XXVI.]

JAMES COUTTS THE BANKER.

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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.' Euvres 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.' Euvres 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.' Euvres 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 II. 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

XXVI.] THE ORIGINALS OF THE PAMPHLET.

95

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 Août. 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. Euvres 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, 12o. Londres, 1766, 12o. 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.' Ib. 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 Europe1 is grown a little wiser, and holds these magnificent pretensions now in proper contempt.' Ib. v. 23.

Note 15. Lady Hervey was the widow of John, Lord Hervey, whom Pope, in the Prologue to the Satires (1. 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?

"Tis an ugly envious shrew,

That rails at dear Lepell and you.'

Elwin and Courthorpe's Pope, iv. 447. Mr. Croker (Memoirs of Lord Hervey, i. xxiv.) quotes the following verse from a ballad on her :

'For Venus had never seen bedded

So perfect a beau and a belle,

As when Hervey the handsome was wedded

To the beautiful Molly Lepell.'

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

1

1 Walpole in italicising Europe refers to Hume's statement that 'Rousseau had sent letters of defiance all over Europe.' Ante, pp. 90, 91.

XXVII.] KINCAID, THE EDINBURGH BOOKSELLER.

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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.

LETTER XXVII.

Further Directions about printing the Pamphlet.

DEAR SIR

I have receiv'd by the Post a Copy of the Paris Edition of the Pamphlet I mention'd to you. I wish it were possible not to print an Edition in London, because the whole Affair will appear perfectly ridiculous1 to the English: But as I am afraid this is impossible, I believe it is better for me to take care, that a true Edition be printed. I committ that matter to your Care.

Contrary to my former Directions, I now desire you not to follow the Paris Edition in my Narrative; but exactly the English Copy which I sent you in Manuscript. There is

H