and holds these magnificent pretensions in proper contempt.

What I have said is to explain why I am sorry my letter makes a part of this controversy. When I sent it to you, it was for your justification; and had it been necessary, I could have added much more, having been witness to your anxious and boundless friendship for Rousseau. I told you, you might make what use of it you pleased. Indeed at that time I did not, could not think of its being printed, you seeming so averse to any publication on that head. However, I by no means take it ill, nor regret my part, if it tends to vindicate your honour.

I must confess that I am more concerned that you have suffered my letter to be curtailed; nor should I have consented to that if you had asked me. I guess that your friends consulted your interest less than their own inclination to expose Rousseau; and I think their omission of what I said on that subject proves I was not mistaken in my guess. My letter hinted too my contempt of learned men and their miserable conduct. Since I was to appear in print, I should not have been sorry that that opinion should have appeared at the same time. In truth, there is nothing I hold so cheap as the generality of learned men; and I have often thought, that young men ought to be made scholars, lest they should grow to reverence learned blockheads, and think there is any merit in having read more foolish books than other folks, which, as there are a thousand nonsensical books for one good one, must be the case of any man who has read much more than other people.

Your friend D'Alembert, who I suppose has read a vast deal, is, it seems, offended with my letter to Rousseau. He is certainly as much at liberty to blame it as I was to write it. Unfortunately he does not convince me; nor can I think but that if Rousseau may attack all governments and all religions, I might attack him: especially on his affectation and affected misfortunes, which you and your editors have proved are affected. D'Alembert might be offended at Rousseau's ascribing my letter to him; and he is in the right. I am a very indifferent author; and there is nothing so vexatious to an indifferent author as to be confounded with another of the same class. I should be sorry to have his eloges and translations of scraps of Taci. tus laid to me. However, I can forgive him any thing, provided he never translates me. Adieu! my dear sir; I am apt to laugh, you know, and therefore you will excuse me, though I do not treat your friends up to the pomp of their claims. They may treat me as freely; I shall not laugh the less, and I promise you I will never enter into a controversy with them.

Yours most sincerely,

HORACE WALPOLE.

V.

TO THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE.

DEAR SIR,

YESTERDAY I received by the post a copy of the edition, printed at Paris, of my narrative of this ridiculous affair between Rousseau and me. There is an introduction in the name of my friends, giving an account of the necessity under which they found themselves to publish this narrative; and an appendix in D'Alembert's name, protesting his innocence with regard to all the imputations thrown on him by Rousseau. I have no objection with regard to the first, but the second contains a clause which displeases me very much, but which you will probably only laugh at: it is that where he blames the king of Prussia's letter as cruel. What could engage D'Alembert to use this freedom, I cannot imagine. Is it possible that a man of his superior parts can bear you ill will because you are the friend of his enemy, madame du Deffand?

What

makes me suspect that there may be something true of this suspicion, is, that several passages in my narrative, in which I mention you and that letter, are all altered in the transiation, and rendered much less obliging than I wrote them: for my narrative sent to Paris was an exact copy of that left in lord Hertford's hands. I would give any thing to prevent a publication in London (for surely the whole affair will appear perfectly ridiculous); but

I am afraid that a book printed at Paris will be translated in London, if there be hopes of selling a hundred copies of it. For this reason, I fancy it will be better for me to take care that a proper edition be published, in which case I shall give orders that all the passages altered in my narrative shall be restored.

Since I came here I have been told that you have had a severe fit of sickness, but that you are now recovered: I hope you are perfectly so. I am anxious to hear of your welfare; being, with great sincerity,

Dear sir,

Your most obedient and most humble servant, DAVID HUME.

Edinburgh, 4th of Nov. 1766.

VI.

TO DAVID HUME, ESQ.

All

INDEED, dear sir, it was not necessary to make me any apology. D'Alembert is certainly at liberty to say what he pleases of my letter; and undoubtedly you cannot think that it signifies a straw to me what he says. But how can you be surprised at his printing a thing that he sent you so long ago? my surprise consists in your suffering him to curtail my letter to you, when you might be sure he would print his own at length. I am glad, however, that he has mangled inine: it not only shows his equity, but is the strongest presumption that he was conscious I guessed right, when I supposed he

urged you to publish, from his own private pique to Rousseau.

What you surmise of his censuring my letter because I am a friend of madame du Deffand, is astonishing indeed, and not to be credited, unless you had suggested it. Having never thought him any thing like a superior genius as you term him, I concluded his vanity was hurt by Rousseau's ascribing my letter to him; but to carry resentment to a woman, to an old and blind woman, so far, as to hate a friend of hers qui ne lui avoit point fait de mal, is strangely weak and lamentable. I thought he was a philosopher, and that philosophers were virtuous, upright men, who loved wisdom, and were above the little passions and foibles of humanity. I thought they assumed that proud title as an earnest to the world that they intended to be something more than mortal; that they engaged themselves to be patterns of excellence, and would utter no opinion, would pronounce no decision, but what they believed the quintessence of truth; that they always acted without prejudice and respect of persons. Indeed we know that the ancient philosophers were a ridiculous composition of arrogance, disputation, and contradictions; that some of them acted against all ideas of decency; that others affected to doubt of their own senses; that some, for venting unintelligible nonsense, pretended to think themselves superior to kings; that they gave themselves airs of accounting for all that we do and do not see-and yet, that no two of them agreed in a single hypothesis; that one thought fire, another water, the origin of all things; and that some were even so absurd, and impious, as to