ROUSSEAU. 177 



the only overt act of the conspiracy in which he soon 

 believed Mr. Hume had joined to ruin his character for 

 ever. Another suspicion proved quite as groundless. 

 Horace Walpole having written a jeu d'esprit which 

 amused the Parisian circles a letter from Frederick 

 inviting him to Berlin, but warning him that he never 

 would gratify him by any of the persecution he so 

 greatly delighted in Rousseau fancied Hume had 

 written this, in which he had no hand whatever. 



That actual insanity had now undermined his rea- 

 son, was become quite apparent. The most indifferent 

 things were converted into proofs of a conspiracy, the 

 object of which was, if possible, more utterly incompre- 

 hensible than that of Grimm and Diderot. In the 

 'Confessions' he refers to this English plot, and says, 

 that " he sees marching towards its execution, without 

 any resistance, the most black, the most frightful con- 

 spiracy that ever was devised against a man's memory," 

 (Conf., part ii., lib. xi. ; GEuv., i. 550.) He also fancied 

 that the government, a party to it by granting the pen- 

 sion, was preventing him from leaving the country ; 

 nay, he wrote to General Conway, then Secretary of 

 State, that he was aware his departure never could be 

 suffered. That letter, indeed, is as completely the 

 production of a madman as any that ever was penned 

 within the walls of Bedlam. He wrote it from Dover, 

 whither he had gone by a rapid journey from Spald- 

 ing, in Lincolnshire, having first gone to Spalding 

 from Wootton, to escape his enemies and the agents 

 of government. After living ten months in England, 

 he came over to France, changing his name to Renou, 

 and went to Amiens, where, though he was received 



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