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.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

1 Literary Gazette, 1822, p. 649. Corrected from original MS. R.S.E.

in France, and had changed his name and his dress: 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.

It

"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. 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,

1 He assumed the name of Renou.

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.

So ended Rousseau's wild sojourn, in what he termed "l'heureuse terre, où sont nés David Hume et le Maréchal d'Ecosse." When the wounds inflicted on his benefactor by ungrateful actions and uncharitable interpretations had been healed by time, and the conduct of him who had occasioned them was seen no longer through the excited medium of lacerated feelings, the hour had come for the just understanding to aid the kind heart, in estimating the character of the assailant; for finding that, deep as were the wounds he might inflict on others, there was an arrow still more deeply buried in his own bosom; that commiseration should take the place of resentment; and that the wanderer's footsteps should be accompanied by the prayer, that peace might revisit his disturbed spirit. Hume felt, perhaps, what he could not have expressed so well as one whose mind had too much in common with that which he describes,

His life was one long war with self-sought foes;
Or friends by him self-banished; for his mind
Had grown Suspicion's sanctuary, and chose,
For its own cruel sacrifice, the kind,

'Gainst whom he raged with fury strange and blind.
But he was frenzied,-wherefore, who may know?
Since cause might be which skill could never find;
But he was frenzied by disease or woe,

To that worst pitch of all, which wears a reasoning show.

Hume was not a man given to the clamorous expression of contritions or regrets. It is in his silence

1 MS. R.S.E.

and his subsequent acts that we find him desirous to compensate for the punishment he had inflicted on his assailant. The letters of his French friends, during the summer of 1767, show that he had earnestly exerted himself to protect Rousseau from the vengeance of the government; and there is all reason to believe, that it was through this intervention that the wanderer was permitted to pursue his course in peace. On the other hand, when the dark cloud had completely passed away, the monomaniac appears to have awakened to a distressing consciousness of what he had done. He afterwards attributed his conduct in England to our foggy atmosphere, which had filled his mind with gloom and discontent; and the work at which he laboured busily with the fierce excitement of him who forges a weapon to avenge his wrongs, stopped short at the very point where his narrative of injuries was to commence.

1 On 1st June, 1767, Turgot writes, in answer to a letter from Hume: "Je me hâte d'y répondre par ce courier, quoique je n'aie encore fait aucune démarche pour le malheureux homme auquel, il est si digne de vous de prendre encore intérêt. Le degré de folie qu'il montre aujourdhui est en vérité préférable à une folie moins exaltée, qui le laissoit chargé de tout l'odieux d'un excès d'ingratitude envers vous et M. Davenport. Une pareille ingratitude réfléchie et méditée ne peut me paroître dans la nature. Je vous remercie de m'avoir choisi parmi vos amis de ce pays-ci pour m'associer à la bonne action que vous voulez faire en lui rendant service. J'y mettrai certainement tout le zèle dont je suis capable et à cause de son infortune, et à cause de l'intérêt que vous y prenez." He continues to say, that to get him a safe passage may be easy to find him a permanent asylum in France, would be a more difficult matter. "La chose est possible hors du ressort du Parlement de Paris, mais il faut que le Roi y consente. Il n'y a que l'intérêt même que vous prenez, et la singularité de cette circonstance qui puisse peut-être adoucir le Roi sur le compte de Rousseau en faisant demander la chose en votre nom par M. de Choiseul."