tter, still
ignorant of the suspicion that was blackening in Rousseau's mind,
supposed that the refusal came from the fact of the pension being kept
private, and at once took measures with the minister to procure the
removal of the condition of privacy. Besides undeniable acts like
these, the state of Hume's mind towards his curious ward is abundantly
shown in his letters to all his most intimate friends, just as
Rousseau's gratitude to him is to be read in all his early letters
both to Hume and other persons. In the presence of such facts on the
one side, and in the absence of any particle of intelligible evidence
to neutralise them on the other, to treat Rousseau's charges with
gravity is irrational.

If Hume had written back in a mild and conciliatory strain, there can
be no doubt that the unfortunate victim of his own morbid imagination
would, for a time at any rate, have been sobered and brought to a
sense of his misconduct. But Hume was incensed beyond control at what
he very pardonably took for a masterpiece of atrocious ingratitude. He
reproached Rousseau in terms as harsh as those which Grimm had used
nine years before. He wrote to all his friends, withdrawing the kindly
words he had once used of Rousseau's character, and substituting in
their place the most unfavourable he could find. He gave the
philosophic circle in Paris exquisite delight by the confirmation
which his story furnished of their own foresight, when they had warned
him that he was taking a viper to his bosom. Finally, in spite of the
advice of Adam Smith, of one of the greatest of men, Turgot, and one
of the smallest, Horace Walpole, he published a succinct account of
the quarrel, first in French, and then in English. This step was
chiefly due to the advice of the clique of whom D'Alembert was the
spokesman, though it is due to him to mention that he softened various
expressions in Hume's narrative, which he pronounced too harsh. It may
be true that a council of war never fights; a council of men of
letters always does. The governing committee of a literary,
philosophical, or theological clique form the very worst advisers any
man can have.

Much must be forgiven to Hume, stung as he was by what appeared the
most hateful ferocity in one on whom he had heaped acts of affection.
Still, one would have been glad on behalf of human dignity, if he had
suffered with firm silence petulant charges against which the
consciousness of his own uprightnes