nogh, ter migh, ter Teyfel,[105:1] and others, high sounding as here pronounced, and of which the Ter Tunder would, I believe, put to flight the delicate ears of the whole town of Sienna.
I hear you are going to France this summer. If you will come to Frankfort on Main, I will meet you there the end of July, and stay with you a fortnight. Bon jour.
N.B.—You have better roads than I, you are strong as a giant, and I am growing ten years older every month; so I think my offer fair.
Oct. 2, 1762.
Jean Jacques Rousseau, persecuted for having writ what he thinks good, or rather, as some folks think, for having displeased persons in great power, who attributed to him what he never meant, came here to seek retreat, which I readily granted; and the king of Prussia not only approved of my so doing, but gave me orders to furnish him his small necessaries, if he would accept them; and though that king's philosophy be very different from that of Jean Jacques, yet he does not think that a man of an irreproachable life is to be persecuted because his sentiments are singular. He designs to build him a hermitage with a little garden, which I find he will not accept, nor perhaps the rest which I have not yet offered to him. He is gay in company, polite, and what the French call aimable, and gains ground daily in the opinion of even the clergy here. His enemies elsewhere continue to persecute him: he is pestered with anonymous letters. This is not a country for him: his attachment and love to his native town is a strong tie to its neighbourhood. The liberty of England, and the character of my good and honoured friend, D. Hume, F——i D——r, (perhaps more singular than that of J. Jacques, for I take him to be the only historian impartial,) draws his inclinations to be near to the F——i D——r. For my part, though it be to me a very great pleasure to converse with the honest savage, yet I advise him to go to England, where he will enjoy
——placidam sub libertate quietem.
He wishes to know, if he can print all his works, and make
some profit, merely to live, from such an edition. I entreat you will let me know your thoughts on this, and if you can be of use to him in finding him a bookseller to undertake the work: you know he is not interested, and little will content him. If he goes to Britain, he will be a treasure to you, and you to him, and perhaps both to me (if I were not so old.) I have offered him lodging in Keith-hall. I am ever, with the greatest regard, your most obedient servant,
M——.
At the same time Madame de Boufflers wrote as follows:—