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LETTER XXXII.: An Appointment sought for Strahan. - David Hume, Letters of David Hume to William Strahan [1756]

Edition used:

Letters of David Hume to William Strahan, ed. G. Birkbeck Hill (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1888).

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LETTER XXXII.

An Appointment sought for Strahan.

[Spring of 1767.]

DearSir

I spoke to Lord Hertford on Sunday Evening: I know not if what I said woud have any Influence; but he seemd to think, that the Determination of that Question woud depend on the Lords who had been active in conducting the Affair, viz: Marchmont1. , Sandes2. and Bautitout3. : I know not by what means you can have Access to them.

I send you a Volume of Olivet's Cicero4. at Mr. Millar's Desire, who proposes instantly to begin an Edition of my Essays in that Form, as a Forerunner to the like Edition of my History5. . Let us see a Sample of your English Press: I do not believe you can make such a Book; and I give you a Defiance. Pray return the Book carefully, after you have carefully survey’d it.

If Becket has a few Copies to spare of the French Edition of my Controversy with Rousseau, I shoud be glad to have three or four of them.

There was a good pleasant Paper, inserted, I believe in your Chronicle6. , about three months ago. It containd Rousseau's Articles of Charge against me, and then some good humourd Raillery against him and Voltaire and me7. . I shoud be glad to have two or three Copies of it, if you can readily find them.

I know not if Becket printed Voltaire's Letter to me8. , but if he did he may perhaps have two or three Copies to spare, which woud oblige me.

I am DrSir Yours sincerely

D. H.

[1.]Note 1. Hugh, third Earl of Marchmont, the friend and executor of Pope. He is the ‘Polwarth’ in Pope's Seventeen Hundred and Thirty Eight (ii. 130), and the ‘Marchmont’ of his Grotto. ‘Were there no other memorials,’ writes Boswell, ‘ he will be immortalised by that line of Pope in the verses on his Grotto:—

“And the bright flame was shot through Marchmont's soul.”’ Life of Johnson, iv. 51. See ib. iii. 392 for Johnson's interview with him. He was at this time Keeper of the Great Seal for Scotland. Court and City Register, 1765, p. 140. Boswell recommends his pronunciation of English as a proper model for a Scotch gentleman. ‘His Lordship told me,’ he says, ‘with great good humour that the master of a shop in London, where he was not known, said to him, “I suppose, Sir, you are an American.” “Why so, Sir?” said his Lordship. “Because, Sir,” replied the shopkeeper, “you speak neither English nor Scotch, but something different from both, which I conclude is the language of America.”’ Ib. ii. 160. Boswell's recommendation contrasts oddly with Colonel Barré's ‘ridiculous description’ of Marchmont's pronunciation. In a debate on Dec. 13, 1770, on a difference between the two Houses, the Members of the House of Commons having been turned out of the House of Lords, Barré said:—‘It seemed as if the mob had broke in; and they certainly acted in a very extraordinary manner. One of the heads of this mob—for there were two—was a Scotchman. I heard him call out several times, “Clear the Hoose! Clear the Hoose.” The face of the other was hardly human; for he had contrived to put on a nose of an enormous size, that disfigured him completely, and his eyes started out of his head in so frightful a way, that he seemed to be undergoing the operation of being strangled.’ The Scotchman was the Earl of Marchmont and the other peer the Earl of Denbigh. Cavendish Debates, ii. 162. See also Chatham Corres. iv. 58. For Lord Denbigh see post, Letter of May 10, 1776.

[2.]Note 2. Samuel Sandys, first Baron Sandys, who was known in his House of Commons days as ‘the Motion-maker.’ Smollett's History of England, ed. 1800, iii. 16. Horace Walpole describes him as ‘a republican, raised on the fall of Sir Robert Walpole to be Chancellor of the Exchequer, then degraded to a peer and cofferer1 ,and soon afterwards laid aside.’ Letters, i. 104. Sir Denis Le Marchant, in a note on Walpole's Memoirs of George III, iv. 119, says that Sandys ‘had been placed at the Board of Trade in 1760. He seems to have regarded the post as a sinecure—as indeed it in a great measure became by the withdrawal of the West Indies from the department.’

[3.]Note 3. Norborne Berkeley, Lord Bottetourt. Horace Walpole, writing on Aug. 9, 1768, about a visit to London, says:—‘I saw nothing there but the ruins of 100, Lady Hertford's cribbage, and Lord Bottetourt, like patience on a monument, smiling in grief. He is totally ruined and quite charmed. Yet I heartily pity him. To Virginia he cannot be indifferent; he must turn their heads somehow or other. If his graces do not captivate them, he will enrage them to fury, for I take all his douceur to be enamelled on iron.’ Letters, v. 116. On Aug. 14, Walpole wrote :—‘There is a disagreeable affair at home, resulting from the disquiets in America. Virginia, though not the most mutinous, contains the best heads and the principal boutes-feux1 . It was thought necessary that the Governor should reside there. It was known that Sir Jeffery Amherst [the governor] would not like that…. At the same time, Lord Bottetourt, a court favourite, yet ruined in fortune, was thought of by his friend, Lord Hillsborough. This was mentioned to Sir Jeffery with the offer of a pension. He boggled at the word pension; but neither cared to go to his government, nor seemed to dislike giving it up.’ Ib. p. 120. Walpole in his Memoirs of George III, iii. 151, describes Bottetourt as ‘of the Bedchamber and a kind of second-rate favourite. He had engaged in an adventure with a company of copper-workers at Warmley. They broke. In order to cover his estate from the creditors he begged a privy seal, to incorporate the Company, as private estates would not then be answerable. The King granted his request, but Lord Chatham, aware of the deception, honestly refused to affix the Seal to the Patent.’ In the end ‘he did acquiesce in resigning the Seal for a short time, that, being put into commission, it might be set to the grant.’ (See also the Chatham Corres. iii. 306–322.) Such was the swindler who on the eve of the outbreak with America was sent there as Lieutenant and Governor-General of Virginia. ‘Whom,’ asked Burke, ‘have they selected in these perilous times to soothe the animosity, and reconcile the differences that now unhappily subsist between our colonies and the mother-country? I need not name the man; everybody knows him as a projector, as one who by wild and chimerical schemes has not only so embarrassed his own affairs as to render his stay in this country impracticable, but brought irretrievable ruin upon many others.’ Parl. Hist. xvi. 723. He died in Virginia on Nov. 9, 1770, ‘greatly lamented by the whole colony.’ Ann. Reg. xiii. 191. Junius described him as ‘a cringing, bowing, fawning, sword-bearing courtier who had ruined himself by an enterprise, which would have ruined thousands if it had succeeded.’ Letters of Junius, ed. 1812, iii. 109. He it is, I believe, whom Churchill introduces in the following couplet:—

  • ‘Dashwood is pious, Berkley fixed as fate,
  • Sandwich (Thank Heav‘n) first Minister of State.’
  • Poems, ed. 1766, ii. 118.

I have little doubt that ‘the affair’ which these three Lords were ‘conducting’ was connected with the printing of the Rolls of Parliament, and the Journals of the House of Lords. Nichols says that in 1767 William Bowyer was made printer, being ‘principally indebted for the appointment to the Earl of Marchmont.’ Lit. Anec. iii. 39. In a curious inscription written by Bowyer under his own bust in Stationers’ Hall it is stated, that ‘he was appointed to print the Journals of the House of Lords, at near LXX Years of age, by the patronage of a noble Peer.’ Ib. p. 293. In the Journals of the House of Lords, xxxi. 509, there is an order on March 9, 1767, to leave to a Sub-committee, to which these three Lords belonged, the question of printing the Rolls and the Journals. Ib. p. 429.

[4.]Note 4. Gibbon describing his student days at Lausanne, says of the writings of Cicero:—‘The most perfect editions, that of Olivet, which may adorn the shelves of the rich, that of Ernesti, which should lie on the table of the learned, were not within my reach.’ Gibbon's Misc. Works, i. 89.

[5.]Note 5. A new edition of Hume's Essays and Treatises in 2 vols. quarto was published by A. Millar, London, and A. Kincaid and A. Donaldson, Edinburgh, in 1768. A quarto edition of his History in 8 vols. was published in 1770.

[6.]Note 6. See ante, p. 64, n. 9.

[7.]Note 7. This paper, I have little doubt, is one quoted in Burton's Hume, ii. 340. Voltaire is only once mentioned. It begins:—

‘Heads of an Indictment laid by J. J. Rousseau, philosopher, against D. Hume, Esq.

‘1. That the said David Hume, to the great scandal of philosophy, and not having the fitness of things before his eyes, did concert a plan with Mess. Tronchin, Voltaire and d’Alembert to ruin the said J. J. Rousseau for ever, by bringing him over to England, and there settling him to his heart's content.

‘2. That the said David Hume did, with a malicious and traitorous intent, procure, or cause to be procured, by himself, or somebody else, one pension of the yearly value of £100 or thereabouts, to be paid to the said J. J. Rousseau, on account of his being a philosopher, either privately or publicly, as to him the said J. J. Rousseau should seem meet.

‘3. That the said David Hume did, one night after he left Paris, put the said J. J. Rousseau in bodily fear, by talking in his sleep; although the said J. J. Rousseau doth not know whether the said David Hume was really asleep, or whether he shammed Abraham1 , or what he meant.’

Dr. Burton adds that this paper ‘has the appearance of having been written by a Scottish lawyer.’

[8.]Note 8. Dr. Burton thinks that this letter only reached Hume through the press. At all events there is no trace of it among his manuscripts. Life of Hume, ii. 358. Rousseau had accused Voltaire of having written a letter against him, which was published as Voltaire's at London, under the title of Lettre au docteur Jean-Jacques Pansophe. The author was M. Bordes, of Lyons. Œuvres de Voltaire, liii. 497. An English translation, published by Payne, is in the list of publications in the Gent. Mag. for April, 1766, p. 192. See also Ib. p. 563. Hume himself at first had no doubt of its authenticity. On May 16, 1766, some weeks before Rousseau's outbreak against him, he wrote to the Countess de Boufflers:—‘You have probably seen Voltaire's letter to our exotic philosopher. I fancy it will rouse him from his lethargy. These two gladiators are very well matched; it is like the combat of Dares and Entellus in Virgil [Æneid. v. 362–484]. The sprightliness and grace, and irony and pleasantry of the one will be a good contrast to the force and vehemence of the other.’ Private Corres. p. 171. Rousseau, after charging Voltaire with being the author of the letter, continues:—‘Le noble objet de ce spirituel ouvrage est de m’attirer le mépris et la haine de ceux chez qui je me suis réfugié.’ Œuvres de Rousseau, ed. 1782, xxiv. 368. Voltaire replied to this accusation in a letter addressed to Hume, dated ‘Ferney, 24 Octobre.’ He says:—‘Il m’a fait l’honneur de me mettre au nombre de ses ennemis et de ses persécuteurs. Intimement persuadé qu’on doit lui élever une statue … il pense que la moitié de l’univers est occupée à dresser cette statue sur son piédestal, et l’autre moitié à la renverser.’ Œuvres de Voltaire, liii. 497. See ante, p. 90, for another extract from this letter. Grimm, writing on Nov. 1, 1766, says:—‘M. de Voltaire a fait imprimer une petite lettre adressée à M. Hume, où il a, pour ainsi dire, donné le coup de grace à ce pauvre Jean-Jacques. Cette lettre a eu beaucoup de succès à Paris, et elle a peutêtre fait plus de tort à M. Rousseau que la brochure de M. Hume.’ Corres. Lit. v. 211. An English translation was published by S. Bladon in Paternoster Row, 1766. It is curious in all the translations to find Jean Jacques turned into John James. ‘The great soul of John James’ reads as comically as ‘la grande âme de Jean-Jacques’ reads naturally.

We find no more mention of Rousseau in Hume's letters to Strahan. On Oct. 8 of this year (1767) he wrote to Adam Smith:—‘Thus you see, he is a composition of whim, affectation, wickedness, vanity, and inquietude, with a very small, if any, ingredient of madness. He is always complaining of his health; yet I have scarce ever seen a more robust little man of his years…. The ruling qualities above mentioned, together with ingratitude, ferocity, and lying,—I need not mention eloquence and invention—form the whole of the composition.’ Burton's Hume, ii. 377. When we consider the judgments, wide as the poles asunder, which Hume passed on Rousseau, we are the more ready to allow that, as regards him at all events, Dr. Carlyle was right when he said:—‘David Hume, like Adam Smith, had no discernment at all of characters.’ Dr. A. Carlyle's Auto. p. 278.

[2.]Note 2. Samuel Sandys, first Baron Sandys, who was known in his House of Commons days as ‘the Motion-maker.’ Smollett's History of England, ed. 1800, iii. 16. Horace Walpole describes him as ‘a republican, raised on the fall of Sir Robert Walpole to be Chancellor of the Exchequer, then degraded to a peer and cofferer1 ,and soon afterwards laid aside.’ Letters, i. 104. Sir Denis Le Marchant, in a note on Walpole's Memoirs of George III, iv. 119, says that Sandys ‘had been placed at the Board of Trade in 1760. He seems to have regarded the post as a sinecure—as indeed it in a great measure became by the withdrawal of the West Indies from the department.’

[3.]Note 3. Norborne Berkeley, Lord Bottetourt. Horace Walpole, writing on Aug. 9, 1768, about a visit to London, says:—‘I saw nothing there but the ruins of 100, Lady Hertford's cribbage, and Lord Bottetourt, like patience on a monument, smiling in grief. He is totally ruined and quite charmed. Yet I heartily pity him. To Virginia he cannot be indifferent; he must turn their heads somehow or other. If his graces do not captivate them, he will enrage them to fury, for I take all his douceur to be enamelled on iron.’ Letters, v. 116. On Aug. 14, Walpole wrote :—‘There is a disagreeable affair at home, resulting from the disquiets in America. Virginia, though not the most mutinous, contains the best heads and the principal boutes-feux1 . It was thought necessary that the Governor should reside there. It was known that Sir Jeffery Amherst [the governor] would not like that…. At the same time, Lord Bottetourt, a court favourite, yet ruined in fortune, was thought of by his friend, Lord Hillsborough. This was mentioned to Sir Jeffery with the offer of a pension. He boggled at the word pension; but neither cared to go to his government, nor seemed to dislike giving it up.’ Ib. p. 120. Walpole in his Memoirs of George III, iii. 151, describes Bottetourt as ‘of the Bedchamber and a kind of second-rate favourite. He had engaged in an adventure with a company of copper-workers at Warmley. They broke. In order to cover his estate from the creditors he begged a privy seal, to incorporate the Company, as private estates would not then be answerable. The King granted his request, but Lord Chatham, aware of the deception, honestly refused to affix the Seal to the Patent.’ In the end ‘he did acquiesce in resigning the Seal for a short time, that, being put into commission, it might be set to the grant.’ (See also the Chatham Corres. iii. 306–322.) Such was the swindler who on the eve of the outbreak with America was sent there as Lieutenant and Governor-General of Virginia. ‘Whom,’ asked Burke, ‘have they selected in these perilous times to soothe the animosity, and reconcile the differences that now unhappily subsist between our colonies and the mother-country? I need not name the man; everybody knows him as a projector, as one who by wild and chimerical schemes has not only so embarrassed his own affairs as to render his stay in this country impracticable, but brought irretrievable ruin upon many others.’ Parl. Hist. xvi. 723. He died in Virginia on Nov. 9, 1770, ‘greatly lamented by the whole colony.’ Ann. Reg. xiii. 191. Junius described him as ‘a cringing, bowing, fawning, sword-bearing courtier who had ruined himself by an enterprise, which would have ruined thousands if it had succeeded.’ Letters of Junius, ed. 1812, iii. 109. He it is, I believe, whom Churchill introduces in the following couplet:—

  • ‘Dashwood is pious, Berkley fixed as fate,
  • Sandwich (Thank Heav‘n) first Minister of State.’
  • Poems, ed. 1766, ii. 118.

I have little doubt that ‘the affair’ which these three Lords were ‘conducting’ was connected with the printing of the Rolls of Parliament, and the Journals of the House of Lords. Nichols says that in 1767 William Bowyer was made printer, being ‘principally indebted for the appointment to the Earl of Marchmont.’ Lit. Anec. iii. 39. In a curious inscription written by Bowyer under his own bust in Stationers’ Hall it is stated, that ‘he was appointed to print the Journals of the House of Lords, at near LXX Years of age, by the patronage of a noble Peer.’ Ib. p. 293. In the Journals of the House of Lords, xxxi. 509, there is an order on March 9, 1767, to leave to a Sub-committee, to which these three Lords belonged, the question of printing the Rolls and the Journals. Ib. p. 429.

[7.]Note 7. This paper, I have little doubt, is one quoted in Burton's Hume, ii. 340. Voltaire is only once mentioned. It begins:—

‘Heads of an Indictment laid by J. J. Rousseau, philosopher, against D. Hume, Esq.

‘1. That the said David Hume, to the great scandal of philosophy, and not having the fitness of things before his eyes, did concert a plan with Mess. Tronchin, Voltaire and d’Alembert to ruin the said J. J. Rousseau for ever, by bringing him over to England, and there settling him to his heart's content.

‘2. That the said David Hume did, with a malicious and traitorous intent, procure, or cause to be procured, by himself, or somebody else, one pension of the yearly value of £100 or thereabouts, to be paid to the said J. J. Rousseau, on account of his being a philosopher, either privately or publicly, as to him the said J. J. Rousseau should seem meet.

‘3. That the said David Hume did, one night after he left Paris, put the said J. J. Rousseau in bodily fear, by talking in his sleep; although the said J. J. Rousseau doth not know whether the said David Hume was really asleep, or whether he shammed Abraham1 , or what he meant.’

Dr. Burton adds that this paper ‘has the appearance of having been written by a Scottish lawyer.’

[1]‘A principal officer of his majesty's Court, next under the Comptroller.’ Johnson's Dictionary.

[1]Boute-feux, Incendiaries.

[1]‘To sham Abram: to feign sickness, a phrase in use among sailors.’ Murray's New Eng. Dict.