to the Princess of Wales, Augusta, mother of George III. ‘The Princess,’ according to Horace Walpole, writing 27 May 1757, ‘gave Home 100l. a year’ (Letters, ed. Cunningham, iii. 78). On Home's return to Scotland the proceedings against him were resumed by the presbytery, but were cut short by his resignation of his charge on 7 June 1757, two days after he had preached at Athelstaneford a farewell sermon, which ‘drew tears from many of his people’ (Postscript to Scots Magazine, 1757, p. 274). In 1770, when he built himself a house not far from Athelstaneford, his former parishioners brought the stones for the building, and would not accept any payment (Mackenzie, i. 34).
Soon after his resignation Home was appointed private secretary to Lord Bute, and became tutor of the Prince of Wales, afterwards George III. In this position he had no difficulty in procuring Garrick's acceptance of the previously rejected ‘Agis.’ Garrick brought it out, and played a principal part in it at Drury Lane on 21 Feb. 1758. Good acting and powerful influence kept it for some time on the stage (Genest, iv. 515). It brought the author from 500l. to 600l. (Nichols, Illustr. Lit. vii. 249). Bute took the Prince of Wales twice to see it. But Gray wrote contemptuously of it, and lamented its marked inferiority to ‘Douglas.’ In the same year Home met at Moffat James Macpherson, and, delighted with his Ossianic fragments, encouraged him to make further discoveries of a like kind. Macpherson left Home in his will 2,000l. (Biog. Dram. i. 362). On 21 Feb. 1760 Home's ‘Siege of Aquileia’ was produced at Drury Lane by Garrick, who played in it and had great hopes of its success, but in that he was disappointed. In the following July Voltaire's ‘L'Écossaise’ was produced at the Théâtre Français, and, in one of his freaks of pseudonymity, Voltaire alleged that it was a translation from the English of ‘M. Home, pastor of the church of Edinburgh, already known by two fine tragedies produced at Edinburgh.’ It does not appear that Home took any notice, or was even aware of, this attempt at mystification.
In 1760, too, Home published his three tragedies in a volume dedicated to the Prince of Wales, who on ascending the throne in the same year gave him a pension of 300l. a year from his privy purse. At the instance of his friends Bute procured for him in 1763 the sinecure office of conservator of Scots privileges at Campvere in Holland, with a salary of another 300l. a year. As its accredited representative at Campvere, Home acquired ex officio a seat in the general assembly of the kirk which he went from London regularly to attend, speaking occasionally in support of the church policy of his friend Dr. Robertson. When Bute resigned the premiership, Home ceased to be his secretary, but they still maintained friendly relations. On 23 Feb. 1769, Garrick produced at Drury Lane Home's ‘Fatal Discovery,’ the characters in which were Ossianic or Erse. The prejudice in London against Bute and the Scotch was still so strong that Garrick induced Home to conceal his authorship of it, and an Oxford student attended the rehearsals as its author. But Home did not allow the secret to be kept, and after the drama had been played for eleven nights with indifferent success, Garrick was compelled to withdraw it.
In the year of his marriage (1770) he acquired on a long lease the farm of Kilduff in East Lothian, and built the mansion in which he generally resided for ten or twelve years. On 27 Jan. 1773 his tragedy ‘Alonzo’ was produced by Garrick at Drury Lane, and, thanks to the acting of Mrs. Barry, ran for eleven nights, and achieved a greater success than any of his dramas, excepting ‘Douglas.’ Horace Walpole (Letters, v. 448) dismisses it contemptuously as ‘the story of David and Goliath worse told than it would have been if Sternhold and Hopkins had put it into metre.’
In April 1776 Home, then in London, started in the company of Adam Smith for Edinburgh to see Hume, whose health was failing. They unexpectedly met Hume at Morpeth, on his way to London, and Home accompanied the invalid to Bath. Home recorded in a diary Hume's sayings and doings during these journeys (printed by Mackenzie, i. 168–82, and in Burton's Hume, ii. 495, 504). Probably during his visit to Bath Walter Scott, then a boy, was introduced to Home (Lockhart, Scott, ed. 1850, p. 7). Scott was afterwards a frequent guest at his villa near Edinburgh (ib. p. 38). In July Home accompanied Hume back to Edinburgh, and the latter, before dying in August 1776, added to his will the codicil leaving to Home ‘ten dozen of my old claret at his choice, and a single bottle of that other liquor called port.’ ‘I also leave to him,’ Hume proceeds, ‘six dozen of port, provided that he attests under his hand, signed John Home, that he has himself alone finished that bottle at two sittings. By this concession he will at once terminate the only two differences that ever arose between us concerning temporal matters.’ David preferred port to claret, John claret to port. When a high duty on French wine was enforced in Scotland, Home expressed his disgust in a well-known epigram condemning port as poison.
On 21 Jan. 1778 appeared, and signally
