driven by the priests and the women from sence his dog has acquired that ascendant. NeufchatelHis affection for that creature is beyond all expression or conception."-Hume. "Is it not strange,' said he to Madame de Boufflers, that 1, who have written so much to decry the morals and conduct of the Parisian ladies, should yet be beloved by them, while the Swiss women, whom I have so much extolled, would cut my throat?' "We are fond of you,' said she, 'because we know that, whatever you may say, you love us to distraction. They detest you, because they know they are too ugly to attract you." On leaving Neufchatel, he went to a tle island, in the midst of a lake, near Berne. The island was inhabited but by one German peasant, his wife, and sister. But the Council of Berne was alarmed, trembled at the thought of a revolution, and ordered him at once to withdraw from their state. Hume undertook his protection, when he thus seemed hunted out of all society. The "gouvernante" followed in the train of the philosopher, for Hume, luckily, had not the trouble of conveying her. She was consigned to the care of another great man. While Hume was negotiating for a pension. for Rousseau, and had nearly got the promise of a hundred a-year, he received a letter "A letter has also come to me, open, from Guy the bookseller, by which I learn that malit-demoiselle sets out post, in company with a humored, very agreeable, and very mad! He friend of mine, a young gentleman, very goodvisited Rousseau in his mountains, who gave him a recommendation to Paoli, the King of Corsica; where this gentleman, whose name is Boswell, went last summer, in search of adventures. He has such a rage for literature, that You remember the story of Terentia, who I dread some event fatal to our friend's honor. was first married to Cicero, then to Sallust, and at last, in her old age, married a young nobleman, who imagined that she must possess some secret, which would convey to him eloquence and genius." To Paris he came, though outlawed by the parliament, in a strange dress, which rendered him conspicuous to the police, as to every body else. He refused the king's passport, because it could, under his circumstances, be only given to him in a false name, and this was a violation of truth to which he would not submit. The instant he came to Paris he was all the fashion. He claimed to have immediate communications with the Divinity, and Hume believed him to be speaking what he thought the truth. In January, 1766, Hume, he, and M. de Luze of Geneva, reached England. On disembarking, Rousseau says leaped on his illustrious friend's neck, braced him without uttering a word, and covered his face with kisses and tears." Rousseau's establishment consisted of a female, Mademoiselle le Vaseux, who is called his "gouvernante," and whom he insisted on accompanying him in all his visits, and his dog, "who," says Hume, "is no better than a collie." 66 Hume, one night, persuaded Rousseau to go to the theatre with him. There had been some previous arrangement with Garrick, who placed him in a box opposite the king and queen. At the very moment they were leaving home, he told Hume that he had changed his mind-" For what shall I do with Sultan ?" (his dog.) behind," said Hume. the streets, and be lost." in your room, em "This woman forms the chief incumbrance to his settlement. M. de Luze, our companion, says that she passes for wicked, and quarrelsome, and tattling, and is thought to be the chief cause of his quitting Neufchatel. He himself owns her to be so dull, that she never knows in what year of the Lord she is, nor in what month of the year, nor in what day of the month or week; and that she can never learn the different value of the pieces of money in any country. Yet she governs him as absolutely as a nurse does a child. In her ab Leave him "He will get into "Lock him up and put the key in your pockWhen they were at the door, the dog howled. Rousseau again changed his mind. Hume at last, half by force, half by urging that the king and queen were expecting to see him, got him to proceed. Efforts were made to lodge Rousseau and his family in one cottage or another with farmers and Rousseau said gardeners: these failed. that he had not come to England to be mixed up with farmers and gardeners, and he was only properly housed when Mr. Davenport, a gentleman of five or six thousand a year, located him and his at some nominal rent, in a house which he happened to have in the peak of Derby. Hume, who was beginning to know his man, thus describes the prospect of his continuing in this hermitage :- "If it be possible for a man to live without occupation, without books, without society, and without sleep, he will not quit this wild and solitary place, where all the circumstances which he ever sal about the pension. Rousseau's insanity required, seem to concur for the purpose of in reality appears at this period to have making him happy. But I dread the weak- risen to such a height as to leave him ness and inquietude natural to every man, scarcely an accountable agent; and to deand above all to a man of his character. I scribe his frenzy as malevolence or ingratishould not be surprised that he soon quitted tude is rather to adopt a metaphor from his retreat." Rousseau's suspicious temper language which assumes the sanity of all had even before Hume wrote the sentence men, than to express with any but the looswhich we have just transcribed, been exci- est analogy, Rousseau's conduct or feelings. ted. Some dispute between mademoiselle Hume was foolishly provoked into the puband an old domestic of Mr. Davenport's lication of a pamphlet on the subject of the seems to have been the immediate occasion quarrel, and this gave rise to a war of of an actual outbreak of madness. Then, pamphlets both in England and in France. with diseased ingenuity, Rousseau put toge- Fuseli, the painter, was one of Rousseau's ther all the facts connected with Walpole's champions, an absurd enterprise for which letter. He had first attributed it to Vol- he was well fitted. The caricaturists did taire, then to D'Alembert, then some acci- not allow the incident to pass without supdent led him to suppose an Englishman the plying them with their share of the harvest, anthor, then Hume himself became the reaped by the thousand industrious livers great object of a thousand suspicions, and on the bounty of the day, which is never no act of kindness was there from Hume or so bountiful as when men, whose names are his friends which he did not contrive to more known to the public than their wridovetail into the diabolical plot for his de- tings, fall out. Rousseau was represented in struction, which he persuaded himself oc- one of their prints, and shown in all the cupied all Europe. He wrote a letter to shop-windows as a yahoo, newly caught in the English newspapers, in which he said, the woods; and Hume as a farmer offering that the author of the forged letter from the him oats, which he refuses to eat. Horace king of Prussia had his accomplices in Walpole is making horns for him of papierEngland. Hume says, that the excitement mâchè, and Voltaire and D'Alembert whipmanifested in the language of this letter ping him up behind. England, Rosseau made him tremble for Rousseau. While found, was not the place for him, and he deRousseau was thus agitating himself to termined to fly. The solitary philosopher frenzy, Hume and his friends were busy does not know, however, how to proceed, trying to arrange the pension affair in such and he writes to the chancellor as the first a manner as would be most palatable to the civil magistrate in the kingdom, saying that philosopher. Jean Jacques first refused it he must "evacuate" England, and desirbecause it was to be a secret. The king's ing a guard to escort him safely to Dover, consent was then sought to permit it to be" the last act of hospitality which he will published. This would not do either; desire of the English nation." Rousseau's Rousseau refused to allow Hume to inter- acts are quite those of a madman. He exfere in his affairs at all. We have no in- hausts himself in language which, for the tention of following Mr. Burton in his ac- most part we think may represent, a real count of this quarrel, which is told at dread- purpose entertained at the moment, but the ful length, and for which Mr. Burton has mind becomes fatigued by the very effort of not the excuse of Hume's former biogra- expression in words, or is satisfied, and does pher, Ritchie, who published the original not one of all the things so earnestly and letters. A remark of Mr. Burton's may be extravagantly expressed. He has scarce worth preserving. In mentioning a letter sent his letter to the chancellor, when he of Rousseau's to Hume, he observes that writes to Mr. Davenport, the friend of "the frantic bitterness of the language is Hume's, whose house in Derbyshire he occontrasted with the elaborate neatness of cupied, a letter conceived in an humble and the penmanship, which, if handwriting con- penitent spirit, expressing his determination veyed a notion of character, would repre- to return to Wooton, and this letter being sent a calm, contented mind gratifying it- written and despatched, he straight sets off, self by the exercise of the petty art of cal- not to Wooton, but to Dover, from which ligraphy." Among the illustrations which he writes a letter to General Conway accuaccompany Mr. Burton's work is a fac-sim- sing Hume, Davenport, and every one else, ile of Rosseau's handwriting, from Rous- of a conspiracy to bring him to derision; seau's letter to Hume in reply to his propo- and this letter ends with entreating Conway silly world goes." Our next extract pre- not to have him assassinated in private, suggesting that such a step would not be safe that in his memoirs, already written, and in the event of his death certain of being published, he has told the world of this conspiracy against his peace; that if he is allowed to return to France, he will suppress and firm resolution to concur in whatever may "Convinced, as we are, of your prudence this work. As a guarantee for his observpromote the happiness of our subjects, it is uning this part of the contract, he consents to necessary for us to recommend to you to avoid accept of the pension from the king, after contentions and unedifying debates; as well which no one will imagine that he could be as to avoid every thing that may tend to disso infamous as to write against the king's turb that harmony and tranquillity which is so ministers or his people. 'He would not essential in councils solely calculated for the suppression of every species of licentiousness, even write against Mr. Hume," he said, irreligion, and vice. And, as we have the and he promised to ascribe all the unpleas- firmest reliance on your zeal in the support of ant feelings that had arisen between them the Christian faith, as well as in the wisdom to his own temper soured by misfortunes. and prudence of your councils, we are thoHe at last, on the very day of writing one roughly assured that they will be directed to of his letters promising or threatening a re- such purposes as may best tend to enforce a turn to Wooton, embarked for Calais. Bet-conscientious observance of all those duties ter and kindlier feelings at last awoke in dom require, and on which the felicity of every which the true religion and laws of this kinghis mind towards Hume, whom he could individual so essentially depends." not at any time have really believed to have been other than his friend. He attributed his conduct in England to the effects of the foggy climate, and his memoirs stop short just before the date at which his narrative would have brought him into contact with Hume and England. Hume appears to have been heartily sick of the whole affair, as he well might. It tormented him during what had promised to be a pleasant vacation year of life. It is during that time the sole subject of his correspondence, and he never seems to have recurred to it afterwards. Rousseau is not mentioned in Hume's autobiography. Hume was an earnest lover of his country. No Scotsman had the slightest literary claims that Hume did not at once ardently and vehemently support. Blind Blacklock was not only a great psychological curiosity, but also a poet to be ranked with blind Thamyris and blind Mæonides. Blind Milton was nothing to him. Wilkie, too, was a poet in Hume's esteem; for he measured poets by a sort of geographical scale, and Wilkie was a man born in the parish of Dalmanie, West Lothian, and a profesor of Natural Philosophy in St. Andrew's. Wilkie had heard of Homer, and had read Pope, In the course of the year 1766, he re- and thought he could do something better turned to Scotland, and seems to have in the way of epic than had yet been done. planned passing the rest of his life there; A bold preface, dealing with the topics of but in the next year we find him, through mythology and poetry in professorial style, the interest of Lord Hertford, under secre-from a small array of false facts deducing tary of state. Conway was secretary. It as the men of " the north countrie" know was a great day for Hume's friends. None how to do-conclusions that not only prove of the Grafton cabinet were Scotsmen. what they please, but the additional fact, There was no under secretary for Scotland, that they were the first persons to see what as in the days before Conway's secretaryship; and Hume was consulted on all affairs that related to Scotland. Hume's heart was in the literary reputation of his country; and he did not loose the opportunity of preaching the merits of his friends. "Tell Robertson," he says, in a letter to Blair, "that the compliment at the end of General Conway's letter to him, was of my composing without any orders from him. He smiled when he read it; but said it was very proper, and signed it. These are not bad puffs from ministers of state, as the they would yet persuade you had been all along lying on the surface, was prefixed to the volume; and this preface did something to help the sale in Edinburgh; for Wilkie's prose style had some life in it, and his speculations were not heavier than Lord Kames's, or Lord Monboddo's. The man who appended ten thousand lines of verse to his dissertation, must be presumed to know what poetry was, and how it should be dealt with. A preface to a poem is, however, a dangerous experiment. Your true critic reads it, picks some hole in it, and will not read further; and Willie Wilkie [tory for another edition. Hume had no was pronounced to be no poet by the wise love for England. Its constitution, we men who then managed the English oracles. have endeavored to prove in a former paper, Hume resisted the inspired voice of the was from the first mistaken by him. He Critical Review-modestly, as became a had at one time called himself a Whig; he man pleading before a tribunal which he now found that the name was inconsistent wished to persuade to a reversal of its own with his present views, and the passage is sentence, but boldly, too; for the cause altered in an after edition of the essay in of Scotland seemed to be involved in pro- which it occurs. The History is also escuring a triumph for Wilkie. Hume writes sentially altered; and, in every instancea letter to the Review, exhibiting, in detail, we have his own authority for the statement the argument of the poem. It was a bold the alterations lean to the Tory side. In step; and, perhaps, it is owing to his praises the next year, Hume commenced building that both Blacklock and Wilkie are em- the house in the new town of Edinburgh balmed and placed in their due rank among in which he died. It is in the street now the mummies in Chalmers's repository of called St. David-street. The name of the the dead poets. John Home, too, was his street originated in a joke. The house was cousin, and one whom he loved; and Doug-inhabited by Hume before any other house las and Agis, and other tragedies by the in the range had been built, and a young same hand, are, therefore, bidden by our lady wrote on the wall, "St. David Street." great critic, to take rank with Shakspeare, Hume's servant lassie, like Byron's man, or rather above him, with an admission, Fletcher, thought it no good speculation to however, that but for the disadvantages of make a saint of her master; the thing a rude age and barbarous country, Shak- would not do, and she ran to tell Hume speare might, perhaps, have rivalled his how he was made game of. "Never mind, dramatic friend. Ossian, too, he was well lassie," said the laughing philosopher, disposed to believe in, and when M'Pher-" many a better man has been made a saint son's first fragments from the Erse were of before." published, he cheerfully subscribed his Of Hume's claim to canonization we do guinea, to enable him to visit the High-not think very favorably, still a case might lands, in search of more poetry of the kind.be made for him which the devil's advocate However, on this subject "a change came would find it hard to resist. If Coleridge o'er the spirit of his dream," and he appears could be called as a witness-as he usually to have been outwearied by M'Pherson's is when any thing untenable in philosophy lying impudence, when the young black- or in fact is to be proved-the advocates guard affected to resent inquiry as if it in- for Saint David could at once prove that volved personal insult. his doctrine of association is identical with A book published by a native of Scotland that of Saint Thomas Aquinas-nay, borit was Hume's delight to introduce to no- rowed from the angelical doctor's comment tice. The only exception we remember on Aristotle. Coleridge, too, would underwas "Ferguson's Essay on the History of take to prove that books of Hume's, which Civil Society." He thought the book un-contained the very treatise, were sold to equal to the author's reputation; but was Sir James Mackintosh, with marks in delighted at its success-hazarding, how- Hume's handwriting. Hume's private study ever, in a low tone, the safe prophecy, that of good works could be thus shown, and its reputation would not last long. also his modest attempt to conceal his merIn July, 1768, General Conway was suits of this kind. The devil's advocate, perseded by Lord Weymouth, and Hume's under-secretaryship was at an end. In 1769 he returned to Edinburgh, "very opulent," he says, "for I possessed a revenue of £1000 a-year, healthy, and, though somewhat stricken in years, with the prospect of enjoying long my ease, and of seeing the increase of my reputation." His friends in France did what they could to make him live there. He, however, returned to his old house in James's Court; and we soon find him correcting his Histo however, might, on cross-examining the witness, force him to admit-first, that the books bought by Mackintosh did not contain any part of Aquinas's commentary on Aristotle, nor the work of Aristotle, in Aquinas's comment on which the law of association is alleged to be propounded; next, that it did not contain Hume's marks or Hume's handwriting; nor was there any reason (except that Mr. Payne, the bookseller, in a catalogue, suggested that some handwriting on the margins might be hated by the public, but has only attained the being railed at. "6. Has never been hurt by his enemies, because he never hated any one of them. "7. Exempt from vulgar prejudices-full of his own. "8. Very bashful, somewhat modest, no way humble. 9. A fool, capable of performances which few wise men can execute. "10. A wise man, guilty of indiscretions which the greatest simpletons can perceive. "11. Sociable, though he lives in solitude. "12.* "13. An enthusiast, without religion; a philosopher, who despairs to attain truth. "A moralist, who prefers instinct to reason. "A gallant, who gives no offence to hus bands and mothers. "A scholar, without the ostentation of learning." Hume's) to think the book bought by Mackintosh had ever belonged to Hume; and lastly, he might show-what, however, is of little importance-that the law of association does not appear to have been stated either by Aristotle or Aquinas-but that the origin of the mistake is, that both mention one or two facts acknowledged by all men, on which St. David, not without help, built up his theoria.* The advocates of canonization, if they went into evidence of character, would be able to prove that, however offensive his metaphysical speculations might be, and however little like those of St. Thomas, he was in society "simple, natural, and playful." "I was," says the venerable Henry Mackenzie, "during the latter period of his life, frequently in his company, among persons of genuine piety, and never heard him venture In this letter, Lady Anne tells us that a remark at which such men, or ladies more Hume asked her, did she remember the susceptible than men, could take offence." time when this playful character was writThe next witness is Adam, lord com- ten? "I was too young," she replied, "to missioner of the jury-court, who died in think of it at the time." "How's this?" 1839. The chief fact which he states is, said he-" have not you and I grown up that Hume, who was always playful in con- together?" I looked surprised. "Yes," versation, when at tea one evening a chair added he, "You have grown tall, and I sunk under his weight, said, "Young ladies, have grown broad." you must tell Mr. Adam to keep stronger chairs for heavy philosophers." Boswell, the young gentleman who escorted Rousseau's gouvernante to England, frankly told Hume he thought he ought not to keep company with him, on account of his books. But, said I to him," adds Bozzy, "how It is not easy to examine a subject at all much better you are than your books." A connected with literature, without finding pleasant letter from Lady Anne Lyndesay, it in some way or other illustrated by Scott. authoress of the song of "Auld Robin In a letter to Mr. Morrit, dated Abbotsford, Gray," will give some help. It contains October, 1815, he says:-" We visited CorHume's character, "from a manuscript by Castle on our return to Scotland, which said to have been found in the Pope's remains, in point of situation, as beautiful library at Rome:" "1. A very good man, the constant purpose of whose life is to do mischief. "2. Fancies he is disinterested, because he substitutes vanity in place of all other passions. "3. Very industrious, without serving either himself or others. "4. Licentious in his pen, cautious in his words, still more so in his actions. "5. Would have had no enemies, had he Home, the poet's, evidence is more doubtful. A banker's clerk, a young man of good character, robbed his master. Home accounts for it by the books he was in the habit of reading," Boston's Fourfold State," and "Hume's Essays." as when its walks were celebrated by David Hume, in the only rhymes he was ever known to be guilty of. Here they are from a pane of glass at Carlisle : : "Here chicks in eggs for breakfast sprawl; "Would it not," he adds, "be a good quiz not courted them; seems desirous of being soforth, with an historical inquiry into the use of eggs for breakfast, a physical discussion on the causes of their being addled; a history of English church music, and of * Obliterated. |