my care and direction, for the state of his mind and health required
it.--I lived with him a twelve-month. My appointments during that
time made a considerable accession to my small fortune. I then
received an invitation from General St. Clair to attend him as a
secretary to his expedition, which was at first meant against Canada,
but ended in an incursion on the coast of France. Next year, to wit,
1747, I received an invitation from the general to attend him in the
same station in his military embassy to the courts of Vienna and
Turin. I then wore the uniform of an officer, and was introduced at
these courts as aide-de-camp to the general, along with Sir Harry
Erskine and Captain Grant, now General Grant. These two years were
almost the only interruptions which my studies have received during
the course of my life: I passed them agreeably and in good company;
and my appointments, with my frugality, had made me reach a fortune
which I called independent, though most of my friends were inclined to
smile when I said so: in short, I was now master of near a thousand
pounds.

I had always entertained a notion, that my want of success in
publishing the Treatise of Human Nature, had proceeded more from the
manner than the matter, and that I had been guilty of a very usual
indiscretion, in going to the press too early. I therefore cast the
first part of that work anew in the Enquiry concerning Human
Understanding, which was published while I was at Turin. But this
piece was at first little more successful than the Treatise of Human
Nature. On my return from Italy, I had the mortification to find all
England in a ferment, on account of Dr. Middleton's Free Enquiry,
while my performance was entirely over-looked and neglected. A new
edition which had been published in London, of my Essays, moral and
political, met not with a much better reception.