Letter 234 To The Earl Of Strafford.

Berkeley Square, Nov. 27, 1781. (page 296)

Each fresh mark of your lordship's kindness and friendship, calls

on me for thanks and an answer: every other reason would enjoin

me silence. I not only grow so old, but the symptoms of age

increase so fast, that, as they advise me to keep out of the

world, that retirement makes me less fit to be informing or

entertaining. Those philosophers who have sported on the verge

of the tomb, or they who have affected to sport in the same

situation, both tacitly implied that it was not out of their

thoughts; and however dear what we are going to leave may be, all

that is not particularly dear must cease to interest us much. If

those reflections blend themselves with our gayest thoughts, must

not their hue grow more dusky when public misfortunes and

disgraces cast a general shade?(458) The age, it is true, soon

emerges out of every gloom, and wantons as before. But does not

that levity imprint a still deeper melancholy on those who do

think? Have any of our calamities corrected us? Are we not

revelling on the brink of the precipice? Does administration grow

more sage, or desire that we should grow more sober? Are these

themes for letters, my dear lord! Can one repeat common news with

indifference, while our shame is writing for future history by

the pens of all our numerous enemies? When did England see two

whole armies lay down their arms and surrender themselves

prisoners? Can venal addresses efface such stigmas, that will be

recorded in every country in Europe? Or will such disgraces have

no consequences? Is not America lost to us? Shall we offer up

more human victims to the demon of obstinacy; and shall we tax

ourselves deeper to furnish out the sacrifice? These are

thoughts I cannot stifle at the moment that enforces them; and

though I do not doubt but the same spirit of dissipation that has

swallowed up all our principles will reign again in three days

with its wonted sovereignty, I had rather be silent than vent my

indignation. Yet I cannot talk, for I cannot think, on any other

subject. It was not six days ago, that in the midst of four

raging wars I saw in the papers an account of the Opera and of

the dresses of the company; and thence the town, and thence of

course the whole nation were informed that Mr. Fitzpatrick had

very little powder in his hair.(459) Would not one think that

our newspapers were penned by boys just come from school for the

information of their sisters and cousins? Had we had Gazettes

and Morning Posts in those days, would they have been filled with

such tittle-tattle after the battle of Agincourt, or in the more

resembling weeks after the battle of Naseby? Did the French

trifle equally even during the ridiculous war of the Fronde? If

they were as impertinent then, at least they had wit in their

levity. We are monkeys in conduct, and as clumsy as bears when

we try to gambol. Oh! my lord! I have no patience with my

country! and shall leave it without regret!--Can we be proud

when all Europe scorns us? It was wont to envy us, sometimes to

hate us, but never despised us before. James the First was

contemptible, but he did not lose an America! His eldest

grandson sold us, his younger lost us--but we kept ourselves.

Now we have run to meet the ruin--and it is coming!

I beg your lordship's pardon, if I have said too much--but I do

not believe I have. You have never sold yourself, and therefore

have not been accessary to our destruction. You must be happy

now not to have a son, who would live to grovel in the dregs of

England. Your lordship has long been so wise as to secede from

the follies of your countrymen. May you and Lady Strafford long

enjoy the tranquillity that has been your option even in better

days!--and may you amuse yourself without giving loose to such

reflections as have overflowed in this letter from your devoted

humble servant!

(458) The fatal intelligence of the surrender of the British

forces at Yorktown, under the command of Lord Cornwallis, to the

combined armies of America and France, under General Washington,

had reached England on the 25th.-E.

(459) The following picture of fashionable life at the time of

Walpole's lament, is by Mr. Wilberforce:--"When I

left the University, so little did I know of general society,

that I came up to London stored with arguments to

prove the authenticity Of Rowley's poems; and now

I was at once immersed in politics and fashion. The very first

time I went to Boodle's, I won twenty.five guineas

of the Duke of Norfolk. I belonged at this time to five clubs-

-Miles and Evans's, Brookes's, Boodle's, White's, Goostree's.

The first time I was at Brookes's, scarcely

knowing any one, I joined, from niere shyness, in play at the

faro-table, where George Selwyn kept bank. A friend,

who knew my inexperience, and regarded me as a victim decked out

for sacrifice, called to me, 'What, Wilberforce! is

that you?' Selwyn quite resented the interference; and, turning

to him, said, in his most expressive tone, 'O,

Sir, don't interrupt Mr. Wilberforce; he could not be better

employed!' Nothing could be more luxurious than the style of

these clubs, Fox, Sheridan, Fitzpatrick, and all

your leading men, frequented them, and associated upon the

easiest terms; you chatted, played at cards, or gambled, as you

pleased. I was one of those who met to spend an

evening in memory of Shakspeare, at the Boar's Head, Eastcheap.

Many professed wits were present, but Pitt was the most amusing

of the party. He played a good deal at

Goostree's; and I well remember the intense earnestness which he

displayed when joining in those games of chance. he perceived

their increasing fascination, and soon after suddenly abandoned

them for ever." Life, vol, i. p, 16.-E.

Letter 235To The Earl Of Buchan.(460)

Berkeley Square, Dec. 1, 1781. (page 297)

I am truly sensible of, and grateful for, your lordship's

benevolent remembrance of me, and shall receive with great

respect and pleasure the collection your lordship has been

pleased to order to be sent to me. I must admire, too, my lord,

the generous assistance that you have lent to your adopted

children; but more forcibly than all I feel your pathetic

expressions on the distress of the public, which is visible even

in this extravagant and thoughtless city. The number of houses to

be let in every street, whoever runs may read.

At the time of your writing your letter, your lordship did not

know the accumulation of misfortune and disgrace that has fallen

on us;(461) nor should I wish to be the trumpeter of my country's

calamities. Yet as they must float on the surface of the mind,

and blend their hue -with all its emanations, they suggest this

reflection, that there can be no time so proper for the

institution of inquiries into past story as the moment of the

fall of an empire,--a nation becomes a theme for antiquaries,

when it ceases to be one for an historian!--and while its ruins

are fresh and in legible preservation.

I congratulate your lordship on the discovery of the Scottish

monarch's portrait in Suabia, and am sorry you did not happen to

specify of which; but I cannot think of troubling your lordship

to write again on purpose; I may probably find it mentioned in

some of the papers I shall receive.

There is one passage in your lordship's letter in which I cannot

presume to think myself included; and yet if I could suppose I

was, it would look like most impertinent neglect and unworthiness

of the honour that your lordship and the society have done me, if

I did not at least offer. very humbly to obey it. You are pleased

to say, my lord, that the members, when authors, have agreed to

give copies of such of their works as any way relate to the

objects of the institution. Amongst my very trifling

publications, I think there are none that can pretend even

remotely to that distinction, but the Catalogue of Royal and

Noble Authors, and the Anecdotes of Painting, in each of which

are Scottish authors or artists. If these should be thought

worthy of a corner on any shelf of the society's library, I

should be proud sending, at your lordship's command, the original

edition of the first. Of the latter I have not a single set left

but my own. But I am printing a new edition in octavo, with many

additions and corrections, though without cuts, as the former

edition was too dear for many artists to purchase. The new I will

send when finished, if I could hope it would be acceptable, and

your lordship would please to tell me by what channel.

I am ashamed, my lord, to have said so much, or any thing

relating to myself. I ask your pardon too for the slovenly

writing of my letter; but my hand is both lame and shaking, and I

should but write worse if I attempted transcribing.

I have the honour to be, with great respect, my lord, your

lordship's most obedient and obliged humble servant.

P. S. It has this moment started into my mind, my lord, that I

have heard that at the old castle at Aubigny, belonging and

adjoining to the Duke of Richmond's house, there are historic

paintings or portraits of the ancient house of Lennox. I

recollect too that Father Gordon, superior of the Scots College

at Paris, showed me a whole-length of Queen Mary, young, and

which he believed was painted while she was Queen of France. He

showed me too the original letter she wrote, the night before her

execution, some deeds of Scottish kings, and one of King (I think

Robert) Bruce, remarkable for having no seal appendent, which

Father Gordon said was executed in the time of his so great

distress, that he was not possessed of a seal. I shall be happy

if these hints lead to any investigations of use.

(460) Now first collected.

(461) The surrender of the British army at Yorktown. See ant`e,

p. 296, letter 234.-E.

Letter 236 To Robert Jephson, Esq.(462)

Berkeley Square, Dec. 3, 1781. (page 299)

I have not only a trembling hand, but scarce time to save the

post; yet I write a few lines to beg you will be perfectly easy

on my account, who never differ seriously with my friends, when I

know they do not mean ill to me. I was sorry you took so much to

heart an alteration in the scenery of your play,(463) which did

not seem to me very material; and which, having since been

adjusted to your wish, had no better effect. I told you that it

was my fault, not Mr. Malone's, who is warmly your friend; and I

am sure you will be sorry if you do him injustice. I regret no

pains I have taken, since they have been crowned with your

success; and it would be idle in either of us to recall any

little cross circumstance that may have happened, (as always do

in bringing a play on the stage,) when they have not prevented

its appearance or good fortune. Be assured, Sir, if that is

worth knowing, that I have taken no offence, and have all the

same good wishes for you that I ever had since I was acquainted

with your merit and abilities. I can easily allow for the

anxiety of a parent of your genius for his favourite offspring;

and though I have not your parts, I have had the warmth, though

age and illness have chilled it: but, thank God! they have not

deprived me of my good-humour, and I am most good-humouredly and

sincerely your obedient humble servant.

(462) Now first collected.

(463) See ant`e, p. 295, letter 233.-E.

Letter 237 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.

Berkeley Square, Dec. 30, 1781. (page 299)

We are both hearty friends, my dear Sir, for I see we have both

been reproaching ourselves with silence at the same moment. I am

much concerned that you have had cause for yours.(464) I have

had less, though indisposed too in a part material for

correspondence--my hand, which has been in labour of chalk-stones

this whole summer, and at times so nervous as to tremble so much,

that, except when quite necessary, I have avoided a pen. I have

been delivered of such a quantity of chalky matter, that I am not

only almost free from pain, but hope to avoid a fit this winter.

How there can be a doubt what the gout is, amazes me! what is it

but a concretion of humours, that either Stop up the fine

vessels, cause pain and inflammation, and pass away only by

perspiration; or which discharge themselves into chalk-stones,

which sometimes remain in their beds, sometimes make their

passage outwardly? I have experienced all three. It may be

objected, that the sometimes instantaneous removal of pain from

one limb to another is too rapid for a current of chalk--true,

but not for the humour before coagulated. As there is,

evidently, too, a degree of wind mixed in the gout, may not that

wind be impregnated with the noxious effluvia, especially as the

latter are pent up in the body and may be corrupted? I hope your

present complaint in the foot will clear the rest of your person.

Many thanks for your etching of Mr. Browne Willis: I shall value

it not only as I am a collector, but because he was your friend.

What shall I say about Mr. Gough? He is not a pleasant man, and

I doubt will tease me about many things, some of which I have

never cared about, and all which I interest myself little about

now, when I seek to pass my remnant in the most indolent

tranquillity. He has not been very civil to me, he worships the

fools I despise, and I conceive has no genuine taste; yet as to

trifling resentments, when the objects have not acted with bad

hearts, I can most readily lose them. Please Mr. Gough, I

certainly shall not; I cannot be very grave about such idle

studies as his and my own, and am apt to be impatient, or laugh

when people imagine I am serious about them. But there is a

stronger reason why I shall not satisfy Mr. Gough. He is a man

to minute down whatever one tells him that he may call

information, and whip it into his next publication. However,

though I am naturally very frank, I can regulate myself by those

I converse with; and as I shall be on my guard, I will not

decline visiting Mr. Gough, as it would be illiberal or look

surly if I refused. You shall have the merit, if you please, of

my assent; and shall tell him, I shall be glad to see him any

morning at eleven o'clock. This will save you the trouble of

sending me his new work, as I conclude he will mention it to me.

I more willingly assure you that I shall like to see Mr.

Steevens,(465) and to show him Strawberry. You never sent me a

person you commended, that I did not find deserved it.

You will be surprised when I tell you, that I have only dipped

into Mr. Bryant's book, and lent the Dean's before I had cut the

leaves, though I had peeped into it enough to see that I shall

not read it. Both he and Bryant are so diffuse on our antiquated

literature, that I had rather believe in Rowley than go through

their proofs. Dr. Warton and Mr. Tyrwhitt have more patience,

and intend to answer them--and so the controversy will be two

hundred years out of my reach. Mr. Bryant, I did find, begged a

vast many questions, which proved to me his own doubts. Dr.

Glynn's foolish evidence made me laugh, and so did Mr. Bryant's

sensibility for me; he says that Chatterton treated me very

cruelly in one of his writings. I am sure I did not feel it so.

I suppose Bryant means under the title of Baron of Otranto, which

is written with humour. I must have been the sensitive plant if

any thing in that character had hurt me! Mr. Bryant too, and the

Dean, as I see by extracts in the papers, have decorated

Chatterton with sanctimonious honour--think of that young

rascal's note, when, summing up his gains and losses by writing

for and against Beckford, he says, "Am glad he is dead by three

pounds 13 shillings 6pence." There was a lad of too nice honour

to be capable of forgery! and a lad who, they do not deny,

forged the poems in the style of Ossian, and fifty other things.

In the parts I did read, Mr. Bryant, as I expected, reasons

admirably, and staggered me; but when I took up the poems called

Rowley's again, I protest I cannot see the smallest air of

antiquity but the old words. The whole texture is conceived on

ideas of the present century. The liberal manner of thinking of

a monk so long before the Reformation is as stupendous; and where

he met with Ovid's Metamorphoses, eclogues, and plans of Greek

tragedies, when even Caxton, a printer, took Virgil's AEneid for

so rare a novelty, are not less incomprehensible: though on these

things I speak at random, nor have searched for the era when the

Greek and Latin classics came again to light-at present I imagine

long after our Edward the Fourth.

Another thing struck me in my very cursory perusal of Bryant. He

asks where Chatterton could find so much knowledge of English

events? I could tell him where he might, by a very natural

hypothesis, though merely an hypothesis. It appears by the

evidence, that Canninge left six chests of manuscripts, and that

Chatterton got possession of some or several. Now what was

therein so probably as a diary drawn up by Canninge himself, or

some churchwarden or wardens, or by a monk or monks? Is any

thing more natural than for such a person, amidst the events at

Bristol, to set down other public facts as happened in the rest

of the kingdom? Was not such almost all the materials of our

ancient story? There is actually such an one, with some curious

collateral facts, if I am not mistaken,--for I write by memory,--

in the History of Furnese or Fountains Abbey, I forget which: if

Chatterton found such an one, did he want the extensive

literature on which so much stress is laid. Hypothesis for

hypothesis,--I am sure this is as rational an one as the

supposition that six chests were filled with poems never else

heard of.

These are my indigested thoughts on this matter--not that I ever

intend to digest them--for I will not, at sixty-four, sail back

into the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and be drowned in an

ocean of monkish writers of those ages or of this! Yours most

sincerely.

(464) Mr. Cole, in a letter of the 31st says, "About six weeks

ago, the gout was harassing both my feet; on Christmas-day it

shifted its quarters, and got into my left hand; and

inexpressible have been the pain and torment I have endured, with

sleepless nights, racking pain, and no rest nor relief by day. I

hope the worst is over, as I had a comfortable sleep for the

whole night last night: but my hopes are like those in a ship in

a storm; when one billow is past, another and greater is at the

heels of it: for a water-drinker my lot is hard."-E.

(465) George Steevens, Esq. In 1770, this eminent scholar and

learned commentator became associated with Dr. Johnson, in the

edition of Shakspeare which goes by their joint names. A fourth

edition, with large additions, was published in 1793, in fifteen

volumes octavo. In the preparation of it for the press, Mr.

Steevens gave an instance of editorial activity and perseverance,

which is, probably, without a parallel. For a period of eighteen

months, he devoted himself solely and exclusively to the work;

and, during that time, left his house every morning at one

o'clock with the Hampstead patrols, and proceeded, without any

consideration of weather or season, to the chambers of his

friend, Isaac Reed, in Staple's Inn, where he found a sheet of

the Shakspeare letterpress was ready for his revision: thus,

while the printers were asleep, the editor was @ awake; and the

fifteen large volumes were completed in the short space of twenty

months. The feat is recorded by Mr. Matthias, in the Pursuits of

Literature:

"Him late, from Hampstead journeying to his book,

Aurora oft for Cophalus mistook;

What time he brush'd her dews with hasty pace,

To meet the printer's dev'let face to face."

He died at Hampstead in 1800, and in his sixty-fourth year.-E.

Letter 238 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.

Berkeley Square, Jan. 27, 1782. (page 302)

For these three weeks I have had the gout in my left elbow and

hand, and can yet but just bear to lay the latter on the paper

while I write with the other. However, this is no complaint, for

it is the shortest fit I have had these sixteen years, and with

trifling pain: therefore, as the fits decrease, it does ample

honour to my bootikins regimen, and method. Next to my

bootikins, I ascribe much credit to a diet-drink of dock-roots,

of which Dr. Turton asked me for my receipt, as the best he had

ever seen, and which I will send you if you please. It came from

an old physician at Richmond, who did amazing service with it in

inveterate scurvies,--the parents, or ancestors, at least, I

believe, of all gouts. Your fit I hope is quite gone.

Mr. Gough has been with me. I never saw a more dry or more cold

gentleman. He told me his new plan is a series of English

monuments. I do like the idea, and offered to lend him drawings

for it.

I have seen Mr. Steevens too, who is much more flowing. I wish

you had told me it was the editor of Shakspeare, for, on his

mentioning Dr. Farmer, I launched out and said, he was by much

the most rational of Shakspeare's commentators, and had given the

only sensible account of the authors our great poet had

consulted. I really meant those -who Wrote before Dr. Farmer.

Mr. Steevens seemed a little surprised, which made me discover

the blunder I had made. For which I was very sorry, though I had

meant nothing by it; however, do not mention it. I hope be has

too much sense to take it ill, as he must have seen I had no

intention of offending him; on the contrary, that my whole

behaviour marked a desire of being civil to him as your friend,

in which light only you had named him to me. Pray take no notice

of it, though I could not help mentioning it, as it lies on my

conscience to have been even undesignedly and indirectly unpolite

to any body you recommend. I should not, I trust, have been so

unintentionally to any body, nor with intention, unless provoked

to it by great folly or dirtiness. Adieu!

Letter 239 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.

Berkeley Square, Feb. 14, 1782. (page 303)

I have received such treasures from you, dear Sir, through the

channel of Mr. Nichols, that I neither know how to thank you, nor

to find time to peruse them so fast as I am impatient to do. You

must complete your kindness by letting me detain them a few days,

till I have gone through them, when I will return them most

carefully by the same intervention; and particularly the curious

piece of enamel; for though you are, as usual, generous enough to

offer it to me, I have plundered you too often already; and

indeed I have room left for nothing more, nor have that miserly

appetite of continuing to hoard what I cannot enjoy, nor have

much time left to possess.

I have already looked into your beautiful illuminated manuscript

copied from Dr: Stukeley's letter, and with Anecdotes of the

Antiquaries of Bennet College; and I have found therein so many

charming instances of your candour, humility, and justice, that I

grieve to deprive Mr. Gough for a minute even of the possession

of so valuable a tract. I will not Injure him or it, by begging

you to cancel what relates to me, as it would rob you of part of

your defence of Mr. Baker. If I wish to have it detained from

Mr. Gough till the period affixed in the first leaf, or rather to

my death, which will probably precede yours, it is for this

reason only: Mr. Gough is apt, as we antiquaries are, to be

impatient to tell the world all he knows, which is unluckily much

more than the world is at all impatient of knowing. For what you

call your flaming zeal, I do not in the least object to it. We

have agreed to tolerate each other, and certainly are neither of

us infallible. I think, on what we differ most is, your calling

my opinions fashionable; they were when we took them up: I doubt

it is yours that are most in fashion now, at least in this

country. The Emperor seems to be of our party; but, if I like

his notions, I do not admire his judgment, which is too

precipitate to be judgment.

I smiled at Mr. Gough's idea of my declining his acquaintance as

a member of that Obnoxious Society of Antiquaries. It is their

folly alone that is obnoxious to me, and can they help that? I

shall very cheerfully assist him.

I am glad you are undeserved about the controversial piece in the

Gentleman's Magazine, which I should have assured You, as you now

know, that it was not mine. I declared, in my Defence,(466) that

I would publish nothing more about that question. I have not,

nor intend it. Neither was it I that wrote the prologue to the

Count of Narbonne, but Mr. Jephson himself. On the opposite page

I will add the receipt for the diet-drink: as to my regimen, I

shall not specify it. Not only you would not adopt it, but I

should tremble to have you. In fact, I never do prescribe it, as

I am persuaded it would kill the strongest man in England, who

was not exactly of the same temperament with me, and who had not

embraced it early. It consists in temperance to quantity as to

eating--I do not mind the quality; I am persuaded that great

abstinence with the gout is dangerous; for, if one does not take

nutriment enough, there cannot be strength sufficient to fling

out the gout, and then it deviates to palsies. But my great

nostrum is the use of cold water, inwardly and outwardly, on all

occasions, and total disregard of precaution against

catching cold. A hat you know I never wear, my breast I never

button, nor wear great-coats, etc. I have often had the gout in

my face (as last week) and eyes, and instantly dip my head in a

pail of cold water, which always cures it, and does not send it

anywhere else. All this I do, because I have so for these forty

years, weak as I look; but Milo would not have lived a week if he

had played such pranks. My diet-drink is not all of so Quixote a

disposition; any of the faculty will tell you how innocent it is,

at least. In a few days, for I am a rapid reader when I like my

matter, I will return all your papers and letters; and in the

mean time thank you most sincerely for the use of them.

(466) Hannah More, in a letter to Mrs. Boscawen, says, "Many

thanks for Mr. Walpole's sensible, temperate, and humane

pamphlet. I am not quite a convert yet to his side in the

Chatertonian controversy, though this elegant writer and all the

antiquaries and critics are against me: I like much the candid

regret he every where discovers at not having fostered this

unfortunate lad, whose profligate manners, however, I too much

fear, would not have done credit to any patronage. Mrs. Garrick

read it, and was more interested than I have ever seen her."-E.

Letter 240 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.

February 15, 1782. (page 304)

I was SO impatient to peruse all the literary stores you sent me,

my dear Sir, that I stayed at home on purpose to give up a whole

evening to them. I have gone through all; your own manuscript,

which I envy Mr. Gough, his specimen, and the four letters to you

from the latter and Mr. Steevens. I am glad they were both

satisfied with my reception. In truth, you know I am neither

formal nor austere, nor have any grave aversion to our

antiquities, though I do now and then divert myself with their

solemnity about arrant trifles; yet perhaps we owe much to their

thinking those trifles of importance, or the Lord knows how they

would have patience to investigate them so indefatigably. Mr.

Steevens seemed pleasant, but I doubt I shall never be demure

enough to conciliate Mr. Gough. Then I have a wicked quality in

an antiquary, nay, one that annihilates the essence: that is, I

cannot bring myself to a habit of minute accuracy about very

indifferent points. I do not doubt but there is a swarm of

diminutive inaccuracies in my Anecdotes--well! if there is, I

bequeath free leave of correction to the microscopic intellects

of my continuators. I took dates and facts from the sedulous and

faithful Vertue,(467) and piqued myself on little but on giving

an idea of the spirit of the times with regard to the arts at the

different periods.

The specimen you present me of Mr. Gough's detail of our

monuments is very differently treated, proves vast industry, and

shows most circumstantial fidelity. It extends, too, much

farther than I expected; for it seems to embrace the whole mass

of our monuments, nay, of some that are vanished. It is not what

I thought, an intention of representing our modes of dress, from

figures on monuments, but rather a history of our tombs. It is

fortunate, though he may not think so, that so many of the more

ancient are destroyed, since for three or four centuries they

were clumsy, rude, and ugly. I know I am but a fragment of an

antiquary, for I abhor all Saxon doings, and whatever did not

exhibit some taste, grace, or elegance, and some ability in the

artists. Nay, if I may say so to you, I do not care a straw for

archbishops, bishops, mitred abbots, and cross-legged knights.

When you have one of a sort, you have seen all. However, to so

superficial a student in antiquity as I am, Mr. Gough's work is

not unentertaining. It has frequently anecdotes and

circumstances of kings, queens, and historic personages, that

interest me though I care not a straw about a series of bishops

who had only Christian names, or were removed from one old church

to a newer. Still I shall assist Mr. Gough with whatever he

wants in my possession. I believe he is a very worthy man, and I

should be a churl not to oblige any man who is so innocently

employed. I have felt the selfish, the proud avarice of those

who hoard literary curiosities for themselves alone, as other

misers do money.

I observed in your account of the Count-Bishop Hervey, that you

call one of his dedicators Martin Sherlock, Esquire.(468) That

Mr. Sherlock is an Irish clergyman; I am acquainted with him. He

is a very amiable good-natured man, and wants judgment, not

parts. He is a little damaged by aiming at Sterne's capricious

pertness which the original wore out; and which, having been

admired and cried up to the skies by foreign writers of reviews,

was, on the contrary, too severely treated by our own. That

injustice shocked Mr. Sherlock, who has a good heart and much

simplicity, and sent him in dudgeon last year to Ireland,

determined to write no more; yet I am persuaded he will, so

strong Is his propensity to being an author; and if he does,

correction may make him more attentive to what he says and

writes. He has no gall; on the contrary, too much benevolence in

his indiscriminate praise; but he has made many ingenious

criticisms. He is a just, a due enthusiast to Shakspeare: but,

alas! he scarce likes Richardson less.

(467) George Vertue, the engraver, was born in London in 1684,

and died in 1756. Walpole has given a short sketch of his active

life in his Anecdotes of Painting in England; a work, for the

materials of which he was in a great measure, indebted to the

collections of Vertue, which he bought of his widow. "These

collections," he says, "amounted to nearly forty volumes, large

and small: in one of his pocket-books I found a note of his first

intention of compiling such a work; it was in 1713, and he

continued it assiduously to his death."-E.

(468) This eccentric and original writer had published a book at

Rome in Italian, and two others at Paris, in French. The first

volume of his "Letters from an English Traveller," translated by

the Rev. John Duncombe, appeared in London in 1779, the author's

return from the Continent, and before it was known he was in holy

orders. The Letters were dedicated to the Hon. and Rev.

Frederick Augustus Hervey, Bishop of Derry, and afterwards Earl

of Bristol. (See ant`e, p. 236, letter 182.) This volume was

republished, revised and corrected by the author, in 1780, and

was soon followed by "New Letters of an English Traveller." In

1781, Mr. Sherlock had a strong inclination to revisit the

Continent, and actually caused the following article to be

inserted in a public journal:--"It is now generally supposed,

that, whoever may be honoured with the negotiation at Vienna, Mr.

Sherlock, the celebrated English traveller and chaplain to the

Earl of Bristol, will be appointed secretary to his embassy. His

great literary and political accomplishments, are in high

estimation throughout the Continent; and he is, perhaps, the only

Englishman who can boast of having familiarly conversed with the

high potentates whose alliance at this important juncture it

would be desirable to obtain. His being in orders is an

objection which will vanish, when it is recollected that the very

same important office was, in 1708, intended for Dr. Swift: a

name which, however deservedly revered in Great Britain and

Ireland, must, in every other kingdom of Europe, give precedence

to those of Sherlock, Rousseau, and Sterne, the luminaries of the

present century." In June of the same year he was presented, by

the Bishop of Killala, with a living of 200 pounds a-year. Upon

which occasion he wrote to his publisher, "I think it may be of

use to our sale to let the world know it in the newspaper; and I

am persuaded that doubling the value of the living will make the

books sell better. The world (God bless it!) is very apt to

value a man's writing according to his rank and fortune. I am

sure they will think more highly of my Letters, if they believe I

have 400 a-year, than if they think I have only two. Pope, you

know, says something like this--

'A saint in crape, is twice a saint in lawn.'

Will you then be so good as to have this paragraph put into the

Morning Herald, the Morning Chronicle, the Morning Post, and any

other fourth paper you choose? 'We hear that the Rev. Martin

Sherlock, M.A., etc., is collated to the united vicarages of

Castleconner and Rilglass, worth 400 a-year.' Is there any news

of me in London? Am I abused or well-spoken of in print? Are

the writers as uneasy as they used to be about my vanity? Keep

all printed things, reviews, newspapers, etc., about me, till I

have an opportunity of sending for them. I think I shall have

something for you by next week; but keep that a secret. wish,

for your sake, I was a bishop; for then, I will answer for it, my

works would sell well." An elegant edition of all Mr. Sherlock's

Letters was published by Mr. Nichols in 1802, in two volumes

octavo. It is now a very scarce book. In 1788, he was collated

to the rectory and vicarage of Streen, and soon afterwards to the

archdeaconry of Killala. He died in 1797.-E.

Letter 241 To The Rev. William Mason.

(page 307)

I have been reading a new French translation of the elder

Pliny,(469) of whom I never read but scraps before; because, in

the poetical manner in which we learn Latin at Eton, we never

become acquainted with the names of the commonest things, too

undignified to be admitted into verse; and, therefore, I never

had patience to search in a dictionary for the meaning of every

substantive. I find I shall not have a great deal less trouble

with the translation, as I am not more familiar with their common

drogues than with the Latin. However, the beginning goes off

very glibly, as I am not yet arrived below the planets: but do

you know that this study, of which I have never thought since I

learnt astronomy at Cambridge, has furnished me with some very

entertaining ideas! I have long been weary of the common jargon

of poetry. You bards have exhausted all the nature we are

acquainted with; you have treated us with the sun, moon, and

stars, the earth and the ocean, mountains and valleys, etc. etc.

under every possible aspect. In short, I have longed for some

American Poetry, in which I might find new appearances of nature,

and consequently of art. But my present excursion into the sky

has afforded me more entertaining prospects, and newer phenomena.

If I was as good a poet, as you are, I would immediately compose

an idyl, or an elegy, the scene of which should be laid in Saturn

or Jupiter: and then, instead of a niggardly soliloquy by the

light of a single moon, I would describe a night illuminated by

four or five moons at least, and they should be all in a

perpendicular or horizontal line, according as Celia's eyes (who

probably in that country has at least two pair) are disposed in

longitude or latitude. You must allow that this system would

diversify poetry amazingly.--And then Saturn's belt! which the

translator says in his notes, Is not round the planet's waist,

like the shingles; but is a globe of crystal that encloses the

whole orb, as You may have seen an enamelled watch in a case of

glass. If you do not perceive what infinitely pretty things may

be said, either in poetry or romance. on a brittle heaven of

crystal, and what furbelowed rainbows they must have in that

country, you are neither the Ovid nor natural philosopher I take

you for. Pray send me an eclogue directly upon this plan--and I

give you leave to adopt my idea of Saturnian Celias having their

every thing quadrupled--which would form a much more entertaining

rhapsody than Swift's thought of magnifying or diminishing the

species in his Gulliver. How much more execution a fine woman

would do with two pair of piercers! or four! and how much longer

the honeymoon would last, if both the sexes have (as no doubt

they have) four times the passions, and four times the means of

gratifying them!--I have opened new worlds to you--You must be

four times the poet you are, and then you will be above Milton,

and equal to Shakspeare, the only two mortals I am acquainted

with who ventured beyond the visible diurnal sphere, and

preserved their intellects. Dryden himself would have talked

nonsense, and, I fear, indecency, on my plan; but you are too

good a divine, I am sure, to treat my quadruple love but

platonically. In Saturn, notwithstanding their glass-case, they

are supposed to be very cold; but platonic love of itself

produces frigid conceits enough, and you need not augment the

dose.--But I will not dictate, The Subject is new; and you, who

have so much imagination, will shoot far beyond me. Fontenelle

would have made something of the idea, even in prose; but

Algarotti would dishearten any body from attempting to meddle

with the system of the universe a second time in a genteel

dialogue.(470) Good night! I am going to bed.--Mercy on me! if I

should dream of Celia with four times the usual attractions!

(469) By Poinsinet de Sivry, in twelve Volumes quarto.-E.

(470) A translation of Count Algarotti's "Newtonianismo per Le

Dame," by Mrs. Elizabeth Carter, under the title of "Sir Isaac

Newton'S Philosophy explained for the Use of the Ladies; in six

Dialogues of Light and Colours," appeared in 1739.-E.

Letter 242 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.

February 2, 1782. (page 308)

I doubt you are again in error, my good Sir, about the letter I

in the Gentleman's Magazine against the Rowleians, unless Mr.

Malone sent it to you; for he is the author, and not Mr.

Steevens, from whom I imagine you received it.(471) There is a

report that some part of Chatterton's forgery is to be produced

by an accomplice; but this I do not answer for, nor know the

circumstances. I have scarce seen a person who is not persuaded

that the forging of the poems was Chatterton's own, though he

might have found some old stuff to work upon, which very likely

was the case; but now that the poems have been so much examined,

nobody (that has an ear) can get over the modernity of the

modulations, and the recent cast of the ideas and phraseology,

corroborated by such palpable pillage of Pope and Dryden. Still

the boy remains a prodigy, by whatever means he procured or

produced the edifice erected; and still It will be found

inexplicable how he found time or materials for operating such

miracles.

You are in another error about Sir Harry Englefield, who cannot

be going to marry a daughter of Lord Cadogan, unless he has a

natural one, of whom I never heard. Lord Cadogan has no daughter

by his first wife, and his oldest girl by My niece is not five

years old.(472) The act of the Emperor to which I alluded, is

the general destruction of convents in Flanders, and, I suppose,

in his German dominions too. The Pope suppressed the carnival,

as mourning and proposes a journey to Vienna to implore

mercy.(473) This is a little different from the time when the

pontiffs trampled on the necks of emperors, and called it

trampling super Aspidem et Draconent. I hope you have received

your cargo back undamaged. I was much obliged to you, and am

yours ever.

(471) It was afterwards published separately, under the title of

"Cursory Observations on the Poems Attributed to Thomas Rowley, a

priest of the fifteenth century."-E.

(472) Lord Cadogan married, in 1747, Frances, daughter of the

first Lord Montfort; and secondly, in 1777, Mary, daughter of

Charles Churchill, Esq. by Lady Mary, daughter of Sir Robert

Walpole.-E.

(473) The Emperor Joseph, having been restrained during the

lifetime of Maria Theresa from acting as he wished in

ecclesiastical matters, upon her death, in November, 1780, issued

two ordinances respecting religious orders: by one forbidding the

Roman Catholics to hold correspondence with their chief in

foreign parts; and by the other forbidding any bull or ordinance

of the Pope from being received in his dominions, until

sanctioned by him. In 1782, he directed the suppression of the

religious houses; upon which he was visited at Vienna by the

Pope, who was received with great respect, but was unable to

procure any intermission in the Emperor's ecclesiastical

reforms.-E.

Letter 243 To The Hon. George Hardinge.

March 8, 1782. (page 309)

It is very pleasing to receive congratulation from a friend on a

friend's success: that success, however, is not so agreeable as

the universal esteem allowed to Mr. Conway's character, which not

only accompanies his triumph,(474) but I believe contributed to

it. To-day, I suppose, all but his character will be reversed;

for there must have been a miraculous change if the Philistines

do not bear as ample a testimony to their Dagon's honour, as

conviction does to that of a virtuous man. In truth, I am far

from desiring that the Opposition should prevail yet: the nation

is not sufficiently changed, nor awakened enough, and it is sure

of having its feelings repeatedly attacked by more woes; the blow

will have more effect a little time hence: the clamour must be

loud enough to drown the huzzas of five hoarse bodies, the

Scotch, Tories, Clergy, Law, and Army, who would soon croak if

new ministers cannot do what the old have made impossible; and

therefore, till general distress involves all in complaint, and

lays the cause undeniably at the right doors, victory will be but

momentary, and the conquerors would soon be rendered more

unpopular than the vanquished; for, depend upon it, the present

ministers would not be as decent and as harmless an Opposition as

the present. Their criminality must be legally proved and

stigmatised, or the pageant itself would soon be restored to

essence. Base money will pass till cried down. I wish you may

keep your promise of calling upon me better than you have done.

Remember, that though you have time enough before you, I have

not; and, consequently, must be much more impatient for our

meeting than you are, as I am, dear Sir, yours most sincerely.

(474) General Conway had, on the 27th of February, distinguished

himself in the House of Commons by a motion, "That the farther

prosecution of offensive war on the continent of America, for the

purpose of reducing the revolted colonies to obedience by force,

will be the means of weakening the efforts of this country

against her European enemies; tend, under the present

circumstances, to increase the mutual enmity so fatal to the

interests both of Great Britain and America; and, by preventing a

happy reconciliation with that country, to frustrate the earnest

desire graciously expressed by his Majesty, to restore the

blessings of public tranquility." This motion was carried by a

majority of 234 to 213; upon which the General moved an humble

address to his Majesty thereupon, which was carried without a

division.-E.

Letter 244 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.

Berkeley Square, March 9, 1782. (page 310)

Though I have scarce time, I must write a line to thank you for

the print of Mr. Cowper, and to tell you how ashamed I am that

You should have so much attention to me, on the slightest wish I

express, when I fear my gratitude is not half so active, though

it ought to exceed obligations.

Dr. Farmer has been with me; and though it was but a short visit,

he pleased me so much by his easy simplicity and good sense, that

I wish for more acquaintance with him.

I do not know whether the Emperor will atone to you for

demolishing the cross, by attacking the crescent. The papers say

he has declared war with the Turks. He seems to me to be a

mountebank who professes curing all diseases. As power is his

Only panacea, the remedy methinks is worse than the disease.

Whether Christianity will be laid aside, I cannot say. As

nothing of the spirit is left, the forms, I think, signify very

little. Surely it is not an age of morality and principle; does

it import whether profligacy is baptized or not? I look to

motives, not to professions. I do not approve of convents: but,

if Caesar wants to make soldiers of monks, I detest his

reformation, and think that men had better not procreate than

commit murder; nay, I believe that monks get more children than

soldiers do; but what avail abstracted speculations? Human

passions wear the dresses of the times, and carry on the same

views, though in different habits. Ambition and interest set up

religions or pull them down, as fashion presents a handle; and

the conscientious must be content when the mode favours their

wishes, or sigh when it does not.

Letter 245 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.

April 13, 1782. (page 310)

Your partiality to me, my good Sir, is much overseen, if you

think me fit to correct your Latin. Alas! I have not skimmed ten

pages of Latin these dozen years. I have dealt in nothing but

English, French, and a little Italian; and do not think. if my

life depended on it, I could write four lines of pure Latin. I

have had occasion, once or twice to speak the language, and soon

found that all my verbs were Italian with Roman terminations. I

would not on any account draw you into a scrape, by depending on

my skill in what I have half forgotten. But you are in the

metropolis of Latium. If you distrust your own knowledge, which

I do not, especially from the specimen you have sent me, surely

you must have good critics at your elbow to consult.

In truth, I do not love Roman inscriptions in lieu of our own

language, though, if any where, proper in an university; neither

can I approve writing what the Romans themselves would not

understand. What does it avail to give a Latin tail to a

Guildhall? Though the word used by moderns, would mayor convey

to Cicero the idea of a mayor? Architectus, I believe, is the

right word; but I doubt whether veteris jam perantiquae is

classic for a dilapidated building--but do not depend on me;

consult some better judges.

Though I am glad of the late revolution,(475) a word for which I

have great reverence, I shall certainly not dispute with you

thereon. I abhor exultation. If the change produces peace, I

shall make a bonfire in my heart. Personal interest I have none;

you and I shall certainly never profit by the politics to which

we are attached. The Archaeologic Epistle I admire exceedingly,

though I am sorry it attacks Mr. Bryant, whom I love and respect.

The Dean is so absurd an oaf, that he deserves to be ridiculed.

Is any thing more hyperbolic than his preference of Rowley to

Homer, Shakspeare, and Milton. Whether Rowley or Chatterton was

the author, are the poems in any degree comparable to those

authors? is not a ridiculous author an object of ridicule? I do

not even guess at your meaning in your conclusive paragraph on

that subject. Dictionary writer I suppose alludes to Johnson;

but surely you do not equal the compiler of a dictionary to a

genuine poet? Is a brickmaker on a level with Mr. Essex? Nor

can I hold that exquisite wit and satire are Billingsgate; if

they were, Milles and Johnson would be able to write an answer to

the epistle. I do as little guess whom you mean that got a

pension by Toryism: if Johnson too, he got a pension for having

abused pensioners, and yet took one himself, which was

contemptible enough. Still less know I who preferred opposition

to principles, which is not a very common case; whoever it was,

as Pope says,

"The way he took was strangely round about."

With Mr. Chamberlayne I was very little acquainted, nor ever saw

him six times in my life. It was with Lord Walpole's branch he

was intimate, and to whose eldest son Mr. Chamberlayne had been

tutor. This poor gentleman had a most excellent character

universally, and has been more feelingly regretted than almost

any man I ever knew.(476) This is all I am able to tell you. I

forgot to say, I am also in the, dark as to the person you guess

for the author of the Epistle. it cannot be the same person to

whom it is generally attributed; who certainly neither has a

pension nor has deserted his principles, nor has reason to be

jealous of those he laughed at; for their abilities are far below

his. I do not mean that it is his, but is attributed to him. It

was sent to me; nor did I ever see a line of it till I read it in

print. In one respect it is most credible to be his; for there

are not two such inimitable poets in England.(477) I smiled on

reading it, and said to myself, "Dr. Glynn is well off to have

escaped!" His language Indeed about me has been Billingsgate;

but peace be to his and the manes of Rowley, if they have ghosts

who never existed. The Epistle has not put an end to that

controversy, which was grown so tiresome. I rejoice at having

kept my resolution of not writing a word more on that subject.

The Dean had swollen it to an enormous bladder; the Archaeologic

poet pricked it with a pin; a sharp one indeed, and it burst.

Pray send me a better account of yourself if you can.

(475) The resignation of Lord North, and the formation of the

Rockingham administration.-E.

(476) Edward Chamberlayne, Esq. recently appointed secretary of

the treasury. He was so overcome by a nervous terror of the

responsibility of the office, that he committed suicide, by

throwing himself out of a window on the 6th of April. On the

following day, Hannah More sent the subjoined account of this

melancholy event to her sister:--"Chamberlayne! the amiable, the

accomplished, the virtuous, the religious Chamberlayne! in the

full vigour of his age, high in reputation, happy in his

prospects, threw him self out of the Treasury window, was taken

up alive, and lived thirty-six hours in the most perfect

possession of his mental activity, his religion, and his

reasoning faculties. With an astonishing composure he settled

his affairs with both worlds. He never seemed to feel any

remorse, or to reproach his conscience with the guilt of suicide.

In vain had they entreated him to accept of this place. In a

fatal moment he consented: after this, he never had a moment's

peace, and little or no sleep; this brought on a slow nervous

fever, but not to confine him a moment. I saw him two days

before. He looked pale and eager, and talked with great disgust

of his place, on my congratulating him on such an acquisition.

We chatted away, however, and he grew pleasant; and we parted--

never to meet again."-E.

(477) In a review of the edition of the Works of Mason which

appeared in 1816, the quarterly Review, after expressing a wish

that this and the Heroic Epistle to Sir William Chambers had been

included in the collection, says, "The Archaeological Epistle was

an hasty but animated effusion, drawn forth by the Rowleian

Controversy, and dressed in the garb of old English verse, in

order to obviate the argument drawn from the difficulty of

writing in the language of the fifteenth century. The task might

indeed have been per; formed by many; but the sentiments accorded

with the known declarations of Mason." Vol. xv. p. 385.-E.

Letter 246 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.

Berkeley Square, May 24, 1782. (page 312)

You are always kind to me, dear Sir, in all respects, but I have

been forced to recur to a rougher prescription than ass's milk.

The pain and oppression on my breast obliged me to be blooded two

days together, which removed my cold and fever; but, as I

foresaw, left me the gout in their room. I have had it in my

left foot and hand for a week, but it is going. This cold is very

epidemic. I have at least half a dozen nieces and great-nieces

confined with it. but it is not dangerous or lasting. I shall

send you, within this day or two, the new edition of my Anecdotes

of Painting; you will find very little new: it is a cheap edition

for the use of artists, and that at least they who really want

the book, and not the curiosity, may have it, without being

forced to give the outrageous price at which the Strawberry

edition sells, merely because it is rare.

I could assure Mr. Gough, that the Letter on Chatterton cost me 6

very small pains. I had nothing to do but recollect and relate

the exact truth. There has been published another piece on it,

which I cannot tell whether meant to praise or to blame me, so

wretchedly is it written; and I have received another anonymous

one, dated Oxford, (which may be to disguise Cambridge) and which

professes to treat me very severely, though stuffed with fulsome

compliments. It abuses me for speaking modestly of myself--a

fault I hope I shall never mend; avows agreeing with me on the

supposition of the poems, which may be a lie, for it is not

uncharitable to conclude that an anonymous writer is a liar;

acquits me of being at all accessory to the poor lad's

catastrophe; and then, with most sensitive nerves, is shocked to

death, and finds me guilty of it, for having, after it happened,

dropped, that had he lived he might have fallen into more serious

forgeries, though I declare that I never heard that he did. To

be sure, no Irishman ever blundered more than to accuse one of an

ex post facto murder! If this Hibernian casuist is smitten

enough with his own miscarriage to preserve it in a magazine

phial, I shall certainly not answer it, not even by this couplet

which is suggested:

So fulsome, yet so captious too, to tell you much it grieves me,

That though your flattery makes me sick, your peevishness

relieves me.

Adieu, my good Sir. Pray inquire for your books, if you do not

receive them: they go by the Cambridge Fly.

Letter 247 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.

Berkeley Square, June 1, 1782. (page 313)

I thank you much, dear Sir, for your kind intention about

Elizabeth of York;. but it would be gluttony and rapacity to

accept her: I have her already in the picture of her

marriage,(478) which was Lady Pomfret's; besides Vertue's print

of her, with her husband, son, and daughter-in-law. In truth I

have not room for any more pictures any where; yet, without

plundering you, or without impoverishing myself, I have

supernumerary pictures with which I can furnish your vacancies;

but I must get well first to look them out. As yet I cannot walk

alone; and my posture, as you see, makes me write ill. It is

impossible to recover in such weather--never was such a sickly

time.

I have not yet seen Bishop Newton's life. I will not give three

guineas for what I would not give threepence, his Works; his

Life,(479) I Conclude, will be borrowed by all the magazines, and

there I shall see it.

I know nothing of Acciliator--I have forgotten some of my good

Latin, and luckily never knew any bad; having always detested

monkish barbarism. I have just finished Mr. Pennant's new

volume, parts of which amused me; though I knew every syllable,

that was worth knowing before, for there is not a word of

novelty; and it is tiresome his giving such long extracts out of

Dugdale and other common books, and telling one long stories

about all the most celebrated characters in the English history,

besides panegyrics on all who showed him their houses: but the

prints are charming; though I cannot conceive why he gave one of

the Countess of Cumberland, who never did any thing worth memory,

but recording the very night on which she conceived.

"The Fair Circassian" was written by a Mr. Pratt, who has

published several works under the name of Courtney Melmoth.(480)

The play might have been written by Cumberland, it is bad enough.

I did read the latter's coxcombical Anecdotes,(481) but saw

nothing on myself, except mention of my Painters. Pray what is

the passage you mean on me or Vertue? Do not write on purpose to

answer this, it is not worth while.

(478) This picture of the marriage of Elizabeth of York with

Henry the Seventh was painted by Mabuse, and is described in

Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting.-E.

(479) Shortly after the death of Bishop Newton, his Works were

published, with an autobiographical Memoir, in two volumes

quarto. The prelate, speaking, in this Memoir, of Johnson's

Lives of the Poets, having observed, that "candour was much hurt

and offended at the malevolence that predominated in every part,"

the Doctor, in a conversation with Dr. Adams, master of Pembroke

College, Oxford, thus retaliated on his townsman:--"Tom knew he

should be dead before what he said of me would appear: he durst

not have printed it while he was alive." Dr. Adams: "I believe

his Dissertations on the Prophecies' is his great work."

Johnson: "Why, Sir, it is Tom's great work; but how far it is

great, or how much of it is Tom's, are other questions. I fancy

a considerable part of it was borrowed." Dr. Adams: "He was a

very successful man." Johnson: "I don't think so, Sir. He did

not get very high. He was late in getting what he did get, and

he did not get it by the best means. I believe he was a gross

flatterer."-Life, vol. viii. p. 286.-E.

(480) Mr. Pratt was the author of "Gleanings in England,"

"Gleanings through Wales, Holland, and Westphalia," and many

other works which enjoyed a temporary popularity, but are now

forgotten. Of Mr. Pratt, the following amusing anecdote is

related by Mr. Gifford, in the Maviad:--"This gentleman lately

put in practice a very notable scheme. Having scribbled himself

fairly out of notice, he found it expedient to retire to the

Continent for a few months, to provoke the inquiries of Mr.

Lane's indefatigable readers. Mark the ingratitude of the

creatures! No inquiries were made, and Mr. Pratt was forgotten

before he had crossed the channel. Ibi omnis efFusus labor--but

what!

The mouse that is content with one poor hole,

Can never be a mouse of any soul:

baffled in this expedient, he had recourse to another, and, while

we were dreaming of nothing less, came before us in the following

paragraph:--"A few days since, died at Basle in Switzerland, the

ingenious Mr. Pratt: his loss will be severely felt by the

literary world, as he joined to the accomplishments of the

gentleman the erudition of the scholar." This was inserted in

the London papers for several days successively; the country

papers too yelled out like syllables of dolour; at length, while

our eyes were yet wet for the irreparable loss we had sustained,

came a second paragraph as follows: "As no event of late has

caused a more general sorrow than the supposed death of the

ingenious Mr. Pratt, we are happy to have it in our power to

assure hiss numerous admirers, that he is as well as they can

wish and (what they will be delighted to hear) busied is

preparing his Travels for the press."-E.

(481) "Anecdotes of Eminent Painters, in Spain during the

Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, with Cursory Remarks upon

the present State of Arts in that Kingdom."

Letter 248 To John Nichols, Esq.

Berkeley Square, June 19, 1782. (page 315)

Sir,

Just this moment, on opening your fifth volume of Miscellaneous

Poems, I find the translation of Cato's speech into Latin,

attributed (by common fame) to Bishop Atterbury. I can most

positively assure you, that that translation was the work of Dr.

Henry Bland, afterwards Head-master of Eton school, Provost of

the college there, and Dean of Durham. I have more than once

heard my father Sir Robert Walpole say, that it was he himself

who gave that translation to Mr. Addison, who was extremely

surprised at the fidelity and beauty of it. It may be worth

while, Sir, on some future occasion, to mention this fact in some

one of your valuable and curious publications. I am, Sir, with

great regard.

Letter 249 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.

Berkeley Square, June 21, 1782. (page 315)

It is no trouble, my good Sir, to write to you, for I am as well

recovered as I generally do. I am very sorry you do not, and

especially in your hands, as your pleasure and comforts so much

depend on them. Age is by no means a burden while it does not

subject one to depend on others; when it does, it reconciles one

to quitting every thing; at least I believe you and I think so,

who do not look on solitude as a calamity. I shall go to

Strawberry to-morrow, and will, as I might have thought of doing,

consult Dugdale and Collins for the Duke of Ireland's inferior

titles. Mr. Gough I shall be glad of seeing when I am settled

there, which will not be this fortnight. I think there are but

eleven parts of Marianne, and that it breaks off in the nun's

story, which promised to be very interesting. Marivaux never

finished Marianne, nor the Paysan Parvenu (which was the case too

with the younger Cr`ebillon with Les Egaremens.) I have seen two

bad conclusions of Marianne by other hands. Mr. Cumberland's

brusquerie is not worth notice, nor did I remember it. Mr.

Pennant's impetuosity you must overlook too; though I love your

delicacy about your friend's memory. Nobody that knows you will

suspect you of wanting it; but, in the ocean of books that

overflows every day, who will recollect a thousandth part of what

is in most of them? By the number of writers one should

naturally suppose there were multitudes of readers; but if there

are, which I doubt, the latter read only the productions of the

day. Indeed, if they did read former publications, they would

have no occasion to read the modern, which, like Mr. Pennant's,

are borrowed wholesale from the more ancient: it is sad to say,

that the borrowers add little new but mistakes. I have just been

turning over Mr. Nichols's eight volumes of Select Poems, which

he has swelled unreasonably with large collops of old authors,

most of whom little deserved revivifying. I bought them for

the biographical notes, in which I have found both inaccuracies

and blunders. For instance, one that made me laugh. In Lord

Lansdown's Beauties he celebrates a lady, one Mrs. Vaughan *

Mr. Nichols turns to the peerage of that time, and finds a Duke

of Bolton married a Lady Ann Vaughan; he instantly sets her down

for the lady in question, and introduces her to posterity as a

beauty. Unluckily, she was a monster, so ugly, that the Duke,

then Marquis of Winchester, being forced by his father to marry

her for her great fortune, was believed never to have

consummated' and parted from her as soon as his father died; but,

if our predecessors are exposed to these misrepresentations, what

shall we be, when not only all private history is detailed in the

newspapers, but scarce ever with tolerable fidelity! I have long

said, that if a paragraph in a newspaper contains a word of

truth, it is sure to be accompanied with two or three blunders;

yet, who will believe that papers published in the face of the

whole town should be nothing but magazines of lies, every one of

which fifty persons could contradict and disprove? Yet so it

certainly is, and future history will probably be ten times

falser than all preceding. Adieu! Yours most sincerely.

Letter 250 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.

Strawberry Hill, July 23, 1782. (page 316)

I have been more dilatory than usual, dear Sir, in replying to

your last; but it called for no particular answer, nor have I now

any thing worth telling you. Mr. Gough and Mr. Nichols dined

with me on Saturday last. I lent the former three-and-twenty

drawings of monuments out of Mr. Lethieullier's books, for his

large work, which will be a magnificent one. Mr. Nichols is, as

you say, a very rapid editor, and I must commend him for being a

very accurate one. I scarce ever saw a book so correct as his

Life of Mr. Bowyer. I wish it deserved the pains he has bestowed

on it every way, and that he would not dub so many men great. I

have known several of his heroes who were very little men. Dr.

Mead had nothing but pretensions; and Philip Carteret Webb was a

sorry knave, with still less foundation. To what a slender total

do those shrink who are the idols of their own age! How very few

are known at all at the end of the next century! But there is a

chapter in Voltaire that would cure any body of being a great man

even in his own eyes. It is a chapter in which a Chinese goes

into a bookseller's shop, and marvels at not finding any of his

own country's classics. It is a chapter that ought never to be

out of the sight of any vain author. I have just got the

catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Museum. It is every way

piteously dear; the method is extremely puzzling, and the

contents chiefly rubbish: who would give a rush for Dr. Birch's

correspondence? many of the pieces are in print. In truth, I

set little store by a collection of manuscripts. A work must be

of little value that never could get into print; I mean, if it

has existed half a century. The articles that diverted me most

were an absolute novelty; I knew Henry VIII. was a royal author,

but not a royal quack. There are several receipts of his own,

and this delectable one amongst others. "The King's Grace's

oyntement made at St. James's, to coole, and dry, and comfort the

--." Another, to the same purpose, was devised at Cawoode,--was

not that an episcopal palace? How devoutly was the head of the

church employed! I hope that you have recovered your spirits;

and that summer, which is arrived at last, will make a great

amendment in you.

Letter 251To The Earl Of Strafford.

Strawberry Hill, August 16, 1782. (page 317)

If this letter reaches your lordship, I believe it must be

conveyed by a dove; for we are all under water, and a postman has

not where to set the sole of his foot. They tell me, that in the

north you have not been so drowned, which will be very fortunate:

for in these parts every thing is to be apprehended for the corn,

the sheep, and the camps: but, in truth, all kinds of prospects

are most gloomy, and even in lesser lights uncomfortable. Here

we cannot stir, but armed for battle. Mr. Potts, who lives at

Mr. Hindley's, was attacked and robbed last week at the end of

Gunnersbury-lane, by five footpads who had two blunderbusses.

Lady Browne and I do continue going to Twickenham park; but I

don't know how long it will be prudent, nor whether it is so now.

I have not been at Park-place, for Mr. Conway is never there, at

least only for a night or two. His regiment was reviewed

yesterday at Ashford-common, but I did not go to see it. In

truth, I have so little taste for common sights, that I never yet

did see a review in my life: I was in town last week, yet saw not

Monsieur de Grasse;(482) nor have seen the giant or the dwarf.

Poor Mrs. Clive is certainly very declining, but has been better

of late; and which I am glad of, thinks herself better. All

visions that comfort one are desirable: the conditions of

mortality do not bear being pryed into; nor am I an admirer of

that philosophy that scrutinizes into them: the philosophy of

deceiving one's self is vastly preferable. What signifies

anticipating what we cannot prevent?

I do not pretend to send your lordship any news, for I do not

know a tittle, nor inquire. Peace is the sole event of which I

wish to hear. For private news, I have outlived almost all the

world with which I was acquainted, and have no curiosity about

the next generation, scarce more than about the twentieth

century. I wish I was less indifferent, for the sake of the few

with whom I correspond,-your lordship in particular, who are

always so good and partial to me, and on whom I should

indubitably wait, were I fit to take a long journey; but as I

walk no better than a tortoise, I make a conscience of not

incommodating my friends, whom I should Only Confine at home.

Indeed both my feet and hands are so lame, that I now scarce ever

dine abroad. Being so antiquated and insipid, I will release

your lordship; and am, with my unalterable respects to Lady

Strafford, your lordship's most devoted humble servant.

(482) The Comte de Grasse, the admiral of the French fleet which

Rodney defeated on the 12th of April, 1782, and who had struck

his flag in that engagement to the Barbeur, and surrendered

himself to Sir Samuel Hood, landed at Portsmouth, as a prisoner

of war, on the 5th of August.-E.

Letter 252 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.(483)

Strawberry Hill, August 20, 1782. (page 318)

You know I am too reasonable to expect to hear from you when you

are so overwhelmed in business, or to write when I have nothing

upon earth to say. I would come to town, but am to have company

on Thursday, and am engaged with Lady Cecilia at Ditton on

Friday,

and On Monday I am to dine and pass the day at Sion-hill; and, as

I am twenty years older than any body of my age, I am forced to

rest myself between my parties. I feel this particularly at this

moment, as the allied houses of Lucan and Althorpe have just been

breakfasting here, and I am sufficiently fatigued.

I have not been at Oatlands for years; for consider I cannot

walk, much less climb a precipice; and the Duke of Newcastle has

none of the magnificence of petty princes in a romance or in

Germany, of furnishing calashes to those who visit his domains.

He is not undetermined about selling the place; but besides that

nobody is determined to buy it, he must have Lord Lincoln's

consent.

I saw another proud prince yesterday, your cousin Seymour from

Paris, and his daughter. She was so dishevelled, that she looked

like a pattern doll that had been tumbled at the Custom-house.

I am mighty glad that war has gone to sleep like a paroli at

faro, and that the rain has cried itself to death; unless the

first would dispose of all the highwaymen, footpads, and

housebreakers, or the latter drown them, for nobody hereabouts

dare stir after dusk, nor be secure at home. When you have any

interval Of Your little campaigns, I shall hope to see you and

Lady Ailesbury here.

(483) Now first printed.

Letter 253 To The Earl Of Buchan.(484)

Strawberry Hill, Sept. 15, 1782. (page 319)

I congratulate your lordship on the acquisition of a valuable

picture by Jameson. The Memoirs of your Society I have not yet

received; but when I do, shall read it with great pleasure, and

beg your lordship to offer my grateful thanks to the members, and

to accept them yourself.

No literature appears here at this time of the year. London, I

hear, is particularly empty. Not only the shooting season is

begun, but till about seventeen days ago, there was nothing but

incessant rains, and not one summer's day. A catalogue, in two

quartos, of the Manuscripts in the British Museum, and which

thence does not seem to contain great treasures, and Mr.

Tyrwhitt's book on the Rowleian controversy, which is reckoned

completely victorious, are all the novelties I have seen since I

left town. War and politics occupy those who think at all-no

great number neither; and most of those, too, are content with

the events of the day, and forget them the next. But it is too

like an old man to blame the age; and, as I have nothing to do

with it, I may as well be silent and let it please itself. I am,

with great regard, my lord, yours, etc.

(484) Now first collected.

Letter 254 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.

Strawberry Hill, Sept. 17, 1782. (page 319)

I had not time yesterday to say what I had to say about your

coming hither. I should certainly be happy to see you and Lady

Ailesbury at any time: but it would be unconscionable to expect

it when you have scarce a whole day in a month to pass at your

own house, and to look after your own works. Friends, I know,

lay as great stress upon trifles as upon serious points; but as

there never was a more sincere attachment than mine, so it is the

most reasonable one too for I always think for you more than

myself. Do whatever you have to do, and be assured, that is what

I like best that you should do. The present hurry cannot last

always. Your present object is to show how much more fit you are

for your post(485) than any other man; by which you will do

infinite service too, and will throw a great many private acts of

good-nature and justice into the account. Do you think I would

stand in the way of any of these things? and that I am not aware

of them? Do you think about me? If it suits you at any moment,

come. Except Sunday next, when I am engaged to dine abroad, I

have nothing to do till the middle of October, when I shall go to

Nuneham; and, going or coming, may possibly catch you at

Park-place.

I am not quite credulous about your turning smoke into gold:(486)

it is perhaps because I am ignorant. I like Mr. Mapleton

extremely; and though I have lived so long, that I have little

confidence, I think you could not have chosen one more likely to

be faithful. I am sensible that my kind of distrust would

prevent all great enterprises; and yet I cannot but fear, that

unless one gives one's self' up entirely to the pursuit of a new

object, this risk must be doubled. But I will say no more; for I

do not even wish to dissuade you, as I am sure I understand

nothing of the matter, and therefore mean no more than to keep

your discretion awake.

The tempest of Monday night alarmed me too for the fleet: and as

I have nothing to do but to care, I feel for individuals as well

as for the public, and think of all those who may be lost, and of

all those who may be made miserable by such loss. Indeed, I care

most for individuals; for as to the public, it seems to be

totally insensible to every thing! I know nothing worth

repeating; and having now answered all your letter, shall bid you

good night. Yours ever.

(485) Mr. Conway was now commander-in-chief.

(486) Alluding to the coke-ovens, for which Mr. Conway afterwards

obtained a patent.

Letter 255 To The Earl Of Strafford.

Strawberry Hill, Oct. 3, 1782. (page 320)

I did think it long since I had the honour of hearing from your

lordship; but, conscious how little I could repay you with any

entertainment, I waited with patience. In fact, I believe

summer-correspondences often turn on complaints of want of news.

it is unlucky that that is generally the season of

correspondence, as it is of separation. People assembled in a

capital contrive to furnish matter, but then they have not

occasion to write it. Summer, being the season of campaigns,

ought to be more fertile: I am glad when that is not the case,

for what is an account of battles but a list of burials?

Vultures and birds of prey might write with pleasure to their

correspondents in the Alps of such events; but they ought to be

melancholy topics to those who have no beaks or talons. At this

moment if I was an epicure among the sharks, I should rejoice

that General Elliot has just sent the carcases of fifteen hundred

Spaniards down to market under Gibraltar;(487) but I am more

pleased that he despatched boats, and saved some of those whom he

had overset. What must a man of so much feeling have suffered at

being forced to do his duty so well as he has done! I remember

hearing such another humane being, that brave old admiral Sir

Charles Wager, say, that in his life be had never killed a fly.

This demolition of the Spanish armada is a great event: a very

good one if it prevents a battle between Lord Howe and the

combined fleets, as I should hope; and yet better if it produces

peace, the only political crisis to which I look with eagerness.

Were that happy

moment arrived, there is ample matter to employ our great men, if

we have any, in retrieving the affairs of this country, if they

are to be retrieved. But though our sedentary politicians write

abundance of letters in the newspapers, full of plans of public

spirit, I doubt the nation is not sober enough to set about its

own work in earnest. When none reform themselves, little good is

to be expected, We see by the excess of highwaymen how far evils

may go before any attempt is made to cure them. I am sure, from

the magnitude of this inconvenience, that I am not talking merely

like an old man. I have lived here above thirty years, and used

to go every where round at all hours of the night without any

precaution. I cannot now stir a mile from my own house after

sunset without one or two servants with blunderbusses. I am not

surprised your lordship's pheasants were stolen: a woman was

taken last Saturday night loaded with nine geese, and they say

has impeached a gang Of fourteen housebreakers -but these are

undergraduates; when they should have taken their doctor's

degrees, they would not have piddled in such little game. Those

regius-professors the nabobs have taught men not to plunder for

farthings.

I am very sensible of your lordship's kindness to my nephew Mr.

Cholmondeley. He is a sensible, well-behaved young man, and, I

trust, would not have abused your goodness. Mr. Mason writes to

me, that he shall be at York at the end of this month. I was to

have gone to Nuneham; but the house is so little advanced, that

it is a question whether they can receive me. Mason, I doubt, has

been idle there. I am sure, if he found no muses there, he could

pick up none at Oxford, where there is not so much as a bedmaker

that ever lived in a muse's family. Tonton begs his duty to all

the lambs, and trusts that Lady Strafford will not reject his

homage.

(487) On the 13th of September, when General Elliot repulsed the

grand attack made on Gibraltar - and Captain Curtis of the

Brilliant, who commanded the marine brigade upon the occasion,

and his men, saved numbers of the Spaniards, at the hazard of

their own lives.-E.

Letter 256 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.

Strawberry Hill, Nov. 5, 1782. (page 321)

I had begun a letter in answer to another person, which I have

broken off on receiving yours, dear Sir. I am exceedingly

concerned at the bad account you give of yourself; and yet on

weighing it, I flatter myself that you are not Only out of all

danger, but have had a fortunate crisis, which I hope will

Prolong your life. A bile surmounted is a present from nature to

us, who are not boys: and though you speak as weary of life from

sufferings, and yet with proper resignation and philosophy, it

does not frighten me, as I know that any humour and gathering,

even in the gum, is strangely dispiriting. I do not write merely

from sympathizing friendship, but to beg that if your bile is not

closed or healing, you will let me know; for the bark is

essential, yet very difficult to have genuine. My apothecary

here, I believe, has some very good, and I will send you some

directly.

I will thank you, but not trouble you with an account of myself.

I had no fit of the gout, nor any new complaint; but it is with

the utmost difficulty I keep the humour from laming me entirely,

especially in my hands, which are a mine of chalk-stones; but, as

they discharge themselves, I flatter myself they prevent heavier

attacks.

I do take in the European Magazine, and think it in general one

of the best. I forgot what was said of me: sometimes I am

corrected, sometimes flattered, and care for neither. I have not

seen the answer to Mr. Warton, but will send for it.

I shall not be sorry on my own account if Dr. Lort quits Lambeth,

and comes to Saville-row, which is in my neighbourhood; but I did

not think a wife was the stall where he would set up his staff.

You have given me the only reason why I cannot be quite sorry

that you do not print what you had prepared for the press. No

kind intention towards me from you surprises me-but then I want

no new proofs. My wish, for whatever shall be the remainder of

my life is to be quiet and forgotten. Were my course to

recommence, and one could think in youth as one does at

sixty-five, I have no notion I should have courage to appear as

an author. Do you know, too, that I look on fame now as the

idlest of all visions? but this theme would lead me too far.

I collect a new comfort from your letter. The writing is much

better than in most of your latest letters. If your pain were

not ceased, you could not have formed your letters so firmly and

distinctly. I will not say more, lest I should draw you into

greater fatigue; let me have but a single line in answer. Yours

most cordially.(488)

(488) This is the last letter addressed by Walpole to Mr. Cole;

who died within six weeks of the date of it. The event is thus

recorded by Mr. Gough, in the second volume of his edition of

Camden's Britannia. "At Milton a small village on the Ely road,

was the retirement of the Rev. William Cole. Here, Dec. 16,

1782, in his sixty-eighth year, he closed a life spent in learned

research into the history and antiquities of this county in

particular, which nothing but his declining state of health

prevented this work from sharing the benefit of. He was buried

under the belfry of St. Clement's Church in Cambridge."-E.

Letter 257 To George Colman, Esq.(489)

Strawberry Hill, May 10, 1783. (page 322)

Dear Sir,

For so you must allow me to call you, after your being so kind as

to send me so valuable and agreeable a present as your

translation of Horace(490)--I wish compliment had left any term

uninvaded, Of which sincerity could make use without suspicion.

Those would be precisely what I would employ in commending your

poem; and, if they proved too simple to content my gratitude, I

would be satisfied with an offering to truth, and wait for a

nobler opportunity of sacrificing to the warmer virtue. If I

have not lost my memory, your translation is the best I have ever

seen of that difficult epistle. Your expression is easy and

natural, and when requisite, poetic. In short, it has a prime

merit, it has the air of an original.

Your hypothesis in your commentary is very ingenious. I do not

know whether it is true, which now cannot be known; but if the

scope of the epistle was, as you suppose, to hint in a delicate

and friendly manner to the elder of Piso's sons that he had

written a bad tragedy, Horace had certainly executed his plan

with great address; and, I think, nobody will be able to show

that any thing in the poem clashes with your idea. Nay, if he

went farther, and meant to disguise his object, by giving his

epistle the air of general rules on poetry and tragedy, he

achieved both purposes; and while the youth his friend was at

once corrected and put to no shame, all other readers were kept

in the dark, except you, and diverted to different scents.(491)

Excuse my commenting your comment, but I had no other way of

proving that I really approve both your version and criticism

than by stating the grounds of my applause. If you have wrested

the sense of the original to favour your own hypothesis, I have

not been able to discover your art; for I do not perceive where

it has been employed. If you have given Horace more meaning than

he was intitled to, you have conferred a favour on him, for you

have made his whole epistle consistent, a beauty all the

spectacles of all his commentators could not find out-but,

indeed, they proceed on the profound laws of criticism, you by

the laws of common sense, which, marching on a plain natural

path, is very apt to arrive sooner at the goal, than they who

travel on the Appian Way; which was a very costly and durable

work, but is very uneasy, and at present does not lead to a

quarter of the places to which it was originally directed.

I am, Sir, with great regard, your most

obedient and obliged humble servant.

(489) Now first collected.

(490) His translation of Horace's Epistola ad Pisones de Arte

Poeticae.-E.

(491) It had been the opinion of Bishop Hurd, that - it was the

proper and sole purpose of ,Horace simply to criticise the Roman

drama;" but Mr. Colman assumed a contrary ground. "If my

partiality to my lamented friend, Mr. Colman," says Dr. Joseph

Warton, "does not mislead me, I should think his account of the

matter the most judicious of any yet published. He conceives

that the elder Piso had written, or meditated, a Poetical

work-probably, a tragedy, and had communicated his piece in

confidence to Horace; but Horace, either disapproving of the

work, or doubting of the poetical faculties of the elder Piso, or

both, wished to dissuade him from all thoughts of publication.

With this view he wrote his Epistle, addressing it, with a

courtliness and delicacy perfectly agreeable to his acknowledged

character, indifferently to the whole family, the father and his

two sons."-E.

Letter 258 To The Earl Of Buchan.(492)

Strawberry Hill, May 12, 1783. (page 324)

My lord,

I did not know, till I received the honour of your lordship's

letter, that any obstruction had been given to your charter. I

congratulate your lordship and the Society on the defeat of that

opposition, which does not seem to have been a liberal one. The

pursuit of national antiquities has rarely been an object, I

believe, with any university: why should they obstruct others

from marching in that track? I have often thought the English

Society of Antiquaries have gone out of their way when they

meddled with Roman remains, especially if not discovered within

our island. Were I to speak out, I should own, that I hold most

reliques of the Romans that have been found in Britain, of little

consequence, unless relating to such emperors as visited us.

Provincial armies stationed in so remote and barbarous a quarter

as we were then, acted little, produced little worth being

remembered. Tombstones erected to legionary officers and their

families, now dignified by the title of inscriptions; and banks

and ditches that surrounded camps, which we understand much

better by books and plans, than by such faint fragments, are

given with much pomp, and tell us nothing new. Your lordship's

new foundation seems to proceed on a much more rational and

useful plan. The biography of the illustrious of your country

will be an honour to Scotland, to those illustrious, and to the

authors: and may contribute considerably to the general history;

for the investigation of particular lives may bring out many

anecdotes that may unfold secrets of state, or explain passages

in such histories as have been already written; especially as the

manners of the times may enter into private biography, though

before Voltaire manners were rarely weighed in general history,

though very often the sources of considerable events. I shall be

very happy to see such lives as shall be published, while I

remain alive. I cannot contribute any thing of consequence to

your lordship's meditated account of John Law. I have heard many

anecdotes of him, though none that I can warrant, particularly

that of the duel for which he fled early.(493) I met the other

day with an account in some French literary gazette, I forget

which, of his having carried off the wife of another man. Lady

Catherine Law, his wife, lived, during his power in France, in

the most stately manner. Your lordship knows, to be sure, that

he died and is buried at Venice. I have two or three different

prints of him, and an excellent head of him in crayons by

Rosalba, the best of her portraits. It is certainly very like,

for, were the flowing wig converted into a female head-dress, it

would be the exact resemblance of Lady Wallingford, his daughter,

whom I See frequently at the Duchess of Montrose's, and who has

by no means a look of the age to which she is arrived. Law was a

very extraordinary man, but not at all an estimable one.

I don't remember whether I ever told your lordship that there are

many charters of your ancient kings preserved in the Scots

College at Paris, and probably many other curiosities. I think I

did mention many paintings of the old house of Lenox in the

ancient castle at Aubigny.

(492) Now first collected.

(493) Evelyn, in his Diary, gives the following account of this

duel:--"April 22 1694. A very young man, named Wilson, the

younger son of one who had not above two hundred pounds a-year

estate, lived in the garb and equipage of the richest nobleman,

for house, furniture, coaches, saddle-horses, and kept a table

and all things accordingly, redeemed his father's estate, and

gave portions to his sisters, being challenged by one Laws, a

Scotchman, was killed in a duel, not fairly. The quarrel arose

from his taking away his own sister from a lodging in a house

where this Laws had a mistress , which the mistress of the house

thinking a disparagement to it, and losing by it, instigated Laws

to this duel. He was taken, and condemned for murder. The

mystery is, how this so young a gentleman, very sober and of good

fame, could live in such an expensive manner; it could not be

discovered by all possible industry, or entreaty of his friends

to make him reveal it. It did not appear that he was kept by

women, play, coining, padding, or dealing in chemistry; but he

would sometimes say, that, if he should live ever so long, he had

wherewith to maintain himself in the same manner, This was a

subject Of much discourse." Law was found guilty of murder, and

sentence of death was passed upon him. He however, found means

to escape, and got clear off to the Continent. A reward of fifty

bounds for is apprehension appeared in the London Gazette of the

7th of January, 1695.-E.

Letter 259 To The Hon. George Hardinge.

Berkeley Square, May 17, 1783. (page 325)

Though I shall not be fixed at Strawberry on this day fortnight,

I will accept your offer, dear Sir, because my time is more at my

disposal than yours, and you May not have any other day to bestow

upon me later. I thank you for your second: which I shall read

as carefully as I did the former. It is not your fault if you

have not yet made Sir Thomas Rumbold white as driven snow to

Me.(494) Nature has providentially given us a powerful antidote

to eloquence, or the criminal that has the best advocate would

escape. But, when rhetoric. and logic stagger my lords the

judges, in steps prejudice, and, without one argument that will

make a syllogism, confutes Messrs. Demosthenes, Tully, and

Hardinge, and makes their lordships see as clearly as any old

woman in England, that belief is a much better rule Of faith than

demonstration. This is Just my case: I do believe, nay, and I

will believe, that no man ever went to India with honest

intentions. If he returns with 100,000 pounds it is plain that I

was in the right. But I have still a stronger proof; my Lord

Coke says "Set a thief to catch a thief;" my Lord Advocate(495)

says, "Sir Thomas is a rogue:" ergo.--I cannot give so complete

an answer to the rest of your note, as I trust I have done to

your pleadings, because the latter is in print, and your note is

manuscript. Now, unfortunately, I cannot read half of it; for,

give me leave to say, that either your hand or my spectacles are

so bad, that I generally guess at your meaning rather than

decipher it, and this time the context has not served me well.

(494) The bill of pains and penalties against Sir Thomas Rumbold,

late governor of Madras, was at this time in its progress through

the House of Commons. On the 1st of July, the further

proceedings upon the bill were adjourned to the 1st of October;

by which means the whole business fell to the ground.-E.

(495) Mr. Dundas, afterwards Lord Melville. "I think him," said

Mr. Wilberforce, in June, 1781, "the first speaker on the

ministerial side in the House of Commons, and there is a

manliness in his character which prevents his running away from

the question; he grants all his adversaries' premises, and fights

them On their own ground." Life, vol. i. P. 21.-E.

Letter 260 To The Earl Of Strafford.

Strawberry Hill, June 24, 1783. (page 326)

Though your lordship's partiality extends even to my letters, you

must perceive that they grow as antiquated as the writer. News

are the soul of letters: when we give them a body of our own

invention, it is as unlike to life as a statue. I have withdrawn

so much from the -world, that the newspapers know every thing

before me, especially since they have usurped the province of

telling every thing, private as -well as public: and

consequently, a great deal more than I should -wish to know, or

like to report. When I do hear the transactions of much younger

people, they do not pass from my ears into my memory; nor does

your lordship interest yourself more about them than I do. Yet

still, when one reduces one's departments to such narrow limits,

one's correspondence suffers by it. However, as I desire to show

only my gratitude and attachment, not my wit, I shall certainly

obey your lordship as long as you are content to read my letters,

after I have told you fairly how little they can entertain you.

For imports of French, I believe we shall have few more. They

have not ruined us so totally by the war, much less enriched

themselves so much by it, but that they who have been here,

complained so piteously of the expensiveness of England, that

probably they will deter others from a similar jaunt; nor, such

is their fickleness, are the French Constant to any thing but

admiration of themselves. Their Anglomanie I hear has mounted,

or descended, from our customs to our persons. English people

are in fashion at Versailles. A Mr. Ellis,(496) who wrote some

pretty verses at Bath two or three years ago, is a favourite

there. One who was so, or may be still, the Beau Dillon, came

upon a very different errand; in short, to purchase at any price

a book written by Linguet, which was just coming out, called

"Antoinette." That will tell your lordship why the Beau

Dillon(497) was the messenger.

Monsieur de Guignes and his daughters came hither; but it was at

eight o'clock at night in the height of the deluge. You may be

sure I was much flattered by such a visit! I was forced to light

candles to show them any thing; and must have lighted the moon to

show them the views. If this is their way of seeing England,

they might as well look at it with an opera-glass from the shores

of Calais.

Mr. Mason is to come to me on Sunday, and will find me mighty

busy in making my lock of hay, which is not Yet cut. I don't

know why, but people are always more anxious about their hay than

their corn, or twenty other things that cost them more. I

suppose my Lord Chesterfield, or some such dictator, made it

fashionable to care about one's hay. Nobody betrays solicitude

about getting in his rents.

We have exchanged spring and summer for autumn and winter, as

well as day for night. If religion or law enjoined people to

love light, and prospect, and verdure, I should not wonder if

perverseness made us hate them; no, nor if society made us prefer

living always in town to solitude and beauty. But that is not

the case. The most fashionable hurry into the country at

Christmas and Easter, let the weather be ever so bad; and the

finest ladies, who will go no whither till eleven at night,

certainly pass more tiresome hours in London alone than they

would in the country. But all this is no business of mine: they

do what they like, and so do I; and I am exceedingly tolerant

about people who are perfectly indifferent to me. The sun and

the seasons were not gone out of fashion when I was young; and I

may do what I will with them now I am old: for fashion is

fortunately no law but to its devotees. Were I five-and-twenty,

I dare to say I should think every whim of my contemporaries very

wise, as I did then. In one light I am always on the side of the

Young, for they only silently despise those who do not conform to

their ordinances; but age is very apt to be angry at the change

of customs, and partial to others no better founded. It is happy

when we are occupied by nothing more serious. It is happy for a

nation when mere fashions are a topic that can employ its

attention; for, though dissipation may lead to graver moments, it

commences with ease and tranquillity: and they at least who live

before the scene shifts are fortunate, considering and comparing

themselves with the various regions who enjoy no parallel

felicity. I confess my reflections are couleur de rose at

present. I did not much expect to live to see peace, without far

more extensive ruin than has fallen on us. I will not probe

futurity in search of less agreeable conjectures.

Prognosticators may see many seeds of dusky hue; but I am too old

to look forwards. Without any omens, common sense tells one,

that in the revolution of ages nations must have unprosperous

periods. But why should I torment myself for what may happen in

twenty years after my death, more than for what may happen in two

hundred? Nor shall I be more interested in the one than in the

other. This is no indifference for my country: I wish it could

always be happy; but so I do to all other countries. Yet who

could ever pass a tranquil moment, if such future speculations

vexed him?

Adieu, my good lord! I doubt this letter has more marks of

senility than the one I announced at the beginning. When I had

no news to send you, it was no reason for tiring you with

commonplaces. But your lordship's indulgence spoils me. Does

not it look as if I thought, that, because you commend my

letters, you would like whatever I say? Will not Lady Strafford

think that I abuse your patience? I ask both your pardons, and

am to both a most devoted humble servant.

(496) George Ellis, Esq.; afterwards a contributor to "The

Rolliad;" a coadjutor of Mr. Canning and Mr. Frere in "The

Anti-Jacobin," and editor of "Specimens of Ancient English

Romances," etc. He died in 1815, at the age of seventy. Sir

Walter Scott, in the introduction to the fifth canto of Marmion,

thus addresses him-

Thou, who can give to lightest lay

An unpedantic moral gay,

Nor less the dullest theme bid flit

On wings of unexpected wit;

In letters as in life approved,

Example honour'd and beloved;

Dear Ellis! to the bard impart

A lesson of thy magic art

To win at once the head and heart,-

At once to charm, instruct, and mend,

My guide, my pattern, and my friend!"-E.

(497) "Colonel Edward Dillon was particularly acquainted with

him," says Wraxall, in his posthumous Memoirs; "he descended, I

believe, collaterally from the noble Irish family of the Earls of

Roscommon, though his father carried on the trade of a

wine-merchant at Bordeaux; but he was commonly called 'Le Comte

Edouard Dillon,' and 'Le Beau Dillon.' In my estimation, he

possessed little pretense to the latter epithet: but surpassed

most men in stature, like Lord Whitworth, Lord Hugh Seymour, and

the other individuals on whom Marie Antoinette cast a favourable

eye. That she showed him some imprudent marks of predilection at

a ball, which, when they took place, excited Comment, is true;

but they prove only indiscretion and levity on her part."-E.

Letter 261 To The Earl Of Strafford.

Strawberry Hill, August 1, 1783. (page 328)

It would be great happiness indeed to me, my dear lord, if such

nothings as my letters could contribute to any part of your

lordship's; but as your own partiality bestows their chief merit

on them, you see they owe More to your friendship than to the

writer. It is not my interest to depreciate them; much less to

undermine the foundation of their sole worth. Yet it would be

dishonest not to warn your lordship, that if my letters have had

any intrinsic recommendation, they must lose of it every day.

Years and frequent returns of gout have made a ruin of me.

Dulness, in the form of indolence, grows upon me. I am inactive,

lifeless, and so indifferent to most things. that I neither

inquire after nor remember any topics that might enliven my

letters. Nothing is so insipid as my way of passing MY time.

But I need not specify what my letters speak. They can have no

spirit left; and would be perfectly inanimate, if attachment and

gratitude to your lordship were as liable to be extinguished by

old age as our more amusing qualities. I make no new connexions;

but cherish those that remain' with all the warmth of youth and

the piety of gray hairs.

The weather here has been, and is, with very few intervals,

sultry to this moment. I think it has been of service to me;

though by overheating Myself I had a few days of lameness. The

harvest is half over already all round us; and so pure, that not

a poppy or cornflower is to be seen. Every field seems to have

been weeded like Brisco's bowling-green. If Ceres, who is at

least as old as many of our fashionable ladies, loves tricking

herself out in flowers as they do, she must be mortified: and

with more reason; for she looks well always with top-knots of

ultramarine and vermilion, which modern goddesses do not for half

so long as they think they do. As Providence showers so many

blessings on us, I wish the peace may confirm them! Necessary I

am sure it was; and when it cannot restore us, where should we

have been had the war continued? Of our situation and prospect I

confess my opinion is melancholy, not from present politics but

from past. We flung away the most brilliant position, I doubt,

for a long season! With politics I have totally done. I wish

the present ministers may last; for I think better of their

principles than of those of their opponents (with a few salvos on

both sides,) and so I do of their abilities. But it would be

folly in me to concern myself about new generations. How little

a way can I see of their progress!

I am rather surprised at the new Countess of Denbigh. How could

a woman be ambitious of resembling Prometheus, to be pawed and

clawed and gnawed by a vulture?(498) I beg your earldom's

pardon; but I could not conceive that a coronet was so very

tempting!

Lady Browne is quite recovered, unless she relapses from what we

suffer at Twickenham-park from a Lord Northesk,(499) an old

seaman, who is come to Richmond on a visit to the Duke of

Montrose. I think the poor man must be out of his senses, at

least he talks us out of ours. It is the most incessant and

incoherent rhapsody that ever was heard. He sits by the

card-table, and pours on Mrs. N * * * all that ever happened in

his voyages or his memory. He details the ship's allowance, and

talks to her as if she was his first-mate. Then in the mornings

he carries his daughter to town to see St. Paul's, and the Tower,

and Westminster Abbey; and at night disgorges all he has seen,

till we don't know the ace of spades from Queen Elizabeth's

pocket-pistol in the armoury. Mercy on us! And mercy on your

lordship too! Why should you be stunned with that alarum? Have

you had your earthquake, my lord? Many have had theirs. I

assure you I have had mine. Above a week ago, when broad awake,

the doors of the cabinet by my bedside rattled, without a breath

of wind. I imagined somebody was walking on the leads, or had

broken into the room under me. It was between four and five in

the morning. I rang my bell. Before my servant could come it

happened again; and was exactly like the horizontal tremor I felt

from the earthquake some years ago. As I had rung once, it is

plain I was awake. I rang again; but heard nothing more. I am

quite persuaded there was some commotion; nor is it surprising

that the dreadful eruptions of fire on the coasts of Italy and

Sicily(500) should have occasioned some alteration that has

extended faintly, hither, and contributed to the heats and mists

that have been so extraordinary. George Montagu said of our last

earthquake, that it was so tame you might have stroked it. It is

comfortable to live where one can reason on them without dreading

them! What satisfaction should you have in having erected such a

monument of your taste, my lord, as Wentworth Castle, if you did

not know but it might be overturned in a moment and crush you?

Sir William Hamilton is expected: he has been groping in all

those devastations. Of all vocations I would not be a professor

of earthquakes! I prefer studies that are couleur de rose; nor

would ever think of calamities, if I can do nothing To relieve

them. Yet this is a weakness of mind that I do not defend. They

are more respectable who can behold philosophically the great

theatre of events, or rather this little theatre of ours! In

some ampler sphere, they may look on the catastrophe of

Messina(501) as we do kicking to Pieces an ant-hill.

Bless me! what a farrago is my letter! It is like the extracts

of books in a monthly magazine! I had no right to censure poor

Lord Northesk's ramblings! Lady Strafford will think he has

infected me. Good-night, my dear lord and lady! Your ever

devoted.

(498) An allusion to Lord Denbigh's figure, and his arms blazoned

on a spread eagle.-E.

(499) George, sixth Earl of Northesk, a naval officer of

distinction, who attained the rank of admiral of the white. He

died in 1792.-E.

(500) In the course of this year a series of violent earthquakes

occurred in Calabria and Sicily. In February, the city of Casal

Nuova was entirely swallowed up; and the Princess Gerace

Grimaldi, with more than four thousand persons, perished in an

instant. The inhabitants of Scylla, who, headed by their Prince,

had descended from the rock and taken refuge on the sea-shore,

were all washed away by an enormous wave, on its return from the

land which it had inundated.-E.

(501) Messina, and all the northern parts of Sicily, suffered

greatly by the convulsions of nature alluded to in the preceding

note.-E.

Letter 262 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.

Strawberry Hill, August 15, 1783. (page 330)

The address from the Volunteers is curious indeed, and upon the

first face a little Irish. What! would they throw off our

Parliament, and yet amend it? It is like correcting a question in

the House of Commons, and then voting against it. But I suppose

they rather mean to increase confusion here, that we may not be

at leisure to impede their progress; at least this may be the

intention of the leaders. Large bodies are only led by being

earnest in themselves, when their leaders are not so: but my head

is not clear enough to apply it to different matters, nor could I

do any good if it were. Our whole system is become a disjointed

chaos, and time must digest it, or blow it up shortly. I see no

way into it, nor expect any thing favourable but from chance,

that often stops confusion on a sudden. To restore us by any

system, it would require a single head furnished with wisdom,

temper, address, fortitude, full and undivided power, and sincere

patriotism divested of all personal views. Where is that prodigy

to be found? and how should it have the power, if it had all the

rest? And if it had the power, how could it be divested of that

power again? And if it were not, how long would it retain its

virtues? Power and wisdom would soon unite, like Antony and

Augustus, to annihilate their colleague virtue, for being a poor

creature like Lepidus. In short, the mass of matter is too big

for me: I am going Out of the world, and cannot trouble myself

about it. I do think of your part in it, and wish to preserve

you where you are, for the benefits that you may contribute. I

have a high opinion of Mr. Fox, and believe that by frankness you

may become real friends, which would be greatly advantageous to

the country. There is no competition in my mind where you are

concerned: but Fox is the minister with whom I most wish you

united,-indeed, to all the rest I am indifferent or adverse: but,

besides his superior abilities, he has a liberality of acting

that is to my taste; it is like my father's plainness, and has

none of the paltry little finesses of a statesman.

Your parties do not tempt me, because I am not well enough to

join in them: nor yet will they stop me, though I had rather find

only you and Lady Ailesbury and Mrs. Damer. I am not seriously

ill; nay, am better upon the whole than I was last year: but I

perceive decays enough in myself to be sensible that the scale

may easily be inclined to the worst side. This observation makes

'me very indifferent to every thing that is not much at my heart.

Consequently what concerns you is, as it has always been for

above forty years, a principal object. Adieu!