309. To The Rev. Henry Zouch.(585) Berkeley Square, March 13, 1787. (page 391)
It is very true, Sir, as Lord Strafford told you, that I have taken care that letters of living persons to me shall be restored to the writers when I die. I have burnt a great many, and, as you desire it, would do so by yours; but, having received a like intimation some time ago, I put yours into a separate paper, with a particular direction that they should be delivered to you: and, therefore, I imagine it will be more satisfaction to you, as it will be to me too, that you should receive them yourself; and therefore if you please to let me know how I shall convey them, I will bring them from Strawberry Hill, where they are, the first time I go thither. I hope you enjoy your health, and I have the honour to be, Sir, etc.
(585) Now first printed.
310. To Miss Hannah More.(596) Strawberry Hill, June 15, 1787. (page 391)
In your note, on going out of town, you desired me to remember you; but as I do not like the mere servile merit of obedience, I took time, my dear Madam, to try to forget you; and, having failed as to my wish, I have the free-born pleasure of thinking of you in spite of my teeth, and without any regard to your injunction. No queen upon earth, as fond as royal persons are of their prerogative, but would prefer being loved for herself rather than for her power; and I hope you have not more majesty
"Than the whole race of queens!"
Perhaps the spirit of your command did not mean that I should give you such manual proof of' my remembrance; and you may not know what to make of a subject who avows a mutinous spirit, and at the same time exceeds the measure of his duty. It is, I own, a kind of Irish loyalty; and, to keep up the Irish character, I will confess that I never was disposed to be so loyal to any sovereign that was not a subject. if you collect from all this galai-Datias that I am cordially your humble servant, I shall be content. The Irish have the best hearts in the three kingdoms, and they never blunder more than when they attempt to express their zeal and affection: the reason, I suppose, is, that cool sense never thinks of attempting impossibilities; but a warm heart feels itself ready to do more than is possible for those it loves. I am sure our poor friend in Clarges-street(597) would subscribe to this last sentence. What English heart ever excelled hers? I should have almost said equalled, if I were not writing to one that rivals her.
The last time I saw her before I left London, Miss Burney(598) passed the evening there, looking quite recovered and well, and so cheerful and agreeable, that the court seems only to have improved the ease of her manner, instead of stamping more reserve on it, as I feared: but what slight graces it can give, will not compensate to us and the world for the loss of her company and her writings. Not but that some young ladies who can write, can stifle their talent as much as if they were under lock and key in the royal library. I do not see but a cottage is as pernicious to genius as the Queen's waiting-room. Why should one remember people that forget themselves? Oh! I am sorry I used that expression, as it is commonly applied to such self-oblivion as Mrs. -; and light and darkness are not more opposite than the forgetfulness to which I alluded, and hers. The former forgetfulness can forget its own powers and the injuries of others; the latter can forget its own defects, and the obligations and services it has received. How poor is that language which has not distinct terms for modesty and virtue, and for excess of vanity and ingratitude! The Arabic tongue, I suppose, has specific words for all the shades of oblivion, which, you see, has its extremes. I think I have heard that there are some score of different terms for a lion in Arabic, each expressive of a different quality; and consequently its generosity and its appetite for blood are not confounded in one general word. but if an Arabian vocabulary were as numerous in proportion for all the qualities that can enter into a human composition, it would be more difficult to be learned therein, than to master all the characters of the Chinese.
You did me the honour of asking me for my "Castle of Otranto," for your library at Cowslip Green. May I, as a printer, rather than as an author, beg leave to furnish part of a shelf there? and as I must fetch some of the books from Strawberry Hill, will you wait till I can send them all together? And will you be so good as to tell me whither I shall send them, or how direct and convey them to you at Bristol? I shall have a satisfaction in thinking that they will remain in your rising cottage (in which, I hope, you will enjoy a long series of happy hours); and that they will sometimes, when they and I shall be forgotten in other places, recall to Miss More's memory her very sincere humble servant.
(596) Now first collected.
(597) In a letter to Walpole, written at this time from Cowslip Green, Miss More says, "When I sit in a little hermitage I have built in my garden,-not to be melancholy in, but to think upon my friends, and to read their works and letters,-Mr. Walpole seldomer presents himself to my mind as the man of wit than as the tender-hearted and humane friend of my dear infirm, broken-spirited Mrs. Vesey. One only admires talents, and admiration is a cold sentiment, with which affection has commonly nothing to do; but one does more than admire them when they are devoted to such gentle purposes. My very heart is softened when I consider that she is now out of the way of your kind attentions' and I fear that nothing else on earth gives her the smallest pleasure." Memoirs, VOL ii, p. 72-E.
(598) This highly-gifted young lady had, in the preceding year, been appointed keeper of the robes to the Queen.-E.
311. To The Hon. H. S. Conway. Strawberry Hill, June 17, 1787. (page 393)
I have very little to tell you since we met but disappointments, and those of no great consequence. On Friday night Lady Pembroke wrote to me that Princess Lubomirski was to dine with her the next day, and desired to come in the morning to see Strawberry. Well, my castle put on its robes, breakfast was prepared, and I shoved another company out of the house, who had a ticket for seeing it. The sun shone, my hay was cocked, we looked divinely; and at half an hour after two, nobody came but a servant to Lady Pembroke, to say her Polish altitude had sent her word she had another engagement in town that would keep her too late:-so Lady Pembroke's dinner was addled; and we had nothing to do, but, like good Christians, if we chose it, to compel every body on the road, whether they chose it or not, to come in and eat our soup and biscuits. Methinks this liberum veto was rather impertinent, and I begin to think that the partition of Poland was very right.
Your brother has sent me a card for a ball on Monday, but I have excused myself. I have not yet compassed the whole circuit of my own garden, and I have had an inflammation in one of my eyes, and don't think I look as well as my house and my verdure; and had rather see my haycocks, than the Duchess of Polignac and Madame Lubomirski. "The Way to Keep Him" had the way to get me, and I could crawl to it because I had an inclination; but I have a great command of myself when I have no mind to do any thing. Lady Constant was worth an hundred ars and irskis. Let me hear of you when you have nothing else to do; though I suppose you have as little to tell as you see I had.
312. To The Earl Of Strafford. Strawberry Hill, July 28, 1787. (page 394)
St. Swithun is no friend to correspondence, my dear lord. There is not only a great sameness in his own proceedings, but he makes every body else dull-I mean in the country, where one frets at its raining every day and all day. In town he is no more minded than the proclamation against vice and immorality. Still, though he has all the honours of the quarantine, I believe it often rained for forty days long before St. Swithun was born, if ever born he was; and the proverb was coined and put under his patronage, because people observed that it frequently does rain for forty days together at this season. I remember Lady Suffolk telling me, that Lord Dysart's great meadow had never been mowed but once in forty years without rain. I said, "All that that proved was, that rain was good for hay," as I am persuaded the climate of a country and its productions are suited to each other. Nay, rain is good for haymakers too, who get more employment the oftener the hay is made over again. I do not know who is the saint that presides over thunder; but he has made an unusual quantity in this chill summer, and done a great deal of serious mischief, though not a fiftieth part of what Lord George Gordon did seven years ago, and happily he is fled.
Our little part of the world has been quiet as usual. The Duke of Queensberry has given a sumptuous dinner to the Princess de Lamballe(599)--et voil`a tout. I never saw her, not even in France. I have no particular penchant for sterling princes and princesses, much less for those of French plate.
The only entertaining thing I can tell your lordship from our district is, that old Madam French, who lives close by the bridge at Hampton-court, where, between her and the Thames, she had nothing but one grass-plot of the width of her house, has paved that whole plot with black and white marble in diamonds, exactly like the floor of a church; and this curious metamorphosis of a garden into a pavement has cost her three hundred and forty pounds:-a tarpaulin she might have had for some shillings, which would have looked as well, and might easily have been removed. To be sure, this exploit, and Lord Dudley's obelisk below a hedge, with his canal at right angles with the Thames, and a sham bridge no broader than that of a violin, and parallel to the river, are not preferable to the monsters in clipt yews of our ancestors;
Bad taste expellas fursa tamen usque recurret.
On the contrary, Mrs. Walsingham is making her house at Ditton (now baptized Boyle-farm) very orthodox. Her daughter Miss Boyle(600) who has real genius, has carved three tablets in marble with buoys, designed by herself. Those sculptures are for a chimney-piece; and she is painting panels in grotesque for the library, with pilasters of glass in black and gold. Miss Crewe, who has taste too, has decorated a room for her mother's house at Richmond, which was Lady Margaret Compton's in a very pretty manner. How much more amiable the old women of the next age will be, than most of those we remember, who used to tumble at once from gallantry to devout scandal and cards! and revenge on the young of their own sex the desertion of ours. Now they are ingenious, they will not want amusement. Adieu, my dear lord!
(599) Sister to the Prince de Carignan, of the royal house of Sardinia, and wife of the Prince de Lamballe, only son to the Duc de Penthi`evre. She was sur-intendante de la maison de la Reine, and, from her attachment to Marie Antoinette, was one of the first females who fell a victim to the fury of the French revolution. The peculiar circumstances of horror which attended her death, and the indignities offered to her remains, are in the memory of every one who has read the accounts of that heart.rending event.-E.
(600) Afterwards married to Lord Henry Fitzgerald.
313. To Miss Hannah More. Strawberry Hill, Oct. 14, 1787. (page 395)
My dear Madam, I am shocked for human nature at the repeated malevolence of this woman!(601) The rank soil of riches we are accustomed to see overrun with weeds and thistles; but who could expect that the kindest seeds sown on poverty and dire misfortunes should meet with nothing but a rock at bottom? Catherine de' Medici, suckled by popes. and transplanted to a throne, seems more excusable. Thank heaven, Madam, for giving you so excellent a heart; ay, and so good a head. You are not only benevolence itself: but, with fifty times the genius of a Yearsley, you are void of vanity. How strange that vanity should expel gratitude! Does not the wretched woman owe her fame to you, as well as her affluence? I can testify your labours for both. Dame Yearsley reminds me of the Troubadours, those vagrants whom I used to admire till I knew their history; and who used to pour out trumpery verses, and flatter or abuse accordingly as they were housed and clothed, or dismissed to the next parish. Yet you did not set this person in the stocks, after procuring an annuity for her! I beg your pardon for renewing so disgusting a subject, and will never mention it again. You have better amusement; you love good works, a temper superior to revenge.(602)
I have again seen our poor friend in Clarges-street: her faculties decay rapidly, and of course she suffers less. She has not an acquaintance in town; and yet told me the town was very full, and that she had had a good deal of company. Her health is re-established, and we must now be content that her mind is not restless. My pity now feels most for Mrs. Hancock,(603) whose patience is inexhaustible, though not insensible.
Mrs. Piozzi, I hear, has two volumes of Dr. Johnson's Letters ready for publication.(604) Bruce is printing his Travels; which I suppose will prove that his narratives were fabulous, as he will scarce repeat them by the press. These and two more volumes of Mr. Gibbon's History, are all the literary news I know. France seems sunk indeed in all respects. What stuff are their theatrical goods, their Richards, Ninas, and Tarares! But when their Figaro could run threescore nights, how despicable must their taste be grown!(605) I rejoice that the political intrigues are not more creditable. I do not dislike the French from the vulgar antipathy between neighbouring nations, but for their insolent and unfounded airs of superiority. In arms we have almost always outshone them: and till they have excelled Newton, and come near to Shakspeare, pre-eminence in genius must remain with us. I think they are most entitled to triumph over the Italians; as, with the most meagre and inharmonious of all languages, the French have made more of that poverty in tragedy and eloquence, than the Italians have done with the language the most capable of both. But I did not mean to send you a dissertation. I hope it will not be long before you remove to Hampton.--Yet why should I wish that'! You will only be geographically nearer to London till February. Cannot you now and then sleep at the Adelphi on a visit to poor Vesey and your friends, and let one know if you do?
(601) Walpole had recently received a letter from Miss More, in which she had said--"MY old friend the milk-woman has just brought out another book, to which she has prefixed my original preface to her first book, and twenty pages of the scurrility published against me in her second. To all this she has added the deed which I got drawn up by an eminent lawyer to secure her money in the funds, and which she asserts I made Mrs. Montagu sign without reading." Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 80.
(602) Mrs. Yearsley was a woman of strong masculine understanding, and of a powerful independent mind, which could not brook any thing in the nature of dictation or interference. Whether she then was a widow, or separated from her husband, I know not; but, in 1793, she kept a bookseller and stationer's shop, under the name of Ann Yearsley, at Bristol Hot-wells, assisted by her son, and there all sorts of literary discussion used to take place daily amongst those who frequented it; and Mrs. Yearsley being somewhat free, both in her political and religious opinions, as well as not a little indignant at Mrs. More's attempt at holding a control over her proceedings, it is not matter of wonder, that a very unreasonable asperity should have been exhibited on both sides.-G.
(603) "What a blessing for Mrs. Vesey, that Mrs. Hancock is alive and well! I do venerate that woman beyond words; her faithful, quiet, patient attachment makes all showy qualities and shining talents appear little in my eyes. Such characters are what Mr. Burke calls I the soft quiet green, on which the soul loves to rest!"' Hannah More's Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 80.-E.
(604) In speaking of these Letters, which appeared shortly after, Hannah More says--:They are such as ought to have been written, but ought not to have been printed: a few of them are very good: sometimes he is moral, and sometimes he is kind. The imprudence of editors and executors is an additional reason why men of parts should be afraid to die. Burke said to me the other day, in allusion to the innumerable lives, anecdotes, remains, etc. of this great man, 'How many maggots have crawled out of that great body!'" Memoirs, vol. ii-P. 101-E.
(605) Mr. Walpole had never seen Figaro acted, nor had he been at Paris for many years before it appeared: he was not, therefore, aware of the bold, witty, and continued allusions of almost every scene and of almost every incident of that comedy, to the most popular topics and the most distinguished characters of the day. The freedom with which it treated arbitrary government and all its establishments, while they all yet continued in unwelcome force- in France, and the moral conduct of each individual of the piece exactly suiting the no-morality of the audience, joined to the admirable manner in which it was acted, certainly must be allowed to have given it its greatest vogue. But even now, when most of these temporary advantages no longer exist, whoever was well acquainted with the manners, habits, and anecdotes of Paris at the time of the first appearance of Figaro, will always admire in it a combination of keen and pointed satire, easy wit, and laughable incident.-B.
314. To The Hon. H. S. Conway. Berkeley Square, Nov. 11, 1787. (page 397)
>From violent contrary winds,(606) and by your letter going to Strawberry Hill, whence I was 'come, I have but just received it, and perhaps shall Only be able to answer it by snatches, being up to the chin in nephews and nieces.
I find you knew nothing of the pacification when you wrote, When I saw your letter, I hoped it would tell me you was coming back, as your island is as safe as if it was situated in the Pacific Ocean, or at least as islands there used to be, till Sir Joseph Banks chose to put them up. I sent you the good news on the very day before you wrote, though I imagined you would learn it by earlier intelligence. Well, I enjoy both your safety and your great success, which is enhanced by its being owing to your character and abilities. I hope the latter will be allowed to operate by those who have not quite so much of either. I shall be wonderful glad to see little Master Stonehenge(607) at Park- place; it will look in character there: but your own bridge is so stupendous in comparison, that hereafter the latter will be thought to have been a work of the Romans. Dr. Stukeley will burst his cerements to offer mistletoe in your temple; and Mason, on the contrary, will die of vexation and spite that he cannot have Caractacus acted on the spot. Peace to all such!
--But were there one whose fires True genius kindles, and fair fame inspires,
he would immortalize you, for all you have been carrying on in Jersey, and for all you shall carry off. Inigo Jones, or Charlton,- or somebody, I forget who, called Stonehenge "Chorea Gigantum:" this will be the chorea of the pigmies; and, as I forget too what is Latin for Lilliputians, I will make a bad pun, and say,
----Portantur avari Pygmalionis opes.--
Pygmalion is as well-sounding a name for such a monarch as Oberon. Pray do not disappoint me, but transport the cathedral(608) of your island to your domain on our continent. I figure unborn antiquaries making pilgrimages to visit your bridge, your daughter's bridge,(609) and the Druidic temple; and if I were not too old to have any imagination left, I would add a sequel to Mi Li.(610) Adieu!
(606) Mr. Conway was at this time at his government in Jersey.
(607) Mr. Walpole thus calls the small Druidic temple discovered in Jersey, which the States of that island had presented to General Conway, to be transported to and erected at Park-place. Dr. Walter Charlton published a dissertation on Stonehenge in 1663, entitled "Chorea Gigantum." it was reprinted in 1715.-E.
(608) The Druidic temple.
(609) The keystones of the centre arch of the bridge at Henley are ornamented with heads of the Thames and Isis, designed by the Hon. Mrs. Damer, and executed by her in Portland stone.
(610) One of the Hieroglyphic tales, containing a description of Park-place. it will be found in Walpole's works.
315. To Thomas Barrett, Esq.(611) Berkeley Square, June 5, 1788. (page 398)
I wish I could charge myself with any merit, which I always wish to have towards you, dear Sir, in letting Mr. Matthew see Strawberry; but in truth he has so much merit and modesty and taste himself, that I gave him the ticket with pleasure, which it seldom happens to me to do; for most of those who go thither, go because it is the fashion, and because a party is a prevailing custom too; and my tranquillity is disturbed, because nobody likes to stay at home. If Mr. Matthew was really entertained I am glad; but Mr. Wyatt has made him too correct a Goth not to have seen all the imperfections and bad execution of my attempts; for neither Mr. Bentley nor my workmen had studied the science, and I was always too desultory and impatient to consider that I should please myself more by allowing time, than by hurrying my plans into execution before they were ripe. My house therefore is but a sketch by beginners, yours is finished by a great master; and if Mr. Matthew liked mine, it was en virtuose, who loves the dawnings of an art, or the glimmerings of its restoration.
I finished Mr. Gibbon a full fortnight ago, and was extremely pleased. It is a most wonderful mass of information, not only of history, but almost on all the ingredients of history, as war, government, commerce, coin, and what not. If it has a fault, it is in embracing too much, and consequently in not detailing enough, and it, striding backwards and forwards from one set of princes to another, and from one subject to another; so that, without much historic knowledge, and without much memory, and much method in one's memory, it is almost impossible not to be sometimes bewildered: nay, his own impatience to tell what he knows, makes the author, though commonly so explicit, not perfectly clear in his expressions. The last chapter of the fourth Volume, I own, made me recoil, and I could scarcely push through it. So far from being Catholic or heretic, I wished Mr. Gibbon had never heard of Monophysites, Nestorians, or any such fools! But the sixth volume made ample amends; Mahomet and the Popes were gentlemen and good company. I abominate fractions of theology and reformation.
Mr. Sheridan, I hear, did not quite satisfy the passionate expectation that had been raised;(612) but it was impossible he could, when people had worked themselves into an enthusiasm of offering fifty, ay, fifty guineas for a ticket to hear him. Well! we are sunk and deplorable in many points, yet not absolutely gone, when history and eloquence throw out such shoots! I thought I had outlived my country; I am glad not to leave it desperate. Adieu, dear Sir!
(611) OF Lee, in East Kent; Whose seat was built by Mr. Wyatt, and greatly admired by Walpole.-E.
(612) Of his speech in Westminster-hall, on bringing forward the Begum charge against Mr. Hastings; upon which Mr. Burke pronounced the high ealogium, that "all the various species of oratory that had been heard, either in ancient or modern times-whatever the acuteness of the bar, the dignity of the senate, or the morality of the pulpit; could furnish--had not been equal to what the House had that day heard." Gibbon, who was present, thus describes it, in a letter to Lord Sheffield:-- "Yesterday the august scene was closed for this year. Sheridan surpassed himself; and, though I am far from considering him a perfect orator, there were many beautiful passages in his speech- -on justice, filial love, etc.; one of the closest chains of argument I ever heard, to prove that Hastings was responsible for the acts of Middleton; and a compliment, much admired to a certain historian of your acquaintance. Sheridan, on the close of his speech, sunk into Burke's arms--a good actor: but I called this morning; he is perfectly well."-E.
316. To The Earl Of Strafford. Strawberry Hill, Tuesday night, June 17, 1788. (page 399)
I guess, my dear lord, and only guess, that you are arrived at Wentworth Castle. If you are not, my letter will lose none of its bloom by waiting for you; for I have nothing fresh to tell you, and only write because you enjoined it. I settled in my Lilliputian towers but this morning. I wish people would come into the country on May-day, and fix in town on the first of November. But as they will not, I have made up my mind; and having so little time left, I prefer London, when my friends and society are in it, to living here alone, or with the weird sisters of Richmond and Hampton. I had additional reason now, for the streets are as green as the fields: we are burnt to the bone, and have not a lock of bay to cover our nakedness: oats are so dear, that I suppose they will soon be eaten at Brooks's and fashionable tables as a rarity. The drought has lasted so long, that for this fortnight I have been foretelling haymaking and winter, which June generally produces; but to-day is sultry, and I am not a prophet worth a straw. Though not resident till now, I have flitted backwards and forwards, and last Friday came hither to look for a minute at a ball at Mrs. Walsingham's at Ditton which would have been pretty, for she had stuck coloured lamps in the hair of all her trees and bushes, if the east wind had not danced a reel all the time by the side of the river. Mr. Conway's play,(613) of which your lordship has seen some account in the papers, has succeeded delightfully, both in representation and applause. The language is most genteel, though translated from verse; and both prologue and epilogue are charming. The former was delivered most Justly and admirably by Lord Derby, and the latter with inimitable spirit and grace by Mrs. Damer. Mr. Merry and Mrs. Bruce played excellently too. But General Conway, Mrs. Damer, and every body else are drowned by Mr. Sheridan, whose renown has engrossed all Fame's tongues and trumpets. Lord Townshend said he should be sorry were he forced to give a vote directly on Hastings, before he had time to cool; and one of the peers saying the speech had not made the same impression on him, the Marquis replied, a seal might be finely cut, and yet not be in fault for making a bad impression.
I have, you see, been forced to send your lordship what scraps I brought from town: the next four months, I doubt will reduce me to my old sterility; for I cannot retail French gazettes, though as a good Englishman bound to hope they will contain a civil war. I care still less about the double imperial campaign, only hoping that the poor dear Turks will heartily beat both Emperor and Empress. If the first Ottomans could be punished, they deserved it, but present possessors have as good a prescription 'on their side as any People in Europe. We ourselves are Saxons, Danes, Normans; our neighbours are Franks, not Gauls; who the rest are, Goths, Gepidae, Heruli, Mr. Gibbon knows; and the Dutch usurped the estates of herrings, turbots, and other marine indigenae. Still, though I do not wish the hair of a Turk's beard to be hurt, I do not say that it would not be amusing to have Constantinople taken, merely as a lusty event; for neither could I live to see Athens revive, nor have I much faith in two such bloody-minded vultures, cock and hen, as Catherine and Joseph, conquering for the benefit of humanity; nor does my Christianity admire the propagation of the Gospel by the mouth of cannon. What desolation of peasants and their families by the episodes of forage and quarters! Oh! I wish Catherine and Joseph were brought to Westminster-hall and worried by Sheridan! I hope, too, that the poor Begums are alive to hear of his speech; it will be some comfort, though I doubt nobody thinks of restoring them a quarter of a lac!
(613) A comedy, called "False Appearances" translated from L'Homme du Jour of Boissy. It was first acted at the private theatre at Richmond.house, and afterwards at Drury-lane.-E.
317. To Miss Hannah More. Strawberry Hill, July 4, 1788. (page 401)
I am soundly rejoiced, my dear Madam, that the present summer is more favourable to me than the last: , and that, instead of not answering my letters in three months, you open the campaign. May not I flatter myself' that it is a symptom of your being in better health? I wish, however, you had told me so in positive words, and that all your complaints have left you. Welcome as is your letter, it would have been ten times more welcome bringing me that assurance; for don't think I forget how ill you was last winter. As letters, you say, now keep their coaches, I hope those from Bristol will call often at my door.(614) I promise you I will never be denied to them.
No botanist am I; nor wished to learn from you, of all the Muses, that piping has a new signification. I had rather that you handled an oaten pipe than a carnation one; yet setting layers, I own, is preferable to reading newspapers, one of the chronical maladies of this age. Every body reads them, nay quotes them, though every body knows they are stuffed with lies or blunders. How should it be otherwise? If any extraordinary event happens, who but must hear it before it descends through a coffee-house to the runner of a daily paper? They who are always wanting news, are wanting to hear they don't know what. A lower species, indeed, is that of the scribes you mention, who every night compose a journal for the satisfaction of such illiterati, and feed them with all the vices and misfortunes of every private family; nay, they now call it a duty to publish all those calamities which decency to wretched relations used in compassion to suppress, I mean self-murder in particular. Mr. -Is was detailed at length; and to-day that of Lord - and -. The pretence is, in terrorem, like the absurd stake and highway of our ancestors; as if there were a precautionary potion for madness, or the stigma of a newspaper were more dreadful than death. Daily journalists, to be sure, are most respectable magistrates! Yes, much like the cobblers that Cromwell made peers.
I do lament your not going to Mr. Conway's play: both the author and actors deserved such an auditor as you, and you deserved to hear them. However, I do not pity good people who out of virtue lose or miss any pleasures. Those pastimes fleet as fast as those of the wicked; but when gone, you saints can sit down and feast on your self-denial, and drink bumpers of satisfaction to the health of your own merit. So truly I don't pity you.
You say you hear no news, yet you quote Mr. Topham;(615) therefore why should I tell you that the King is going to Cheltenham? Or that the Baccelli lately danced at the opera at Paris with a blue bandeau on her forehead, inscribed, "Honi soit qui mal y pense." Now who can doubt but she is as pure as the Countess of Salisbury! Was not it ingenious? and was not the ambassador so to allow it? No doubt he took it for a compliment to his own knee.
Well! would we committed nothing but follies! What do we not commit when the abolition of slavery hitches! Adieu!
Though Cato died, though Tully spoke, Though Brutus dealt the godlike stroke, Yet perish'd fated Rome.
You have written; and I fear that even if Mr. Sheridan speaks, trade, the modern religion, will predominate. Adieu!
(614) Miss More, in her last letter, had said--"Mail-coaches, which come to others, come not to me: letters and newspapers, now that they travel In coaches, like gentlemen and ladies, come not within ten miles of my hermitage: and while other fortunate provincials are studying the world and its ways, and are feasting upon elopement, divorces, and suicides, tricked out in all the elegancies of Mr. Topham's phraseology, I am obliged to be contented with village vices, petty iniquities, and vulgar sins," Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 77.-E.
(615) Major Topham was the proprietor of the fashionable morning paper entitled The World. "In this paper," says Mr. Gifford, in his preface to the Baviad, "were given the earliest specimens of those unqualified and audacious attacks on all private character, and which the town first smiled at for their quaintness then tolerated for their absurdity; now--that other papers equally wicked and more intelligible, have ventured to imitate it--will have to lament to the last hour of British liberty." In 1791, Major Topham published the Life of John Elwes the miser; which Walpole considered one of the most amusing anecdotical books in the English language.-E.
(616) While the Duke of Dorset, who kept her was ambassador at Paris. The Countess of Salisbury, to the fall OF whose garter has been attributed the foundation of the order of the Garter.
318. To Miss Hannah More. Strawberry Hill, July 12, 1788. (page 402)
Won't you repent of having opened the correspondence, my dear Madam, when you find my letters come so thick upon you? In this instance, however, I am only to blame in part, for being too ready to take advice, for the sole reason for which advice ever is taken, 'because it fell in with my inclination. You said in your last that you feared you took up time of mine to the prejudice of the public; implying, I imagine, that I might employ it in composing. Waving both your compliment, and my own vanity, I will speak very seriously to you on that subject, and with exact truth. My simple writings have had better fortune than they had any reason to expect; and I fairly believe, in a great degree, because gentlemen-writers, who do not write for interest, are treated with some civility if they do not write absolute nonsense. I think so, because I have not unfrequently known much better works than mine much more neglected, if the name, fortune, and situation of the authors were below mine. I wrote early, from youth, spirits, and vanity; and from both the last when the first no longer existed. I now shudder when I reflect on my own boldness; and with mortification, when I compare my own writings with those of any great authors. This is So true, that I question"Whether it would be possible for me to summon up courage to publish any thing I have written, if I could recall the past, and should yet think as I think at present. So much for what is over and out of my power. As to writing now, I have totally forsworn the profession, for two solid reasons. One I have already told you; and it is, that I know my own writings are trifling and of no depth. The other is, that, light and futile as they were, I am sensible they are better than I could compose now. I am aware of the decay of the middling parts I had, and others may be still more sensible of it. How do I know but I am superannuated? nobody will be so coarse as to tell me so; but if I published dotage all the world would tell me so. And who but runs that risk who is an author after severity? What happened to the greatest author of this age, and who certainly retained a very considerable portion of his abilities for ten years after my age Voltaire, at eighty-four, I think, Went to Paris to receive the incense, in person, of his countrymen, and to be witness of their admiration of a tragedy he had written at that Methusalem age. Incense he did receive till it choked him; and at the exhibition of his play he was actually crowned with laurel in the box where he sat. But what became of his poor play? It died as soon as he did--was buried with him; and no mortal, I dare to say, has ever read a line of it since, it was so bad.(617)
As I am neither by a thousandth part so great, nor a quarter so little, I will herewith send you a fragment that an accidental rencontre set me upon writing,, and which I found so flat, that I would not finish it. Don't believe that I am either begging praise by the stale artifice of' hoping to be contradicted; or that I think there is any occasion to make you discover my caducity. No; but the fragment contains a curiosity--English verses written by a French prince of the blood, and which at first I had a mind to add to my Royal and Noble Authors, but as he was not a royal author of ours, and as I could not please myself with an account of him, I shall revert to my old resolution of not exposing my pen's gray hairs.(618)
Of one passage I must take notice; it is a little indirect sneer at our crowd of authoresses. My choosing to send this to you is a proof that I think you an author, that is, a classic. But in truth I am nauseated by the Madams Piozzi, etc. and the host of novel-writers in petticoats, who think they imitate what is inimitable, Evelina and Cecilia. Your candour I know will not agree with me, when I tell you I am not at all charmed with Miss Seward and Mr. Hayley piping to one another: but you I exhort, and would encourage to write; and flatter myself you will never be royally gagged and promoted to fold Muslins, as has been lately wittily said on Miss Burney, in the list of five hundred living authors. Your writings promote virtues; and their increasing editions prove their worth and utility. If you question my sincerity, can you doubt my admiring you, when you have gratified my self-love so amply in your Bas Bleu? Still, as much as I love your writings, I respect yet more your heart and your goodness. You are so good, that I believe you would go to heaven, even though there were no Sunday, and only six working days in the week. Adieu, my best Madam!
(617) Madame du Deffand, in a letter to Walpole of the 8th of March 1778, says--"Voltaire se Porte bien: il est uniquement occup`e de sa tragedie d'Ir`ene; on assure qu'on la jouera de demain en huit: si elle n'a pas de succ`es, il en mourra." On the 18th, she again writes--"Le succ`es de la pi`ece a `et`e tr`es mediocre; il y eut cependant beaucouP de claquemens de mains, mais C'`etait Plus Voltaire qui en `etait l'objet que la Pi`ece." He died in the May following.-E.
(618) The French prince of the blood here spoken of, was Charles Duke of Orleans, who being a prisoner at the battle of Agincourt, was brought to England and detained here for twenty.five years. For a copy of the verses, see Walpole's works, vol. i. p. 564.-E.
319. To The Earl Of Strafford. Strawberry Hill, August 2, 1788. (page 404)
Matter for a letter, alas! my dear lord, I have none; but about letters I have great news to tell your lordship, only may the goddess of post-offices grant it be true! A Miss Sayer, of Richmond, who is at Paris, writes to Mrs. Boscawen, that a Baron de ]a Garde (I am sorry there are so many as in the genealogy of my story.) has found in a vieille armoire five hundred more letters of Madame de S`evign`e, and that they will be printed if the expense is not too great. I am in a taking, lest they should not appear before I set out for the Elysian fields for, though the writer is one of the first personages I should inquire after on my arrival, I question whether St. Peter has taste enough to know where she lodges, she is more likely to be acquainted with St. Catherine of Sienna and St. Undecimillia; and therefore I had rather see the letters themselves. It is true I have no small doubt of the authenticity of the legend; and nothing will persuade me of its truth so much as the non-appearance of the letters-a melancholy kind of conviction. But I vehemently suspect some new coinage, like the letters of Ninon de l'Enclos, Pope Ganganelli, and the Princess Palatine. I have lately been reading some fragments of letters of the Duchess of Orleans, which are certainly genuine, and contain some curious circumstances; for though she was a simple gossiping old gentlewoman, yet many little facts she could not help learning: and, to give her her due, she was ready to tell all she knew. To our late Queen she certainly did write often; and her Majesty, then only Princess, was full as ready to pay her in her own coin, and a pretty considerable treaty of commerce for the exchange of scandal was faithfully executed between them; insomuch that I remember to have heard forty years ago, that our gracious sovereign entrusted her Royal Highness of Orleans with an intrigue of one of her women of the bedchamber. Mrs. Selwyn to wit; and the good Duchess entrusted it to so many other dear friends that at last it got into the Utrecht Gazette, and came over hither, to the signal edification of the court of Leicester- fields. This is an additional reason, besides the internal evidence, for my believing the letters genuine. This old dame was mother of the Regent; and when she died, somebody wrote on her tomb, Cy gist l'Oisivet`e. This came over too; and nobody could expound It, till our then third Princess, Caroline, unravelled it,--Idleness is the mother of all vice.
I wish well enough to posterity to hope that dowager highnesses will Imitate the practice, and write all the trifles that occupy their royal brains; for the world so at least learns some true history, which their husbands never divulge, especially if they are privy to their own history, which their ministers keep from them as much as possible. I do not believe the present King of France knows much more of what he, or rather his Queen, is actually doing, than I do. I rather pity him; for I believe he means well, which is not a common article of my faith.
I shall go about the end of this week to Park-place, where I expect to find the Druidic temple from Jersey erected. How dull will the world be, if constant pilgrimages are not made thither! where, besides the delight of the scenes, that temple, the rude great arch, Lady Ailesbury's needle-works, and Mrs. Damer's Thames and Isis on Henley-bridge, with other of her sculptures, make it one of the most curious spots in the island, and unique. I want to have Mr. Conway's comedy acted there; and then the father, mother, and daughter would exhibit a theatre of arts as uncommon. How I regret your lordship did not hear Mrs. Damer speak the epilogue!
Letter 320To John Pinkerton, Esq.(619) Arlington Street, Aug. 14, 1788. (page 405)
Your intelligence of the jubilees to be celebrated in Scotland in honour of the Revolution was welcomed indeed. It is a favourable symptom of an age when its festivals are founded on good sense and liberality of sentiment, and not to perpetuate superstition and slavery. Your countrymen, Sir, have proved their good sense too in their choice of a poet. Your writings breathe the noble generous spirit congenial to the institution. Give me leave to say that it is very flattering to me to have the ode communicated to me; I will not say, to be consulted, for of that distinction I am not worthy: I am not a poet, and am Sure I cannot improve your ideas, which you have expressed with propriety and clearness, the necessary ingredients of an address to a populous meeting; for I doubt our numerous audiences are not arrived at Olympic taste enough to seize with enthusiasm the eccentric flights of Pindar. You have taken a more rational road to inspiration,'-by adhering to the genuine topics of the occasion; and you speak in so manly a Style, that I do not believe a more competent judge could amend your poetry.
I will tell you how more than occasionally the mention of Pindar slipped into my pen. I have frequently, and even yesterday, wished that some attempt were made to ennoble our horse-races, particularly at Newmarket, by associating better arts with the courses; as, by contributing for odes, the best of which should be rewarded by medals. Our nobility would find their vanity gratified; for, as the pedigrees of their steeds would soon grow tiresome, their own genealogies would replace them; and, in the mean time, poetry and medals would be improved. Their lordships would have judgment enough to know if their horse (which should be the impression on one side) were not well executed; and, as I hold that there is no being more difficult to draw well than a horse, no bad artist could be employed. Such a beginning would lead farther; and the cup or plate for the prize might rise into beautiful vases. But this is a vision; and I may as well go to bed and dream of any thing else.
(619) Now first collected.
321. To Miss Hannah More.(620) Strawberry Hill, August 17, 1788. (page 406)
Dear Madam, In this great discovery of a new mine of Madame de S`evign`e's letters, my faith, I confess, is not quite firm. Do people sell houses wholesale, without opening their cupboards? This age, too, deals so much in false coinage, that booksellers and Birmingham give equal vent to what is not sterling; with the only difference, that the shillings of the latter pretend that the names are effaced, while the wares Of the former pass under borrowed names. Have we not seen, besides all the Testamens Politiques, the spurious letters of Ninon de l'Enclos, of Pope Ganganelli, and the Memoirs of the Princess Palatine? This is a little mortifying, while we know that there actually exists at Naples a whole library of genuine Greek and Latin authors; most of whom probably, have never been in print: and where it is not unnatural to suppose the work of some classics, yet lost, may be in being, and the remainder of some of the best. Yet, at the 'rate in which they proceed to unroll, it would take as many centuries to bring them to light, as have elapsed since they were overwhelmed. Nay, another eruption of Vesuvius may return all the volumes to chaos! Omar is stigmatized for burning the library of Alexandria. Is the King of Naples less a Turk? IS not it almost as unconscientious to keep a seraglio of virgin authors under the custody of nurses, as of blooming Circassians? Consider, my dear Madam, I am past seventy; or I should not be SO Ungallant as to make the smallest comparison between the contents of the two harems. Your picture, which hangs near my elbow, would frown, I am sure, if I had any light meaning.
(620) Now first collected.
322. To The Earl Of Strafford. Strawberry Hill, Sept. 12, 1788. (page 407)
My late fit of gout, though very short, was a very authentic one, my dear lord, and the third I have had since Christmas. Still, of late years, I have suffered so little pain, that I can justly complain of nothing but the confinement, and the debility of my hands and feet, which, however, I can still use to a certain degree; and as I enjoy such good spirits and health in the intervals, I look upon the gout as no enemy; yet I know it is like the compacts said to be made with the devil, (no kind comparison to a friend!) who showers his favours on the Contractors, but is sure to seize and carry them off at last.
I would not say so much of myself, but in return to your lordship's obliging concern for me: Yet, insignificant as the subject, I have no better in bank; and if I plume myself on the tolerable state of my out-ward man, I doubt your lordship finds that age does not treat my interior so mildly as the gout does the other. If my letters, as you are pleased to say, used to amuse you, you must perceive how insipid they are grown, both from my decays and the little intercourse I have with the world. Nay, I take care not to aim at false vivacity: what do the attempts of age at liveliness prove but its weakness? What the Spectator said wittily, ought to be practised in sober sadness by old folks: when he was dull, he declared it was by design. So far, to be sure, we ought to observe it, as not to affect more spirits than we possess. To be purposely stupid, would be forbidding our correspondents to continue the intercourse; and I am so happy in enjoying the honour of your lordship's friendship, that I will be content (if you can be so) with my natural inanity, without studying to increment it.
I have been at Park-place, and assure your lordship that the Druidic temple vastly more than answers my expectation. Small it is, no doubt, when you are within the enclosure, and but a chapel of ease to Stonehenge; but Mr. Conway has placed it with so much judgment, that it has a lofty effect, and infinitely more than it could have had if he had yielded to Mrs. Damer's and my opinion, who earnestly begged to have it placed within the enclosure of the home grounds. It now stands on the ridge of the high hill without, backed by the horizon, and with a grove on each side at a little distance; and, being exalted beyond and above the range of firs that climb up the sides of the hill from the valley, wears all the appearance of an ancient castle, whose towers are only shattered, not destroyed; and devout as I am to old castles, and small taste as I have for the ruins of ages absolutely barbarous, it is impossible not to be pleased with so very rare an antiquity so absolutely perfect, and it is difficult to prevent visionary ideas from improving a prospect.
If, as Lady Anne Conolly told your lordship, I have had a great deal of company, you must understand it of my house, not of me; for I have very little. Indeed, last Monday both my house and I were included. The Duke of York sent me word the night before, that he would come and see it, and of course I had the honour of showing it myself. He said, and indeed it seemed so, that he was much pleased; at least, I had every reason to be satisfied; for I never saw any prince more gracious and obliging, nor heard one utter more personally kind speeches.
I do not find that her grace the Countess of Bristol's(621) will is really known yet. They talk of two wills--to be sure, in her double capacity; and they say she has made three coheiresses to her jewels, the Empress of Russia, Lady Salisbury, and the whore of Babylon.(622) The first of those legatees, I am not sorry, is in a piteous scrape: I like the King of Sweden no better than I do her and the Emperor; but it is good that two destroyers should be punished by a third, and that two crocodiles should be gnawed by an insect. Thank God! we are not only at peace, but in full plenty--nay, and in full beauty too. Still better; though we have had rivers of rain, it has not, contrary to all precedent, washed away our warm weather. September, a month I generally dislike for its irresolute mixture of warm and cold, has hitherto been peremptorily fine. The apple and walnut-trees bend down with fruit, as in a poetic description of Paradise.
(621) The Duchess of Kingston, who died at Paris in August.-E.
(622) The newspapers had circulated a report that the Duchess had bequeathed her diamonds to the Empress of Russia and his Holiness the Pope.-E.
323. To Miss Hannah More. Strawberry Hill, Sept. 22, 1788. (page 408)
I don't like to defraud you of your compassion, my good friend, profuse as you are of it. I really suffered scarce any pain at all from my last fit of gout. I have known several persons who think there is a dignity in complaining; and, if you ask how they do, reply, "Why, I am pretty well to-day; but if you knew what I suffered yesterday!" Now methinks nobody has a right to tax another for pity on what is past; and besides, complaint of what is over can only make the hearer glad you are in pain no longer. Yes, yes, my dear Madam, you generally place your pity so profitably, that YOU shall not waste a drop upon me, who ought rather to be congratulated on being so well at my age.
Much less shall I allow you to make apologies for your admirable and proper conduct towards your Poor prot`eg`ee(623) And now you have told me the behaviour of a certain great dame, I will confess to you that I have known it some months by accident-nay, and tried to repair it. I prevailed on Lady * * * * *, who as readily undertook the commission, and told the Countess of her treatment of you. Alas! the answer was, "It is too late; I have no money." No! but she has, if she has a diamond left. I am indignant; yet, do you know, not at this duchess, or that countess, but at the invention of ranks, and titles, and pre-eminence. I used to hate that king and t'other prince; but, alas! on reflection I find the censure ought to fall on human nature in general. They are made of the same stuff as we, and dare we say what we should be in their situation? Poor creatures! think how they are educated, or rather corrupted, early, how flattered! To be educated properly, they should be led through hovels, and hospitals, and prisons. Instead of being reprimanded (and perhaps immediately after sugar-plum'd) for not learning their Latin or French grammar, they now and then should be kept fasting; and, if they cut their finger, should have no plaister till it festered. No part of a royal brat's memory, which is good enough, should be burthened but with the remembrance of human sufferings. In short, I fear our nature is so liable to be corrupted and perverted by greatness, rank, power, and wealth, that I am inclined to think that virtue is the compensation to the poor for the want of riches: nay, I am disposed to believe that the first footpad or highwayman has been a man of quality, or a prince, who could not bear having wasted his fortune, and was too lazy to work; for a beggar-born would think labour a more natural way of getting a livelihood than venturing his life. I have something a similar opinion about common women. No modest girl thinks of many men, till she has been in love with one, been ruined by him, and abandoned. But to return to my theme, and it will fall heavy on yourself. Could the milkwoman have been so bad, if you had merely kept her from starving, instead of giving her opulence? The soil, I doubt, was bad; but it could not have produced the rank weed of ingratitude, if you had not dunged it with gold, which rises from rock, and seems to meet with a congenial bed when it falls on the human heart.
And so Dr. Warton imagines I m writing "Walpoliana!" No, in truth, nor any thing else; nor shall-nor will I go out in a jest-book. Age has not only made me prudent, but, luckily, lazy; and, without the latter extinguisher, I do not know but that farthing candle my discretion would let my snuff of life flit to the last sparkle of folly, like what children call. the parson and clerk in a bit of burnt paper. You see by my writability in pressing my letters on you, that my pen has still a colt's tooth left, but I never indulge the poor old child with more paper than this small-sized sheet, I do not give it enough to make a paper kite and fly abroad on wings of booksellers. You ought to continue writing, for you do good your writings, or at least mean it; and if a virtuous intention fails, it is a sort of coin, which, though thrown away, still makes the donor worth more than he was before he gave it away. I delight too in the temperature of your piety, and that you would not see the enthusiastic exorcist. How shocking to suppose that the Omnipotent Creator of worlds delegates his power to a momentary insect to eject supernatural spirits that he had permitted to infest another insect, and had permitted to vomit blasphemies against himself! Pray do not call that enthusiasm, but delirium. I pity real enthusiasts, but I would shave their heads and take away some blood. The exorcist's associates are in a worse predicament, I doubt, and hope to make enthusiasts. If such abominable impostors were not rather a subject of indignation, I could smile at the rivalship between them and the animal magnetists, who are inveigling fools into their different pales. And alas! while folly has a shilling left, there will be enthusiasts and quack doctors; and there will be slaves while there are kings or sugar-planters.(624) I have remarked, that though Jesuits, etc. travel to distant East and West to propagate their religion and traffic, I never heard of one that made a journey into Asia or Africa to preach the doctrines of liberty, though those regions are so deplorably oppressed. Nay, I much doubt whether ever any chaplain of the regiments we have sent to India has once whispered to a native of Bengal, that there are milder forms of government than those of his country. No; security of property is not a wholesome doctrine to be inculcated in a land where the soil produces diamonds and gold! In short, if your Bristol exorcist believes he can cast out devils, why does he not go to Leadenhallstreet? There is a company whose name is legion.
By your gambols, as you call them, after the most ungambolling peeress in Christendom, and by your jaunts, I conclude, to my great satisfaction, that you are quite well. Change of scene and air are good for your spirits; and September, like all our old ladies, has given itself May airs, and must have made your journey very pleasant. Yet you will be glad to get back to your Cowslip-green, though it may offer you nothing but Michaelmas daisies. When you do leave it, I wish you could persuade Mrs. Garrick to settle sooner in London. There is full as good hay to be made in town at Christmas at Hampton, and some hay-makers that will wish for you particularly. Your most sincere friend.
(623) Ann Yearsley. See ant`e, p. 395, letter 313.-E.
(624) In the letter to which this is a reply, Miss More had said-- "in vain do we boast of the enlightened eighteenth century, and conceitedly talk as if human reason had not a manacle left about her, but that philosophy had broken down all the strongholds of prejudice, ignorance, and superstition: and yet at this very time Mesmer has got an hundred thousand pounds by animal magnetism in Paris, and Mainanduc is getting as much in London. There is a fortune-teller in Westminster who is making little less. Lavater's Physiognomy-books sell at fifteen guineas a set. The divining-rod is still considered as oracular in many places. Devils are cast out by seven ministers; and, to complete the disgraceful catalogue, slavery is vindicated in print, and defended in the House of Peers." Memoirs, vol. ii. P. 120.-E.
324. To The Right Hon. Lady Craven. Berkeley Square, Dec. 11, 1788. (page 411)
It is agreeable to your ladyship's usual goodness to honour me with another letter; and I may say, to your equity too, after I had proved to Monsieur Mercier, by the list of dates of my letters, that it was not mine, but the post's fault, that you did not receive one that I had the honour of writing to you above a year ago. Not, Madam, that I could wonder if you had the prudence to drop a correspondence with an old superannuated man; who, conscious of his decay, has had the decency of not troubling, with his dotages persons of not near your ladyship's youth and vivacity. I have been of opinion that few persons know when to die; I am not so English as to mean when to despatch themselves--no, but when to go out of the world. I have usually applied this opinion to those who have made a considerable figure; and, consequently, it was not adapted to myself. Yet even we ciphers ought not to fatigue the public scene when we are become lumber. Thus, being quite out of the question, I will explain my maxim, which is the more wholesome, the higher it is addressed. My opinion, then, is, that when any personage has shone as much as is possible in his or her best walk, (and, not to repeat both genders every minute, I will use the male as the common of the two,) he should take up his Strulbrugism, and be heard of no more. Instances will be still more explanatory. Voltaire ought to have pretended to die after Alzire, Mahomet, and Semiramis, and not have produced his wretched last pieces: Lord Chatham should have closed his political career with his immortal war: and how weak was Garrick, when he had quitted the stage, to limp after the tatters of fame by writing and reading pitiful poems; and even by sitting to read plays which he had acted with such fire and energy! We have another example in Mr. Anstey; who, if he had a friend upon earth, would have been obliged to him for being knocked on the head, the moment he had published the first edition of the Bath Guide; for, even in the second, he had exhausted his whole stock of inspiration, and has never written any thing tolerable since. When Such unequal authors print their works together, one man may apply in a new light the old hacked simile of Mezentius, who tied together the living and the dead.
We have just received the works of an author, from whom I find I am to receive much less entertainment than I expected, because I shall have much less to read than I intended. His Memoirs, I am told, are almost wholly military; which, therefore, I shall not read: and his poetry, I am sure, I shall not look at, because I should not understand it. What I saw of it formerly, convinced me that he would not have been a poet, even if he had written in his own language: and, though I do not understand German, I am told it is a fine language - and I can easily believe that any tongue (not excepting our old barbarous Saxon, which, a bit of an antiquary as I am, I abhor,) is more harmonious than French. It was curious absurdity, therefore, to pitch on the most unpoetic language in Europe, the most barren, and the most clogged with difficulties. I have heard Russian and Polish sung, and both sounded musical; but, to abandon one's own tongue, and not adopt Italian, that is even sweeter, and softer, and more copious, than the Latin, was a want of taste that I should think could not be applauded even by a Frenchman born in Provence. But what a language is the French, which measures verses by feet that never are to be pronounced; which is the case wherever the mute e is found! What poverty of various sounds for rhyme, when, lest similar cadences should too often occur, their mechanic bards are obliged to marry masculine and feminine terminations as alternately as the black and white squares of a chessboard? Nay, will you believe me, Madam,--yes, you will, for you may convince your own eyes,-that a scene of Zaire begins with three of the most nasal adverbs that ever snorted together in a breath? Enfin, donc, desormais, are the culprits in question. Enfin donc, need I tell your ladyship, that the author I alluded to at the beginning of' this long tirade is the late King of Prussia?
I am conscious that I have taken a little liberty when I excommunicate a tongue in which your ladyship has condescended to write;(625) but I only condemn it for verse and pieces of eloquence, of which I thought it alike incapable, till I read Rousseau of Geneva. It is a most sociable language, and charming for narrative and epistles. Yet, write as well as you will in it, you must be liable to express yourself better in the speech natural to you and your own country has a right to understand all your works, and is jealous of their not being as perfect as you could make them. Is it not more creditable to be translated into a foreign language than into your own? and will it not vex you to hear the translation taken for the original, and to find vulgarisms that you could not have committed yourself? But I have done, and will release you, Madam; only observing, that you flatter me with a vain hope, when you tell me you shall return to England, some time or other. Where will that time be for me! and when it arrives, shall I not be somewhere else?
I do not pretend to send your ladyship English news, nor to tell you of English literature. You must before this time have heard of the dismal state into which our chief personage is fallen! That consideration absorbs all others. The two houses are going to settle some intermediate succedaneum; and the obvious one, no doubt, will be fixed on.
(625) Besides writing a comedy in French, called "Nourjahad," Lady Craven had translated into that language Cibber's play of "She would and She would not."-E.
325. \To The Miss Berrys.(626) February 2, 17-71(627) [1789.) (page 413)
I am sorry, in the sense of that word before it meant, like a Hebrew word, glad or sorry, that I am engaged this evening; and I am at your command on Tuesday, as it is always my inclination to be. It is a misfortune that words are become so much the current coin of society, that, like King William's shillings, they have no impression left; they are so smooth, that they mark no more to whom they first belonged than to whom they do belong, and are not worth even the twelvepence into which they may be changed: but if they mean too little, they may seem to mean too much too, especially when an old man (who is often synonymous for a miser) parts with them. I am afraid of protesting how much I delight in your society, lest I should seem to affect being gallant; but if two negatives make an affirmative, why may not two ridicules compose one piece of sense? and therefore, as I am in love with you both, I trust it is a proof of the good sense of your devoted H. WALPOLE.
(626) This is the first of a series of letters addressed by Mr Walpole to Miss Mary and Miss Agnes Berry, and now first published from the original in their possession.-E.
(627) The date is thus put, alluding to his age, which, in'1789 was seventy-one.-M. B.
326. To The Miss Berrys. Berkeley Square, March 20, 1789. (page 413)
Mrs. Damer had lent her Madame de la Motte,(628) and I have but this moment recovered it; so, you see, I had not forgotten it any more than my engagements to you: nay, were it not ridiculous at my age to use a term so almost run out as never, I would add, that you may find I never can forget you. I hope you are not engaged this day sevennight, but will allow me to wait on you to Lady Ailesbury, which I will settle with her when I have your answer. I did mention it to her in general, but have no day free before Friday next, except Thursday; when, if there is another illumination, as is threatened, we should neither get thither nor thence; especially not the latter, if the former is impracticable.
"Quicquid delirant Reges, plectuntur Achivi."(629)
P. S. I have got a few hairs of Edward the Fourth's head, not beard; they are of a darkish brown, not auburn.
(628) The M`emoire Justificatif of Madame de la Motte, relative to her conduct in the far-famed affair of the necklace.-E.
(629) Alluding to the public rejoicings on the recovery of George the Third from his first illness in 1788. In a letter to her sister of the 9th of March, Miss More relates the following particulars:--"A day or two ago I dined at the Bishop of London's, with Dr. Willis. As we had nobody else at dinner but the Master of the Rolls, I was indulged in asking the doctor all manner of impertinent questions. He never saw, he said, so much natural sweetness and goodness of mind, united to so much piety, as in the King. During his illness, he many time shed tears for Lord North's blindness. The Bishop had been to him that morning: he told him that he wished to return his thanks to Almighty God in the most public manner, and hoped the Bishop would not refuse him a sermon. He proposed going to St. Paul's to do it. He himself has named one of the Psalms for the thanksgiving-day, and the twelfth of Isaiah for the lesson."
On the 17th, she again writes--"The Queen and Princesses came to see the illuminations, and did not get back to Kew till after one O'clock. When the coach stopped, the Queen took notice of a fine gentleman who came to the coach-door without his hat. This was the King, who came to hand her out. She scolded him for being up and out so late; but he gallantly replied, 'he could not Possibly go to bed and sleep till he knew she was safe.' There never was so joyous, so innocent, and so orderly a mob." Memoirs, vol. ii. Pp. 144- 155-E.
327. To Miss Hannah More. Berkeley Square, April 22, 1789. (page 414)
Dear Madam, As perhaps you have not yet seen the "Botanic Garden" (which I believe I mentioned to you), I lend it you to read. The poetry, I think, you will allow most admirable; and difficult it was, no doubt. If you are not a naturalist, as well as a poetess, perhaps you will lament that so powerful a talent has been wasted to so little purpose; for where is the use of describing in verse what nobody can understand without a long prosaic explanation of every article? It is still more unfortunate that there is not a symptom of plan in the whole poem. The lady-flowers and their lovers enter in pairs or trios, or etc. as often as the couples in Cassandra. and you are not a whit more interested about one heroine and her swain than about another. The similes are beautiful, fine, and sometimes sublime: and thus the episodes will be better remembered than the mass of the poem itself, which one cannot call the subject; for could one call it a subject, if any body had composed a poem on the matches formerly made in the Fleet, where, as Waitwell says, in "The Way of the World," they stood like couples in rows ready to begin a country-dance? Still, I flatter myself you will agree with me that the author is a great poet, and could raise the passions, and possesses all the requisites of the art. I found but a single bad verse; in the last canto one line ends e'er long. You will perhaps be surprised at meeting a truffle converted into a nymph, and inhabiting a palace studded with emeralds and rubies like a saloon in the Arabian Nights! I had a more particular motive for sending this poem to you: you will find the bard espousing your poor Africans. There is besides, which will please you too, a handsome panegyric on the apostle of humanity, Mr. Howard.(630)
Mrs. Garrick, whom I had the pleasure of meeting in her own box at Mr. Conway's play, gave me a much better account of your health which delighted me. I am sure, my good friend, you partake of my joy at the great success of his comedy. The additional character of the Abb`e pleased much: it was added by the advice of the players to enliven it; that is, to stretch the jaws of the pit and galleries. I sighed silently; for it was originally so genteel and of a piece, that I was sorry to have it tumbled by coarse applauses. But this is a secret. I am going to Twickenham for two days on an assignation with the spring, and to avoid the riotous devotion of to-morrow.
A gentleman essayist has printed what he calls some strictures on my Royal and Noble Authors, in revenge for my having spoken irreverently (on Bishop Burnet's authority) of the Earl of Anglesey, who had the honour, it seems, of being the gentleman's grandfather. He asks me, by the way, why it was more ridiculous in the Duke of Newcastle to write his two comedies, than in the Duke of Buckingham to write "The Rehearsal?" Alas! I know but one reason; which is, that it is less ridiculous to write one excellent comedy, than two very bad ones. Peace be with such answerers! Adieu, my dear Madam! Yours most cordially.
(630) "I did not feel," says Miss More, in her reply, "so much gratified in reading the poem, marvellous as I think it, as I did at the kindness which led you to think of me when you met with any thing that you imagined would give me pleasure. Your strictures, which are as true as if they had no wit in them, served to embellish every page as I went on, and were more intelligible and delightful to me than the scientific annotations in the margin. The author is, indeed, a poet; and I wish, with you, that he had devoted his exuberant fancy, his opulence of imagery, and his correct and melodious versification. to subjects more congenial to human feelings than the intrigues of a flower-garden. I feel, like the most passionate ]over, the beauty of the cyclamen, or honeysuckle; but am as indifferent as the most fashionable husband to their amours, their pleasures, or their unhappiness." Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 149.-E.
328. To The Miss Berrys. April 28, at night, 1789. (page 415)
By my not saying no to Thursday, you, I trust, understood that I meant yes; and so I do. In the mean time, I send you the most delicious poem upon earth. If you don't know what it is all about, or why; at least you will find glorious similes about every thing in the world, and I defy you to discover three bad verses in the whole stack. Dryden was but the prototype of the Botanic Garden in his charming Flower and Leaf; and if he had less meaning, it is true he had more plan: and I must own, that his white velvets and green velvets, and rubies and emeralds, were much more virtuous gentlefolks than most of the flowers of the creation, who seem to have no fear of Doctors' Commons before their eyes. This is only the Second Part; for, like my 'king's eldest daughter' in the Hieroglyphic Tales, the First Part is not born yet:--no matter. I can read this over and over again for ever; for though it is so excellent, it is impossible to remember any thing so disjointed, except you consider it as a collection of short enchanting poems,--as the Circe at her tremendous devilries in a church; the intrigue of the dear nightingale and rose; and the description of Medea; the episode of Mr. Howard, which ends with the most sublime of lines--in short, all, all; all is the most lovely poetry. And then one sighs, that such profusion of poetry, magnificent and tender, should be thrown away on what neither interests nor instructs, and, with all the pains the notes take to explain, is scarce intelligible.'
How strange it is, that a man should have been inspired with such enthusiasm of poetry by poring through a microscope, and peeping through the keyholes of all the seraglios of all the flowers in the universe I hope his discoveries may leave any impression but of the universal polygamy going on in the vegetable world, where, however, it is more gallant than amongst the human race; for you will find that they are the botanic ladies who keep harams, and not the gentlemen. Still, I will maintain that it is much better that we should have two wives than your sex two husbands. So pray don't mind Linnaeus and Dr. Darwin: Dr. Madan had ten times more sense. Adieu! Your doubly constant Telypthorus.
(631) "Modern ears," says Mr. Matthias, in the Pursuits of Literature, "are absolutely debauched by such poetry as Dr. Darwin's, which marks the decline of simplicity and true taste in this country. It is to England what Seneca's prose was to Rome: abundat dulcibus vitiis. Dryden and Pope are the standards of excellence in this species of writing in our language; and when young minds are rightly instituted in their works, they may, without much danger, read such glittering verses as Dr. Darwin's. They will then perceive the distortion of the sentiment, and the harlotry of the ornaments." To the short-lived popularity of Dr. Darwin, the admirable poem of "The Loves of the Triangles'" the joint production of Mr. Canning and Mr. Frere, in no small degree contributed.-E.
329. To The Miss Berrys. Strawberry Hill, Tuesday, June 23, 1789. (PAGE 416)
I am not a little disappointed and mortified at the post bringing me no letter from you to-day; you promised to write on the road. I reckon you arrived at your station on Sunday evening: if you do not write till next day, I shall have no letter till Thursday!
I am not at all consoled for my double loss: my only comfort is, that I flatter myself the journey and air will be of service to you both. The latter has been of use to me, though the part of the element of air has been chiefly acted by the element of water, as my poor haycocks feel! Tonton (632) does not miss you so much as I do, not having so good a taste; for he is grown very fond of me, and I return it for your sakes, though he deserves it too, for he is perfectly good-natured and tractable; but he is not beautiful, like his " god-dog,(633) as Mr. Selwyn, who dined here on Saturday, called my poor late favourite; especially as I have had him clipped. The shearing has brought to light a nose an ell long; an as he has now nasum rhinocerotis, I do not doubt but he will be a better critic in poetry than Dr. Johnson, who judged of harmony by the principles of an author, and fancied, or wished to make others believe, that no Jacobite could write bad verses, nor a Whig good.
Have you shed a tear over the Opera-house?(634) or do you agree with me, that there is no occasion to rebuild it? The nation has long been tired of operas, and has now a good opportunity of dropping them. Dancing protracted their existence for some time; but the room after. was the real support of both, and was like what has been said of your sex, that they never speak their true meaning but in the postscript of their letters. Would not it be sufficient to build an after-room on the whole emplacement, to which people might resort from all assemblies? It should be a codicil to all the diversions of London; and the greater the concourse, the more excuse there would be for staying all night, from the impossibility of ladies getting their coaches to drive up. To be crowded to death in a waiting-room, at the end of an entertainment, is the whole joy; for who goes to any diversion till the last minute of it? I am persuaded that, instead if retrenching St. Athanasius's Creed, as the Duke of Grafton proposed, in order to draw good company to church, it would be more efficacious if the Congregation were to be indulged with an After-room in the vestry; and, instead of two or three being gathered together, there would be all the world, before the prayers would be quite over.
Thursday night
"Despairing, beside a clear stream A shepherd forsaken was laid;"--
not very close to the stream, but within doors in sight of it; for in this damp weather a lame old Colin cannot lie and despair with any comfort on a wet bank: but I smile against the grain, and am seriously alarmed at Thursday being come, and no letter! I dread one of you being ill. Mr. Batt(635) and the Abb`e Nicholls(636) dined with me to-day, and I could talk of you en pais de connoissance. They tried to persuade me that I have no cause to be in a fright about you; but I have such perfect faith in the kindness of both of you, as I have in your possessing every other virtue, that I cannot believe but some sinister accident must have prevented my hearing from you. I wish Friday was come! I cannot write about any thing else till I have a letter.
(632) A dog of Miss Berry's left in Walpole's care during their absence in Yorkshire.-M.B.
(633) The dog which had been bequeathed to Mr. Walpole by Madame du Deffand at her death, and which was likewise called Tonton. See ant`e, p. 275, letter 217.-M.B.
(634) on the night of the 17th, the Opera-house was entirely consumed by fire.-E.
(635) Thomas Batt, Esq. then one of the commissioners for public accounts.-E.
(636) The Rev. Norton Nicholls, rector of Lound and Bradwell in the county of Suffolk; one of the most elegant scholars and accomplished gentlemen of the day. He died in November 1809, in his sixty-eighth year. " It was his singular good fortune," says Mr. Dawson Turner, , to have been distinguished in his early life by the friendship of Gray the poet; while the close of his days was cheered and enlivened and dignified by the friendship, and almost constant society, of a Man scarcely inferior to Gray in talent and acquirements Mr. Mathias; who has embalmed his memory in an Italian Ode and a biographical Memoir; which latter is a beautiful specimen of that kind of composition.,, They will both be found in the fifth volume of Nicholls's Illustrations of Literature.-E.
330. To Miss Hannah More. Strawberry Hill, June 23, 1789. (PAGE 418)
Madam Hannah, You are an errant reprobate, and grow wickeder and wickeder every day. You deserve to be treated like a negre; and your favourite Sunday, to which you are so partial that you treat the other poor six days of the week as if they had no souls to be saved, should, if I could have my will, "shine no Sabbath-day for you." Now, don't simper, and look as innocent as if virtue would not melt in your mouth. Can you deny the following charges?--I lent you "The Botanic Garden," and you returned it without writing a syllable, or saying, -where you were or whither you was going; I suppose for fear I should know how to direct to you. Why, if I did send a letter after you, could not you keep it three months without an answer, as you did last year?
In the next place, you and your nine accomplices, who, by the way, are too good in keeping you company, have clubbed the prettiest poem imaginable,(637) and communicated it to Mrs. Boscawen, with injunctions not to give a copy of it; I suppose, because you are ashamed of having written a panegyric. Whenever you do compose a satire, you are ready enough to publish it; at least, whenever you do, you will din one to death with it. But now, mind your perverseness: that very pretty novel poem, and I must own it is charming, have you gone and spoiled, flying in the faces of your best friends the Muses, and keeping no measures with them. I'll be shot if they dictated two of the best lines with two syllables too much in each--nay, you have weakened one of them,
"Ev'n Gardiner's mind"
is far more expressive than steadfast Gardiner's; and, as Mrs. Boscawen says, whoever knows any thing of Gardiner, could not want that superfluous epithet; and whoever does not, would not be the wiser for your foolish insertion--Mrs. Boscawen did not call it foolish, but I do. The second line, as Mesdemoiselles the Muses handed it to you, Miss, was,
"Have all be free and saved--"
not, "All be free and all be saved:" the second all be is a most unnecessary tautology. The poem was perfect and faultless, if you could have let it alone. I wonder how your mischievous flippancy could help maiming that most new and beautiful expression, "sponge Of sins;" I should not have been surprised, as you love verses too full of feet, if you have changed it to "that scrubbing-brush of sins."
Well! I will say no more now: but if you do not order me a copy of "Bonner's Ghost" incontinently, never dare to look my printing house in the face again. Or come, I'll tell you what; I will forgive all your enormities, if you will let me print your poem. I like to filch a little immortality out of others, and the Strawberry press could never have a better opportunity. I will not haggle for the public will be content with printing only two hundred copies, of which you shall have half, and I half. It shall cost you nothing but a yes, I only propose this, in case you do not mean to print it yourself. Tell me sincerely which you like. But as to not printing it at all, charming and unexceptionable as it is, you cannot be so preposterous.(638) I by no means have a thought of detracting from your own share in your own poem; but, as I do suspect that it caught some inspiration from your perusal of "The Botanic Garden," so I hope you will discover that my style is much improved by having lately studied Bruce's travels. There I dipped, and not in St. Giles's pound, where one would think this author had been educated. Adieu! Your friend, or mortal foe, as you behave on the present occasion.
(637) "Bishop Bonner's Ghost;" to which was prefixed the following argument:--"In the garden of the palace at Fulham is a dark recess; at the end of this stands a chair which once belonged to Bishop Bonner. A certain Bishop of London more than two hundred years after the death of the aforesaid -Bonner just as the clock of the Gothic chapel had struck six undertook to cut with his own hand a narrow walk through this thicket, which is since called 'The Monk's Walk.' He had no sooner begun to clear the way, than lo! suddenly up started from the chair the Ghost of Bonner; who, in a tone of just and bitter indignation, uttered the following verses."-E.
(638) Miss More, in her reply, says--"I send this under cover to the Bishop of London, to whom I write your emendations, and desire they may be considered as the true reading. What is odd enough, I did write both the lines so at first but must go a-tinkering them afterwards. I do not pretend that I am 'lot flattered by your obliging proposal of printing these slight verses at the Strawberry press. YOU must do as you please, I believe. What business have I to think meanly of verses You have commended?" Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 159.-E.
331. To Miss Berry. Strawberry Hill, June 30, 1789. (PAGE 419)
Were there any such thing as sympathy at the distance of two hundred miles, you would have been in a mightier panic than I was; for, on Saturday se'nnight, going to open the glass case in the Tribune, my foot caught in the carpet, and I fell with my whole (si weight y a) weight against the corner of the marble altar, on my side, and bruised the muscles so badly, that for two days I could not move without screaming.(639) I am convinced I should have broken a rib, but that I fell on the cavity whence two of my ribs were removed, that are gone to Yorkshire. I am much better both of my bruise and of my lameness, and shall be ready to dance at my own wedding when my wives return. And now to answer your letter. If you grow tired of the Arabian Nights, you have no more taste than Bishop Atterbury,(640) who huffed Pope for sending him them or the Persian Tales, and fancied he liked Virgil better, who had no more imagination than Dr. Akenside. Read Sinbad the Sailor's Voyages, and you will be sick of AEneas's. What woful invention were the nasty poultry that dunged on his dinner, and ships on fire turned into Nereids! a barn metamorphosed into a cascade in a pantomime is full as sublime an effort of genius. I do not know whether the Arabian Nights are of Oriental origin or not:(641) I should think not, because I never saw any other Oriental composition that was not bombast without genius, and figurative without nature; like an Indian screen, where you see little men on the foreground, and larger men hunting tigers above in the air, which they take for perspective. I do not think the Sultaness's narratives very natural or very probable, but there is a wildness in them that captivates. However, if you could wade through two octavos(642) of Dame Piozzi's thoughts and so's and I trow's, and cannot listen to seven volumes of Scheherezade's narrations, I will sue for a divorce infibro Parnassi, and Boccalini shall be my proctor. The cause will be a counterpart to the sentence of the Lacedoemonian, who was condemned for breach of the peace, by saying in three words what he might have said in two.
You are not the first Eurydice that has sent her husband to the devil, as you have kindly proposed to me; but I will not undertake the jaunt, for if old Nicholas Pluto should enjoin me not to look back to you, I should certainly forget the prohibition like my predecessor. Besides, I am a little too close to take a voyage twice which I am so soon to repeat; and should be laughed at by the good folks on the other side of the water, if I proposed coming back for a twinkling Only. No; I choose as long as I can
"Still with my fav'rite Berrys to remain."(643)
So you was not quite satisfied, though you ought to have been transported, with King's College Chapel, because it has no aisles, like every common cathedral. I suppose you would object to a bird of paradise, because it has no legs, but shoots to heaven in a trait, and does not rest on earth. Criticism and comparison spoil many tastes. You should admire all bold and unique essays that resemble nothing else; the Botanic Garden, the Arabian Nights, and King's Chapel are above all rules: and how preferable is what no one can imitate, to all that is imitated even from the best models! Your partiality to the pageantry of popery I do not approve, and I doubt whether the world will not be a loser (in its visionary enjoyments) by the extinction of that religion, as it was by the decay of chivalry and the proscription of the heathen deities. Reason has no invention; and as plain sense will never be the legislator of human affairs, it is fortunate when taste happens to be regent.
(639) Miss More, in a letter written at this time to Walpole, says, "How you do scold me! but I don't care for your scolding; and I don't care for your wit neither, that I don't. half as much as I care for a blow which I hear you have given yourself against a table. I have known such very serious consequences arise from such accidents, that I beg of you to drown yourself in the "Veritable Arquebusade." Memoirs, vol. ii. P. 158.-E.
(640) The following are the Bishop's expressions:--"And now, Sir, for your Arabian Tales. Ill as I have been, almost ever since they came to hand, I have read as much of them as I shall read while I live. indeed, they do not please my taste; they are writ with so romantic an air, and are of so wild and absurd a contrivance, that I have not only no pleasure, but no patience in reading them. I cannot help thinking them the production of some woman's imagination." The Honourable Charles Yorke, in a letter to his brother, the second Earl of Hardwicke written in June 1740, states that Pope and Warburton both agreed in condemning the bishop's judgment on the Arabian Tales and that Warburton added, that from those tales the completest notion might be gather,d of the Eastern ceremonies and manners.-E.
(641) The work entitled "Mille et Une Nuits," was translated from an original Arabic manuscript, in the King of France's library by M. Galland, professor of Arabic in the University of Paris. It appeared in 1704-8: in twelve volumes.-E.
(642) Her "Observations and Reflections in the course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany," honoured with a couplet in the Baviad--
See Thrale's gray widow with a satchel roam, And bring in Pomp laborious nothings home."-E.
(643) A line from some verses that he had received.-M.B.
332. To Miss Hannah More. Strawberry Hill, July 2, 1789. (PAGE 421)
I almost think I shall never abuse you again; nay, I would not, did not it prove so extremely good for you. No walnut tree is better for being threshed than you are; and, though you have won my heart by your compliance, I don't know whether my conscience will not insist on my using YOU ill now and then; for is there any precedent for gratitude not giving way to every other duty? Gratitude like an earl's eldest son, is but titular, and has no place upon trials. But I fear I punning sillily, instead of thanking you seriously, as I do, for allowing me to print your lovely verses. My press can confer no honour; but, when I offer it, it is a certain mark Of My sincerity and esteem. It has been dedicated to friendship, to charity-too often to worthless self-love; sometimes to the rarity of the pieces, and sometimes to the merit of them; now it will unite the first motive and the last.
My fall, for which you so kindly concern yourself, was not worth mentioning; for as I only bruised the muscles of my side, instead of breaking a rib, camphire infused in arquebusade took off the pain and all consequences in five or six days: and one has no right to draw on the compassion of others for what one has suffered and is past. Some love to be pitied on that score; but forget that they only excite, in the best-natured, joy on their deliverance. You commend me too for not complaining of my chronical evil; but, my dear Madam, I should be blamable for the reverse. If I would live to seventy-two, ought I not to compound for the encumbrances of old age? And who has fewer? And who has more cause to be thankful to Providence for his lot? The gout, it is true, comes frequently, but the fits are short, and very tolerable; the intervals are full health. My eyes are perfect, my hearing but little impaired, chiefly to whispers, for which I certainly have little occasion: my spirits never fail; and though my hands and feet are crippled, I can use both, and do not wish to box, wrestle, or dance a hornpipe. In short, I am just infirm enough to enjoy all the prerogatives of old age, and to plead them against any thing I have not a mind to do. Young men must conform to every folly in fashion - drink when they had rather be sober; fight a duel if somebody else is wrong-headed; marry to please their fathers, not themselves; and shiver in a white waistcoat, because ancient almanacks, copying the Arabian, placed the month of June after May; though, when the style was reformed, it ought to have been intercalated between December and January. Indeed, I have been so childish as to cut my hay for the same reason, and am now weeping over it by the fireside. But to come to business.
You must suffer me to print two hundred copies; and if you approve it, I will send thirty to the Bishop of London out of your quota. You may afterwards give him more, if you please. I do not propose putting your name, unless you desire it; as I think it would swear with the air of ancientry you have adopted in the signature and notes. The authoress will be no secret; and as It will certainly get into magazines, why should not you deal privately beforehand with some bookseller, and have a second edition ready to appear soon after mine is finished? The difficulty of getting my edition at first, from the paucity of the number and from being only given as presents, will make the second edition eagerly sought for; and I do not see why my anticipating the publication should deprive you of the profit. Rather than do that, I would print a smaller number. I wish to raise an additional appetite to that which every body has for your writings; I am sure I did not mean to injure you. Pray think of this; there 'Is time enough; I cannot begin to print under a week: my press has lain fallow for some time, and my printer must prepare ink, balls, etc.; and as I have but one man, he cannot be expeditious. I seriously do advise you to have a second edition ready; why should covetous booksellers run away with all the advantages of your genius? They get enough by their ample share of the sale.
I will say no more, but to repeat my thanks for your consent, which truly obliges me; and I am happy to have been the instrument of' preserving what your modesty would have sunk. My esteem could not increase: but one likes to be connected by favours to those one highly values.
333. To Miss Berry. Strawberry Hill, July 9, 1789. (PAGE 422)
You are so good and punctual, that I will complain no more of your silence, unless you are silent. You must not relax, especially until you can give me better accounts of your health and spirits. I was peevish before with the weather; but, now it prevents your riding, I forget hay and roses, and all the comforts that are washed away, and shall only watch the weathercock for an east wind in Yorkshire. What a shame that I should recover from the gout and from bruises, as I assure you I am entirely, and that you should have a complaint left! One would think that it was I was grown young again; for while just now, as I was reading your letter in my bedchamber, while some of my customers(644) are seeing the house, I heard a gentleman in the armoury ask the housekeeper as he looked at the bows and arrows, "Pray, does Mr. Walpole shoot?" No, nor with pistols neither. I leave all weapons to Lady Salisbury(645) and Mr. Lenox;(646) and, since my double marriage, have suspended my quiver in the Temple of Hymen. Hygeia shall be my goddess, if she will send you back blooming to this region.
I wish I had preserved any correspondence in France, as you are curious about their present history; which I believe very momentous indeed. What little I have accidentally heard, I will relate, and will learn what more I can. On the King,'s being advised to put out his talons, Necker desired leave to resign, as not having been consulted, and as the measure violated his plan. The people, hearing his intention, thronged to Versailles; and he was forced to assure them from a balcony, that he was not to retire. I am not accurate in dates, nor warrant my intelligence, and therefore pretend only to send you detached scraps. Force being still in request, the Duc du Chatelet acquainted the King that he could not answer for the French guards. Chatelet, who, from his hot arrogant temper, I should have thought would have been One of the proudest opposers of the people, is suspected to lean to them. In short, Marshal Broglio is appointed commander-in-chief, and is said to have sworn on his sword, that he will not sheathe it till he has plunged it into the heart of ce gros banquier Genevois. I cannot reconcile this with Necker's stay at Versailles. That he is playing a deep game is certain. It is reported that Madame Necker tastes previously every thing he swallows.(647) A vast camp is forming round Paris; but the army is mutinous--the tragedy may begin on the other side. They do talk of an engagement at Metz, where the French troops, espousing the popular cause, were attacked by two German regiments, whom the former cut to pieces. The Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, who were at Paris, have thought it prudent to leave it; and My Cousin, Mr. Thomas Walpole, who is near it, has just written to his daughters, that he is glad to be Out of the town, that he may Make his retreat easily.
Thus, you see the crisis is advanced far beyond orations, and wears all the aspect of civil war. For can one imagine that the whole nation is converted at once, and in some measure without provocation from the King, who, far from enforcing the prerogative like Charles the First, Cancelled the despotism obtained for his grandfather by the Chancellor Maupeou, has exercised no tyranny, and has shown a disposition to let the constitution be amended. It did want it indeed; but I fear the present want of temper grasps at so much, that they defeat their own purposes; and where loyalty has for ages been the predominant characteristic of a nation, it cannot be eradicated at once. Pity will soften the tone of the moment; and the nobility and clergy have more interest in wearing a royal than a popular yoke; for great lords and high-priests think the rights of mankind a defalcation of-their privileges. No man living is more devoted to liberty than I am; yet blood is a terrible price to pay for it! A martyr to liberty is the noblest of characters; but to sacrifice the lives of others, though for the benefit of all, is a strain of heroism that I could never ambition.
I have just been reading Voltaire's Correspondence,--one of those heroes who liked better to excite martyrs, than to be one. How vain would he be, if alive now! I was struck with one of his letters to La Chalotais, who was a true upright patriot and martyr too. In the 221 st Letter of the sixth volume, Voltaire says to him, "Vous avez jett`e des germes qui produiront un jour plus qu'on ne pense." It was lucky for me that you inquired about France; I had not a halfpennyworth more of news in my wallet.
A person who was very apt to call on you every morning for a Minute, and stay three hours, was with me the other day, and his grievance from the rain was the swarms of gnats. I said, I supposed I have very bad blood, for gnats never bite me. He replied, "I believe I have bad blood, too, for dull people, who would tire me to death, never Come Dear me." Shall I beg a pallet-full of that repellent for you, to set in your window as barbers do?
I believe you will make me grow a little of a newsmonger, though you are none; but I know that at a distance, in the country, letters of news are a regale. I am not wont to listen to the batteries on each side of me at Hampton-court and Richmond; but in your absence I shall turn a less deaf ear to them, in hopes of gleaning something that may amuse you: though I shall leave their manufactures of scandal for their own home consumption; you happily do not deal in such wares. Adieu! I used to think the month of September the dullest of the whole set; now I shall be impatient for it.
(644) The name given by Mr. Walpole to parties coming to view his house.-M.B.
(645) Lady Mary-Amelia, daughter of Wills, first Marquis of Downshire; married, in 1773, to James seventh Earl of Salisbury, advanced, in August 1789, to the title of Marquis. Her ladyship was a warm patroness of the art of archery, and a first-rate equestrian. In November 1835, at the age of eighty-four, she was burnt to death at Hatfield-house.-E.
(646) In consequence of a dispute, concerning words said to have been spoken at Daubiny's club, a duel took place at Wimbledon, on the 26th of May, between the Duke of York and Colonel Lenox, afterwards Duke of Richmond. Neither of the parties was wounded; and the seconds, Lords Rawdon and Winchilsea, certified, that both behaved with the utmost coolness and intrepidity.-E.
(647) On the 11th of July, two days after the date of this letter, Necker received his dismission and a formal demand to quit the kingdom. It was accompanied by a note from the King, praying him to depart in a private manner, for fear of exciting disturbances. Necker received this intimation just as he was dressing for dinner-, after which, without divulging his intention to any one, he set out in the evening, with Madame Necker, for Basle. See Mignet, tom. i. p. 47.-E.
334. To Miss Hannah More
Strawberry Hill, July 10, 1789. (PAGE 425)
Though I am touchy enough with those I love, I did not think you dilatory, nor expect that answers to letters should be as quick as repartees. I do pity you for the accident that made you think yourself remiss.(648) I enjoy your patient's recovery; but almost smiled unawares at the idea of her being sopped, and coming out of the water brustling up her feathers and ermines, and assuming the dignity of a Jupiter Pluvius.
I beseech you not to fancy yourself vain on my being your printer would Sappho be proud, though Aldus or Elzevir were her typographer? My press has no rank but from its narrowness, that is, from the paucity of its editions, and from being a volunteer. But a truce to compliments, and to reciprocal humility. Pray tell me how I shall convey your parcel to you: the impression is begun. I shall not dare, vu le sujet, to send a copy to Mrs. Garrick;(649) I do not know whether you will venture. Mrs. Boscawen shall have one, but it shall be in your name: so authorize me to present It, that neither of us may tell the whitest of fibs. Shall I deliver any others for you within my reach, to save you trouble?
I have no more corrections to make. I told you brutally at first of the only two faults I found, and you sacrificed them with the patience of a martyr; for I conclude that when a good poet knowingly sins against measure twice, he is persuaded that he makes amends by greater beauties: in such case docility deserves the palmbranch. I do not applaud your declining a London edition; but you have been so tractable, that I will let you have your way in this, though you only make over profit to magazines. Being an honest printer myself, I have little charity for those banditti of my profession who pilfer from every body they find on the road.
(648) "You will think me a great brute and savage, dear Sir, for not having directly thanked you for your letter, till you have read my piece justificative, and then you will think I should have been a greater brute and savage if I had; for the very day I received it, a very amiable neighbour, coming to call on us, was overturned from her phaeton into some water, her husband driving her. The poor lady was brought into our house, to all appearance dying. I thank God, however, she is now out of danger; but our attendance, day and night, on the maimed lady and the distressed husband banished poetry from my thoughts, and suspended all power of writing nonsense." Miss More to Walpole. Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 160.-E.
(649) Mrs. Garrick was a Roman Catholic.-E.
335. To The Hon. H. S. Conway
Strawberry Hill, Wednesday night, [July 15, 1789.] (PAGE 425)
I write a few lines only to confirm the truth of much of what you will read in the papers from Paris. Worse may already be come, or is expected every hour. Mr. Mackenzie and Lady Betty called on me before dinner, after the post was gone out; and he showed me a letter from Dutens, who said two couriers arrived yesterday from the Duke of Dorset and the Duchess of Devonshire, the latter of whom was leaving Paris directly. Necker had been dismissed, and was thought to be set out for Geneva. Breteull, who was at his country-house, had been sent for to succeed him. Paris was in an uproar; and, after the couriers had left it, firing of cannon was heard for four hours together. That must have been from the Bastille,(650) as probably the tiers `etat were not so provided. It is shocking to imagine what may have happened in such a thronged city! One of the couriers was stopped twice or thrice, as supposed to pass from the King; but redeemed himself by pretending to be despatched by the tiers `etat. Madame de Calonne told Dutens, that the newly encamped troops desert by hundreds.
Here seems the egg to be hatched, and imagination runs away with the idea. I may fancy I shall hear of the King and Queen leaving Versailles, like Charles the First, and then skips imagination six-and-forty years lower, and figures their fugitive majesties taking refuge in this country. I have besides another idea. If the Bastille conquers, still it is impossible, considering the general spirit in the country, and the numerous fortified places in France, but some may be seized by the dissidents, and whole provinces be torn from the crown! On the other hand, if the King prevails, what heavy despotism will the `etats, by their want of temper and moderation, have drawn on their country! They might have obtained many capital points, and removed great oppression. No French monarch will ever summon `etats again, if this moment has been thrown away.
Though I have stocked myself with such a set of visions for the event either way, I do not pretend to foresee what will happen. Penetration argues from reasonable probabilities; but chance and folly are apt to contradict calculation, and hitherto they seen) to have full scope for action. One hears of no genius on either side, nor do symptoms of any appear. There will perhaps: such times and tempests bring forth, at least bring out, great men. I do not take the Duke of Orleans or Mirabeau to be built du bois dont on les fait; no, nor Monsieur Necker.(651) He may be a great traitor, if he made the confusion designedly: but it is a woful evasion, if the promised financier slips into a black politician! I adore liberty, but I would bestow it as honestly as I could; and a civil war, besides being a game of chance, is paying a very dear price for it.
For us, we are in most danger of a deluge; though I wonder we so frequently complain of long rains. The saying about St. Swithin is a proof of how often they recur; for proverbial sentences are the children of experience, not of prophecy. Good night! In a few days I shall send you a beautiful little poem from the Strawberry press.
(650) For an interesting account of the storming and destruction of the Bastille, on the 14th of July, see Mr. Shobert's valuable translation of M. Thiers's "History of the French Revolution," vol. i. p. 59.-E.
(651) "It was in vain," says Sir Walter Scott, "that the Marquis de Bouill`e pointed out the dangers arising from the constitution assigned to the States General, and insisted that the minister was arming the Popular part of the nation against the two privileged orders, and that the latter would soon experience the effects of their hatred, Necker calmly replied, that there was a necessary reliance to be placed on the virtues of the human heart--the maxim of a worthy man, but not of an enlightened statesman, who has but too much reason to know how often both the virtues and the prudence of human nature are surmounted by its prejudices and Passions." Life of Napoleon Buonaparte, vol. i, p, 107, ed. 1834.-E.
336. To Miss Hannah More. Strawberry Hill, Monday night, July 20, 1789. (PAGE 427)
My excellent friend, I never shall be angry with your conscientiousness, though I ) do not promise never to scold it, as you know I think you sometimes carry it too far; and how pleasant to have a friend to scold on such grounds! I see all your delicacy in what you call your double treachery, and your kind desire of connecting two of your friends.(652) The seeds are sprung up already; and the Bishop has already condescended to make me the first, and indeed so unexpected a visit, that, had I in the least surmised it, I should certainly, as became me, have prevented him. One effect, however, I can tell you your pimping between us will have: his lordship has, to please your partiality, flattered me so agreeably in the letter you betrayed, that I shall never write to you again without the dread of attempting the wit he is so liberal as to bestow on me; and then either way I must be dull or affected, though I hope to have the grace to prefer the former, and then you only will be the sufferer, as we both should by the latter. But I will come to facts -. they are plain bodies, can have nothing to do with wit, and yet are not dull to those who have any thing to do with them.
According to your order, I have delivered Ghosts(653) to Mrs. Boscawen, Mrs. Garrick, Lady Juliana Penn, Mrs. Walsingham, and Mr. Pepys. Mr. Batt, I am told, leaves London to-day; so I shall reserve his to his return. This morning I carried his thirty to the Bishop of London, who said modestly, he should not have expected above ten. I was delighted with the palace, with the Venerable chapel, and its painted episcopalities in glass, and the brave hall, etc. etc. Though it rained, I would crawl to Bonner's chair. In short, my satisfaction would have been complete, but for wanting the presence of that jesuitess, "the good old papist."
To-morrow departs for London, to be delivered to the Bristol coach at the White-horse-cellar in Piccadilly, a parcel containing sixty-four Ghosts, one of which is printed on brown for your own eating. There is but one more such, so you may preserve it like a relic. I know these two are not so good as the white: but, as rarities, a collector would give ten times more for them; and uniquity will make them valued more than the charming poetry. I believe, if there was but one ugly woman in the world, she would occasion a longer war than Helen did. You will find the Bishop's letter in the parcel. I did not breathe a hint of my having seen it, as I could not conjure up Into my pale cheeks the blush I ought to exhibit on such flattery.
I pity you most sincerely for your almost drowned guest. Fortune seems to delight in throwing poor Louisas in Your Way, that you may exercise your unbounded charity and benevolence. Adieu! pray write. I need not write to you to pray; but I wish, when your knees have what the common people call a worky-day, you would employ your hands the whole time. Yours most cordially.
P. S. I believe I have blundered, and that your knees would call a week-day a holiday.
(652) With the view of making Bishop Porteus and Walpole better known to each other, Miss More had committed what she called a double treachery, in showing to the Bishop a letter she had received from Walpole, and to Walpole one sent her by the Bishop.-E.
(653) Though the author of this poem must have been known to so many individuals in the year 1789, the secret was so well kept, that it was actually printed in the, Gentleman's Magazine for February, 1804, as the production of Walpole.-E.
337. To Miss Berry. Strawberry Hill, July 29, 1789. (PAGE 428)
I have received two dear letters from you of the 18th and 25th and though you do not accuse me, but say a thousand kind things to me in the most agreeable manner, I allow my ancientry, and that I am an old, jealous, and peevish husband, and quarrel with you if I do not receive a letter exactly at the moment I please to expect one. You talk of mine; but, if you knew how I like Yours, you would not wonder that I am impatient, and even unreasonable in my demands. However, though I own my faults, I do not mean to correct them. I have such pleasure in your letters (I am sorry I am here forced to speak in the singular number,'which by the way is an Irishism,) that I will be cross if you do not write to me perpetually. The quintessence of your last but one was, in telling me you are better - how fervently do I wish to receive such accounts every post. But who can mend but old I, in such detestable weather?--not one hot day; and, if a morning shines, the evening closes with a heavy shower.
Of French news I can give you no fresher or more authentic account, than you can collect in general from the newspapers; but my present visitants and every body else confirm the veracity of Paris being in that anarchy that speaks the populace domineering in the most cruel and savage manner, and which a servile multitude broken loose calls liberty; and which in all probability will end, when their Massaniello-like reign is over, in their being more abject slaves than ever, and chiefly by the crime of their `Etats, who, had they acted with temper and prudence, might have obtained from their poor and undesigning King a good and permanent constitution. Who may prove their tyrant, if reviving loyalty does not in a new frenzy force him to be so, it is impossible to foresee; but much may happen first. The rage seems to gain the provinces, and threatens to exhibit the horrors of those times when the peasants massacred the gentlemen. Thus you see I can only conjecture, which is not sending you news; and my intelligence reaches me by so many rebounds, that you must not depend on any thing I can tell you. I repeat, because I hear; but draw on you for no credit. Having experienced last winter, in suporaddition to a long life of experience, that in Berkeley Square I could not trust to a single report from Kew, can I swallow implicitly at Twickenham the distorted information that comes from Paris through the medium of London?
You asked me in one of your letters who La Chalotais was. I answer, premier pr`esident or avocat-g`en`eral, I forget which, of the Parliament of Bretagne; a great, able, honest, and most virtuous man, who opposed the Jesuits and the tyranny of the Duc d'Aiguillon; but he was as indiscreet as he was good. Calonne was his friend and confident; to whom the imprudent patriot trusted, by letter, his farther plan of opposition and designs. The wretch pretended to have business with, or to be sent for by, the Duc de la Vrilli`ere, secretary of state; a courtier-wretch, whose mistress used to sell lettres do cachet for a louis.(654) Calonne was left to wait in the antechamber; but being, as he said, suddenly called in to the minister, as he was reading (a most natural soil for such a lecture) the letter of his friend, he by a second natural inadvertence left the fatal letter on the chimney-piece. The consequence, much more natural, was, that La Chalotais was committed to the Ch`ateau du Taureau, a horrible dungeon on a rock in the sea, with his son, whose legs mortified there, and the father was doomed to the scaffold; but the Duc de Choiseul sent a counter reprieve by an express and a cross-road, and saved him.(655) At the beginning of this reign he was restored. Paris, however, was so indignant at the treachery, that this Calonne was hissed out of the theatre, when I was in that capital.(656) When I heard, some years after, that a Calonne was made controlleur-g`en`eral, I concluded that it must be a son, not conceiving that so reprobated a character could emerge to such a height; but asking my sister, 'who has been in France since I was, she assured me it was not only the identical being, but that when she was at Metz, where I think he was intendant, the officers in garrison would not dine with him. When he fled hither for an asylum, I did not talk of his story till I saw it in one of the pamphlets that were written against him in France, and that came over hither.
Friday night, 31st.
My company prevented my finishing this: part left me at noon, the residue are to come to-morrow. To-day I have dined at Fulham(657) along with Mrs. Boscawen but St. Swithin played the devil so, that we could not stir out of doors, and had fires to chase the watery Spirits. Quin, being once asked if ever he had seen so bad a winter, replied, "Yes, just such an one last summer!"--and here is its youngest brother!
Mrs. Boscawen saw a letter from Paris to Miss Sayer this morning, Which says Necker's son-in-law was arrived, and had announced his father-in- law's promise of return from Basle. I do not know whether his honour or ambition prompt this compliance; Surely not his discretion. I am much acquainted with him, and do not hold him great and profound enough to quell the present anarchy. if he attempts to moderate for the King, I Shall not be surprised if he falls another victim to tumultuary jealousy and outrage.(658) All accounts agree in the violence of the mob against the inoffensive as well as against the objects of their resentment; and in the provinces, where even women are not safe in their houses. The hotel of the Duc de Chatelet, lately built and superb, has been assaulted, and the furniture sold by auction;(659) but a most shocking act of a royalist in Burgundy who is said to have blown up a committee of forty persons, will probably spread the flames of civil rage much wider. When I read the account I did not believe it; but the Bishop of London says, he hears the `Etats have required the King to write to every foreign power not to harbour the execrable author, who is fled.(660) i fear this conflagration will not end as rapidly as that in Holland!
(654) The Duc de la Vrillibre was dismissed in 1775, and succeeded by M. de Malesherbes, Madame du Deffand's letter to Walpole of June 26, 1774, contains the following epigram on him:--
"Ministre sans talent ainsi que sans vertu, Couvert d'ignominie autant qu'on le peut `etre, Retire-toi donc! Qu'attends-tu? Qu'on te jette par la fen`etre?"-E.
(655) La Chalotais died in July 1785. Among other works he wrote an "Essay On National Education," which was reprinted in 1825. His son perished by the guillotine in January 1794.-E.
(656) "An intrigue brought M. de Calonne forward, who was not in good odour with the public, because he had contributed to the persecution Of La chatolais." Thiers, vol. i. p. 5.-E.
(657) With Bishop Porteus. "I fear," writes Hannah More, on hearing of this dinner, "I shall secretly triumph in the success of my fraud, if it has contributed to bring about any intercourse between the Abbey of Fulham and the Castle of Otranto, it sounds so ancient and so feudal! But among the things which pleased you in the episcopal domain, I hope the lady of it has that good fortune; she is quite a model of a pleasant wife. Now, I am acquainted with a great many very good wives, who are so notable and so manageable, that they make a man every thing but happy; and I know a great many other;, who sing, play and paint, and cut paper, and are so accomplished, that they have no time to be agreeable, and no desire to be useful," Memoirs, vol.'Ii. p. 165.-E.
(658) On the 16th of July, five days after the dismissal of M. Necker, the National Assembly obtained his recall. His return from Basle to Paris was one continued triumph. During the next twelve months, he was constantly presenting new financial statements; but he soon perceived that his influence was daily diminishing: at length the famous Red Book appeared, and completely put an end to his popularity. In September 1790, his resignation was accepted: as he was quitting the kingdom, his carriage was stopped by the same populace which had so recently drawn him into Paris in triumph; and it was necessary to apply to the Assembly for an order, directing that he should be allowed to proceed to Switzerland. He obtained this permission, and retired to Coppet, "there," says M. Thiers, "to contemplate at a distance, a revolution which he was no longer qualified to observe Closely Or to guide."-E.
(659) The Duke, who was colonel of the King's guard, narrowly escaped assassination.-E.
(660) After an inquiry, instituted by the National Assembly, the whole was found to be a villanous fabrication.-E.
338. To John Pinkerton, Esq.(661) Strawberry Hill, July 31, 1789. (PAGE 431)
Having had my house full of relations till this evening, I could not answer the favour of your letter Sooner; and now I am ashamed of not being able to tell you that I have finished reading your "Essay on the Ancient History of Scotland." I am so totally unversed in the story of original nations, and I own always find myself so little interested in savage manners unassisted by individual characters, that, though you lead me with a firmer hand than any historian through the dark tracts, the clouds rose round me the moment I have passed them, and I retain no memory of the ground I have trod. I greatly admire your penetration, and read with wonder your clear discovery of the kingdom of Strathclyde; but, though I bow to you, as I would to the founder of an empire, I confess I do not care a straw about your subjects, with whom I am no more acquainted than with the ancient inhabitants of Otaheite. Your origin of the Piks is most able; but then I cannot remember them with any precise discrimination from any other hyperborean nation; and all the barbarous names at the end of the first volume, and the gibberish in the Appendix, was to me as unintelligible as if Repeated Abracadabra; and made no impression on me but to raise respect of your patience, and admire a sagacity that could extract meaning and suite from what seemed to me the most indigestible of all materials. You rise in my estimation in Proportion to the disagreeable mass of your ingredients. What gave me pleasure that I felt, was the exquisite sense and wit of your Introduction; and your masterly handling and confutation of the Macphersons, Whitaker, etc. there and through your work. Objection I have but one, I think you make yourself too much a party against the Colts. I do not think they were or are worthy of hatred.
Upon the whole, dear Sir, you see that your work is too learned and too deep for my capacity and shallow knowledge. I have told you that my reading and knowledge is and always was trifling and superficial, and never taken up or pursued but for present amusement. I always was incapable of dry and unentertaining studies; and of all studies the origin of nations never was to my taste. Old age and frequent disorders have dulled both my curiosity and attention, as well as weakened my memory; and I cannot fix my attention to long deductions. I say to myself, "What is knowledge to me who stand on the verge, and must leave any old stores as well as what I may add to them; and how little could that be?"
Having thus confessed the truth, I am sure you are too candid and liberal to be offended - you cannot doubt of my high respect for your extraordinary abilities I am even proud of having discovered them of myself without any clue. I should be very insincere, if I pretended to have gone through with eagerness your last work, which demands more intense attention than my age, eyes, and avocations will allow. I cannot read long together; and you are sensible that your work is not a book to be`rea'd' by snatches and intervals; especially as the novelty, to me at least, requires some helps to connect it with the memory.
(661) Now first collected.
339. To Miss Hannah More.(662) Strawberry Hill, August 9, 1789. (PAGE 432)
You are not very corresponding, (though better of late,) and therefore I will not load the conscience of your fingers much, lest you should not answer me in three months. I am happy that you are content with my edition of your Ghost, and with the brown copy. Every body is charmed with your poem: I have not heard one breath but of applause. In confirmation, I enclose a note to me from the Duchess of Gloucester, who certainly never before wished to be an authoress. You may lay it up in the archives of Cowslip-green, and carry it along with your other testimonials to Parnassus.(663) Mr. Carter, to whom I sent a copy, is delighted with it. The Bishop, with whom I dined last week, is extremely for your printing an edition for yourself, and desired I would press you to it. Mind, I do press you: and could Bonner's Ghost be laid again,-which is ,impossible, for it will walk for ever, and by day too,--we would have it laid in the Red Sea by some West India merchant, who must be afraid of spirits, and cannot be in charity with you. Mrs. Boscawen dined at Fulham with me. It rained all day; and, though the last of July, we had fires in every room, as if Bonner had been still in possession of the see.
I have not dared to recollect you too often by overt acts, dear Madam; as, by the slowness of your answer, you seem to be sorry my memory was so very alert. Besides, it looks as if you had a mind to keep me at due distance, by the great civility and cold complimentality of your letter; a style I flattered myself you had too much good will towards me to use. Pretensions to humility I know are generally traps to flattery; but, could you know how very low my opinion is of myself, I am sure you would not have used the terms to me you did, and which I will not repeat, as they are by no means applicable to me. If I ever had tinsel parts, age has not only tarnished them, but convinced me how frippery they were.
Sweet are your Cowslips, sour my Strawberry Hill; My fruits are fallen, your blossoms flourish still.
Mrs. Boscawen told me last night, that she had received a long letter from you, which makes me flatter myself you have no return of your nervous complaints. Mrs. Walsingham I have seen four or five times - Miss Boyle has decorated their house most charmingly; she has not only designed, but carved in marble, three beautiful base reliefs, with boys, for a chimney-piece; besides painting elegant panels for the library, and forming, I do not know how, pilasters of black and gold beneath glass; in short, we are so improved in taste, that, if it would be decent, I could like to live fifty or sixty years more, just to see how matters go on. In the mean time, I wish my Macbethian wizardess would tell me "that Cowslip Dale should come to Strawberry Hill;" which by the etiquette of oracles, you know, would certainly happen, because so improbable. I will be content if the nymph of the dale will visit the old man of the mountain, and her most sincere friend.
(662) Now first collected.
(663) In reply to this, Miss More says, "You not only do all you can to turn my head by printing my trumpery verses yourself. but you call in royal aid to complete my delirium. I comfort myself you will counteract some part of the injury you have done, my principles this summer, by a regular course of abuse when we meet in the winter: remember that you owe this to my moral health; next to being flattered I like to be scolded; but to be let quietly alone would be intolerable. Dr. Johnson once said to me, 'I Never mind whether they praise or abuse your writings; any thing is tolerable except oblivion.'" Memoirs, vol. ii. P. 169.-E.
340. To John Pinkerton, Esq.(664) Strawberry Hill, Aug. 14, 1789. (PAGE 433)
I must certainly have expressed myself very awkwardly, dear Sir, if you conceive I meant the slightest censure on your book, much less on your manner of treating it; which is as able, and clear, and demonstrative as possible. No; it was myself, my age, my want of apprehension and memory, and my total ignorance of the subject, which I intended to blame. I never did taste or study the very ancient histories of nations. I never had a good memory for names of persons, regions, places, which no specific circumstances concurred to make me remember; and now, at seventy-two, when, as is common, I forget numbers of names most familiar to me, is it possible I should read with pleasure any work that consists of a vocabulary so totally new to me? Many years ago, when my faculties were much less impaired, I was forced to quit Dow's History of Indostan, because the Indian names made so little impression on me, that I went backward instead of forward, and was every minute reverting to the former page to find about whom I was reading. Your book was a still more laborious work to me; for it contains such a series of argumentation that it demanded a double effort from a weak old head; and, when I had made myself master of a deduction, I forgot it the next day, and had my pains to renew. These defects have for some time been so obvious to me, that I never read now but the most trifling books; having often said that, at the very end of life, it is useless to be improving one's stock of knowledge, great or small, for the next world. Thus, Sir, all I have said in my last letter or in this, is an encomium on your work, not a censure or criticism. It -would be hard on you, indeed, if my incapacity detracted from your merit.
Your arguments in defence of works of science and deep disquisition are most just; and I am sure I have neither power nor disposition to answer them. You have treated your matter as it ought to be treated. Profound men or conversant on the subject, like Mr. Dempster, will be pleased with it, for the very reasons that made it difficult to me. If Sir Isaac Newton had written a fairy tale, I should have swallowed it eagerly; but do you imagine, Sir, that, idle as I am, I am, idiot enough to think that Sir Isaac had better have amused me for half an hour, than enlightened mankind and all ages? I was so fair as to confess to you that your work was above me, and did not divert me: you was too candid to take that ill, and must have been content with silently thinking me very silly; and I am too candid to condemn any man for thinking of me as I deserve. I am only sorry when I do deserve a disadvantageous character.
Nay, Sir, you condescend, after all, to ask My opinion of the best way of treating antiquities; and, by the context, I suppose you mean, how to make them entertaining. I cannot answer you in one word -, because there are two ways, as there are two sorts of readers. I should therefore say, to please antiquaries of judgment, as you have treated them, with arguments and proofs; but, if you would adapt antiquities to the taste of those who read only to be diverted, not to be instructed, the nostrum is very easy and short. You must divert them in the true sense of the word diverto; you must turn them out of the way, you must treat them with digressions nothing or very little to the purpose. But, easy as I call this recipe, you, I believe, would find it more difficult to execute, than the indefatigable industry you have employed to penetrate chaos and extract the truth. There have been professors who have engaged to adapt all kinds of knowledge to the meanest capacities. I doubt their success, at least on me: however, you need not despair; all readers are not as dull and superannuated as, dear Sir, yours, etc.
(664) Now first collected.
341. To John Pinkerton, Esq,(665) Strawberry Hill, August 19, 1789. (PAGE 434)
I will not use many words, but enough, I hope, to convince you that I meant no irony in my last. All I said of you and myself was very sincere- It is my true opinion that your understanding is one of the strongest, most manly, and clearest I ever knew; and, as I hold my own to be of a very inferior kind and know it to be incapable of sound, deep application, I should have been very foolish if I had attempted to sneer at you or your pursuits. Mine have always been light and trifling, and tended to nothing but my casual amusement; I will not say, without a little vain ambition of showing some parts but never with industry sufficient to make me apply to any thing solid. My studies, if they could be called so, and my productions, were alike desultory. In my latter days I discovered the utility both of my objects and writings: I felt how insignificant is the reputation of an author of mediocrity; and that, being no genius, I only added one name more to a list of writers that had told the world nothing but what it could as well be without.
These reflections were the best proofs of my sense: and, when I could see through my own vanity, there is less wonder at my discovering that such talents as I might have had, are impaired at Seventy-two. Being just to myself, I am not such a coxcomb as to be unjust to you. No, nor did I cover any irony towards you, in the opinion I gave you of making deep writings palatable to the mass of readers. Examine my words; and I am sure you will find that, if there was any thing ironic in my meaning, it was levelled at your readers, not at you. it is my opinion, that whoever wishes to be read by many, if his subject is weighty and solid, must treat the majority with more than is to his purpose. Do not you believe that twenty name Lucretius because of the poetic commencement of his books, for five that wade through his philosophy?
I promised to say but little; and, if I have explained myself clearly, I have said enough. It is not, I hope, my character to be a flatterer: I do most sincerely think you capable of great things; and I should be a pitiful knave if I told you SO, unless it was my opinion; and what end could it serve to me? Your course is but beginning; mine is almost terminated. I do not want you to throw a few daisies on my grave; and if you make the figure I augur you will, I shall not be a witness to it. Adieu, dear Sir!
(665) NOW first collected.
342. To Richard Gough, Esq. Strawberry Hill, August 24, 1789. (PAGE 435)
I shall heartily lament with you, Sir, the demolition of those beautiful chapels at Salisbury. I was scandalized long ago at the ruinous state in which they were indecently suffered to remain. It appears as strange, that, when a spirit of restoration and decoration has taken place, it should be mixed with barbarous innovation. As much as taste has improved, I do not believe that modern execution will equal our models. I am sorry that I can only regret, not prevent. I do not know the Bishop of Salisbury(666) even by Sight, and certainly have no credit to obstruct any of his plans. should I get sight of Mr. Wyatt, which is not easy to do, I will remonstrate against the intended alteration; but probably without success, as I do not suppose he has authority enough to interpose effectually: still I will try. It is an old complaint with me, Sir, that when families are extinct, chapters take the freedom of removing ancient monuments, and even of selling, over again the sites of such tombs. A scandalous, nay, dishonest abuse, and very unbecoming clergy! Is it creditable for divines to traffic for consecrated ground, and which the church had already sold? I do not wonder that magnificent monuments are out of fashion, when they are treated so disrespectfully. You, Sir, alone have placed several out of the reach of such a kind of simoniacal abuse; for to buy into the church, or to sell the church's land twice over, breathes a similar kind of spirit. Perhaps, as the subscription indicates taste, if some of the subscribers could be persuaded to object to the removal of the two beautiful chapels, as contrary to their view of beautifying, it might have good effect; or, if some letter were published in the papers against the destruction, as barbarous and the result of bad taste, it might divert the design. I zealously wish it were stopped, but I know none of the chapter or subscribers.(667)
(666) Dr. Shute Barrington; in 1791, translated to the see of Durham.-E.
(667) Much discussion on the subject of the injury done to Salisbury cathedral, here complained of by Walpole, took place in the Gentleman's Magazine for this and the following year. "This good," says the writer of a learned article on Cathedral Antiquities, in the Quarterly Review for 1825, "has arisen from the injury which was done at Salisbury, that in subsequent undertakings of the same kind, the architect has come to his work with Greater respect for the structures upon which he was employed, and a mind more embued with the principles of Gothic architecture."-E.
343. To The Miss Berrys. Strawberry Hill, Thursday evening, Aug. 27, 1789. (PAGE 436)
I jumped for joy,-that is, my heart did, which is all the remain of me that is in statu iumpante,-at the receipt of your letter this morning, which tells me you approve of the house at Teddington. How kind you was to answer so incontinently! I believe you borrowed the best steed from the races. I have sent to the landlord to come tomorrow: but I could not resist beginning my letter to-night, as I am at home alone, with a little pain in my left wrist; but the right one has no brotherly feeling for it, and would not be put off so. You ask how you have deserved such attentions? Why, by deserving them; by every kind of merit, -and by that superlative one to me, your submitting to throw away so much time on a forlorn antique--you two, who, without specifying particulars, (and you must at least be conscious that you are not two frights,) might expect any fortune and distinctions, and do delight all companies. On which side lies the Wonder? Ask me no more such questions, or I will cram you with reasons.
My poor dear niece(668) grows worse and worse: the medical people do not pretend to give us any hopes; they only say she may last some weeks, which I do not expect, nor do absent myself. I had promised Mr. Barrett to make a visit to my Gothic child, his house, on Sunday; but I have written to-day to excuse myself: so I have to the Duchess of Richmond,(669) who wanted me to meet her mother, sister,(670) and General Conway, at Goodwood next week.
I wish Lady Fitzwilliam may not hear the same bad news as I expect, in the midst of her royal visitors: her sister, the Duchess of St. Albans, is dying, in the same way as Lady, Dysart; and for some days has not been in her senses. How charming you are to leave those festivities for your good parents; who I do not wonder are impatient for you. I, who am old enough to be your great-grandmother, know one needs not be your near relation to long for your return. Of all your tour, next to your duteous visits, I most approve the jaunt to the sea - I believe in its salutary air more than in the whole college and all its works.
You must not expect any news from me, French or homebred. I am not in the way of hearing any: your morning gazetteer rarely calls on me, as I am not likely to pay him in kind. About royal progresses, paternal or filial, I never inquire; nor do you, I believe, care more than I do. The small wares in which the societies at Richmond and Hampton-court deal, are still less to our taste. My poor niece and her sisters take up most of my time and thoughts: but I will not attrist you to indulge myself, but will break off here, and finish my letter when I have seen your new landlord. Good night!
Friday.
Well! I have seen him, and nobody was ever so accommodating! He is as courteous as a candidate for a county. You may stay in his house till Christmas if you please, and shall pay but twenty pounds; and if more furniture is wanting, it shall be supplied.
(668) The Countess of Dysart.-M.B.
(669) Lady Mary Bruce, daughter of the Earl of Ailesbury by Caroline Campbell, daughter of General John Campbell, afterwards Duke of Argyle.-M.B.
(670) Mrs. Damer, only child of the Dowager Countess of Ailesbury, by Marshal Henry Seymour Conway, her second husband. She was thus half-sister to the Duchess of Richmond.-M.B.
344. To The Miss Berrys. Strawberry Hill, Sept. 4, 1789. (PAGE 437)
You ask whether I will call you wise or stupid for leaving, York races in the middle-neither; had you chosen to stay, you would have done rightly. The more young persons see, where there is nothing blamable, the better; as increasing the stock of ideas early will be a resource for age. To resign pleasure to please tender relations is amiable, and superior to wisdom; for wisdom, however laudable, is but a selfish virtue. But I do decide peremptorily, that it was very prudent to decline the invitation to Wentworth House,(671) which was obligingly given; but, as I am very proud for you, I should have disliked your being included in a mobbish kind of colhue. You two are not to go where any other two misses would have been equally pri`ees, and where people would have been thinking of the princes more than of the Berrys. Besides, princes are so rife now, that, besides my sweet nephew(672) in the Park, we have another at Richmond: the Duke of Clarence has taken Mr. Henry Hobart's house, pointblank over against Mr. Cambridge's, which will make the good woman of that mansion cross herself piteously, and stretch the throat of the blatant beast at Sudbrook(673) and of all the other pious matrons `a la ronde; for his Royal Highness, to divert lonesomeness, has brought with him - -, who, being still more averse to solitude, declares that any tempter would make even Paradise more agreeable than a constant t`ete-`a-t`ete.
I agree with you in not thinking Beatrice one of Miss Farren's capital parts. Mrs. Pritchard played it with more spirit, and was superior to Garrick's Benedict; so is Kemble, too, as he Is to Quin in Maskwell. Kemble and Lysons the clergyman(674) passed all Wednesday here with me. The former is melting the three parts of Henry the Sixth into one piece: I doubt it will be difficult to make a tolerable play out of them.
I have talked scandal from Richmond, like its gossips; and now, by your queries after Lady Luxborough, you are drawing me into more, which I do not love: but she is dead and forgotten, except on the shelves of an old library, or on those of my old memory; which you will be routing into. The lady you wot of, then, was the first wife of Lord Catherlogh, before he was an earl; and who was son of Knight, the South Sea cashier, and whose second wife lives here at Twickenham. Lady Luxborough, a high-coloured lusty black woman, was parted from her husband, upon a gallantry she had with Dalton, the reviver of Comus and a divine. She retired into the country; corresponded, as you see by her letters, with the small poets of that time; but, having no Theseus amongst them, consoled herself, as it is said, like Ariadne, with Bacchus.(675) This might be a fable, like that of her Cretan Highness--no matter; the fry of little anecdotes are so numerous now, that throwing one more into the shoal is of no consequence, if it entertains you for a Moment; nor need you believe what I don't warrant.
Gramercy for your intention of seeing Wentworth Castle. it is my favourite of all great seats;-such a variety of ground, of wood, and water; and almost all executed and disposed with so much taste by the present Earl. Mr. Gilpin sillily could See nothing but faults there. The new front is, in my opinion, one of the lightest and most beautiful buildings on earth - and, pray like the little Gothic edifice, and its position in the menagerie! I recommended it, and had it drawn by Mr. Bentley, from Chichester Cross. Don't bring me a pair of scissors from Sheffield - I am determined nothing shall cut our loves, though I should live out the rest of Methusalem's term, as you kindly wish, and as I can believe, though you are my wives; for I am persuaded my Agnes wishes so too. Don't you?
At night.
I am just come from Cambridge's, where I have not been in an evening, time out of mind. Major Dixon, alias "the Charming man,"(676) is there; but I heard nothing of the Emperor's rickets:(677) a great deal, and many horrid stories, of the violences in France; for his brother, the Chevalier Jerningham, is Just arrived from Paris. You have heard of the destruction of thirty-two chateaus in Burgundy, at the instigation of a demon, who has since been broken on the racks. There is now assembled near Paris a body of sixteen thousand deserters, daily increasing; who, they fear, will encamp and dictate to the capital, in spite of their militia of twenty thousand bourgeois. It will soon, I suppose, ripen to several armies, and a civil war; a fine acheminement to liberty!
My poor niece is still alive, though weaker every day, and pronounced irrecoverable: yet it is possible she may live some weeks; which, however, is neither to be expected nor wished, for she eats little and sleeps less. Still she is calm, and behaves with the patience of a martyr.
You may perceive, by the former part of my letter, that I have been dipping into Spenser again, though he is no passion of mine - there I lighted upon two lines that, at first sight, reminded me of Mademoiselle d'Eon,
"Now, when Marfisa had put off her beaver, To be a woman every one perceive her!"
but I do not think that is so perceptible in the Chevali`ere. She looked more feminine, as I remember her, in regimentals, than she does now. She is at best a heri-dragoon, or an Herculean hostess. I wonder she does not make a campaign in her own country, and offer her sword to the almost dethroned monarch, as a second Joan of Arc.(678) Adieu! for three weeks I shall say, Sancte Michael, ora pro nobis! You seem to have relinquished your plan of sea-coasting. I shall be sorry for that; it would do you good.
(671) The Prince of Wales and the Duke of York were going to receive a great entertainment at Wentworth House.-M.B.
(672) The Duke of Gloucester.
(673) Lady Greenwich.
(674) The " little Daniel" of the Pursuits of Literature, brother of Samuel Lysons, the learned antiquary, and author of "The Environs, twelve miles round London," in four volumes quarto--
"Nay once, for Purer air o'er rural ground, With little Daniel went his twelve miles round."-E.
(675) Lady Luxborough died in 1756. Her letters to Shenstone were published in 1775. In the first leaf of the original manuscript there is an autograph of the poet, describing them as being "written with abundant ease politeness, and vivacity; in which she was scarce equalled by any woman of her time." Some of her verses are printed in Dodsley's Miscellany, and Walpole has introduced her ladyship into his Noble Authors.-E.
(676) Edward Jerningham, Esq. Of Cossey, in Norfolk, uncle to the present Lord Stafford. He was distinguished in his day by the name of Jerningham the poet; but it was an unpoetical day. The stars of Byron, of Baillie, and of Scott, had not risen On the horizon. The well merited distinction of Jerningham was the friendship, affection, and intimacy which his amiable character had impressed on the author, and on all of his society mentioned in these letters.-M.B.
(677) This alludes to something said in a character which Jerningham had assumed, for the amusement of a society some time before at Marshal Conway's.-M.B.
(678) Miss More gives the following account of this extraordinary character:--"On Friday I gratified the curiosity of many years, by meeting at dinner Madame la Chevali`ere D'Eon - she is extremely entertaining, has universal information, wit, vivacity, and gaiety. Something too much of the latter (I have heard) when she has taken a bottle or two of Burgundy; but this being a very sober party, she was kept entirely within the limits of decorum. General Johnson was of the party, and it was ridiculous to hear her military conversation. Sometimes it Was, 'Quand j'`etais colonel d'un tel regiment;' then again, 'Non, c'Rait quand j'`etais secr`etaire d'ambassade du Duc de Nivernois,' or, 'Quand je n`egociais la paix de Paris.' She is, to be sure, a phenomenon in history; and, as such, a great curiosity. But one D'Eon is enough, and one slice of her quite sufficient." Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 156.-E.
345. To The Hon. H. S. Conway. Strawberry Hill, Sept. 5, 1789. (PAGE 440)
You speak so unperemptorily of your motions, that I must direct to you at random: the most probable place where to hit you, I think, will be Goodwood; and I do address this thither, because I am impatient to thank you for your tale, which is very pretty and easy and genteel. It has made me make a reflection, and that reflection made six lines; which I send you, not as good, but as expressing my thoughts on your writing so well in various ways which you never practised when you was much younger. Here they are:
The Muse most wont to fire a youthful heart, To gild your setting sun reserved her art; To crown a life in virtuous labours pass'd, Bestow'd her numbers and her wit at last; And, when your strength and eloquence retire, Your voice in notes harmonious shall expire.
The swan was too common a thought to be directly specified, and, perhaps, even to be alluded to: no matter, such a trifle is below criticism.
I am still here, in no uncertainty, God knows, about poor Lady Dysart (679) of whom there are not the smallest hopes. She grows weaker every day, and does actually still go out for the air, and may languish many days, though most probably will go off in a moment, As the water rises. She retains her senses perfectly, and as perfectly her unalterable calmness and patience, though fully sensible of her situation. At your return from Goodwood, I shall like to come to you, if you are unengaged, and ready to receive me. For the beauties of Park-place, I am too well acquainted with them, not, like all old persons about their contemporaries, to think it preserves them long after they are faded; and am so unwalking, that prospects are more agreeable to me when framed and glazed, and I look at them through a window. It is yourselves I want to visit, not your verdure. Indeed, except a parenthesis of scarce all August, there has been no temptation to walk abroad; and the tempter himself would not have persuaded me, if I could, to have climbed that long-lost mountain whence he could show one even the Antipodes. It rained incessantly all June and all July; and now again we have torrents every day.
Jerningham's brother, the Chevalier, is arrived from Paris, and does not diminish the horrors one hears every day. They are now in the capital dreading the sixteen thousand deserters who hover about them. I conclude that when in the character of banditti the whole disbanded army have plundered and destroyed what they can, they will congregate into separate armies under different leaders, who will hang Out different principles, and the kingdom will be a theatre of civil wars; and, instead of liberty, the nation will get petty tyrants, perhaps petty kingdoms: and when millions have suffered, or been sacrificed, the government will be no better than it was, all owing to the intemperance of the `etats, who might have obtained a good constitution, or at least one much meliorated, if they had set out with discretion and moderation. They have left too a sad lesson to despotic princes, who will quote this precedent of frantic `etats, against assembling any more, and against all the examples of senates and parliaments that have preserved rational freedom. Let me know when it will be convenient to you to receive me. Adieu!
(679) Her ladyship, who was the daughter of Sir Edward Walpole and the first wife of Lionel, fourth Earl of Dysart, died on the day this letter was written.-E.
346. To Miss Hannah More. Strawberry Hill, Sept. -, 1789. (PAGE 441)
I know whence you wrote last, but not where you are now; you gave me no hint. I believe you fly lest I should pursue, and as if you were angry that I have forced you to sprout into laurels. Yet you say you are vain of it, and that you are no philosopher. Now, if you are vain I am sure you are a philosopher; for it is a maxim of mine, and one of my own making, that there never was a philosopher that did not love sweetmeats. ou tell me too, that you like I should scold you but since you have appeared as Bonner's ghost, I think I shall feel too much awe; for though (which I never expected would be in my power) I have made you stand in a white sheet, I doubt my respect is increased. I never did rate you for being too bad, but too good: and if, when you make up your week's account, YOU find but a fraction of vanity in the sum total, you will fall to repenting, and Come forth On Monday as humble as * * *. Then, if I huff my heart Out, you will only simper, and still wrap yourself up in your obstinate goodness. Well! take your own way; I give you Up to your abominable virtues, and will go answer the rest of your letter.
I congratulate you on the demolition of the Bastille; I mean as you do, of its' functions.(680) For the poor soul itself, I had no ill will to it: on the contrary, it was a curious sample of ancient castellar dungeons, which the good folks the founders took for palaces: yet I always hated to drive by it, knowing the miseries it contained. Of itself it did not gobble up prisoners to glut its maw, but received them by command. The destruction of it was silly, and agreeable to the ideas of a mob, who do not know stones and bars and bolts from a lettre de cachet. If the country remains free, the Bastille would be as tame as a ducking-Stool, now that there is no such thing as a scold. If despotism recovers, the Bastille will rise from its ashes!-- recover, I fear, it will. The `Etats cannot remain a mob of kings, and will prefer a single one to a larger mob of kings and greater tyrants. The nobility, the clergy, and people of property will wait, till by address and Money they can divide the people; or, whoever gets the larger or more victorious army into his hands, will be a Cromwell or a Monk. In short, a revolution procured by a national vertigo does not promise a crop of legislators. It is time that composes a good constitution: it formed ours. We were near losing it by the lax and unconditional restoration of Charles the Second. The revolution was temperate, and has lasted; and, though it might have been improved, we know that with all its moderation it disgusted half the nation, who would have brought back the old sores. I abominate the Inquisition as much as you do: yet if the King of Spain receives no check like his cousin Louis, I fear he will not be disposed to relax any terrors. Every crowned head in Europe must ache at present; and the frantic and barbarous proceedings in France will not meliorate the stock of liberty, though for some time their majesties will be mighty tender of the rights of their subjects.
According to this hypothesis, I can administer some comfort to you about your poor negroes. I do not imagine that they will be emancipated at once; but their fate will be much alleviated, as the attempt will have alarmed their butchers enough to make them gentler, like the European monarchs, for fear of"provoking the disinterested, who have no sugar plantations, to abolish the horrid traffic.
I do not understand the manoeuvre of sugar, and, perhaps, am going to talk nonsense, as my idea maybe impracticable; but I Wish human wit, which is really very considerable in mechanics and merchantry, could devise some method of cultivating canes and making sugar without the manual labour of the human" species. How many mills and inventions have there not been discovered to supply succedaneums to the works of the hands, which before the discoveries would have been treated as visions! It is true, manual labour has sometimes taken it very ill to be excused, and has destroyed such mills; but the poor negroes would not rise and insist upon being worked to death. Pray talk to some ardent genius, but do not name me; not merely because I may have talked like an idiot, but because my ignorance might, ipso C fiacto, stamp the idea with ridicule. People, I know, do not love to be put out of their old ways: no farmer listens at first to new inventions in agriculture; and I don't doubt but bread was originally deemed a new-fangled vagary, by those who had seen their fathers live very comfortably upon acorns. Nor is there any harm in starting new game to invention: many excellent discoveries have been made by men who were a la chasse of something very different. I am not quite sure that the art of making gold and of* living for ever have been yet found out: yet to how many noble discoveries has the pursuit of those nostrums given birth! Poor chymistry, had she not had such glorious objects in view! If you are sitting under a cowslip at your cottage, these reveries may amuse you for half an hour, at least make you smile; and for the ease of your conscience, which is always in a panic, they require no answer.(681)
I will not ask you about the new history of Bristol,(682) because you are too good a citizen to say a word against your native place; but do pray cast your eye on the prints of The cathedral and castle, the chef-d',oeuvres of Chatterton's ignorance, and of Mr. Barrett's too; and on two letters pretended to have been sent to me, and which never were sent. If my incredulity had wavered, they would have fixed it. I wish the milkwoman would assert that Boadicea's dairymaid had invented Dutch tiles; it would be like Chatterton's origin of heraldry and painted glass, in those two letters. I must, however, mention one word about myself. In the new fourth volume of the Biographia Britannica I am more candidly treated about that poor lad than usual: yet the writer still affirms, that, according to my own account, my reply was too much in the-commonplace style of court replies. Now my own words, and the truth, as they stand in print in the very letter of mine which this author quotes, were, "I wrote him a letter with as much kindness and tenderness as if I had been his guardian." Is this by my own account a court-reply? Nor did I conceive, for I never was a courtier, that courtiers are wont to make tender replies to the poor; I am glad to hear they do.
I have kept this letter some days in my writing-box, till I could meet with a stray member of parliament, for it is not worth making you pay for: but when you talk to me I cannot help answering incontinently; besides, can one take up a letter at a long distance, and heat one's reply over again with the same interest that it occasioned at first? Adieu! I wish you may come to Hampton before I leave these purlieus! Yours More and More.
(680) Miss More had written to Walpole,--"Poor France! though I am sorry that the lawless rabble are so triumphant, I cannot help hoping that some good will arise from the sum of human misery having been so considerably lessened at one blow by the destruction of the Bastille. The utter extinction of the Inquisition, and the redemption of Africa, I hope yet to see accomplished." Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 170.-E.
(681) To this passage Miss More thus replies:--"Your project for relieving our poor slaves by machine work is so far from being wild or chimerical, that of three persons deep and able in the concern (Mr. Wilberforce among others), not one but has thought it rational and practicable, and that a plough may be so constructed as to save much misery." Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 187.-,E.
(682) "The History and Antiquities of Bristol, by William Barrett:" Bristol, 1789, quarto; a Work which Mr. Park described as " a motley compound of real and superstitious history."-E.
347. To Miss Hannah More. Strawberry Hill, Nov. 4, 1789. (PAGE 444)
I am not surprised, my dear Madam, that the notice of my illness should have stimulated your predominant quality, your sensibility. 1 cannot do less in return than relieve it immediately, by assuring you that I am in a manner recovered; and should have gone out before this time, if my mind were as much at ease as my poor limbs. I have passed, five months most uncomfortably; the two last most unhappily. In June and September I had two bad falls by my own lameness and weakness, and was much bruised; while I was witness to the danger, and then to the death, of my invaluable niece, Lady Dysart. She was angelic, and has left no children. The unexpected death of Lord Waldegrave(683) one of the most amiable of men, has not only deprived me of him, but has opened a dreadful scene of calamities! he and my niece were the happiest and most domestic of couples.
Your kind inquiries after me have drawn these details from me, for which I make no excuse; good-nature never grudges its pity. I, who love to force your gravity to smile, am seriously better pleased to indulge your benevolence with a subject of esteem, which, though moving your compassion, will be accompanied by no compunction. I will now answer your letter. Your plea, that not composition, but business, has occasioned your silence, is no satisfaction to me. In my present anxious solitude I have again read Bonner and Florio, and the Bas Bleu; and do you think I am much pleased to learn that you have not been writing? Who is it says something like this line?--
Hannah will not write, and Lactilla will.
They who think her Earl Goodwin will outgo Shakspeare, might be in the right, if they specified in what way. I believe she may write worse than he sometimes did, though that is not easy; but to excel him--oh! I have not words adequate to my contempt for those who can suppose such a possibility!
I am sorry, very sorry, for what you tell me of poor Barrett's fate. Though he did write worse than Shakspeare, it is great pity he was told so, as it killed him; and I rejoice that I did not publish a word in contradiction of the letters which he said Chatterton sent to me, as I was advised to do. I might have laughed at the poor man's folly, and then I should have been miserable to have added a grain to the poor man's mortification.(684)
you rejoice me, not my vanity, by telling me my idea of a mechanic succedaneum to the labour of negroes is not visionary, but thought practicable. Oh! how I wish I understood sugar ploughs, and could marry them! Alas! I understand nothing useful. My head is as un-mechanic as it is un-arithmetic, un-geometric, un-metaphysic, uncommercial; but will not some one of those superior heads to whom you have talked on my indigested hint reduce it to practicability'! How a feasible scheme would stun those who call humanity romantic, and show, from the books of the Custom-house, that murder is a great improvement of the revenue! Even the present situation of France is favourable. Could not Mr. Wilberforce obtain to have the enfranchisement of the negroes started there? The Jews are claiming their natural rights there; and blacks are certainly not so great defaulters as the Hebrews, though they too have undergone ample persecutions. Methinks, as Lord George Gordon is in correspondence with the `Etats, he has been a little remiss in not signing the petition of those of his new communion.
The `Etats are detestable and despicable; and, in fact, guilty of the outrages of the Parisian and provincial mobs. The mob of twelve hundred, not legislators, but dissolvers of all law, unchained the mastiffs that had been tied up, and were sure to worry all who fell in their way. To annihilate all laws, however bad, and to have none ready to replace them, was proclaiming anarchy. What should one think of a mad-doctor, who should let loose a lunatic, suffer him to burn Bedlam, chop off the heads of the keepers, and then consult with some students in physic on the gentlest mode of treating delirium? By a late vote I see that the twelve hundred praters are reduced to five hundred: Vive la reine Billingsgate! the Thalestris who has succeeded Louis Quatorze! A committee of those Amazons stopped the Duke of Orleans, who, to use their style, I believe is not a barrel the better herring.
Your reflections on Vertot's passion for revolutions are admirable,(685) and yet it is natural for an historian to like to describe times of action. Halcyon days do not furnish matter for talents; they are like the virtuous couple in a comedy, a little insipid. Mr. Manly and Lady Grace, Mellefont and Cynthia, do not interest one much. Indeed, in a tragedy where they are unhappy, they give the audience full satisfaction, and no envy. The newspapers, no doubt, thought Dr. Priestley could not do better than to espouse you.(686) He certainly would be very judicious, could he obtain your consent; but, alas! you would squabble about Socinianism, or some of those isms. To tell you the truth, I hate all those Constantinopolitan jargons, that set people together by the ears about pedantic terms. When you apply scholastic phrases as happily and genteelly as you do in your Bas Bleu, they are delightful; but don't muddify your charming simplicity with controversial distinctions, that will sour your sweet piety. Sects are the bane of charity, and have deluged the world with blood.
I do not mean, by what I am going to say, to extort another letter from you before I have the pleasure of seeing you at Hampton; but I really shall be much obliged to you for a single line soon, only to tell me if Miss Williams is at Stoke with the Duchess of Beaufort. To a short note, cannot you add a short P. S. on the fate of Earl Goodwin?(687) Lac mihi novum non frigore desit. Adieu! my amiable friend! Yours most sincerely.
(683) George fourth Earl of Waldegrave born in 1751; married, in 1782, his cousin Lady Elizabeth Laura Waldegrave, daughter of James, the second Earl. He died on the 22d of October.-E.
(684) Mr. Barrett was the person who first encouraged Chatterton to publish the poems which he attributed to Rowley. He was a respectable surgeon at Bristol.-E.
(685) Miss More, in her last letter, had said--"What a pity it is that Vertot is not alive that man's element was a state convulsion; he hopped over peaceful intervals, as periods of no value, and only seemed to enjoy himself when all the rest of the world was sad. Storm and tempest were his halcyon days."-E.
(686) In her letter to Walpole Miss More had said,--"I comforted myself., that your two fair wives were within reach of your elbow-chair, and that their pleasant society would somewhat mitigate the sufferings of your confinement. Apropos of two wives--when the newspapers the other day were pleased to marry me to Dr. Priestley, I am surprised they did not rather choose to bestow me on Mr. Madan, as his wife is probably better broken in to these eastern usages, than Mrs. Priestley may be. I never saw the Doctor but once in my life, and he had then been married above twenty years." Memoirs, vol. ii. P. 188.-E.
(687) Ann Yearsley's tragedy, which had just been represented, with little success, at the Bath and Bristol theatres. In reply to Walpole's query, Miss More says, "There are, I dare say, some Pretty Passages in it, but all seem to bring it in guilty of the crime of dullness; which I take to be the greatest fault in dramatic composition."-E.
348. To Miss Hannah More. Berkeley Square, Feb. 20, 1790. (PAGE 446)
It is very provoking that people must always be hanging or drowning themselves, or going mad, that you forsooth, Mistress, may have the diversion of exercising your pity and good-nature, and charity, and intercession, and all that bead-roll of virtues that make you so troublesome and amiable, when you might be ten times more agreeable by things that would not cost one above half-a-crown at a time.(688) YOU are an absolutely walking hospital, and travel about into lone and bye places, with your doors open to house stray casualties! I wish at least that you would have some children yourself, that you might not be plaguing one for all the Pretty brats that are starving and friendless. I suppose it was some such goody two or three thousand years ago that suggested the idea of an alna-mater, suckling the three hundred and sixty-five bantlings of the Countess of Hainault. Well, as your newly-adopted pensioners have two babes, I insist on your accepting two guineas for them instead of one at present (that is, when you shall be present). i If you cannot circumscribe your own charities, you shall not stint mine, Madam, who can afford it much better, and who must be dunned for alms, and do not scramble over hedges and ditches in searching for opportunities of flinging away my money on good works. I employ mine better at auctions, and in buying pictures and baubles, and hoarding curiosities, that in truth I cannot keep long but that will last for ever in my catalogue, and make me immortal! Alas! will they cover a multitude of sins? Adieu! I cannot jest after that sentence. Yours sincerely.
(688) Miss More was at this time raising a subscription for the benefit of the family of a poor man who had been cut down after he had nearly hung himself.-E.
349. To The Hon. H. S. Conway.(689) Strawberry Hill, June 25, 1790. (PAGE 447)
I am glad at least that you was not fetched to town on last Tuesday, which was as hot as if Phaeton had once more gotten into his papa's curricle and driven it along the lower road; but the old king has resumed the reins again, and does not allow us a handful more of beams than come to our northern share. I am glad, too, that I was not summoned also to the Fitzroyal arrangement: it was better to be singed here, than exposed between two such fiery furnaces as Lady Southampton and my niece Keppel. I pity Charles Fox to be kept on the Westminster gridiron.(690) Before I came out of town, I was diverted by a story from the hustings: one of the mob called out to Fox, "Well, Charley, are not you sick of your coalition?" "Poor gentleman!" cried an old woman in the crowd, "why should not he like a collation?"
I am very sorry Mrs. Damer is so tormented, but I hope the new inflammation will relieve her. As I was writing that sentence this morning, Mesdames de Boufflers came to see me from Richmond, and brought a Comte de Moranville to see my house. The puerile pedants of their `Etats are going to pull down the statues of Louis Quatorze, like their silly ancestors, who proposed to demolish the tomb of John Duke of Bedford. The Vicomte de Mirabeau is arrested somewhere for something, perhaps for one of his least crimes; in short, I M angry that the cause of liberty is profaned by such rascals. If the two German Kings make peace, as you hear and as I expected, the Brabanters, who seem not to have known much better what to do with their revolution, will be the first sacrifice on the altar of peace.
I stick fast at the beginning of the first volume of Bruce,(691) though I am told it is the most entertaining; but I am sick of his vanity, and (I believe) of his want of veracity; but I am sure of his want of method and of his obscurity. I hope my wives were not at Park-place in your absence: the loss of them is irreparable to me, and I tremble to think how much more I shall feel it in three months, when I am to part with them for--who can tell how long? Adieu!
(689) Now first printed.
(690) At the close of the election, on the 2d of July, the numbers were, for Mr. Fox 3516, Lord Hood 3217, and Mr. Horne Took 1697.-E.
(691) Bruce's "Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile" had just appeared, in five large quarto volumes. It was dedicated to George the Third, who, while society in general raised a cry of incredulity against it, stood up warmly in its' favour, and contended that it was a great work.-E.
350. To The Earl Of Strafford. Strawberry Hill, June 26, 1790. (page 448)
I do not forget your lordship's commands, though I do recollect my own inability to divert you. Every year at my advanced time of life would make more reasonable my plea of knowing nothing worth repeating, especially at this season. The general topic of elections is the last subject to which I could listen: there is not one about which I care a straw; and I believe your lordship quite as indifferent. I am not much more au fait of war. or peace; I hope for the latter, nay and expect it, because it is not yet war. Pride and anger do not deliberate to the middle of the campaign; and I believe even the great incendiaries are more intent on making a good bargain than on saving their honour. If they save lives, I care not who is the better politician; and, as I am not to be their judge, I do not inquire what false weights they fling into the scales. Two-thirds of France, who are not so humble as I, seem to think they can entirely new-model the world with metaphysical compasses; and hold that no injustice, no barbarity, need to be counted in making the experiment. Such legislators are sublime empirics, and in their universal benevolence have very little individual sensibility. In short, the result of my reflections on what has passed in Europe for these latter centuries is, that tyrants have no consciences, and reformers no feeling; and the world suffers both by the plague and by the cure. What oceans of blood were Luther and Calvin the authors of being spilt! The late French government was detestable; yet I still doubt whether a civil war will not be the consequence of the revolution, and then what may be the upshot? Brabant was grievously provoked; is it sure that it will be emancipated? For how short a time do people who set out on the most just principles, advert to their first springs of motion, and retain consistency? Nay, how long can promoters of revolutions be sure of maintaining their own ascendant? They are like projectors, who are commonly ruined; while others make fortunes on the foundation laid by the inventors.
351. To The Hon. H. S. Conway. Strawberry Hill, Wednesday night, July 1, 1790. (page 448)
It is certainly not from having any thing to tell you, that I reply so soon, but as the most agreeable thing I can do in my confinement. The gout came into my heel the night before last, perhaps from the deluge and damp. I increased it yesterday by limping about the house with a party I had to breakfast. To-day I am lying on the settee, unable to walk alone, or even to put on a slipper. However, as I am much easier this evening, I trust it will go off.
I do not love disputes, and shall not argue with you about Bruce; but, if you like him, you shall not choose an author for me. It is the most absurd, obscure, and tiresome book I know. I shall admire if you have a clear conception about most of the persons and matters in his work; but, in fact, I do not believe you have. Pray, can you distinguish between his cock and hen Heghes, and between A Yasouses and Ozoros? and do you firmly believe that an old man and his son were sent for and put to death, because the King had run into a thornbush, and was forced to leave his clothes behind him? Is it your faith, that one of their Abyssinian Majesties pleaded not being able to contribute towards sending for a new Abuna, because he had spent all his money at Venice in looking-glasses? And do you really think that Peter Paez was a Jack-of-all-trades, and built palaces and convents without assistance, and furnished them with his own hands? You, who are a little apt to contest most assertions, must have strangely let out your credulity!(692) I could put forty questions to you as wonderful; and, for my part, could as soon credit * * * *.
I am tired of railing at French barbarity and folly. They are more puerile now serious, than -when in the long paroxysm of gay levity. Legislators, a senate, to neglect laws, in order to annihilate coats of arms and liveries! to pull down a King, and set up an Emperor! They are hastening to establish the tribunal of the praetorian guards; for the sovereignty, it seems, is not to be hereditary. One view of their F`ete of the 14th,(693) I suppose, is to draw money to Paris; and the consequence will be, that the deputies will return to the provinces drunk with independence and self-importance, and will commit fifty times more excesses, massacres, and devastations, than last year. George Selwyn says, that Monsieur, the King's brother, is the only man of rank from whom they cannot take a title.(694)
How franticly have the French acted, and how rationally the Americans! But Franklin and Washington were great men. None have appeared yet in France; and Necker has only returned to make a wretched figure! He is become as insignificant as his King; his name is never mentioned, but now and then as disapproving something that is done. Why then does he stay? Does he wait to strike some great stroke, when every thing is demolished? His glory, which consisted in being minister though a Protestant, is vanished by the destruction of popery; the honour of which, I suppose, he will scarce assume to himself. I have vented my budget, and now good night! I feel almost as if I could walk up to bed.
(692 Though Bruce's work was attacked at the time by the critics with much virulence, his statements have been more or less confirmed by Salt, Burckhardt, Wit-an, Clarke, Belzoni, and other distinguished travellers. Bruce never replied to any of his opponents; but sometimes said to his daughter, that he hoped she would live to see the time when the truth of what he had written would be established. He lost his life in April 1794, in consequence of an accidental slip of his foot, while handing a lady down stairs to her carriage. A second edition of his Travels was published in 1805, by Dr. Alexander Murray, from a copy which the traveller had himself prepared for the press.-E.
(693) The grand federation in the Champ de Mar, on the anniversary of the taking of the Bastille, thus described by M. Thiers:--"A magnificent amphitheatre, formed at the further extremity, was destined for the national authorities. The King and the president sat beside one another on similar seats. Behind the King was an elevated balcony for the Queen and the court. The ministers were at some distance before from the King, and the deputies ranged on either side. Four hundred thousand spectators occupied the lateral amphitheatres. Sixty thousand armed federalists performed their evolutions in the intermediate space; and in the centre, upon a base twenty-five feet high, stood the altar of the country. Three hundred priests, in white surplices and tricoloured scarfs, covered the steps, and were to officiate. The Bishop of Anton" [afterwards Prince Talleyrand] began the mass. Divine service over, La Fayette received the orders of the King, who handed to him the form of the oath. La Fayette carried it to the altar. At this moment all the banners waved, every sabre glistened. The general the army, the president, the deputies cried 'I swear it.' The King, standing, with his hand outstretched towards the altar, said 'I King of the French, swear,' etc. At this moment., the Queen, moved by the general emotion, clasped in her arms the august child, the heir to the throne, and, from the balcony, showed him to the assembled nation. At this moment shouts of joy, attachment 'enthusiasm, were addressed to the mother and the child, and all hearts were hers." History of the Revolution, vol. i. p. 155.-E.
(694) On the 20th of Julio, a decree, that the titles of duke, count, marquis, viscount, baron, and chevalier should be suppressed, had been carried in the National Assembly by a large majority.-E.
352. To Miss Berry. Strawberry Hill, Saturday night, July 3, 1790. (page 450)
How kind to write the very moment you arrived! but pray do not think that, welcome as your letters are, I would purchase them at the price of any fatigue to you-a proviso I put in already against moments when you may be more weary than by a journey to Lymington. You make me happy by the good accounts of Miss Agnes; and I should be completely so, if the air of the sea could be so beneficial to you both, as to make your farther journey unnecessary to your healths, at least for some time; for--and I protest solemnly that not a personal thought enters into the consideration--I shall be excessively alarmed at your going to the Continent. when such a frenzy has seized it. You see by the papers, that the flame has burst out at Florence: can Pisa then be secure? Flanders can be no safe road; and is any part of France so? I told you in my last of the horrors at Avignon. At Madrid the people are riotous against the war with us, and prosecuted I am persuaded it will not be; but the demon of Gaul is busy every where. The Etats, who are as foolish as atrocious, have printed lists of the surnames which the late noblesse are to assume or resume; as if people did not know their own names. I like a speech I have heard of the Queen. She went with the King to see the manufacture of glass, and, as they passed the Halles, the poissardes huzzaed them; "Upon my word," said the Queen, "these folks are civiler when you visit them, than when they visit you." This marked both spirit and good -humour. For my part, I am so shocked at French barbarity, that I begin to think that our hatred of them is not national prejudice, but natural instinct; as tame animals are born with an antipathy to beasts of prey.
Mrs. Damer tells me in a letter to-day, that Lady Ailesbury was charmed with you both (which did not surprise either of us); and she never saw two persons have so much taste for the country, who have no place of their Own. It may be so; but begging her ladyship's pardon and yours, I think that people who have a place of their own, are mighty apt not to like any other.
I feel all the kindness at your determination of coming to Twickenham in August, and shall certainly say no more against it, though I am certain that I shall count every day that passes; and when they are passed, they will leave a melancholy impression on Strawberry, that I had rather have affixed to London. The two last summers were infinitely the pleasantest I ever passed here, for I never before had an agreeable neighbourhood. Still I loved the place, and had no comparisons to draw. Now, the neighbourhood will remain, and will appear ten times worse; with the aggravation of remembering two months that may have some transient roses, but I am sure, lasting thorns. You tell me I do not write with my usual spirits: at least I will suppress, as much as I can, the want of them, though I am a bad dissembler.(695)
You do not mention the cathedral at Winchester, which I have twice seen and admired; nor do you say any thing of Bevismount and Netley--charming Netley! At Lyndhurst you passed the palatial hovel of my royal nephew; who I have reason to wish had never been so, and did all I could to prevent his being.
The week before last I met the Marlboroughs at Lady Di's. The Duchess(696) desired to come and see Strawberry again, as it had rained the whole time she was here last. I proposed the next morning: no, she could not: she expected company to dinner; she believed their brother, Lord Robert(697) would dine with them: I thought that a little odd, as they had Just turned him out for Oxfordshire; and I thought a dinner no cause at the distance of four miles. In her grace's dawdling way, she could fix no time: and so on Friday, at half an hour after seven, as I was going to Lady North's, they arrived; and the sun being setting, and the moon not risen, You may judge how much they could see through all the painted glass by twilight.
(695) In a letter written in this month to Walpole, Miss More asks, "Where and how are the Berrys? I hope they are within reach of your great chair, if you are confined, and of your airings, if you go abroad. I hate their going to Yorkshire: as Hotspur Says, 'What do they do in the north, when they ought to be in the south?", Memoirs, vol.ii. p. 235.-E.
(696) Lady Caroline Russell; married, in 1762, to the Duke of Marlborough.
(697) Lord Robert Spencer, brother of the Duke of Marlborough.
353. To The Hon. H. S. Conway. Strawberry Hill, August 9, at night, 1790. (page 452)
MR. NICHOLLS has offered to be postman to you; whereof, though I have nothing, or as little as nothing, to say, I thought as how, it would look kinder to send nothing in writing than by word of mouth.
Nothing the first. So the peace is made, and the stocks drank its health in a bumper; but when they waked the next morning, they found they had reckoned without their host, and that their majesties the King of big Britain and the King of little Spain have agreed to make peace some time or other, if they can agree upon it; and so the stocks drew in their horns: but, having great trust in some time or other, they only fell two pegs lower. I, who never believed there would be war, keep my prophetic stocks up to par, and my consolation still higher; for when Spanish pride truckles, and English pride has had the honour of bullying, I dare to say we shall be content with the ostensible triumph, as Spain will be with some secret article that will leave her much where she was before. Vide Falkland's Island.
Nothing the second. Miss Gunning's match with Lord Blandford. You asserted it so peremptorily, that, though I doubted it, I quoted you. Lo! it took its rise solely in poor old Bedford's dotage, that still harps on conjunctions copulative, but now disavows it, as they say, on a remonstrance from her daughter.
Nothing the third. Nothing will come of nothing, says King Lear, and your humble servant.
354. To The Earl Of Strafford. Strawberry Hill, August 12, 1790. (page 452)
I must not pretend any longer, my dear lord, that this region is void of news and diversions. Oh! we can innovate as well as neighbouring nations. If an Earl Stanhope, though he cannot be a tribune, is ambitious of being a plebeian, he may without law be as vulgar as heart can wish; and, though we have not a national assembly to lay the axe to the root of nobility, the peerage have got a precedent for laying themselves in the kennel. Last night the Earl of Barrymore was so humble as to perform a buffoon-dance and act Scaramouch in a pantomime at Richmond for the benefit of Edwin, Jun. the comedian:(698) and I, like an old fool, but calling myself a philosopher that loves to study human nature in all its disguises, went to see the performance.
Mr. Gray thinks that some Milton or some Cromwell may be lost to the world under the garb of a ploughman. Others may suppose that some excellent jack-pudding may lie hidden under red velvet and ermine. I cannot say that by the experiment of last night the latter hypothesis has been demonstrated, any more than the inverse proposition in France, where, though there seem to be many as bloody-minded rascals as Cromwell, I can discover none of his abilities.(699) They have settled nothing like a constitution; on the contrary, they seem to protract every thing but violence, as much as they can, in order to keep their Louie a day, which is more than two-thirds of the Asset they perhaps ever saw in a month. I do not love legislators that pay themselves so amply! They might have had as good a constitution as twenty-four millions of people could comport. As they have voted an army of an hundred and fifty thousand men, I know what their constitution will be, after passing through a civil war. In short, I detest them: they have done irreparable injury to liberty, for no monarch will ever summon `etats again; and all the real service that will result from their fury will be, that every King in Europe, for these twenty, or perhaps thirty years to come, will be content with the prerogative he has. without venturing to augment it.
The Empress of Russia has thrashed the King of Sweden; and the King of Sweden has thrashed the Empress of Russia. I am more glad that both are beaten than that either is victorious ; for I do not, like our newspapers, and such admirers, fall in love with heroes and heroines who make war without a glimpse of provocation. I do like our makincy peace, whether we had provocation or not. I am forced to deal in European news, my dear lord, for I have no homespun. I don't think my whole inkhorn could invent another paragraph; and therefore I will take my leave, with (your lordship knows) every kind wish for your health and happiness.(700)
(698) In the following month "The Follies of a Day" was performed at Lord Barrymore's private theatre, at Wergrave. "His lordship, in the character of the gardener," according to the newspapers, "was highly comic, and his humour was not overstrained: the whole concluded with a dance, in which was introduced a favourite pas Russe, by Lord Barrymore and Mr. Delpini, which kept the theatre in a roar."-E.
(699) Gibbon, in a letter written a few months before from Lausanne to Lord Sheffield, makes the following reflections:-- "The French nation had a glorious opportunity, but they have abused and may lose their advantages. If they had been content with a liberal translation of our system, if they had respected the prerogatives of the crown and the privileges of the nobles, they might have raised a solid fabric on the only true foundation, the natural aristocracy of a great country. How different is the prospect! Their King brought a captive to Paris, after his palace had been stained with the blood of his guards; the nobles in exile; the clergy plundered in a way which strikes at the root of all property; the capital an independent republic; the union of the provinces dissolved; the flames of discord kindled by the worst of men, and the honestest of the Assembly a set of wild visionaries. As yet there is no symptom of a great man, a Richelieu or a Cromwell, arising either to restore the monarchy, or to lead the commonwealth."-E.
(700) This appears to have been the last letter addressed by Walpole to the Earl of Strafford. His lordship died at Wentworth Castle, on the 10th of March following, in his seventy-ninth year.-E.