TWICKENHAM, _June_ 8, 1747.
You perceive by my date that I am got into a new camp, and have left my
tub at Windsor. It is a little plaything-house that I got out of Mrs.
Chenevix's shop, and is the prettiest bauble you ever saw. It is set in
enamelled meadows, with filigree hedges:
A small Euphrates through the piece is told,
And little finches wave their wings in gold.
Two delightful roads, that you would call dusty, supply me continually
with coaches and chaises: barges as solemn as Barons of the Exchequer
move under my window; Richmond Hill and Ham walks bound my prospect;
but, thank God! the Thames is between me and the Duchess of Queensberry.
Dowagers as plenty as flounders inhabit all around, and Pope's ghost is
just now skimming under my window by a most poetical moonlight. I have
about land enough to keep such a farm as Noah's, when he set up in the
ark with a pair of each kind; but my cottage is rather cleaner than I
believe his was after they had been cooped up together forty days. The
Chenevixes had tricked it out for themselves: up two pair of stairs is
what they call Mr. Chenevix's library, furnished with three maps, one
shelf, a bust of Sir Isaac Newton, and a lame telescope without any
glasses. Lord John Sackville _predecessed_ me here, and instituted
certain games called _cricketalia_, which have been celebrated this
very evening in honour of him in a neighbouring meadow.
You will think I have removed my philosophy from Windsor with my
tea-things hither; for I am writing to you in all this tranquillity,
while a Parliament is bursting about my ears. You know it is going to be
dissolved: I am told, you are taken care of, though I don't know where,
nor whether anybody that chooses you will quarrel with me because he
does choose you, as that little bug the Marquis of Rockingham did; one
of the calamities of my life which I have bore as abominably well as I
do most about which I don't care. They say the Prince has taken up two
hundred thousand pounds, to carry elections which he won't carry:--he
had much better have saved it to buy the Parliament after it is chosen.
A new set of peers are in embryo, to add more dignity to the silence of
the House of Lords.
I made no remarks on your campaign, because, as you say, you do nothing
at all; which, though very proper nutriment for a thinking head, does
not do quite so well to write upon. If any one of you can but contrive
to be shot upon your post, it is all we desire, shall look upon it as a
great curiosity, and will take care to set up a monument to the person
so slain; as we are doing by vote to Captain Cornewall, who was killed
at the beginning of the action in the Mediterranean four years ago. In
the present dearth of glory, he is canonized; though, poor man! he had
been tried twice the year before for cowardice.
I could tell you much election news, none else; though not being
thoroughly attentive to so important a subject, as to be sure one ought
to be, I might now and then mistake, and give you a candidate for Durham
in place of one for Southampton, or name the returning officer instead
of the candidate. In general, I believe, it is much as usual--those sold
in detail that afterwards will be sold in the representation--the
ministers bribing Jacobites to choose friends of their own--the name of
well-wishers to the present establishment, and patriots outbidding
ministers that they may make the better market of their own
patriotism:--in short, all England, under some name or other, is just
now to be bought and sold; though, whenever we become posterity and
forefathers, we shall be in high repute for wisdom and virtue. My
great-great-grandchildren will figure me with a white beard down to my
girdle; and Mr. Pitt's will believe him unspotted enough to have walked
over nine hundred hot ploughshares, without hurting the sole of his
foot. How merry my ghost will be, and shake its ears to hear itself
quoted as a person of consummate prudence! Adieu, dear Harry!
Yours ever.
_HIS MODE OF LIFE--PLANTING--PROPHECIES OF NEW METHODS AND NEW
DISCOVERIES IN A FUTURE GENERATION._