(67) This curiosity was at first estimated at a thousand

crowns, but Madame du Deffand finally purchased it for Walpole

for fifty louis. "Ce bijou," she says, "me parait un peu cher

et ressemble beaucoup aux casques du Ch`ateau d,Otrante: si

vous persistez `a le d`esirer, je le payerai, je le ferai

encaisser et Partir sur le champ. C'est certainement une

pi`ece tr`es belle et tr`es rare, mais infiniment ch`ere."-E.

Letter 39 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.

Late Strawberry Hill, Jan. 7, 1772. (page 64)

You have read of my calamity without knowing it, and will pity

me when you do. I have been blown up; my castle is blown up;

Guy Fawkes has been about my house: and the 5th of November has

fallen on the 6th of January! In short, nine thousand

powder-mills broke loose yesterday morning on

Hounslow-heath;(68) a whole squadron of them came hither, and

have broken eight of my painted-glass windows; and the north

side of the castle looks as if it had stood a siege. The two

saints in the hall have suffered martyrdom! they have had their

bodies cut off, and nothing remains but their heads. The two

next great sufferers are indeed two of the least valuable,

being the passage-windows to the library and great parlour--a

fine pane is demolished in the round-room; and the window by

the gallery is damaged. Those in the cabinet, and

Holbein-room, and gallery, and blue-room, and green-closet,

etc. have escaped. As the storm came from the northwest, the

china-closet was not touched, nor a cup fell down. The

bow-window of brave old coloured glass, at Mr. Hindley's, is

massacred; and all the north sides of Twickenham and Brentford

are shattered. At London it was proclaimed an earthquake, and

half the inhabitants ran into the street.

As lieutenant-general of the ordnance, I must beseech you to

give strict order that no more powder-mills may blow up. My

aunt, Mrs. Kerwood, reading one day in the papers that a

distiller's had been burnt by the head of the still flying off,

said, she wondered they did not make an act of parliament

against the heads of stills flying off. Now, I hold it much

easier for you to do a body this service; and would recommend

to your consideration whether it would not be prudent to have

all magazines of powder kept under water till they are wanted

for service. In the mean time, I expect a pension to make me

amends for what I have suffered under the government. Adieu!

Yours.

(68) Three powder-mills blew up on Hounslow-heath, on the 6th

of January, when such was the violence of the explosion that it

was felt not only in the metropolis, but as far as Gloucester,

and was very generally mistaken for the shock of an

earthquake.-E.

Letter 40 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.

Arlington Street, Jan. 28, 1772. (page 65)

It is long indeed, dear Sir, since we corresponded. I should

not have been silent if I had had any thing worth telling you

in your way: but I grow such an antiquity myself, that I think

I am less fond of what remains of our predecessors.

I thank you for Bannerman's proposal; I mean, for taking the

trouble to send it, for I am not at all disposed to subscribe.

I thank you more for the note on King Edward; I mean, too, for

your friendship in thinking of me. Of Dean Milles I cannot

trouble myself to think any more. His piece is at Strawberry:

perhaps I may look at it for the sake of your note. The bad

weather keeps me in town, and a good deal at home; which I find

very comfortable, literally practising what so many persons

pretend they intend, being quiet and enjoying my fireside in my

elderly days.

Mr. Mason has shown me the relics of poor Mr. Gray. I am sadly

disappointed at finding them so very inconsiderable. He always

persisted, when I inquired about his writings, that he had

nothing by him. I own I doubted. I am grieved he was so very

near exact--I speak of my own satisfaction; as to his genius,

what he published during his life will establish his fame as

long as our language lasts, and there is a man of genius left.

There is a silly fellow, I do not know who, that has published

a volume of Letters on the English Nation, With characters of

our modern authors. He has talked such nonsense On Mr. Gray,

that I have no patience with the compliments he has paid me.

He must have an excellent taste; and gives me a woful opinion

of my own trifles, when he likes them, and cannot see the

beauties of a poet that ought to be ranked in the first line.

I am more humbled by any applause in the present age, than by

hosts of such critics as Dean Milles. Is not Garrick reckoned

a tolerable author, though he has proved how little sense is

necessary to form a great actor'? His Cymon, his prologues and

epilogues, and forty such pieces of trash, are below

mediocrity, and yet delight the mob in the boxes as well as in

the footman's gallery. I do not mention the things written in

his praise; because he writes most Of them himself! But you

know any one popular merit can confer all merit. Two women

talking Of Wilkes, one said he squinted--t'other replied,

"Squints!--well, if he does, it is not more than a man should

squint." For my part, I can see how extremely well Garrick

acts, without thinking him six feet high. It is said

Shakspeare was a bad actor; why do not his divine plays make

our wise judges conclude that he was a good one? They have not

a proof of the contrary, as they have in Garrick's works--but

what is it to you or me what he is? We may see him act with

pleasure, and nothing obliges us to read his writings.(69)

(69) The best defence of Garrick against the charges which

Walpole so repeatedly brings against him will be found in the

estimation in which he was held by the most distinguished of

his contemporaries. His friend Dr. Johnson thought well of'

his talent in prologue writing: "Dryden," he said, "has written

prologues superior to any that David has written; but David has

written more good prologues than Dryden has done. It is

wonderful that he has been able to write such variety of them.

A true conception of character and natural expression of it,

were his distinguished excellences; but I thought him less to

be envied on the stage than at the head of a table. He was the

first man in the world for sprightly conversation."-E.

Letter 41 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.

Arlington Street, June 9, 1772. (page 66)

Dear sir,

The preceding paper(70) was given me by a gentleman, who has a

better opinion of my bookhood than I deserve. I could give him

no satisfaction, but told him, I would get inquiry made at

Cambridge for the pieces he wants. If you can give any

assistance in this chase, I am sure you will: as it will be

trouble enough, I will not make my letter longer.

(70) This letter enclosed some queries from a gentleman abroad,

respecting books, etc. relating to the order of Malta.

Letter 42 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.

Strawberry Hill, June 17, 1772. (page 66)

Dear sir,

You are a mine that answers beyond those of Peru. I have given

the treasure you sent me to the gentleman from whom I had the

queries. He is vastly obliged to you, and I am sure so am I,

for the trouble you have given yourself"and, therefore I am

going to give you more. King Edward's Letters are printed.(71)

Shall I keep them for you or send them, and how? I intend you

four copies--shall you want more? Lord Ossory takes a hundred,

and I have as many; but none will be sold.

I am out of materials for my press. I am thinking of printing

some numbers of miscellaneous MSS. from my own and Mr. Gray's

collection. If you have any among your stores that are

historic, new and curious, and like to have them printed, I

shall be glad of them. Among Gray's are letters of Sir Thomas

Wyat the elder.(72) I am sure you must have a thousand hints

about him. If you will send them to me I will do you justice;

as you will see I have in King Edward's Letters. Do you know

any thing of his son,(73) the insurgent, in Queen Mary's reign?

I do not know whether it was not to Payne the bookseller, but I

am sure I gave somebody a very few notes to the British

Topography. They were indeed of very little consequence.

I have got to-day, and am reading with entertainment, two vols.

in octavo, the Lives of Leland, Hearne, and Antony Wood.,(74)

I do not know the author, but he is of Oxford. I think you

should add that of your friend Brown Willis.(75) There is a

queer piece on Freemasonry in one of the volumes, said to be

written, on very slender authority, by Henry VI. with notes by

Mr. Locke: a very odd conjunction! It says that Arts were

brought from the East by Peter Gower. As I am sure you will

not find an account of this singular person in all your

collections, be it known to you, that Peter Gower was commonly

called Pythagoras. I remember our newspapers insisting that

Thomas Kouli Khan was an Irishman, and that his true name was

Thomas Callaghan.

On reading over my letter, I find I am no sceptic, having

affirmed no less than four times, that I am sure. Though this

is extremely awkward, I am sure I will not write my letter over

again; so pray excuse or burn my tautology.

P. S. I had like to have forgotten the most obliging, and to me

the most interesting part of your letter-your kind offer of

coming hither. I accept it most gladly; but, for reasons I

will tell you, wish it may be deferred a little. I am going to

Park-place (General Conway's), then to Ampthill (Lord

Ossory's), and then to Goodwood (Duke of Richmond's); and the

beginning of August to Wentworth Castle (Marquis of

Rockingham's); so that I shall not be at all settled here till

the end of the latter month. But I have a stronger reason. By

that time will be finished a delightful chapel I am building in

my garden, to contain the shrine of Capoccio, and the Window

with Henry III. and his Queen. My new bedchamber will be

finished too, which is now all in litter: and, besides,

September is a quiet month; visits to make or receive are over,

and the troublesome go to shoot partridges. If that time suits

you, pray assure me I shall see you on the first of September.

(71) "Copies of seven original Letters from King Edward VI. to

Barnaby Fitzpatrick." Strawberry Hill, 1772.-E.

(72) He was the contemporary and friend of Surrey, and was

accused by Henry VIII. of being the paramour of Anne Boleyn;

but the King's suspicion dying away, he was appointed, in 1537,

Henry's ambassador to the Emperor. His poems have recently

been published in the Aldine edition of the Poets; and in the

Biographical Preface to them are included some of his admirable

letters.-E.

(73) Sir Thomas Wyatt "the younger," son of the preceding, who

is presumed to have received that designation from having been

knighted in the lifetime of his father. Having joined in the

effort to place Lady Jane Grey on the throne, he was condemned

and executed for high treason, on the 11th of April 1554.-E.

(74) The editor was W. Huddersford, fellow of Trinity

College.-E.

(74) Browne Willis, the antiquary, and author of "A Survey of

the Cathedrals of England;" "Notitia Parliamentaria," etc. He

was born at Blandford in 1682, and died in February 1760. Dr.

Ducarel printed privately, immediately after his death, a small

quarto pamphlet, entitled " Some Account Of Browne Willis, Esq.

LL. D." One of Willis's peculiarities was his fondness for

visiting cathedrals on the saints, days to which they were

dedicated.-E.

Letter 43 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.

Strawberry Hill, Monday, June 22, 1772. (page 68)

It is lucky that I have had no dealings with Mr. Fordyce;(75)

for, if he had ruined me, as he has half the world, I could not

have run away. I tired myself with walking on Friday: the gout

came on Saturday in my foot; yesterday I kept my bed till four

o'clock, and my room all day-but, with wrapping myself all over

with bootikins, have scarce had any pain-my foot swelled

immediately, and today I am descended into the blueth and

greenth:(76) and though you expect to find that I am paving the

way to an excuse, I think I shall be able to be with you on

Saturday. All I intend to excuse myself from, is walking. I

should certainly never have the gout, if I had lost the use of

my feet. Cherubims that have no legs, and do nothing but stick

their chins in a cloud and sing, are never out of order.

Exercise is the worst thing in the world, and as bad an

invention as gunpowder.

Apropos to Mr. Fordyce, here is a passage ridiculously

applicable to him, that I met with yesterday in the letters of

Guy Patin: "Il n'y a pas long-temps qu'un auditeur des comptes

nomm`e Mons. Nivelle fit banqueroute; et tout fra`ichement,

c'est-`a-dire depuis trois jours, un tr`esorier des parties

casuelles, nomm`e SanSon, en a fait autant; et pour vous

montrer qu'il est vrai que res humanae faciunt circulum, comme

il a `et`e autrefois dit par Plato et par Aristote, celui-l`a

s'en retourne d'o`u il vient. Il est fils d'un paysan; il a

`et`e laquais de son premier m`etier, et aujourd'hui il n'est

plus rien, si non qu'il lui reste une assez belle femme."--I do

not think I can find in Patin or Plato, nay, nor in Aristotle,

though he wrote about every thing, a parallel case to Charles

Fox:(77) there are advertised to be sold more annuities of his

and his society, to the amount of five hundred thousand pounds

a-year! I wonder what he will do next, when he has sold the

estates of all his friends!

I have been reading the most delightful book in the world, the

Lives of Leland, Tom earne, and Antony Wood. The last's diary

makes a thick volume in octavo. One entry is, "This day Old

Joan began to make my bed." In the story of Leland is an

examination of a freemason, written by the hand of King Henry

VI., with notes by Mr. Locke. Freemasonry, Henry VI., and

Locke, make a strange heterogeneous olio; but that is not all.

The respondent, who defends the mystery of masonry, says it was

brought into Europe by the Venetians--he means the Phoenicians.

And who do you think propagated it? Why, one Peter Gore--And

who do you think that was?--One Pythagoras, Pythagore. I do

not know whether it is not still More extraordinary, that this

and the rest of the nonsense in that account made Mr. Locke

determine to be a freemason: so would I too, if I could expect

to hear of more Peter Gores.

Pray tell Lady Lyttelton that I say she will certainly kill

herself if she lets Lady Ailesbury drag her twice a-day to feed

the pheasants, and you make her climb cliffs and clamber over

mountains. She has a tractability that alarms me for her; and

if she does not pluck up a spirit, and determine never to be

put out of her own way, I do not know what may be the

Consequence. I will come and set her an example of

immovability. Take notice, I do not say one civil syllable to

Lady Ailesbury. She has not passed a whole day here these two

years. She is always very gracious, says she will come when

you will fix a time, as if you governed, and then puts it off

whenever it is proposed, nor will spare one Single day from

Park-place-as if other people were not as partial to their own

Park-places, Adieu! Yours ever.

Tuesday noon.

I wrote my letter last night; this morning I received yours,

and shall wait till Sunday, as you bid me, which will be more

convenient for my gout, though not for other engagements, but I

shall obey the superior, as nullum tempus occurrit regi et

podagrae.

(75) The greatest consternation prevailed at this time in the

metropolis, in consequence of the banking-house of Neale,

James, Fordyce, and Down having stopped payment. Fordyce was

bred a hosier in Aberdeen. For a memoir of him, see Gent. Mag.

vol. x1ii. p. 310.-E.

(76) Cant words of Walpole for blue and green. He means, that

he came out of his room to the blue sky and green fields.

(77) Gibbon, in a letter to Mr. Holroyd, of the 8th of

February, in reference to the recent debate in the House of

Commons, on the clerical petition for relief from subscription

to the Thirty-nine Articles, says--"I congratulate you on the

late victory of our dear Mamma, the Church of England. She had,

last Thursday, seventy-one rebellious sons, Who pretended to

set aside her will, on a account of insanity; but two hundred

and seventeen worthy champions, headed by Lord North, Burke,

Charles Fox, etc., though they allowed the thirty-nine clauses

of her testament were absurd and unreasonable, supported the

validity of it with infinite honour. By the bye, Charles Fox

prepared himself for that holy work by passing twenty-one hours

in the pious exercise of hazard; his devotions cost him only

about five hundred pounds an hour, in all, eleven thousand

pounds."-E.

Letter 44 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.

Strawberry Hill, July 7, 1772. (page 70)

Dear Sir,

I sent you last week by the Cambridge Fly, that puts up in

Gray's-inn-lane, six copies of King Edward's Letters, but fear

I forgot to direct their being left at Mr. Bentham's, by which

neglect perhaps you have not yet got them; so that I have been

very blamable, while I thought I was very expeditious; and it

was not till reading your letter again just now that I

discovered my carelessness.

I have not heard of Dr. Glynn, etc., but the housekeeper has

orders to receive them. I thank you a thousand times for the

Maltese notes, which I have given to the gentleman, and for the

Wyattiana: I am going to work on the latter.

I have not yet seen Mr. 's print, but am glad it is so like. I

expected Mr. Mason would have sent me one early; but I suppose

he keeps it for me, as I shall call on him in my way to Lord

Strafford's.

Mr. West,(78) one of our brother antiquaries, is dead. He had

a very curious collection of old pictures, English coins,

English prints, and manuscripts. But he was so rich, that I

take for granted nothing will be sold. I could wish for his

family pictures of Henry V. and Henry VIII.

Foote, in his new comedy of The Nabob, has lashed Master Doctor

Miles and our Society very deservedly for the nonsensical

discussion they had this winter about Whittington and his Cat.

Few of them are fit for any thing better than such researches.

Poor Mr. Granger has been very ill, but is almost recovered. I

intend to invite him to meet you in September. It is a party I

shall be very impatient for: you know how sincerely I am, dear

Sir, your obliged and Obedient humble servant.

(78) James West, Esq. He was for some time one of the

secretaries of the treasury, vice president of the Society of

Antiquaries, and president of the Royal Society. His curious

collection of manuscripts were purchased by the Earl of

Shelburne, and are now deposited in the British Museum.-E.

Letter 45 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.

Strawberry Hill, July 28, 1772. (page 70)

Dear Sir,

I am anew obliged to you, as I am perpetually, for the notice

you give me of another intended publication against me in the

Archaeologia, or Old Woman's Logic. By Your account, the

author will add much credit to their Society! For my part, I

shall take no notice of any of his handycrafts. However, as

there seems to be a willingness to carp at me, and as gnats may

on a sudden provoke one to give a slap, I choose to be at

liberty to say what I think Of the learned Society; and

therefore I have taken leave of them, having so good an

occasion presented as their council on Whittington and his Cat,

and the ridicule that Foote has thrown on them. They are

welcome to say any thing on my writings, but that they are the

works of a fellow of so foolish a Society.

I am at work on the Life of Sir Thomas Wyat, but it does not

please me; nor will it be entertaining, though you have

contributed so many materials towards it. You must take one

trouble more it is to inquire and search for a book that I want

to see. It is the Pilgrim; was written by William Thomas, who

was executed in Queen Mary's time; but the book was printed

under, and dedicated to, Edward VI. I have only an imperfect

memorandum of it, and cannot possibly recall to mind from

whence I made it. All I think I remember is, that the book was

in the King's library. I have sent to the Museum to inquire

after it; but I cannot find it mentioned in Ames's History of

English Printers. Be so good as to ask all your antiquarian

friends if they know such a work.

Amidst all your kindness, you have added one very disagreeable

paragraph:--I mean, you doubt about coming here in September.

Fear of a sore throat would be a reason for your never coming.

It is one of the distempers in the world the least to be

foreseen, and September, a dry month, one of the least likely

months to bring it. I do not like your recurring to so very

ill-founded an excuse, and positively will not accept it,

unless you wish I should not be so much as I an, dear Sir, Your

most faithful humble servant,

H. W.

Letter 46 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.

Strawberry Hill, Aug. 25, 1772. (page 71)

Dear sir,

I thank YOU for your notices, dear Sir, and will deliver you

from the trouble of any further pursuit of the Peleryne of

Thomas. I have discovered him among the Cottonian MSS. in the

Museum, and am to see him.

If Dr. Browne is returned to Cambridge, may I beg you to give

him a thousand thanks for the present he left at my house, a

goarstone and a seal, that belonged to Mr. Gray. I shall lay

them up in my cabinet at Strawberry among my most valuables.

Dr. Browne, however, was not quite kind to me; for he left no

direction where to find him in town, so that I could not wait

upon him, nor invite him to Strawberry Hill, as I much wished

to do, Do not these words, "invite him to Strawberry," make

Your ears tingle? September is at hand, and You must have no

sore throat. The new chapel in the garden is almost finished,

and you must come to the dedication.

I have seen Lincoln and York, and to say the truth, prefer the

former in some respects. In truth, I was scandalized in the

latter. William of Hatfield's tomb and figure is thrown aside

into a hole: and yet the chapter possess an estate that his

mother gave them. I have charged Mr. Mason(79) with my

anathema, unless they do justice. I saw Roche Abbey, too;

which is hid in such a venerable chasm, that you might lie

concealed there even from a 'squire parson of the parish. Lord

Scarborough, to whom it belongs, and who lives at next door,

neglects it as much as if he was afraid of ghosts. I believe

Montesino's cave lay in just such a solemn thicket, which is

now so overgrown, that, when one finds the spot, one can scarce

find the ruins.

I forgot to tell you, that in the screen of York Minster there

are most curious statues of the Kings of England, from the

Conqueror to Henry VI.; very singular, evidently by two

different hands, the one better than the other, and most of

them I am persuaded, very authentic. Richard II., Henry III.,

and Henry V., I am sure are; and Henry Iv., though unlike the

common portrait at Hampton-court, in Herefordshire, the most

singular and villanous countenance I ever saw. I intend to try

to get them well engraved. That old fool, James I., is crowded

in, in the place of Henry VII., that was taken away to make

room for this piece of flattery; for the chapter did not slight

live princes. Yours ever.

(79) Mason was a residentiary of York cathedral; as well as

prebendary of Duffield, and rector of Aston.-E.

Letter 47 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.

Strawberry Hill, August 28, 1772. (page 72)

Dear Sir,

Your repentance is much more agreeable than your sin, and will

cancel it whenever you please. Still I have a fellow-feeling

for the indolence of age, and have myself been writing an

excuse this instant for not accepting an invitation above

threescore miles off. One's limbs, when they grow old, will

not go any where, when they do not like it. If yours should

find themselves in a more pliant humour, you are always sure of

being welcome here, let the fit of motion come when it will.

Pray what is become of that figure you mention of Henry VII.,

which the destroyers, not the builders have rejected? and which

the antiquaries, who know a man by his crown better than by his

face, have rejected likewise? The latter put me in mind of

characters in comedies, in which a woman disguised in man's

habit, and whose features her very lover does not know, is

immediately acknowledged by pulling off her hat, and letting

down her hair, which her lover had never seen before. I should

be glad to ask Dr. Milles, if he thinks the crown of England

was always made, like a quart pot, by Winchester measure? If

Mr. Tyson has made a print from that little statue, I trust he

will give me one; and if he, or Mr. Essex, or both, will

accompany you hither, I shall be glad to see them.

At Buckden, in the Bishop's palace, I saw a print of Mrs.

Newcome: I Suppose the late mistress of St. John's. Can you

tell me where I can procure one? Mind, I insist that you do

not serve me as you have often done, and send me your own, if

you have one. I seriously will not accept it, nor ever trust

you again. On the staircase, in the same palace, there is a

picture of two young men, in the manner of Vandyck, not at all

ill done; do you know who they are, or does any body? There is

a worse picture, in a large room, of some lads, which, too, the

housemaid did not know. Adieu! dear Sir, yours ever.

Letter 48To The Rev. Mr. Cole.

Strawberry Hill, Nov. 7, 1772. (page 73)

Dear Sir,

I did receive the print of Mrs. Newcome, for which I am

extremely obliged to you, with a thousand other favours, and

should certainly have thanked you for it long ago, but I was

then, an(I am now, confined to my bed with the gout in every

limb, and in almost every joint. I have not been out of my

bedchamber these five weeks to-day and last night the pain

returned violently into one of my feet; so that I am now

writing to you in a most uneasy posture, which will oblige me

to be very short.

Your letter, which I suppose was left at my house in Arlington

street by Mr. Essex, was brought to me this morning. I am

exceedingly sorry for his disappointment, and for his coming

without writing first; in which case I might have prevented his

journey. I do not know, even, whither to send to him, to tell

him how impossible it is for me just now, in my present painful

and hopeless situation, to be of any use to him. I am so weak

and faint, I do not see even my nearest relations, and God

knows how long it will be before I am able to bear company,

much less application. I have some thoughts, as soon as I am

able, of removing to Bath; so that I cannot guess when it will

be in my power to consider duly Mr. Essex's plan with him. I

shall undoubtedly, if ever capable of it, be ready to give him

my advice, such as it is; or to look over his papers, and even

to correct them, if his modesty thinks me more able to polish

them than he is himself. At the same time, I must own, I think

he will run too great a risk by the expense. The engravers in

London are now arrived at such a pitch of exorbitant

imposition, that, for my own part, I have laid aside all

thoughts of having a single plate more done.

Dear Sir, pray tell Mr. Essex how concerned I am for his

mischance, and for the total impossibility I am under of seeing

him now. I can write no More, but I shall be glad to hear from

you on his return to Cambridge: and when I am recovered, you

may be assured how glad I shall be to talk his plan over with

him. I am his and Your obliged humble servant.

Letter 49 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.

(page 74)

I have had a relapse, and not been able to use my hand, or I

should have lamented with you on the plunder of your prints by

that Algerine hog.(80) I pity you, dear Sir, and feel for your

awkwardness, that was struck dumb at his rapaciousness. The

beast has no sort of taste neither-and in a twelvemonth will

sell them again. I regret particularly one print, which I dare

to say he seized, that I gave you, Gertrude More; I thought I

had another, and had not; and, as you liked it, I never told

you so. This Muley Moloch used to buy books, and now sells

them. He has hurt his fortune, and ruined himself, to have a

Collection, without any choice of what it should be composed.

It is the most underbred swine I ever saw; but I did not know

it was so ravenous. I wish you may get paid any how; you see

by my writing how difficult it is to me, and therefore will

excuse my being short.

(80) This letter may want some explanation. A gentleman, a

collector of prints, and a neighbour of Mr. Walpole's, had just

before requested to see Mr. Cole's collection, and on Mr.

Cole's offering to accommodate him with such heads as he had

not, he selected and took away no less than one hundred and

eighty-seven of the most rare and valuable.

Letter 50 To The Countess Of Ailesbury.

Arlington Street, Dec. 20, 1772. (page 74)

Indeed, Madam, I want you and Mr. Conway in town. Christmas has

dispersed all my company, and left nothing but a loo-party or

two. If all the fine days were not gone out of town, too, I

should take the air in a morning; but I am not yet nimble enough,

like old Mrs. Nugent, to jump out of a postchaise into an

assembly.

You have a woful taste, my lady, not to like Lord Gower's bonmot.

I am almost too indignant to tell you of a most amusing book in

six volumes, called "Histoire Philosophique et Politique du

commerce des Deux Indes."(81) It tells one every thing in the

world;--how to make conquests, invasions, blunders, settlements,

bankruptcies, fortunes, etc.; tells you the natural and

historical history of all nations; talks commerce, navigation,

tea, coffee, china, mines, salt, spices; of the Portuguese,

English, French, Dutch, Danes, Spaniards, Arabs, caravans,

Persians, Indians, of Louis XIV. and the King of Prussia; of La

Bourdonnais, Dupleix, and Admiral Saunders; of rice, and women

that dance naked; of camels, ginghams, and muslin; of millions of

millions of livres, pounds, rupees, and cowries; of iron cables,

and Circassian women; of Law and the Mississippi; and against all

governments and religions. This and every thing else is in the

two first volumes. I cannot conceive what is left for the four

others. And all is so mixed, that you learn forty new trades and

fifty new histories in a single chapter. There is spirit, wit,

and clearness and, if there were but less avoirdupois weight in

it, it would be the richest book in the world in materials--but

figures to me are so many ciphers, and only put me in mind of

children that say, an hundred hundred hundred millions. However,

it has made me learned enough to talk about Mr. Sykes and the

Secret Committee,(82) which is all that any body talks of at

present, and yet Mademoiselle Heinel(83) is arrived. This is all

I know, and a great deal too, considering I know nothing, and

yet, were there either truth or lies, I should know them; for one

hears every thing in a sick room. Good night both!

(81) By the Abb`e Raynal. sensible of the faults of his work,

the Abb`e visited England and Holland to obtain correct

mercantile information, and, on his return, published an improved

edition at Geneva, in ten volumes, octavo. Hannah More relates,

that, when in England, the Abb`e was introduced to Dr. Johnson,

and advancing to shake his band, the Doctor drew back and put it

behind him, and afterwards replied to the expostulation of a

friend--"Sir, I will not shake hands with an infidel." The

Parliament of Paris ordered the work to be burnt, and the author

to be arrested; but he retired to Spain, and, in 1788, the

National Assembly cancelled the decree passed against him. He

died at Passy in 1794, at the age of eighty-five.-E.

(82) Upon indian affairs.

(83) See ante, p. 59, letter 34.

Letter 51 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.

Arlington Street, Jan. 8, 1773. (page 75)

In return to your very kind inquiries, dear Sir, I can let you

know, that I am quite free from pain, and walk a little about

my room, even without a stick: nay, have been four times to

take the air in the park. Indeed, after fourteen weeks this is

not saying much; but it is a worse reflection, that when one is

subject to the gout, and far from young, one's worst account

will probably be better than that after the next fit. I

neither flatter myself on one hand, nor am impatient on the

other--for will either do one any good? one must bear one's lot

whatever it be.

I rejoice Mr. * * * * has justice,(84) though he had no bowels.

How Gertrude More escape' him I do not guess. It will be wrong

to rob you of her, after she has come to you through so many

hazards--nor would I hear of it either, if you have a mind to

keep her, or have not given up all thoughts of a collection

since you have been visited by a Visigoth.

I am much more impatient to see Mr. Gray's print, than Mr.

What-d'ye-call-him's answer to my Historic Doubts.(85) He may

have made himself very angry; but I doubt whether he will make

me at all so. I love antiquities; but I scarce ever knew an

antiquary who knew how to write upon them. Their

understandings seem as much in ruins as the things they

describe. For the Antiquarian Society, I shall leave them in

peace with Whittington and his Cat. As my contempt for them

has not, however, made me disgusted with what they do not

understand, antiquities, I have published two numbers of

Miscellanies, and they are very welcome to mumble them with

their toothless gums. I want to send you these--not their

gums, but my pieces, and a Grammont,(86) of which I have

printed only a hundred copies, and which will be extremely

scarce, as twenty-five copies are gone to France. Tell me how

I shall convey them safely.

Another thing you must tell me, if you can, is, if you know any

thing ancient of the Freemasons Governor Pownall,(87) a

Whittingtonian, has a mind they should have been a corporation

erected by the popes. As you see what a good creature I am,

and return good for evil, I am engaged to pick up what I can

for him, to support this system, in which I believe no more

than in the pope: and the work is to appear in a volume of the

Society's pieces. I am very willing to oblige him, and turn my

cheek, that they may smite that, also. Lord help them! I am

sorry that they are such numsculls, that they almost make me

think myself something! but there are great authors enough to

bring me to my senses again. Posterity, I fear, will class me

with the writers of this age, or forget me with them, not rank

me with any names that deserve remembrance. If I cannot

survive the Milles's, the What-d'ye-call-him's, and the

compilers of catalogues of topography, it would comfort me very

little to confute them. I should be as little proud of success

as if I had carried a contest for churchwarden.

Not being able to return to Strawberry Hill, where all my books

and papers are, and my printer lying fallow, I want some short

bills to print. Have you any thing you wish printed? I can

either print a few to amuse ourselves, or, if very curious, and

not too dry, could make a third number of Miscellaneous

Antiquities.

I am not in any eagerness to see Mr. What-d'ye-call-him's

pamphlet against me; therefore pray give yourself no trouble to

get it for me. The specimens I have seen of his writing take

off all edge from curiosity. A print of Mr. Gray will be a

real present. Would it not be dreadful to be commended by an

age that had not taste enough to admire his Odes? Is not it

too great a compliment to me to be abused too? I am ashamed!

Indeed our antiquaries ought to like me. I am but too much on

a par with them. Does not

Mr. Henshaw come to London? Is he a professor, or only a lover

of engraving? If the former, and he were to settle in town, I

would willingly lend him heads to copy. Adieu!

(84) The gentleman who had carried off so many of Mr.

Cole's prints. He now fully remunerated Mr. Cole in a valuable

present of books.

(85) Mr. Master's pamphlet, printed at the expense of the

Antiquarian Society in the second volume of the Archaeologia.

(86) "M`emoires du Comte de Grammont, nouvelle edition,

augment`ee de Notes et Eclaircissemens n`ecessaires, par M.

Horace Walpole." Strawberry Hill, 1772, 4to. To the M`emoires

was prefixed the following dedication to Madame du Deffand:--

"L'Editeur VOUS Consacre cette edition, comme un monument de

son amiti`e, de son admiration, et de son respect, a vous dont

les gr`aces, l'esprit, et le gout retracent an si`ecle present

le si`ecle de Louis XIV., et les agr`emens de l'auteur de ces

Memoires."

(87) Thomas Pownall, Esq. the antiquary, and a constant

contributor to the Archaeologia. Having been governor of South

Carolina and other American colonies, he was always

distinguished from his brother John, who was likewise an

antiquary, by the title of Governor.-E.

Letter 52 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.

Arlington Street, Feb. 18, 1773. (page 77)

The most agreeable ingredient of your last, dear Sir, is the

paragraph that tells me you shall be in town in April, when I

depend on the pleasure of seeing you; but, to be certain, wish

you would give me a few days' law, an let me know, too, where

you lodge. Pray bring your books, though the continuation of the

Miscellaneous Antiquities is uncertain. I thought the

affectation of loving veteran anecdotes was so vigorous, that I

ventured to print five hundred copies., One, hundred and thirty

only are sold. I cannot afford to make the town perpetual

presents; though I find people exceedingly eager to obtain them

when I do; and if they will not buy them, it is a sign of such

indifference, that I shall neither bestow my time, nor my cost,

to no purpose. All I desire is, to pay the expenses, which I can

afford much less than my idle moments. Not but the operations

of-my press have often turned against myself in many shapes. I

have told people many things they did not know, and from fashion

they have bought a thousand things out of my hands, which they do

not understand, and only love en passant. At Mr. West's sale,

I got literally nothing: his prints sold for the frantic sum of

1495 pounds 10 shillings. Your and my good friend Mr. Gulston

threw away above 200 pounds there.

I am not sorry Mr. Lort has recourse to the fountainhead: Mr.

Pownall's system of Freemasonry is so absurd and groundless,

that I am glad to be rid of intervention. I have seen the

former once: he told Me he was willing to sell his prints, as

the value of them is so increased--for that very reason I did

not want to purchase them.

Paul Sanby promised me ten days ago to show Mr. Henshaw's

engraving which I received from Dr. Ewen) to Bartolozzi, and

ask his terms, thinking he would delight in So Very promising a

scholar; but I have heard nothing since, and therefore fear

there is no success. Let me, however, see the young man when

he comes, and I will try if there is any other way of serving

him.

What shall I say to you, dear Sir, about Dr. Prescot? or what I

say to him? It hurts me not to be very civil, especially as

any respect to my father's memory touches me much more than any

attention to myself, which I cannot hold to be a quarter so

well founded. Yet, how dare I write to a poor man, who may do,

as I have lately seen done by a Scotchwoman that wrote a

play,(88) and printed Lord Chesterfield's and Lord Lyttelton's

letters to her, as Testimonia fluctorum: I will therefore beg

you to make my compliments and thanks to the master, and to

make them as grateful as you please, provided I am dispensed

with giving any certificate under my hand. You may plead my

illness, which, though the fifth month ended yesterday, is far

from being at an end, My relapses have been endless - I cannot

yet walk a step: and a great cold has added an ague in my

cheek, for which I am just going to begin the bark. The

prospect for the rest of my days is gloomy. The case of my

poor nephew still more deplorable - he arrived in town last

night, and bore his Journey tolerably-but his head is in much

more danger of not recovering than his health; though they give

us hopes of both. But the evils of life are not good subjects

for letters--why afflict one's friends? Why make commonplace

reflections? Adieu! Yours ever.

(88) "Sir Harry Gaylove; or, Comedy in Embryo;" by Mrs. Jane

Marshall. It was printed in Scotland by subscription, but not

acted. in the preface, she complains bitterly of the managers

of the three London theatres, for refusing her the advantages

of representing her performance.-E.

Letter 53 To The Rev. William Mason.(89)

March 2, 1773. (page 78)

What shall I say? How shall I thank you for the kind manner in

which you submit your papers to my correction? But if you are

friendly, I must be just. I am so far from being dissatisfied,

that I Must beg to shorten your pen, and in that respect only

would I wish, with regard to myself, to alter your text. I am

conscious that in the beginning of the differences between Gray

and me, the fault was mine. I was young, too fond of my own

diversions; nay, I do not doubt, too much intoxicated by

indulgence, vanity, and the insolence of my situation, as a

prime minister's Son, not to have been inattentive to the

feelings of one, I blush to say, that I knew was obliged to me;

of one, whom presumption and folly made me deem not very

superior in parts, though I have since felt my infinite

inferiority to him. I treated him insolently. He loved me,

and I did not think he did. I reproached him with the

difference between us, when he acted from the conviction of

knowing that he was my superior. I often disregarded his wish

of seeing places, which I would not quit my own amusements to

visit, though I offered to send him thither without me.

Forgive me, if I say that his temper was not conciliating, at

the same time that I confess to you, that he acted a most

friendly part had I had the sense to take advantage of it. He

freely told me my faults. I declared I did not desire to hear

them, nor would correct them. You will not wonder,, that with

the dignity of his spirit, and the obstinate carelessness of

mine the breach must have widened till we became incompatible.

After this confession, I fear you will think I fall short in

the words I wish to have substituted for some of yours. If you

think them inadequate to the state of the case, as I own they

are, preserve this letter and let some future Sir John

Dalrymple produce it to load my memory; but I own I do not

desire that any ambiguity should aid his invention to forge an

account) for me. If you would have no objection, I would

propose your narrative should run thus, [Here follows a note,

which is inserted verbatim in Mason's Life of Gray.(90)] and

contain no more, till a more proper time shall come for

publishing the truth, as I have stated it to you. While I am

living, it is not pleasant to see my private disagreements

discussed in magazines and newspapers.

(89) This and the following letter are from Mr. mitford's

valuable edition of Gray's Works. See vol. iv. pp. 216, 218.-

E.

(90) "In justice to the memory of so respectable a friend, Mr.

Walpole enjoins me to charge himself with the chief blame in

their quarrel - confessing that more attention and

complaisance, more deference to a warm friendship, superior

judgment and prudence, might have prevented a rupture that gave

such uneasiness to them both and a lasting concern

to the survivor; though, in the year 1744, a reconciliation was

effected between them, by a lady who wished well to both

parties."-E.

Letter 54 To The Rev. William Mason.

Strawberry Hill, March 27, 1773. (page 79)

I have received your letter, dear Sir, your manuscript, and

Gray's letters to me. Twenty things crowd upon my pen, and

jostle, and press to be laid. As I came here to-day for a

little air, and to read you undisturbed, they shall all have a

place in due time. But having so safe a conveyance for my

thoughts, I must begin with the uppermost of them, the Heroic

Epistle. I have read it so very often, that I have got it by

heart; and now I am master of all its beauties, I confess I

like it infinitely better than I did, though I liked it

infinitely before. There is more wit, ten times more delicacy

of irony, as much poetry, and greater facility than and as in

the Dunciad. But what Signifies what I think? All the world

thinks the same. No soul has, I have heard, guessed within an

hundred miles. I catched at Anstey's name, and have,

contributed to spread that notion. It has since been called

Temple Luttrell's, and, to my infinite honour, mine; Lord -----

- swears he should think so, if I did not praise it so

excessively. But now, my dear Sir, that you have tapped this

mine of talent, and it runs so richly and easily, for Heaven's

sake, and for England's sake, do not let it rest! You have a

vein of irony, and satire, etc.

I am extremely pleased with the easy unaffected simplicity of

your manuscript (Memoirs of Gray), and have found scarcely any

thing I could wish added, much less retrenched, unless the

paragraph on Lord Bute,(91) which I don't think quite clearly

expressed; and yet perhaps too clearly, while you wish to

remain unknown as the author of the Heroic Epistle,(92) since

it might lead to suspicion. For as Gray asked for the place,

and accepted it afterwards from the Duke of Grafton, it might

be thought that he, or his friend for him, was angry with the

author of the disappointment. I can add nothing to your

account of Gray's going abroad with me. It was my own thought

and offer, and cheerfully accepted. Thank you for inserting my

alteration. As I am the survivor, any Softening would be

unjust to the dead. I am sorry I had a fault towards him. It

does not wound me to own it; and it must be believed when I

allow it, that not he, but I myself, was in the wrong.

(91) This paragraph was suppressed-E.

(92) In March, 1798, Mr. Matthias suggested, in the Pursuits of

Literature, that Walpole's papers would possibly lead to the

discovery of the author of the far-famed Heroic Epistle to Sir

William Chambers. By Thomas Warton, the poet-laureate, it was

supposed to have been "written by Walpole, and buckrum'd by

Mason;" and Mr. Croker, in a note to his edition of Boswell's

Johnson, says of it, "there can be no doubt that it was the

joint production of Mason and Walpole; Mason supplying the

poetry and Walpole the points;" while the Quarterly Review,

vol. xv. p. 385, observes, that "when it is remembered that no

one then alive, with the same peculiar taste and the same

political principles, could have written such poetry, we must

either ascribe the Heroic Epistle to Mr. Mason, or suppose,

very needlessly and improbably, that one person supplied the

matter and another shaped it into verse; but, the personal

insolence displayed in this poem to his Sovereign, which was

probably the true reason for concealing the writer's -the

principles of genuine taste which abound in it--the bitter and

sarcastic strain of indignation against a monstrous mode of bad

taste then beginning to prevail in landscape gardening, and,

above all, a vigorous flow of spirited and harmonious verse,

all concur to mark it as the work of our independent and

uncourtly bard," The above letter settles the long-disputed

point, and fixes the sole authorship of this exquisite poem on

Mason.-E.

Letter 55 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.

Arlington Street, April 7, 1773. (page 80)

I have now seen the second volume of the Archaeologia, or Old

Woman's Logic, with Mr. Masters's Answer to me. If he had not

taken such pains to declare it was written against my Doubts, I

should have thought it a defence of them; for the few facts he

quotes make for my arguments, and confute himself; particularly

in the case of Lady Eleanor Butler; -whom, by the way, he makes

marry her own nephew, and not descend from her own family,

because she was descended from her grandfather.

This Mr. Masters is an excellent Sancho Panza to such a Don

Quixote as Dean Milles! but enough of such goosecaps! Pray

thank Mr. Ashby for his admirable correction of Sir Thomas

Wyat's bon-mot. It is right beyond all doubt, and I will quote

it if ever the piece is reprinted.

Mr. Tyson surprises me by usurping your Dissertation. It seems

all is fish that comes to the net of the Society- Mercy on us!

What a cart-load of brick and rubbish, and Roman ruins, they

have piled together! I have found nothing-, tolerable in the

volume but the Dissertation of Mr Masters; which is followed by

an answer, that, like Masters, contradicts him, without

disproving any thing.

Mr. West's books are selling outrageously. His family will

make a fortune by what he collected from stalls and Moorfields.

But I must not blame the virtuosi, having surpassed them. In

short I have bought his two pictures of Henry V. and Henry

VIII. and their families; the first of which is engraved in my

Anecdotes, or, as the catalogue says, engraved by Mr. H.

Walpole, and the second described there. The first cost me 38

pounds and the last 84, though I knew Mr. West bought it for

six guineas. But, in fact, these two, with my Marriages of

Henry VI. and VII., compose such a suite of the House of

Lancaster, and enrich my Gothic house so completely, that I

would not deny myself. The Henry VII. cost me as much, and is

less curious: the price of antiquities is so exceedingly risen,

too, at present, that I expected to have paid more. I have

bought much cheaper at the same sale, a picture of Henry VIII.

and Charles V. in one piece, both much younger than I ever saw

any portrait of either. I hope your pilgrimage to St.

Gulaston's this month will take place, and that you will come

and see them. Adieu!

Letter 56 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.

Arlington Street, April 27, 1773. (page 81) '

I had not time this morning to answer your letter by Mr. Essex,

but I gave him the card you desired. You know, I hope, how

happy I am to obey any orders of yours.

In the paper I showed you in answer to Masters, you saw I was

apprised of Rastel's Chronicle: but pray do not mention my

knowing of it; because I draw so much from it, that I lie in

wait, hoping that Milles, or Masters, or some of their fools,

will produce it against me; and then I shall have another word

to say to them, which they do not expect, since they think

Rastel makes for them.

Mr. Gough(93) wants to be introduced to me! Indeed! I would

see him, as he has been midwife to Masters; but he is so dull,

that he would only be troublesome--and besides you know I shun

authors, and would never have been One myself, if it obliged me

to keep such bad company. They are always in earnest, and

think their profession serious, and dwell upon trifles, and

reverence learning. I laugh at all those things, and write

only to laugh at them, and divert myself. None of us are

authors of any consequence; and it is the most ridiculous in

all vanities to be vain of being mediocre. A page in a great

author humbles me to the dust; and the conversation of those

that are not superior to myself, reminds me of what will be

thought of myself. I blush to flatter them, or to be flattered

by them, and should dread letters being published some time or

other, in which they should relate our interviews, and we

should appear like those puny conceited Witlings in Shenstone's

and Hughes' Correspondence,(94) who give themselves airs from

being in possession of the soil of Parnassus for the time

being; as peers are proud, because they enjoy the estates of

great men who went before them. Mr. Gough is very welcome to

see Strawberry Hill; or I would help him to any scraps in my

possession, that would assist his publications; though he is

one of those industrious who are only reburying the dead-but I

cannot be acquainted with him. It is contrary to my system,

and my humour; and, besides, I know nothing of barrows, and

Danish entrenchments, and Saxon barbarisms, and Phoenician

characters--in short, I know nothing of those ages that knew

nothing--then how should I be of use to modern literati? All

the Scotch metaphysicians have sent me their works. I did not

read one of them, because I do not understand what is not

understood by those that write about it; and I did not get

acquainted with one of the writers. I should like to be

intimate with Mr. Anstey,(95) even though he wrote Lord

Buckhorse, or with the author of the Heroic Epistle.(96) I

have no thirst to know the rest of my contemporaries, from the

absurd bombast of Dr. Johnson down to the silly Dr. Goldsmith;

though the latter changeling has had bright gleams of parts,

and the former had sense, 'till he charged it for words, and

sold it for a pension. Don't think me scornful. Recollect

that I have seen Pope, and lived with Gray. Adieu! Yours

ever.

P. S. Mr. Essex has shown me a charming drawing, from a

charming round window at Lincoln. It has revived all my

eagerness to have him continue his plan.

(93) Richard Gough, Esq., author of the British Topography, and

the Sepulchral Monuments of Great Britain; and editor of

Camden's Britannia. This learned antiquary was born in 1735,

and died in the year 1809-E.

(94) A second edition had just appeared of "Letters by several

eminent Persons deceased; including the Correspondence of John

Hughes, Esq, and several of His Friends."-E.

(95) The author of the New Bath Guide. See vol. iii., letter

307 to George Montagu, Esq., June 20 1766.-E.

(96) See ante, letter 54, P. 80.-E.

Letter 57 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.

Arlington Street, May 4, 1773. (page 82)

I should not have hurried to answer your letter, dear Sir, the

moment I receive it, but to send you another ticket(97) for

your sister, in case she should not have recovered the other;

and I think you said she was to stay but a fortnight in town.

I would have sent it to her, had I known whither: and I have

made it for five persons, in case she should have a mind to

carry so many.

I am sorry for the young engraver; but I can by no means meddle

with his going abroad, without the father's consent. it would

be very wrong, and would hurt the young man essentially, if the

father has any thing to leave. , In any case, I certainly would

not be accessory to sending away the son against the father's

will. The father is an impertinent fool--but that you

and I cannot help.

Pray be not uneasy about Gertrude More: I shall get the

original or, at least, a copy. Tell me how I shall Send you

martagons by the safest conveyance, or any thing else you want.

I am always in your debt; and the apostle-spoon will make the

debtor side in my book of gratitude run over.

Your public orator has done me too much honour by far--

especially as he named me with my father,(98) to whom I am so

infinitely inferior, both in parts and virtues. Though I have

been abused undeservedly, I feel I have more title to censure

than praise, and -will subscribe to the former sooner than to

the latter. Would not it be prudent to look upon the encomium

as a funeral oration, and consider Myself as dead? I have

always dreaded outliving myself, and writing after what small

talents I have should be decayed. Except the last volume of

the Anecdotes of Painting, which has been finished and printed

so long, and which, appear when they may, will still come too

late for many reasons. I am disposed never to publish any more

of my own self; but I do not say so positively, lest my

breaking my intention should be but another folly. The gout

has, however, made me so indolent and inactive, that if my head

does not inform me how old I grow, at least my mind and my feet

will--and can one have too many monitors of one's weakness!

I am sorry you think yourself so much inconvenienced by

stirring from home. ' This is an incommodity by which your

friends will suffer more than yourself, and nobody more,

sensibly than yours, etc.

(97) Of admission to Strawberry.

(98) On presenting a relation of Mr. Walpole's to the

Vice-chancellor for his honorary degree.

Letter 58 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.

Arlington Street, May 29, 1773. (page 83)

Dear Sir,

I have been so much taken up of late with poor Lord Orford's

affairs, I have not had, and scarce have now, time to write you

a line, and thank you for all your kindnesses, information, and

apostle -spoon. I have not Newcomb's Repertorium, and shall be

obliged to you for the transcript; not as doubting, but to

confirm what Heaven, King Edward I., and the Bishop of the

Tartars have deposed in favour of Malibrunus, the Jew painter's

abilities. I should sooner have suspected that Mr. Masters

would have produced such witnesses to condemn Richard III. The

note relating to Lady Boteler does not relate to her marriage.

I send you two martagon roots, and some jonquils; and have

added some prints, two enamelled Pictures, and three medals.

One of Oliver, by Simon; a fine one of Pope Clement X., and a

scarce one of Archbishop Sancroft and the Seven Bishops. I

hope the two latter will atone for the first. As I shall never

be out of your debt, pray draw on me for any more other roots,

or any thing that will be agreeable to you, and excuse me at

present.

Letter 59 To Dr. Berkenhout.(99)

July 6, 1773, (page 84)

Sir,

I am so much engaged in private business at present, that I

have not had time to thank you for the favour of your letter:

nor can I now answer it to your satisfaction. My life has been

too insignificant to afford materials interesting to the

public. In general, the lives of mere authors are dry and

unentertaining; nor, though I -have been one occasionally, are

my writings of a class or merit to entitle me to any

distinction. I can as little furnish you, Sir, with a list of

them or their dates, which would give me more trouble to make

out than is worth while. If I have any merit with the public,

it is for printing and preserving some valuable works of

others; and if ever you write the lives of printers, I may be

enrolled in the number. My own works, I suppose, are dead and

buried; but, as I am not impatient to be interred with them, I

hope you will leave that office to the parson of the parish,

and I shall be, as long as I live, yours, etc.

(99) Dr. John Berkenhout had been a captain both in the English

and Prussian service, and in 1765 took his degree of MD. at

Leyden. his application to Walpole was for the purpose of

procuring materials for a life of him In his forthcoming work,

"Biographia Literaria, or a Biographical History of Literature;

containing the Lives of English, Irish, and Scottish Authors,

from the dawn of Letters in these Kingdoms to the present

Time." The first volume, which treats of those writers who

lived from the beginning of the fifth to the end of the sixth

century, and which is the only one ever published, appeared in

1777. He died in 1791-E.

Letter 60 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.

Arlington Street, Aug. 30, 1773. (page 84)

I returned last night from Houghton,(100) where multiplicity of

business detained me four days longer than I intended, and

where I found a scene infinitely more mortifying than I

expected; though I certainly did not go with a prospect of

finding a land flowing with milk and honey. Except the

pictures, which are in the finest preservation, and the woods,

which are become forests, all the rest is ruin, desolation,

confusion, disorder, debts, mortgages, sales, pillage, villany,

waste, folly, and madness. I do not believe that five thousand

pounds would put the house and buildings into good repair. The

nettles and brambles in the park are up to your shoulders;

horses have been turned into the garden, and banditti lodged in

every cottage. The perpetuity of livings that come up to the

park-pales have been sold--and every farm let for half its

value. In short, you know how much family pride I have, and

consequently may judge how much I have been mortified! Nor do I

tell you half, or near the worst circumstances. I have just

stopped the torrent-and that is all. I am very uncertain

whether I must not fling up the trust; and some of the

difficulties in my way seem unsurmountable, and too dangerous

not to alarm even my zeal; since I must not ruin myself, and

hurt those for whom I must feel, too, only to restore a family

that will end with myself, and to retrieve an estate' from

which I am not likely ever to receive the least advantage.

if you will settle with the Churchills your journey to

Chalfont, and will let me know the day, I will endeavour to

meet you there; I hope it Will not be till next week. I am

overwhelmed with business--but, indeed, I know not when I shall

be otherwise! I wish you joy of this endless summer.

(100) Whither he had gone during the mental alienation of his

nephew, George Earl of Orford, to endeavour to settle and

arrange his affairs.

Letter 61 To The Earl Of Strafford.

Strawberry Hill, Sept. 24, 1773. (page 85)

The multiplicity of business which I found chalked out to me by

my journey to Houghton, has engaged me so much, my dear lord,

and the unpleasant scene opened to me there struck me so

deeply, that I have neither had time nor cheerfulness enough to

flatter myself I could amuse my friends by my letters. Except

the pictures, I found every thing worse than I expected, and

the prospect almost too bad to give me courage to pursue what I

am doing. I am totally ignorant of most of the branches of

business that are fallen to my lot, and not young enough to

learn any new business well. All I can hope is to clear the

worst part of the way; for, in undertaking to retrieve an

estate, the beginning is certainly the most difficult of the

work--it is fathoming a chaos. But I will not unfold a

confusion to your lordship which your good sense will always

keep You from experiencing --very unfashionably; for the first

geniuses of the age hold, that the best method of governing the

world is to throw it into disorder. The experiment is not yet

complete, as the rearrangement is still to come.

I am very seriously glad of the birth of your nephew,(101)

my lord; I am going this evening with my gratulations'; but

have been so much absent and so hurried, that I have not yet

had the pleasure of seeing

Lady Anne,(102) though I have called twice. To Gunnersbury I

have no summons this summer: I receive such honours, or the

want of them, with proper respect. Lady Mary Coke, I fear, is

in chace of a Dulcineus that she will never meet. When the

ardour of peregrination is a little abated, will not she

probably give in to a more comfortable pursuit; and, like a

print I have seen of -the blessed martyr Charles the First,

abandon the hunt of a corruptible for that of an incorruptible

crown? There is another beatific print just published in that

style: it is of Lady Huntingdon. With much pompous humility,

she looks like an old basket-woman trampling on her coronet at

the mouth of a cavern.-Poor Whitfield! if he was forced to do

the honours of the spelunca!--Saint Fanny Shirley is nearer

consecration. I was told two days ago that she had written a

letter to Lady Selina that was not intelligible. Her grace of

Kingston's glory approaches to consummation in a more worldly

style. The Duke(103) is dying, and has given her the whole

estate, seventeen thousand a-year. I am told she has already

notified the contents of the will, and made offers of the sale

of Thoresby. Pious matrons have various ways of expressing

decency.

Your lordship's new bow-window thrives. I do not want it to

remind me of its master and mistress, to whom I am ever the

most devoted humble servant.

(101) A son of John Earl of Buckingham, who died young.

(102) Lady Anne Conolly.

(103) The Duke of Kingston died on the 22d of September, when

all his honours became extinct.-E.

Letter 62 To The Earl Of Strafford.

Arlington Street, Nov. 15, 1773. (page 86)

I am very sorry, my dear lord, that you are coming towards us

so slowly and unwillingly. I cannot quite wonder at the

latter. The world is an old acquaintance that does not improve

upon one's hands: however, one must not give way to the

disgusts it creates. My maxim, and practice, too, is to laugh,

because I do not like to cry. I could shed a pailfull of tears

over all I have seen and learnt Since my poor nephew's

misfortune-the more one has to do with men the worse one finds

them But can one mend them? No. Shall we shut ourselves up

from them? No. We should grow humourists-and of all animals an

Englishman is least made to live alone. For my part, I am

conscious of so many faults, that I think I grow better the

more bad I see in my neighbours; and there are so many I would

not resemble, that it makes me watchful over myself You, my

lord, who have forty more good qualities than I have, should

not seclude yourself. I do not wonder you despise knaves and

fools: but remember, they want better examples; they will never

grow ashamed by conversing with one another.

I came to settle here on Friday, being drowned out of

Twickenham. I find the town desolate, and no news in it, but

that the ministry give up the Irish -tax-some say, because it

will not pass in Ireland; others, because the city of London

would have petitioned against it; and some, because there were

factions in the council-- which is not the most incredible of

all. I am glad, for the sake of some of my friends who would

have suffered by it, that it is over.(104) In other respects, I

have too much private business of my own to think about the

public, which is big enough to take care of itself.

I have heard some of Lady Mary Coke's mortifications. I have

regard and esteem for her good qualities, which are many; but I

doubt her genius will never suffer her to be quite happy. As

she will not take the psalmist's advice of not putting trust, I

am sure she would not follow mine; for, with all her piety,

King David is the only royal person she will not listen to, and

therefore I forbear my sweet counsel. When she and Lord

Huntingdon meet, will not they put you in mind of Count-Gage

and Lady Mary Herbert, who met in the mines of Asturias, after

they had failed of the crown of Poland?(105) Adieu, my dear

lord! Come you and my lady among us. You have some friends

that are not odious, and who will be rejoiced to see you both-

-witness, for one, yours most faithfully.

(104) A tax upon absentees. Mr. Hardy, in his Memoirs of Lord

Charlemont, says, that the influence of the Whig leaders

predominated so far as to oblige the ministers to relinquish

the measure.-E.

(105) "The crown of Poland, venal twice an age,

To just three millions stint;ed modest Gage."

Pope in a note to the above couplet, states that Mr. Gage and

Lady Mary Herbert, " each of them, in the Mississippi scheme,

despised to realize above three hundred thousand pounds: the

gentleman with a view to the purchase of the crown of Poland,

the lady on a vision of the like royal nature: they have since

retired into Spain, where they are still in search of gold, in

the mines of the Asturias."-E.

Letter 63 To Lady Mary Coke.(106)

((page 87)

Your ladyship's illustrious exploits are the constant theme of

my meditations. Your expeditions are so rapid, and to such

distant regions, that I cannot help thinking you are possessed

of the giant's boots that stepped seven leagues at a stride, as

we are assured by that accurate historian Mother Goose. You

are, I know, Madam', an excellent walker, yet methinks seven

leagues at once are a prodigious straddle for a fair lady. But

whatever is your manner of travelling, few heroines ancient or

modern can be compared to you for length of journeys.

Thalestris, Queen of the Amazons, and M. M. or N. N. Queen of

Sheba, went each of them the Lord knows how far to meet

Alexander the Great and Solomon the Wise; the one to beg the

favour of having a daughter (I suppose) and heiress by him; and

the other, says scandal, to grant a like favour to the Hebrew

monarch. Your ladyship, who has more real Amazonian

principles, never makes visits but to empresses, queens, and

princesses; and your country is enriched with the maxims of

wisdom and virtue which you collect in your travels. For such

great ends did Herodotus, Pythagoras, and other sages, make

voyages to Egypt, and every distant kingdom; and it is amazing

how much their own countries were benefited by what those

philosophers learned in their peregrinations. Were it not that

your ladyship is actuated by such public spirit, I could Put

YOU in mind, Madam, of an old story that might save you a great

deal of fatigue and danger-and now I think of it, as I have

nothing better to fill my letter with, I will relate it to you.

Pyrrhus, the martial and magnanimous King of Epirus (as my Lord

Lyttelton would call him), being, as I have heard or seen

Goodman Plutarch say, intent on his preparations for invading

Italy, Cineas, one of the grooms of his bedchamber, took the

liberty of asking his majesty what benefit he expected to reap

if he should be successful in conquering the Romans?--Jesus!

said the King, peevishly; why the question answers itself.

When we have overcome the Romans, no province, no town, whether

Greek or barbarian, will be able to resist us: we shall at once

be masters of all Italy. Cineas after a short pause replied,

And having subdued Italy, what shall we do next?--Do next?

answered Pyrrhus; why, seize Sicily. Very likely, quoth

Cineas: but will that put an end to the war?-The gods forbid!

cried his Majesty: when Sicily is reduced, Libya and Carthage

will be within our reach. And then, without giving Cineas time

to put in a word, the heroic Prince ran over Africa, Greece,

Asia, Persia, and every other country he had ever heard of upon

the face of God's earth; not one of which he intended should

escape his victorious sword. At last, when he was at the end

of his geography, and a little out of breath, Cineas watched

his opportunity, and said quietly, Well, Sire, and when we have

conquered all the world, what are we to do then?--Why, then,

said his Majesty, extremely satisfied with his own prowess, we

will live at our ease; we: Will spend whole days in banqueting

and carousing, and will think of nothing but our pleasures.

Now, Madam, for the application. Had I had the honour a few

years ago of being your confidential abigail, when you

meditated a visit to Princess Esterhazi, I would have ventured

to ask your ladyship of what advantage her acquaintance would

be to you? Probably you would have told me, that she would

introduce you to several electresses and margravines, whose

courts you would visit. That having conquered all their

hearts, as I am persuaded you would, your next jaunt would be

to Hesse; from whence it would be but a trip to Aix, where

Madame de Rochouart lives. Soaring from thence you Would

repair to the Imperial court at Vienna, where resides the most

august, most virtuous, and most plump of empresses and queens-

-no, I mistake--I should only have said, of empresses; for her

Majesty of Denmark, God bless her! is reported to be full as

virtuous, and three stone heavier. Shall not you call at

Copenhagen, Madam? If you do, you are next door to the

Czarina, who is the quintessence of friendship, as the Princess

Daskioff says, whom, next to the late Czar, her Muscovite

Majesty loves above all the world. Asia, I suppose, would not

enter into your ladyship's system Of conquest; for, though it

contains a sight of queens and sultanas, the poor ladies are

locked up in abominable places, into which I am sure your

ladyship's amity would never carry you--I think they call them

seraglios. Africa has nothing but empresses stark-naked; and

of complexions directly the reverse of your alabaster They do

not reign in their own right; and what is worse, the emperors

of those barbarous regions wear no more robes than the

sovereigns of their hearts. And what are princes and

princesses without velvet and ermine? As I am not a jot a

better geographer than King Pyrrhus, I can at present recollect

but one lady more who reigns alone, and that is her Majesty of

Otaheite, lately discovered by Mr. Bankes and Dr. Solander; and

for whom, your ladyship's compassionate breast must feel the

tenderest emotions,' she having been cruelly deprived of her

faithful minister and lover Tobiu, since dead at Batavia.

Well,'Madam, after you should have given me the plan of your

intended expeditions, and not left a queen regent on the face

of the globe unvisited,-- I would ask what we were to do next?-

-Why then, dear Abigail, you would have said, we will retire to

Notting-hill, we will plant shrubs all the morning, read

Anderson's Royal Genealogies all the evening; and once or twice

a week I will go to Gunnersbury and drink a bottle with

Princess Amelia. Alas, dear lady! and cannot you do all that

without skuttling from one end of the world to the other?--This

was the, upshot of all Cineas's inquisitiveness: and this is

the pith of this tedious letter from, Madam, your ladyship's

most faithful Aulic Counsellor and humble admirer.

(106) See the two preceding letters. It will be recollected

that Lady Mary Coke was sister-in-law to The Earl of Strafford,

and widow of Viscount Coke, heir apparent of Thomas Earl of

Leicester, who died without issue by her, in his father's

lifetime. Lady Mary died at a great age in 1811-E.

Letter 64 To The Hon. Mrs. GREY.(107)

Dec. 9, 1773. (page 89)

DEAR MADAM,

As I hear Lady Blandford has a return of the gout-, as I

foretold last night from the red spot being not gone, I beg you

will be so good as to tell her, that if she does not encourage

the swelling by keeping her foot wrapped up as hot as possible

in flannel, she will torment herself and bring more pain. I

will answer that if she will let it swell, and suffer the

swelling to go off of itself, she will have no more pain; and

she must remember, that the gout will bear contradiction no

more than she herself(108) Pray read this to her, and what I

say farther--that though I know she will not bear pain for

herself, I am sure she will for her friends. Her misfortune

has produced the greatest satisfaction that a good mind can

receive, the experience that that goodness has given her a

great many sincere friends, who have shown as much concern as

ever was known, and the most disinterested; as we know her

generosity has left her nothing to give. We wish to preserve

her for her own sake and ours, and the poor beseech her to bear

a little pain for them.

I am going out of town till Monday, or would bring my

prescription myself. She wants no virtue but patience; and

patience takes it very ill to be left out of such good company.

I am, dear Madam, Your obedient servant,

Dr. WALPOLE.

(107) NOW first printed.

(108) It has already been stated, that Lady Blandford was

somewhat impatient in her temper.-E.

Letter 65 To Sir David Dalrymple.(109)

Arlington Street, Dec. 14, 1773. (page 90)

Sir,

I have received from Mr. Dodsley, and read with pleasure, your

Remarks on the History of Scotland," though I am not

competently versed in some of the subjects. Indeed, such a

load of difficult and vexatious business is fallen upon me by

the unhappy situation of my nephew, Lord Orford, of whose

affairs I have been forced to undertake the management, though

greatly unfit for it, that I am obliged to bid adieu to all

literary amusement and pursuits; and must dedicate the rest of

a life almost worn out, and of late wasted and broken by a long

illness, to the duties I owe to my family. I hope you, Sir,

will have no such disagreeable avocation, and am your obliged

servant.

(109) Now first collected.

Letter 66 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.

Arlington Street, May 4, 1774. (page 90)

Dear Sir,

We have dropped one another, as if we were not antiquaries, but

people of this world-or do you disclaim me, because I have

quitted the Society? I could give You but too sad reasons for

my silence. The gout kept entire possession of me for six

months; and, before it released me, Lord Orford's illness and

affairs engrossed me totally. I have been twice in Norfolk

since you heard from me. I am now at liberty again. What is

your account of yourself? To. ask you to come above ground,

even so far as to see me, I know is in vain or I certainly

would ask it. You impose Carthusian shackles on Yourself, Will

not quit your cell, nor will speak above once a week. I am

glad to hear of you, and to see your hand, though you make that

as much like print as you can. If you were to be tempted

abroad, it would be a pilgrimage: and I can lure you even with

that. My chapel is finished, and the shrine will actually be

placed in less than a fortnight. My father is said to have

said, that every man had his price. You are a Beatus, indeed,

if you resist a shrine. Why should not you add to your

claustral virtues that of a peregrination to Strawberry? You

will find me quite alone in July. Consider, Strawberry is

almost the last monastery left, at least in England. Poor Mr.

Bateman's is despoiled. Lord Bateman has stripped and

plundered it: has sequestered the best things, has advertised

the site, and is dirtily selling by auction what he neither

would keep, nor can sell for a sum that is worth while. I was

hurt to see half the ornaments of the chapel, and the

reliquaries, and in short a thousand trifles, exposed to

sneers. I am buying a few to keep for the founder's sake.

Surely it is very indecent for a favourite relation, who is

rich, to show so little remembrance and affection. I suppose

Strawberry will have the same fate! It has already happened to

two of my friends. Lord Bristol got his mother's house from

his brother, by persuading her he was in love with it. He let

it in a month after she was dead band all her favourite

pictures and ornaments, which she had ordered not to be

removed, are mouldering in a garret! You are in the right to

care so little for a world where there is no measure but

avoirdupois. Adieu! Yours sincerely.

Letter 67 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.

Strawberry Hill, May 28, 1774. (page 91)

Nothing will be more agreeable to me', dear Sir, than a visit

from you in July. I will try to persuade Mr. Granger to meet

you; and if you had any such thing as summer in the fens, I

would desire you to bring a bag with you. We are almost

freezing here in the midst of beautiful verdure, with a

profusion of blossoms and flowers; but I keep good fires, and

seem to feel warm weather while I look through the window; for

the way to ensure summer in England, is to have it framed and

glazed in a comfortable room.

I shall be still more glad to hear you are settled in Your

living. Burnham is almost in my neighbourhood; and its being

in that of Eton and Windsor, will more than console you, I

hope, for leaving Ely and Cambridge. Pray let me know the

moment you are certain. It would now be a disappointment to me

as well as you. You shall be inaugurated in my chapel, which

is much more venerable than your parish church, and has the

genuine air of antiquity. I bought very little of poor Mr.

Bateman's. His nephew disposed of little that was worth

houseroom, and Yet pulled the whole to pieces.

Mr. Pennant has Published a new Tour to Scotland and the

Hebrides: and, though he has endeavoured to paint their dismal

isles and rocks in glowing colours, they will not be satisfied;

for he seems no bigot about Ossian, at least in some passages;

and is free in others, which their intolerating spirit will

resent. I cannot say the book is very entertaining to me, and

it is more a book of rates than of antiquities. The most

amusing part was communicated to him by Mr. Banks, who found

whole islands that bear nothing but columns, as other places do

grass and barley. There is a beautiful cave called Fingal's;

which proves that nature loves Gothic architecture.

Mr. Pennant has given a new edition of his former Tour, with

more cuts. Among others, is the vulgar head, called the

Countess of Desmond. I told him I had discovered, and proved

past contradiction, that it is Rembrandt's mother. He owned

it, and said, he would correct it by a note-but he has not.

This is a brave way of being an antiquary! as if there could be

any merit in giving for genuine what one knows to be spurious.

He is, indeed, a superficial man, and knows little of history

or antiquity: but he has a violent rage for being an author.

He set out with Ornithology, and a little Natural History, and

picks Up his knowledge as he rides. I have a still lower idea

of Mr. Gough; for Mr. Pennant, at least, is very civil: the

other is a hog. Mr. Fenn,(110) another smatterer in antiquity,

but. a very good sort of man, told me, Mr. Gough desired to be

introduced to me--but as he has been such a bear to you,(111)

he shall not come. The Society of Antiquaries put me in mind

of what the old Lord Pembroke said to Anstis the herald: "Thou

silly fellow! thou dost not know thy own silly business." If

they went behind taste by poking into barbarous ages, when

there was no taste, one could forgive them--but they catch at

the first ugly thing they see, and take it for old, because it

is new to them, and then usher it pompously into the world, as

if they had made a discovery; though they have not yet cleared

up a single point that is of the least importance, or that

tends to Settle any obscure passage in history.

I will not condole with you on having had the gout, since you

find it has removed other complaints. Besides as it begins

late, you are never likely to have it severely. I shall be in

terrors in two or three months, having had the four last fits

periodically and biennially Indeed, the two last were so long

and severe, that my remaining and shattered strength could ill

support such.

I must repeat how glad I shall be to have you at Burnham. When

people grow old, as you and I do, they should get together.

Others do not care for us: but we seem wiser to one another by

finding fault with them. Not that I am apt to dislike young

folks, whom I think every thing becomes: but it is a kind of

self-defence to live in a body. I dare to say that monks never

find out that they grow old fools. Their age gives them

authority, and nobody contradicts them. In the world, one

cannot help perceiving one is out of fashion. Women play at

cards with women of their own standing, and censure others

between the deals, and thence conclude themselves Gamaliels. I

who see many young men with better parts than myself, submit

with a good grace, or retreat hither to my castle, where I am

satisfied with what I have done, and am always in good humour.

But I like to have one or two old friends with me. I do not

much invite the juvenile, who think my castle and me of equal

antiquity: for no wonder, if they supposed George I. lived in

the time of the crusades.

Adieu! my good Sir, and pray let Burnham Wood and Dunsinane be

good neighbours. Yours ever.

(110) Sir John Fenn, who edited the "Original Letters, written

during the Reigns of Henry VI., Edward IV., Richard III., and

Henry ViI., by various Persons of rank and consequence,

digested in a Chronological order - with Notes historical and

explanatory;" which were published in four volumes, quarto,

between the years 1787-1789. The letters are principally by

members of the Paston family and others, who were of great

consequence in Norfolk at the time Sir John who was a native of

Norwich, died in 1794. A fifth volume was published in 1823.-

E.

(111) Alluding to his not having answered a letter from Mr.

Cole for nearly a twelvemonth.

Letter 68 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.

Strawberry Hill, June 21, 1774. (page 93)

Your illness, dear Sir, is the worst excuse you could make me;

and the worse, as you may be well in a night, if you will, by

taking six grains of James's Powder. He cannot cure death; but

he can most complaints that are not mortal or chronical. He

could cure you so soon of colds, that he would cure you of

another distemper, to which I doubt you are a little subject,

the fear of them. I hope you were certain, that illness is a

legal plea for missing induction, or you will have nursed a

cough and hoarseness with too much tenderness, as they

certainly could bear a journey. Never see my face again, if

you are not rector of Burnham. How can you be so bigoted to

Milton? I should have thought the very name would have

prejudiced you against the place, as the name is all that could

approach towards reconciling me to the fens. I shall be very

glad to see you here, whenever you have resolution enough to

quit your cell. But since Burnham and the neighbourhood of

Windsor and Eton have no charms for you, can I expect that

Strawberry Hill should have any? Methinks, that when one grows

old, one's contemporary friends should be our best amusement:

for younger people are soon tired of us, and our old stories:

but I have found the contrary in some of mine. For your part,

you care for conversing with none but the dead: for I reckon

the unborn, for whom you are writing, as much dead, as those

from whom you collect. .

You certainly ask no favour, dear Sir, when you want prints of

Me. They are at any body's service that thinks them worth

having. The owner sets very little value on them, since he

sets very little, indeed, on himself: as a man, a very faulty

one; and as an author, a very

middling one; which

whoever thinks a comfortable rank, is not at all my opinion.

Pray convince me that you think I mean sincerely, by not

answering me with a compliment. it is very weak to be pleased

with flattery; the stupidest of 'all delusions to beg it. From

You I should take it ill. We have known one another almost

fifty years--to very little purpose, indeed, if any ceremony is

necessary, or downright sincerity not established between us.

tell me that you are recovered, and that I shall see you some

time or other. I have finished the catalogue of my collection;

but you shall never have it without fetching, nor, though a

less punishment, the prints you desire. I propose in time to

have plates of my house added to 'the Catalogue, yet I Cannot

afford them, unless by degrees. Engravers are grown so much

dearer, without My growing richer, that I must have patience! a

quality I seldom have, but when I must. Adieu! Yours ever.

P. S. I have lately been at Ampthill, and saw Queen Catherine's

cross. It is not near large enough for the situation, and would

be fitter for a garden than a park: but it is executed in the

truest and best taste. Lord Ossory is quite satisfied, as well

as I, and designs Mr. Essex a present of some guineas. If ever

I am richer, I shall consult the same honest man about building

my offices, for Which I have a plan: but if I have no more

money, ever, I Will not run in debt, and distress myself: and

therefore remit my designs to chance and a little economy.

Letter 69 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.

Strawberry Hill, June 23, 1774. (page 94)

I have nothing to say--which is the best reason in the world

for writing; for one must have a great regard for any body, one

writes to, when one begins a letter neither on ceremony nor

business. You are seeing armies,(112) who are always in fine

order--and great spirits when they are in cold blood: I am

sorry you thought it worth while to realize what I should have

thought you could have seen in your mind's eye. However, I

hope you will be amused and pleased With viewing heroes, both

in their autumn and their bud. Vienna will be a new sight; so

will the Austrian eagle and its two heads, I should like

seeing, too, if any fairy would present me with a chest that

would fly up into the air by touching a peg, and transport me

whither I pleased in an instant: but roads, and inns, and dirt,

are terrible drawbacks on My curiosity. I grow so old and so

indolent, that I scarce stir from hence; and the dread of the

gout makes me almost as much a prisoner, as a fit of it. News

I know none, if there is any. The papers tell me that the city

was to present a petition to The King against the Quebec-bill

yesterday; and I suppose they will tell me to-morrow whether it

was presented. The King's speech tells me, there has nothing

happened between the Russians and the Turks.(113) Lady

Barrymore told me t'other day, that nothing was to happen

between her and Lord Egremont. I am as well satisfied with

these negatives, as I should have been with the contrary. I am

much more interested about the rain, for it destroys all my

roses and orange-flowers, of which I have exuberance; and my

hay is cut, and cannot be made. However, it is delightful to

have no other distresses. When I compare my present

tranquillity and indifference with all I suffered last

year,(114) I am thankful for my happiness and enjoy it--unless

the bell rings early in the morning--then I tremble, and think

it an express from Norfolk.

It is unfortunate that when one has nothing to talk of but

one's self, one should have nothing to' say of one's self. It

is shameful, too, to send such a scrap by the post. I think I

shall reserve it till Tuesday. If -I have then nothing to add,

as is probable, you must content yourself with my good

intentions, as you, I hope, will with this speculative

campaign. Pray, for the future, remain at home and build

bridges: I wish you were here to expedite ours to Richmond,

which they tell me Will not be passable these two years. I

have done looking so forward. Adieu!

(112) Mr. Conway was now on a tour of military curiosity

through Flanders, Germany, Prussia, and part of Hungary.

(113) Peace between Russia and Turkey Was proclaimed at St.

Petersburgh on the 14th of August, 1774.-E.

(114) During the illness of his nephew, Lord Orford.

Letter 70 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.

Matson, near Gloucester, Aug. 15, 1774. (page 95)

Dear Sir,

As I am your disciple in antiquities (for you studied them when

I was but a scoffer), I think it my duty to give you some

account of my journeying, in the good cause. You will not

dislike my date. I am in the Very mansion where King Charles

the First and his two eldest sons lay during the siege; and

there are marks of the last's

hacking with his hanger on a window, as he told Mr. Selwin's

grandfather afterwards. The present master has done due honour

to the royal residence, and erected a good marble bust of the

Martyr, in a little gallery. In a window is a shield in

painted glass, with that King's and his Queen's arms, which I

gave him. So you see I am not a rebel, when alma mater

antiquity stands godmother.

I went again to the cathedral, and, on seeing the monument of

Edward II a new historic doubt started which I pray you to

solve. His Majesty has a longish beard - and such were

certainly worn at that time. Who is the first historian that

tells the story of his being shaven with cold water from a

ditch and weeping to supply warm, as he was carried to Berkeley

Castle? Is not this apocryphal? The house whence Bishop

Hooper(115) was carried to the stake, is still standing, tale

quale. I made a visit to his actual successor, Warburton, 'who

is very infirm, speaks with much hesitation, and, they say,

begins to lose his memory. They have destroyed the beautiful

cross; the two battered heads of Henry III. and Edward III. are

in the Postmaster's garden.

Yesterday I made a jaunt four miles hence that pleased me

exceedingly, to Prinknash, the individual villa of the abbots

of Gloucester. I wished you there with their mitre on. It

stands on a glorious, but impracticable hill, in the midst of a

little forest of beech, and commanding Elysium. The house is

small, but has good rooms, and though modernized here and

there, not extravagantly. On the ceiling of the hall is Edward

IVth's Jovial device, a fau-con serrure. The chapel is low and

small, but antique, and with painted glass, with many angels in

their coronation robes, i. e. wings and crowns. Henry VIII.

and Jane Seymour lay here: in the dining-room are their arms in

glass, and of Catherine of Arragon, and of Brays and Bridges.

Under the window, a barbarous bas-relief head of Harry, young:

as it is still on a sign of an alehouse, on the descent of the

hill. Think of my amazement, when they showed me the chapel

plate, and I found on it, on four pieces, my own arms,

quartering my mother-in-law, Skerret's, and in a shield of

pretence, those of Fortescue certainly by mistake, for those of

my sister-in-law, as the barony of Clinton was in abeyance

between her and Fortescue Lord Clinton. The whole is modern

and blundered: for Skerret should be impaled, not quartered,

and instead of our crest, are two spears tied together in a

ducal coronet, and no coronet for my brother, in whose time

this plate must have been made, and at whose sale it was

probably bought; as he finished the repairs of the church at

Houghton, for which, I suppose, this decoration was intended.

But the silversmith was no herald, you see.

As I descended the hill, I found in a wretched cottage a child,

in an ancient oaken cradle, exactly in the form of that lately

published from the cradle of Edward II. I purchased it for

five shillings; but don't know whether I shall have fortitude

enough to transport it to Strawberry Hill. People would

conclude me in my second childhood.

To-day I have been at Berkeley and Thornbury Castles. The

first disappointed me much, though very entire. It is much

smaller than I expected, but very entire, except a small part

burnt two years ago, while the present Earl was in the house.

The fire began in the housekeeper's room, who never appeared

more; but as she was strict over the servants, and not a bone

of her was found, it was supposed that she was murdered, and

the body conveyed away. The situation is not elevated nor

beautiful, and little improvements made of late, but some silly

ones `a la Chinoise, by the present Dowager. In good sooth, I

can give you but a very imperfect account; for, instead of the

lord's

being gone to dine with the mayor of Gloucester, as I expected,

I found him in the midst of all his captains of the militia. I

am so sillily shy of strangers and youngsters, that I hurried

through the chambers; and looked for nothing but the way out of

every room. I just observed that there were many bad portraits

of the family, but none ancient; as if the Berkeleys had been

commissaries, and raised themselves in the last war. There is

a plentiful addition of those of my Lord Berkeley of Stratton,

but no knights templars, or barons as old as Edward I.; yet are

there three beds on which there may have been as frisky doings

three centuries ago, as there probably have been within these

ten ears. The room shown for the murder of Edward II., and the

shrieks of an agonizing king, I verily believe to be genuine.

It is a dismal chamber, almost at top of the house, quite

detached, and to be approached only by a kind of foot-bridge,

and from that 'descends' a large flight of steps that terminate

on strong gates; exactly the situation for a corps de garde.

In that room they show you a cast of a face in plaister, and

tell you it was taken from Edward's. I was not quite so easy

of faith about that; for it is evidently the face of Charles I.

The steeple of the church, lately rebuilt handsomely, stands

some paces from the body; in the latter are three tombs of the

old Berkeleys;, with cumbent figures. The wife of the Lord

Berkeley,(116) who was supposed to be privy to the murder, has

a curious headgear; it is like a long horseshoe, quilted in

quatrefoils; and, like Lord Foppington's wig, allows no more

than the breadth of a half-crown to be discovered of the face.

Stay, I think I mistake; the husband was a conspirator against

Richard II. not Edward. But in those days, loyalty was not so

rife as at present.

>From Berkeley Castle I went to Thornbury, of which the ruins

are half-ruined. It would have been glorious, if

finished.(117) I wish the lords of Berkeley had retained the

spirit of deposing till Henry the VIIIth's time! The situation

is fine, though that was not the fashion; for all the windows

of the great apartment look into the inner court. The prospect

was left to the servants. Here I had two adventures. I could

find nobody to show me about. I saw a paltry house that I took

for the sexton's, at the corner of the close, and bade my

servant ring, and ask who could show me the Castle. A voice in

a passion flew, from a casement, and issued from a divine.

"What! was it his business to show the Castle? - Go look for

somebody else! What did the fellow ring for as if the house was

on fire?" The poor

Swiss came back in a fright, and said, the doctor had sworn at

him. Well--we scrambled over a stone stile, saw a room or two

glazed near the gate, and rung at it. A damsel came forth and

satisfied our curiosity. When we had done seeing, I said,

"Child, we don't know our Way, and want to be directed into the

London road; I see the Duke's steward yonder at the window,

pray desire him to come to me, that I may consult him." She

went--he stood staring at us at the window, and sent his

footman. I do not think courtesy is a resident at Thornbury.

As I returned through the close, the divine came running, out

of breath, and without his beaver or band, and calls out, "Sir,

I am come to justify myself: your servant says I swore at him:

I am no swearer--Lord bless me! (dropping his voice) it is Mr.

Walpole!" "Yes, Sir, and I think you was Lord Beauchamp's

tutor at Oxford, but I have forgot your name." "Holwell, Sir."

"Oh! yes." and then I comforted him, and laid the ill-breeding

on my footman's being a foreigner; but could not help saying, I

really had taken his house for the sexton's. "Yes, Sir, it is

not very good without, won't you please to walk in!" I did, and

found the inside ten times worse, and He was making an Index to

Homer, a lean wife, suckling a child. He is going to publish

the chief beauties, and I believe had just been reading some of

the delicate civilities that pass between Agamemnon and

Achilles, and that what my servant took for oaths, were only

Greek compliments.(118) Adieu! Yours ever.

You see I have not a line more of paper.

(115) John Hooper, Bishop of Gloucester, who, having refused to

recant his opinions, was burned alive before the cathedral of

Gloucester in the year 1554.-E.

(116) Thomas, third Lord Berkeley, was entrusted with the

custody of Edward II.; but, owing to the humanity with which he

treated the captive monarch, he was forced to resign his

prisoner and his castle to Lord Maltravers and Sir Thomas

Gournay. After the murder of Edward, Lord Berkeley was

arraigned as a participator in the crime, but honourably

acquitted. The Lady Berkeley alluded to by Walpole was his

first wife, Margaret, daughter of Roger de Mortimer, Earl of

March, and widow of Robert Vere, Earl of Oxford.-E.

(117) Thornbury Castle was designed, but never finished by the

Duke of Buckingham, in Henry VIII's time.-E.

(118) The Rev. William Holwell, vicar of Thornbury, prebendary

of Exeter, and some time chaplain to the King. He was

distinguished by superior talents as a scholar, and a critical

knowledge of the Greek language. His "Extracts from Mr. Pope's

Translation, corresponding with the Beauties of Homer, selected

from the Iliad," were published in 1776.-E.

Letter 71 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.

Strawberry Hill, August 18, 1774. (page 98)

It is very hard, that because you do not get my letters, you

will not let me receive yours, who do receive them. I have not

had a line from you these five weeks. Of your honours and

glories fame has told me;(119) and for aught I know, you may be

a veldt-marshal by this time, and despise such a poor cottager

as me. Take notice I shall disclaim you in my turn, if you are

sent on a command against Dantzich, or to usurp a new district

in Poland.(120)

I have seen no armies, kings, or. empresses, and cannot send

you such august gazettes; nor are they what I want to hear of.

I like to hear you are well and diverted; nay, have pimped

towards the latter, by desiring Lady Ailesbury to send you

Monsieur do Guisnes's invitation to a military f`ete at

Metz.(121) For my part, I wish you was returned to your

plough. Your Sabine farm is in high beauty. I have lain there

twice within this week, going to and from a visit to George

Selwyn, near Gloucester; a tour as much to my taste as yours to

you. For fortified towns I have seen ruined castles.

Unluckily, in that of Berkeley I found a hole regiment of

militia in garrison, and as many young officers as if the

Countess was

in possession, and ready to surrender at indiscretion. I

endeavoured to comfort myself, by figuring that they were

guarding Edward II. I have seen many other ancient sights

without asking leave of the King of Prussia: it would not

please me so much to write to him, as it once did to write for

him.(122)

They have found at least seventy thousand pounds of Lord

Thomond's.(123) George Howard has decked himself with a red

riband, money, and honours! Charming things! and yet One may

be happy without them.

The young Mr. Coke is returned from his travels n love with the

Pretender's queen,(124) who has permitted him to have her

picture. What can I tell you more? Nothing. Indeed, if I

only write to postmasters, my letter is long enough. Every

body's head but mine is full of elections. I had the

satisfaction at Gloucester, where George Selwyn is canvassing,

of reflecting on my own wisdom. "Suave mari maggno turbantibus

aequora ventis," etc. I am certainly the greatest philosopher

in the world, without ever having thought of being so: always

employed, and never busy;' eager about trifles, and indifferent

to every thing serious. Well, if it is not philosophy, it is

at least content. I am as pleased here with my own nutshell,

as any monarch you have seen these two months astride his

eagle--not but I was dissatisfied when I missed you at

Park-place, and was peevish at your being in an Aulic chamber.

Adieu! Yours ever.

P- S. They tell us from Vienna, that the peace is made between

Tisiphone and the Turk: is it true?

(119) Alluding to the distinguished notice taken of General

Conway by the King of Prussia.

(120) The first dismemberment of Poland had taken place in the

preceding year, by which a third of her territory was ceded to

Russia, Austria, and Prussia.-E.

(121) To see the review of the French regiment of Carabineers,

then commanded by Monsieur de Guisnes.

(122) Alluding to the Letter to Rousseau in the name of the

King of Prussia.

(123) Percy Wyndham Obrien. He was the second son of Sir

Charles Wyndham, chancellor of the exchequer to Queen Anne; and

took the name of Obrien, pursuant to the Earl of Thomond in

Ireland.

(124) The Countess of Albany.-E.

Letter 72 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.

Strawberry Hill, Sept. 7, 1774. (page 99)

I did not think you had been so like the rest of the world, as,

when you pretended to be visiting armies, to go in search of

gold and silver mines!(125) The favours of courts and the

smiles of emperors and kings, I see, have corrupted even you,

and perverted you to a nabob. Have you brought away an ingot

in the calf of your leg? What abomination have you committed?

All the gazettes in Europe have sent you on different

negotiations: instead of returning With a treaty in your

pocket, you will only come back with bills of exchange. I

don't envy your subterraneous travels, nor the hospitality of

the Hungarians. Where did you find a spoonful of Latin about

you? I have not attempted to speak Latin these thirty years,

without perceiving I was talking Italian thickened with

terminations in us and orum. I should have as little expected

to find an Ovid in those regions; but I suppose the gentry of

Presburg read him for a fashionable author, as our squires and

their wives do the last collections of ballads that have been

sung at Vauxhall and Marybone. I wish you may have brought

away some sketches of Duke Albert's architecture. You know I

deal in the works of royal authors, though I have never admired

any of their own buildings, not excepting King Solomon's

temple. Stanley(126) and Edmondson in Hungary! What carried

them thither? The chase of mines too? The first, perhaps,

waddled thither obliquely, as a parrot would have done whose

direction was to Naples.

Well, I am glad you have been entertained, and seen such a

variety of sights. You don't mind fatigues and hardships, and

hospitality, the two extremes that to me poison travelling. I

shall never see any thing more, unless I meet with a ring that

renders one invisible. It was but the other day that, being

with George Selwyn at Gloucester, I Went to view Berkeley

Castle, knowing the Earl was to dine with the mayor of

Gloucester. Alas! when I arrived, he had put off the party to

enjoy his militia a day longer, and the house was full of

officers. They might be in the Hungarian dress, for aught I

knew; for I was so dismayed, that I would"fain have persuaded

the housekeeper that she could not show me the apartments; and

when she opened the hall, and I saw it full of captains, I hid

myself in a dark passage, and nothing could persuade me to

enter, till they had the civility to quit the place. When I

was forced at last to go over the castle, I ran through it

without seeing any thing, as if I had been afraid of being

detained prisoner.

I have no news to send you: if I had any, I would not conclude,

as all correspondents do, that Lady Ailesbury left nothing

Untold. Lady Powis is gone to hold mobs at Ludlow, where there

is actual war, and where a knight, I forget his name, one of

their friends, has been almost cut in two with a scythe. When

you have seen all the armies in Europe, you will be just in

time for many election-battles--perhaps, for a war in America,

whither more troops are going. Many of those already sent have

deserted; and to be sure the- prospect there is not smiling.

Apropos, Lord Mahon,(127) whom Lord Stanhope, his father, will

not suffer to wear powder because wheat is so dear, was

presented t'other day in coal-black hair and a white feather:

they said, "he had been tarred and feathered."

In France you will find a new scene.(128) The Chancellor is

sent, a little before his time, to the devil. The old

Parliament is expected back. I am sorry to say I shall not

meet you there. It will be too late in the year for me to

venture, especially as I now live in dread of my biennial gout,

and should die of it in an h`otel garni, and forced to receive

all comers--I, who you know lock myself up when I am ill as if

I had the plague.

I wish I could fill my sheet, in return for your five pages.

The only thing-you will care for knowing is, that I never saw

Mrs. Damer better in her life, nor look so well. You may trust

me, who am so apt to be frightened about her.

(125) Mr. Conway had gone to see the gold and silver mines of

cremnitz, in the neighbourhood of Grau, in Hungary.

(126) Mr. Hans Stanley.

(127) Charles Viscount Mahon, born on the 3d of August 1753.

In the following December, he married Lady Hester Pitt, eldest

daughter of the Earl of Chatham. He succeeded his father, as

third Earl Stanhope, in March 1786, and died in 1816.-E.

(128) In Consequence of the death of Louis XV. on the 10th of

May.-E.

Letter 73 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.

Strawberry Hill, Sept. 27, 1774. (page 101)

I should be very ungrateful indeed if I thought of complaining

of you, who are goodness itself to me: and when I did not

receive letters from 'you, I concluded it happened from your

eccentric positions. I am amazed, that hurried as YOU have

been, and your eyes and thoughts- crowded with objects, you

have been able to find time to write me so many and such long

letters, over and above all those to Lady, Ailesbury, your

daughter, brother, and other friends. Even Lord Strafford

brags of your frequent remembrance. That your superabundance

of royal beams would dazzle you, I never suspected. Even I

enjoy for you the distinctions you have received--though I

should hate such things for myself, as they are particularly

troublesome to me,'and I am particularly awkward under them,

and as I abhor the King of Prussia, and if I passed through

Berlin, should have no joy like avoiding him--like one of our

countrymen, who changed horses at Paris, and asked what the

name of that town was? All the other civilities you have

received I am perfectly happy in. The Germans are certainly a

civil, well-meaning people, and, I believe, one of the least

corrupted nations in Europe. I do not think them very

agreeable; but who do I think are so? A great many French

women, some English men, and a few English women; exceedingly

few French men. Italian women are the grossest, vulqarest of

the sex. If an Italian man has a grain of sense, he is a

buffoon. So much for Europe!

I have already told you, and so must Lady Ailesbury, that my

courage fails me, and I dare not meet you at Paris, As the

period arrived when the gout used to come, it is never a moment

out of my head. Such a suffering, such a helpless condition as

I was in for five months and a half, two years ago, makes me

tremble from head to foot. I should die at once if seized in a

French inn; or, what, if possible, would be worse, at Paris,

where I must admit every body.--I, who you know can hardly bear

to see even you when I am ill, and who shut up myself here, and

would not let Lord and Lady Hertford come near me--I, who have

my room washed though in bed, how could I bear French dirt! In

short, I, who am so capricious, and whom you are pleased to

call a philosopher, I suppose because I have given up every

thing but my own will--how could I keep my temper, who have no

way of keeping my temper but by keeping it out of every body's

way! No, I must give up the satisfaction of being with you at

Paris. I have just learnt to give up my pleasures, but I

cannot give up my pains, which such selfish people as I who

have suffered much, grow to compose into a system that they are

partial to, because it is their own. I must make myself amends

when you return: you will be more stationary, I hope, for the

future; and if I live I shall have intervals of health. In

lieu of me, you will have a charming succedaneum, Lady Harriet

Stanhope.(129) Her father, who is more a hero than i, is

packing up his old decrepit bones, and goes too. I wish she

may not have him to nurse, instead of diverting herself.

The present state of your country is, that it is drowned and

dead drunk; all water without, and wine within. Opposition for

the next elections every where, even in Scotland; not from

party, but as laying Out money to advantage. In the

head-quarters, indeed, party is not out of the question: the

day after to-morrow will be a great bustle in the city for a

Lord Mayor,(130) and all the winter in Westminster, where Lord

Mahon and Humphrey Cotes oppose the court. Lady Powis is

saving her money at Ludlow and Powis Castles by keeping open

house day and night against Sir Watkin Williams, and fears she

shall be kept there till the general election. It has rained

this whole month, and we have got another inundation. The

Thames is as broad as your Danube, and all my meadows are under

water. Lady Browne and I, coming last Sunday night from Lady

Blandford's, were in a piteous plight. The ferryboat was

turned round by the current, and carried to Isleworth. Then we

ran against the piers of our new bridge, and the horses were

frightened. Luckily, my cicisbeo -was a Catholic, and screamed

to so many Saints, that some of them at the nearest alehouse

came and saved us, or I should have had no more gout, or what I

dreaded I should; for I concluded we should be carried ashore

somewhere, and be forced to wade through the mud up to my

middle. So you see one may wrap oneself up in flannel and be

in danger, without visiting all the armies on the face of the

globe, and putting the immortality of one's chaise to the

proof.

I am ashamed Of sending you three sides of smaller paper in

answer to seven large--but what can I do? I see nothing, know

nothing, do nothing. My castle is finished, I have nothing new

to read, I am tired of writing, I have no new or old bit for my

printer. I have only black hoods around me; or, if I go to

town, the family-party in Grosvenor Street. One trait will

give you a sample of how I passed my time, and made me laugh,

as it put me in mind of you; at least it was a fit of absence,

much more likely to have happened to you than to me. I was

playing eighteenpenny tredrille with the Duchess of

Newcastle(131) and Lady Browne, and certainly not much

interested in the game. I cannot recollect nor conceive what I

was thinking of, but I pushed the cards very gravely to the

Duchess, and said, "Doctor, you are to deal." You may guess at

their astonishment, and how much it made us all laugh. I wish

it may make you smile a moment, or that I had any thing better

to send you. Adieu, most affectionately. Yours ever.

(129) a Daughter of the Earl of Harrington. Her ladyship was

married, in 1776, to Thomas second Lord Foley.-E.

(130) When Mr. Wilkes was elected.

(131) Catherine, eldest daughter and heiress of the Right Hon.

Henry Pelham, married to Henry ninth Earl of Lincoln; who, in

consequence of his marriage with her, inherited in 1768, the

dukedom of Newcastle-under-Line on the demise of the Countess's

uncle, Thomas Pelham Holles, Who had been created Duke of

Newcastle.under-Line, with special remainder to the Earl of

Lincoln , in 1756 _E.

Letter 74 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.

Strawberry Hill, Sept. 28, 1774. (page 103)