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90.: From DAVID HUME - Adam Smith, Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence Vol. 6 Correspondence of Adam Smith [1740]

Edition used:

Correspondence of Adam Smith, ed. E. C. Mossner and I. S. Ross, vol. VI of the Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1987).

Part of: The Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith, 7 vols.

About Liberty Fund:

Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


90.

From DAVID HUME

  • Address: A Monsieur Monsieur Adam Smith Chez Monsieur Foley, Banquier a Paris

MS., RSE ii. 38; HL ii. 5–6.

[London, ? end of Jan. 1766]

Dear Smith

I can write as seldom and as Short as you—I am sorry I did not see you before I left Paris. I am also sorry I shall not see you there soon. I shall not be able to fix Rousseau to his Mind for some Weeks yet: He is a little variable and fanciful, tho’ very agreeable.1 Lord Hertford is to be over some time in April. I must then wait for him; and afterwards must be dispos’d of, for some time, by his Commands. I recommended my Servant St Jean to you: If he be with you or the Duke, I am sure you will like him and keep him on; and you need say nothing of this to him. But if you did not engage him, please send to him and tell him, that as I cannot promise on my Return to Paris soon, I do not wish he woud deprive himself of any other good Service that offers. He lives at Collet’s, a Hirer of Coaches in the Rue des vieux Augustins, a few Doors from the Hotel du Parc roiale where you intended to lodge. He is known either by the Name of St Jean or Jean Garneaux—Some push me to continue my History. Millar offers me any Price: All the Marlborough Papers are offerd me.2 And I believe no body woud venture to refuse me: But cui bono? Why shoud I forgo Idleness and Sauntering and Society; and expose myself again to the Clamours of a stupid, factious Public? I am not yet tir’d of doing nothing; and am become too wise either to mind Censure or Applause. By and bye I shall be too old to undergo so much Labour: Adieu

David Hume.

[1 ]Rather a different report comes from William Rouet, writing to William Mure from London on 25 Jan. 1766: ‘David Hume, and J. J. Rousseau, are in Buckingham Street, next door to J. Stuart’s [John Stewart’s, the wine merchant], where many go from civility to see him; and our friend David is made the shower of the Lion. He is confoundedly weary of his pupil, as he calls him; he is full of oddities and even absurdities . . .’ (Caldwell Papers, II. ii. 63).

[2 ]Very likely the papers which David Mallet had by him for more than twenty years without producing the history of the great Duke of Marlborough which he had undertaken to write.