demonftrated the contrary; and it is not ufua for favours conferred to beget ill-will in the perfon who confers them. But fuppofing I had fecretly entertained an animofity towards him, would I run the rifque of a difcovery, by fo filly a vengeance, and by fending this piece to the prefs, when I knew, from the ufual avidity of the news-writers to find articles of intelligence, that it must neceffarily in a few days be laid hold of?

But not imagining that I was the object of fo black and ridiculous a fufpicion, I purfued my ufual train, by ferving my friend in the leaft doubtful manner. I renewed my applications to General Conway, as foon as the ftate of that gentleman's health permitted it: the General applies again to his Majeny: his Majefty's confent is renewed: the Marquis of Rockingham, first commiffioner of the treafury, is alfo applied to: the whole affair is happily finifhed; and full of joy, I conveyed the intelligence to my friend.'

General Conway foon after received a letter from Mr. Rouffeau, which appeared both to him and Mr. Hume, to be a plain refufal of the penfion, as long as the article of fecrecy was infifted on; but as Mr. Hume knew that Mr. Rouffeau had been acquainted with this condition from the beginning, he was the leís furprized at his filence towards him. He thought, that his friend, confcious of having treated him ill in this affair, was afhamed to write to him; and having prevailed on General Conway to keep the matter ftill open, he wrote a very friendly letter to Mr. Rouffeau, exhorting him to return to his former way of thinking, and to accept of the penfion.

Mr. Hume waited three weeks in vain for an answer: he thought this a little ftrange, and even wrote to Mr. Davenport, but having to do with a very odd fort of man, and still accounting for his filence, by fuppofing him afhamed to write to him, he was refolved not to be difcouraged, nor to lose the opportunity of doing him an effential fervice, an account of a vain ceremonial. He accordingly renewed his applications to the mipifters, and was fo happy as to be enabled to write the following letter to Mr. Rouffeau.

Lifle-Street, Leicester-Fields, June 19, 1766.

As I have not received any anfwer from you, I conclude, that you perfevere in the fame refolution of refufing all marks of his Majefty's goodnefs, as long as they mult remain a fecret." I have therefore applied to Ceneral Conway to have this condition removed; and I was fo fortunate as to obtain his promife that he would fpeak to the King for that purpote. "It will only be requifite, faid he, that we know previoufly from Mr. Roi feau, whether he would accept of a pention publicly granted

him, that his Majefty may not be expofed to a fecond refufal He gave me authority to write to you on that fubject; and I beg to hear your refolution as foon as poffible. If you give your confent, which I earnestly intreat you to do, I know, that I could depend on the good offices of the Duke of Richmond, to fecond General Conway's application; fo that I have no doubt of fuccefs. I am, my dear Sir,

Yours, with great fincerity, D. H. In five days I received the following anfwer.

Mr. Rouffeau to Mr. Hume.

Wooton, June 23, 1766. I imagined, Sir, that my filence, truly interpreted by your own confcience, had faid enough; but fince you have fome defign in not understanding me, I fhall fpeak. You have but ill difguifed yourself. I know you, and you are not ignorant of it. Before we had any perfonal connections, quarrels, or difputes; while we knew each other only by literary reputation, you affectionately made me the offer of the good offices of yourfelf and friends. Affected by this generofity, I threw myself into your arms; you brought me to England, apparently to procure me an afylum, but in fact to bring me to dishonour. You applied to this noble work, with a zeal worthy of your heart, and a fuccefs worthy of your abilities. You needed not have taken to much pains: you live and converfe with the world; I with my felf in folitude. The public love to be deceived, and you were formed to deceive them. I know one man, however, whom you can not deceive; I mean yourself. You know with what horrour my heart rejected the first fufpicion of your defigns. You know I embraced you with tears in my eyes, and told you, if you were not the best of men, you must be the blackest of mankind. In reflecting on your private conduct, you must say to yourself fometimes, you are not the beft of men: under which conviction, I doubt much if ever you will be the happiest.

• I leave your friends and you to carry on your fchemes as you pleafe; giving up to you, without regret, my reputation during life; certain that fooner or later juftice will be done to that of both. As to your good offices in matters of intereft, which you have made ufe of as a mafk, I thank you for them, and The difpenfe with profiting by them. I ought not to hold a correfpondence with you any longer, or to accept of it to my advantage in any affair in which you are to be the mediator. Adieu, Sir, I wish you the trueft happinefs; but as we ought not to have any thing to lay to each other for the future, this is the last letter you will receive from me. J. J. R.

Ta

< To this I immediately fent the following reply. • Mr. Hume to Mr. Rouffeau.

June 26, 1766.

As I am confcious of having ever acted towards you the most friendly part, of having always given the most tender, the most active proofs of fincere affection; you may judge of my extreme furprize on perufing your ep ftle! Such violent accufations, confined altogether to generals, it is as impoffible to anfwer, as it is impoffible to comprehend them. But affairs cannot, muft not remain on that footing. I fhall charitably fuppofe, that fome infamous calumniator has belied me to you. But in that cafe, it is your duty, and I am perfuaded it will be your inclination, to give me an opportunity of detecting him, and of justifying myfelf; which can only be done by your mentioning the particulars of which I am accufed. You fay, that I myself know that I have been falfe to you; but I fay it loudly, and will fay it to the whole world, that I know the contrary, that I know my friendship towards you has been unbounded and uninterrupted, and that though inftances of it have been very generally remarked both in France and England, the fmalleft part of it only has as yet come to the knowlege of the public. I demand, that you will produce me the man who will affert the contrary; and above all, I demand, that he will mention any one particular in which I have been wanting to you. You owe this to me; you owe it to yourself; you owe it to truth, and honour, and juftice, and to every thing that can be deemed facred among men. As an innocent man; I will not fay, as your friend; I will not fay, as your benefactor'; but, I repeat it, as an innocent man, I claim the privilege of proving my innocence, and of refuting any fcandalous lie which may have been invented against me. Mr. Davenport, to whom I have fent a copy of your letter, and who will read this before he delivers it, I am confident, will fecond my demand, and will tell you, that nothing poffibly can be more equitable. Happily I have preferved the letter you wrote me after your arrival at Wooton; and you there exprefs in the ftrongest terms, indeed in terms too ftrong, your fatisfaction in my poor endeavours to ferve you the little epiftolary intercourfe which afterwards paffed between us, has been all employed on my fide to the most friendly purposes. Tell me, what has fince given you offence? Tell me of what I am accufed. Tell me the man who accufes me. Even after you have fulfilled all thefe conditions, to my fatiffaction, and to that of Mr. Davenport, you will have great difficulty to juftify the employing fuch outrageous terms towards a man, with whom you have been fo intimately connected, and

:

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whom,

whom, on many accounts, you ought to have treated with fome regard and decency.

Mr. Davenport knows the whole tranfaction about your penfion, because I thought it neceffary that the perfon who had undertaken your fettlement, fhould be fully acquainted with your circumftances; left he fhould be tempted to perform towards you concealed acts of generofity, which, if they accidentally came to your knowlege, might give you fome grounds of offence. I am, Sir,

D. H.

Mr. Davenport's authority procured Mr. Hume, in three weeks, an enormous letter, which takes up about fifty pages of the account now before us. This letter confirms all the material circumftances of the foregoing narrative; and as from these circumftances alone the public muft judge of this whole affair, it is quite unneceffary to give any extracts from Mr. Rouffeau's letter. Were we to lay before our Readers thofe parts of it, on which he himself feems to lay the greateft ftrefs, we fhould be fufpected of being prejudiced against him. I have hitherto, (fays he, in this extraordinary letter) dwelt upon public and notorious facts; which from their own nature and my acknowledgment, have made the greatest eclat. Those which are to follow are particular and fecret, at least in their caufe, and all poffible measures have been taken to keep the knowledge of them from the public; but as they are well known to the perfon interefted, they will not have the less influence toward his own conviction.'

This paffage alone is fufficient to excufe us to the difcerning Reader, for declining to enter into the particulars of this long letter. Thole who will be at the pains of perufing it, will clearly fee, that Mr. Rouffeau's extreme fenfibility renders him peculiarly liable to entertain fufpicions even of his best friends; and that his uncommon force of imagination combines circumftances, feemingly minute and trifling, in fuch a manner as to impofe on his own understanding. What complexion his heart is of, though appearances in regard to Mr. Hume are strongly against him, we dare not pretend to determine. The fentiments tha ari in our minds, are thofe of compaffion towards an unfo tunate man, whofe peculiar temper and conftitution of mind , we fear, render him unhappy in every fituation.

mu,

M. Hume oncludes his paraphrafe in the following manner.

I hus I have given a narrative, as concife as poffible, of this extraordinary affair, which I am told has very much attractet the attention of the public, and which contains more unexpected in idents than any other in which I was ever engaged, The perfons to whom I have shown the original papers which authenticate the whole, have differed very much in their opi

nion, as well of the ufe I ought to make of them as of Mr. Rouffeau's prefent fentiments and ftate of mind. Some of them have maintained, that he is altogether infincere in his quarrel with me, and his opinion of my guilt, and that the whole proceeds from that exceffive pride which forms the bafis of his chaTacter, and which leads him both to feek the eclat of refusing the King of England's bounty, and to shake off the intolerable burthen of an obligation to me, by every facrifice of honour, truth, and friendship, as well as of intereft. They found their fentiments on the abfurdity of that firft fuppofition on which he grounds his anger, viz. that Mr. Walpole's letter, which he knew had been every where difperfed both in Paris and London, was given to the prefs by me; and as this fuppofition is contrary to common sense on the one hand, and not fupported even by the pretence of the flightest probability on the other, they conclude, that it never had any weight even with the perfon himfelf who lays hold of it. They confirm their fentiments by the number of fictions and lies, which he employs to justify his anger; fictions with regard to points, in which it is impoffible for him to be mistaken. They alfo remark his real chearfulnefs and gaiety, amidst the deep melancholy with which he pretended to be oppreffed. Not to mention the abfurd reafoning which runs through the whole, and on which it is impoffible for any man to reft his conviction; and though a very important interest is here abandoned, yet money is not univerfally the chief object with mankind; vanity weighs farther with fome men, particularly with this philofopher; and the very oftentation of refufing a penfion from the King of England, an oftentation which, with regard to other princes, he has often fought, might be of itself a fufficient motive for his prefent conduct.

There are others of my friends, who regard this whole affair in a more compaffionate light, and confider Mr. Rouffeau as an object rather of pity than of anger. They fuppofe the fame domineering pride and ingratitude to be the bafis of his character; but they are alfo willing to believe, that his brain has received a fenfible fhock, and that his judgment, fet afloat, is carried to every fide, as it is pufhed by the current of his humours and of his paffions. The abfurdity of his belief is no proof of its infincerity. He imagines himfelf the fole important being in the univerfe: he fancies all mankind to be in a combination against him: his greatest benefactor, as hurting him moft, is the chief object of his animofity: and though he fupports all his whimfies by lies and fictions, this is fo frequent a cafe with wicked men, who are in that middle state between fober reafon and total frenzy, that it needs give no furprize to any body.

I own that I am much inclined to this latter opinion; tho', at the fame time, I question whether, in any period of his life,

Mr.