Economists -- Great Britain -- Biography; Smith, Adam, 1723-1790
The deep love of tranquillity this letter breathes, the dislike of
publicity as a snare fatal to future quiet, the contempt for the petty
vanity that makes men of letters run into print with their little
personal affairs, as if they were of moment to anybody but themselves,
are all very characteristic of Smith's philosophic temper of mind; and
there is also--what appears on other occasions as well as this in the
intercourse of the two philosophers--a certain note of affectionate
anxiety on the part of the younger and graver philosopher towards the
elder as towards a man of less weight of natural character and
experience, and perhaps less of the wisdom of this world, than
himself.
Smith seems to have shown Hume's letter to their common friends in
Paris, and while deeply interested, as was only natural, in the
quarrel, they with one consent took Hume's side, the only possible
view of the transaction. The subject continued to furnish matter of
conversation and conference among Hume's French literary friends
during the whole time of Smith's residence in Paris. Hume sent Smith
another letter a little later on in the month of July, which he asked
him specially to show to D'Alembert. This Smith did on the 21 st, when
he met D'Alembert at dinner at Mademoiselle de l'Espinasse's, in
company with Turgot, Marmontel, Roux, Morellet, Saurin, and Duclos;
and on the same evening D'Alembert wrote Hume that he had just had the
honour of seeing Mr. Smith, who had shown him the letter he had
received, and that they had talked much together about Hume and his
affairs. Apparently Smith's objections to Hume publishing anything on
the quarrel were now overcome; at all events, the result of this
consultation of Hume's French friends was to advise publication; and
accordingly a week or two later Hume sent on a complete narrative of
his relations with Rousseau, together with the whole correspondence
from first to last, to D'Alembert, with full permission to make any
use of it he thought best, and he wrote Smith at the same time asking
him to go and get a sight of it. "Pray tell me," he adds, "your
judgment of my work, if it deserves the name. Tell D'Alembert I make
him absolute master to retrench or alter what he thinks proper in
order to suit it to the latitude of Paris."[171]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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