76
“Desultory Gleanings, and Original Communications. Translated from ‘Mémoires et correspondence de Madame D’Epinay’ [section ‘Anecdote of David Hume’],’’ The New-England Galaxy and Masonic Magazine (18 June 1819), p. 144.
Anonymous
The New-England Galaxy and Masonic Magazine was a weekly, published and edited in Boston by Joseph T. Buckingham. On The New-England Galaxy and Masonic Magazine see Neal L. Edgar, A History and Bibliography of American Magazines, 1810–1820 (Metuchen, 1975), p. 194; API, p. 153; BAP, pp. 113–14; Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines, 1741–1850 (Cambridge, 1938), pp. 127, 169, 199.
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THE celebrated David Hume the great English Historiographer, known and esteemed by his works, was not so well gifted for that kind of amusement to which all our Ladies had decided him to be suitable. He made his debut at the house of Madame de T***; they had given him the part of a Sultan seated between two slaves, on which he should employ his eloquence to fix their love; when finding them inexorable, he was to seek out the cause of their pains and their resistance: They place him upon a sofa between two of the prettiest women in Paris; — he looks at them attentively. He strikes his paunch and his knees repeatedly, and found nothing to say to them but — “Eh! bien! mes demoiselles — Eh, bien! vous donc — Eh, bien! vous voila — vous volila ici? — * This phrase was continued for a quarter of an hour, and he could not get beyond or out of it. At length one of them rose up with impatience. Ah, said she, I doubt very much if that man is good for anything but to eat his veal!
From that time he exiled himself for a spectator, but is not the less feasted or cajoled. It is indeed a very comical part that he plays here; but luckily for him, or rather for his philosophical dignity, because he appears to accommodate himself very well to this sort of life — there has not been any ruling mania in this country since his arrival — and thus circumstanced they have regarded him as a lucky thing (trouvaille,) and the effervescence of our young heads is altogether turned in his favor. All the beautiful women are taken with him; he is invited to all the fine suppers; and there is no good feast without him; in a word he is for our coquettes what the Genevan is for me.
*Well! Misses — Well! you are here then — Well! you are here — You are here?