relieve him.[165:1] His unhappiness seems to proceed from the infirmity of his body, and the delicacy, not to say weakness, of his mind. He has wrote to me letters full of the bitterest anguish, on account of the treatment he meets with from his parishioners. I believe it is not good; but it is impossible not to think it exaggerated by his imagination: and I am of your opinion that the same persecution, partly real, partly imaginary, would follow him in every other settlement. I had concerted with Baron Mure a very likely scheme for his removal; but to what purpose would this serve, if the same complaints must return in his new situation? I agree with you, that a small pension, could it be obtained, might bestow on him some degree of tranquillity; but how to obtain it I profess I do not know, as I suppose you will readily believe. That door was never very wide for men of letters; and is become still narrower than ever."
He proceeds, in terms similar to those already recorded, to state his satisfaction in the connexion with Lord Hertford, and continues:—
"I go to a place of the world which I have always admired the most; and it is not easy to imagine a reception better than I have reason to expect. What, then, can be wanting to my happiness? I hope, nothing;
or if any thing, it will only be an age and temper better adapted to vanity and dissipation. I beg of you to embrace Mrs. Carlisle in my name, and to assure her of my sincere respects.
"I write no politics, having now become a politician. Please address yourself to John Hume for information on that head. Let him explain to you his patron's situation!!!! Pray, is there any body such an idiot at present as to be a partisan of the Douglas?"
To obtain literary distinction in France at that time, was to be received at court. The star of Germany had not yet risen in the horizon of literature, and the great monarch and warrior of the Teutonic tribes treated his native tongue as the speech of boors, tried to distinguish himself in French literature, and was ambitious of being received into equal companionship with the popular authors of France. Britain, notwithstanding her series of illustrious names, had not yet quite shaken off an air of provincialism. Shakspere was a strange wild genius, full of barbarisms and abominable galimatias: Voltaire had said it, and it was a judgment, not an opinion. Some discontented Frerons or Arnauds, might cavil against it: but this was rebellion, not controversy. The greatness of our masters in science and philosophy was fully admitted; but they were viewed as citizens of the great world of letters, accidentally born in one of its more barren districts; and they were scarcely more closely identified with the national literature of their country, than Linnæus might be with that of Sweden, or Tycho Brahe with that of Denmark. In truth, the apparent interregnum, following the decline of the Latin as the literary language of the world, appeared likely to end in the establishment of the French as its successor. Such expectations gave to the literature of France a
metropolitan air, with which no other could cope; and communicated to those natives of other places, whose name was honoured in the French circles of letters, a corresponding elevation.[167:1] Hume would have been impervious to the most conclusive evidence on the subject, if he had failed to know how greatly he was honoured among all the literary circles of the continent, and particularly in those of the metropolis of literature. Lord Elibank, writing from Paris, on 11th May, 1763, says to him, "No author ever yet attained to that degree of reputation in his own lifetime that you are now in possession of at Paris;"[167:2] and the extent of his fame was abundantly attested by others.[167:3]
Hume arrived in France on the 14th day of October, 1763. Of his reception, his own letters will give the best account.
"Fontainbleau, 26th Oct. 1763.