MY DEAR FRIEND—­I am thoroughly convinced that Rousseau is as great a rascal as you and as every man here believe him to be.  Yet let me beg of you not to think of publishing anything to the world upon the very great impertinence which he has been guilty of.  By refusing the pension which you had the goodness to solicit for him with his own consent, he may have thrown, by the baseness of his proceedings, a little ridicule upon you in the eyes of the court and the ministry.  Stand this ridicule; expose his brutal letter, but without giving it out of your own hand, so that it may never be printed, and, if you can, laugh at yourself, and I will pawn my life that before three weeks are at an end this little affair which at present gives you so much uneasiness shall be understood to do you as much honour as anything that has ever happened to you.  By endeavouring to unmask before the public this hypocritical pedant, you run the risk of disturbing the tranquillity of your whole life.  By leaving him alone he cannot give you a fortnight’s uneasiness.  To write against him is, you may depend upon it, the very thing he wishes you to do.  He is in danger of falling into obscurity in England, and he hopes to make himself considerable by provoking an illustrious adversary.  He will have a great party—­the Church, the Whigs, the Jacobites, the whole wise English nation—­who will love to mortify a Scotchman, and to applaud a man who has refused a pension from the king.  It is not unlikely, too, that they may pay him very well for having refused it, and that even he may have had in view this compensation.  Your whole friends here wish you not to write,—­the Baron, D’Alembert, Madame Riccoboni, Mademoiselle Rianecourt, M. Turgot, etc. etc.  M. Turgot, a friend every way worthy of you, desired me to recommend this advice to you in a particular manner as his most earnest entreaty and opinion.  He and I are both afraid that you are surrounded with evil counsellors, and that the advice of your English literati, who are themselves accustomed to publishing all their little gossiping stories in newspapers, may have too much influence upon you.  Remember me to Mr. Walpole, and believe me, etc.

P.S.—­Make my apology to Millar for not having yet answered his last very kind letter.  I am preparing the answer to it, which he will certainly receive by next post.  Remember me to Mrs. Millar.  Do you ever see Mr. Townshend?[170]

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.