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Yes, Mr Hume, you have me by all the ties of this life; but you have no power over my probity or my fortitude, which, being independent either of you or of mankind, I will preserve in spite of you. Think not to frighten me with the fortune that awaits me. I know the opinions of mankind; I am accustomed to their injustice, and have learned to care little about it. If you have taken your resolution, as I have reason to believe you have, be assured mine is taken also. I am feeble indeed in body, but never possessed greater strength of mind.
Mankind may say and do what they will, it is of little consequence to me. What is of consequence, however, is, that I should end as I have begun; that I should continue to preserve my ingenuousness and integrity to the end, whatever may happen; and that I should have no cause to reproach myself either with meanness[Pg cix] in adversity, or insolence in prosperity. Whatever disgrace attends, or misfortune threatens me, I am ready to meet them. Though I am to be pitied, I am much less so than you, and all the revenge I shall take on you is, to leave you the tormenting consciousness of being obliged, in spite of yourself, to have a respect for the unfortunate person you have oppressed.
In closing this letter, I am surprised at my having been able to write it. If it were possible to die with grief, every line was sufficient to kill me with sorrow. Every circumstance of the affair is equally incomprehensible. Such conduct as yours hath been, is not in nature: it is contradictory to itself, and yet it is demonstrable to me that it has been such as I conceive. On each side of me there is a bottomless abyss! and I am lost in one or the other.
If you are guilty, I am the most unfortunate of mankind; if you are innocent, I am the most culpable.[40] You even make me desire to be that contemptible object. Yes, the situation to which you see me reduced, prostrate at your feet, crying out for mercy, and doing every thing to obtain it; publishing aloud my own unworthiness, and paying the most explicit homage to your virtues, would be a state of joy[Pg cx] and cordial effusion, after the grievous state of restraint and mortification into which you have plunged me. I have but a word more to say. If you are guilty, write to me no more; it would be superfluous, for certainly you could not deceive me. If you are innocent, justify yourself. I know my duty; I love, and shall always love it, however difficult and severe. There is no state of abjection that a heart, not formed for it, may not recover from. Once again, I say, if you are innocent, deign to justify yourself; if you are not, adieu for ever.
J. J. R.
[5] The fact was this. My friend, Mr Ramsay, a painter of eminence, and a man of merit, proposed to draw Mr Rousseau's picture; and when he had begun it, told me he intended to make me a present of it. Thus the design of having Mr Rousseau's picture drawn did not come from me, nor did it cost me any thing. Mr Rousseau, therefore, is equally contemptible in paying me a compliment for this pretended gallantry, in his letter of the 29th March, and in converting it into ridicule here.—Mr HUME.
[6] Mr Rousseau forms a wrong judgment of me, and ought to know me better. I have written to Mr Davenport, even since our rupture, to engage him to continue his kindness to his unhappy guest.—Mr HUME.
[7] How strange are the effects of a disordered imagination! Mr Rousseau tells us he is ignorant of what passes in the world, and yet talks of the enemies he has in England. How does he know this? Where did he see them? He hath received nothing but marks of beneficence and hospitality. Mr Walpole is the only person who hath thrown out a little piece of raillery against him; but is not therefore his enemy. If Mr Rousseau could have seen things exactly as they are, he would have seen that he had no other friend in England but me, and no other enemy but himself.—Mr HUME.
[8] That a general outcry should prevail against Mr Rousseau's persecutors in England, is no wonder. Such an outcry would have prevailed from sentiments of humanity, had he been a person of much less note; so that this is no proof of his being esteemed. And as to the encomiums on him inserted in the public newspapers, the value of such kind of puffs is well known in England. I have already observed, that the authors of more respectable works were at no loss what to think of Mr Rousseau, but had formed a proper judgment of him long before his arrival in England. The genius which displayed itself in his writings did by no means blind the eyes of the more sensible part of mankind to the absurdity and inconsistency of his opinions and conduct. In exclaiming against Mr Rousseau's fanatical persecutors, they did not think him the more possessed of the true spirit of martyrdom. The general opinion indeed was, that he had too much philosophy to be very devout, and had too much devotion to have much philosophy.—English Translator.
[9] Mr Rousseau knows very little of the public judgment in England, if he thinks it is to be influenced by any story told in a certain Magazine. But, as I have before said, it was not from this time that Mr Rousseau was slightingly spoke of, but long before, and that in a more consequential manner. Perhaps, indeed, Mr Rousseau ought in justice to impute great part of those civilities he met with on his arrival, rather to vanity and curiosity than to respect and esteem.—English Translator.
[10] So then I find I am to answer for every article of every Magazine and newspaper printed in England. I assure Mr Rousseau I would rather answer for every robbery committed on the highway; and I am entirely as innocent of the one as the other.—Mr HUME.
[11] This relates to my friend Mr John Stewart, who entertained Mr Rousseau at his house, and did him all the good offices in his power. Mr Rousseau, in complaining of this gentleman's behaviour, forgets that he wrote Mr Stewart a letter from Wooton, full of acknowledgments, and just expressions of gratitude. What Mr Rousseau adds, regarding the brother of Mr Stewart, is neither civil nor true—Mr HUME.
[12] I shall mention only one, that made me smile; this was, his attention to have, every time I came to see him, a volume of Eloisa upon his table; as if I did not know enough of Mr Hume's taste for reading, as to be well assured, that of all books in the world, Eloisa must be one of the most tiresome to him.—Mr ROUSSEAU.
