‘29 Aprile.
‘In answer to your question, the Don quixotisme you mention never entered into my head. I wish I could see you to answer honestly all your questions, for tho I had my share of follys with others, yet as my intentions were at bottom honest, I should open to you my whole budget, and lett you know many things which are perhaps not all represented, I mean not truly. I remember to have recommended to your acquaintance Mr. Floyd, son to old David Floyd, at St. Germains, as a man of good sense, honor, and honesty: I fear he is dead, he would have been of great service to you in a part of your history since 1688. A propos of history when you see Helvetius, tell I desired you to enquire of him concerning a certain history. I fancy he will answer you with his usuall Frankness.’
This, then, must refer to Helvetius’s lie about the Prince’s cowardice.
Walker & Boutall, ph. sc.
The Earl Marischal
circ. 1750.
The following letters to Hume illustrate the rather blasphemous bonhomie of the Earl, who, because of Hume’s genius and fatness, was wont to speak of him as ‘verbum caro factum.’ He writes of his new hermitage at Potsdam, of his garden, his favourite books (just what we might expect them to be—Montaigne, Swift, Ariosto), of Voltaire, d’Argens, and d’Alembert. He incidentally shows, à propos of a fabled discovery, that Mr. Darwin’s theory would not have astonished him much:—
‘Potsdam, ce 11 Sep. 1764.
‘Le plaisir de votre lettre, et l’assurance d’amitié de Madame Geauffrin et de Monsieur d’Alembert, a été bien rabattu par ce que vous me dites de l’etat de la santé de M. d’Alembert; sobre comme il est a table, comment peut il avoir des meaux d’estomac: il faut qu’il travaille trop de la tête à des calculs, ou qu’il allume sa chandelle par les deux bouts, c’est cela sans doute. Renvoyez-le ici a mon hermitage, je le rendray à sa, ou ses, belles frais, reposé, se portant a merveille.