tions of the society he had met there in the following letter:
December 12th, 1761.
My Lord,—An accident, a little unexpected has hastened my journey to Scotland a little sooner than I intended. I was offered a chaise that sets out to-morrow morning, where I could sit alone and loiter and read and muse for the length of four hundred miles. Your Lordship may judge, by this specimen of my character, how unfit I am to mingle in such an active and sprightly society as that of which your Lordship invited me to partake, and that in reality a book and a fireside, are the only scenes for which I am now qualified. But I should be unfit to live among human creatures could I ever forget the obligations which I owe to your Lordship's goodness, or could ever lose the firm resolution of expressing my sense of them on all occasions. I beg your Lordship to believe that, though age and philosophy have mortified all ambition in me, yet there are other sentiments which I find more inherent to me, which I shall always cherish, and which no time can efface. And when I shall see your Lordship making a figure in the active scenes of life, I shall always consider your progress with a peculiar pleasure, though perhaps accompanied with the regret that I partake of it at so great a distance. I remember to have seen a picture in your Lordship's house of a Hottentot who fled from a cultivated life to his companions in the woods and left behind him all his fine accoutrements and attire. I compare not my case to his; for I return to very sociable, civilized people.[1] I only mean to express the force of habit which renders a man accustomed to retreat and study unfit for the commerce of the great world, and makes it a necessary piece of wisdom for him to shun it after age has rendered that habit entirely inveterate. This is the only excuse I can give to your Lordship for being so much wanting to my
- ↑ Hume was then on his way to Scotland. In 1763 Lord Hertford, Ambassador to the Court of France, appointed him to be his secretary.
