HUME. 229 



by exciting his warm and feverish imagination, sud- 

 denly broke with his benefactor and " dear patron," as 

 he before called him. His proofs of the conspiracy, and 

 of Mr. Hume's secret enmity, are truly the workings of 

 a sick brain, and sick with vanity ; as appears, among 

 other symptoms, from his declaring how happy it 

 made him to observe the popularity Hume had gained 

 at Paris by his kindness to Rousseau ; and as also ap- 

 pears, by his roundly asserting that his own popu- 

 larity and following in England was extraordinary, 

 until this plot was concocted to decry him. The let- 

 ter is at the bottom of it all.* He at once pronounced 

 that he knew it from its style to be D'Alembert's, and 

 was enraged when told that it was certainly written 

 by Horace Walpole "as if," said he, "it were pos- 

 sible I could mistake D'Alembert's style, and imagine 

 an Englishman's French to be his." Then D'Alem- 

 bert was a friend of Hume's ; and though D'Alembert 

 had no more to do with the joke than Rousseau him- 

 self, this was made the foundation of a quarrel ; for 

 not only was D'Alembert Hume's friend, but a M. 

 Tronchin was Hume's landlord, whose father had 

 slandered Rousseau at Geneva ; and others of his ene- 

 mies, real or supposed, turned out to be Hume's friends 

 also. This was, he gravely asserts, a clear case of 

 conspiracy made out against Hume, who must have in- 

 veigled him over to England in order to ruin his repu- 

 tation. One of the overt acts of this plot was the 

 obtaining, through General Conway, a pension for him 

 who was starving, of a hundred a-year. But it is to 



' See these letters in CEuv., vol. vii., p. 138, 139, 148 et seq. 



