Romilly (Life, i. 179) records the following anecdote, which he had from Diderot in 1781:--'Hume dina avec une grande compagnie chez le Baron d'Holbach. Il etait assis a cote du Baron; on parla de la religion naturelle. "Pour les Athees," disait Hume, "je ne crois pas qu'il en existe; je n'en ai jamais vu." "Vous avez ete un peu malheureux," repondit l'autre, "vous voici a table avec dix-sept pour la premiere fois."' It was on the same day that Diderot related this that he said to Romilly, 'Il faut sabrer la theologie.'
[22] 'The inference upon the whole is, that it is not from the value or worth of the object which any person pursues that we can determine his enjoyment; but merely from the passion with which he pursues it, and the success which he meets with in his pursuit. Objects have absolutely no worth or value in themselves. They derive their worth merely from the passion. If that be strong and steady and successful, the person is happy. It cannot reasonably be doubted but a little miss, dressed in a new gown for a dancing-school ball, receives as complete enjoyment as the greatest orator, who triumphs in the splendour of his eloquence, while he governs the passions and resolutions of a numerous assembly.' Hume's Essays, i. 17 (The Sceptic). Pope had written in the Essay on Man (iv. 57):
'Condition, circumstance, is not the thing; Bliss is the same in subject or in King.'
See also post, April 15, 1778.
[23] In Boswelliana, p. 220, a brief account is given of his life, which was not altogether uneventful.
[24] We may compare with this what he says in The Rambler, No. 21, about the 'cowardice which always encroaches fast upon such as spend their time in the company of persons higher than themselves.' In No. 104 he writes:--'It is dangerous for mean minds to venture themselves within the sphere of greatness.' In the court that Boswell many years later paid to Lord Lonsdale, he suffered all the humiliations that the brutality of this petty greatness can inflict. Letters of Boswell, p. 324. See also post, Sept. 22, 1777.
[25] See Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 19, 1773.
[26] Johnson (Works, ix. 107) thus sums up his examination of second-sight:--'There is against it, the seeming analogy of things confusedly seen, and little understood; and for it, the indistinct cry of natural persuasion, which may be, perhaps, resolved at last into prejudice and tradition. I never could advance my curiosity to conviction; but came away at last only willing to believe.' See also post, March 24, 1775. Hume said of the evidence in favour of second-sight--:'As finite added to finite never approaches a hair's breadth nearer to infinite, so a fact incredible in itself acquires not the smallest accession of probability by the accumulation of testimony.' J. H. Burton's Hume, i. 480.
[27] 'I love anecdotes,' said Johnson. Boswell's Hebridge, Aug. 16, 1773. Boswell said that 'Johnson always condemned the word anecdotes, as used in the sense that the French, and we from them, use it, as signifying particulars.' Letters of Boswell, p. 311. In his Dictionary, he defined 'Anecdotes Something yet unpublished; secret history.' In the fourth edition he added: 'It is now used, after the French, for a biographical incident; a minute passage of private life.'
[28] See ante, July 19, 1763.
[29] Boswell, writing to Wilkes in 1776, said:--'Though we differ widely in religion and politics, il y a des points ou nos ames sont animes, as Rouseau said to me in his wild retreat.' Almon's Wilkes, iv. 319.
[30] Rousseau fled from France in 1762. A few days later his arrest was ordered at Geneva. He fled from Neufchatel in 1763, and soon afterwards he was banished from Berne. Nonev. Biog. Gen., Xlii. 750. He had come to England with David Hume a few weeks before this conversation was held, and was at this time in Chiswick. Hume's Private Corres., pp. 125, 145.
[31] Rousseau had by this time published his Nouvelle Helloise and Emile.
[32] Less than three months after the date of this conversation Rousseau wrote to General Conway, one of the Secretaries of State, thanking him for the pension which George III proposed secretly to confer on him. Hume's Private Corres., p. 165. Miss Burney, in her preface to Evelina, a novel which was her introduction to Johnson's strong affection, mentioning Rousseau and Johnson, adds in a footnote:-- 'However superior the capacities in which these great writers deserve to be considered, they must pardon me that, for the dignity of my subject, I here rank the authors of Rasselas and Eloise as novelists.'
[33] Rousseau thus wrote of himself:
'Dieu est juste; il veut que je souffre; et il sait que je suis innocent. Voila le motif de ma confiance, mon coeur et ma raison me crient qu'elle ne me trompera pas. Laissons donc faire les hommes et la destinee; apprenons a souffrir sans murmure; tout doit a la fin rentrer dans Fordre, et mon tour viendra tot ou tard.' Rousseau's Works, xx. 223.
[34] 'He entertained me very courteously,' wrote Boswell in his Corsica, p.