228 HUME. 



treated with the utmost kindness, and that every thing 

 was done which friendship could devise to render his 

 stay in London and its neighbourhood agreeable. Mr. 

 Hume then, finding that he was resolved to live at a 

 distance from society, and had intended going into 

 Wales, introduced him to Mr. Davenport,* who kindly 

 offered him the use of his house at Wootton, in 

 Derbyshire. The silly, misplaced pride of the poor 

 man would not suffer him to accept this without pay- 

 ing an equivalent ; and he was allowed to sit at an 

 almost nominal rent of thirty pounds. 



He went to Wootton about the 20th of March, 

 1766. His letters to Mr. Hume, of the 22nd and 

 29th, are full of gratitude and affection, though he 

 had seen three weeks before the supposed letter of 

 Frederick II. ; for he speaks of it to his friend De 

 Peyron, llth March; and he says, that on asking 

 Hume if it was Horace Walpole's, "he neither said 

 yes nor no," a silence afterwards made one of his 

 charges against Hume. On the 5th of April he 

 writes to Madame de Bouffiers, still full of gratitude to 

 Mr. Hume, who, he says, had obtained for him the 

 comfort and pleasure of his retreat in Derbyshire. 

 Two days after, 7th April, he writes to a friend not 

 named, and sends a contradiction of Frederick's letter to 

 a newspaper : Rousseau's letter speaks of secret enemies, 

 under the " mask of perfidious friendship, seeking to 

 dishonour him ;" and on the 9th he writes his ac- 

 cusation of Mr. Hume to Madame de Boufflers, so that it 

 is clear he had all at once, between the 5th and 7th, 



* Grandfather of Lady Williams, wife of Mr. Justice Williams. 



