I cannot sufficiently express, my dear sir, all the acknowledgments which I owe you for the pains you have taken in translating a work, which so little merited your attention, or the attention of the public. It is done entirely to my satisfaction; and the introduction in particular is wrote with great prudence and discretion in every point, except where your partiality to me appears too strongly. I accept of it, however, very willingly as a pledge of your friendship. You and M. D'Alembert did well in softening some expressions, especially in the notes; and I shall take care to follow these corrections in the English edition. My paper, indeed, was not wrote for the public eye; and nothing but a train of unforeseen accidents could have engaged me to give it to the press. I am not surprised, that those who do not consider nor weigh those circumstances, should blame this appeal to the public; but it is certain that if I had persevered in keeping silence, I should have passed for the guilty person, and those very people who blame me at present, would, with the appearance of reason, have thrown a much greater blame upon me. This whole adventure, I must regard as a misfortune in my life: and yet, even after all is past, when it is easy to correct any errors, I am not sensible that I can accuse myself of any imprudence; except in accepting of this man when he threw himself into my arms: and yet it would then have appeared cruel to refuse him. I am excusable for not expecting to meet with such a prodigy of pride and ferocity, because such a one never before existed. But after he had declared war against me in so violent a manner, it could not have been prudent in me to keep silence towards my friends, and to wait till he should find a proper time to stab my reputation. From my friends, the affair passed to the public, who interested themselves more in a private story, than it was possible to imagine; and rendered it quite necessary to lay the whole before them. Yet, after all, if any one be pleased to think, that by greater prudence I could have avoided this disagreeable extremity, I am very willing to submit. It is not surely the first imprudence I have been guilty of.[358:1] Among other distinctions, the publication of the controversy brought Hume a letter from Voltaire, in which the patriarch gave the history of his own grievances against Rousseau, with all his usual sarcasm; and said, of that absorbing vanity for which he might have had more fellow feeling, that Rousseau, believing himself worthy of a statue, thought one half of the world was occupied in raising it on its pedestal, and the other in pulling it down.[358:2]