_April_ 13, 1782.
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 that 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,[1] though, if anywhere, 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 words are
used by moderns, would _major_ 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.
[Footnote 1: Walpole certainly here shows himself superior in judgement
to Johnson, who, when Burke, Reynolds, and others, in a "round-robin,"
requested that the epitaph on Goldsmith, which was entrusted to him to
draw up, should be in English instead of Latin, refused, with the absurd
expression that "he would never be guilty of defacing Westminster Abbey
with an English inscription."]
Though I am glad of the late _revolution_,[1] 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,[2] whom I love and respect. The Dean is so absurd an oaf, that
he deserves to be ridiculed. Is anything more hyperbolic than his
preferences 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.
[Footnote 1: In March Lord North resigned, and been replaced by Lord
Rockingham, who had been Prime Minister before in 1765.]
[Footnote 2: Bryant, the celebrated or notorious critic, who published a
treatise in which he denied the existence of Troy, and even called in
question that of Homer--a work which, whether Walpole agreed with him on
this point or not, afterwards drew down on him the indignant
denunciations of Byron. It was well for him that he wrote before the
discoveries of Dr. Schliemann.]
_HIGHWAYMEN AND FOOTPADS._