reigned 1780-1790. His attempted reforms in the Low Countries
created a revolution against Austria; the two insurgent parties
of the _Statistes_ and _Vonckistes_,--the one conservative and
aristocratic, the other commercial and resembling in their views
the French Constitutionalists,--made common cause and expelled
the Austrian governor, the Duke of Saxe-Teschen. "Vôtre pays,"
said Joseph, a few days before his death, to the Prince de
Ligne, "m'a tué. La prise de Gand a été mon agonie; l'abandon de
Bruxelles, ma mort."
[107] Frederick II. of Prussia died August 17, 1786. He had
recently endeavoured to mediate between the Republican party
in Holland and the Stadtholder, who was, in 1786, deprived
of the government of the Hague and of his military powers as
captain-general. He had also, in 1778 and 1785, interfered to
prevent Austria's designs upon Bavaria.
502.
_To Lord Sheffield._
Lausanne, January 17th, 1786.
*Hear all Ye nations! An Epistle from Sheffield-place, received the
17th of January, is answered the same day; and to say the truth,
this method, which is the best, is at the same time the most easy
and pleasant. Yet I do not allow that in the last past silence and
delay you have any more right to damn than myself. Our letters
crossed each other, our claims were equal, and if both had been
stiffly maintained, our mutual silence must have continued till the
day of judgment. The balance was doubtless in my favour, if you
recollect the length, the fullness, the variety of pleasant and
instructive matter of my last dispatch. Even at present, of myself,
my occupations, my designs, I have little or nothing to add; and can
only speak dryly and briefly to very dry and disagreeable business
demands and want of money. But we shall both agree that the true
criminal is My Lady; and though I do suppose that a letter is on
the road, which will make some amends, her obstinate, contumacious,
dilatory silence, after so many months or years since my valuable
letter, is worthy not of a Cat but of a Royal Tygress.
Notwithstanding your gloomy politicians, I do love the funds; and
were the next war to reduce them to half, the remainder would be a
better and pleasanter property, than a similar value in your dirty
acres. We are now in the height of our winter amusements; balls,
great suppers, comedies, &c.; and, except St. Stephen's, I certainly
lead a more gay and dissipated life here, among the Alps, (by the
bye, a most extraordinary mild winter,) than in the midst of London.
Yet my mornings, and sometimes an afternoon, are diligently employed,
my work advances, but much remains, indeed much more than I imagined;
but a great book, like a great house, was never yet finished at the
given time. When I talk of the spring of '87, I suppose all my time
well bestowed; and what do you think of a fit of the gout, that
may disqualify me for two or three months? You may growl, but if
you calmly reflect on my pecuniary and sentimental state, you will
believe that I most earnestly desire to compleat my labour, and
_visit_ England. Adieu.*
With regard to the three old Ladies, I behave like a fool to one, and
like a beast (though they too are silent) to the other two. But all
shall be speedily rectified. The portrait seems to be firmly rooted
here. You know you have no right, and Deyverdun seems not disposed to
shew you any indulgence.
Yours,
E. G.
I shall probably hear from you and the Goslings before the end of
next month, and you may depend on an immediate answer. You will
probably have corresponded with Hugonin. It is surely hard to
be obliged to a man, who in two years and four months, has not
condescended to send me a line of information or account. If you talk
of credit, you must allow that it is unpleasant to desire the Darrels
to sell a part of my short Annuity.
503.
_To his Stepmother._
Lausanne, May 3rd, 1786.
DEAR MADAM,
Shall I begin by a complaint or an apology? Without much injustice
I might complain of your long silence, which between other
correspondents than ourselves might seem to indicate some degree
of forgetfulness, the too frequent consequences of absence and
distance. Between us, however, it indicates no such thing, and in
the confidence of our mutual regard our silence is more eloquent
than the loquacity of others. I might even add that the constant
expectation on every post-day of a letter from Bath, has suspended
my not very vigorous efforts to renew the correspondence. Some
truth there undoubtedly may be in this assertion, but you will much
more readily believe, that in my strange compound of industry and
lazyness, I have very often formed the design, and as often found
some excellent reason of delay till the very next post, when I would
most undoubtedly write to the best and dearest of my friends. Perhaps
it would not be a bad method on both sides, a note of four lines, a
certificate of health and remembrance, without computing of debtor or
creditor, or any formal attempt to produce a regular Epistle. But as
even this project may fail, I must seriously beg that you would never
allow yourself to be made uneasy by any flying reports, or newspaper.
Be assured that if any untoward accident should stop my breath, or
disable my hand, my friend M. Deyverdun will send the early and
authentic Gazette to Sheffield place, from whence it will be imparted
with proper speed to my other friends in England. At the same time,
I can affirm with truth, that my sole reason for this advertisement
is derived from some foolish Articles, that were very familiar last
year to the home and foreign papers. Since I have known you or myself
I never had more pleasing inducements to cherish life, or less
apprehension of too speedily quitting it.
[Sidenote: IMPROVEMENT IN HIS HEALTH.]
My health is certainly better than when I left England, and this
improvement I partly ascribe to the climate, and partly to the
temperance of my diet. I had long ago shaken off the bad habits of
the Hampshire Militia, but a London life, in the best Company, is
a life of fullness and intemperance; which cannot be separated from
the lateness and irregularity of our hours, the variety of wines
and dishes, and the English practise of setting after dinner, with
the bottle and glasses on the table. Since my last fit of the Gout,
I avoid the temptation without losing the pleasure of suppers, by
confining myself to a mess of boiled milk, and in companies of twenty
or thirty men and women, my frugal bason has often been placed on the
tables: my dinners are moderate, and breakfast still continues to be
my favourite repast. This regimen appears to have succeeded; I have
passed the winter without hearing of the enemy, and last month, after
a short and slight visit or rather menace, he politely retired, and
has left me free to enjoy the beauties of an incomparable spring,
which rapidly treads on the heels of a very mild winter.
The glories of the landskip I have always enjoyed; but Deyverdun has
almost given me a taste for minute observation, and I can dwell with
pleasure on the shape and colour of the leaves, the various hues of
the blossoms, and successive progress of vegetation. These pleasures
are not without cares; and there is a white Acacia just under the
windows of my library, which in my opinion was too closely pruned
last Autumn, and whose recovery is the daily subject of anxiety and
conversation! My romantic wishes led sometimes to an idea which was
impracticable in England, the possession of an house and garden,
which should unite the society of town with the beauties and freedom
of the country. That idea is now realized in a degree of perfection
to which I never aspired, and if I could convey in words a just
picture of my library, apartments, terrace, wilderness, vineyard,
with the prospect of land and water, terminated by the mountains; and
this position at the gate of a populous and lively town where I have
some friends and many acquaintance, you would envy or rather applaud
the singular propriety of my choice.
During the first year of my residence I often compared the tumult
of London and the house of Commons, with the studious social
tranquillity of Lausanne, and felt with complacency that I had
chosen the better part. Those busy scenes are now far from me,
like the remembrance of a noisy and troublesome dream, and though
I possess from nature or reflection a happiness of temper that can
be easy almost in any situation, I am at a loss to conceive how I
could support so long a way of life so ill-suited to my mind and
circumstances. What I particularly disliked was the alternative of a
batchelor, large accidental dinners abroad, or my solitary chicken at
home. Here I can keep a regular table and establishment equal to the
best families of the place; we seldom dine alone, and I have often
agreable suppers of men and women. The habits of female conversation
have sometimes tempted me to acquire the piece of furniture, a wife,
and could I unite in a single Woman, the virtues and accomplishments
of half a dozen of my acquaintance, I would instantly pay my
addresses to the Constellation.
[Sidenote: A MINISTRY OF RESPECTABLE BOYS.]
In the mean while I must content myself with my other wife, the
decline and fall of the Roman Empire, which I prosecute with pleasant
and constant industry. I had some hopes of compleating it this year,
but let no man who builds a house, or writes a book, presume to say
when he will have finished. When he imagines that he is drawing
near to his journey's end, Alps rise on Alps, and he continually
finds something to add, and something to correct. Yet I _now_ think
myself sure of bringing over two or three Volumes in quarto (down
to the taking of Constantinople by the Turks) in the course of next
summer, I mean the summer of eighty-seven, and as the business of
impression will require many months, I may long enjoy the company
of my English friends. Of private friends I hope to find many in
the _vulgar_, and some in the _pure_ and _genuine_ sense of the
word, but I shall be totally bewildered. About three months after
my departure, an Earthquake threw down all the men and systems of
which I had any knowledge, and the country seems to be governed by a
set of most respectable boys, who were at school half a dozen years
ago. I see in the papers that young Eliot is become the brother and
privy-Counsellor of Pitt, and that the independent father has no
objection either to titles or places.
And now, My Dear Madam, after so much about myself, let me conclude
with a word of enquiry on a subject very near to my heart, your
health and happiness. The only apprehension from your silence relates
to want of activity and spirits, and from those fears I hope you can
honestly deliver me. Remember me with kindness to Mrs. Gould, and
Mrs. Holroyd, and let me hear if any thing good has befallen them,
more especially the former, whose situation was more susceptible of
change: when I mention her I include her family. Is Mr. Melmoth still
alive? I saw young Coxe last year, with a very decent and reasonable
Bear, whom he leads from North to South. Adieu, Dear Madam, my paper
fails.
Most truly yours,
E. G.
504.
_To Lord Sheffield._
Lausanne, May 10th, 1786.
[Sidenote: THE DEATH OF "AUNT KITTY."]
*By the difference, I suppose, of the posts of France and Germany,
Sir Stanier's letter, though first written, is still on the road,
and yours, which I received yesterday morning, brought me the first
account of poor Mrs. P[orten]'s departure. There are few events
that could affect me more deeply, and I have been ever since in a
state of mind more deserving of your pity than of your reproaches.
I certainly am not ignorant that we have nothing better to wish for
ourselves than the fate of that best-humoured woman, as you very
justly style her. A good understanding, and an excellent heart,
with health, spirits, and a competency, to live in the midst of her
friends till the age of fourscore, and then to shut her eyes without
pain or remorse. Death can have deprived her only of some years of
weakness, perhaps of misery; and for myself it is surely less painful
to lose her at present, than to find her in my visit to England next
year sinking under the weight of age and infirmities, and perhaps
forgetfull of herself and of the persons once the dearest to her.
All this is perfectly true: but all these reflections will not
dispell a thousand sad and tender remembrances that rush upon
my mind. To her care I am indebted in earliest infancy for the
preservation of my life and health. I was a puny child, neglected by
my Mother, starved by my nurse, and of whose being very little care
or expectation was entertained; without her maternal vigilance I
should either have been in my grave, or imperfectly lived a crooked
ricketty monster, a burthen to myself and others. To her instructions
I owe the first rudiments of knowledge, the first exercise of reason,
and a taste for books, which is still the pleasure and glory of
my life; and though she taught me neither language nor science,
she was certainly the most useful preceptor I have ever had. As I
grew up, an intercourse of thirty years endeared her to me, as the
faithful friend and the agreeable companion. You have seen with what
freedom and confidence we lived together, and have often admired
her character and conversation, which could alike please the young
and the old. All this is now lost, finally, irrecoverably lost! I
will agree with My Lady, that the immortality of the soul is on some
occasions a very comfortable doctrine. A thousand thanks to her for
her constant kind attention to that poor woman who is no more.
I wish I had as much to applaud and as little to reproach in my own
behaviour towards Mrs. P. since I left England; and when I reflect
that my letters would have soothed and comforted her decline, I
feel more deeply than I can express, the real neglect, and seeming
indifference, of my silence. To delay a letter from the Wednesday
to the Saturday, and then from the Saturday to the Wednesday,
appears a very slight offence; yet in the repetition of such delay,
weeks, months, and years will elapse, till the omission may become
irretrievable, and the consequence mischievous or fatal. After a long
lethargy, I had rouzed myself last week, and wrote to the three old
Ladies; my letter for Newman Street went away last post, Saturday
night, and yours did not arrive till Monday morning. Sir Stanier will
probably open it, and read the true picture of my sentiments for a
friend who, when I wrote, was already extinct. There is something
sad and awful in the thought, yet on the whole, I am sorry that even
this tardy Epistle preceded my knowledge of her death. But it did
not precede (you will observe) the information of her dangerous and
declining state, which I conveyed in my last letter, and her anxious
concern that she should never see or _hear_ from you again.
This idea, and the hard thoughts which you must entertain of me,
press so hard on my mind, that I must frankly acknowledge a strange
and inexcusable supineness, on which I desire you would make no
comment, and which in some measure may account for my delays in
corresponding with you. The unpleasant nature of business, and
the apprehension of finding something disagreeable, tempted me to
postpone from day to day, not only the answering, but even the
opening, your penultimate epistle; and when I received your last,
yesterday morning, the seal of the former was still unbroken. Oblige
me so far as to make no reflections; my own may be of service to me
hereafter. Thus far (except the last sentence) I have run on with
a sort of melancholy pleasure, and find my heart much relieved by
unfolding it to a friend. And the subject so strongly holds me, so
much disqualifies me for other discourse, either serious or pleasant,
that here I would willingly stop, and reserve all miscellaneous
matter for a second volunteer Epistle. But we both know how frail
are promises, how dangerous are delays, and there are some pecuniary
objects on which I think it necessary to give you an immediate,
though now tardy, explanation.
I do not return you any formal thanks for* securing me the £500
at Gosling's. We are sufficiently acquainted with each other's
sentiments, nor can I be surprized that you should do for me what
in a similar situation you would have found and accepted without
hesitation on my part. But I must remove the appearance of duplicity
which might not give you pleasure, that I should complain of urgent
poverty, and doubt whether my draught would be paid, while I had
£400 in Gosling's hands. A part of this wealth is only ideal, as
I had reckoned on Mrs. Gibbon's Christmas half-year (£150), which
was really drawn for a few days afterwards. For the rest of the
difference, I can only say that I reckoned from memory (having
mislaid their last year's account), that my fears preponderated, and
that I am glad to find myself for once, a richer man than I expected.
To show you that I am in earnest, as I shall not want to draw for
some months, I am very willing that you should divert a part of your
supply to the most pressing occasions. Of that nature is certainly
the Buckinghamshire bond to the man who married Harris's daughter,
and I beg you would pay both principal and interest immediately. The
Jobbman for horses should, I think, be the next, and when these two
are satisfied, upwards of £200 must remain. When I consider the large
amount and easy earning of Newton's bill, he surely may wait for my
return. If you are too much plagued with his importunities, silence
him with another sop of £100. Whatever you do, you will send me the
account, that I may know the exact quantity of my provision. You know
my attachment to my little deposit in the funds, but if I should
be pressed before my return by any further expences or demands, I
will transact the business with the Darrels either by sale or loan.
Apropos of Newton, were it perfectly convenient, I would not clear
his whole bill, till I had extracted from his hands all the writings
of my Hampshire Estate. I wish you would seriously undertake that
extraction, the importance of which you feel more strongly than
myself.
I have really an hundred things to say of myself, of you and Co., of
your works, of mine, of my books in Downing Street, of Lausanne, of
Politicks, &c. &c. After this, some Epistolary debts must and SHALL
be paid; and to proceed with order, I have fixed this day fortnight
(May 25th) for the date and dispatch of your second Epistle. Give me
credit once more. Pray, does My Lady think herself absolved from all
obligation of writing to me? To _her_, at least, I am not in arrear.
Adieu.
505.
_To Lord Sheffield._
Lausanne, July 22nd, 1786.
[Sidenote: BOOKS LONGER IN MAKING THAN PUDDINGS.]
This general order will, I presume, remove all the unforeseen
difficulties, which I should have thought must have given way to your
name, and the knowledge of our connection. Use the power according
to your own discretion, even to the full amount of your £500 which I
have not yet violated, but remember not to satisfy Newton till he has
disgorged my writings, of which, as you will easily believe, I have
no list. *I suppose you have sworn (I have sworn myself) at my long
silence and delay. The _plena Epistola_ I have postponed from post
to post, and as I see no end of waiting (though I think it will not
run beyond the end of the month), it seemed most prudent to dispatch
this needful missive. I am well, happy, and diligent; but your kind
hint of the London house is perfectly superfluous; as instead of the
_spring_, we must already read the _summer_ of next year.* Do not be
childish or passionate; trust me, I wish to appear in England; but it
must be with my book in my hand; and a book takes more time in making
than a pudding. Adieu. Will my Lady never write?
E. G.
*Since I have another page, and some leisure moments, we may as well
employ it in friendly converse; the more so, as the great letter
to which I alluded is most wonderfully precarious and uncertain;
the more so likewise, as our correspondence for some time past
has been of an abrupt, dark and disagreeable cast. Let us first
talk of Sheffield's works; they are of two sorts: _primo_, two
nymphs, whom I much desire to see; the stately Maria and the gentle
Louisa. I perfectly represent them both in the eye of fancy; each of
them accomplished according to her age and character, yet totally
different in their external and internal forms. _Secundo_, three
pamphlets; pamphlets I cry you mercy; three weighty treatises, almost
as useful as an enquiry into the state of the primitive Church; and
here let me justify, if I have not before, my silence on a subject
which we authors do not easily forgive. The first, whose first
editions had seen the light before I left England, followed me here
in a more compleat condition; and that Treatise on the American
Trade has been read, judged, approved, and reported. The second, on
Ireland, I have seen by accident, the copy you had sent Mr. Trevor,
who passed last summer (85) in this [place]. The third, and in my
present situation the most interesting, on the French Commerce,[108]
I have not yet seen by any means whatsoever, and you who know what
orders you have given to Elmsley or others, will best discern on whom
should be laid the fault and the blame.* By the bye, Mrs. Trevor
is now here without her husband--so much the better--and I am just
going to see her, about a mile out of town: she is judged elegant and
amiable; but in health and figure most lamentably declined since last
year. *But to return to your books, all that I have seen must do you
honour, and might do the public service; you are above the trifling
decorations of style and order, but your sense is strong, your views
impartial, and your industry laudable. I find that your American
tract is just translated into German.
[Sidenote: HIS CONTEMPLATED VISIT TO ENGLAND.]
Do you still correspond with* Eden?[109] *If he could establish a
beneficial intercourse between the two first nations in the World,
I could excuse him some little political tergiversation. At some
distance of time and place, those domestic squabbles lose much of
their importance; and though I should not forgive him any breach
of private friendship or confidence, I cannot much blame him if he
chose rather to serve his family and his country, than to persevere
in a hopeless and, as I suspect, an unpopular opposition. You have
never told me clearly and correctly how you support your inactive
retreat from the house of Commons; whether you have resumed your
long forgotten taste for rural and domestic pleasures, and whether
you have never cast a look towards Coventry, or some other borough
equally pure and respectable. In the short space that is left I will
only repeat more distinctly, that in the present contemplation of
my work, June or July of next year is the earliest term at which I
can hope to see England*; and if I have a fit of the Gout--I have,
indeed, been free from the monster this last twelvemonth; but he is
most arbitrary and capricious. Of my own situation let me say with
truth that it is tranquil, easy, and well adapted to my character.
All enthusiasm is now at an end; I see things in their true light,
and I applaud the judgment and choice of my retirement.
You see why I have left a blank in the first page; and when I begun
I had no design of going beyond it; and now, unless I have some
extraordinary fit of diligence and zeal, shall probably wait till
the return of your Epistle. A word before we part, about the least
unpleasant of my business; my library in Downing-street. Excuse the
accidental derangement; I shall send for no more books, and only beg
you to give them shelter in your stinking parlour till my arrival.
Two or three mornings will suffice for a personal review, and the
subsequent steps of sale or travel will most properly be executed
under my own eye. Ours and the foreign papers announce the distress
and reformation of the P. of W.[110] Are you one of the Noblemen who
offer him their houses? As papa is tenacious and poor, I suppose Fox
next session will celebrate his economy, and Parliament will pay his
debts. Once more adieu.
[108] Lord Sheffield did not _publish_ his _Observations on the
French Treaty and Commerce_. [S.]