“Mr. Hume happened to lodge in the same hotel with Mr. Walpole, and often proposed to introduce Rousseau to him; but as author of a paper written to ridicule him, he thought it would be unhandsome to suffer Hume to make their acquaintance. A few days afterward Hume and Rousseau left Paris for London, when the letter in question having got in some of the French Mercures, was printed in an English newspaper.[1] Rousseau aware of Hume and Walpole being friends; that Hume was secretary to Lord Hertford, cousin to Walpole; and that he had often been with Walpole at the time this letter first appeared, suspected that Hume had some hand in the publication. But Mr. Walpole assured me he never showed it to Hume; and publication arose solely in consequence of many copies being handed about. Rousseau could not divest himself of this suspicion. Hence the origin of his subsequent quarrel with Hume. The latter became so distressed on the occasion, that he requested Walpole to write him a letter, avowing sole authorship in the offensiv piece, which he did.
“This acknowledgment was published by D’Alembert in his account of the dispute between Rousseau and Hume. Mr. Walpole complained to me that Hume had garbled his letter, for it began: ‘Your friends, the literati, have acted like fools as literati generally do;’ but this paragraph was suppressed.
“Such was Mr. Walpole’s acount; but the true solution of the quarrel is that Rousseau was mad.—M.”
- ↑ See it in Saint James’s Chronicle.
