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revising.
    How had Hume’s latest career petered out and his intellectual output dried up? To the Earl of Shelburne, an Irish intellectual and futureprime minister, Hume likened himself to a Hottentot who flees the cultivated life and returns to his companions in the woods. A man accustomed to retreat and study, he told the earl, was unfit for the commerce of the great world and it was wise for him to shun it. But behind the rational phrases lay umbrage and bile. Although he now had an enviable reputation and a circle of friends in London, Hume was bitter at the scant regard given to men of letters by men of riches and power. Literature was appreciated in Scotland. This was not so among “the barbarians who inhabit the Banks of the Thames.”
    Indeed, he seems to have returned to Edinburgh estranged from the English, almost seeking refuge. The London “barbarians” were rife with anti-Scottish prejudice. In September 1764, Gilbert Elliot, an old Edinburgh chum and M.P., wrote to Hume, then in Paris, exhorting him to “love the French as much as you will; but above all continue still an Englishman.” In his resentful reply, Hume mused on his future:
    I believe, taking the continent of Europe from Petersburg to Lisbon, and from Bergen to Naples, there is not one who ever heard of my name, who has not heard of it with advantage, both in point of morals and genius. I do not believe there is one Englishman in fifty who if he heard I had broke my neck tonight would be sorry. Some because I am not a Whig; some because I am not a Christian; and all because I am a Scotsman. Can you seriously talk of my continuing an Englishman?
    He contemplated taking the reigns of William of Orange and of Anne as his next subject. Nonetheless, he told Andrew Millar, his publisher, “I have an aversion to appear in the capital till I see that more justice is done me with regard to the preceding volumes. … The general rage against the Scots is an additional discouragement. I think the Scotch Minister [Bute] is obliged to make me some compensation for this.”
    This might have been a pleasantry. If he was genuinely expressing his hopes of a government pension or a place, he was in for anotherdisappointment. Bute was indeed thinking of public office for a Scottish historian—but not for Hume. William Robertson was appointed historiographer royal for Scotland on July 25, 1763, with an increased stipend, of £200. Hume was put out. “I have been accustomed to meet with nothing but insults and indignities from my native country: But if it continues so,
ingrata patria, ne ossa quidem habebis.
” In the words of the victorious Roman general Scipio Africanus, “Ungrateful fatherland, you shall not even have my bones.”
    Thus in 1763 we find Hume at the height of his literary powers and acknowledged as one of the finest minds of his generation. He has broken new ground in philosophy, politics, economics, historiography. Yet his considerable achievements have not brought him unalloyed success, contentment, or even peace of mind. Rather, at each step of the way, success has been dogged by failure, setbacks, and public hostility. Only the beneficence of his character has won widespread recognition.
    At the age of fifty-two, he is about to embark on another change of career and become a diplomat in the European capital of culture. It was much more than a new job—it was an escape to Elysium.

4
Plots, Alarums, and Excursions
    No character in human society is more dangerous than that of the fanatic.
    â€”H UME
    Cities are the abyss of the human species.
    â€”R OUSSEAU
    E ARLIER, WHILE H UME was still in Edinburgh writing his
History
in the Advocates Library and making merry at the Poker Club, Jean-Jacques Rousseau had resolved on an escape to solitude.
    However bafflingly to his contemporaries, Rousseau was determined to put Paris behind him. In 1756, aged forty-four, he accepted the hospitalityof