noticing that Walpole's instinct appears to have foreseen the trouble that fell upon Hume. 'I wish,' he wrote to Lady Hervey, in a letter which Hume carried to England when he accompanied his untunable protégé thither, I wish he may not repent having engaged with Rousseau, who contradicts and quarrels with all mankind, in order to obtain their admiration.'1 He certainly, upon the present occasion, did not belie this uncomplimentary character. Before the last stages of the Hume-Rousseau controversy had been reached, Hume was back again in Paris, and Walpole had returned to London. Upon the whole, he told Mann, he liked France so well that he should certainly go there again. In September, 1766, he was once 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. 1 Walpole to Lady Hervey, 2 January, 1766. In a letter to Lady Mary Coke, dated two days later, he says: 'Rousseau set out this morning for England. As He loves to contradict a whole Nation, I suppose he will write for the present opposition. . . . As he is to live at Fulham, I hope his first quarrel will be with his neighbour the Bishop of London, who is an excellent subject for his ridicule ' (Letters and Journals, iii. 1892, xx). more attacked with gout, and at the beginning of October went to Bath, whose Avon (as compared with his favourite Thames) he considers 'paltry enough to be the Seine or Tyber.' Nothing pleases him much at Bath, although it contained such notabilities as Lord Chatham, Lord Northington, and Lord Camden; but he goes to hear Wesley, of whom he writes rather flippantly to Chute. He describes him as 'a lean, elderly man, fresh-coloured, his hair smoothly combed, but with a soupçon of curl at the ends.' 'Wondrous clean,' he adds,' but as evidently an actor as Garrick. He spoke his sermon, but so fast, and with so little accent, that I am sure he has often uttered it, for it was like a lesson. There were parts and eloquence in it; but towards the end he exalted his voice, and acted very ugly enthusiasm; decried learning, and told stories, like Latimer, of the fool of his college, who said, 'I thanks God for everything.' He returned to Strawberry Hill in October. In August of the next year he again went to Paris, going almost straight to Madame du Deffand's, where he finds Mademoiselle Clairon (who had quitted the stage) invited to declaim Corneille in his honour, and he sups in a distinguished company. His visit 1 Walpole to Chute, 10 October, 1766. 1 |