"General Conway told me, on my arrival, that Rousseau had made an application to him, through the canal of Mr. Davenport, to have his pension granted to him. The general's answer was, that I was to be in town in a few days; and, without my consent, and even full approbation, he would take no step in that affair. You may believe that I exhorted him to do so charitable an action. I wish he may not find a difficulty with the King, who is very much prejudiced against Rousseau.[365:1] This step of my old friend confirms the suspicion which I always entertained, that he thought he had interest enough to obtain the pension of himself; and that he had only picked a quarrel with me in order to free himself from the humiliating burden of gratitude towards me. His motives, therefore, were much blacker than many seem to apprehend them.

"A gentleman told me that he heard, from the French ambassador, that his most Christian Majesty had given an arrêt, prohibiting, under the severest penalties, the printing, vending, or dispersing, any paper of Rousseau, or his partisans, against me. I dine with the ambassador to-day, so shall know the truth of the matter, which scarce appears credible. It is surely very honourable for me; but yet will occasion that strange man to complain, that he is oppressed with power all over the world. I am,"[365:2] &c.

Hume to Dr. Blair.

"27th May, 1767.

"Since you are curious to hear Rousseau's story, I shall tell you the sequel of it. A few days after his letter to the Chancellor, of which I informed you, I got a letter from Davenport, who told me that he had just received a letter from Rousseau, dated at Spalding, wherein that wild philosopher, as he calls him, appeared very penitent, and contrite, and melancholy; and expressed his purpose of returning immediately to his former retreat at Wooton. The same day, and nearly the same hour, General Conway received a long letter from him, dated at Dover, about two hundred miles distant from Spalding. This great journey he had made in two days; and had probably set out immediately after writing the letter above-mentioned to Davenport.[372:1] This letter to General Conway is the most frenzical imaginable. He there supposes that he was brought into England by a plot of mine, in order to reduce him to infamy, derision, and captivity. That General Conway, and all the most considerable personages of the nation, and the nation itself, had entered into this conspiracy. That he is at present actually a state prisoner in General Conway's hands, and has been so ever since his arrival in the kingdom. He entreats him, however, to allow him the liberty of departing; warns him that it will not be safe to assassinate him in private; as he is unhappily too well known not to have inquiries made, if he should disappear on a sudden; and promises that if his request be granted, his memoirs shall never be printed to disgrace the English ministry and the English nation.

"He owns that he has wrote such memoirs, the chief object of which was to deliver a faithful account of the treatment he has met with in England; but he promises, that the moment he sets foot on the French shore, he shall write to the friend in whose hand the manuscript is deposited, to deliver it to the General, who may destroy it if he pleases. He adds, that as it may be objected, that after recovering his liberty he may do as he pleases, he offers, as a pledge of his sincerity, to accept of his pension; after which he thinks no one will imagine he could be so infamous as to write against the king's ministers or his people. Amidst all this frenzy, he employs these terms as if a ray of reason had for a moment broke into his mind. He says, speaking of himself in the third person, 'Non-seulement il abandonne pour toujours le projet d'écrire sa vie et ses mémoires, mais il ne lui échappera jamais, ni de bouche ni par écrit, un seul mot de plainte sur les malheurs qui lui sont arrivés en Angleterre; il ne parlera jamais de M. Hume, ou il n'en parlera qu'avec honneur, et lorsqu'il sera pressé de s'expliquer sur quelques indiscrètes plaintes, qui lui sont quelquefois échappées dans le fort de ses peines, il les rejettera sans mystère, sur son humeur aigrie et portée à la défiance, et aux ombrages par ce malheureux penchant, ouvrage de ses malheurs, et qui maintenant y met le comble.'[373:1]

"We hear that notwithstanding his imagined captivity, he has passed over to Calais; where he is likely to experience what real captivity is. I have, however, used my persuasion with Mons^r de Guerchi to represent him to his court as a real madman, more an object of compassion than of anger. We shall no doubt see his Memoirs in a little time: which will be full of eloquence and extravagance, though perhaps as reasonable as any of his past productions; for I do not imagine he was ever much more in his senses than at present. I think I may be entirely without anxiety concerning all his future productions."[374:1]

Hume to Adam Smith.

"London, 8th October, 1767.

"Dear Smith,—I shall give you an account of the late heteroclite exploits of Rousseau, as far as I can recollect them. There is no need of any secrecy: they are most of them pretty public, and are well known to every body that had curiosity to observe the actions of that strange, undefinable existence, whom one would be apt to imagine an imaginary being, though surely not an ens rationis.

"I believe you know, that in spring last, Rousseau applied to General Conway to have his pension. The General answered to Mr. Davenport, who carried the application, that I was expected to town in a few days; and without my consent and approbation he would take no steps in that affair. You may believe I readily gave my consent. I also solicited the affair, through the Treasury; and the whole being finished, I wrote to Mr. Davenport, and desired him to inform his guest, that he needed only appoint any person to receive payment. Mr. Davenport answered me, that it was out of his power to execute my commission: for that his wild philosopher, as he called him, had eloped of a sudden, leaving a great part of his baggage behind him, some money in Davenport's hands, and a letter on the table, as odd, he says, as the one he wrote to me, and implying that Mr. Davenport was engaged with me in a treacherous conspiracy against him! He was not heard of for a fortnight, till the Chancellor received a letter from him, dated at Spalding in Lincolnshire; in which he said that he had been seduced into this country by a promise of hospitality; that he had met with the worst usage; that he was in danger of his life from the plots of his enemies; and that he applied to the Chancellor, as the first civil magistrate of the kingdom, desiring him to appoint a guard at his own (Rousseau's) expense, who might safely conduct him out of the kingdom. The Chancellor made his secretary reply to him, that he was mistaken in the nature of the country; for that the first post-boy he could apply to, was as safe a guide as the Chancellor could appoint. At the very same time that Rousseau wrote this letter to the Chancellor, he wrote to Davenport, that he had eloped from him, actuated by a very natural desire, that of recovering his liberty; but finding he must still be in captivity, he preferred that at Wooton: for his captivity at Spalding was intolerable beyond all human patience, and he was at present the most wretched being on the face of the globe: he would therefore return to Wooton, if he were assured that Davenport would receive him.

"Here I must tell you, that the parson of Spalding was about two months ago in London, and told Mr. Fitzherbert, from whom I had it, that he had passed several hours every day with Rousseau, while he was in that place; that he was cheerful, good-humoured, easy, and enjoyed himself perfectly well, without the least fear or complaint of any kind. However this may be, our hero, without waiting for any answer, either from the Chancellor or Mr. Davenport, decamps on a sudden from Spalding, and takes the road directly to Dover; whence he writes a letter to General Conway, seven pages long, and full of the wildest extravagance in the world. He says, that he had endured a captivity in England, which it was impossible any longer to submit to. It was strange, that the greatest in the nation, and the whole nation itself, should have been seduced by one private man, to serve his vengeance against another private man: he found in every face that he was here the object of general derision and aversion, and he was therefore infinitely desirous to remove from this country. He therefore begs the General to restore him to his liberty, and allow him to leave England; he warns him of the danger there may be of cutting his throat in private; as he is unhappily a man too well known, not to have inquiries made after him, should he disappear of a sudden: he promises, on condition of his being permitted to depart the kingdom, to speak no ill of the king or country, or ministers, or even of Mr. Hume; as indeed, says he, I have perhaps no reason; my jealousy of him having probably arisen from my own suspicious temper, soured by misfortunes. He says, that he wrote a volume of Memoirs, chiefly regarding the treatment he has met with in England; he has left it in safe hands, and will order it to be burned, in case he be permitted to go beyond seas, and nothing shall remain to the dishonour of the king and his ministers.

"This letter is very well wrote, so far as regards the style and composition; and the author is so vain of it, that he has given about copies, as of a rare production. It is indeed, as General Conway says, the composition of a whimsical man, not of a madman. But what is more remarkable, the very same post, he wrote to Davenport, that, having arrived within sight of the sea, and finding he was really at liberty to go or stay, as he pleased, he had intended voluntarily to return to him; but seeing in a newspaper an account of his departure from Wooton, and concluding his offences were too great to be forgiven, he was resolved to depart for France. Accordingly, without any farther preparation, and without waiting General Conway's answer, he took his passage in a packet boat, and went off that very evening. 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. He was tired in England; where he was neither persecuted nor caressed, and where, he was sensible, he had exposed himself. He resolved, therefore, to leave it; and having no pretence, he is obliged to contrive all those absurdities, which he himself, extravagant as he is, gives no credit to. At least, this is the only key I can devise to his character. The ruling qualities above-mentioned, together with ingratitude, ferocity, and lying,—I need not mention eloquence and invention,—form the whole of the composition.

"When he arrived at Paris, all my friends, who were likewise all his, agreed totally to neglect him. The public, too, disgusted with his multiplied and indeed criminal extravagancies, showed no manner of concern about him. Never was such a fall from the time I took him up, about a year and a half before. I am told by D'Alembert and Horace Walpole, that, sensible of this great alteration, he endeavoured to regain his credit by acknowledging to every body his fault with regard to me: but all in vain: he has retired to a village in the mountains of Auvergne, as M. Durand tells me, where nobody inquires after him. He will probably endeavour to recover his fame by new publications; and I expect with some curiosity the reading of his Memoirs, which will I suppose suffice to justify me in every body's eyes, and in my own, for the publication of his letters and my narrative of the case. You will see by the papers, that a new letter of his to M. D., which I imagine to be Davenport, is published. This letter was probably wrote immediately on his arrival at Paris; or perhaps is an effect of his usual inconsistence: I do not much concern myself which. Thus he 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. My compliments to Mr. Oswald; and also to Mrs. Smith. I am," &c.[378:1]

Hume to Adam Smith.

"London, 17th October, 1767.

"Dear Smith,—I sit down to correct a mistake or two in the former account which I gave you of Rousseau. I saw Davenport a few days ago, who tells me, that the letter inserted in all the newspapers, was never addressed to him. He even doubts its being genuine; both because he knows it to be opposite to all his sentiments with regard to me, to whom he desires earnestly to be reconciled, and because it is too absurd and extravagant, and seems to be contrived rather as a banter upon him. Davenport added, that Rousseau was retired to some place in France, and had changed his name and his dress:[379:1] but wrote to him that he was the most miserable of all beings; that it was impossible for him to stay where he was; and that he would return to his old hermitage, if Davenport would accept of him. Indeed, he has some reason to be mortified with his reception in France; for Horace Walpole, who has very lately returned thence, tells me, that though Rousseau is settled at Cliché, within a league of Paris, nobody inquires after him, nobody visits him, nobody talks of him, every one has agreed to neglect and disregard him: a more sudden revolution of fortune than almost ever happened to any man—at least to any man of letters.

"I asked Mr. Davenport about those Memoirs, which Rousseau said he was writing, and whether he had ever seen them. He said, yes, he had; it was projected to be a work in twelve volumes; but he had as yet gone no farther than the first volume, which he had entirely composed at Wooton. It was charmingly wrote, and concluded with a very particular and interesting account of his first love, the object of which was a person whose first love it also was. Davenport, who is no bad judge, says, that these Memoirs will be the most taking of all his works; and, indeed, you may easily imagine what such a pen would make of such a subject as that I mentioned. Meanwhile it appears clearly, what I told you before, that he is no more mad at present, than he has been during the whole course of his life, and that he is capable of the same efforts of genius. I think I may wait in security his account of the transactions between us. But, however, this incident, which I foresaw, is some justification of me for publishing his letters, and may apologise for a step, which you, and even myself, have been inclined sometimes to blame, and always to regret."[380:1]