton's Hume , ii. 173. Dr. Blair was his tenant for part of this time. Hume wrote to him in the spring of 1764:—‘ I am glad to find that you are my tenant. You have got an excellent house for its size. It was perfectly clear of vermin when I left it, and I hope you will find it so…. Never put a fire in the south room with the red paper. It is so warm of itself that all last winter, which was a very severe one, I lay with a single blanket; and frequently upon coming in at midnight, starving with cold, have sat down and read for an hour, as if I had had a stove in the room. The fires of your neighbours will save you the expense of a fire in that room 1 .’ M. S. R. S. E. On Dec. 28, 1765, writing to Blair, he said:—‘If you leave my House as you thought you would, Nairne may have it for 35 pounds as we agreed.’ M. S. R. S. E. This perhaps was the rent for the house furnished, as Hume had left it when he started for Paris. In his will he bequeathed the life-rent of it to his sister, ‘or in case that house be sold at the time of my decease, twenty pounds a year during the whole course of her life.’ Hume's Philosophical Works , ed. 1854, i. xxx. Blair in a letter dated May 13 [1766], says that he is on the point of leaving. M. S. R. S. E.
By a house in Edinburgh, it must be remembered, a single story, or half a story, was commonly meant. In one single building there were generally many freeholds separately held. Sir John Pringle, writing to Hume from London on Nov. 2, 1773, about an Edinburgh house, says:—‘I will not answer for the clearness [of my reply], as I apprehend some danger in misunderstanding one another from the different terms in use here and in Scotland at present. When I left it, we had luckily neither parlours, nor first and second floors to confound us.’ Ib.
Dr. Robert Chambers, in his Traditions of Edinburgh , ed. 1825, i. 219, says that ‘till the building of the New Town James's Court was inhabited by a select set of gentlemen. They kept a clerk to record their names and their proceedings, had a scavenger of their own, clubbed in many public measures, and had balls and assemblies among themselves.’ Hume's flat was on the northern side of the Court, where the houses were built on so steep a slope, that he who from the south had entered on a level with the pavement found on going to the windows at the north that he was looking down from the fourth story. Below him he could have seen the topmost branches of a fine row of trees. ‘How well,’ says Lord Cockburn, ‘the ridge of the old town was set off by a bank of elms that ran along the front of James's Court, and stretched eastward over the ground now partly occupied by the Bank of Scotland.’ Memorials , p. 292. They and many another stately group fell before ‘the Huns,’ who in Edinburgh in the early part of the present century ‘massacred every town tree that came in a mason's way.’ Ib. p. 291.
Boswell, when Johnson visited him in 1773, was living on the ground floor of the same house, on a level with the Court. ‘Boswell,’ wrote Johnson to Mrs. Thrale, ‘has very handsome and spacious rooms; level with the ground on one side of the house, and on the other four stories high.’ Piozzi Letters , i. 109. Dr. Burton is mistaken in thinking that the flat in which Johnson was received was the very one which had been occupied by Hume. He quotes a paper, apparently undated, drawn up by Hume for defending an action brought against him by a builder for repairs. In this it is stated that ‘at Whitsuntide last, Mr. Boswell, advocate, left Mr. Hume's house in James's Court; and Lady Wallace, dowager, came to it.’ The document goes on to say that the Boswells had lived two years in the house. If Boswell lived two years in this flat it must have been later on, for Hume left it for St. Andrew's Square little more than a year before Johnson's visit. Dr. Burton says:—‘I have ascertained that by ascending the western of the two stairs facing the entry of James's Court to the height of three stories, we arrive at the door of David Hume's house, which, of the two doors on that landing place, is the one towards the left.’ Life of Hume , ii. 137. It has been suggested to me that Dr. Burton was misled by Hume's statement that he lived ‘in the third story,’ and that he should have counted the stories from the outside. My correspondent says:—‘If you enter from the Mound, that is from the north side, then the house is on the third story, as stories in Scotland are not reckoned from the pavement flat, but from the one immediately above it.’ I feel convinced however that Hume did not live on the pavement flat. In the first place, we have Dr. Burton's positive statement, which was, he says, founded on ‘information communicated by Joseph Grant, Esq.’ In the second place, Hume, in the letter to Elliot quoted above, says that his house ‘is the third story.’ As he did not say on which side of the Court it stood, he could never have expected his correspondent to know that it was one of those houses in which the third story was also the sixth. In the third place, in the list of occupants in 1773, given in Chambers's Traditions of Edinburgh , ed. 1825, i. 220, it is stated that while Boswell occupied the floor level with the pavement, Dr. Gregory Grant lived on the fourth floor. Now Dr. Blair when Hume's tenant wrote to him on Oct. 8, 1765:—‘I have got two rooms in Dr. Grant's house above me for Mr. Percy's accommodation 1 .’ M. S. R. S. E. Of course Dr. Grant's house would have been above him, had he been living on the pavement level; but it seems likely that he meant the flat just above. In 1773 the third floor, according to Chambers's list, was occupied by Alexander Wallace, Esq., Banker. It was to this floor that, when ‘Mr. Boswell, the advocate, left in Whitsuntide, Lady Wallace, dowager, came.’ Whether she was related to the banker I do not know. It is possible that Hume's tenant was not Johnson's biographer, but his cousin, Claude James Boswell, also an advocate, afterwards Lord Balmuto. If, however, it was James Boswell, then his two years’ tenancy must have fallen between the end of 1773 and the summer of 1776. It is strange nevertheless that if he ever lived in Hume's old house he should have made no mention of it.
The two stories of this house in a few years saw a remarkable set of inmates and visitors. Round about Hume, and Boswell, and Blair the best society of Edinburgh gathered. Adam Smith had his chamber in Hume's flat 2 ; Benjamin Franklin was his guest for several weeks together 3 ; it was here that a shelter was offered to Rousseau 4 . It was here that Paoli visited Boswell in 1771 5 , and that Johnson held his levées in 1773 6 . Some memorial surely should be raised to tell both citizen and stranger of the past glories of this long-neglected Court.
The Duc de Nivernois had been ambassador in England in 1762. Walpole's Letters , iv. 17. Walpole calls him ‘a namby-pamby kind of pedant, with a peevish petite santé. ’ Ib. v. 131.
‘Formerly a common name in Scotland for a cook-maid.’ Note by Stewart.
Perhaps it was these fires which caused the conflagration by which this most interesting house was burnt down in 1857.
Mr. Percy, the son of the Earl of Northumberland, was his pupil.
Post , Letter of Feb. 11, 1776, note 1.
Dr. A. Carlyle's Autobiography , p. 437.
Ante , p. 76, n. 5.
Chambers's Traditions of Edinburgh , i. 221.
Boswell's Johnson , v. 395.
Note 3. Hume enjoyed also the advantage of having been sought by a man of ‘the decorum and piety of Lord Hertford.’ Writing on Sept. 1, 1763, soon after his appointment as his Lordship's Secretary, he says:—‘Elliot said to me that my situation was, taking all its circumstances, the most wonderful event in the world. I was now a person clean and white as the driven snow; and that were I to be proposed for the see of Lambeth no objection could henceforth be made to me.’ Burton's Hume , ii. 159.
Note 4. Gibbon, in his fifty-second year, wrote:—‘This day may possibly be my last; but the laws of probability, so true in general, so fallacious in particular, still allow about fifteen years 7 .’ He lived about five more. Gibbon's Misc. Works , i. 274.
According to the tables drawn up by Dr. William Ogle on the basis of the death-rates of 1871–80 the laws of probability allow a man of Gibbon's age about eighteen years. Whitaker's Almanack , p. 346.
Note 5. Hume writing of his twenty-fourth year, says in his Autobiography :—‘I resolved to make a very rigid frugality supply my deficiency of fortune, to maintain unimpaired my independency, and to regard every object as contemptible except the improvement of my talents in literature.’
Note 6. Hume just two years earlier, wrote to dissuade Gibbon from composing in French:—‘Let the French triumph in the present diffusion of their tongue. Our solid and increasing establishments in America, where we need less dread the inundation of Barbarians, promise a superior stability and duration to the English language.’ Gibbon's Misc. Works , i. 204. Franklin, writing to Hume from Coventry on Sept. 27, 1760, says:—‘I hope with you that we shall always in America make the best English of this Island our standard, and I believe it will be so. I assure you it often gives me pleasure to reflect how greatly the audience (if I may so term it) of a good English writer will, in another century or two, be increased by the increase of English people in our colonies.’ Life of Franklin , ed. by J. Bigelow, i. 412. Franklin's reflections would have been far less pleasurable could he have foreseen the meanness of this vast audience of the future. He was honest enough to think that each man has some right to enjoy the fruits of his own labour. He would have been the last man to rob English writers of their fairly-earned reward by refusing them a copy-right. Once, when upholding in Congress a law of libel, he said that he was willing to give up his right of throwing dirt at other people, would other people give up their right of throwing dirt at him. In like manner he would have urged the Americans to give up their right of robbing Englishmen, when he saw that Englishmen were willing to give up their right of robbing Americans. I speak with some feeling, for 1 have learnt that Messrs. Harper of New York are ‘reprinting’ my edition of Boswell's Life of Johnson.
Note 7. Wilkes had withdrawn to France in 1763. By not appearing to the indictments which were laid against him, towards the end of 1764, he was outlawed.An exile from his country, distrest in his circumstances, and in a great measure abandoned by his friends, he seemed not only totally ruined, but also nearly forgotten Ann. Reg. 1769, i. 58. Had the pardon for which in 1766 he sued from the prime-minister, the Duke of Grafton, been granted, he might have sunk altogether into oblivion. Had he been offered the bribe of a pension or a place, he would have ceased to bea Wilkitemany years earlier than he did. He was however treated, not only with neglect, but with some indignity. In December, 1767, he published a letter to the Duke of Grafton in which he accused him and Chatham of being the tools of Bute. The public attention and pity were once more roused. ‘They began to think his suffering out of measure, and to reflect that he was at any rate a victim to the popular cause Ib. p. 59. In defiance of his sentence of outlawry, he returned to England on the dissolution of Parliament, and in March, 1768, stood for the City of London. He was unsuccessful, rather, it seems, through the cowardice than the ill-will of the electors. He at once set up for the County of Middlesex, and was returned by a great majority. The Londoners flocked to Brentford to hear the declaration of the poll.There has not been so great a defection of the inhabitants from London and Westminster to ten miles distance in one day, since the Lifeguardmanprophecy of the earthquake which was to destroy both those cities in the year 1750 Ib. 1768, i. 86. Strahan, describing these transactions in a letter to Sir Andrew Mitchell, dated April 1, 1768, saysDuring the continuance of the poll for London he appeared every day on the hustings, though he was more than once arrested there at the instance of his private creditors. But he found bail for his appearance, braved it out to the last, and was attended by a considerable mob every day. When he found the poll going against him, he publicly gave out he would stand for Middlesex. There he was likely to stand a better chance, an incredible number of petty freeholders of that County from Wapping, and its environs, immediately declared for him, and on the day of election, he carried it with ease, and with very little disturbance at Brentford; though the whole road thither was lined with a mob who insulted every one who would not join in the Cry of Wilkes and Liberty. This success immediately reached London, and occasioned such an intoxication in the mob—men, women, and children—that they spread themselves from Hyde Park Corner to Wapping, and broke everybodywindows who refused to illuminate their houses; among the rest, those of the Mansion House of the Lord Mayor, who happened that night to sleep in the Country, were quite demolished; and though a party of soldiers were at length sent for by the Mayoress from the Tower, they, when they came (so general was the infatuation) seemed more disposed to assist the mob than to disperse them. You will not easily believe it, but it is true, that the Dukes of Grafton and Northumberland, and many others of the first nobility, nay some of the Royal Family itself (viz. the Princess Amelia and the Dukes of Gloucester and Cumberland) were mean enough to submit to illuminate their windows upon this infamous occasion, in obedience to the orders of a paltry Mob, which a dozen of their footmen might easily have dispersed. If you ask me why was not Wilkes secured on his arrival, and before he had acquired his present consequence?—the answer is plain, the Ministry were part of them timid, and part of them secretly his friends. The outlawry, says the present Attorney General De Grey cannot be defended, because of some informalities in the passing of it; and his predecessor Norton who did pass it, is in opposition. The Duke of Grafton, though then in Town, is now at Newmarket, the Chancellor at Bath, the rest electioneering in different parts of the country, or skulking in town; but not one of them disposed to prevent this insult to their Master or to issue orders for a party of the Guards (and a small one would have been sufficient) to clear the streets.
‘The next night, the same illuminations were again insisted on, and the same insolence, with the same impunity, was repeated.’ M. S. R. S. E.
‘It is really on extraordinary event,’ wrote Dr. Franklin on April 16, ‘to see an outlaw and exile, of bad personal character, not worth a farthing, come over from France, set himself up as a candidate for the capital of the kingdom, miss his election only by being too late in his application, and immediately carrying it for the principal county. The mob (spirited up by numbers of different ballads sung or roared in every street) requiring gentlemen and ladies of all ranks, as they passed in their carriages, to shout for Wilkes and liberty, marking the same words on all coaches with chalk, and No. 45 on every door; which extends a vast way along the roads in the country.’ Franklin's Memoirs (ed. 1833), iii. 306. Wilkes, after being allowed his liberty for nearly three months, was committed to the King's Bench on his outlawry. The mob carried him off in triumph on his way to prison, taking the horses out of his carriage and drawing it themselves. He gave himself up the same day to the marshal. Ann. Reg. 1768, i. 100. On May 10, at a riot in St. George's Fields, before his prison gates five or six people were shot dead by the soldiers, and about fifteen wounded. Ib. p. 108. On June 8 Wilkes's outlawry was reversed; Ib. p. 121; but on June 18 judgment was pronounced on him for the charges of which, in February 1764, he had been convicted in his absence; namely the republication of the North Briton , No. 45, and the publication of the Essay on Woman. He was sentenced to two fines of five hundred pounds each and to two terms of imprisonment of ten and twelve months each. Ib. p. 127. When two of the soldiers who had fired on the crowd were put on their trial, the anger of the people was roused by the alleged mockery of justice. They were still more angered by ‘a letter of a Secretary of State recommending an effectual and early use of the military power; and by another from the Secretary at War, thanking the soldiers for their alacrity, and promising them protection; and these words being attended with pecuniary rewards publicly given, the populace were actuated with the highest degree of fury and resentment.’ Ib. 1769, i. 62. Meanwhile ‘the disorders in the Colonies increased to such a degree as to grow every day more alarming…. Moreover it was said that the weakness of Government had encouraged the neighbouring States to treat us with contempt and indifference.’ Ib. p. 63.
London during the first six months of 1768 was, to quote Dr. Franklin's words, ‘a daily scene of lawless riot. Mobs patrolling the streets at noon-day, some knocking all down that will not roar for Wilkes and liberty;… coal-heavers and porters pulling down the houses of coal-merchants that refuse to give them more wages; sawyers destroying saw-mills; sailors unrigging all the outward-bound ships, and suffering none to sail till merchants agree to raise their pay; watermen destroying private boats and threatening bridges; soldiers firing among the mobs, and killing men, women, and children.’ Franklin's Memoirs , 1818, iii. 307. ‘We have independent mobs,’ wrote Horace Walpole on May 12, ‘that have nothing to do with Wilkes, and who only take advantage of so favourable a season. The dearness of provisions incites, the hope of increase of wages allures, and drink puts them in motion…. I cannot bear to have the name of Liberty profaned to the destruction of the cause; for frantic tumults only lead to that terrible corrective, Arbitrary Power,—which cowards call out for as protection, and knaves are so ready to grant.’ Letters , v. 99. The Annual Register for this year describes among other riots one on April 18, in which three persons were killed by shots, and several dangerously wounded (i. 96); a second, on the 25th, in which ‘several lives were lost’ ( ib. p. 99); a third, on May 10—the one before Wilkes's prison, mentioned above; a fourth, on May 25, in which ‘many lives were lost’ ( ib. p. 114); a fifth, on June 2, in which two captains of ships were so beaten that their lives were despaired of ( ib. p. 119); a sixth, on June 4, in which ‘the coal-heavers and sailors had a terrible battle, when many were wounded on both sides’ ( ib. p. 120); a seventh, on June 7, ‘another great fray, in which several sailors lost their lives’ ( ib. p. 121); and an eighth, on June 13, a fight between the coal-heavers and the military, ‘wherein several were hurt on both sides’ ( ib. p. 124). In the end nine coal-heavers were hanged, and for a time there was peace. Ib. pp. 137, 139. The High Sheriff of Hertford, at the summer assizes, ‘sent a turtle for the table of the judges, with burgundy instead of the common present of claret, and gave for a reason, that in these licentious times he could not treat His Majesty's chief ministers of justice with too much respect.’ Ib. p. 153.
On Feb. 3, 1769, Wilkes was expelled the House of Commons, and declared incapable of being elected. On Feb. 16 he was a second time, and on March 16 a third time, elected without opposition; his election in each case was declared void. On April 13, being elected for the fourth time by a great majority, the poll taken for him was declared null and void, and the seat was given to his opponent. Parl. Hist. xvi. 437, 546. There was much less rioting in 1769. Nevertheless on March 22 the King issued a Proclamation, in which it was stated that ‘disorderly persons had in a most daring and audacious manner assaulted several merchants and others, coming to our palace at St. James's, and had committed many acts of violence and outrage before the gates of our palace.’ Ann. Reg. 1769, i. 229. Less than a month before the date of Hume's letter, some riotous weavers, armed with guns and pistols, attacked a party of soldiers who had been sent against them. Two weavers and one soldier were killed and several were wounded. Ib. p. 136. Five of the weavers were hanged. Ib. pp. 159, 162. Even the Lord Mayor's Feast was troubled. Of all the Ministers and great officers of state invited, Lord Chancellor Camden alone attended; and in the procession only ‘five aldermen appeared without dread of popular disgrace.’ Ib. p. 149.
The Middlesex election had roused the whole country. ‘The remotest counties,’ says Burke, ‘caught the alarm…. The nation was in a great ferment during the whole summer—the like had scarcely been ever remembered.’ Ann. Reg. 1770, i. 56, 58. Horace Walpole, on his return to London from France, wrote on Oct. 13:—‘I arrived the night before last; and do not find any reason to change my opinion on the state of this country. It approaches by fast strides to some great crisis, and to me never wore so serious an air, except in the Rebellion.’ Letters , v. 196.
Note 8. Sir James Macdonald wrote to Hume on May 18, 1765:—‘The silk-weavers got a bill passed in the House of Commons to prevent more effectually the importation of foreign silks, which the Duke of Bedford threw out in the House of Lords. The next day above ten thousand of these people came down to the House, desiring redress, with drums beating and colours flying. They attacked the Duke of Bedford in his chariot, and threw so large a stone at him that, if he had not put up his hand and saved his head by having his thumb cut to the bone, he must have been killed. He behaved with great resolution and got free of them, since which time he has remained blockaded in his own house, and defended by the troops. Yesterday the same number of weavers assembled again at the House of Lords, where the horse and foot guards were to secure the entry for the Peers. The mob were ranged before the soldiers, and their colours were playing in the faces of his Majestytroops. The degree of security with which these people commit felony seems to me the most formidable circumstance in the whole…. It is really serious to see the legislature of this country intimidated by such a rabble, and to see the House of Lords send for Justice Fielding, to hear him prove for how many reasons he ought not to do his duty. The Duke of Bedford is still in danger of his life if he goes out of his house.’ Letters of Eminent Persons to David Hume , p. 55.
Note 9. Boswell records the following conversation on April 10, 1783B Oswell. “This has been a very factious reign, owing to the too great indulgence of Government.” Johnson. “ I think so, Sir. What at first was lenity, grew timidity. Yet this is reasoning a posteriori , and may not be just. Supposing a few had at first been punished, I believe faction would have been crushed; but it might have been said that it was a sanguinary reign. A man cannot tell a priori what will be best for Government to doBoswell's Johnson , iv. 200.
Note 10. Theirpretencehad some foundation. Dr. Brocklesby, Physician to the Army, the friend of Johnson and Burke, in his Œconomical and Medical Observations reviewed in the Gent. Mag. for 1763, pp. 602, 634, saysthat more than eight times as many soldiers fall by fever as by battleThe military hospitals ‘sweep off the men like a perpetual pestilence….A cruel parsimony frequently devotes many lives to destruction…. Soldiers frequently contract inveterate rheumatisms and lose the use of their limbs merely for want of an addition to their clothing…. As it is frequently fit that the sick should be kept upon half diet, his unexpended pay should always come into his own pocket, which at present is seldom the case. He might then be able to procure shoes and stockings, the want of which frequently occasions a relapse in weakly men.’ Dr. Franklin, describing on May 14, 1768, the riot in St. GeorgeFields in which the soldiers shot six people dead, continues:—'several of the soldiers are imprisoned. If they are not hanged, it is feared there will be more and greater mobs; and if they are, that no soldier will assist in suppressing any mob hereafter. The prospect either way is gloomy. It is said the English soldiers English as distinguished from the Scotch cannot be confided in to act against these mobs, being suspected as rather inclined to favour and join themThe soldiers who had fired on the mob belonged to a Scotch regiment. Franklin Memoirs (ed. 1833), iii. 310.
Note 11. The Marquis of Granby was Commander in Chief from Aug. 1766 to Jan. 1770. His popularity is shown by the number of taverns that still bear his sign.It was cruel,’ wrote Lord Chesterfield on his appointment,to put a boy he was 45 years old over the head of old Ligonier Letters to his Son , iv. 248. Junius, who had attacked him in his life-time, after his death wrote:—‘His mistakes in public conduct did not arise from want of sentiment or want of judgment, but in general from the difficulty of saying No to the bad people who surrounded him.’ Chatham Corres. iii. 478. Horace Walpole writing of the division on the address of Thanks on Jan. 9, 1770, says:—‘The most serious part is the defection of Lord Granby the Commander-in-Chief; for though he has sunk his character by so many changes, a schism in the army would be very unpleasant, especially as there are men bad enough to look towards rougher divisions than parliamentary Letters , v. 214.
Note 12. Charles Pratt, first Earl Camden, was Lord Chancellor from July, 1766, till his dismissal by the Duke of Grafton in Jan., 1770. In the London Chronicle of Oct. 26, 1769 (the day after the date of Hume's letter), the following paragraph appearedYesterday the Lord Chancellor was done at Jonathanupon the ratio of sixty to forty guineas that he resigns before Christmas; and at night his Lordship was done at Arthurupon the ratio of three to one that he resigns before Saturday sennight.’
Note 13. Hume wrote of Lord Mansfield on July 5, 1768:—‘Lord Mansfield said to me that it was impossible for him to condemn Wilkes to the pillory, because the Attorney-General did not demand it. Yesterday he represented to the Spanish Ambassador that moderate sentence as a refinement in politics, which reduced the scoundrel the sooner to obscurity. It would be a strange cause which he could not find plausible reasons to justifyBurton's Hume , ii. 415. Horace Walpole, writing on Nov. 13, 1766, saysLord Mansfield was reduced to make a speech against prerogative —yes, yes; and then was so cowed by Lord Camden, and the very sight of Lord Chatham, that he explained away half he had said Letters , v. 28. On Dec. 18, 1770, Walpole wrote:—‘If we having nothing else to do after the holidays, we are to amuse ourselves with worrying Lord Mansfield, who between irregularities in his Court, timidity, and want of judgment, has lowered himself to be the object of hatred to many, and of contempt to everybody.’ Ib. p. 270. In the Memoirs of George III , iv. 187, Walpole speaks of hispusillanimityandabject spiritsStrahan writing to Hume on Jan 13, 1770, after mentioning that Mansfieldnephew, Lord Stormont, had called on him, continuesI took that opportunity of lamenting his Unclewant of courage; which if joined to his great abilities might at this juncture be of such eminent service to this country. He said nobody acted more strictly up to the plan of conduct he prescribed to himself. I replied, I was no judge of that; but I was certain his allowing Wilkes to insult him upon the Bench, and his deigning to vindicate himself against the accusations of that scoundrel, could not be consistent with any plan whatever. At least to me it was wholly incomprehensible. There was no answering this. And I chose not to push the matter further. You will probably think I pushed it too far. Perhaps I might, but it came naturally into the conversation M. S. R. S. E.
Note 14. Lord Butetraining and character suited an experimenter. Johnson described him as ‘a theoretical statesman—a book-minister.’ Boswell's Johnson , ii. 353. Lord Shelburne wrote of him:—‘He panted for the Treasury, having a notion that the King and he understood it from what they had read about revenue and funds while they were at KewFitzmaurice Shelburne , i. 141. Hisproject of Government,’ as Burke termed it, is described in Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents , Payne Burke , i. 12—14. Though he resigned office in April, 1763, his influence was long felt and perhaps still longer dreaded. Mr. Grenville, the Prime Minister, on May 22, 1765, in the name of the Cabinet offered to the King certain points as indispensably necessary for carrying on the public business. The first of these wasthat the King's Ministers should be authorised to declare that Lord Bute is to have nothing to do in His MajestyCouncils or Government, in any manner or shape whatever Grenville Papers , iii. 41. To this the King assented. Ib. p. 185. In the following November Jenkinson (afterwards first Earl of Liverpool)owned to Mr. Grenville that the intercourse in writing between His Majesty and Lord Bute always continued, telling him that he knew that the King wrote him a journal every day of what passed, and as minute a one as if, said he, “your boy at school was directed by you to write his journal to you Ib. p. 220. Hume wrote on Aug. 13, 1767, when he was still an Under-Secretary of State:—‘I am told that Lord Townshend openly ascribes his own promotion [to the Lord-Lieutenancy of Ireland] entirely to the friendship of Lord Bute. Charles Fitzroy lately in a great meeting proposed Lord Bute's health in a bumper. It will be a surprise to you certainly if that noble Lord should again come into fashion, and openly avow his share of influence, and be openly courted by all the world.’ Burton's Hume, ii. 407.
Strahan, at the end of his letter of April 1, 1768, after saying that he thinks that the banishment of Lord Bute from England is probable, continues:—‘The case of this nobleman is really singular; divested of power, he retains all the odium of Prime Minister. Having long since most injudiciously pushed into office, and as injudiciously retired from the political theatre, he hath ever since exercised the power of recommending, or rather nominating every succeeding Ministry. These have by turns spurned at and renounced their maker, and what is truly remarkable, though he has had no influence in their Councils, though he has all along never dared to interpose, even so far as occasionally to serve an humble retainer or dependant, yet, being well known to have named the men , he has made himself in the public opinion ultimately responsible for their measures ; and will ere long, if I am not mistaken, be made the scapegoat of all their misconduct; so that in the end, his master's favour, of which he appears to have little known how to avail himself, will cost him dear.’ M. S. R. S. E.
It was on March 2, 1770, that Lord Chatham, in the House of Lords, ‘spoke of the secret influence of an invisible power; of a favourite, who notwithstanding he was abroad was at this moment as potent as ever; who had ruined every plan for the public good, and betrayed every man who had taken a responsible office…. There is,’ he added, ‘something behind the throne greater than the King himself.’ Parl. Hist. xvi. 842—3.
Note 15. Hume wrote on March 28, 1769:—‘I am well assured that Lord Chatham will, after the holidays, creep out from his retreat and appear on the scene.
I know not if I cite Virgil exactly 1 , but I am sure I apply him right. The villain is to thunder against the violation of the Bill of Rights in not allowing the county of Middlesex the choice of its member! Think of the impudence of that fellow, and his quackery—and his cunning—and his audaciousness; and judge of the influence he will have over such a deluded multitude.’ Burton's Hume , ii. 422.
Horace Walpole wrote on March 24, 1769:—‘If the Scotch who cannot rest in patience without persecuting Wilkes, and who have neither known how to quiet or to quell him, prompt new violence, the nation will call out for Lord Chatham and Lord Temple.... For a little more power men risk what they possess, and never discover that the most absolute are those which reign in the hearts of the people. Were Cardinal Richelieu, Cromwell, or Lewis XI more despotic than Mr. Pitt at the end of the last reign? And then he had the comfort of going to bed every night without the fear of being assassinated 1 .’ Letters , v. 149. On July 9, 1769, Burke wrote to the Marquis of Rockingham:—‘The Court alone can profit by any movements of Lord Chatham, and he is always their resource, when they are run hard.’ Burke's Corres. i. 179. On Oct. 29 (four days after the date of Hume's letter) he wrote to the same Lord:—‘Though, according to Lord Camden's phrase, Lord Chatham has had a wonderful resurrection to health, his resurrection to credit and consequence, and to the power of doing mischief (without which his resurrection will be incomplete), must be owing to your Lordship and your friends.’ Ib. p. 202.
Johnson in a paragraph which was struck out of his Taxation no Tyranny by ‘men in power’ suggests that King William may be sought for by the Whigs of America, if they erect a monarchy. Boswell's Johnson , ii. 314. See post , Letters of Jan. 25, 1770; March 25, 1771, and Oct. 26, 1775, for Hume's attacks on Lord Chatham.
Burke, in the Ann. Reg. for 1761 (i. 47), had said that ‘under Mr. Pitt for the first time administration and popularity were seen united.’
Note 16. Burke, in Present Discontents (p. 45), written at the end of 1769, says:—‘Good men look upon this distracted scene with sorrow and indignation. Their hands are tied behind them. They are despoiled of all the power which might enable them to reconcile the strength of Government with the rights of the people. They stand in a most distressing alternative. But in the election among evils they hope better things from temporary confusion than from established servitude. In the meantime, the voice of law is not to be heard. Fierce licentiousness begets violent restraints. The military arm is the sole reliance; and then, call your constitution what you please, it is the sword that governs. The civil power, like every other that calls in the aid of an ally stronger than itself, perishes by the assistance it receives.’
Horace Walpole wrote on Jan. 1, 1770:—‘Is the Crown to be forced to be absolute! Is Cæsar to enslave us, because he conquered Gaul!... Is eloquence to talk or write us out of ourselves! or is Catiline to save us, but so as by fire !... Despotism, or unbounded licentiousness, can endear no nation to any honest man. The French can adore the monarch that starves them, and banditti are often attached to their chief; but no good Briton can love any constitution that does not secure the tranquillity and peace of mind of all.’ Letters , v. 213. See post , Letter of Nov. 13, 1775.
Note 17. The ‘shooting’ and the ‘hanging,’ fortunately for liberty, were not sure to be on the same side. Professor Dicey points out that ‘the position of a soldier may be, both in theory and practice, a difficult one. He may, as it has been well said 1 , be liable to be shot by a court-martial if he disobeys an order, and to be hanged by a judge and jury if he obeys it.’ Law of the Constitution , ed. 1886, p. 311. Hume, in the midst of the riots of the previous year, writing to a French lady, had expressed himself with much more calmness than he now did:—‘London, 24th May, 1768. There have been this spring in London a good many French gentlemen, who have seen the nation in a strange situation, and have admired at our oddity. The elections have put us into a ferment; and the riots of the populace have been frequent; but as these mutinies were founded on nothing, and had no connexion with any higher order of the state, they have done but little mischief, and seem now entirely dispersed.’ Private Corres. p. 262. Dr. Blair wrote to Hume from Edinburgh on March 11, 1769:—‘John [Bull] seems to have lost altogether the little sense he had; and I do suspect blood must be drawn from him before he settles. We look on the distant scene with calmness; procul a Jove, procul a fulmine ; but to live in the midst of it I would really think disagreeable.’ M. S. R. S. E.
Professor Dicey is perhaps quoting Lord Hervey's words. See Memoirs of Lord Hervey, ii. 135, 142.
Note 18. Burke describes how ‘the nation had been in a great ferment during the whole summer—the like had scarcely been ever remembered.’ After giving the opinions of each party he continues:— ‘The minds of all men were occupied on the one side and the other with these considerations, and great expectations were formed concerning the manner in which these great points would be handled in the Speech from the Throne. The Speech began by taking notice of a distemper that had broke out among the horned cattle.... No notice whatsoever was taken of the great domestic movements, which had brought on, or followed, the petitions. The public were much surprised at the silence concerning the petitions, and at the solemn mention of the horned cattle, which filled the place of that important business. It became even a subject of too general ridicule.’ Ann. Reg. 1770, pp. 58–9.
Johnson in The False Alarm , published in Jan. 1770, while he attacks those ‘who have been so industrious to spread suspicion and incite fury from one end of the kingdom to the other,’ and calls the disturbances ‘this tempest of outrage,’ yet proposes no rash remedies. ‘He cannot favour the opposition,’ he says, ‘for he thinks it wicked, and cannot fear it, for he thinks it weak.... Nothing is necessary at this alarming crisis but to consider the alarm as false. To make concessions is to encourage encroachment. Let the Court despise the faction, and the disappointed people will soon deride it.’ Works , vi. 156, 178.
Note 19. The Duke was thirty-four years old. Horace Walpole wrote on June 16, 1768:—‘What can one say of the Duke of Grafton, but that his whole conduct is childish, insolent, inconstant, and absurd—nay, ruinous? Because we are not in confusion enough, he makes everything as bad as possible, neglecting on one hand, and taking no precaution on the other. I neither see how it is possible for him to remain Minister, nor whom to put in his place. No government, no police, London and Middlesex distracted, the Colonies in rebellion, Ireland ready to be so, and France arrogant and on the point of being hostile! ... the Duke of Grafton, like an apprentice, thinking the world should be postponed to a whore and a horse-race.’ Letters , v. 106. Junius, in his Letter of April 10, 1769, describes the Duke as ‘a singular instance of youth without spirit.’ Hume had written on July 22 of the year before, when the Duke was in power:—‘I fancy the Ministry will remain; though surely their late remissness, or ignorance, or pusillanimity, ought to make them ashamed to show their faces, were it even at Newmarket.’ Burton's Hume , ii. 417. When the Duke resigned Walpole wrote:—‘A very bad temper; no conduct, and obstinacy always ill-placed, have put an end to his Grace's administration.’ Letters , v. 223.
Note 20. It is probable that a man who boasted of his ‘rigid frugality’ and enjoyed his opulence had before this sold out the stock, for the rise of which he had been so anxious ( ante , p. 42). In his last illness ‘he maintained that the national debt must be the ruin of Britain.’ Burton's Hume , ii. 497. Thirty-three years earlier, in 1737, so prosperous had been the country that Sir John Barnard brought in a bill to reduce the interest of the National Debt from four to three per cent. Sir Robert Walpole opposed it, chiefly through ‘fear of disobliging the moneyed men in the House of Commons.’ Though the Bill at first was supported by a great majority (220 to 157), yet Walpole ‘by making use of all his oratory to persuade and all his Exchequer knowledge to puzzle’ got it thrown out by a majority nearly as great. The Debt at that time amounted to almost fifty million pounds. Lord Hervey's Memoirs , ii. 325–330.
Note 21. March, 1765. Stamp Act passed. Ann. Reg. 1765, i. 38. March, 1766. Stamp Act repealed. Ib. 1766, i. 46. June, 1767. Tea duties established. Parl. Hist. xvi. 376. Sept. 1768. Convention met at Boston. Ann. Reg. 1768, i. 73. Sept. 1768. Troops sent from England to support the Government arrived on the day the Convention broke up. Ib. p. 74. March, 1770. ‘Terrible engagement between the soldiery and the towns-people of Boston; four persons killed on the spot.’ Ib. 1770, i. 99. Dec. 1773. Tea thrown into the sea at Boston. Ib. 1774, i. 49. Sept. 1774. General Congress met at Philadelphia. Ib. 1775, i. 23. April, 1775. ‘First blood drawn at Lexington.’ Ib. i. 126. June, 1775. Battle of Bunker's Hill. Ib. i. 134.
Horace Walpole on Aug. 4, 1768, after describing a riot at Wapping, continues:—‘Well! but we have a worse riot, though a little farther off. Boston—not in Lincolnshire, though we have had a riot even there—but in New England, is almost in rebellion, and two regiments are ordered thither. Letters are come in that say the other provinces disapprove; and even the soberer persons there. In truth it is believed in the City that this tumult will be easily got the better of.’ Letters , v. 114.
Note 22. Burke, after telling of the peace made with Hyder Ali on April 3, 1769, continues:—‘The consequences of this unfortunate war in the Carnatic were not confined to the East Indies; the alarm was caught at home, where the distance of the object and the uncertain knowledge of the danger, having full room to operate upon the imagination, multiplied the fears of the people concerned in a most amazing degree. India stock fell above 60 per cent. in a few days.’ Ann. Reg. 1769, i. 52. It was not till nearly a month after the date of Hume's letter that certain news of the peace was received. Gent. Mag. 1769, p. 557. Horace Walpole wrote on July 19, 1769:—‘The East India Company is all faction and gaming. Such fortunes are made and lost every day as are past belief. Our history will appear a gigantic lie hereafter, when we are shrunk again to our own little island. People trudge to the other end of the town to vote who shall govern empires at the other end of the world.’ Letters , v. 177.
Note 23. Hume wished for the diminution of London because he dreaded its power, exerted as it was at this time against the combination of Court and Parliament. ‘The Common-Council was,’ to use Johnson's phrase, ‘too inflammable.’ Boswell's Johnson , ii. 164. Johnson in 1775 ‘owned that London was too large; but added, “It is nonsense to say the head is too big for the body. It would be as much too big, though the body were ever so large; that is to say, though the country were ever so extensive. It has no similarity to a head connected with a body.”’ Ib. ii. 356. In 1778 ‘he laughed at querulous declamations against the age, on account of luxury—increase of London,’ etc. Ib. iii. 226. A line in Horace Walpole's Letter of July 19, 1769 ( Letters , v. 177), shows why the power of London had so often been dreaded. ‘London,’ he says, ‘for the first time in its life, has not dictated to England.’
Note 24. ‘Hall, the author of Crazy Tales , said he could not bear David Hume for being such a monarchical dog. “Is it not shocking,” said he, “that a fellow who does not believe in God should believe in a King?”’ Boswelliana , p. 210. ‘“Sir,” said Dr. Johnson, “Hume is a Tory by chance, as being a Scotchman; but not upon a principle of duty, for he has no principle. If he is anything, he is a Hobbist.”’ Boswell's Johnson , v. 272.
Note 25. Hume wrote to the Countess de Boufflers on June 19, 1767:—‘You know that ministerial falls are very light accidents in this country; a fallen minister immediately rises a patriot, and perhaps mounts up to greater consideration than before.’ Private Corres. p. 246. Lord Hervey writing of the year 1727 says:—‘Both Whigs and Tories were subdivided into two parties; the Tories into Jacobites and what were called Hanover Tories; the Whigs in to patriots and courtiers, which was in plain English “Whigs in place” and “Whigs out of place.”’ Lord Hervey's Memoirs , i. 5. Johnson in the fourth edition of his Dictionary , published in 1773, introduced a second definition of patriot :—‘It is sometimes used for a factious disturber of the government.’ In 1775 ‘he suddenly uttered, in a strong determined tone, an apophthegm at which many will start:—“Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.”’ Boswell's Johnson , ii. 348.
Note 26. Had Hume's wish been gratified, he would scarcely have been satisfied with the result; for according to Johnson, ‘Mr. Wilkes and the freeholders of Middlesex might all sink into non-existence without any other effect, than that there would be room made for a new rabble and a new retailer of sedition and obscenity. The cause of our country would suffer little; the rabble, whencesoever they come, will be always patriots, and always supporters of the Bill of Rights.’ Johnson's Works , vi. 169.
Hume had expressed wishes fully as violent before. Thus on July 22, 1768, he wrote to Elliot:—‘O! how I long to see America and the East Indies revolted, totally and finally—the revenue reduced to half,—public credit fully discredited by bankruptcy,—the third of London in ruins, and the rascally mob subdued. I think I am not too old to despair of being witness to all these blessings.’ Burton's Hume , ii. 417. On Oct. 16, 1769, he wrote:—‘I am delighted to see the daily and hourly progress of madness, and folly, and wickedness in England. The consummation of these qualities are the true ingredients for making a fine narrative in history, especially if followed by some signal and ruinous convulsion,—as I hope will soon be the case with that pernicious people!’ Ib. p. 431.
Lord North would have laughed at Hume's violence: ‘On Nov. 13, 1770, in his speech on the Address he said:—‘Can any mortal, who does not read the Persian Tales as a true history, believe that because we have little political squabbles among ourselves the people will throw off at once their allegiance, their interest and their honour, abandon their lawful sovereign and offer their necks to a foreign yoke? This surely is the raving of a madman or the dream of an idiot. He that has sense to feed himself, or reason to distinguish rags and straw in a cell of Bedlam from the trappings of royalty, can never draw so monstrous a conclusion.’ Parl. Hist. xvi. 1050. How different from Hume's were Horace Walpole's feelings as he viewed the troubled scene. Less than a fortnight later he wrote:—‘I sit on the beach and contemplate the storm, but have not that apathy of finding that
“Suave mari magno turbantibus aequora ventis 1 ,” etc.
I love the constitution I am used to, and wish to leave it behind me; and Roman as my inclinations are, I do not desire to see a Caesar on the stage, for the pleasure of having another Brutus; especially as Caesars are more prolific than Brutuses.’ Letters , v. 201.
Lucretius, ii. 1.
Note 27. In the debate of March 19, 1770, on the Remonstrance from the City, ‘Lord Barington said it was so far from being an act of the City of London, that it could not properly be said to be the act of the poor people to whom it was once read, but of a set of Catilines only, who had no view but to draw all men from law and allegiance. Mr. Beckford, the Lord Mayor, was stung by this keen reproach; and to recriminate said that there were people out of the City who were ready to cut throats, and had an army at hand for that purpose.’ Parl. Hist. xvi. 899.
Note 28. Who this friend was I have not been able to ascertain.
Note 29. When Lord Stormont, in 1779, was made Secretary of State, Horace Walpole wrote:—‘He has a fair character, and is a friend of General Conway; but he is a Scot and Lord Mansfield's nephew, which the people mind much more than his character.’ Letters , vii. 266. His ‘return home’ was perhaps from a visit to Italy in 1768. On May 12 of that year Horace Walpole wrote to Sir Horace Mann at Florence:—‘I am much obliged to Lord Stormont for his kind thoughts, and am glad you are together. You will be a comfort to him, and it must be very much so to you at this time, to have a rational man to talk with instead of old fools and young ones, boys and travelling governors.’ Ib. v. 100.