Note 306:2 — Chapter XIV

Madame de Boufflers seems to have early apprehended mischief from Walpole's letter. In the letter referred to, she says, "Je voudrois savoir si une lettre du Roy de Prusse qui court Paris est vraie ou fausse. On dit qu'elle est pleine d'ironie." She then proceeds to describe the letter. Hume in answer says, "I suppose, that by this time you have learned it was Horace Walpole who wrote the Prussian letter you mentioned to me. It is a strange inclination we have to be wits, preferably to every thing else. He is a very worthy man; he esteems and even admires Rousseau; yet he could not forbear, for the sake of a very indifferent joke, the turning him into ridicule, and saying harsh things against him. I am a little angry with him; and I hear you are a great deal: but the matter ought to be treated only as a piece of levity."—Private Correspondence , p. 130.