VI. Dramatic Composition.

"I CONFESS, too, that there must be two distinct views in writers for the stage; one of which is more allowable to them than to other authors. The one is durable fame—the other, peculiar to dramatic authors, the view of writing to the present taste, and perhaps, as you say, to the level of the audience. I do not mean for the sake of profitbut even high comedy must risk a little of its immortality by consulting the ruling taste. And thence a comedy always loses some of its beauties, the transient and some of its intelligibility. Like its harsher sister, Satire, many of its allusions must vanish, as the objects it aims at correcting cease to be in vogue-and perhaps that cessation, the natural death of fashion, is often ascribed by an author to his own reproofs. Ladies would have left off patching on the Whig or Tory side of their face, though Mr. Addison had not written his excellent Spectator. Probably even they who might be corrected by his reprimand adopted some new distinction as ridiculous; not discovering that his satire was levelled at their partial animosity, and not at the mode of placing their patches-for, un. fortunately, as the world cannot be cured of being foolish, a preacher who eradicates one folly does but make room for some other."

END OF THE LETTERS.

NARRATIVE

Of what passed relative to

THE QUARREL OF

MR. DAVID HUME

AND

JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU,

AS FAR AS MR. HORACE WALPOLE WAS CONCERNED IN IT.

THE Volume is yet deficient in its necessary quantity-another "REMINISCENCES" the reader will not expect-but the "NARRATIVE" which follows, partakes so much of the same matériel, although in a very different tone, and is so strikingly characteristic not only of Rousseau, but of our Author, that the Editor feels no hesitation in selecting it for the entertainment of his readers.

MAY, 1819.

NARRATIVE, &c.

I WENT to Paris in September, 1765. Mr. Hume was there, secretary to the English ambassador, the earl of Hertford. About that time the curate of Motiers, in Switzerland, had excited the mob against Rousseau, and it was no longer safe for him to stay in that country. He petitioned the magistrates of the place to imprison him, affirming that he was troubled with a rupture, and in so bad a state of health that it was impossible for him to travel. There was no law in Switzerland against ruptures, and the magistrates could not comply with his request. Mr. Hume was desired by some friends of Rousseau to procure him a retreat in England, and undertook it zealously. He spoke to me, and said, he had thoughts of obtaining permission for him to live in Richmond new park. I said, an old groom, that had been servant of my father, was one of the keepers there, had a comfortable little lodge in a retired part of that park, and I could answer for procuring a lodging there. We afterwards recollected that lord Bute was ranger

of the park, and might not care to have a man who had given such offence by his writings to pious persons, appear to be particularly under his protection; on which we dropped that idea. Sir Gilbert Elliot was then at Paris, and going to England: to him Mr. Hume applied to look out for some solitary habitation for Rousseau, as the latter had desired.

The king of Prussia, hearing that Rousseau could not remain in Switzerland, had offered him a retreat in his dominions, which Rousseau declined. It happened that I was one evening at Madame Geoffrin's in a mixed company, where the conversation turned on this refusal, and many instances were quoted of Rousseau's affected singularities, and of his projects to make himself celebrated by courting persecution. I dropped two or three things, that diverted the company, of whom monsieur Helvetius was one. When I went home, I reduced those thoughts into a little letter from the king of Prussia to Rousseau*, and dining the next

*The letter was as follows:

"Le Roi de Prusse à Mons. Rousseau.

"Mon chere Jean Jaques,

"Vous avez renoncé à Geneve votre patrie; vous vous êtes fait chasser de la Suisse, pays tant vanté dans vos écrits; la France vous a decreté.

"Venez donc chez moi: j'admire vos talents; je m'amuse de vos reveries, qui (soit dit en passant) vous occupent trop, et trop long tems. Il faut à la fin être sage et heureux. Vous avez fait assez parler de vous par des singularités peu convenables à un veritable grand homme. Demontrez à vos ennemis que vous pouvez avoir quelquefois le sens commun: cela les fachera, sans vous faire tort. Mes états vous offrent une retraite paisible; je vous veux