For literature, it is very amusing when one has nothing else to do. I think it rather pedantic in society: tiresome when displayed professedly; and, besides, in this country, one is sure it is only the fashion of the day. Their taste in it is the worst of all; could one believe, that when they read our authors, Richardson and Mr. Hume should be their favourites? The latter is treated here with perfect veneration. His History, so falsified in many points, so partial in as many, so very unequal in its parts, is thought the standard of writing.[225:2] Thus, and in the like strain, do the French suffer in his good opinion, for their offence in making an idol of Hume. So, on the 3d October, when writing to Mr. Chute,-- Their authors, who by the way are every where, are worse than their own writings, which I don't mean as a compliment to either. In general, the style of conversation is solemn, pedantic, and seldom animated, but by a dispute. I was expressing my aversion to disputes: Mr. Hume, who very gratefully admires the tone of Paris, having never known any other tone, said with great surprise, "Why, what do you like, if you hate both disputes and whisk?"[225:3] Then, on the 19th of the same month, to Mr. Brand: I assure you, you may come hither very safely, and be in no danger from mirth. Laughing is as much out of fashion as pantins and bilboquets. Good folks, they have no time to laugh. There is God and the king to be pulled down first; and men and women, one and all, are devoutly employed in the demolition. They think me quite profane for having any belief left. But this is not my only crime; I have told them, and am undone by it, that they have taken from us to admire the two dullest things we had--Whisk and Richardson. It is very true that they want nothing but George Grenville to make their conversations, or rather dissertations, the most tiresome upon earth. For Lord Lyttelton, if he would come hither, and turn freethinker once more, he would be reckoned the most agreeable man in France,--next to Mr. Hume, who is the only thing in the world that they believe implicitly, which they must do, for I defy them to understand any language that he speaks.[226:1] At this time Adam Smith was travelling in France, with his pupil, the young Duke of Buccleuch. On 5th July, 1764, he writes from Toulouse, requesting Hume to give him and his pupil introductions to distinguished Frenchmen, the Duc de Richelieu, the Marquis de Lorges, &c. He says, that Mr. Townsend had assured him of these and other introductions, from the Duc de Choiseul, but that none had made their appearance in that quarter. Smith seems to have been heartily tired of the glittering bondage of his tutorship, and to have sighed for the academic conviviality he had left behind him at Glasgow. He says:--