[354] Letter to a Member of the National Assembly. The same passage contains some strong criticism on Rousseau’s style.

[355] Burton, 304, 309, 310.

[356] Ib. ii. 309, n.

[357] Mr. Howitt has given an account of Rousseau’s quarters at Wootton, in his Visits to Remarkable Places.  One or two aged peasants had some confused memory of “old Ross-hall.”  For Rousseau’s own description, see his letters to Mdme. de Luze, May 10, 1766. Corr., iv. 326.

[358] Burton, 313.  It has been stated that Rousseau never paid this; at any rate when he fled, he left between thirty and forty pounds in Mr. Davenport’s hands.  See Davenport to Hume; Burton, 367.  Rousseau’s accurate probity in affairs of money is absolutely unimpeachable.

[359] Corr. iv. 312.  April 9, 1766.

[360] Here is a translation of this rather poor piece of sarcasm:—­“My dear Jean Jacques—­You have renounced Geneva, your native place.  You have caused your expulsion from Switzerland, a country so extolled in your writings; France has issued a warrant against you; so do you come to me.  I admire your talents; I am amused by your dreamings, though let me tell you they absorb you too much and for too long.  You must at length be sober and happy; you have caused enough talk about yourself by oddities which in truth are hardly becoming a really great man.  Prove to your enemies that you can now and then have common sense.  That will annoy them and do you no harm.  My states offer you a peaceful retreat.  I wish you well, and will treat you well, if you will let me.  But if you persist in refusing my help, do not reckon upon my telling any one that you did so.  If you are bent on tormenting your spirit to find new misfortunes, choose whatever you like best.  I am a king, and can procure them for you at your pleasure; and what will certainly never happen to you in respect of your enemies, I will cease to persecute you as soon as you cease to take a pride in being persecuted.  Your good friend, FREDERICK.”

[361] Corr., iv. 313, 343, 388, 398.

[362] Ib. 395.

[363] Ib. 389, etc.

[364] Ib. 384.

[365] Ib. 343, 344, 387, etc.

[366] Corr., iv. 346.

[367] Ib. 390.  A letter from Hume to Blair, long before the rupture overt, shows the former to have been by no means so phlegmatic on this occasion as he may have seemed.  “I hope,” he writes, “you have not so bad an opinion of me as to think I was not melted on this occasion; I assure you I kissed him and embraced him twenty times, with a plentiful effusion of tears.  I think no scene of my life was ever more affecting.”  Burton, ii. 315.  The great doubters of the eighteenth century could without fear have accepted the test of the ancient saying, that men without tears are worth little.

[368] Bernardin de St. Pierre, Oeuv., xii. 79.