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. 



