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THE

LETTERS OF
HORACE WALPOLE,
EARL OF ORFORD:
INCLUDING
NUMEROUS LETTERS NOW FIRST PUBLISHED
FROM THE ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPTS.

IN SIX VOLUMES.
VOL. VL

1778 — 1797.

LONDON:
RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET;
mitimtv i%t ©rtJinarj) to mtv iMajeistp.
1840.

BvS'U 77
il %
copy {

The present Volume will be found to contain upwards of
one hundred letters, introduced into no former edition of tlie
Correspondence of Horace Walpole. The greater part of them
were written between the years 1789 and 1797, and were
addressed to the Miss Berrys, during their residence in Italy.
They embrace most of the leading events of the first five years
of the French Revolution ; and wherever the facts detailed in
the letters have appeared to require elucidation or confirma
tion, the Editor has generally had recourse to M. Thiers's
useful " History " of that great event ; which has recently ap
peared in an English dress, accompanied with notes and illus
trations, drawn from the most authentic sources.
While the last sheets of this volume were going to press,
the Editor was favoured with a Letter from the Right Ho
nourable Sir Charles Grey, relative to the share which he
considers Mr. Walpole to have had in the composition and
publication of the Letters of Junius.

Albany Street, Regent's Park,
October 28, 1840.

ADVERTISEMENT
TO THE LETTERS ADDRESSED TO THE
MISS BERRYS.

To the first edition of Lord Orford's works, which
was published the year after he died, no memoir
of his life was prefixed : his death was too recent,
his life and character too well known, his works
too popular, to require it. His political Memoirs,
and the collections of his Letters which have been
subsequently published, were edited by persons,
who, though well qualified for their task in every
other respect, have failed in their account of his
private life, and their appreciation of his individual
character, from the want of a personal acquaintance
with their author.
The life contained in Sir Walter Scott's Biogra
phical Sketches of the English Novelists labours
under the same disadvantages. He had never seen
Lord Orford, nor even lived much with such of his
intimates and contemporaries in society as survived
him. Lord Dover, who has so admirably edited the
first part of his correspondence with Sir Horace
Mann, knew Lord Orford only by having been
carried sometimes, when a boy, by his father Lord
Clifden to Strawberry Hill. His editorial labours
with these letters were the last occupation of his
accomplished mind, and were pursued while his
b 2

VIU ADVERTISEMENT.
body was fast sinking under the complication of
disease, which so soon after deprived society of one
of its most distinguished members, the arts of an
enlightened patron, and his intimates of an amiable
and attaching friend. Of the meagreness and in
sufficiency of his memoir of Lord Orford's life pre
fixed to the letters, he was himself aware, and ex
pressed to the author of these pages his inability
then to improve it, and his regret that circum
stances had deprived him, while it was yet time,
of the assistance of those who could have furnished
him with better materials. His account of the
latter part of Lord Orford's life is deficient in
details, and sometimes erroneous as to dates. He
appears likewise to have been unacquainted with
some of his writings, and the circumstances which
led to and accompanied them. In the present
publication these deficiencies are supplied from
notes, in the hands of the writer, left by Lord
Orford, of the dates of the principal events of his
own life, and of the writing and publication of all
his works. It is only to be regretted that his auto
biography is so short, and so entirely confined to
dates. In estimating the character of Lord Orford, and
in the opinion which he gives of his talents. Lord
Dover has evinced much candour and good taste.
He praises with discrimination, and draws no un
fair inferences from the peculiarities of a character
with which he was not personally acquainted.
It is by the Review of the Letters to Sir Horace
Mann, that the severest condemnation has been

ADVERTISEMENT. IX
passed and the most ul^ust impressions given, not
only of the genius and talents, but of the heart and
character, of Lord Orford. The mistaken opinions
of the eloquent and accomplished author of that
review are to be traced chiefly to the same causes
which defeated the intentions of the two first biogra
phers. In his case, these causes were increased, not
only by no acquaintance with his subject, but by still
farther removal from the fashions, the social habits,,
the little minute details, of the age to which Horace
Walpole belongs, — an age so essentially different
from the business, the movement, the important
struggles, of that which claims the critic as one of
its most distinguished ornaments. A conviction
that these reasons led to his having drawn up,
from the supposed evidence of Walpole's works
alone, a character of their author so entirely and
offensively unlike the original, has forced the pen
into the feeble and failing hand of the writer of
these pages, — has imposed the pious duty of at
tempting to rescue, by incontrovertible facts ac
quired in long intimacy, the memory of an old and
beloved friend, from the giant grasp of an author
and a critic from whose judgment, when delibe
rately formed, few can hope to appeal with success.
The candour, the good-nature of this critic, — the
inexhaustible stores of his literary acquirements,
which place him in the first rank of those most
distinguished for historical knowledge and critical
acumen, — will allow him, I feel sure, to forgive
this appeal from his hasty and general opinion, to
the judgment of his better informed mind, on the

X ADVERTISEMENT.
peculiarities of a character often remarkably dis
similar from that of his works.
Lord Dover has justly and forcibly remarked,
" that what did the most honour both to the head
" and the heart of Horace Walpole, was the friend-
" ship Avhich he bore to Marshal Conway ; a man
" who, according to all the accounts of him that
" have come down to us, was so truly worthy of
" inspiring such a degree of affection.^ "
He then quotes the character given of him by
the editor of Lord Orford's works in 1798. This
character of Marshal Conway was a portrait drawn
from the life, and, as it proceeded from the same pen
which now traces these lines, has some right to
be inserted here. " It is only those who have
" had the opportunity of penetrating into the most
" secret motives of his public conduct, and into
" the inmost recesses of his private life, who can
" do real justice to the unsullied purity of his cha-
" racter ; — who saw and knew him in the evening of
" his days, retired from the honorable activity of a
" soldier and of a statesman, to the calm enjoy-
" ments of private life ; happy in the resources of
" his own mind, and in the cultivation of useful
" science, in the bosom of domestic peace — un-
" enriched by pensions or places — undistinguished
" by titles or ribbons — unsophisticated by public
" life, and unwearied by retirement."
To this man. Lord Orford's attachment, from
their boyish days at Eton school to the death of
' Sketch of the Life of Horace Walpole, by Lord Dover.
See vol. i. p. 14.

ADVERTISEMENT. XI
Marshal Conway in 1795, is already a circum
stance of sufficiently rare occurrence among men
of the world. Could such a man, of whom the fore
going lines are an unvarnished sketch — of whose
character, simplicity was one of the distinguished
ornaments — could such a man have endured the in
timacy of such an individual as the reviewer de
scribes Lord Orford to have been ? Could an in
tercourse of uninterrupted friendship and undimin
ished confidence have existed between them during
a period of nearly sixty years, undisturbed by the
business and bustle of middle life, so apt to cool,
and often to terminate, youthful friendships ? Could
such an intercourse ever have existed, with the sup
posed selfish indifference, and artificial coldness and
conceit of Lord Orford's character ?
The last correspondence included in the present
publication will, it is presumed, furnish no less
convincing proof, that the warmth of his feelings,
and his capacity for sincere affection, continued un-
enfeebled by age. It is with this view, and this
alone, that the correspondence alluded to is now,
for the first time, given to the public. It can
add nothing to the already established epistolary
fame of Lord Orford, and the public can be as little
interested in his sentiments for the two individuals
addressed. But, in forming a just estimate of his
character, the reader will hardly fail to observe, that
those sentiments were entertained at a time of life
when, for the most part, the heart is too little
capable of expansion to open to new attachments.
The whole tone of these letters must prove the

XU ADVERTISEMENT.
unimpaired warmth of his feelings, and form a
striking contrast to the cold harshness of which
he has been accused, in his intercourse with Madame
du DefFand, at an earlier period of his life. This
harshness, as was noticed by the editor of Madame
du Deffand's letters, in the preface to that pub
lication, proceeded solely from a dread of ridicule,
which forraed a principal feature of Mr. Walpole's
character, and which, carried, as in his case, to
excess, must be called a principal weakness. " This
" accounts for the ungracious language in which he
" so often replies to the importunities of her anxious
" affection ; a language so foreign to his heart, and
" so contrary to his own habits in friendship." •
Is this, then, the man who is supposed to be " the
" most eccentric, the most artificial, the most fas-
" tidious, the most capricious of mortals — his mind
" a bundle of inconsistent whims and affectations
" — his features covered with mask within mask,
" which, when the outer disguise of obvious affecta-
" tion was removed, you were still as far as ever
" from seeing the real man."  " Affectation is
" the essence of the man. It pervades all his
" thoughts, and all his expressions. If it were
" taken away, nothing would be left.^ "
He affected nothing ; he played no part ; he was
what he appeared to be. Aware that he was
ill qualified for politics, for public life, for parlia
mentary business, or indeed for business of any sort,
1 See Preface to Madame du Deffand's Letters, p. xi ; and
vol. v. p. 132 of this Collection.
^ See Edinburgh Review, vol. Iviii. p. 233.

ADVERTISEMENT. xiii
the whole tenour of his life was consistent with this
opinion of himself. Had he attempted to effect
what belongs only to characters of another stamp
— had he endeavoured to take a lead in the
House of Commons — had he sought for place, dig
nity, or office — had he aimed at intrigue, or at
tempted to be a tool for others — then, indeed, he
might have deserved the appellation of artificial,
eccentric, and capricious.
From the retreat of his father, which happened
the year after he entered parliament, the only real
interest he took in politics was when their events
happened immediately to concern the objects of his
private friendships. He occupied himself with
what really amused him. If he had affected any
thing, it would certainly not have been a taste
for the trifling occupations with which he is re
proached. Of no person can it be less truly said,
that " affectation was the essence of the man."
What man, or even what woman, ever affected
to be the frivolous being he is described ? When
his critic says, that he had " the soul of a gen
tleman usher," he was little aware that he only
repeated what Lord Orford often said of him
self — that from his knowledge of old ceremonials
and etiquettes, he was sure that in a former state
of existence, he must have been a gentleman-usher
about the time of Elizabeth.
In politics, he was what he professed to be, a Whig,
in the sense which that denomination bore in his
younger days, — never a Republican.
In his old and enfeebled age, the horrors of the

XlV ADVERTISEMENT.
first French revolution made him a Tory ; while he
always lamented, as one of the worst effects of its
excesses, that they raust necessarily retard to a
distant period the progress and establishment of
civil liberty. But why are we to believe his con
tempt for crowned heads should have prevented his
writing a memoir of " Royal and Noble Authors ?"
Their literary labours, when all brought together
by himself, would not, it is believed, tend much to
raise, or much to alter his opinion of them.
In his letters from Paris, written in the years
1765, 1766, 1767, and 1771, it will be seen, that so
far from being infinitely more occupied with " the
fashions and gossip of Versailles and Marli than
with a great moral revolution which was taking
place in his sight," he was truly aware of the state of
the public mind, and foresaw all that was coming on.
Of Rousseau he has proved that he knew more,
and that he judged him more accurately, than Mr.
Hume, and many others who were then duped by
his mad pride and disturbed understanding.
Voltaire had convicted himself of the basest of
vain lies in the intercourse he sought with Mr.
Walpole. The details of this transaction, and the
letters which passed at the time, are already print
ed in the quarto edition of his works. In the short
notes of his life left by himself, and from which
all the dates in this notice are taken, it is thus
mentioned :
" Although Voltaire, with whom I had never
" had the least acquaintance, had voluntarily writ-
" ten to me first, and asked for my. book, he

ADVERTISEMENT. XV
" wrote a letter to the Duchesse de Choiseul, in
" which, without saying a syllable of his having
" written to me first, he told her I had officiously
" sent him my works, and declared war with him
" in defence ' de ce bouffon de Shakspeare,' whom in
" his reply to me he pretended so much to admire.
" The Duchesse sent me Voltaire's letter; which
" gave me such a contempt for his disingenuity,
" that I dropped all correspondence with him."
When he spoke with contempt of d'Alembert,
it was not of his abilities ; of which he never pre
tended to judge. Professor Saunderson had long
before, when he was a lad at Cambridge, assured
him, that it would be robbing him to pretend
teaching him mathematics, of which his mind was
perfectly incapable, so that any comparison "of
the intellectual powers of the two men" would
indeed be as " exquisitely ridiculous" as the critic
declares it. But Lord Orford, speaking of d'Alem
bert, complains of the overweening importance
which he, and all the men of letters of those days in
France, attributed to their squabbles and disputes.
The idleness to which an absolute government
necessarily condemns nine-tenths of its subjects,
sufficiently accounts for the exaggerated import
ance given to and assumed by the French writers,
even before they had become, in the language
of the Reviewer, " the interpreters between Eng
land and mankind :" he asserts, " that all the great
" discoveries in physics, in metaphysics, in political
" science, are ours ; but no foreign nation, except
" France, has received them from us by direct com-

xvi ADVERTISEMENT.
" munication : isolated in our situation, isolated
" by our manners, we found truth, but did not
" impart it." ^ It may surely be asked, whether
France will subscribe to this assertion of supe
riority, in the whole range of science ? If she
does, her character has undergone a greater
change, than any she has yet experienced in
the course of all her revolutions.
Lord Orford is believed by his critic to have
" sneered" at everybody. Sneering was not his
way of showing dislike. He had very strong pre
judices, sometimes adopted on very insufficient
grounds, and he therefore often made great mis
takes in the appreciation of character ; but when
influenced by such impressions, he always expressed
his opinions directly, and often too violently.
The affections of his heart were bestowed on few ;
for in early life they had never been cultivated, but
they were singularly warm, pure, and constant;
characterized not by the ardour of passion, but by
the constant preoccupation of real affection. He
had lost his mother, to whom he was fondly attach
ed, early in life ; and with his father, a man of
coarse feelings and boisterous manners, he had few
sentiments in common. Always feeble in constitu
tion, he was unequal to the sports of the field, and
to the drinking which then accompanied them;
so that during his father's retreat at Houghton,
however much he respected his abilities and was
devoted to his fame, he had little sympathy in his
tastes, or pleasure in his society. To the friends
1 Edinburgh Review, vol. Iviii. p. 233.

ADVERTISEMENT. xvii
of his own selection his devotion was not confined
to professions or words : on all occasions of diffi
culty, of whatever nature, his active affection came
forward in defence of their character, or assistance
in their affairs.
When his friend Conway, as second in command
under Sir John Mordaunt, in the expedition to St.
Maloes, partook in some degree of the public cen
sure called forth by the failure of these repeated
ill-judged attempts on the coasts of France, Wal
pole's pen was immediately employed in rebutting
the accusations of the popular pamphlet of the day
on this subject, and establishing his friend's ex
emption from any responsibility in the failure.
When, on a more important occasion, Mr. Conway
was not only dismissed from being Equerry to the
King, George III, but from the command of his
regiment, for his constitutional conduct and votes
in the House of Commons, in the memorable affair
of the legality of General Warrants for the seizure
of persons and papers, Walpole iramediately step
ped forward, not with cold coraraendations of
his friend's upright and spirited conduct, but
with all the confidence of long-tried affection,
and all the security of noble minds incapable of
misunderstanding each other, he insisted on being
allowed to share in future his fortune with his
friend, and thus more than repair the pecuniary
loss he had incurred. Mr. Conway, in a letter to
his brother Lord Hertford, of this period, says,
" Horace Walpole has on this occasion shown that
" warmth of friendship that you know him capable

XVlU ADVERTISEMENT.
" of SO strongly, that I want words to express my
"sense of it;"* thus proving the justice he did to
Walpole's sentiments and intentions.
In the case of General Conway's near relation
ship and intimacy from childhood, the cause
in which his fortunes were suffering might have
warmed a colder heart, and opened a closer hand,
than Mr. Walpole's : but Madame du DefFand
was a recent acquaintance, who had no claim on
him, but the pleasure he received from her society,
and his desire that her blind and helpless old age
might not be deprived of any of the comforts and
alleviations of which it was capable. When, by
the financial arrangements of the French govern
ment, under the unscrupulous administration of the
Abbe Terray, the creditors of the state were con
siderably reduced in income, Mr, Walpole, in the
most earnest manner, begged to prevent the unplea
santness of his old friend's exposing her necessities,
and imploring aid from the minister of the day, by
allowing him to make up the deficit in her revenue,
as a loan, or in any manner that would be most
satisfactory to her. The loss, after all, did not fall
on that stock from which she derived her income,
and the assistance was not accepted ; but Madame
du Deffand's confidence in, and opinion of, the offer
we see in her letters.
During his after life, although no ostentatious
contributor to public charities and schemes of im
provement, the friends in whose opinion he knew
he could confide, had always more difficulty to re
press than to excite his liberality,
1 See vol. iv. p. 416.

ADVERTISEMENT. XlX
That he should have wished his friend Conway
to be employed as commander on military expe
ditions, which, as a soldier fond of his profession,
he naturally coveted, although Mr, Walpole might
disapprove of the policy of the minister in sending
out such expeditions, surely implies neither dis
guise, nor contradiction in his opinions.
The dread which the reviewer supposes him to
have had, lest he should lose caste as a gentleman,
by ranking as a wit and an author, he was much
too Jine a gentleman to have believed in the possi
bility of feeling. He knew he had never studied
since he left college ; he knew that he was not at all
a learned man : but the reputation that he had ac
quired by his wit and by his writings, not only
among fine gentlemen but with society in general,
made him nothing loath to cultivate every oppor
tunity of increasing it. The account he gave of
the idleness of his life to Sir Horace Mann, when
he disclaims the title of " the learned gentleman,"
was literally true; and it is not easy to imagine any
reason why a man at the age of forty-three, who
admits that he is idle, and who renounces being
either a learned man or a politician, should be
" ashamed " of playing loo in good company till
two or three o'clock in the morning, if he neither
ruins himself nor others.* He wrote his letters
as rapidly as his disabled fingers would allow
him to form the characters of a remarkably legi
ble hand. No rough draughts or sketches of fa
miliar letters were found amongst his papers at
1 See Edinburgh Review, vol. Iviii. page 2.32.

XX ADVERTISEMENT,
Strawberry Hill : but he was in the habit of put
ting down on the backs of letters or on slips of
paper, a note of facts, of news, of witticisms, or of
anything he wished not to forget, for the amuse
ment of his correspondents.
After reading " The Mysterious Mother," who
will accede to the opinion, that his works are " des
titute of every charm that is derived from eleva
tion, or from tenderness, of sentiment ?"*
But, with opinions as to the genius, the taste, or
the talents of Lord Orford, this little notice has
nothing to do. It aims solely at rescuing his indi
vidual character from misconceptions. Of the
means necessary for this purpose, its writer, by the
" painful pre-eminence " of age, remains the sole
depositary, and being so, has submitted to the
task of repelling such misconceptions. It is done
with the reluctance which must always be expe
rienced in differing from, or calling in question,
the opinions of a person, for whom is felt all the
admiration and respect due to super-eminent abili-;
ties, and all the grateful pride and affectionate re
gard inspired by personal friendship.

October 1840.

See Edinburgh Review, vol. Iviii. page 237.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE LETTERS OF HORACE WALPOLE,
EARL OF ORFORD.
Sir, I. Before your last volume is published, I am desirous
of stating to you some of the considerations which, more than
seventeen years ago, led me to the belief I still entertain, that
Walpole had a principal share in the composition and publica
tion of the Letters of Junius: though I think it likely that
Mason, or some other friend, corrected the style, and gave pre
cision and force to the most striking passages,
2. It was in 1823, whilst I was residing in India, that Lord
Holland's edition of Walpole's Memoires of the Last Ten Years
of the Reign of George the Second suggested to me this notion ;
and it was shortly afterwards communicated to several of my
friends. The edition of Junius which I had with me, was that
of Mr. Woodfall the younger, in three volumes ; and I am not
at present by any means satisfied that all the, letters which the
Editor assigns to Junius were written by him : but in this hasty
notice I must proceed upon the supposition that they were.
3. It will be remembered that the Memoires were composed
by Walpole in secrecy, and that he left them in a sealed box,
which, by his will, was forbidden to be opened until many years
after his death. The letters from which the corresponding
passages are given below are all published as Letters of Junius
by Mr. Woodfall, and are of dates later than the time when
Walpole wrote his Memoires ; but half a century earlier than
the time when they were printed,
JUNIUS. WALPOLE.
I own, my lord, that yours is not As it is observed that timorous
an uncommon character. Women, natures like those of women are
and men like women, are timid, vin- generally cruel, Lord Mansfield
dictive, and irresolute. — WoodfalVs might easily slide into rigour, &c.—
Junius, vol. ii. p. 168. Walpole's Memoires, vol. ii. p. 175.
Without openly supporting the The occasions of the times had
person, you (Lord Mansfield) have called him (Lord Mansfield) off from
VOL, VI, '^

XXll

WALPOLE AND JUN [US.

JUNIUS.
done essential service to the cause ;
and consoled yourself for the loss of
a favourite family by reviving and
establishing the maxims of their go
vernment. — Vol ii. p. 162.
You (Lord Mansfield) would fain
be thought to take no share in go
vernment, while in reality you are
the main-spring of the machine. —
Vol. ii. p. 179.
You secretly engross the power,
while you decline the title of minis
ter.— Vol. ii. p. 179.
In council he generally affects to
take a moderate part. — ^Vol. ii. p. 354.
At present there is something
oracular in the delivery of my opi
nion. I speak from a recess which
no human curiosity can penetrate.
— Vol. i. p. 31*.
Our enemies treat us as the cun
ning trader does the unskilful In
dian. They magnify their generosity
when they give us baubles of little
proportionate value for ivory and
gold. — Vol. ii. p. 359.
If you deny him the cup, there will
be no keeping him within the pale of
the ministry. — Vol. ii. p. 219.

Honour and justice must not be
renounced, although a thousand
modes of right and wrong were to
occupy the degrees of morality be
tween Zeno and Epicurus. The
fundamental principles ofChristianity
may still be preserved. — Vol. ii. p.
346. He (the Duke of Bedford) would
not have betrayed such ignorance or
such contempt of the constitution as
openly to avow in a court of judica
ture the purchase and sale of a bo
rough. Note. — In an answer in Chancery
in a suit against him to recover a
large sum paid him by a person whom
he had undertaken to return to par
liament for one of his Grace's bo
roughs. He was compelled to repay
the money. — Vol. i. p. 576.

WALPOLB.
principles that favoured an arbitrary
king — he still leaned towards an
arbitrary government. — Vol. ii. p.
266. Pitt liked the dignity of des
potism ; Lord Mansfield the reality.
— Vol. ii. p. 274.
He was timid himself, and always
waving what he was always court
ing.— Vol. ii. p. 336.

The conduct was artful, new, and
grand : secluded from all eyes, his
(Lord Chatham's) orders were re
ceived as oracles. — Vol. ii. p. 347.
They made a legal purchase to all
Eternity of empires and posterity,
from a parcel of naked savages, for
a handful of glass beads and baubles.
— Vol. i. p. 343.
Where I believe the clergy do
not deny the laity the cup. — Letter
to Montague.
He took care to regulate his
patron's warmth within the pale of
his own advantage. — Memoires, Vol.
ii. p. 197.
Come over to the pale of loyalty. —
Vol. i. p. 282.
The modes of Christianity were
exhausted. — Vol. ii. p. 282.
To mark how much the modes of
thinking change, and that funda
mentals themselves can make no im
pression. — Vol. ii. p. 285.
Corruption prevailed in the House
of Commons. Instances had been
brought to our courts of judicature
how much it prevailed in our elec
tions. Note.— The Duke of Bedford had
received 1500/. for electing Jeffery
French at one of his boroughs in the
West ; but he dying immediately,
his heir sued the Duke for the money
who paid it rather than let the cause
be heard.

WALPOLE AND JUNIUS.

XXlll

JUNIUS.
The Princess Dowager made it her
first care to inspire her son with hor
ror against heresy, and with a respect
for the church.
His mother took more pains to
form his belief than either his mo
rals or his understanding. — Vol. iii.
p. 408.
That prince had strong natural
parts, and used frequently to blush for
his own ignorance and want of educa
tion, which had been wilfully neg
lected by his mother Mid her minion.
» • * • »
Our great Edward, too, at an early
period, had sense enough to under
stand the nature of the connection
between his abandoned mother and
the detested Mortimer.
• » « « »
When it was proposed to settle the
present King's household as Prince of
Wales, it is well known that the
Earl of Bute was forced into it in
direct contradiction to the late
King's inclination. — Vol. ii.

WALPOLE.
From the death of the Prince the
object of the Princess Dowager had
been the government of her son ; and
her attention had answered. She
had taught him great devotion, and
she had taken care that he should be
taught nothing else. — Vol. i. p. 396.
Martin spoke for the clause, and
said, " The King could not have a
separate interest from his people,
the Princess might ; witness Queen
Isabella and her minion Mortimer."
— Vol.i. p. 118.

Fox had an audience. The mon
arch was sour, but endeavoured to
keep his temper, yet made no conces
sions ; no request to the retiring mi
nister to stay. At last he let slip
the true cause of his indignation:
" You," said he, " have made me
make that puppy Bute groom of the
stole."-^Vol. ii. p. 92.

Though too long to be cited in these hurried notes, there
are several other passages in which the coincidence of sen
timent and expression, and of the order in which the thoughts
and arguments are ranged, is very remarkable: and the diffi
culty of accounting otherwise for such coincidences between
the Letters of Junius and the unpublished and secret Memoires
of Walpole, first made me suspect that the two names might
belong to one and the same person — Horace Walpole the younger.
4, Being led by this conjecture to examine the other works
of Walpole, I found, in them also, many echoes, as it were, of
the voice of Junius, which it is singular should not have been
more observed. No one, I think, can collate the concluding
portion of Walpole's letter to Lord Bute, of February 15, 1762,
and the latter part of the eulogium of Junius on Lord Chatham,
without being struck by the similarity of manner and tone;
and by the identity of that feeling which, in both cases, prompts
the writer, whilst he is elaborating compliments, to defend him
self jealously against all suspicion of flattery or interested mo
tives. c 2

XXIV

WALPOLE AND JUNIUS.

JUNIUS.
I did not intend to make a public
declaration of the respect I bear Lord
Chatham. I well knew what unwor
thy conclusions would be drawn from
it. But I am called upon to deliver
my opinion, and surely it is not in
the little censure of Mr. Home to
deter me from doing signal justice
to a man who, I confess, has grown
upon my esteem. As for the com
mon, sordid views of avarice, or any
purpose of vulgar ambition, I question
whether the applause of Junius
would be of service to Lord Chat
ham. My vote will hardly recom
mend him to an increase of his pen
sion, or to a seat in the Cabinet.
But if his ambition be upon a level
with his understanding ; if he judges
of what is truly honourable for him
self with the same superior genius
which animates and directs him to
eloquence in debate, to wisdom in
decision, even the pen of Junius
shall contribute to reward him. Re
corded honour shall gather round his
monument, and thicken over him.
It is a solid fabric, and will support
the laurels that adorn it. I am not
conversant in the language of pane
gyric. These praises are extorted
from me ; but they will wear well,
for they have been dearly earned. —
Vol. ii. p. 310.

WALPOLE.
I did not purpose to tempt aga,m
the patience of mankind. But the
case is very different with regard to
my trouble. My whole fortune is
from the bounty of the Crown and
from the public : it would ill become
me to spare any pains for the King's
glory, or for the honour and satisfac
tion of my country; and give me
leave to add, my lord, it would be an
ungrateful return for the distinction
with which your lordship has con
descended to honour me, if I withheld
such trifling aid as mine, when it
might in the least tend to adorn your
lordship's administration. From me,
my lord, permit me to say these are
not words of course, or of compli
ment, this is not the language of
flattery : your lordship knows I have
no views ; perhaps knows that, insig
nificant as it is, my praise is never
detached from my esteem : and
when you have raised, as I trust you
will, real monuments of glory, the
most contemptible characters in the
inscription dedicated by your coun
try, may not be the testimony of, my
lord, your lordship's most obedient
humble servant. — Letters, vol. iv. p.
208,

I have neither time nor space for going much farther into
this part of the subject; but there is one circumstance which,
in its application to the supposition that Francis was Junius,
is too remarkable to be passed over. Sir Philip Francis sup
plied Mr. Almon with reports of .two speeches of Lord Chat
ham, in one of which there is this palssage, " The Americans
had purchased their liberty at a dear rate, since they had quitted
their native country and gone in search of freedom to a desert."
Junius, about three weeks before, had said, « Tliey lefi their
native land in search of freedom, and found it in a desert •" and
it has been inferred from this, that the words in the speech
were not Lord Chatham's, but the reporter's, and that Sir Philip
Francis was Junius. But it happens that Walpole, in his Royal

WALPOLE AND JUNIUS. XXV
and Noble Authors, some years eariier than either the letter
of Junius or the speech of Lord Chatham, had said of Lord
Brooke, that he was on the point " of seeking liberty in the
forests of America."
5. If we turn from a recollection of the words to a considera
tion of the pecuharities of the style of Junius, I think it will
be agreed that the most remarkable of all is that species of
irony which consists in equivocal compliment. Walpole also
excelled in this ; and prided himself upon doing so. Are we
not justified in saying, that of all who, in the eighteenth cen
tury, cast their thoughts on public occurrences into the form of
letters, Junius and Walpole are the most distinguished? that
the works of no other prose writer of their time exhibit a zest
for political satire equal to that which is displayed in the Let
ters of Junius, and in the Memoires and Political Letters of
Walpole? and that the sarcasm of equivocal praise was the
favourite weapon in the armoury of each, though it certainly
appears to have been tempered, and sharpened, and polished
with additional care for the hand of Junius ? When did Francis
ever deal in compliment or in equivoque ? In his vituperation
there was always more of fury than of malice : but Junius and
Walpole were cruel. Madame du Deffand says to the latter,
" Votre plume est de fer trempe dans le fiel." I have some
times thought that clever old woman either knew or suspected
him to be Junius, She uses in one place the unusual expression,
" Votre ecrit de Junius :" and if Walpole was Junius, some
of the most carefully composed letters, in 1769 and 1771 were
written in Paris; where, indeed, it would seem that Junius,
whoever he was, collected the materials for the accusation with
which he threatened the Duke of Bedford, and which he evi
dently knew to be untrue.
6. It has sometimes been said, that the Letters ' of Junius
must have been written by a lawyer, and they were at one time
attributed even to Mr. Dunning. The mistakes which I am
about to notice, trifling as they may be, make it impossible that
any lawyer should have been the author ; and it appears to me
that not only is there a considerable resemblance in those mis
takes which I adduce of Walpole's, but that the affectation in

XXVI WALPOLE AND JUNIUS.
both of employing legal terms with which they were not familiar,
and of which they did not distinctly apprehend the meaning, is
very remarkable. Junius thought De Lolme's Essay " deep,
and talks of property which " savours of the reality:"^ he mis
applies that trite expression of the courts, bona fide :^ misunder
stands mortmain,* and supposes that an inquisitio post mortem
was an inquiry how the deceased came by his death.^ Walpole
talks of « the purparty of a wife's lands;" of " tenures against
which, of all others, quo warrantos are sure to take place ;" of
" the days of soccage," which he supposes to be obsolete ; and of
a fera naturce. '
JUNIUS. WALPOLE.
You say the facts on which you This circumstance is alleged
reason are universally admitted: a against them as an incident con-
gratis dictum which 1 flatly deny. — , trived to gain belief, as if they had
Vol. iii. p. 143. been in danger of their lives. The
argument is gratis dictum. — Works,
vol. ii. p. 568.
They are the trustees, not the Do you think we shall purchase
owners of the estate. The fee sim- the fee simple of him for so many
pie is in us. — Vol. i. p. 345. years .J" — Letters, vol. iii. p. 77.
7, Walpole's time of life, his station in society, means of in
formation, and habits of writing much, and anonymously, and
in concealment, all tally with the supposition of his being Junius,
So do his places of residence, when that part of the subject ,is
carefully examined.
8. It is an odd circumstance that Walpole, who makes remarks
on everything, makes no remark on Junius. If he ever ex
pressed an opinion of him in his letters to any of his numerous
correspondents, those letters have been suppressed. There are
fewer letters of his in the years during which Junius was writing
than in any others,
9, Walpole's quarrel with the Duke and Duchess of Bedford,
and the party whom he calls " the Bedford court," and Junius
" the Bloomsbury gang," would account for the rancour of the
letters of the latter to the Duke.
10. Walpole's dislike and opinion of the Duke of Grafton
' Woodfall's Junius, vol. i. p. 385. " Ibid. p. 312.
^ Ibid. p. 311. * Ibid, vol.ii.p. 131. « Ibid. vol. i. p,^454.

WALPOLE AND JUNIUS. XXvii
which is nowhere more remarkably expressed than in a letter
pubhshed for the first time in your fifth volume, page 205,
coupled with his friendship for the first Duchess of Grafton, fall
in with the attacks of Junius on the Duke.
11. The Memoires of Walpole show an enmity to Lord
Mansfield almost equal to that of Junius.
12. Turning from these to a person in a difierent station,
we find, on the part of Walpole, (and, by-the-by, of Mason
too,) a «ort of spite against Dr. Johnson; and in the works of
Walpole, selected by himself for publication after his death,^
there is a high-wrought criticism and condemnation of the
style of Johnson, which I cannot help believing to have been
concocted in revenge of the well-known handling of Junius in
Johnson's pamphlet on the Falkland Islands. " Let not in
judicious admiration mistake the venom of the shaft for the
vigour of the bow," is said by Johnson of Junius : and Walpole
says of Johnson, that " he destroys more enemies by the weight
of his shield, than with the point of his spear."
13. There is a host of small facts which might be adduced
in support of what I have advanced. Any one who has leisure
to examine the voluminous works of Walpole, and who can lend
his mind to the inquiry, will find them crowd upon him. Let
me mention one well-known occurrence,
Junius says, in the postscript of a private note to Mr. Wood-
fall, " Beware of David Garrick, He was sent to pump you,
and went directly to Richmond to tell the King I should write no
more," He then directed Woodfall to send the following note to
Garrick, but not in the handwriting of Junius : — " I am very ex
actly informed of your impertinent inquiries, and of the informa
tion you so busily sent to Richmond, and with what triumph and
exultation it was received. I knew every particular of it the next
day. Now, mark me, vagabond ! Keep to your pantomimes, or
be assured you shall hear of it. Meddle no more, thou busy
informer ! It is in my power to make you curse the hour in
which you dared to interfere with Junius."^
Mr. Woodfall remarks on this, that Garrick had received a
' Walpole's Works, vol. iv. p. 361. ' Junius, vol. i. p. 228.

XXVIU WALPOLE AND JUNIUS.
letter from Woodfall, (the editor of the newspaper in which the
letters of Junius first appeared,) before the above note of Junius
was sent to the printer, in which Garrick was told, in confidence,
that there were some doubts whether Junius would continue to
write much longer. Garrick flew with the intelligence to Mr.
Remus, one of the pages to the King, who immediately conveyed
it to his Majesty at that time residing at Richmond; and from the
peculiar sources of information that were open to this extraordi
nary writer, Junius was apprized of the whole transactioft on the
ensuing morning, and wrote the above postscript, and the letter
that follows it, in consequence.
Now all that appears to Mr. Woodfall the younger, to be so
wonderful in these circumstances is very easily explained, if we
suppose Walpole to have been Junius, Strawberry Hill is very
near Richmond Park, and Walpole had many acquaintances
amongst those who were about the King ; whilst his friend Mrs,
Clive, the actress, who lived in the adjoining house to his own,
and her brother, Mr. Raftor, who frequently visited her, both
belonged to Garrick's company.
But I have extended this letter too far. My purpose was
merely to invite your attention to a subject of some literary inte
rest, which you have peculiar opportunities of examining ; and to
enable you, if you should think fit, to draw to it the attention of
the pubhc also. I am, Sir,
Your obedient servant,
Chas. Edw. Grey.
20, Albemarle Street,
October 24, 1840.

CONTENTS OF
THE SIXTH VOLUME.

[ Tlie Letters now first collected are marked N.]
1778. PAGE
To the Hon. H. S. Conway, July 8. — Suggesting the propriety of
pacification with America. Conduct of the Opposition. French
neutrality. Partition of Poland . . . .1
To the Rev. Mr. Cole, July 12.— Projected Life of Mr. Baker.
Dr. Kippis's " Biographia Britannica." Addison's character
of Lord Somers. Whitgift and Abbot. Archbishop Markham.
Calvin and Wesley. Popery and Presbyterianism. Churches
and convents . . , . . .3
To the Hon. H. S. Conway, July 18.— Sailing of the Brest fleet.
Political prospects . . . . .5
To the Rev. Mr. Cole, July 24. — Answer to the attack upon him
prefixed to Chatterton's works. Gray's tomb, and Mason's
epitaph . . . . . .7
To the same, Aug. 15. — Rowley's pretended poems. Walpole's
Defence. Bishop Walpole's tomb. Baker's Life . . 8
To the Hon, H. S. Conway, Aug. 21. — Recollections of Sussex.
Arundel Castle. Tombs of the Fitzalans. Knowle and Pens-
hurst. Summer-hill. Leeds Castle. Goldsmiths' Company.
Aquatic adventure . . . . .9
To the Rev. Mr. Cole, Aug. 22. — Chatterton. Attacks on Wal
pole in the Critical Review. Lord Hardwicke and the Carleton
Papers. Literary squabbles.. The " Old English Baron." Lady
Craven's " Sleep Walker.'' A literary adventure . ,10
To the same, Sept. 1. — Attack on him in the Critical Review. Ca
bal in the Antiquarian Society. Their Saxon and Danish dis
coveries, and Roman remains. Value of Mr. Cole's collections.
Visit from Dr. Kippis . . . . .14

XXX CONTENTS. PAGE
To the Rev. Mr. Cole, Sept. 18.—" Biographia Britannica." Life
of the first Lord Barrington. Anecdote of the present peer . 17
To the same, Oct. 14. — Defence of Sir Robert Walpole against a
charge of instigating George the Second to destroy the will of
his father. Lord Chesterfield . . . .19
To the Hon. H. S. Conway, Oct. 23. — Account of his pursuits . 21
To the Rev. Mr. Cole, Oct. 26.— Completion of his Life of Mr.
Baker . . . . . .22
To the samp^ Nov. 4. — Attack of the gout. Character of Mr.
BakeT . . . . . .24
To Lady Browne, Nov. 5. — Reflections on the state of his health.
Lady Blandford's obstinacy. [N.] . . .24
To the same, Dec. 18. — Admiral Keppel's trial. Lord Bute,
Lord George Germaine. Lady Holderness. Lord and Lady
Carmarthen. [N.] . . . . ,26
To the Earl of Buchan, Dec. 24. — Reply to inquiries after certain
portraits. [N.] . . . . .28
To Edward Gibbon, Esq. — On the attacks upon his History of
the Decline and FaU. [N.] . . . ,30
1779.
To the Rev. Mr. Cole, Jan. 3.— Life of Mr. Baker. Damage
done by the great tempest on New-year's morning. Death of
Bishop Kidder. Tamworth Castle. Lord Ferrers's passion for
ancestry . . . . . .32
To the Hon. H. S. Conway, Jan. 9. — Mrs. Miller's follies at
Batheaston. Ennui. His recent illness. Prospects of old age.
Admiral Keppel's trial. Grecian republics. Anecdote of Sir
Robert Walpole. Character of Sir William Meredith . 33
To the Rev. Mr. Cole, Jan. 15.— Life of Mr. Baker. Pamphlet
respecting Chatterton . . . _ o t
To the same, Jan. 28. — Reasons for not printing his pamphlet
concerning Chatterton. His Hieroglyphic Tales . . 35
To the same, Feb. 4.— Answer to Mr. Cole's objections to his
Life of Mr. Baker . . . _ „_
To the same, Feb. 18. — His opinion of Hasted's History of
Kent. Lord Ferrers and Tamworth Castle . oy
To Sir David Dalryraple, March 12. — Thanks for his " Annals."
Portrait of Duns Scotus. [N.] . . _ „„
To the Rev. Mr. Cole, March 28.— Swinburne's Travels in Spain.

CONTENTS. XXXI PAGE
The Alhambra. Character of the Moors. Cumberland's Masque
of " Calypso." Design of a chimney-piece, by Holbein . 39
To Edward Gibbon, Esq. — Congratulations on his "Vindication"
of his "History." [N.] . . , .41
To the Rev. Mr. Cole, April 12.— St. Peter's portrait. Richard the
Third. Truth and Falsehood. Murder of Miss Ray by Mr.
Hackman. Shades of madness. Solace in books and past ages 42
To the same, April 20. — Plates after designs by Rubens . 43
To the same, April 23. — Sale of the pictures at Houghton . 44
To Mrs. Abington. — Regrets at not being able to accept an in
vitation. [N.] . . . . , .44
To the Rev. Mr. Cole, May 21.— History of the Abbey of Bee.
Keate's " Sketches from Nature." Church of Reculver. Per
son of Richard the Third . . . 45
To the Hon. H. S. Conway, May 22. — Attack on Jersey. War in
America. Masquerades. Festino at Almack's. Lord Bristol's
wonderful calf . . . . .46
To the Rev. Mr. Cole, June 2. — State of his health. Strictures on
a volume of the Archaeologia. Pictures at Houghton . 47
To the Rev. Dr. Lort, June 4. — Painted shutters from the altar of
St. Edmund's Bury . . . . .49
To the Hon. H. S. Conway, June 5. — Disturbances in Ireland.
Spanish declaration of war. Treatment of America. Tickell's
"Cassette Verte." Dr. Franklin. "Opposition Mornings."
Story of Mrs. Ellis and her great O. . . .50
To the same, June 16. — Sailing of the Brest fleet. Probability of
a war with Spain. Dispute with America. State of Ireland.
Fete at the Pantheon . . , . ,53
To the Hon. George Hardinge, July 4. — Thanks for drawings of
Grignan. Letters of Madame de S^vign^, and of her daughter.
Character of Coulanges . . . . .56
To the Countess of Ailesbury, July 10. — Conjectures on the poli
tical state of the country. Washington and Clinton. Difficulty
of conquering America . . . . .57
To the Rev. Mr. Cole, July 12. — ^Value of the pictures at Hough
ton . . . . . . ,59
To the same, Aug. 12. — Thanks for offer of painted glass. " His
tory of Alien Priories " . . . . .61
To the Countess of Ailesbury, Aug. 13. — Situation of General
Conway in Jersey. Constancy of Fortune. Folly of pursuing
the war with America . . . ,61

XXXll CONTENTS. PAGE
To the Hon. H. S. Conway, Sept. 13.— Alarms for the General's
situation at Jersey. Battle between Byron and D'Estaing.
Mrs. Darner. Eruption of Vesuvius . , .63
To the Rev. Mr. Cole, Nov. 16. — Mr. Tyson's Journal. Old Gate
at Whitehall. Nichols's "Alien Priories." Rudder's " History
of Gloucestershire." Removal of old friends . • 64
To the same, Dec. 27. — Earl-bishops. Lord Bristol. Rudder's
" History of Gloucestershire " . . . .66
1780.
To the Rev. Mr. Cole, Jan. 5. — Congratulations on his providen
tial escape. Count-bishops. Old painting found in Westmin
ster-abbey. Tomb of Ann of Cleve. Reburial of the crown,
robes, and sceptre of Edward the First. Sale of the Houghton
pictures . . . . . .67
To Robert Jephson, Esq. Jan. 25. — His opinion of Mr. Jephson's
" Count of Narbonne ;" and advice on casting the parts. [N.] . 69
To the same, Jan. 27. — Tragedy of the " Count of Narbonne."
Warburton's panegyric on the " Castle of Otranto." Miss
Aikin's " Fragment." " Old English Baron." [N.] . . 72
To the Rev. Mr. Cole, Feb. 5.— New volume of the " Biographia
Britannica." Characters of Dr. Birch, Dr. Blackwell, and Dr.
John Brown. Dr. Kippis's threat. CardinaJ Beaton. Dr.
Bentley. Mr. Hollis. Barry the painter , . .74
To the same, Feb. 27. — Rodney's victory. Home prospects , Party
divisions. History of Leicester. Cite des Dames. Chris
tina of Pisa . . . . .76
To the same, March 6.— Thanks for his portrait in glass. His
tory of Leicester. Dean Milles and Mr. Masters. Pine
apples. Charles the Second's gardener . . .78
To the same, March 13. — Atkyns's Gloucestershire. Hutchin
son's Northumberland. Roman antiquities in England. Cor
respondence of Hackman and Miss Ray, Sir Herbert Croft's
" Love and Madness." Chatterton. " The Young Villain."
Lord Chatham. Lady Craven's " Miniature Picture" . 79
To the same, March 30.— Projected reform of the House of Com
mons. Annual parliaments . . _ go
To the same. May 11.— Death of Mr. Tyson, and of his old friend
George Montagu. His character . . _ .83
To the same. May 19. — Character of Joseph Spence . , 84
To the same. May 30.— Altar-doors from St. Edmondsbury. An-
nibal Caracci and Shakspeare . . . .85

CONTENTS. XXXin PAGE
To Mrs. Abington, June 11.— Invitation to Strawberry Hill. [N.] 86
To the Earl of Strafford, June 12. — Lord George Gordon and the
Riots of London. Persecutions under the cloak of religion.
Highway robberies. Ambition the most detestable of passions 87
To the Rev. Mr. Cole, June 15. — London riots. Black Wednes
day. Lord George Gordon in the Tower. Electioneering riot
ing in Cambridgeshire. Mr. Banks and the Otaheitans . 89
To the same, July 4. — Wishes his having written the Life of
Baker to be kept a secret . . . .91
To the Earl of Strafford, Sept. 9.— Folly of election contests.
Dissatisfaction in the fleefi . . . .91
To the Rev. Mr. Cole, Sept. 27. — Electioneering agitations. Death
of Madame du Deffand . . . . .93
To the same, Oct. 3. — " Life of Mr, Baker." Dr. James Brown . 94
To the same, Nov. 11. — Mr.Gough's "Topography." Introduc
tion of ananas. Rose, the gardener of Charles the Second.
Folly of antiquaries . , . . . 9.^
To the same, Nov. 24. — Mr. Gough's " Topography." Character
of Mr. Pennant. Dean Milles. Judge Barrington. Dulness and
folly of Grose's Dissertations. Rejoices in having done with the
professions of author and printer, and determines to be comfort
ably lazy . . . . . .97
To the same, Nov. 30. — In answer to a request for a copy of his
Anecdotes for the University Library at Cambridge. Cha
racter of Mr. Gough . . . . .98
To Sir David Dalrymple, Dec. 11. — Thanks for communications for
his Anecdotes of Painters. Hogarth. Colonel Charteris.
Archbishop Blackbourne and Mrs. Conwys. Poetry of Richard
son and Hogarth. Lord Chesterfield's story of Jervas. Origin
of Oil Painting. [N.] . . . . .100
To the Rev. Mr. Cole, Dec. 19. — Friendship between Gray and
Mason. Views of Strawberry HiU . . . 103

1781.
To Sir David Dalrymple, Jan. 1. — ^Thanks for his favourable
opinion of his father. His reasons for not writing his Life. Dr.
Kippis and the "Biographia Britannica." Lord Barrington
and the Hamburgh lottery. Character of King WiUiam. Folly
of re-burying the crown and robes of Edward the First. Dr.
Johnson's notions of sacrUege. [N.] . . . 104
To the Hon. H. S. Conway, Jan. 3. — On the General's speech for

XXXIV CONTENTS. PAGE
quieting the troubles in America. Melancholy state of the
country .,..•• 1*"^
To the Rev. Mr. Cole, Feb. 7.— Death of Lady Orford at Pisa . 109
To the same, Feb. 9.— Wolsey's negotiations. Value of Mr. Cole's
manuscripts. Character of Mr. Pennant . • .110
To the Earl of Buchan, Feb. 10.— Thanks for being elected a mem
ber of the Scotch Society of Antiquaries. [N.] . ,111
To Sir David Dalrymple, Feb. 10.— Sir WiUiam Windham and Sir
Robert Walpole. Archibald Duke of ArgyU. Scotch Society
of Antiquaries. Portrait of Lady Mary Douglas. [N.] . 112
To the Rev. Mr. Cole, March 2. — Reasons for becoming a member
of the Scotch Antiquarian Society . . .116
To the same, March 5. — Inquiries after Lord Hardwicke's " Wal-
poliana" . . , -, • .116
To the same, March 29. — Contradicting a report of Mr. Pennant's
indisposition of mind . . . . .117
To the same, April 3. — Lord Hardwicke's " Walpoliana" . 117
To the same. May 4. — Character of Dr. Farmer. On his own
rank as an author. Pennant's " Welsh Tour." Madame du
Deffand's dog Tonton . . . . .118
To the Hon. H. S. Conway, May 6.— Relief of Gibraltar. Lord
Cholmondeley at Brookes's. Winnings of Charles Fox and
Fitzpatrick. India affairs. Arrival of Tonton . . 120
To the same. May 28. — Scotch thistles. French politics. Resigna
tion of Necker. Proposals for a pacification with America.
Charles Fox and the Marriage-biU. FoUy of retiring from the
world ...... 122
To the same, June 3. — Projected French attack on Jersey. Siege
of Gibraltar. " The Young William Pitt's " first display. Mr.
Bankes. Theatricals. Consequences of Lord CornwaUis's vic
tories ...... 125
To the Earl of Strafford, June 13. — Visit from Mr. Storer . 128
To the Rev. Mr. Cole, June 16. — Sir Richard Worseley's His
tory of the Isle of Wight. Nichols's Life of Hogarth. Mies
Strawberrianae." Miseries of having a house worth being seen 129
TotheEarlofCharlemont, July 1.— On Mr. Preston's poems. [N.] 132
To the Rev. Mr. Cole, July 7. — Orthodoxy and heterodoxy . 132
To the same, July 26. . . . . _ ^34
To the Earl of Strafford, Aug. 31. — DifiSculty of sending an enter
taining letter. Mason's EngUsh Garden. Marriage of Lord
Althorp . . . . . .135

vi

CONTENTS. XXXV PAGE
To the Hon. H. S. Conway, Sept. 16.— Their long and uninter
rupted friendship. Madame du Deffand's papers. Henley
bridge . . . . . .136
To John Nichols, Esq. Oct. 31.— Criticisms on his Life of Ho
garth . . . . . .138
To Robert Jephson, Esq. Nov. 7. — On his tragedy of " The
Count of Narbonne." [N.] .... 140
To the same, Nov. 10.— [N.] .... 143
To the same, Nov. 13. — [N.] .... 144
To the same, Nov. 18. — [N.] .... 145
To the Hon. H. S. Conway, Nov. 18. — On Mr. Jephson's tragedy
of" The Count of Narbonne" . . . .146
To Robert Jephson, Esq. Nov. 21. — Favourable reception of " The
Count of Narbonne." [N.] . . . .147
To the Earl of Strafford, Nov. 27. — Surrender of the British forces
at York Town. Gloomy forebodings of the consequences. Ge
neral spirit of dissipation . . . .148
To the Earl of Buchan, Dec. 1. — British disgraces in America.
Ancient portraits. [N.] , . . . .151
To Robert Jephson, Esq. Dec. 3. — On his expression of dissatis
faction at some alterations in the scenes of his play. [N.] . 153
To the Rev. Mr. Cole, Dec. 30. — The gout described. Etching
of Browne WUlis. Character of Mr. Gough. Mr. George
Steevens. Rowley and Chatterton controversy . , 153
1782.
To the Rev. Mr. Cole, Jan. 27. — Interview with, and characters of,
Mr. Gough and Mr. Steevens .... 157
To the same, Feb. 14. — Thanks for the loan of some manuscripts.
Society of Antiquaries. Description of his regimen. His great
nostrum ...... 158
To the same, Feb. IS. — Specimen of Mr. Gough's " Sepulchral
Monuments." Antiquarian solemnities ridiculed. Count-bishop
Hervey. Martin Sherlock the English traveller . . 160
To the Rev. WiUiam Mason. — New French translation of the
Elder Pliny. Common jargon of poetiy . . . 163
To the Rev. Mr. Cole, Feb. 22. — Rowley and Chatterton contro
versy ...... 165
To the Hon. George Hardinge, March 8.— On the success of Ge
neral Conway's motion for putting an end to the American war 166

XXXVl CONTENTS. PAGE
To the Rev. Mr. Cole, March 9.— Character of Dr. Farmer. De
claration of war by the Emperor against the Crescent. Am
bition and interest under the mask of reUgion . • ^^"^
To the same, April 13. — His preference of English to Latin in
scriptions. Mason's Archaeological Epistle to Dean MiUes.
Melancholy death of Mr. Chamberlayne. Dr. Glynn • 168
To the same. May 24. — On his own iUness. The Chatterton con
troversy . . . . . .171
To the same, June 1.— Bishop Newton's Life. Pratt's " Fair
Circassian." Cumberland's " Anecdotes of Painters in Spain" 172
To John Nichols, Esq. June 19. — Dr. Henry Bland the trans
lator of Cato's speech into Latin . . . .174
To the Rev. Mr. Cole, June 21. — Old age and solitude. Mari-
vaux and Cr^biUon. MultipUoity of writers. Errors in Ni
chols's " Select Poems " . . . .175
To the same, July 23. — Merits of Nichols's " Life of Bowyer."
Dr. Mead. Carteret Webb. Great men. Dr. Birch's Cata
logue of the Manuscripts in the British Museum . .176
To the Earl of Strafford, Aug. 16. — Inclemency of the season.
Robberies. Comte de Grasse. Mrs. Clive's decUning health.
Philosophy of deceiving one's self . . .177
To the Hon. H. S. Conway, Aug. 20. — [N.] . . .179
To the Earl of Buchan, Sept. 15.— Dr. Birch's Catalogue. Mr.
Tyrwhitt's book on the Rowleian controversy. [N.] . ,180
To the Hon. H. S. Conway, Sept. 17.— On the General's being ap
pointed Commander-in-chief. His new coke ovens . .180
To the Earl of Strafford, Oct. 3.— General EUiot's success at Gib
raltar. Necessity of peace. Increase of highway robberies.
Mr. Mason ..... ^ 182
To the Rev. Mr. Cole, Nov. 5.— On Mr. Cole's illness. His
death ...... ig3

1783.
To George Colman, Esq. May 10.— Thanks for his translation of
Horace's Art of Poetry. [N.] . . _ ,ot
To the Earl of Buchan, May 12.— Congratulations on the success
of the Scotch Antiquarian Society. Roman remains. Biogra
phy of Ulustrious men. Account of John Law. Papers in the
Scotch CoUege at Paris, and paintings in the Castle of Au-
bigny. [N.] . . . . . . jgy

CONTENTS. XXXVll PAGE
To the Hon. George Hardinge, May 17.— Sir Thomas Rumbold's
BiU of pains and penalties . . . .189
To the Earl of Strafford, June 24. — Visits of the French to Eng
land. Their Anglomanie. George Ellis. Beau DiUon. " An
toinette." Mr. Mason. Fashionable Ufe . . . 190
To the same, Aug. 1. — Complains of his own inactivity and indif
ference. Speculations on the peace. Lord Northesk. Shock
of an earthquake . . . . .193
To the Hon. H. S. Conway, Aug. 15. — Address of the Irish Vo
lunteers. Political speculations. Mr. Fox . .196
To the same, Aug. 27. — [N.] . . . .197
To the Earl of Strafford, Sept. 12.— Visit to Astley's theatre. Sir
WiUiam HamUton. Mr. Mason's new discoveries in painting.
Pursuit of health . . . . .199
To the same, Oct. 11. — Disturbed state of Ireland. Parliamentary
reform. Yorkshire Associations. Leaders of faction. Lord
CarUsle's tragedy. Lord and Lady FitzwUUam . . 201
To Lady Browne, Oct. 19.— State of his health. [N.] . . 203
To Governor Pownall, Oct. 27. — Observations on a defence of Sir
Robert Walpole by the Governor. Character of Hume. Sylla.
Liberality of George the First and Second to his father . 204
To the same, Nov. 7. — The same subject . . . 208
To the Earl of Strafford, Nov. 10. — Situation of Ireland. Flowers
of Billingsgate. Flood and Grattan. Meeting of the delegates.
Difference between correcting abuses and removing land-marks.
Character of Mr. Fox . . . . .209
To the same, Dec. 11. — ExceUence of letter- writing. India-bill.
Air-balloons. Mrs. Siddons. Lord Thurlow. Flood and Courte-
nay . . . . . . .211

1784.
To the Hon. H. S. Conway, May 5. — Congratulations on the
General's retirement from place and Parliament. Mr. Fox's
election ...... 213
To Miss Hannah More, May 6.— Thanks for her poem, the " Bas
Bleu." [N.] . . . . • .216
To the Hon. H. S. Conway, May 21.— Epitaph writing. Lord
Melcombe's Diary. Cox's Travels . . .216
To the Countess of AUesbury, June 8.— Voltaire's Memoirs. Lord
Melcombe's Diary. Severity of the weather . .218
VOL. VI. <^

XXXVIU CONTENTS. PAGE
To the Hon. H. S. Conway, June 25.— Benefits of retirement from
public Ufe. Local grievances. Highway robberies. The good
things of life ...••• ^'^
To the same, June 30.— Inclemency of the season. Death of
Lady Harrington. Lunardi's baUoon . • • 221
To the Earl of Strafford, Aug. 6.— Earthquakes. The Deluge.
Uncertainty of human reasoning . . ¦ ¦ 222
To Mr. Dodsley, Aug. 8.— Declining Mr. Pinkerton's offer of a
dedication to him of his Essay on Medals. [N.] . . 223
To the Hon. H. S. Conway, Aug. 14.— Frequency of robberies in
his neighbourhood. Disturbed state of Ireland . . 224
To John Pinkerton, Esq. Aug. 24. — Thanks for the perusal of his
poems, and invitation to Strawberry HiU. [N.] . . 225
To the Earl of Strafford, Sept. 7. — Congratulations on the return
of fine weather. Air-baUoons and highwaymen. Sir William
Hamilton. Mrs. Walsingham. Mrs. Damer's " sleeping dogs " 225
To John Pinkerton, Esq. Sept. 27. — Criticisms on his comedy. [N.] 227
To the same, Oct. 6. — Further criticisms on his comedy. Re
marks on English poetry, on poetry in general, and on the
drama. [N.] ...... 229
To the Hon. H. S. Conway, Oct. 15. — Speculations on the perfec
tion of air-balloons ..... 232
To John Pinkerton, Esq. Oct. 27. — His own pubUcations and
literary career. Remarks on Mr. Pinkerton's projected History
of the Reign of George the Second. [N.] . . . 234
To Miss Hannah More, Nov. 13.— On the poems and conduct of
Ann Yearsley, the Bristol mUkwoman. Danger of encouraging
her poetical propensity. Fate of Stephen Duck . . 237
To the Hon. H. S. Conway, Nov. 28. — Continental politics. Po
etical epistle to Lady Lyttelton .... 240

1785.
To Miss Hannah More, AprU 5. — In answer to an anonymous let
ter from Miss More, ridicuUng the prevaUing adoption of French
idioms into the English language .... 04,0
To John Pinkerton, Esq. June 22. — Strictures on " Heron's Let
ters of Literature." Mr. Pinkerton's proposed amendment of
the EngUsh language. Lady Mary Wortley Montague. Mr.
Hume and Mr. Gray. [N.] • • . . 244
To the same, June 26. — Further criticism on Heron's " Letters,"

CONTENTS. XXXIX PAGE
Definition and exemplification of grace. Remarks on AVaUer,
MUton, Cowley, Boileau, Pope, and Madame de S^vign^. [N.] 247
To John Pinkerton, Esq. July 27. — Declining to print Greek '
authors at the Strawberry HUl press. [N.] . . / 252
To the same, Aug. 18. — Declines to print an edition of the Lifft of
St. Ninian. [N.] . . . . 1 . 254
To the same, Sept. 17. — Advising him not to reply to the critiqiies
of anonymous adversaries. [N.] . . ... 255
To George Colman, Esq. Sept. 19. — On sending him a copy of iTie
Due de Nivernois' translation of his " Essay on Modern Gar
dening." [N.] . . . . ',. 256
To the Earl of Buchan, Sept. 23. — Literary stores in the Vaticstv,
and in the Scottish College at Paris. Mr. Herschell's dis>
coveries. [N.] .....> 257
To John Pinkerton, Esq. Sept. 30. — Advice on his intended publi
cation of Lives of the Scottish Saints. His opinion of Bishop
Hoadley. Reflections on his own life. [N.] . . 259
To the Hon. H. S. Conway, Oct. 6. — Jarvis's window at New
CoUege. Blenheim. Beau Desert. Stowe. "The Charming
Man." Boswell's " Tour to the Hebrides." . . 261
To the Earl of Charlemont, Nov. 23.— Order of St. Patrick. [N.] 263
To Lady Browne, Dec. 14. — Last Ulness and death of Kitty
Clive. Lord John Russell's marriage. [N.] . . 264

1786.
To Miss Hannah More, Feb. 9.— On her poem of " Florio," dedi
cated to him ...... 266
To the Hon. H. S. Conway, June 18. — Account of his visit to the
Princess Amelia at Gunnersbury. — Stanzas addressed to the
Princess. Her answer. Purchase of the Jupiter Serapis and
Julio Clovio . . . . . .267
To Richard Gough, Esq. June 21. — Thanks for the present of his
" Sepulchral Monuments." The Due de Nivernois' translation
of his " Essay on Gardening." .... 269
To the Earl of Strafford, Aug. 29.— The new bridge at Henley.
Mrs. Damer's colossal masks. Visit from Count Oginski. Out-
pensioners of Bedlam. Lord George Gordon. Archbishop
Chicheley and Henry the Fifth . . . .271
To the Hon. H. S. Conway, Oct. 29.— Two Charades, by Colonel
Fitzpatrick. Precocity of Robert Stewart, afterwards Marquis
of Londonderry ..... 273
d 2

xl CONTENTS. PAGE
To the Right Hon. Lady Craven, Nov. 27. — Apologies for not
having written, and thanks for a drawing of the Castle of
Qtranto . . • • • .274
1787.
To Miss*Hannah More, Jan. 1.— With a present of "Christine de
Pise.'-j Her "Citg des Dames." Mrs. Yearsley . . 276
To thejjRight Hon. Lady Craven, Jan. 2— On her ladyship's
traveK Sir John Mandeville. Lady Mary Wortley. Peter
the Lermit ..... • 277
To Mitjs Hannah More, Feb. 23.— Christina's " Life of Charles
the Jifth" . . . . . .279
To til Rev. Henry Zouch, March 13.— Proposing to return the
letters he had received from him. [N.] . • ¦ 280
To Miss Hannah More, June 15.— The Irish character. Miss
Burney. [N.] . . . . . - 280
To the Hon. H. S. Conway, June 17. — Expected visit from the
Princess Lubomirski. " The Way to keep Him '' . . 282
To the Earl of Strafford, July 28.— St. Swithin. The Duke of
Queensberry's dinner to the Princesse de LambaUe. Mrs.
French's marble pavement. Lord Dudley's obelisk. Miss Boyle's
carvings ...... 283
To Miss Hannah More, Oct. 14. — Ingratitude of Anne Yearsley
to her. Mrs. Vesey. Dr. Johnson's Letters. Bruce's Travels.
Gibbon's History. Figaro .... 285
To the Hon. H. S. Conway, Nov. 11. — On the smaU Druidical
temple presented by the States of Jersey to the General. Stone-
henge ...... 288
1788.
To Thomas Barrett, Esq. June 5.— Gibbon's " DecUne and Fall."
Sheridan's speech against Mr. Hastings . . . 289
To the Earl of Strafford, June 17. — General Conway's comedy of
" False Appearances." Sheridan's speech against Mr. Hastings 291
To Miss Hannah More, July 4. — Newspaper reading. General
Conway's play • - . . . 293
To the same, July 12. — On his own writings. Authorship after
seventy. Voltaire at eighty-four. Fate of his last tragedy. Mrs.
Piozzi. Pipings of Miss Seward and Mr. Hayley . . 295
To the Earl of Strafford, Aug. 2. — On a reported discovery of new

CONTENTS. xli
PAGE
letters of Madame de S^vigne. Letters of the Duchess of Or
leans. Druidical temple from Jersey . . 297
To John Pinkerton, Esq. Aug. 14.— Criticism on his Ode for the
Scottish Revolution Club. [N.] . . . 299
To Miss Hannah More, Aug. 17. — Rumoured discovery of new let
ters of Madame de S^vign^. Library of Greek and Latin au
thors at Naples. [N.] ..... 300
To the Earl of Strafford, Sept. 12. — Account of the Druidical tem
ple at Park -place. The Duchess of Kingston's wiU . . 301
To Miss Hannah More, Sept. 22. — Ingratitude of Mrs. Yearsley.
Education of the Great. Walpoliana. Virtuous intentions.
Enthusiasts and quack-doctors .... 303
To the Right Hon. Lady Craven, Dec. 11. — Wisdom of retiring
from the world in time. Voltaire. Lord Chatham. Mr. Anstey.
King of Prussia's Memoirs. Poverty of the French language,
as far as regards verse and pieces of eloquence. [N.] . 307

1789.
To the Miss Berrys, Feb. 2. — Acceptance of an invitation. Ex
pressions of delight on being in their society. [N.] . . 309
To the same, March 20. — Madame de la Motte's M^moire Justifi-
catif. General iUumination for the King's recovery. Hairs of
Edward the Fourth's head. [N.] . ' . . .310
To Miss Hannah More, April 22. — Darwin's Botanic Garden.
Loves of the Plants. Success of General Conway's comedy. [N.] 311
To the Miss Berrys, April 28. — Darwin's Botanic Garden. His
poetry characterized. [N.] .... 313
To the same, June 23. — Destruction of the Opera-house by fire.
The nation tired of Operas. "¦ The room after." Mr. Batt
and the Abb6 NichoUs. [N.] . . . .314
To Miss Hannah More, June 23.— On her poem of Bishop Bonner's
Ghost. Offers to print it at Strawberry HiU. Bruce's Tra
vels. [N.] . . . . . -316
To Miss Berry, June 30.— Arabian Nights. Bishop Atterbury.
Sinbad the Sailor versus .(Eneas. Mrs. Piozzi's Travels. King's
CoUege Chapel. Effects of criticism and comparison. Pageantry
of popery. [N.] ..... 319
To Miss Hannah More, July 2. — Thanks for permission to print
" Bishop Bonner's Ghost." Account of his fall. Gratitude to
Providence for his lot .... 321
To Miss Berry, July 9. — Recovery from his faU. Present state of

xlii CONTENTS. PAGE
France. Tumults at VersaiUes on the reported resignation of
Necker. Marshal Broglio appointed commander-in-chief.
Camp round Paris. Mutinous disposition of the army. Vol
taire's correspondence. His letters to La Chalotais. [N.] 323
To Miss Hannah More, July 10.—" Bishop Bonner's Ghost" . 326
To the Hon. H. S. Conway, July 15.— Dismissal of Necker. Paris
in an uproar. Storming and destruction of the BastiUe. Specu
lation on the probable results. The Duke of Orleans and Mira-
beau ...... 327
To Miss Hannah More, July 20. — Result of her " double treach
ery.'' A visit from Bishop Porteus. The visit returned . 329
To Miss Berry, July 29. — ^Anarchy in Paris. Account of La Cha
lotais. Treachery of Calonne. Character of the Due de Vril-
Uere. St. Swithin's day. Predicts the faU of Necker. [N.] . 331
To John Pinkerton, Esq. July 31. — Remarks on his " Inquiry into
the early History of Scotland." [N.] . . .335
To Miss Hannah More, Aug. 9. — On sending her copies of " Bon
ner's Ghost." Complains of the cold complimentality of her let
ters. [N.] . . . . . .336
To John Pinkerton, Esq. Aug. 14. — Confesses his want of taste for
the ancient histories of nations. Remarks on the different modes
of treating antiquities. [N.] .... 338
To the same, Aug. 19. — Compliments him on his strong and manly
understanding. Account of his own studies. [N.] . . 340
To Richard Gough, Esq. Aug. 24. — Strictures on the injuries done
to SaUsbury cathedral by the recent alterations . .341
To the Miss Berrys, Aug. 27. — Illness of the Countess of Dysart.
Richmond and Hampton-Court gossip. [N.] . . 342
To the same, Sept. 4. — On their decUning a visit to Wentworth
House. The Duke of Clarence at Richmond. Miss Farren's
Beatrice. Account of Lady Luxborough. Wentworth Castle
described. Violences in France. Destruction of cha.teaus in
Burgundy. Assemblage of deserters round Paris. Patience of
Lady Dysart under her sufferings. MademoiseUe d'Eon in pet
ticoats. [N.] . . . . . _ 344
To the Hon. H. S. Conway, Sept. 5.— Thanks to him for a poem.
Death of Lady Dysart. Terrible situation of Paris. Predicts
that the kingdom wiU become a theatre of civil wars . . 343
To Miss Hannah More, Sept. — Congratulation on the demo
lition of the functions of the BastiUe. The Etats a mob of
kings. Time the composer of a good constitution. Negro
slavery. Suggests the possibUity of relieving slaves by machine

CONTENTS. xliii
PAGE
work. UtUity of starting new game to invention. Barrett's
History of Bristol. The Biographia Brit.-innica and Chatterton . 349
To Miss Hannah More, Nov. 4.— Death of Lady Dysart and
Lord Waldegrave. Mrs. Yearsley's Earl Goodwin. Death of
Mr. Barrett. Succedaneum for negro labour. Suggests the pro
priety of Mr. Wilberforce's starting the aboUtion of slavery
to the Etats. Character of the Etats . . , 353

1790.

To Miss Hannah More, Feb. 20. — With his contribution to a cha
ritable subscription ..... 356
To the Hon. H. S. Conway, June 25.— Charles Fox and the West
minster gridiron. PuerUe pedantry of the French Etats. De
struction of the statues of Louis Quatorze. Bruce's Travels.
[N.] . . . . . .357
To the Earl of Strafford, June 26. — Reflections on the state of
France. Consciences of tyrants. Luther and Calvin. Fate
of projectors ...... 359
To the Hon. H. S. Conway, July i; — Bruce's Travels. French
barbarity and folly. Grand Federation in the Champ de Mars.
RationaUty of the Americans. Franklin and Washington. A
great man wanted in France. Return of Necker. His insig
nificance. [N.] ..... 360
To Miss Berry, July 3. — His alarm at their design of visiting
Italy. Atrocities of the French Etats. Good-humoured speech
of Marie Antoinette. Winchester Cathedral. Netley Abbey.
Visit from the Duchess of Marlborough. [N.] . . 362
To the Hon. H. S. Conway, Aug. 9. — Peace with Spain. Miss
Gunning's reported match with Lord Blandford . . 364
To the Earl of Strafford, Aug. 12. — Lord Barrymore's exhibitions
at the Richmond theatre. Reflections on the progi-ess of the
French Revolution ..... 365
To Sir David Dalrymple, Sept. 21. — Pictures at Burleigh. Shak
speare GaUery. Macklin's GaUery . . • 367
To the Miss Berrys, Oct. 10.— On their departure for Italy. Re
grets at the loss of their society. [N.] . . . 369
To the same, Oct. 31.— Burke's " Reflections." Calonne's "Etat
de la France." [N.] . . • • .371
To the same, Nov. 8.— Pacification with Spain and Brabant. Earl
Stanhope and the Revolution Club. Mr. Burke's " Reflections

Xliv CONTENTS. PAGE
on the French Revolution" characterized. Visit from the
Prince of Furstemberg. [N.] . . . • 372
To Miss Berry, Nov. 11. — Mrs. Damer's departure for Lisbon.
Effects of Burke's pamphlet on Dr. Price. Mr. Merry's
" Laurel of Liberty." The DeUa Crusca school of poetry
described. [N.] . . . . -375
To the Miss Berrys, Nov. 18. — Character of the Bishop of Arras.
Dr. Price's talons drawn by Mr. Burke. Revolution Club ex
ploded. [N.] . . . . . .376
To the same, Nov. 27. — Anxiety for a letter from Florence. [N.] 380
To Miss Agnes Berry, Nov. 29. — Thanks for her letter. Cor-
reggio. Guercino, a German edition of Guido. Lord Stan
hope's speech against Calonne's book. Dr. Price's answer to
Burke. Reasons for creating Mr. GrenviUe a peer. Richmond
arrivals. Duke of Clarence. Mrs. Fitzherbert. Duke of
Queensbury. Madame Grifoni. Works of Massaccio. Fra
Bartolomeo. Benvenuto CelUni's Perseus. [N.] . . 380
To the Miss Berrys, Dec. 20.— Character of Mr. Burke's " Re
flections." Mrs. Macaulay's reply to it. [N.] , . 383

1791.
To Miss Berry, Jan. 22.— Recovery from a severe iUness. Death
of Mrs. French. IUness of George Selwyn. [N.] . . 384
To the Miss Berrys, Jan. 29. — Effects of his late iUness. Picture
of himself. Death and character of George Selwyn. Mademoi
seUe Fagniani. Story of Miss Vernon and Martindale. The
Gunninghiad. Visit from Mr. Batt. Overthrow of the French
monarchy. The Duchess of Gordon and Mr. Dundas. [N.] . 386
To Miss Berry, Feb. 4.— Regrets at their absence, and anxiety
for their return. Destructive tempest. The rival Opera-
houses. Taylor's pamphlet against the Lord Chamberlain. [N.] 389
To the same, Feb. 12. — His anxiety for their return, but resolu
tion not to derange their plans of economy. Comte de Coigny.
InstabUity of the present government of France. Home Tooke's
Ubel on the House of Commons. Christening of Miss Boycot
[N-]  ; 392
To Miss Agnes Berry, Feb. 13.— Narrative of the history of a
marriage supposed to have been likely to take place between
Miss Gunning and the Marquis of Blandford. [N.] . 394
To the Earl of Charlemont, Feb. 17. — On a surreptitious edition
of The Mysterious Mother, pubUshed at Dublin. [N.] . 397

CONTENTS. xlv
, PAGE
To Miss Agnes Berry, Feb. 18. — CodicU to GunnUda's story.
Opening of the Pantheon. Dieu et mon Droit versus Ich
Dien. [N.] ...... 399
To the Miss Berrys, Feb. 26. — More of the Gunnings. Arrival of
Madame du Barry to recover her jewels. The King of France's
aunts stopped from leaving France. Majesty of the mob. The
Monster. Gibbon's account of Necker in retirement ; and opi
nions of Burke's Reflections. Madame du Barry and the Lord
Mayor. Recovery of her jewels. Jerningham's poetry. [N.] . 402
To the same, March 5. — London unknown to Londoners. " Who
is Sir Robert Walpole .'' " Destruction of the Albion mUls. Au
tomaton snuff-box. [N.] .... 407
To Miss Berry, March 19. — Mrs. Gunning's letter to the Duke of
Argyle. [N.] . . . . . .408
To the Miss Berrys, March 27. — King's message on the situation
of Europe. Blusterings of the Autocratrix. Bounces and huffs
of Prussia. Royal reconciliation. Taylor and the Lord Cham
berlain. Prosecution of the Gunnings. GunnUda's letter to
Lord Blandford. [N.] . . . . .411
To Miss Berry, April 3. — On her fall down a bank near Pisa.
Kemble and Mrs. Siddons. Mrs. Damer's reception at Elvas.
Death of Dr. Price. Outrageous violence of the National Assem
bly. Paine's answer to Burke. [N.] . . . 414
To the same, April 15. — Lady Diana Beauclerc's designs for Dry-
den's Fables. War with Russia. Madame du Barry dining
with the Prince of Wales. Increased population of London.
Story of the young woman at St. Helena. A party at Mrs. Bul-
ler's described. [N.] . . . . .416
To Miss Berry, April 23. — Resignation of the Duke of Leeds.
Progress of the repairs at Cliveden. The abolition of the slave-
trade rejected. Captain Bowen's pamphlet against Gunnilda.
Hannah More and the Gretna Green runaway. Lord Chol-
mondeley's marriage. Indian victory. [N.] . . 420
To the same. May 12. — Congratulations on her recovery. Earnest
wish to put them in possession of Cliveden during his life. Un
happy quarrel between Mr. Burke and Mr. Fox. Mrs. Damer's
arrival from Spain. [N.] .... 423
To the same. May 19. — Thanks for her punctuaUty in writing.
Advantages of resources in one's self. Internal armour more ne
cessary to females than weapons to men. Duchesse de Brissac.
Due de Nivernois. Hastings's impeachment. The Countess of
Albany in London. Her presentation at court. Her visit to
the Pantheon. [N.] . . ¦ • -427

xlvi CONTENTS. PAGE
To Miss Berry, May 26.— The Duchess of Gordon's journal of a day.
Arrival of Sir WiUiam Hamilton with the Nymph of the Atti
tudes. Strictures on BosweU's Life of Dr. Johnson. John
son's abuse of Gray. Burke's " Letter to a Member of the Na
tional Assembly." His character of Rousseau. Lodge's " lUus-
trations of British History" panegyrieised. Lord Mount-
Edgcumbe's bon-mot on M. d'Eon. [N.] . . . 430
To the Miss Berrys, June 2. — "This is the Note that nobody
wrote." Interview with, and description of, Madame d' Albany.
[N.] . . . . . . .436
To the same, June 8. — Frequency of highway robberies. The birth
day. Madame d'Albany. Mrs. Fitzherbert. Mrs. Cosway.
Lally de ToUendal's tragedy. French politics. Rage for buUd
ing in London. Visit to Dulwich CoUege. [N.] . . 437
To the same, June 14. — Mrs. Hobart's rural breakfast. Dr. Beattie.
Malone's Shakspeare. [N.] .... 441
To Miss Berry, June 23. — Madame du Barry at Mrs. Hobart's
breakfast. Dr. Robertson's " Disquisition." French anarchy.
Madame d'Albany at the House of Lords. [N.] . , 444
To the same, July 12. — Calonne in London. Attack of the rheu
matism. [N.] ...... 447
To the Miss Berrys, July 26. — Tom Paine in England. Crown
and Anchor celebration of the French Revolution. Birmingham
riots. Flight of the King of France to, and return from, Va-
rennes. Marriage of the Duke of York. Catherine of Russia.
Bust of Mr. Fox. [N.] . . . . .44,8
To Miss Berry, Aug. 17.— Spirit of democracy in Switzerland.
Peace with Russia. M. de Bouill^'s bravado. Sir WiUiam
Hamilton's pantomime wife. Antique statues. [N.] . . 451
To the Miss Berrys, Aug. 23.— Miss Harte and her attitudes.
Conversation with Madame du Barry. Account of a boat-race.
The soirdisante Margravine in England. [N.] . 453
To the same, Sept. 11. — Lord Blandford's marriage. Sir W. Hamil
ton married to his GaUery of Statues. Successes in India. [N.] 455
To the same, Sept. 16.— Mrs. Jordan. Miss Brunton's marriage.
Lord Buchan's jubUee for Thomson. Character of the " Sea
sons." Danger of returning to England through France. [N.l 456
To the same, Sept. 25. — Valombroso. Ionian antiquities. Egyp
tian pyramids. Mr. Gilpin and Richmond HUl. [N.l . 450
To the Hon. H. S. Conway, Sept. 27.— The French emigrants at
Richmond. Progress of the French Revolution. The Legisla
tive Assembly. The King's forced acceptance of the new con-

CONTENTS. xlvii

stitution. Predicts the flight of La Fayette and the Lameths.
Condorcet turned placeman. Character of J^irabeau. [N.] . 461
To Miss Hannah More, Sept. 29.— State of his health. The Bishop
of London's charity sermon. The Miss Berrys.. Anxiety for
their safe return from Italy. Miss Burney. Mrs. Barbauld's
Verses on the Abolition of the Slave-trade. [N.] . . 463
To Miss Berry, Oct. 9. — ^Anxiety for their safe return. — Account
of a visit to Windsor Castle. St. George's ehapel. The new
screen. Jarvis's window. West's paintings. Story of Peg
Nicholson. Thanks for their disinterested generosity in return
ing to England. The Bolognese school. General Gunning and
the tailor's wife. [N.] ..... 466
To John Pinkerton, Esq. Dec. 26. — His feelings and situation on
his accession to the title of Earl of Orford. [N.] . . 469

1792.
To Miss Hannah More, Jan. 1. — Increase of trouble and business
occasioned by his accession to the title . . .471
To Thomas Barrett, Esq. May 14.— Darwin's " Triumph of Flora." 473
To Miss Hannah More, Aug. 21. — The massacres of Paris. Butch
eries at the ThuUleries. Tortures of the King and Queen.
Pleroic conduct of Madame EUzabeth. Thankfulness for the
tranquillity of England. Mrs. Wolstoncroft's " Rights of Wo
men." Gratitude for past comforts, and submission to his future
lot. [N.] . . . . . .474
To the Hon. H. S. Conway, Aug. 31. — Detail of French atrocities.
Anecdotes of the Duchess of York. State of his health . 477

1793.
To Miss Hannah More, Feb. 9.— French horrors. Beheading of
Louis the Sixteenth. Assignats. DiaboUcal conduct of the
Duke of Orleans. Heroism of Madame EUzabeth. Sublime
sentence of Father Edgeworth. Speculations on the future . 479
To the same, March 23. — On her "ViUage Politics." French
atheism. Massacre of Manuel. Condorcet's new constitution 484
To the Hon. H. S. Conway, June 13.— On parties and party-men.
Injury done to the cause of liberty by the French repubUcans . 487
To the same, July 17.— Sultriness of the season. EngUsh feUcity.
French atrocities. Separation of Marie Antoinette from her
son ....••¦ 488

xlviii

CONTENTS. PAGE

To the Misj^errys, Sept. 17.— Reminds them of his first introduc
tion to tMlS^-]. _-,... __^..'- . . .4.90
To the same, Sept. 25.— Visit of the Duchess of York to Strawberry
HUl. [N.] ..... 491
To the same, Oct. 6.— Inertness of the grand aUiance against
France. [N.] . . . • -493
To Miss Hannah More, Oct.— On the answer to her pamphlet
against M. Dupont. Atrocities of the French atheists. [N.] 495
To the Miss Berrys, Oct. 15. — Arrest of the Duchesse de Biron,
and of the Duchesse de Fleury. Execution of Marie Antoinette.
The Duchesse de la Valiere. [N.] . . .497
To the same, Nov. 7. — Murder of Marie Antoinette. Loss of Lord
Montagueand Mr. Burdett in the faUs of Schaffhausen. Suicide
of Mr. Tickell. " Death an endless sleep." Mr. Lysons's Roman
Remains. Account of his own readings. [N.] . . 499
To Miss Berry, Dec. 4. — Visit to Haymarket Theatre. Young
Bannister in " The ChUdren of the Wood." The Comte de
Coigni. Fate of the Due de Fleury. [N.] . . . 503
To the same, Dec. 13. — Reported successes of Lord Howe, and
the Duke of Brunswick. Quarrel between Robespierre and
Barrere. Fate of Barnave, Orleans, and Brissot. Mr. Jerning
ham's play. Character of Mrs. Howe. [N.] . . 505

1794.
To the Hon. H. S. Conway, Jan. 10. — On the gloomy prospect of
affairs. Jasper Wilson's Letter to Mr. Pitt . . 508
To Miss Berry, AprU 16. — Successes in Martinico. Mrs. Piozzi's
" British Synonymes." Mr. Courtenay's verses on him. [N.] . 509
To Miss Hannah More, AprU 27. — An invitation to meet Lady
Waldegrave ..... ^jj
To the Miss Berrys, Sept. 27.— Visit to Mrs. Damer's new house.
Her bust of Mrs. Siddons. Canterbury. A Ghost story.
Lord HoUand's buildings at Kingsgate. Recommends thera to
visit Mr. Barrett at Lee. [N.] . . . .,0

To Miss Berry, Oct. 7.— On the advisabUity of her accepting a
situation at court. [N.] ...
To the Miss Berrys, Oct. 17. — On their visit to Mr. Barrett at
Lee. [N.] . . . . ,
To the Rev. WUUam Beloe, Dee. 2. — On his intending to dedicate
his translation of Aulus Gellius to Lord Orford

515519
520

CONTENTS. xlix

1795.
To Miss Hannah More, Jan. 24. — With his subscription to the
fund for promoting the dispersion of the Cheap Repository
Tracts. Death of Condorcet, Orleans, &c. Justice of Provi
dence . ... 521
To the same, Teb. 13. — On receiving some ballads written by her
for the Cheap Repository. Bishop Wilson's edition of the
Bible presented to her by Lord Orford . . . 523
To WiUiam Roseoe, Esq. AprU 4. — On his sending him a copy of
his Life of Lorenzo de' Medici .... 524
To the Hon. H. S. Conway, July 2. — The Queen's expected visit
to Strawberry HUl . . . . .526
To the same, July 7. — Account of the Queen's visit to Strawberry
HUl ...... 527
1796.
To Miss Berry, Aug. 16. — Mr. and Mrs. Cosway. Madame d'Ar-
blay's " CamiUa." Arundel Castle. Monuments of the Fitz
alans. Account of a visit from Mr. Penticross. [N.] . . 528
To the same, Aug. 24. — Arundel Castle. Chapel of the Fitz
alans. [N.] ..... 531
To Miss Hannah More, Aug. 29. — Giving an account of his health ;
and expressing gratitude to God for the blessings he enjoys . 532
To Richard Gough, Esq. Dee. 5. — Thanking him for the second
volume of his " Sepulchral Monuments " . . . 534
To Miss Berry, Dec. 15. — Account of the debates in the House of
Commons on the Loan to the Emperor. Death of Lord Orford.
[N.] . . . . . .535
1797.
To the Countess of Ossory, Jan. IS. ... 536

PORTRAITS IN THE SIXTH VOLUME.
The Honourable Horace Walpole ; from a painting by Eckardt,
at Strawberry HiU .... to front Title.
Miss Mary Berry; from a bust by the Honourable Anne Sey
mour Damer, in' the possession of Sir Alexander John
son . . . . . . .to front p. 1
The Right Honourable Elizabeth Berkeley, Lady Craven, after
wards Margravine of Anspach ; from the original by Romney,
in the collection at Strawberry HiU . . . • P- 274
Full many an Artist has on canvas fix'd
All charms that Nature's pencil ever mix'd,
The witching of her eyes, the grace that tips
The inexpressible douceur of her lips :
Komney alone in this fair image caught,
Each charm's expression, and each feature's thought ;
And shows how in their sweet assembly sit,
Taste, spirit, softness, sentiment, and wit.
H. W.
The Honourable Anne Seymour Damer, only child of General
Conway and the Countess of Ailesbury ; from a drawing by
R. Cosway, R.A. in the collection at Strawberry Hill . p. 426

W Gceafbatch. scuto

:KS§ BEAmT )BKHS.liS.T.

VJji 3TJST. 3T TEE SOS^^JimE SStHOUK mMKS. M THE FOSSES STCn>r OF SIR .'LJOJUJT'TOTf

lonflorL , Pablis'iied "bj-^cliard Ben-fley , 1Q44

CORRESPONDENCE

HON. HORACE WALPOLE.

TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY.
Strawberry HiU, July 8, 1778.
I HAVE had some conversation with a ministerial person,
on the subject of pacification with France ; and he dropped a
hint, that as we should not have much chance of a good peace,
the Opposition would make great clamour on it. I said a
few words on the duty of ministers to do what they thought
right, be the consequence what it would. But as honest men
do not want such lectures, and dishonest will not let them
weigh, I waived that theme, to dwell on what is more likely
to be persuasive, and which I am firmly persuaded is no less
true than the former maxim ; and that was, that the ministers
are still so strong, that if they could get a peace that would
save the nation, though not a brilliant or glorious one, the
nation in general would be pleased with it, and the clamours
of the Opposition be insignificant.
I added, what I think true, too, that no time is to be lost in
treating ; not only for preventing a blow, but from the conse
quences the first misfortune would have. The nation is not
yet alienated from the court, but it is growing so ; is grown so
VOL. VI. B

2 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1778.
enough, for any calamity to have violent efiects. Any internal
disturbance would advance the hostile designs of France. An
insurrection from distress would be a double invitation to in
vasion ; and, I am sure, much more to be dreaded, even per
sonally, by the ministers, than the ill-humours of Opposition
for even an inglorious peace. To do the Opposition justice,
it is not composed of incendiaries. Parliamentary speeches
raise no tumults : but tumults would be a dreadful thorough
bass to speeches. The ministers do not know the strength
they have left (supposing they apply it in tirae), if they are
afraid of making any peace. They were too sanguine in
making war; I hope they will not be too timid of making
peace. What do you think of an idea of mine, of offering France a
neutrality? that is, to allow her to assist both us and the
Americans. I know she would assist only them : but were it
not better to connive at her assisting them, without attacking
us, than her doing both ? A treaty with her would perhaps
be followed by one with America. We are sacrificing all the
essentials we can recover, for a few words; and risking the
independence of this country, for the nominal supremacy over
America. France seems to leave us time for treating. She
made no scruple of begging peace of us in '63, that she might
lie by and recover her advantages. Was not that a wise pre
cedent ? Does not she now show that it was ? Is not policy
the honour of nations ? I mean, not morally, but has Europe
left itself any other honour ? And since it has really left itself
no honour, and as little morality, does not the morality of a
nation consist in its preserving itself in as much happiness as
it can ? The invasion of Portugal by Spain in the last war,
and the partition of Poland, have abrogated the law of nations.
Kings have left no ties between one another. Their duty to
their people is still allowed. He is a good King that pre
serves his people ; and if temporising answers that end, is it
not justifiable ? You, who are as moral as wise, answer my
questions. Grotius is obsolete. Dr. Joseph * and Dr. Frede-
• The Emperor of Germany.

1778. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 3
ric,» with four hundred thousand commentators, are reading
new lectures — and I should say, thank God, to one another,
if the four hundred thousand commentators were not in worse
danger than they.^ Louis XVL is grown a casuist compared
to those partitioners. Well, let us simple individuals keep
our honesty, and bless our stars that we have not armies at
our command, lest we should divide kingdoms that are at our
bienseancef What a dreadful thing it is for such a wicked
little imp as man to have absolute power! — But I have
travelled into Germany, when I meant to talk to you only of
England ; and it is too late to recall my text. Good night !

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.
July 12, 1778.
Mr. Lout has delivered your papers to me, dear Sir, and
I have already gone through them. I will try if I can make
anything of them, but fear I have not art enough, as I per
ceive there is absolutely but one fact — the expulsion. You
have certainly very clearly proved that Mr. Baker was neither
supported by Mr. Prior nor Bishop Burnet; but these are
mere negatives. So is the question, whether he intended to
compile an Athense Cantabrigienses or not; and on that you
say but Uttle, as you have not seen his papers in the Museum.
I will examine the printed catalogue, and try if I can discover
the truth thence, when I go to town. I will also borrow the
new Biographia, as I wish to know more of the expulsion.
As it is our only fact, one would not be too dry on it. Upon
the whole, I think that it would be preferable to draw up an
ample character of Mr. Baker, rather than a life. The one
was most beautiful, amiable, conscientious; the other totally

' Frederic II. King of Prussia.
* The Emperor of Germany and King of Prussia having some dispute
about Bavaria, brought immense armies into the field, but found their
forces so nearly balanced, that neither ventured to attack the other ; and
the Prussian monarch falUng back upon Silesia, the affair was, through
the intervention of the Empress of Russia, settled by negociation, which
ended in the peace of Teschen. — E. B 2

4 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1778.
barren of more than one event : and though you have taken
excellent pains to discover all that was possible, yet there is
an obscurity hangs over the circumstances that even did attend
him ; as his connexion with Bishop Crewe and his living. His
own modesty comes out the brighter, but then it composes a
character, not a life.
As to Mr. Kippis and his censures, I am perfectly indif
ferent to them. He betrays a pert mahgnity in hinting an
intention of being severe on my father, for the pleasure of ex
erting a right I allowed, and do allow, to be a just one, though
it is not just to do it for that reason ; however, let him say his
pleasure. The truth will not hurt my father ; falsehood will
recoil on the author.
His asserting, that my censure of Mr. Addison's character
of Lord Somers is not to be justified, is a silly ipse dixit, as he
does not, in truth cannot, show why it is not to be justified.
The passage I alluded to is the argument of an old woman;
and Mr. Addison's being a writer of true humour is not a jus
tification of his reasoning like a superstitious gossip. In the
other passage you have sent me, Mr. Kippis is perfectly in the
right, and corrects me very justly. Had I ever seen Arch
bishop Abbot's* Preface, with the outrageous flattery on, and
lies of James I, I should certainly never have said, " Honest
Abbot could not flatter." I should have said, and do say, I
never saw grosser perversion of truth. One can almost ex
cuse the faults of James when his bishops were such base
sycophants. What can a king think of human nature, when
it produces such wretches? I am too impartial to prefer
Puritans to clergymen, or vice versa, when Whitgift and Abbot
only ran a race of servility and adulation : the result is, that
priests of all religions are the same. James and his Levites
were worthy of each other; the golden calf and the idolaters
were well coupled, and it is pity they ever came out of the
' Dr. George Abbot, Archbishop of Canterbury, born at GuUdford, in
Surrey, in 1562. In 1604, when the translation of the Scriptures now
in use was commenced by direction of King James, Dr. Abbot was the
second of eight divines of Oxford to whom was committed the care of
translating the New Testament, with the exception of the Epistles*
He died at the palace at Croydon, in 1633. — E.

1778. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 5
wilderness. I am very glad Mr. Tyson has escaped death and
disappointment: pray wish him joy of both from me. Has
not this Indian summer dispersed your complaints ? We are
told we are to be invaded. Our Abbots and Whitgifts nov7
see with what successes and consequences their preaching up
a crusade against America has been crowned ! Archbishop
Markham * may have an opportunity of exercising his martial
prowess. I doubt he would resemble Bishop Crewe more
than good Mr. Baker. Let us respect those only who are
Israelites indeed. I surrender Dr. Abbot to you. Church
and presbytery are terms for monopolies. Exalted notions of
church matters are contradictions in terms to the lowliness
and humility of the gospel. There is nothing sublime but the
Divinity. Nothing is sacred but as His work. A tree or a
brute stone is more respectable as such, than a mortal called
an Archbishop, or an edifice called a Church, which are the
puny and perishable productions of men. Calvin and Wesley
had just the same views as the Pope; power and wealth their
objects. I abhor both, and admire Mr. Baker.
P. S. I like Popery as well as you, and have shown I do.
I like it as I like chivalry and romance. They all furnish one
with ideas and visions, which Presbyterianism does not. A
Gothic church or a convent fills one with romantic dreams —
but for the mysterious, the Church in the abstract, it is a jar
gon that means nothing, or a great deal too much, and I re
ject it and its apostles, from Athanasius to Bishop Keene.*

TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY.
Saturday, July 18, 1778.
Yesterday evening the following notices were fixed up
in Lloyd's coffee-house: — That a merchant in the city had
received an express from France, that the Brest fleet, consist-
1 Dr. WiUiam Markham, translated to the see of York from Chester
in 1776. He died in 1807.— E.
» Dr. Edmund Keene, Bishop of Ely.— E.

CORRESPONDENCE OF

1778.

ing of twenty-eight ships of the line, were sailed, with orders
to burn, sink, and destroy. That Admiral Keppel was at
Plymouth, and had sent to demand three more ships of the
line to enable him to meet the French. On these notices
stocks sunk three-and-a-half per cent An account I have
received this morning from a good hand says, that on Thurs
day the Admiralty received a letter from Admiral Keppel,
who was off the Land's End, saying that the Worcester was in
sight; that the Peggy had joined him, and had seen the
Thunderer making sail for the fleet; that he was waiting for
the Centaur, Terrible, and Vigilant; and that having received
advice from Lord Shuldham that the Shrewsbury was to sail
from Plymouth on Thursday, he should likewise wait for her.
His fleet will then consist of thirty ships of the line ; and he
hoped to have an opportunity of trying his strength with the
French fleet on our own coast : if not, he would seek them on
theirs. The French fleet sailed on the 7 th, consisting of
thirty-one ships of the line, two fifty-gun ships, and eight
frigates. This state is probably more authentic than those at
Lloyd's. Thus you see how big the moment is ! and, unless far more
favourable to us in its burst than good sense allows one to
promise, it must leave us greatly exposed. Can we expect to
beat without considerable loss? — and then, where have we
another fleet? I need not state the danger from a reverse.
The Spanish ambassador certainly arrived on Monday.
I shall go to town on Monday for a day or two ; therefore,
if you write to-morrow, direct to Arlington-street. I add
no more: for words are unworthy of the situation; and to
blame now, would be childish. It is hard to be gamed for
against one's consent; but when one's country is at stake,
one must throw oneself out of the question. When one is old
and nobody, one must be whirled with the current, and shake
one's wings like a fly, if one lights on a pebble. The pro
spect is so dark, that one shall rejoice at whatever does not
happen that may. Thus I have composed a sort of philo
sophy for myself, that reserves every possible chance. You
want none of these artificial aids to your resolution. Invincible

1778. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 7
courage and immaculate integrity are not dependent on the
folly of ministers or on the events of war. Adieu !

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.
Strawberry HiU, July 24, 1778.
Upon reviewing your papers, dear Sir, I think I can
make more of them than I at first conceived. I have even
commenced the life, and do not dislike my ideas for it, if
the execution does but answer. At present I am interrupted
by another task, which you, too, have wished me to under
take. In a word, somebody has pubhshed Chatterton's works,
and charged me heavily for having discountenanced him.
He even calls for the indignation of the public against me.
It is somewhat singular, that I am to be offered up as a
victim at the altar of a notorious impostor ! but as many
saints have been impostors, so many innocent persons have
been sacrificed to them. However, I shall not be patient
under this attack, but shall publish an answer — the nar
rative I mentioned to you. I would, as you know, have
avoided entering into this affair if I could; but as I do not
despise public esteem, it is necessary to show how ground
less the accusation is. Do not speak of my intention, as
perhaps I shall not execute it immediately.
I am not in the least acquainted with the Mr. Bridges
you mention, nor know that I ever saw him. The tomb
for Mr. Gray is actually erected, and at the generous ex
pense of Mr. Mason, and with an epitaph of four lines,i
as you heard, and written by him — but the scaffolds are
not yet removed. I was in town yesterday, and intended
to visit it, but there is digging a vault for the family of
Northumberland, which obstructs the removal of the boards.
I rejoice in your amendment, and reckon it among my
> " No more the Grecian Muse unrivall'd reigns ;
To Britain let the nations homage pay :
She felt a Homer's fire in Milton's strains,
A Pindar's rapture in the lyre of Gray."— E.

8 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1778.
obligations to the fine weather, and hope it will be the most
lasting of them. Yours ever.

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.
Strawberry HiU, August 15, 1778.
YouB observation of Rowley not being mentioned by
William of Wyrcestre, is very strong, indeed, dear Sir, and I
shall certainly take notice of it. It has suggested to me
that he is not named by Bale or Pitts" — is he? Will you
trouble yourself to look ? I conclude he is not, or we should
have heard of it. Rowley is the reverse of King Arthur,
and all those heroes that have been expected a second time ;
he is to come again for the first time — I mean, as a great
poet. My defence amounts to thirty pages of the size of
this paper: yet I believe I shall not publish it. I abhor a
controversy ; and what is it to me whether people believe
in an impostor or not? Nay, shall I convince everybody
of my innocence, though there is not the shadow of reason
for thinking I was to blame? If I met a beggar in the
street, and refused him sixpence, thinking him strong enough
to work, and two years afterwards he should die of drinking,
might not I be told I had deprived the world of a capital
rope-dancer? In short, to show one's self sensible to such
accusations, would only invite more; and since they accuse
me of contempt, I will have it for my accusers.
My brass plate for Bishop Walpole was copied exactly
from the print in Dart's Westminster, of the tomb of Robert
Dalby, Bishop of Durham, with the sole alteration of the
name. I shall return, as soon as I have time, to Mr. Baker's
Life; but I shall want to consult you, or, at least, the ac
count of him in the new Biographia, as your notes want some
dates. I am not satisfied yet with what I have sketched*
' John Bale, Bishop of Ossory. The work to which Walpole alludes
is his " Catalogus Scriptorum Ulustrium Majoris Brytannie." Basle
1557-9. —John Pitts wrote, in opposition to Bale, " De illustrihns
AngUae Scriptoribus." Paris, 1619.— E. ""rious

1778. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 9
but I shall correct it. My small talent was grown very dull.
This attack about Chatterton has a little revived it; but it
warns me to have done ; for, if one comes to want provoca
tives, the produce will soon be feeble. Adieu ! Yours most
sincerely.

TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY.
Strawberry HiU, August 21, 1778.
I THINK it 80 very uncertain whether this letter will
find you, that I write it merely to tell you I received yours
to-day. I recollect nothing particularly worth seeing in
Sussex that you have not seen (for I think you have seen
Coudray and Stansted, and I know you have Petworth),
but Hurst Monceaux, near Battle ; and I don't know whe
ther it is not pulled down. The site of Arundel Castle is
fine, and there are some good tombs of the Fitzalans at the
church, but little remains of the castle ; in the room of which
is a modern brick house; and in the late Duke's time the
ghost of a giant walked there, his grace said — but I sup
pose the present Duke has laid it in the Red Sea — of
claret. Besides Knowle and Penshurst, I should think there were
several seats of old families in Kent worth seeing; but I do
not know them. I poked out Summer-hilP for the sake of
the Babylonienne in Grammont ; but it is now a mere farm
house. Don't let them persuade you to visit Leeds Castle,
which is not worth seeing.
You have been near losing me and half a dozen fair cousins
to-day. The Goldsmiths' Company dined in Mr. Shirley's
field, next to Pope's. I went to Ham with my three Wal
degrave nieces and Miss Keppel, and saw them land, and
dine in tents erected for them, from the opposite shore. You
may imagine how beautiful the sight was in such a spot and
in such a day ! I stayed and dined at Ham, and after
' Formerly a country-seat of Queen Elizabeth, and the residence of
Charles the Second when the court was at Tunbridge. — E.

10 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1778.
dinner Lady Dysart with Lady Bridget ToUemache took
our four nieces on the water to see the return of the barges,
but were to set me down at Lady Browne's. We were, with
a footman and the two watermen, ten in a httle boat As
we were in the middle of the river, a larger boat full of
people drove directly upon us on purpose. I believe they
were drunk. We called to them, to no purpose ; they beat
directly against the middle of our little skiff — but, thank
you, did not do us the least harm — no thanks to them.
Lady Malpas was in Lord Strafford's garden, and gave us for
gone. In short, Neptune never would have had so beau
tiful a prize as the four girls.
I hear an express has been sent to * * * * to offer him
the mastership of the horse. I had a mind to make you
guess, but you never can — to Lord Exeter ! Pray let me
know the moment you return to Park-place.

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.
Strawberry Hill, August 22, 1778.
I BEG you will feel no uneasiness, dear Sir, at having
shown my name to Dr. Glynn. I can never suspect you,
who are giving me fresh proofs of your friendship, and so
licitude for my reputation, of doing anything unkind. It is
true I do not think I shall publish anything about Chat
terton. Is not it an affront to Innocence, not to be per
fectly satisfied in her? My pamphlet, for such it would be,
is four times as large as the narrative in your hands, and I
think would not discredit me — but, in truth, I am grown
much fonder of truth than fame ; and scribblers or their
patrons shall not provoke me to sacrifice the one to the
other. Lord Hardwicke, I know, has long been my enemy,
— latterly, to get a sight of the Conway Papers, he has paid
great court to me, which, to show how little I regarded his
enmity, I let him see, at least the most curious. But as
I set as little value on his friendship, I did not grant an
other of his requests. Indeed, I have made more than one

1778. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 11
foe by not indulging the vanity of those who have made
application to me; and I am obliged to them, when they
augment my contempt by quarrelhng with me for that re
fusal. It was the case of Mr. Masters, and is now of Lord
Hardwicke. He sohcited me to reprint his Boeotian volume
of Sir Dudley Carleton's Papers, for which he had two mo
tives. The first he inherited from his father, the desire of
saving money ; for though his fortune is so much larger
than mine, he knew I would not let out my press for hire,
but should treat him with the expense, as I have done for
those I have obliged. The second was, that the rarity of
my editions makes them valuable, and though I cannot make
men read dull books, I can make them purchase them. His
lordship, therefore, has bad grace in affecting to overlook
one, whom he had in vain courted, yet he again is grown
my enemy, because I would not be my own. For my writ
ings, they do not depend on him or the venal authors he
patronizes (I doubt very frugally), but on their own merits
or demerits. It is from men of sense they must expect
their sentence, not from boobies and hireling authors, whom
I have always shunned, with the whole fry of minor wits,
critics, and monthly censors. I have not seen the Review
you mention, nor ever do, but when something particular is
pointed out to me. Literary squabbles I know preserve
one's name, when one's work will not; but I despise the
fame that depends on scolding till one is remembered, and
remembered by whom ? The scavengers of literature ! Re
viewers are like sextons, who in a charnel-house can tell you
to what John Thompson or to what Tom Matthews such a
skull or such belonged — but who wishes to know? The
fame that is only to be found in such vaults, is like the fires
that burn unknown in tombs, and go out as fast as they
are discovered. Lord Hardwicke is welcome to live among
the dead if he likes it, and can contrive to live nowhere else.
Chatterton did abuse me under the title of Baron of
Otranto,^ but unluckily the picture is more like Dr. Milles
' Chatterton exhibited a ridiculous portrait of Walpole, in the " Me-

12 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1778.
and Chatterton's own devotees, than to me, who am but a re
creant antiquary, and, as the poor lad found by experience,
did not swallow every fragment that was offered to me as an
antique ; though that is a feature he has bestowed upon me.
I have seen, too, the criticism you mention on the Castle of
Otranto, in the preface to the Old English Baron.^ It is not
at all obhque, but, though mixed with high compliments,
directly attacks the visionary part, which, says the author or
authoress, makes one laugh. I do assure you, I have not had
the smallest inclination to return that attack. It would even
be ungrateful, for the work is a professed imitation of mine,
only stripped of the marvellous ; and so entirely stripped, ex
cept in one awkward attempt at a ghost or two, that it is the
most insipid dull nothing you ever saw. It certainly does not
make one laugh ; for what makes one doze, seldom makes one
merry. I am very sorry to have talked for near three pages on what
relates to myself, who should be of no consequence, if people
did not make me so, whether I will or not. My not replying
to them, I hope, is a proof I do not seek to make myself the
topic of conversation. How very foolish are the squabbles of
authors ! They buzz and are troublesome to-day, and then
repose for ever on some shelf in a college library, close by
their antagonists, like Henry VI. and Edward IV. at Windsor.
I shall be in town in a few days, and will send you the
heads of painters, which I left there ; and along with them for
yourself a translation of a French play,^ that I have just
printed there. It is not for your reading, but as one of the
Strawberry editions, and one of the rarest ; for I have printed
moirs of a Sad Dog," under the character of " the redoubted Baron
Otranto, who bas spent his whole life in conjectures."  E.
' The Old English Baron, a romance of considerable repute which
has been frequently reprinted, was the production of Clara Reeve' This
ingenious lady had pubUshed, in 1772, a translation of Barclay's Latin
romance of Argenis, under the title of " The Pheenix, or the History of
Polyarchus and Argenia." She was bom at Ipswich in 1738 and died
there in 1808. — E. '
" "J^t,S'^t" T^J^?,'''"J'T^«"y ^iU 1778. It was translated
from the French of M. Pont de Veyle, by Lady Craven, afterwards Mar
gravine of Anspach. — E.

1778. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 13
but seventy-five copies. It was to oblige Lady Craven, the
translatress ; and will be an aggravation of my offence to Sir
Dudley's State Papers.
I hope this Elysian summer, for it has been above Indian,
has dispersed all your complaints. Yet it does not agree with
fruit ; the peaches and nectarines are shrivelled to the size of
damsons, and half of them drop. Yet you remember what
portly bellies the peaches had at Paris, where it is generally
as hot. I suppose our fruit-trees are so accustomed to rain,
that they don't know how to behave without it. Adieu !
P. S. I can divert you with a new adventure, that has hap
pened to me in the hterary way. About a month ago, I re
ceived a letter from a Mr. Jonathan Scott, at Shrewsbury, to
tell me he was possessed of a MS. of Lord Herbert's Account
of the Court of France,^ which he designed to publish by sub
scription, and which he desired me to subscribe to, and to
assist in the publication. I replied, that having been obhged
to the late Lord Powis and his widow, I could not meddle
with any such thing, without knowing that it had the consent
of the present Earl and his mother.
Another letter, commending my reserve, told me Mr. Scott
had applied for it formerly, and would again now. This
showed me they did not consent. I have just received a third
letter, owning the approbation is not yet arrived ; but to keep
me employed in the mean time, the modest Mr. Scott, whom
I never saw, nor know more of than I did of Chatterton, pro
poses to me to get his fourth son a place in the civil depart
ment in India : the father not choosing it should be in the mili
tary, his three elder sons being engaged in that branch already.
If this fourth son breaks his neck, I suppose it will be laid to
my charge ! Yours ever.
' By Lord Herbert's Account of the Court of France, Mr. Scott most
probably referred to his " Letters written during his residence at the
Erench Court," and which were first published from the originals, in the
edition of his Life which appeared in 1826. — B.

14 CORRESPONDENCE OF

1778.

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.
September 1, 1778.
I HAVE now seen the Critical Review, with Lord Hard
wicke's note, in which I perceive the sensibihty of your friend
ship for me, dear Sir, but no rudeness on his part. Con
temptuous it was to reprint Jane Shore's letter without any
notice of my having given it before : the apology, too, is not
made to me — but I am not affected by such incivilities, that
imply more ill-will than boldness. As I expected more from
your representation, I beheve I expressed myself with more
warmth than the occasion deserved ; and, as I love to be just,
I will, now I am perfectly cool, be so to Lord Hardwicke.
His dislike of me was meritorious in him, as I conclude it was
founded on my animosity to his father, as mine had been, from
attachment to my own, who was basely betrayed by the late
Earl. The present has given me formerly many peevish
marks of enmity ; and I suspect, I don't know if justly, that
he was the mover of the cabal in the Antiquarian Society
against me — but all their misunderstandings were of a size
that made me smile rather than provoke me. The Earl, as I
told you, has since been rather wearisome in applications to
me; which I received very civilly, but encouraged no farther.
When he wanted me to be his printer, I own I was not good
Christian enough, not to be pleased with refusing, and yet in
as well-bred excuses as I could form, pleading, what was true
at the time, as you know, that I had laid down my press —
but so much for this idle story. I shall think no more of it,
but adhere to my specific system. The antiquarians will be
as ridiculous as they used to be ; and, since it is impossible to
infuse taste into them, they will be as dry and dull as their
predecessors. One may revive what perished, but it will
perish again, if more hfe is not breathed into it than it en
joyed originally. Facts, dates, and names will never please
the multitude, unless there is some style and manner to re
commend them, and unless some novelty is struck out from
their appearance. The best merit of the society lies in their

1778. THE HON. HORACE' WALPOLE. 15
prints ; for their volumes, no mortal will ever touch them but
an antiquary. Their Saxon and Danish discoveries are not
worth more than monuments of the Hottentots ; and for Ro
man remains in Britain, they are upon a foot with what ideas
we should get of Inigo Jones, if somebody was to publish
views of huts and houses, that our officers run up at Senegal
and Goree. Bishop Lyttelton used to torment me with bar
rows and Roman camps, and I would as soon have attended
to the turf graves in our church-yards. I have no curiosity to
know how awkward and clumsy men have been in the dawn of
arts, or in their decay.
I exempt you entirely from my general censure on antiqua
ries, both for your singular modesty in pubhshing nothing
yourself, and for collecting stone and bricks for others to build
with. I wish your materials may ever fall into good hands —
perhaps they will I our empire is falhng to pieces ! we are
relapsing to a little island. In that state, men are apt to
inquire how great their ancestors have been; and, when a
kingdom is past doing anything, the few that are studious
look into the memorials of past time ; nations, like private
persons, seek lustre from their progenitors, when they have
none in themselves, and the farther they are from the dignity
of their source. When half its colleges are tumbled down,
the ancient University of Cambridge will revive from your
Collections,' and you will be quoted as a living witness that
saw its splendour.
' His valuable CoUections, in about a hundred volumes, in folio, fairly
written in his own hand, Mr. Cole, on his death in 1782, left to the Bri
tish Museum, to be locked up for twenty years. His Diary, as will be
seen by a specimen or two, is truly ludicrous: — "Jan. 25, 1766.
Foggy. My beautiful parrot died at ten at night, without knowing the
cause of his Ulness, he being very weU last night. — Feb. 1. Fine day,
and cold. WUl. Wood carried three or four loads of dung into the clay-
pit close. Baptized WUliam, the son of William Grace, blacksmith,
whom I married about six months before. — March 3. I baptized Sarah,
the bastard daughter of the Widow Smallwood, of Eton, aged near fifty,
whose husband died about a year ago. — March 6. Very fine weather.
My man was blooded. I sent a loin of pork and a spare-rib to Mr.
Cartwright, in London. — 27. I sent my two French wigs to my London
barber to alter them, they being made so miserably I coidd not wear
them. — June 17. I went to our new Archdeacon's visitation at Newport-
Pagnel. I took young H. Travel with me on my dun-horse, in order

16 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1778.
Since I began this letter, I have had another curious adven
ture. I was in the Holbein chamber, when a chariot stopped
at my door. A letter was brought up — and who should be
below but — Dr. Kippis. The letter was to announce himself
and his business, flattered me on my writings, desired my
assistance, and particularly my direction and aid for his
writing the life of my father. I desired he would walk up,
and received him very civilly, taking not the smallest notice of
what you had told me of his flirts at me in the new Biogra
phia. I told him, if I had been applied to, I could have
pointed out many errors in the old edition, but as they were
chiefly in the printing, I supposed they would be corrected.
With regard to my father's life, I said, it might be partiality,
but I had such confidence in my father's virtues, that I was
satisfied the more his life was examined, the clearer they
would appear. That I also thought that the life of any ma.n
written under the direction of his family, did nobody honour ;
and that, as I was persuaded my father's would stand the test,
I wished that none of his relations should interfere in it.
That I did not doubt but the Doctor would speak impartially,
and that was all I desired. He replied, that he did sup
pose I thought in that manner, and that all he asked was to
be assisted in facts and dates. I said, if he would please to
write the life first, and then communicate it to me, I would
point out any errors in facts that I should perceive. He
seemed mightily well satisfied — and so we parted — but is it
not odd, that people are continually attacking me, and then
come to me for assistance ? — but when men write for profit,
they are not very delicate.
I have resumed Mr. Baker's life, and pretty well arranged
my plan ; but I shall have httle time to make any progress till
October, as I am going soon to make some visits. Yours ever.
that he might hear the organ, he being a great psalm-singer. The most
numerous appearance of clergy that I remember : forty-four dined with
the Archdeacon ; and, what is extraordinary, not one smoked tobacco.
My new coach-horse ungain. — Aug. 16. Cool day. Tom reaped for Joe
Holdom. I cudgeUed Jem for staying so long on an errand " &e.  E.

1778. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 17

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.
strawberry HiU, Sept. 18, 1778.
I HAVE run through the new articles in the Biographia,
and think them performed but by a heavy hand. Some per
sons have not trusted the characters of their ancestors, as I
did my father's, to their own merits. On the contrary, I have
met with one whose corruption is attempted to be palHated by
imputing its punishment to the revenge of my father — which,
by the way, is confessing the guilt of the convict. This was
the late Lord Barrington,' who, I believe, was a very dirty
fellow ; for, besides being expelled the House of Commons ou
the affair of the Harburgh lottery, he was reckoned to have
twice sold the Dissenters to the court; but in short, what
credit can a Biographia Britannica, which ought to be a
standard work, deserve, when the editor is a mercenary writer,
who runs about to relations for directions, and adopts any tale
they deliver to him ? This very instance is a proof that it is
not a jot more creditable than a peerage. The authority is
said to be a nephew of Judge Foster (consequently, I suppose,
a friend of Judge Barrington), and he pretends to have found
a scrap of paper, nobody knows on what occasion written, that
seems to be connected with nothing, and is called a palliative,
if not an excuse of Lord Barrington's crime. A man is ex
pelled from Parliament for a scandalous job, and it is called a
sufficient excuse to say the minister was his enemy ; and this
nearly forty years after the death of both ! and without any
impeachment of the justice of the sentence : instead of which
we are told that Lord Barrington was suspected of having
' John Shute, first Viscount Barrington in the peerage of Ireland, ex
pelled the House of Commons in February 1723, for having promoted,
abetted, and carried on that fraudulent undertaking, the Harburgh lot
tery. 'Phis lottery took its name from the place where it was to be drawn,
the town and port of Harburgh, on the river Elbe, where the projector
was to settle a trade for the woollen manufacture between England and
Germany. Lord Barrington was distinguished for theological learning,
and published " Miscellanea Critica," and an " Essay on the several
Dispensations of God to Mankind." He died in 1734, leaving five sons,
who had the rare fortune of each rising to high stations in the church,
the state, the law, the army, and the navy. — E.
VOL. VI. C

18 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1778.
offended Sir Robert Walpole, who took that opportunity of
being revenged. Supposing he did — which at most you see
is a suspicion grounded on a suspicion — it would at least im
ply, that he had found a good opportunity. — A most admirable
acquittal ! Sir Robert Walpole was expelled for having in
dorsed a note that was not for his own benefit, nor ever sup
posed to be, and it was the act of a whole outrageous party ;
yet, abandoned as parhaments sometimes are, a minister would
not find them very complaisant in gratifying his private re
venge against a member without some notorious crime. Not
a syllable is said of any defence the culprit made ; and, had
my father been guilty of such violence and injustice, it is
totally incredible that he, whose minutest acts and his most
innocent were so rigorously scrutinized, tortured, and black
ened, should never have heard that act of power complained
of. The present Lord Barrington, who opposed him, saw his
fall, and the secret committee appointed to canvass his life,
when a retrospect of twenty years was desired and only ten
allowed, would certainly have pleaded for the longer term,
had he had anything to say in behalf of his father's sentence.
Would so warm a patriot then, though so obedient a courtier
now, have suppressed the charge to this hour? This Lord
Barrington, when I was going to publish the second edition of
my Noble Authors, begged it as a favour of me to suppress all
mention of his father — a strong presumption that he was
ashamed of him. I am well repaid ! but I am certainly now
at liberty to record that good man. I shall — and shall take
notice of the satisfactory manner in which his sons have
whitewashed their patriarch !
I recollect a saying of the present peer that will divert you
when contrasted with forty years of servility, which even in
this age makes him a proverb. It was in his days of virtue.
He said, " If I should ever be so unhappy as to have a place
that would make it necessary for me to have a fine coat
on a birth-day, I would pin a bank-bill on my sleeve." He
had a place in less than two years, I think — and has had
almost every place that every administration could bestow.'
* See vol. i. p. 190. Araong the MitcheU MSS. is a letter from Lord

1778. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 19
Such were the patriots that opposed that excellent man, my
father; allowed by all parties to have been as incapable of
revenge as ever minister was — but whose experience of man
kind drew from him that memorable saying, " that very few
men ought to be prime ministers, for it is not fit many should
know how bad men are ;" — one can see a httle of it without
being a prime minister. If one shuns mankind and flies to
books, one meets with their meanness and falsehood there,
too ! one has reason to say, there is but one good, that is
God. Adieu ! Yours ever.

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.
Oct. 14, 1778.
I THINK you take in no newspapers, nor I beUeve con
descend to read any more modern than the Paris a la Main
at the time of the Ligue ; consequently you have not seen
a new scandal on my father, which you will not wonder
offends me. You cannot be interested in his defence; but,
as it comprehends some very curious anecdotes, you will
not grudge my indulging myself to a friend in vindicating
a name so dear to me.
In the accounts of Lady Chesterfield's' death and fortune,
it is said that the late King, at the*instigation of Sir Robert
Walpole, burnt his father''s will which contained a large
legacy to that, his supposed, daughter, and I beheve his
real one ; for she was very like him, as her brother, General
Schulembourg, is, in black, to the late King. The fact of
Barrington, in which he says, " No man knows what is good for him :
my invariable rule, therefore, is to ask nothing, to refuse nothing ; to
let others place me, and to do my best wherever I am placed. The
same strange fortune which made me secretary of war five years ago has
made me chanceUor of the exchequer ; it may perhaps at last make me
pope. I think I am equaUy fit to be at the head of the church as the
exchequer." — ^E.
' Malosina de Schulenbourg, a natural daughter of George I, by Miss
Schulenbourg, afterwards created Duchess of Kendal. She was created,
in 1722, Countess of Walsingham and Baroness of Aldborough, and was
the widow of PhUip Dormer Stanhope, the celebrated Earl of Chester
field, who died in 1773.— E. 0 2

20 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1778.
suppressing the will is indubitably true ; the instigator most
false, as I can demonstrate thus : —
When the news arrived of the death of George the First,
my father carried the account from Lord Townshend to the
then Prince of Wales. One of the first acts of royalty is for
the new monarch to make a speech to the privy council.
Sir Robert asked the King who he would please to have draw
the Speech, which was, in fact, asking who was to be prime
minister ; to which his Majesty replied. Sir Spencer Comp
ton. It is a wonderful anecdote, and but httle known, that
the new premier, a very dull man, could not draw the Speech,
and the person to whom he apphed was the deposed premier.
The Queen, who favoured my father, observed how unfit a
man was for successor, who was reduced to beg assistance
of his predecessor. The council met as soon as possible,
the next morning at latest. There Archbishop Wake, with
whom one copy of the will had been deposited, (as another
was, I think, with the Duke of Wolfenbuttle, who had a
pension for sacrificing it, which, I know, the late Duke of
Newcastle transacted,) advanced, and delivered the will to
the King, who put it into his pocket, and went out of coun
cil without opening it, the Archbishop not having courage or
presence of mind to desire it to be read, as he ought to have
done. These circumstances, which I solemnly assure you are
strictly true, prove that my father neither advised, nor was
consulted ; nor is it credible that the King in one night's
time should have passed from the intention of disgracing
him, to make him his bosom confidant on so delicate an
affair. I was once talking to the late Lady Suffolk, the former
mistress, on that extraordinary event. She said, " I cannot
justify the deed to the legatees ; but towards his father, the
late King was justifiable, for George the First had burnt two
wills made in favour of George the Second." I suppose they
were the testaments of the Duke and Duchess of Zell, pa
rents of George the First's wife, whose treatment of her
they always resented.

1778. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 21
I said, / know the transactions of the Duke of Newcastle.
The late Lord Waldegrave showed me a letter from that
Duke to the first Earl of Waldegrave, then ambassador at
Paris, with directions about that transaction, or, at least,
about payment of the pension, I forget which.' I have
somewhere, but cannot turn to it now, a memorandum of
that affair, and who the Prince was, whom I may mistake
in calling Duke of Wolfenbuttle. There was a third copy
of the will, I likewise forget with whom deposited. The
newspaper says, which is true, that Lord Chesterfield filed
a bill in chancery against the late King to oblige him to pro
duce the will, and was silenced, I think, by payment of twenty
thousand pounds. There was another legacy to his own
daughter the Queen of Prussia, which has at times been,
and, I beheve, is still claimed by the King of Prussia.
Do not mention any part of this story; but it is worth
preserving, as I am sure you are satisfied with my scru
pulous veracity. It may perhaps be authenticated hereafter
by collateral evidence that may come out. If ever true his
tory does come to light, my father's character will have just
honour paid to it. Lord Chesterfield, one of his sharpest
enemies, has not, with all his prejudices, left a very un
favourable account of him, and it would alone be raised by
a comparison of their two characters. Think of one who
calls Sir Robert the corrupter of youth, leaving a system
of education to poison them from their nursery ! Chester
field, Pulteney, and Bolingbroke were the saints that reviled
my father ! I beg your pardon, but you will allow me to
open my heart to you when it is full. Yours ever.

TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY.
October 23, 1778.
****** Having thus told you all I know, I shall
add a few words, to say I conclude you have known as much,
' See Walpole's Memoires of George the Second, vol. U. p. 458. — E.

22 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1778.
by my not having heard from you. Should the post-office or
secretary's office set their wits at work to bring to hght all
the intelligence contained under the above hiatus, I am con
fident they will discover nothing, though it gives an exact
description of all they have been about themselves.
My personal history is very short. I have had an assem
bly and the rheumatism — and am buying a house — and it
rains — and I shall plant the roses against my treillage to
morrow. Thus you know what I have done, suffered, am
doing, and shaU do. Let rae know as much of you, in
quantity, not in quahty. Introductions to, and conclusions
of, letters are as much out of fashion, as to, at, &c. on letters.
This subhme age reduces everything to its quintessence:
all periphrases and expletives are so much in disuse, that
I suppose soon the only way of making love will be to say
" Lie down." Luckily, the lawyers will not part with any
synonymous words, and will, consequently, preserve the re
dundancies of our language — Dixi.

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.
October 26, 1778.
I HAVE finished the Life of Mr. Baker, will have it
transcribed, and send it to you. I have omitted several httle
particulars that are in your notes, for two reasons; one, be
cause so much is said in the Biographia; and the other,
because I have rather drawn a character of him, than meant
a circumstantial life. In the justice I have done to him, I
trust I shall have pleased you. I have much greater doubt
of that effect in what I have said of his principles and party.
It is odd, perhaps, to have made use of the life of a high
churchman for expatiating on my own very opposite prin
ciples; but it gave me so fair an opportunity of discussing
those points, that I very naturally embraced it. I have done
due honour to his immaculate conscience, but have not spared
the cause in which he fell, — or rather rose, — for the ruin
of his fortune was the triumph of his virtue.

1778. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 23
As you know I do not love the press, you may be sure I
have no thoughts of printing this life at present ; nay, I beg
you will not only not communicate it, but take care it never
should be printed without my consent. I have written what
presented itself; I should perhaps choose to soften several
passages; and I trust it to you for your own satisfaction,
not as a finished thing, or as I am determined it should
remain. Another favour I beg of you is to criticise it as largely and
severely as you please : you have a right so to do, as it is
built with your own materials; nay, you have a right to
scold if I have, nay, since I have, employed them so dif
ferently from your intention. All my excuse is, that you
communicated them to one who did not deceive you, and
who you was pretty sure would make nearly the use of them
that he has made. Was not you? did not you suspect a
little that I could not even write a Life of Mr. Baker with
out talking Whiggism ! — Well, if I have ill-treated the
cause, I am sure I have exalted the martyr. I have thrown
new hght on his virtue from his notes on the Gazettes, and
you will admire him more, though you may love me less,
for my chymistry. I should be truly sorry if I did lose a
scruple of your friendship. You have ever been as candid
to me, as Mr. Baker was to his antagonists, and our friend
ship is another proof that men of the most opposite prin
ciples can agree in everything else, and not quarrel about
them. As my manuscript contains above twenty pages of my
writing on larger paper than this, you cannot receive it
speedily — however, I have performed my promise, and I
hope you will not be totally discontent, though I am not
satisfied with myself. I have executed it by snatches and by
long interruptions; and not having been eager about it, I
find I wanted that ardour to inspire me; another proof of
what I told you, that my small talent is waning, and wants
provocatives. It shall be a warning to me. Adieu !

24 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1778.

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.
ArUngton Street, Nov. 4, 1778.
You will see by my secretary's hand, that I am not able
to write myself; indeed, I am in bed with the gout in six
places, hke Daniel in the den ; but, as the lions are slumber
ing round me, and leave me a moment of respite, I employ it
to give you one. You have misunderstood me, dear Sij : I
have not said a word that will lower Mr. Baker's character ;
on the contrary, I think he will come out brighter from my
ordeal. In truth, as I have drawn out his life from your
papers, it is a kind of political epic, in which his conscience is
the hero that always triumphs over his interest upon the most
opposite occasions. Shall you dislike your saint in this light?
I had transcribed about half when I fell ill last week. If the
gout does not seize my right hand, I shall probably have full
leisure to finish it during my recovery, but shall certainly not
be able to send it to you by Mr. Lort.
Your promise fully satisfies me. My life can never extend
to twenty years.' Any one that saw me this moment would
not take me for a Methusalem. I have not strength to dictate
more now, except to add, that if Mr. Nicholls has seen my
narrative about Chatterton, it can only be my letter to Mr.
Barrett, of which you have a copy ; the larger one has not yet
been out of my own house. Yours most sincerely.

TO LADY BR0WNE.2
ArUngton Street, Nov. 5, 1778.
Your ladyship is exceedingly kind and charitable, and
the least I can do in return is to do all I can — dictate a let
ter to you. I have not been out of bed longer than it was
necessary to have it made, once a day, since last Thursday.
' Mr. Cole had informed Walpole that his collections were not to be
opened until twenty years after his death. See ante, p. 15. — E.
2 Now first printed. See vol. v. p. 184.

1778. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 25
The gout is in both my feet, both my knees, and in my left
hand and elbow. Had I a mind to brag, I could boast of a
little rheumatism too, but I scorn to set value on such a trifle ;
nay, I will own that I have felt little acute pain. My chief
propensity to exaggeration would be on the miserable nights I
have passed ; and yet whatever I should say would not be be
yond what I thought I suffered. I have been constantly as
broad awake as any Mrs. Candour that is always gaping for
Scajidal,' except when I have taken opiates, and then my
dreams have been as extravagant as all Mrs. Candour adds to
what she hears. In short, Madam, not to tire you with more
details, though you have ordered them, I am so weak that
I am able to see nobody at all, and when I shall be recovered
enough to take possession of this new lease, as it is called, the
mansion, I believe, will be so shattered that it won't be worth
repairs. Is it not very foolish, then, to be literally buying a
new house? Is it not verifying Pope's line, when I choose a
pretty situation, " But just to look about us and to die ? "
I am sorry Lady Jane's lot is fallen in Westphalia, where
so great a hog is lord of the manor. He is like the dragon
of Wantley, " And houses and churches
To him are geese and turkeys ; "
so I don't wonder that he has gobbled her two cows.
Lady Blandford is delightful in congratulating me upon
having the gout in town, and staying in the country herself.
Nay, she is very insolent in presuming to be the only person
invulnerable. If I could wish her any harm, it should be that
she might feel for one quarter of an hour a taste of the mortifi
cations that I suffered from eleven last night till four this morn
ing, and I am sure she would never dare to have a spark of
courage again. I can only wish her in Grosvenor-square,
' Sheridan's popular comedy of the " School for Scandal," which came
out at Drury-lane theatre in May 1777, was at this time as much the
favourite of the town as ever. — E.

26 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1778.
where she would run no risks. Her reputation for obstinacy
is so well estabhshed, that she might take advice from her
true friends for a twelvemonth, before we should believe our
own ears. However, as everybody has some weak part, I
know she will do for others more than for herself; and there
fore, pray Madam, tell her, that I am sure it is bad for your
ladyship to stay in the country at this time of year, and that
reason I am sure will bring you both. I really must rest.

TO LADY BR0WNE.1
ArUngton Street, Dec. 18, 1778.
My not writing with my own hand, to thank your lady
ship for your very obliging letter, is the worst symptom that
remains with me, Madam: all pain and swelling are gone;
and I hope in a day or two to get a glove even on my right
hand, and to walk with help into the next room by the end of
next week. I did, I confess, see a great deal too much com
pany too early ; and was such an old child as to prattle abun
dantly, till I was forced to shut myself up for a week and see
nobody ; but I am quite recovered, and the emptiness of the
town will soon preserve me from any excesses.
I am exceedingly glad to hear your ladyship finds so much
benefit from the air : I own I thought you looked ill the last
time I had the honour of seeing you ; and though I am sorry
to hear you talk with so much satisfaction of a country hfe, I
am not selfish enough to wish you to leave Tusmore^ a day be
fore your health is quite re-established, nor to envy Mr. Fer-
mor so agreeable an addition to his society and charming seat.
Poor Lady Albemarle is indeed very miserable and full of
apprehensions ; though the incredible zeal of the navy for Ad
miral Keppel crowns him with glory, and the indignation of
mankind, and the execration of Sir Hugh, add to the triumph.
' Now first printed.
" Lady Browne's first husband was Henry Fermor, Esq. grandfather
of Mr. Fermor of Tusmore House. She was a Miss Sheldon.  E.

1778. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 27
Indeed, I still think Lady A.'s fears may be well founded:
some slur may be procured on her son; and his own bad
nerves, and worse constitution, may not be able to stand agita
tion and suspense.'
Lady Blandford has had a cold, but I hear is well again,
and has generally two tables. She will be a loss indeed to all
her friends, and to hundreds more; but she cannot be im
mortal, nor would be, if she could.
The writings are not yet signed, Madam, for my house, but
I am in no doubt of having it ; yet I shall not think of going
into it till the spring, as I cannot enjoy this year's gout in it,
and will not venture catching a codicil, by going backwards
and forwards to it before it is aired.
I know no particular news, but that Lord Bute was thought
in great danger yesterday ; I have heard nothing of him to
day. I do not know even a match, but of some that are going
to be divorced ; the fate of one of the latter is to be turned
into an exaltation, and is treated by her family and friends in
' Some charges having been brought against Admiral Keppel for his
conduct at the battle off Ushant, by Sir Hugh Palliser, his vice-admiral,
he was tried for the same, and not only unanimously acquitted, but the
prosecution declared maUcious. This verdict gave such general satis
faction, that London was iUuminated for two nights ; upon one of which a
mob, consisting in great part of sailors who had served under Keppel,
broke aU the windows in the house of his accuser. The city of London
voted the Admiral the freedom of the corporation. In 1782, he was
created Viscount Keppel, and appointed first lord of the admiralty. He
died unmarried, in October 1786. The foUowing is apart of Mr. Burke's
beautiful panegyric on him, at the conclusion of his Letter to a Noble
Lord : — " I ever looked on Lord Keppel as one of the greatest and best
men of his age, and I loved and cultivated him accordingly. It was at
his trial that he gave me this picture. With what zeal and anxious
affection I attended him through that his agony of glory; what part my
son took in the early flush and enthusiasm of his virtue, and the pious
passion with which he attached himself to aU my connexions ; with what
prodigality we both squandered ourselves in courting almost every sort
of enmity for his sake, I believe he felt, just as I should have felt sueh
friendship on such an occasion. I partook, indeed, of this honour with
several of the first, and best, and ablest in the kingdom ; but I was be
hind with none of them ; and I am sure that if, to the eternal disgrace
of this nation, and to the total annihilation of every trace of honour and
virtue in it, things had taken a different turn from what they did, I
should have attended him to the quarter-deck with no less good-wUl and
more pride, though with far other feeUngs, than I partook of the gene
ral flow of national joy that attended the justice that was done to his
virtue."— E.

28 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1778.
quite a new style, to the discomfit of all prudery. It puts
me in mind of Lord Lansdowne's lines in the room in the
Tower where my father had been confined,
" Some fall so hard, they bound and rise again."
Methinks, however, it is a little hard on Lord George Ger
maine, that in four months after seeing a Duchess of Dorset,
he may see a Lord Middlesex too ; for so old the egg is said
to be, that is already prepared. If this trade goes on, half
the peeresses will have two eldest sons with both fathers ahve
at the same time. Lady Holderness expresses nothing but
grief and willingness to receive her daughter' again on any
terms, which probably will happen ; for the daughter has al
ready opened her eyes, is sensible of her utter ruin, and has
written to Lord Carmarthen and Madam Cordon, acknowledg
ing her guilt, and begging to be remembered only with pity,
which is sufficient to make one pity her.
I would beg pardon for so long a letter, but your ladyship
desired intelhgence, and I know a long letter from London is
not uncomfortable at Christmas, even in the most comfortable
house in the country. Perhaps my own forced idleness has a
little contributed to lengthen it ; still I hope it implies great
readiness to obey your ladyship's commands, in your most
obedient humble servant

TO THE EARL OF BUCHAN.^
Arlington Street, Dec. 24, 1778.
It was an additional mortification to my illness, my lord,
that I was not able to thank your lordship with my own hand
' Amelia D'Arcy, Baroness Conyers, daughter of Robert, fourth Earl
of Holderness, married to Lord Carmarthen ; who had eloped with
Captain John Byron, father of the great poet. — E.
2 Now first printed. David Stewart Erskine, eleventh Earl of Buchan.
He was intended for public life, but shortly after his succeeding to the
family honours, in 1767, he retired to Scotland, and devoted himself to
Uterature. His principal works were, an Essay on the Lives of Fletcher
of Saltoun and the poet Thomson, and a Life of Napier of Merchiston.
He died at Dryburgh Abbey, in 1829, at the age of eighty-seven. — E.

1778. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 29
for the honour of your letter, and for your goodness in remem
bering an old man, who must with reason consider himself as
forgotten, when he never was of importance, and is now al
most useless to himself. Frequent severe fits of the gout
have a good deal disabled me from pursuing the trifling stu
dies in which I could pretend to know anything; or at least
have given me an indifference, that makes me less ready in
answering questions than I may have been formerly ; and as
my papers are in the country, whither at present I am not
able to go, I fear I can give but unsatisfactory replies to your
lordship's queries.
The two very curious pictures of King James and his
Queen (I cannot recollect whether the third or fourth of the
name, but I know that she was a princess of Sweden or Den
mark,^ and that her arms are on her portrait,) were at the
palace at Kensington, and I imagine are there still. I had
obtained leave from the Lord Chamberlain to have drawings
made of them, and Mr. Wale actually began them for me ; but
he made such slow progress, and I was so called off from the
thought of them by indispositions and other avocations, that
they were never finished ; and Mr. Wale may, perhaps, still
have the beginnings he made.
At the Duke of Devonshire's at Hardwicke, there is a
valuable though poorly painted picture of James V. and Mary
of Guise, his second queen : it is remarkable from the great
resemblance of Mary Queen of Scots to her father ; I mean in
Lord Morton's picture of her, and in the image of her on her
tomb at Westminster, which agree together, and which I take
to be the genuine likeness. I have doubts on Lord Burling
ton's picture, and on Dr. Mead's. The nose in both is thicker,
and also fuller at bottom than on the tomb; though it is a
Uttle supported by her coins.
There is a much finer portrait — indeed, an excellent head,
— of the Lady Margaret Douglas at Mr. Carteret's at Hawnes
in Bedfordshire, the late Lord Granville's. It is a very
' James the First married, in 1590, Anne, daughter of Frederick
King of Denmark. — E.

30 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1778.
shrewd countenance, and at the same time with great good
ness of character. Lord Scarborough has a good picture, in
the style of Holbein at least, of Queen Margaret Tudor,
daughter of Henry VII, and of her second or third husband
(for, if I don't mistake, she had three) ; but indeed, my lord,
these things are so much out of my memory at present, that I
speak with great diffidence. I cannot even recollect anything
else to your lordship's purpose; but I flatter myself, that
these imperfect notices will at least be a testimony of my
readiness to obey your lordship's commands, as that I am,
with great respect, my lord, your lordship's obedient humble
servant.

TO EDWARD GIBBON, ESQ.'
DEAR SIR, L ¦-'
I HAVE gone through your Inquisitor's attack,* and am
far from being clear that it deserves your giving yourself the
trouble of an answer, as neither the detail nor the result
affects your argument. So far from it, many of his reproofs
are levelled at your having quoted a wrong page ; he confess
ing often that what you have cited is in the author referred
to, but not precisely in the individual spot. If St. Peter is
attended by a corrector of the press, you will certainly never
be admitted where he is a porter. I send you my copy, be
cause I scribbled my remarks. I do not send them with the
impertinent presumption of suggesting a hint to you, but to
prove I did not grudge the trouble of going through such
a book when you desired it, and to show how httle struck me
as of any weight.
' Now first coUected.
' " An Examination of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Chapters of Mr.
Gibbon's History of the DecUne and FaU of the Roman Empire. By
Henry Edward Davis, B.A. of BaUol CoUege, Oxford." He was" born
in 1756, and died in 1784, at the early age of twenty-seven. He was a
native of Windsor, and is believed to have received a present from
George the Third for this production. — E.

1778. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 31
I have set down nothing on your imputed plagiarisms ; for,
if they are so, no argument that has ever been employed
must be used again, even where the passage necessary is ap
plied to a different purpose. An author is not allowed to be
master of his own works ; but, by Davis's new law, the first
person that cites him would be so. You probably looked into
Middleton, Dodwell, &c, ; had the same reflections on the same
circumstances, or conceived them so as to recollect them,
without remembering what suggested them. Is this plagia
rism? If it is, Davis and such cavillers might go a short
step further, and insist that an author should peruse every
work antecedently written on every subject at all collateral
to his ovra, — not to assist him, but to be sure to avoid every
material touched by his predecessors.
I will make but one remark on such divine champions.
Davis and his prototypes tell you Middleton, &c. have used
the same objections, and they have been confuted: answer
ing, in the theologic dictionary, signifying confuting ; no mat
ter whether there is sense, argument, truth, in the answer or
not. Upon the whole, I think ridicule is the only answer such a
work iso entitled to. The ablest answer which you can make
(which would be the ablest answer that could be made) would
never have any authority with the cabal, yet would allow a
sort of dignity to the author. His patrons will always main
tain that he vanquished you, unless you made him too ridicu
lous for them to dare to revive his name. You might divert
yourself, too, with Alma Mater, the church, employing a
gmgat to defend the citadel, while the generals repose in their
tents. If Irenseus, St. Augustine, &c. did not set appren
tices and proselytes to combat Celsus and the adversaries of
the new religion  but early bishops had not five or six
thousand pounds a-year.
In short, dear Sir, I wish you not to lose your time ; that
is, either not reply, or set your mark on your answer, that it
may always be read with the rest of your works.

32 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1779.

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.
Strawberry HiU, Jan. 3, 1779.
At last, after ten weeks, I have been able to remove
hither, in hopes change of air and the frost will assist my
recovery ; though I am not one of those ancients that forget
the register, and think they are to be as well as ever after
every fit of illness. As yet I can barely creep about the room
in the middle of the day.
I have made my printer (now my secretary) copy out the
rest of Mr. Baker's Life ; for my own hand will barely serve
to write necessary letters, and complains even of them. If
you know of any very trusty person passing between London
and Cambridge, I would send it to you, but should not care
to trust it by the coach, nor to any giddy undergraduate
that comes to town to see a play; and, besides, I mean to
return you your own notes. I will say no more than I have
said in my apology to you for the manner in which I have
written this life. With regard to Mr. Baker himself, I am
confident you will find that I have done full justice»to his
work and character. I do not expect you to approve the in
ferences I draw against some other persons; and yet, if his
conduct was meritorious, it would not be easy to excuse those
who were active after doing what he would not do. You will
not understand this sentence till you have seen the Life.
I hope you have not been untiled or unpaled by the tempest
on New-year's morning.' I have lost two beautiful elms in
a row before my windows here, and had the skyhght demo
lished in town. Lady Pomfret's Gothic house in my street
lost one of the stone towers, like those at King's Chapel, and
it was beaten through the roof. The top of our cross, too, at
Ampthill was thrown down, as I hear from Lady Ossory this
morning. I remember to have been told that Bishop Kidder
' On the morning of the 1st of January 1779, London was visited by
one of the most violent tempests ever known. Scarcely a public build
ing in the metropolis escaped without damage. — E.

1779. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 33
and his wife were killed in their bed in the palace of Glou
cester in 1709,' and yet his heirs were sued for dilapidations.
Lord de Ferrers,^ who deserves his ancient honours, is
going to repair the castle at Tamworth, and has flattered
me that he will consult me. He has a violent passion for
ancestry — and, consequently, I trust will not stake the
patrimony of the Ferrarii, Townshends, and Comptons, at
the hazard-table. A little pride would not hurt our nobility,
cock and hen. Adieu, dear Sir ; send me a good account of
yourself. Yours ever.
TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY.
Arlington Street, Jan. 9, 1779.
Your flight to Bath would have much surprised me,
if Mr. Churchill, who, I think, heard it from Stanley, had
not prepared me for it. Since you was amused, I am glad
you went, especially as you escaped being initiated in Mrs.
Miller's follies at Batheaston,' which you would have men
tioned. She would certainly have sent some trapes of a
Muse to press you, had she known what good epigrams you
write. I went to Strawberry partly out of prudence, partly from
ennui. I thought it best to air myself before I go in and out
of hot rooms here, and had my house thoroughly warmed
for a week previously, and then only stirred from the red
room to the blue on the same floor. I stayed five days,
and was neither the better nor the worse for it. I was quite
tired with having neither company, books, nor amusement
of any kind. Either from the emptiness of the town, or
¦ The memorable storm here aUuded to took place in November 1703,
and Bishop Kidder and his lady perished in their bed at the episcopal
palace at Wells by the faU of a stack of chimneys. They were privately
interred in the cathedral; and one of his daughters, dying single, di
rected by her wiU a monument to be erected for her parents. — E.
'¦' Robert, sixth Earl Ferrers. He had just succeeded to the title, by
the death of his brother Washington, vice-admiral of the blue ; who had
begun to rebuild the mansion of Stanton-Harold, in Leicestershire,
according to a plan of his own, and lived to see it nearly finished. — E.
» See vol. V. p. 406.— E.
VOL. VI. D

34 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1779.
that ten weeks of gout have worn out the patience of all
my acquaintance, but I do not see three persons in three
days. This gives me but an uncomfortable prospect for my
latter days : it is but probable that I may be a cripple in a
fit or two more, if I have strength to go through them; and
as that will be long hfe, one outlives one's acquaintance. I
cannot make new acquaintance, nor interest myself at all
about the young, except those that belong to me ; nor does
that go beyond contributing to their pleasures, without having
much satisfaction in their conversation — But — one must
take everything as it comes, and make the best of it. I
have had a much happier life than I deserve, and than mil-
hons that deserve better. I should be very weak if I could
not bear the uncomfortableness of old age, when I can
afford what comforts it is capable of. How many poor old
people have none of them ! I am ashamed whenever I am
peevish, and recollect that I have fire and servants to help
me. I hear Admiral Keppel is in high spirits with the great
respect and zeal expressed for him. In my own opinion,
his constitution will not stand the struggle. I am very un
easy too for the Duke of Richmond, who is at Portsmouth,
and wiU be at least as much agitated.
Sir William Meredith has written a large pamphlet, and
a very good one. It is to show, that whenever the Grecian
repubhcs taxed their dependents, the latter resisted, and
shook off the yoke. He has printed but twelve copies : the
Duke of Gloucester sent me one of them. There is an anec
dote of my father, on the authority of old Jack White, which
I doubt. It says, he would not go on with the excise scheme,
though his friends advised it. I cannot speak to the par
ticular event, as I was then at school ; but it was more like
him to have yielded, against his sentiments, to Mr. Pelham
and his candid — or say, plausible and timid friends. I have
heard him say, that he never did give up his opinion to such
men but he always repented it. However, the anecdote in
the book would be more to his honour. But what a strange
man is Sir WilUam ! I suppose, now he has written thip

1779. THE HON, HORACE WALPOLE. 35
book, he will change his opinion, and again be for carrying
on the war — or, if he does not know his own mind for two
years together, why will he take places, to make everybody
doubt his honesty ?

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.
January 15, 1779.
I SEND you by Dr. Jacob, as you desired, my life of
Mr. Baker, and with it your own materials. I beg you will
communicate my manuscript to nobody, but if you think it
worth your trouble I will consent to your transcribing it ; but
on one condition, and a silly one for me to exact, who am as
old as you, and broken to pieces, and very unlikely to sur
vive you; but, should so improbable a thing happen, I must
exact that you will keep your transcript sealed up, with
orders written on the cover to be restored to me in case of
an accident, for I should certainly dishke very much to see
it printed without my consent.
I should not think of your copying it, if you did not love
to transcribe, and sometimes things of as little value as my
manuscript I shall beg to have it returned to me by a safe
hand as soon as you can, for I have nothing but the foul
copy which nobody can read, I believe, but I and my secre
tary. I am actually printing my justification about Chatterton,
but only two hundred copies to give away ; for I hate calling
in the whole town to a fray, of which otherwise probably not
one thousand persons would ever hear. You shall have a
copy as soon as ever it is finished, which my printer says
wiU be in three weeks.
You know my printer is my secretary too : do not imagine
I am giving myself airs of a numerous household of officers.
I shall be glad to see the letter of Mr. Baker you mentioned.
You will perceive two or three notes in my manuscript in a
different hand from mine, or that of my amanuensis (still the
same officer) : they were added by a person I lent it to, and
I have effaced part of the last. D 2

36 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1779.
I must finish, lest Dr. Jacob should call, and my parcel
not be ready. I hope your sore throat is gone ; my gout has
returned again a httle with taking the air only, but did not
stay — however, I am still confined, and almost ready to
remain so, to prevent disappointment Yours most sincerely.

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.
ArUngton Street, Jan. 28, 1779.
I WRITE in as much hurry as you did, dear Sir, and
thank you for the motive of yours : mine is to prevent your
fatiguing yourself in copying my manuscript, for which I am
not in the least haste : pray keep it tiU another safe convey
ance presents itself. You may bring the gout, that is, I am
sorry to hear, flying about you, into your hand by weary
ing it.
How can you tell me I may well be cautious about my ma
nuscript and yet advise me to print it? — No — I shall not
provoke nests of hornets, till I am dust, as they will be too.
If I dictated tales when ill in my bed, I must have been
worse than I thought; for, as I know nothing of it, I must
have been hght-headed. Mr. Lort was certainly misinformed^
though he seems to have told you the story kindly to the
honour of my philosophy or spirits — but I had rather have
no fame than what I do not deserve.
I am fretful or low-spirited at times in the gout, hke other
weak old men, and have less to boast than most men. I
have some strange things in my drawer, even wilder than the
Castle of Otranto, and called Hieroglyphic Tales; but they
were not written lately, nor in the gout, nor, whatever they
may seem, written when I was out of my senses. I showed
one or two of them to a person since my recovery, who may
have mentioned them, and occasioned Mr. Lort's misintel-
ligence. I did not at all perceive that the latter looked ill ;
and hope he is quite recovered. You shall see Chatterton
soon. Adieu !

1779. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 37

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.
February 4, 1779.
I HAVE received the manuscript, and though you forbid my
naming the subject more, I love truth, and truth in a friend
so much, that I must tell you, that so far from taking your
sincerity ill, I had much rather you should act with your
native honest sincerity than say you was pleased with my manu
script. I have always tried as much as is in human nature
to divest myself of the self-love of an author ; in the present
case I had less difficulty than ever, for I never thought my
Life of Mr. Baker one of my least indifferent works. You
might, believe me, have sent me your long letter ; whatever
it contained, it would not have made a momentary cloud
between us. I have not only friendship, but great gratitude
for you, for a thousand instances of kindness ; and should
detest any writing of mine that made a breach with a friend,
and still more, if it could make me forget obligations.

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.
February 18, 1779.
I SENT you my Chattertoniad ' last week, in hopes it would
sweeten your pouting; but I find it has not, or has mis
carried ; for you have not acknowledged the receipt with your
usual punctuality.
Have you seen Hasted's new History of Kent ?2 I am sail
ing through it, but am stopped every minute by careless mis
takes. They tell me the author has good materials, but is
very negligent, and so I perceive. He has not even given a
list of monuments in the churches, which I do not remember
' " A Letter to the Editor of the MisceUanies of Thomas Chatterton."
Strawberry HiU, 1779, 8vo.— E.
' " The History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent ;
by Edward Hasted;" four volumes, foUo, 1778-1799." A second and
improved edition, in twelve volumes, octavo, appeared in 1797-1801.
Mr. Hasted died in 1812, at the age of eighty. — ^E.

38 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1779.
in any history of a county ; but he is rich in pedigrees ;
though I suppose they have many errors too, as I have found
some in those I am acquainted vrith. It is unpardonable to
be inaccurate in a work in which one nor expects nor demands
anything but fidehty.'
We have a great herald arising in a very noble race, Lord
de Ferrers. I hope to make him a Gothic architect too, for
he is going to repair Tamworth Castle, and flatters me that
I shall give him sweet counsel. I enjoin him to kemellare.
Adieu ! Yours ever.

TO SIR DAVID DALRYMPLE.''
ArUngton Street, March 12, 1779.
I HAVE received this moment from your bookseller, Sir,
the valuable present of the second volume of your " Annals,"
and beg leave to return you my grateful thanks for so agree
able a gift, of which I can only have taken a look enough
to lament that you do not intend to continue the work.
Repeated and severe attacks of the gout forbid my enter
taining visions of pleasures to come ; but though I might not
have the advantage of your labours. Sir, I wish too well to
posterity not to be sorry that you check your hand.
Lord Buchan did me the honour lately of consulting me
on portraits of illustrious Scots. I recollect that there is at
Windsor a very good portrait of your countryman Duns
Scotus,^ whose name struck me on just turning over your
' In a memoir of himself, which he drew up for the Gentleman's Ma
gazine, to be pubUshed after his death, he says, " his laborious History
of Kent took him up more than forty years ; during the whole series of
which he spared neither pains nor expense to bring it to maturity."  E.
' Now first coUected.
' Granger considers the portrait at Windsor not to be genuine. Of
Duns Scotus, he says, " It requires one-half of a man's life to read the
works of this profound doctor, and the other to understand his subtleties.
His printed works are in twelve volumes, in folio ! His manuscripts are
sleeping in Merton College, Oxford. Voluminous works frequently arise
from the ignorance and confused ideas of the authors : if angels says
Mr. Norris, were writers, we should have few foUos. He was the 'head
of the sect of schoolmen called Scotists. — He died in 1308."  E.

1779. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. S9
volume. A good print was made from that picture some
years ago, but I believe it is now very scarce: as it is not
worth while to trouble his lordship with another letter for
that purpose only, may I take the liberty. Sir, of begging
you to mention it to his lordship ?

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.
Strawberry HUl, March 28, 1779.
Your last called for no answer; and I have so httle to
tell you, that I only write to-day to avoid the air of remiss
ness. I came hither on Friday, for this last week has been
too hot to stay in London ; but March is arrived this morn
ing with his north-easterly malice, and I suppose will assert
his old-style claim to the third of April. The poor infant
apricots will be the victim to that Herod of the almanack. I
have been much amused with new travels through Spain by a
Mr. Swinburne' — at least with the Alhambra, of the inner
parts of which there are two beautiful prints. The Moors
were the most polished,'and had most taste of any people in
the Gothic ages; and I hate the knave Ferdinand and his
bigoted Queen for destroying them. These new travels are
simple, and do tell you a httle more than late voyagers, by
whose accounts one would think there was nothing in Spain
but miileteers and fandangos. In truth there does not seem
to be much worth seeing but prospects ; and those, unless I
were a bird, I would never visit, when the accommodations
are so wretched.
Mr. Cumberland has given the town a masque, called
' "Travels through Spain in the Years 1775 and 1776 ; in which seve
ral Monuments of Roman and Moorish Architecture are iUustrated by
accurate Drawings taken on the spot. By Henry Swinburne." London,
1779, 4to. Mr. Swinburne also pubUshed, in 1783-5, his " Travels in
the Two SiciUes during the Years 1777-8-9, and 1780." This celebrated
traveller was the youngest son of Sir John Swinburne, of Capheaton,
Northumberland ; the long- established seat of that ancient Roman Ca
tholic family. Pecuniary embarrassments, arising from the marriage of
his daughter to Paul Benfield, Esq. and consequent involvement in the
misfortunes of that adventurer, induced him to obtain a place in the
newly-ceded settlement of Trinidad, where he died in 1803. — E.

40 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1779.
Calypso,' which is a prodigy of dulness. Would you beheve,
that such a sentimental writer would be so gross as to make
cantharides one of the ingredients of a love-potion for en
amouring Telemachus? If you think I exaggerate, here are
the lines : " To these, the hot Hispanian fly
Shall bid his languid pulse beat high."
Proteus and Antiope are Minerva's missioners for securing
the prince's virtue, and in recompense they are married and
crowned king and queen !
I have bought at Hudson's sale a fine design of a chimney-
piece, by Holbein, for Henry VIII. If I had a room left, I
would erect It is certainly not so Gothic as that in my
Holbein room ; but there is a great deal of taste for that bas
tard style ; perhaps it was executed at Nonsuch. I do intend
under Mr. Essex's inspection, to begin my offices next spring.
It is late in my day, I confess, to return to brick and mortar ;
but I shall be glad to perfect my plan, or the next possessor
will marry my castle to a Doric stable. There is a perspec
tive through two or three rooms in the Alhambra, that might
easily be improved into Gothic, though there seems but small
affinity between them ; and they might be finished within with
Dutch tiles, and painting, or bits of ordinary marble, as there
must be gilding. Mosaic seems to be their chief ornaments,
for walls, ceilings, and floors. Fancy must sport in the furni
ture, and mottos might be gallant, and would be very Arab
esque, I would have a mixture of colours, but with a strict
attention to harmony and taste; and some one should pre-
dominatei as supposing it the favourite colour of the lady who
was sovereign of the knight's affections who built the house.
Carpets are classically Mahometans, and fountains — but,
alas 1 our climate till last summer was never romantic !
Were I not so old, I would at least build a Moorish novel —
for you see my head runs on Granada — and by taking the
¦ " Calypso" was brought out at Covent-Garden theatre, but was per
formed only a few nights. It was imprudently ushered in by a prelude
in which the author treated the newspaper editors as a set of unprin
cipled feUows. — E.

1779. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 41
most picturesque parts of the Mahometan and Catholic re
ligions, and with the mixture of African and Spanish names,
one might make something very agreeable — at least I will
not give the hint to Mr. Cumberland. Adieu ! Yours ever.

TO EDWARD GIBBON, ESQ.'
[1779.]
The penetration, solidity, and taste, that made you the
first of historians, dear Sir, prevent my being surprised at
your being the best writer of controversial pamphlets too.^
I have read you with more precipitation than such a work
deserved, but I could not disobey you and detain it. Yet
even in that hurry I could discern, besides a thousand beau
ties and strokes of wit, the inimitable eighty-third page,
and the conscious dignity that you maintain throughout, over
your monkish antagonists. When you are so superior in
argument, it would look like insensibility to the power of
your reasoning, to select transient passages for commen
dation; and yet I must mention one that pleased me par
ticularly, from the delicacy of the severity, and from its
novelty too ; it is, bold is not the word. This is the feathered
arrow of Cupid, that is more formidable than the club of
Hercules. I need not specify thanks, when I prove how
much I have been pleased. Your most obliged.
' Now first collected.
'' Gibbon's celebrated " Vindication " of the Fifteenth and- Sixteenth
Chapters of his History appeared early in the year 1779. " I adhered,"
he says, in his Memoirs, " to the wise resolution of trusting myself and
my writings to the candour of the public, tiU Mr. Davis of Oxford pre
sumed to attack, not the faith, but the fidelity of the historian. My
Vindication, expressive of less anger than contempt, amused for a mo
ment the busy and idle metropolis ; and the most rational part of the
laity, and even of the clergy, appear to have been satisfied of my inno
cence and accuracy. I would not print it in quarto, lest it should be
bound and preserved with the History itself. At the distance of twelve
years, I calmly affirm my judgment of Davis, Chelsum, &c. A victory
Over such antagonists was a sufficient humiUation. They, however, were
rewarded in this world. Poor Chelsum was, indeed, neglected ; and I
dare not boast the making Dr. Watson a bishop : he is a prelate of a
large mind and a liberal spirit : but I enjoyed the pleasure of giving a
royal pension to Mr. Davis, and of coUating Dr. Althorpe to an archi-
episcopal living." — E.

42 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1779.

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.
ArUngton Street, AprU 12, 1779.
As your gout was so concise, I will not condole on it,
but I am sorry you are liable to it if you do but take the air.
Thank you for telling me of the vendible curiosities at the Al
derman's. For St Peter's portrait to hang to a fairie's watch,
I shall not think of it, both as I do not believe it very like,
and as it is composed of invisible writing, for which my eyes
are not young enough. In truth, I have almost left off making
purchases; I have neither room for anything more, nor in
clination for them, as I reckon everything very dear when one
has so httle time to enjoy it However, I cannot say but the
plates by Rubens do tempt me a little — yet, as I do not care
to buy even Rubens in a poke, I should wish to know if the
Alderman would let me see if it were but one. Would he be
persuaded? I would pay for the carriage, though I should
not buy them.
Lord de Ferrers will be infinitely happy with the sight of
the pedigree, and I will certainly tell him of it, and how kind
you are.
Strype's account, or rather Stow's, of Richard's person is
very remarkable — but I have done with endeavouring at
truth. Weeds grow more naturally than what one plants. I
hear your Cantabrigians are stiU unshaken Chattertonians.
Many men are about falsehood like girls about the first man
that makes love to them : a handsomer, a richer, or even a
sincerer lover cannot eradicate the first impression  but a
silher swain, or a sihier legend, sometimes gets into the head
of the miss or the learned man, and displaces the antecedent
folly. Truth's kingdom is not of this world.
I do not know whether our clergy are growing Mahometans
or not: they certainly are not what they profess themselves 
but as you and I should not agree perhaps in assigning the
same defects to them, I wiU not enter on a subject which
I have promised you to drop. All I ahude to now is, the

1779. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 43
shocking murder of Miss Ray' by a divine. In my own
opinion, we are growing more fit for Bedlam than for Ma
homet's paradise. The poor criminal in question, I am per
suaded, is mad — and the misfortune is, the law does not
know how to define the shades of madness ; and thus there
are twenty outpensioners of Bedlam, for one that is confined.
You, dear Sir, have chosen a wiser path to happiness by de
pending on yourself for amusement. Books and past ages
draw one into no scrapes, and perhaps it is best not to know
much of men till they are dead. I wish you health — you
want nothing else. I am, dear Sir, yours most truly.

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.
Arlington Street, AprU 20, 1779.
DEAR SIR,
I HAVE received the plates very safely, but hope you nor
the Alderman* will take it ill that I return them. They are
extremely pretty, and uncommonly well preserved ; but I am
sure they are not by Rubens, nor I believe after his designs,
for I am persuaded they are older than his time. In truth, I
have a great many of the same sort, and do not wish for more.
I shall send them back on Thursday by the Fly, and will beg
you to inquire after them; and I trust they will arrive as
safely as they did to Yours ever.

" On the 7th of AprU, Miss Reay, who had been the mistress of Lord
Sandwich for twenty years, by whom she was the mother of many chil
dren, was shot, on her leaving Covent-Garden theatre, by the Rev. James
Hackman, who had the living of Wiverton, in Norfolk ; a young man
not half her age, who had imbibed a violent passion for her, whom he
first met at Lord Sandwich's seat at Hinchinbroke, where he had been
frequently invited to dine while commanding a recruiting party at
Huntingdon ; he being, previously to his entering the church, a Ueute
nant in the 68th regiment of foot. Having shot Miss Reay, he fired a
pistol at himself ; but, being only wounded by it, he was tried at the
Old Bailey for murder, convicted, and executed. — E.
" Alderman John Boydell, an English engraver ; distinguished as an
encourager of the fine arts. In 1790 he held the office of Lord Mayor
of London, and died in 1804. — £.

44 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1779.

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.
AprU 23, 1779.
I OUGHT not to trouble you so often when you are not
-well ; but that is the very cause of my writing now. You left
off abruptly from disorder, and therefore I wish to know it is
gone. The plates I hope got home safe. They are pretty,
especially the reverses ; but the drawing in general is bad.
Pray tell me what you mean by a priced catalogue of the
pictures at Houghton. Is it a printed one ? if it is, where is
it to be had ? — odd questions from me, and which I should
not wish to have mentioned as coming from me. I have been
told to-day that they are actually sold to the Czarina — sic
transit ! mortifying enough, were not everything transitory !
we must recollect that our griefs and pains are so, as well as
our joys and glories ; and, by balancing the account, a grain
of comfort is to be extracted. Adieu ! I shall be heartily
glad to receive a better account of you.

TO MRS. ABINGTON.'
[1779.]
Mr. Walpole cannot express how much he is mortified
that he cannot accept of Mrs. Abington's obliging invitation,
as he had engaged company to dine with him on Sunday at
Strawberry-hill; whom he would put off, if not foreigners
who are leaving England. Mr. Walpole hopes, however, that
this accident will not prevent an acquaintance, which his
admiration of Mrs. Abington's genius has made him long
desire ; and which he hopes to cultivate at Strawberry-hill,
when her leisure will give him leave to trouble her with an
invitation. ' Now first coUected.

1779. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 45
TO THE REV. MR. COLE.
ArUngton Street, May 21, 1779.
As Mr. Essex has told me that you still continue out of
order, I am impatient to hear from yourself how you are. Do
send me a line : I hope it will be a satisfactory one.
Do you know that Dr. Ducarel has published a translation
of a History of the Abbey of Bee ? There is a pretty print
to it: and one very curious circumstance, at least valuable to
us disciples of Alma Mater Etonensis. The ram-hunting was
derived from the manor of Wrotham in Norfolk, which formerly
belonged to Bee, and being forfeited, together with other ahen
. priories, was bestowed by Henry VI. on our college. I do
not repine at reading any book from which I can learn a single
fact that I wish to know. For the lives of the abbots, they
were, according to the author, all pinks of piety and hohness
— but there are few other facts amusing, especially with re
gard to the customs of those savage times — excepting that
the Empress Matilda was buried in a bull's hide, and after
wards had a tomb covered with silver. There is another new
book called " Sketches from Nature," in two volumes, by Mr. G.
Keate, in which I found one fact too, that, if authentic, is
worth knowing. The work is an imitation of Sterne, and has
a sort of merit, though nothing that arrives at originality.
For the foundation of the church of Reculver, he quotes a
manuscript said to be written by a Dominican friar of Canter
bury, and preserved at Louvain. The story is evidently meta
morphosed into a novel, and has very little of an antique air;
but it affirms that the monkish author attests the beauty of
Richard III. This is very absurd, if invention has nothing to
do with the story; and therefore one should suppose it ge
nuine. I have desired Dodsley to ask Mr. Keate, if there
truly exists such a manuscript : if there does, I own I wish he
had printed it rather than his own production; for I agree
with Mr. Gray, " that any man living may make a book worth
reading, if he will but set down with truth what he has seen
or heard, no matter whether the book is well written or not."
Let those who can't write, glean.

46 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1779.
TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY.
Arlington Street, May 22, 1779.
If you hear of us no oftener than we of you, you will be
as much behindhand in news as my Lady Lyttelton. We
have seen a traveller that saw you in your island,' but it sounds
Uke hearing of Ulysses. Well ! we must be content. You
are not only not dethroned, but owe the safety of your domi
nions to your own skill in fortification. If we do not hear of
your extending your conquests, why, is it not less than all our
modem heroes have done, whom prophets have foretold and
gazettes celebrated — or who have foretold and celebrated them
selves. Pray be content to be cooped up in an island that
has no neighbours, when the Howes and Clintons and Dun-
mores and Burgoynes and Campbells are not yet got beyond
the great river — Inquiry!" To-day's papers say, that the
little Prince of Orange ^ is to invade you again ; but we trust
Sir James Wallace has chpped his wings so close, that they
will not grow again this season, though he is so ready to fly.
Nothing material has happened since I wrote last — so, as
every moment of a civil war is precious, every one has been
turned to the interest of diversion. There have been three
masquerades, an installation, and the ball of the knights at the
Haymarket this week ; not to mention Almack's festino. Lady
Spencer's, Ranelagh and Vauxhall, operas and plays. The
Duchess of Bolton too saw masks — so many, that the floor
gave way, and the company in the dining-room were near fall
ing on the heads of those in the parlour, and exhibiting all
that has not yet appeared in Doctors' Commons. At the
knights' ball was such a profusion of strawberries, that people
' Mr. Conway was now at his government of Jersey.
' The parUamentary inquiry which took place in the House of Com
mons on the conduct of the American war.
' The Prince of Nassau, who had commanded the attack upon Jersey,
claiming relationship to the great house of Nassau, Mr. Walpole eaUs
him the " little Prince of Orange." Gibbon, in a letter to Mr. Holroyd,
of the 7th, says, " You_ have heard of the Jersey invasion ; everybody
praises Arbuthnot's decided spirit. Conway went last night to throw
himself into the island." — E.

1779. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 47
could hardly get into the supper-room. I could tell you
more, but I do not love to exaggerate.
Lady Ailesbury told me this morning that Lord Bristol has
got a calf with two feet to each leg — I am convinced it is by
the Duchess of Kingston, who has two of every thing where
others have but one.' Adieu ! — I am going to sup with Mrs.
Abington — and hope Mrs. Clive vrill not hear of it>

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.
Strawberry HiU, June 2, 1779.
I AM most sincerely rejoiced, dear Sir, that you find
yourself at all better, and trust it is an omen of farther
amendment. Mr. Essex surprised me by telling me, that you,
who keep yourself so warm and so numerously clothed, do yet
sometimes, if the sun shines, sit and write in your garden for
hours at a time. It is more than I should readily do, whose
habitudes are so very different from yours. Your complaints
seem to demand perspiration — but I do not venture to advise.
I understand no constitution but my own, and should kill
Milo, if I managed him as I treat myself. I sat in a win
dow on Saturday, with the east wind blowing on my neck till
near two in the morning — and it seems to have done me
good, for I am better within these two days than I have been
these six months. My spirits have been depressed, and my
nerves so aspen, that the smallest noise disturbed me. To
day I do not feel a complaint; which is something at near
sixty-two. I don't know whether I have not misinformed you, nor am
sure it was Dr. Ducarel who translated the account of the
Abbey of Bee — he gave it to Mr. Lort; but I am not certain
he ever published it. You was the first that notified to me
the fifth volume of the Archaeologia — I am not much more
edified than usual; but there are three pretty prints of Re-
' " Do you know, my lord," said the Duchess, then Miss Chudleigh,
to Lord Chesterfield, " the world says I have had twins ! " — " Does it ? "
said his lordship ; " I make a point of beUeving only one-half of what it
s."— E.

48 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1779.
ginal Seals. Mr. Pegge's tedious dissertation, which he calls
a brief one, about the foohsh legend of St George, is despi
cable : all his arguments are equally good for proving the ex
istence of the dragon. What diversion might laughers make
of the society ! Dolly Pentraeth, the old woman of Mouse-
hole, and Mr. Penneck's nurse, p. 81, would have furnished
Foote with two personages for a farce. The same grave dis
sertation on patriarchal customs seems to have as much to
do with British antiquities, as the Lapland witches that sell
wind — and pray what business has the society with Roman
inscriptions in Dalmatia! I am most pleased with the ac
count of Nonsuch, imperfect as it is : it appears to have been
but a villa, and not considerable for a royal one. You see
lilacs were then a novelty. — WeU, I am glad they pubhsh
away. The vanity of figuring in these repositories will make
many persons contribute their manuscripts, and every now
and then something valuable will come to light, which its own
intrinsic merit might not have saved.
I know nothing more of Houghton. I should certainly be
glad to have the priced catalogue; and if you will lend me
yours, my printer shall transcribe it — but I am in no hurry.
I conceive faint hopes, as the sale is not concluded : however,
I take care not to flatter myself.
I think I told you I had purchased, at Mr. Ives's sale, a
handsome coat in painted glass, of Hobart impaling Boleyn —
but I can find no such match in my pedigree — yet I have
heard that Blickling belonged to Ann Boleyn's father. Pray
reconcile all this to me.
Lord de Ferrers is to dine here on Saturday ; and I have
got to treat him with an account of ancient painting, formerly
in the hall of Tamworth Castle ; they are mentioned in War-
ton's Observations on the Fairy Queen, vol. i. p. 43.
Do not put yourself to pain to answer this — only be as
sured I shall be happy to know when you are able to write
with ease. You must leave your cloister, if your transcribing
leaves you. Believe me, dear Sir, Ever most truly.

1779. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 49

TO THE REV. DR. LORT.
Strawberry HiU, June 4, 1779.
I AM sorry, dear Sir, you could not let me have the plea
sure of your company; but, I own, you have partly, not en
tirely, made me amends by the sight of your curious ma
nuscript, which I return you, with your other book of inaugu
rations. The sight of the manuscript was particularly welcome to
me, because the long visit of Henry VI. and his uncle Glou
cester, to St Edmund's Bury, accounts for those rare altar
tablets that I bought at Mr. Ives's sale, on which are incon-
testably the portraits of Duke Humphrey, Cardinal Beaufort
and the same archbishop that is in my Marriage of Henry VI.
I know the house of Lancaster were patrons of St. Edmund's
Bury ; but so long a visit is demonstration.
The fourth person on my pannels is unknown. Over his
head is a coat of arms. It may be that of W. Curteys the
abbot, or the alderman, as he is in scarlet. His figure and
the Duke's are far superior to the other two, and worthy of a
good Italian master. The Cardinal and the Archbishop are in
the dry hard manner of the age. I wish you would call and
look at them ; they are at Mr. Bonus's in Oxford-road ; the
two prelates are much damaged. I peremptorily enjoined
Bonus to repair only, and not repaint them ; and thus, by put
ting him out of his way, I have put him so much out of
humour too, that he has kept them these two years, and not
finished them yet. I design them for the four void spaces in
my chapel, on the sides of the shrine. The Duke of Glou
cester's face is so like, though younger, that it proves I guessed
right at his figure in my Marriage. The tablets came out of
the abbey of Bury ; were procured by old Peter Le Neve,
Norroy ; and came by his widow's marriage to Tom Martin, at
whose sale Mr. Ives bought them. We have very few princely
portraits so ancient, so authentic, and none so well painted as
the Duke and fourth person. These were the insides of the
doors, which I had split into two, and value them extremely.
VOL. VI. E

50 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1779.
This account I think will be more satisfactory to you than
notes. Pray tell me how you hke the pictures when you have ex
amined them. I shall search in Edmondson's new Vocabu
lary of Arms for the coat which contains three bulls' heads on
six pieces ; but the colours are either white and black, or the
latter is become so by time.. I hope you are not going out of
town yet ; I shaU probably be there some day in next week.
I see advertized a book something in the way of your inau
gurations, caUed Le Costume; do you know anything of it?
Can you teh me who is the author of the Second Anticipation
on the Exhibition ? Is not it Barry the painter ?

TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY.
Strawberry HUl, Saturday, June 5, 1779.
I WRITE to you more seldom than I am disposed to do,
from having nothing positive to tell you, and from being un
willing to say and unsay every minute something that is re
ported positively. The confident assertions of the victory
over D'Estaing are totally vanished — and they who invented
them, now declaim as bitterly against Byron, as if he had de
ceived them — and as they did against Keppel. This day
se'nnight there was a great alarm about Ireland — which was
far from being all invention, though not an absolute insurrec
tion, as was said. The case, I believe, was this : — The
court in order to break the volunteer army established by the
Irish themselves, endeavoured to persuade a body in Lady
Blayney's county of Monaghan to enlist in the militia — which
they took indignantly. They said, they had great regard for
Lady Blayney and Lord Clermont; but to act under them,
would be acting under the King, and that was by no means
their intention. There have since been motions for inquiries
what steps the ministers have taken to satisfy the Irish — and
these they have imprudently rejected — which will not tend to
pacification. The ministers have been pushed too on the
article of Spain, and could not deny that all negotiation is at

1779. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 51
an end — though they will not own farther. However, the
Spanish ambassador is much out of humour. From Paris
they write confidently of 'the approaching declaration ; ' and
Lord Sandwich, I hear, has said in a very mixed company,
that it was folly not to expect it. There is another million
asked, and given on a vote of credit; and Lord North has
boasted of such mines for next year, that one would think he
believed next year would never come.
The Inquiry^ goes on, and Lord Harrington did himself
and Burgoyne honour. Barr6 and Governor Johnstone have
had warm words,^ and Burke has been as frantic for the Roman
Catholics as Lord George Gordon against them. The Par
liament, it is said, is to rise on the 21st
You will not collect from all this that our prospect clears
up. I fear , there is not more discretion in the treatment of
Ireland than of America. The court seems to be infatuated,
and to think that nothing is of any consequence but a ma
jority in Parliament — though they have totally lost all power
but that of provoking. Fortunate it had been for the King
and kingdom, had the court had no majority for these six
years ! America had still been ours ! — and all the lives and
all the milhons we have squandered ! A majority that has lost
thirteen provinces by bullying and vapouring, and the most
childish menaces, will be a brave countermatch for France and
Spain, and a rebellion in Ireland ! In short, it is plain that
there is nothing a raajorityin Parliament can do, but outvote
a minority ; and yet by their own accounts one would think
they could not do even that. I saw a paper t'other day that
began with this Iriscism, " As the minority have lost us thir
teen provinces," &c. I know nothing the minority have done,
or been suffered to do, but restore the Roman Catholic re
hgion — and that too was by the desire of the court
' On the breaking out of the war between this country and America,
Spain had offered to mediate between them ; but, receiving a refusal, she
at once declared herself a principal in the war, and ready to fulfil the
terms of the family compact. — E.
' The Inquiry into the Conduct of the American war.
' In the course of a debate in the House of Commons, on the 3rd of
June, Governor Johnstone told Colonel Barre, that he was making a
E 2

52 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1779.
This is however the present style. They announced with
infinite applause a new production of Tickell: — it has ap
peared, and is a most paltry performance. It is called the
Cassette Verte of M. de Sartine, and pretends to be his cor
respondence with the opposition. Nay, they are so pitifully
mean as to laugh at Doctor Franklin, who has such thorough
reason to sit and laugh at them. What triumph it must be to
him to see a miserable pamphlet all the revenge they can
take ! There is another, still duller, caUed Opposition Morn
ings, in which you are lugged in. In truth, it is a compliment
to any man to except him out of the number of those that
have contributed to the shocking disgraces inflicted on this
undone country ! When Lord Chatham was minister, he
never replied to abuse but by a victory.
I know no private news : I have been here ever since Tues
day, enjoying my tranquillity, as much as an honest man can
do who sees his country ruined. It is just such a period as
makes philosophy wisdom. There are great moments when
every man is called on to exert himself — but when folly, in
fatuation, delusion, incapacity, and profligacy fling a nation
away, and it concurs itself, and applauds its destroyers, a man
who has lent no hand to the mischief, and can neither pre
vent nor remedy the mass of evils, is fully justified in sit
ting aloof and beholding the tempest rage, with silent scorn
and indignant compassion. Nay, I have, I own, some comfort
able reflections. I rejoice that there is still a great continent
of Enghshmen who will remain free and independent, and who
laugh at the impotent majorities of a prostitute Parliament I
care not whether General Burgoyne and Governor Johnstone
cross over and figure in, and support or oppose ; nor whether
Mr. Burke, or the superior of the Jesuits, is high commissioner
to the kirk of Scotland. My ideas are such as I have always
had, and are too plain and simple to comprehend modern con
fusions; and, therefore, they suit with those of few men.
What will be the issue of this chaos, I know not, and, pro
bably, shah not see. I do see with satisfaction, that what was
scaramouch of himself. The Colonel got up to demand an explanation,
but the Speaker put an end to the altercation. — E.

1779. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 53
meditated has failed by the grossest folly ; and when one has
escaped the worst, lesser evils must be endured with patience.
After this dull effusion, I will divert you with a story that
made me laugh this morning till I cried. You know my Swiss
David, and his incomprehensible pronunciation. He came
to me, and said, " Auh ! dar is Meses Ellis wants some of
your large flags to put in her great O." With much ado, I
found out that Mrs. Ellis had sent for leave to take up some
flags out of my meadow for her grotto.
I hope in a few days to see Lady Ailesbury and Miss
Jennings here ; I have writ to propose it What are your in
tentions .? Do you stay till you have made your island im
pregnable ? I doubt it will be our only one that will be so.

TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY.
Strawberry HiU, June 16, 1779.
Your Countess was here last Thursday, and received
a letter from you, that told us how slowly you receive ours.
When you will receive this I cannot guess; but it dates a
new era, which you with reason did not care to look at as
possible. In a word, behold a Spanish war ! I must detail
a httle to increase your wonder. I heard here the day be
fore yesterday that it was likely ; and that night received a
letter from Paris, telhng me (it was of the 6th) that Mon
sieur de Beauveau was going, they knew not whither, at the
head of twenty-five thousand men, with three lieutenant-
generals and six or eight marechaux de camp under him.
Yesterday I went to town, and Thomas Walpole happened
to call on me. He, who used to be informed early, did not
beheve a word either of a Spanish war or a French expe
dition. I saw some other persons in the evening as ignorant
At ni^ht I went to sup at Richmond-house. The Duke said
the Brest fleet was certainly sailed, and had got the start of
ours by twelve days; that Monsieur de Beauveau was on
board with a large sum of money, and with white and red
cockades ; and that there would certainly be a Spanish war.

54 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1779.
He added, that the Opposition were then pressing in the
House of Commons to have the Parhament continue sitting,
and urging to know if we were not at the eve of a Spanish
war; but the ministers persisted in the prorogation for to
morrow or Friday, and would not answer on Spain.
I said I would make you wonder — But no — Why should
the Parhament continue to sit ? Are not the ministers and
the Parliament the same thing? And how has either House
shown that it has any talent for war ?
The Duke of Richmond does n^t guess whither the Brest
fleet is gone. He thinks, if to Ireland, we should have
known it by this time. He has heard that the Prince of
Beauveau has said he was going on an expedition that would
be glorious in the eyes of posterity. I asked, if that might
not mean Gibraltar ? The Duke doubts, but hopes it, as he
thinks it no wise measure on their side ; yet he was very
melancholy, as you will be, on this heavy accession to our
distresses. Well ! here we are, aris et focis and all at stake ! What
can we be meaning? Unable to conquer America before
she was assisted — scarce able to keep France at bay — are
we a match for both, and Spain too? What can be our
view? nay, what can be our expectation? I sometimes
think we reckon it will be more creditable to be forced by
France and Spain to give up America, than to have the
merit with the latter of doing it with grace. — But, as Cato
says, " I 'm weary of conjectures — this must end them ; "
that is, the sword: — and never, I believe, did a country
plunge itself into such difficulties step by step, and for six
years together, without once recollecting that each foreign
war rendered the object of the civil war more unattainable ;
and that in both the foreign wars we have not an object in
prospect Unable to recruit our remnant of an army in
America, are we to make conquests on France and Spain?
They may choose their attacks : we can scarce choose what
we will defend.

1779. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 55
Ireland, they say, is more temperate than was expected.
That is some consolation — yet many fear the Irish will be
tempted to unite with America, which would throw all that
trade into their convenient harbours : and I own I have ap
prehensions that the Parliament's rising without taking a step
in their favour may offend them. Surely at least we have
courageous ministers. I thought my father a stout man : —
he had not a tithe of their spirit.
The town has wound up the season perfectly in character
by a fete at the Pantheon by subscription. Le Texier man
aged it; but it turned out sadly. The company was first
shut into the galleries to look down on the supper, then
let to descend to it. Afterwards they were led into the
subterraneous apartment, which was laid with mould, and
planted with trees, and crammed with nosegays: but the
fresh earth, and the dead leaves, and the effluvia of breaths
made such a stench and moisture, that they were suffocated ;
and when they remounted, tbe legs and wings of chickens
and remnants of ham (for the supper was not removed)
poisoned them more. A druid in an arbour distributed verses
to the ladies ; then the Baccelli' and the dancers of the Opera
danced; and then danced the company; and then it being
morning, and the candles burnt out, the windows were
opened; and then the stewed-danced assembly were such
shocking figures, that they fled like ghosts as they looked.
— I suppose there will be no more balls unless the French
land, and then we shall show we do not mind it
Thus I have told you all I know. You will ponder over
these things in your little distant island, when we have for
gotten them. There is another person, one Doctor Franklin,
who, I fancy, is not sorry that we divert ourselves so well.
Yours ever.

¦ After the departure of MademoiseUe Heinel, no dancing so much
delighted the frequenters of the Opera as that of MademoiseUe Baccelli
and M. Vestris le jeune. — B.

56 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1779.

TO THE HON. GEORGE HARDINGE.'
Strawberry HiU, July 4, 1779.
I HAVE now received the drawings of Grignan, and know
not how to express my satisfaction and gratitude but by a
silly witticism that is hke the studied quaintness of the last
age. In short they are so much more beautiful than I ex
pected, that I am not surprised at your having surprised me
by exceeding even what I expected from your well-known
kindness to me; they are charmingly executed, and with
great taste. I own too that Grignan is grander, and in a
much finer situation, than I had imagined; as I concluded
that the witchery of Madame de Sevigne's ideas and style
had spread the same leaf-gold over places with which she
gilded her friends. All that has appeared of them since the
publication of her letters has lowered them. A single letter
of her daughter, that to Paulina, with a description of the
Duchess of Bourbon's toilette, is worthy of the mother.
Paulina's own letters contain not a little worth reading;
one just divines that she might have written well if she
had had anything to write about (which, however, would not
have signified to her grandmother). Coulanges was a silly
good-humoured glutton, that flattered a rich widow for her
dinners. His wife was sensible, but dry, and rather peevish
at growing old. Unluckily nothing more has come to light
of Madame de Sevigne's son, whose short letters in the col
lection I am almost profane enough to prefer to his mother's ;
and which makes me astonished that she did not love his
wit so unaffected, and so congenial to her own, in preference
to the eccentric and sophisticated reveries of her sublime and
ill-humoured daughter. Grignan alone maintains its dignity,
> Son of Nicholas Hardinge, Esq. one of the joint secretaries of the
treasury, and member for the borough of Eye. He was educated at
Eton school, and finished his studies at Trinity College, Cambridge
where Dr. Watson was his tutor. He was caUed to the bar' in 1769, and
was subsequently appointed solicitor-general to the Queen. In 1787 he
was made a Welsh judge, and died in 1816. In 1818, the works of this
clever and eccentric scholar were pubUshed, with an account of his life
by Mr. John Nichols.— E. '

1779. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 57
and shall be consecrated here among other monuments of
that bewitching period, and amongst which one loves to lose
oneself, and drink oblivion of an era so very unlike ; for the
awkward bigots to despotism of our time have not Madame
de Sevigne's address, nor can paint an Indian idol with an
hundred hands as graceful as the Apollo of the Belvidere.
When will you come and accept my thanks ? will Wednesday
next suit you ? But do you know that I must ask you not
to leave your gown behind you, which indeed I never knew
you put on willingly, but to come in it I shall want your
protection at Westminster Hall. Yours most cordially.

TO THE COUNTESS OF AILESBURY.
Saturday night, July 10, 1779.
I COULD not thank your ladyship before the post went
out to-day, as I was getting into my chaise to go and dine
at Carshalton with my cousin Thomas Walpole when I re
ceived your kind inquiry about my eye. It is quite well
again, and I hope the next attack of the gout will be any
where rather than in that quarter.
I did not expect Mr. Conway would think of returning just
now. As you have lost both Mrs. Damer and Lady WiUiam
Campbell, I do not see why your ladyship should not go to
Goodwood. The Baroness's increasing peevishness does not surprise
me. When people will not weed their own minds, they are
apt to' be overrun with nettles. She knows nothing of poli
tics, and no wonder talks nonsense about them. It is silly to
wish three nations had but one neck; but it is ten times
more absurd to act as if it was so, which the government has
done ; — ay, and forgetting, too, that it has not a scimitar
large enough to sever that neck, which they have in effect
made one. It is past the time. Madam, of making conjec
tures. How can one guess whither France and Spain will di
rect a blow that is in their option? I am rather inclined
to think that they will have patience to ruin us in detail.

58 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1779.
Hitherto France and America have carried their points by
that manoeuvre. Should there be an engagement at sea, and
the French and Spanish fleets, by their great superiority,
have the advantage, one knows not what might happen.
Yet though there are such large preparations making on the
French coast I do not much expect a serious invasion, as
they are sure they can do us more damage by a variety of
other attacks, where we can make little resistance. Gibraltar
and Jamaica can but be the immediate objects of Spain. Ire
land is much worse guarded than this island: — nay, we must
be undone by our expense, should the summer pass without
any attempt. My cousin thinks they will try to destroy Ports
mouth and Plymouth — but I have seen nothing in the pre
sent French ministry that looks like bold enterprise. We are
much more adventurous, that set everything to the hazard :
but there are such numbers of baronesses that both talk and
act with passion, that one would think the nation had lost its
senses. Everything has miscarried that has been undertaken,
and the worse we succeed, the more is risked ; — yet the na
tion is not angry ! How can one conjecture during such a
delirium ? I sometimes almost think I must be in the wrong
to be of so contrary an opinion to most men — yet, when
every misfortune that has happened had been foretold by a
few, why should I not think I have been in the right? Has
not almost every single event that has been announced as
prosperous proved a gross falsehood, and often a silly one?
Are we not at this moment assured that Washington cannot
possibly amass an army of above 8000 men ! and yet Clinton,
with 20,000 men, and with the hearts, as we are told, too, of
three parts of the colonies, dares not show his teeth without
the walls of New York? Can I be in the wrong in not be
hoving what is so contradictory to my senses? We could
not conquer America when it stood alone ; then France sup
ported it and we did not mend the matter. To make it still
easier, we have driven Spain into the alhance. Is this wis
dom? Would it be presumption, even if one were single, to
think that we must have the worst in such a contest ? Shall
I be hke the mob, and expect to conquer France and Spain,

1779. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 59
and then thunder upon America? Nay, but the higher mob
do not expect such success. They would not be so angry at
the house of Bourbon, if not morally certain that those kings
destroy all our passionate desire and expectation of conquer
ing America. We bullied, and threatened, and begged, and
nothing would do. Yet independence was still the word.
Now we rail at the two monarchs — and when they have
banged us, we shall sue to them" as humbly as we did to the
Congress. All this my senses, such as they are, tell me has
been and will be the case. What is worse, all Europe is of the
same opinion; and though forty thousand baronesses may be
ever so angry, I venture to prophesy that we shall make but
a very foolish figure whenever we are so lucky as to obtain a
peace; and posterity, that may have prejudices of its own,
will still take the liberty to pronounce, that its ancestors were
a woful set of politicians from the year 1774 to — I wish I
knew when.
Jf I might advise, I would recommend Mr. Burrell to com
mand the fieet in the room of Sir Charles Hardy. The .for
tune of the Burrells is powerful enough to baffle calculation.
Good -night. Madam !
P. S. I have not written to Mr. Conway since this day
sevennight,. not having a teaspoonful of news to send him. I
will beg your ladyship to tell him so.

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.
Strawberry HiU, July 12, 1779.
I AM concerned, dear Sir, that you gave yourself the
trouble of transcribing the catalogue and prices, which I re
ceived last night and for which I am exceedingly obliged to
you. Partial as I am to the pictures at Houghton, I confess
I think them much overvalued. My father's whole collection,
of which alone he had preserved the prices, cost but 40,000Z. ;
and after his death there were three sales of pictures, among
which were all the whole-lengths of Vandyke but three, which
had been sent to Houghton, but not fitting any of the spaces

60 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1779.
left came back to town. Few of the rest sold were very fine,
but no doubt Sir Robert had paid as dear for many of them;
as purchasers are not perfect connoisseurs at first.
Many of the valuations are not only exorbitant, but inju
dicious. They who made the estimate seem to have considered
the rarity of the hands more than the excellence. Three —
The Magi's Offering, by Carlo Maratti, as it is called, and two,
supposed Paul Veronese, — are very indifferent copies, and yet
aU are roundly valued, and the first ridiculously. I do not
doubt of another picture in the collection but the Last Supper,
by Raphael, and yet this is set down at 500?. I miss three
pictures, at least they are not set down, the Sir Thomas Whar
ton, and Laud and Gibbons, The first is most capital ; yes,
I recollect I have had some doubts on the Laud, though the
University of Oxford once offered 400Z. for it — and if Queen
Henrietta is by Vandyke, it is a very indifferent one. The
affixing a higher value to the Pietro Cortona than to the oc
tagon Guido is most absurd — I have often gazed on the lat
ter,, and preferred it even to the Doctor's. In short, the
appraisers were determined to see what the Czarina could
give, rather than what the pictures were really worth — I am
glad she seems to think so, for I hear no more of the sale —
it is not very wise in me still to concern myself, at my age,
about what I have so little interest in — it is still less wise to
be anxious on trifles, when one's country is sinking. I do
not know which is most mad, my nephew or our ministers —
both the one and the other increase my veneration for the
founder of Houghton !
I will not rob you of the prints you mention, dear Sir ; one
of them at least I know Mr. Pennant gave me. I do not ad
mire him for his punctihousness with you. Pray tell me the
name of your glass-painter ; I do not think I shall want him,
but it is not impossible. Mr. Essex agreed with me, that
Jarvis's windows for Oxford, after Sir Joshua Reynolds, will
not succeed. Most of his colours are opake, and their great
beauty depending on a spot of hght for sun or moon, is an im
position. When his paintings are exhibited at Charing-cross,
all the rest of the room is darkened to reheve them. That

1779. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 61
cannot be done at New College ; or if done, the chapel would
be too dark. If there are other hghts, the effect will be lost.
This sultry weather will, I hope, quite restore you ; people
need not go to Lisbon and Naples, if we continue to have
such summers. Yours most sincerely.

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.
Strawberry HiU, August 12, 1779.
I WRITE from decency, dear Sir, not from having any
thing particular to say, but to thank you for your offer of
letting me see the arms of painted glass; which, however,
I will dechne, lest it should be broken, and as at present I
have no occasion to employ the painter. If I build my offices,
perhaps I may have ; but I have dropped that thought for this
year. The disastrous times do not inspire expense. Our
alarms, I conclude, do not ruffle your hermitage. We are re
turning to our state of islandhood, and shall have little, I be
lieve, to boast but of what we have been.
I see a History of Alien Priories announced ; ' do you know
anything of it, or of the author ? I am ever yours.

TO THE COUNTESS OF AILESBURY.
Strawberry HiU, Friday night, 1779.
I AM not at all surprised, my dear Madam, at the intre
pidity of Mrs. Damer ; ^ she always was the heroic daughter
of a hero. Her sense and coolness never forsake her. I,
who am not so firm, shuddered at your ladyship's account.
Now that she has stood fire for four hours, I hope she will
give as clear proofs of her understanding, of which I have
' This was Mr. Gough's well-known work, entitled " Some Account
of the AUen Priories, and of such Lands as they are known to have pos
sessed in England and Wales," in two volumes octavo. — E.
^ The packet in which she was crossing from Dover to Ostend was
taken by a French frigate, after a running fight of several hours.

62 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1779.
as high opinion as of her courage, and not return in any
danger. I am to dine at Ditton to-morrow, and will certainly talk
on the subject you recommend; yet I am far, till I have
heard more, from thinking with your ladyship, that more
troops and artillery at Jersey would be desirable. Any con
siderable quantity of either, especially of the former, cannot
be spared at this moment, when so big a cloud hangs over this
island, nor would any number avail if the French should be
masters at sea. A large garrison would but tempt the French
thither, were it but to distress this country; and, what is
worse, would encourage Mr. Conway to make an impractica
ble defence. If he is to remain in a situation so unworthy of
him, I confess I had rather he was totally incapable of making
any defence. I love him enough not to murmur at his ex
posing himself where his country and his honour demand him ;
but I would not have him measure himself in a place untenable
against very superior force. My present comfort is, as to him,
that France at this moment has a far vaster object. I have
good reason to believe the government knows that a great
army is ready to embark at St. Maloes, but will not stir till
after a sea-fight, which we do not know but may be engaged
at this moment. Our fleet is allowed to be the finest ever set
forth by this country ; but it is inferior in number by seven
teen ships to the united squadron of the Bourbons. France,
if successful, means to pour in a vast many thousands on us,
and has threatened to burn the capital itself. Jersey, my
dear Madam, does not enter into a calculation of such magni
tude. The moment is singularly awful; yet the vaunts of
enemies are rarely executed successfully and ably. Have we
trampled America under our foot ?
You have too good sense. Madam, to be imposed upon by
my arguments, if they are insubstantial. You do know that I
have had my terrors for Mr. Conway ; but at present they are
out of the question, from the insignificance of his island. Do
not listen to rumours, nor believe a single one till it has been
canvassed over and over. Fear, folly, fifty motives, will coin
new reports every hour at such a conjuncture. When one is

1779. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 63
totally void of credit and power, patience is the only wisdom.
I have seen dangers still more imminent They were dis-.
persed. Nothing happens in proportion to what is meditated.
Fortune, whatever fortune is, is more constant than is the
common notion. I do not give this as one of my solid argu
ments, but I have always encouraged myself in being supersti
tious on the favourable side. I never, like most superstitious
people, beheve auguries against my wishes. We have been
fortunate in the escape of Mrs. Damer, and in the defeat at
Jersey even before , Mr. Conway arrived ; and thence I de
pend on the same future prosperity. From the authority of
persons who do not reason on such airy hopes, I am seriously
persuaded, that if the fleets engage, the enemy will not gain
advantage without deep-felt loss, enough probably to dismay
their invasion. Coolness may succeed, and then negotiation.
Surely, if we can weather the summer, we shall, obstinate as
we are against conviction, be compelled by the want of money
to relinquish our ridiculous pretensions, now proved to be
utterly impracticable ; for, with an inferior navy at home, can
we assert sovereignty over America ? It is a contradiction in
terms and in fact. It may be hard of digestion to relinquish
it, but it is impossible to pursue it Adieu, my dear Madam !
I have not left room for a line more.

TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY.
strawberry HiU, Sept. 13, 1779.
I AM writing to you at random ; not knowing whether or
when this letter will go : but your brother told me last night
that an officer, whose name I have forgot, was arrived from
Jersey, and would return to you soon. I am sensible how
very seldom I have written to you — but you have been few
moments out of my thoughts. What they have been, you who
know me so minutely may well guess, and why they do not
pass my lips. Sense, experience, circumstances, can teach
one to command one's self outwardly, but do not divest a most
friendly heart of its feelings. I believe the state of my mind

64 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1779*
has contributed to bring on a very weak and decaying body
my present disorders. I have not been well the whole sum
mer; but for these three weeks much otherwise. It has at
last ended in the gout, which to all appearance will be a
short fit
On pubhc affairs I cannot speak. Everything is so exag
gerated on all sides, that what grains of truth remain in the
sieve would appear cold and insipid ; and the great man
oeuvres you learn as soon as I. In the naval battle between
Byron and D'Estaing, our captains were worthy of any age in
our story.
You may imagine how happy I am at Mrs. Damer's return,
and at her not being at Naples, as she was likely to have been,
at the dreadful explosion of Vesuvius.' Surely it will have
glutted Sir William's rage for volcanos ! How poor Lady
Hamilton's nerves stood it I do not conceive. Oh, mankind !
mankind ! Are there not calamities enough in store for us,
but must destruction be our amusement and pursuit ?
I send this to Ditton,'^ where it may wait some days ; but I
would not suffer a sure opportunity to shp without a hne.
You are more obhged to me for all I do not say, than for
whatever eloquence itself could pen.
P. S. I unseal my letter to add, that undoubtedly you will
come to the meeting of Parliament, which will be in October.
Nothing can or ever did make me advise you to take a step
unworthy of yourself. But surely you have higher and more
sacred duties than the government of a molfe-hill !

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.
Berkeley Square, Nov. 16, 1779.
You ought not to accuse yourself only, when I have been
as silent as you. Surely we have been friends too long to
' On the 10th of August ; when the eruption was so great, that seve
ral villages were destroyed : a hunting seat belonging to the King of
Naples, called Caccia BeUa, shared the like fate. — E.
" Where Lord Hertford had then a vUla.

1779. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 65
admit ceremony as a go-between. I have thought of writing
to you several times, but found I had nothing worth telling
you. I am rejoiced to hear your health has been better : mine
has been worse the whole summer and autumn than ever it
was without any positive distemper, and thence I conclude it
is a failure in my constitution — of which, being a thing of
course, we will say no more — nobody but a physician is
bound to hear what he cannot cure — and if we will pay for
what we cannot expect, it is our own fault
I have seen Doctor Lort, who seems pleased with becoming
a limb of Canterbury. I heartily wish the mitre may not
devolve before it has beamed substantially on him. In the
mean time he will be delighted with ransacking the library at
Lambeth ; and, to do him justice, his ardour is literary, not
interested. I am much obliged to you, dear Sir, for taking the trouble
of transcribing Mr. Tyson's Journal, which is entertaining.
But I am so ignorant as not to know where Hatfield Priory is.
The three heads I remember on the gate at Whitehall ; there
were five more. The whole demolished structure was trans
ported to the great park at Windsor by the late Duke of
Cumberland, who intended to re-edify it but never did; and
now I suppose Its ruins ruined, as its place no more.
I did not know what was become of the heads, and am glad
any are preserved. I should doubt their being the works of
Torregiano. Pray who is Mr. Nichols, who has published the
Ahen Priories; there are half a dozen or more pretty views of
French cathedrals. I cannot say that I found anything else
in the book that amused me — but as you deal more in ancient
lore than I do, perhaps you might be better pleased.
I am told there is a new History of Gloucestershire, very
large, but ill executed, by one Rudder ' — still I have sent for
it, for Gloucestershire is a very historic country.
' " The History and Antiquities of Gloucestershire ; comprising the
Topography, Antiquities, Curiosities, Produce, Trade, and Manufac
tures of that County :" by Samuel Rudder, printer, Cirencester, folio.— E.
VOL. VI. F

66 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1779.
It was a vn-ong scent on which I employed you. The arms
I have impaled were certainly not Boleyn's. You lament re
moval of friends — alas ! dear Sir, when one hves to our age,
one feels that in a higher degree than from their change of
place ! but one must not dilate those common moralities.
You see by my date I have changed place myself. I am got
into an excellent, comfortable, cheerful house ; and as, from
necessity and inclination, I hve much more at home than I
used to do, it is very agreeable to be so pleasantly lodged, and
to be in a warm inn as one passes through the last vale.
Adieu ! Yours ever.

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.
Berkeley Square, Dec. 27, 1779.
I K.WE two good reasons against writing, — n6thing to say,
and a lame muffled hand ; and therefore I choose to write to
you, for it shows remembrance. For these six weeks almost
I have been a prisoner with the gout^ but begin to creep
about my room. How have you borne the late deluge and
the present frost? How do you like an earl-bishop?' Had
' The Hon. and Rev. Frederick Hervey, bishop of Deny, had just suc
ceeded to the earldom of Bristol, as fifth Earl, by the death of his brother.
Hardy, in his Memoirs of Lord Charlemont, gives the following account
of this singular man : — " His family was famous for talents, equally so
for eccentricity ; and the eccentricity of the whole race shone out, and
seemed to be concentrated in him. In one respect, he was not unlike
VilUers Duke of Buckingham, ' every thing by starts, and nothing long ! '
Generous, but uncertain ; splendid, but fantastical ; an admirer of the
fine arts, without any just selection ; engaging, often licentious in con
versation; extremely polite, extremely violent. His distribution of
church livings, chiefly, as 1 have been informed, among the older and
respectable clergy in his own diocese, must always be mentioned with
that warm approbation which it is justly entitled to. His progress frora
his diocese to the metropolis, and his entrance into it, were perfectly
correspondent to the rest of his conduct. Through every town on the
road, he seemed to court and was received with all warlike honours; and
I remember seeing him' pass by the Parliament-house in DubUn (Lords
and Commons were then both sitting), escorted by a body of dragoons,
fuU of spirits and talk, apparently enjoying the eager gaze of the sur
rounding multitude, and displaying altogether the self-complacency of a
favourite marshal of France on his way to VersaUles, rather than the
grave deportment of a prelate of the church of England." He died in
1603.— E.

1780. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 67
not we one before in ancient days ? I have not a book in
town; but was not there Anthony Beck, or a Hubert de
Burgh, that was Bishop of Durham and Earl of Kent, or have
I confounded them ?
Have you seen Rudder's new History of Gloucestershire ?
His additions to Sir Robert Atkyns make it the most sensible
history of a county that we have had yet; for his descriptions
of the scite, soil, products, and prospects of each parish are
extremely good and picturesque ; and he treats fanciful preju
dices, and Saxon etymologies, when unfounded, and traditions,
with due contempt
I will not spin this note any further, but shall be glad of a
line to tell me you are well. I have not seen Mr. Lort since
he roosted under the metropolitan wings of his grace of Lam
beth. Yours ever.

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.
Berkeley Square, Jan. 5, 1780.
When you said that you feared that your particular
account of your very providential escape would deter me
from writing to you again, I am sure, dear Sir, that you
spoke only from modesty, and not from thinking me capable
of being so criminally indifferent to anything, much less
under such danger as you have run, that regards so old a
friend, and one to whom I owe so many obligations. I am
but too apt to write letters on trifling or no occasions; and
should certainly have told you the interest I take in your
accident, and how happy I am that it had no consequences
of any sort It is hard that temperance itself, which you are,
should be punished for a good-natured transgression of your
own rules, and where the excess was only staying out beyond
your usual hour. I am heartily glad you did not jump out
of your chaise ; it has often been a much worse precaution
than any consequences from risking to remain in it ; as you
are lame too, might have been very fatal. Thank God ! all
ended so welL Mr. Masters seems to have been more
F 2

68 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1780.
frightened, with not greater reason. What an absurd man
to be impatient to notify a disagreeable event to you, and
in so boisterous a manner, and which he could not know was
true, since it was not !
I shall take extremely kind your sending me your picture
in glass. I have carefully preserved the slight outline of
yourself in a gown and night-cap, which you once was so
good as to give me, because there was some likeness to your
features, though it is too old even now. For a portrait of
me in return, you might have it by sending the painter to
the anatomical school, and bidding him draw the first skele
ton he sees. I should expect any limner would laugh in my
face if I offered it to him to be copied.
I thought I had confounded the ancient count-bishops,
as I had, and you have set me right. The new temporal-
ecclesiastical peer's estate is more than twelve thousand
a year, though I can scarce believe it is eighteen, as the last
lord said.
The picture found near the altar in Westminster-abbey,
about three years ago, was of King Sebert; I saw it, and
it was well preserved, with some others worse — but they
have foolishly buried it again behind their new altar-piece;
and so they have a very fine tomb of Ann of Cleve, close to
the altar, which they did not know till I told them whose it
was, though her arms are upon it, and though there is an
exact plate of it in Sandford. They might at least have
cut out the portraits and removed the tomb to a conspicuous
situation ; but though this age is grown so antiquarian, it has
not gained a grain more of sense in that walk — witness as you
instance in Mr. Grose's Legends, and in the dean and chapter
reburying the crown, robes, and sceptre of Edward I. — there
would surely have been as much piety in preserving them in
their treasury, as in consigning them again to decay. I did
not know that the salvation of robes and crowns depended
on receiving Christian burial. At the same time, the chapter
transgress that prince's will, like aU their antecessors; for
he ordered his tomb to be opened every year or two years,
and receive a new cere-cloth or pall; but they boast now

1780. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 69
of having enclosed him so substantially, that his ashes cannot
be violated again.
It was the present Bishop Dean who showed me the pic
tures and Ann's tomb, and consulted me on the new altar-
piece. — I advised him to have a light octangular canopy,
Hke the cross at Chichester, placed over the table or altar
itself, which would have given dignity to it, especially if
elevated by a flight of steps ; and from the side arches of the
octagon, I would have had a semicircle of open arches that
should have advanced quite to the seats of the prebends,
which would have discovered the pictures ; and through the
octagon itself you would have perceived the shrine of Edward
the Confessor, which is much higher than the level of the
choir — but men who ask advice seldom follow it, if you do
not happen to light on the same ideas with themselves.
P. S. The Houghton pictures are not lost — but to Hough
ton and England ! '

TO ROBERT JEPHSON, ESQ.'^
Berkeley Square, January 25, 1780.
It was but yesterday. Sir, that I received the favour of
your letter, and this morning I sent, according to your per
mission, to Mr. Sheridan the elder, to desire the manuscript
of your tragedy ; ' for as I am but just recovering of a fit of
' They had been sold to the Empress of Russia in the preceding Sep
tember, and immediately transferred to that country. — E.
° Now first published.
' Mr. Jephson's tragedy of The Count of Narbonne, founded on Wal
pole's Gothic story of the Castle of Otranto. It wiU be seen, that it
was brought out, in the foUowing year, with considerable success, at
Covent Garden theatre. " On Friday evening," says Hannah More, in a
letter to one of her sisters, " I went to Mr. Tighe's to hear him read
Jephson's tragedy. * Praise,' says Dr. Johnson, 'is a tribute which every
man is expected to pay for the grant of perusing a manuscript ;' and in
deed I could praise without hurting my conscience, for The Count of Nar
bonne has considerable merit ; the language is very poetical, and parts of
the fable very interesting ; the plot managed with art, and the characters
well drawn. The love scenes I think are the worst : they are prettUy
written, and fuU of flowers, but are rather cold ; they have more poetry
than passion. I do not mean to detract from Mr. Jephson's merit by this
remark ; for it does not lessen a poet's fame, to say he excels more in
painting the terrible, than the tender passions." — Memoirs, vol. i. p. 206.
— E.

70 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1780.
the gout, which I had severely for above two months, I was
not able to bear the fatigue of company at home ; nor could I
have had the pleasure of attending to the piece so much as I
wished to do, if I had invited ladies to hear it, to whom I
must have been doing the honours.
I have read your play once, Sir, rapidly, though alone, and
therefore cannot yet be very particular on the details ; but I
can say already, with great truth, that you have made a great
deal more than I thought possible out of the skeleton of a
story; and have arranged it so artfully, that unless I am
deceived by being too familiar with it, it will be very intelhgi-
ble to the audience, even if they have not read the original
fable; and you have had the address to make it coherent,
without the marvellous, though so much depended on that
part In short you have put my extravagant materials in an
alembic, and drawn off only what was rational.
Your diction is very beautiful, often poetic, and yet what I
admire, very simple and natural ; and when necessary, rapid,
concise, and sublime.
If I did not distrust my own self-love, I should say that I
think it must be a very interesting piece : and yet I might say
so without vanity, so much of the disposition of the scenes is
your own. I do not yet know, Sir, what alterations you pro
pose to make ; nor do I perceive where the second and fourth
acts want amendment. The first in your manuscript is im
perfect If I wished for any correction, it would be to shorten
the scene in the fourth act between the Countess, Adelaide,
and Austin, which rather delays the impatience of the audi
ence for the catastrophe, and does not contribute to it, but by
the mother's orders to the daughter at the end of the scene to
repair to the great church. In the last scene I should wish
to have Theodore fall into a transport of rage and despair
immediately on the death of Adelaide, and be carried off by
Austin's orders ; for I doubt the interval is too long for him
to faint after Narbonne's speech. The fainting fit, I think,
might be better applied to the Countess ; it does not seem
requisite that she should die, but the audience might be left
in suspense about her.

1780. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 71
My last observations will be very trifling indeed. Sir ; but I
think you use nobleness, nicewess, &c. too often, which I
doubt are not classic terminations for nobility, nicety, &c.
though I allow that nobility will not always express nobleness.
My children's timeless deaths can scarce be said for untimely ;
nor should I choose to employ children's as a plural genitive
case, which I think the s at the end cannot imply. " Hearted
preference " is very bold for preference taken to heart Ray
mond in the last scene says —
" Show me thy wound — oh, heU ! 'tis through her heart !"
This line is quite unnecessary, and infers an obedience in dis
playing her wound which would be shocking; besides, as
there is often a buffoon in an audience at a new tragedy, it
might be received dangerously. The word " Jehovah " will
certainly not be suffered on the stage.
In casting the parts I conclude Mrs. Yates, as women never
cease to like acting young parts, would prefer that of Adelaide,
though the Countess is more suitable to her age; and it is
foolish to see her representing the daughter of women fifteen
or twenty years younger. As my bad health seldom allows
my going to the theatre, I never saw Mr. Henderson but
once. His person and style should recommend him to the
parts of Raymond or Austin. Smith, I suppose, would ex
pect to be Theodore ; but Lewis is younger, handsomer, and,
I think, a better actor; but you are in the right, Sir, in
having no favourable idea of our stage at present.
I am sorry. Sir, that neither my talents nor health allow
me to offer to supply you with Prologue and Epilogue. Poetry
never was my natural turn ; and what httle propensity I had
to it, is totally extinguished by age and pain. It is honour
enough to me to have furnished the canons of your tragedy ;
I should disgrace it by attempting to supply adventitious
ornaments. The clumsiness of the seams would betray my
gouty fingers.
I shall take the liberty of reading your play once more be
fore I return it It will be extraordinary indeed if it is not
accepted, but I cannot doubt but it will be, and very success-

72 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1780.
ful ; though it will be great pity but you should have some
zealous friend to attend to it, and who is able to bustle, and
see justice done to it by the managers. I lament that such a
superannuated being as myself is not only totally incapable of
that office, but that I am utterly unacquainted with the mana
gers, and now too retired to form new connections. I was
still more concerned. Sir, to hear of your unhappy accident,
though the bad consequences are past.

TO ROBERT JEPHSON, ESQ.'
Berkeley Square, Jan. 27, 1780.
I HAVE returned your tragedy. Sir, to Mr. Sheridan,
after having read it again, and without wishing any more
alterations than the few I hinted before. There may be
some few incorrectnesses, but none of much consequence.
I must again applaud your art and judgment Sir, in having
made so rational a play out of my wild tale : and where you
have changed the arrangement of the incidents, you have
applied them to great advantage. The characters of the
mother and daughter you have rendered more natural by
giving jealousy to the mother, and more passion to the
daughter. In short you have both honoured and improved
my outlines : my vanity is content, and truth enjoins me to
do justice. Bishop Warburton, in his additional notes to
Pope's works, which I saw in print in his bookseller's hands,
though they have not yet been pubhshed, observed that the
plan of The Castle of Otranto was regularly a drama " (an
' Now first printed.
= Bishop Warburton's panegyric on The Castle of Otranto appears in
a note to the foUowing Unes in Pope's imitation of one of Horace's
epistles ; — " Then peers grew proud in horsemanship t' excel,
Newmarket's glory rose as Britain's fell ;
The soldier breathed the gaUantries of France,
And ev'ry flow'ry courtier writ Romance."
" Amidst all this nonsense," says the Bishop, " when things were at the
worst, we have been lately entertained with what I wUl venture to call
a masterpiece in the Fable ; and of a new species likewise. The piece I

1780. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 73
intention I am sure I do not pretend to have conceived;
nor, indeed, can I venture to affirm that I had any inten
tion at all but to amuse myself — no, not even a plan, till
some pages were written). You, Sir, have realized his idea,
and yet I believe the Bishop would be surprised to see how
well you have succeeded. One cannot be quite ashamed of
one's follies, if genius condescends to adopt, and put them to
a sensible use. Miss Aikin flattered me even by stooping
to tread in my eccentric steps. Her " Fragment," though
but a specimen, showed her talent for imprinting terror.
I cannot compliment the author of the " Old English Baron,"
professedly written in imitation, but as a corrective of The
Castle of Otranto. It was totally void of imagination and
interest ; had scarce any incidents ; and, though it condemned
the marvellous, admitted a ghost I suppose the author
thought a tame ghost might come within the laws of pro
bability. You alone. Sir, have kept within nature, and made
superstition supply the place of phenomenon, yet acting as
the agent of divine justice — a beautiful use of bigotry.
I was mistaken in thinking the end of the first act de
ficient. The leaves stuck together, and, there intervening
two or three blank pages between the first and second acts,
I examined no farther, but concluded the former imperfect,
which on the second reading I found it was not
I imagine. Sir, that the theatres of Dublin cannot have
fewer good performers than those of London ; may I ask
why you prefer ours .'' Your own directions and instructions
would be of great advantage to your play ; especially if you
suspect antitragic prejudices in the managers. You, too,
would be the best judge at the rehearsal of what might be
improvements. Managers will take liberties, and often cur
tail necessary speeches, so as to produce nonsense. Me
thinks it is unkind to send a child, of which you have so
much reason to be proud, to a Foundling Hospital.
mean is The Castle of Otranto. The scene is laid in Gothic chivalry;
where a beautiful imagination, supported by strength of judgment, has
enabled the author to go beyond his subject, and effect the fuU purpose
of the ancient tragedy ; that is, to purge the passions by pity and terror,
in colouring as great and harmonious as in any of the best dramatic
writers." — E.

74 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1780.

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.
Berkeley Square, Feb. 5, 1780.
I HAVE been turning over the new second volume of the
Biographia, and find the additions very poor and lean per
formances. The lives entirely new are partial and flat
tering, being contributions of the friends of those whose lives
are recorded. This publication made at a time when I have
lived to see several of my contemporaries deposited in this
national temple of fame has made me smile, and reflect that
many preceding authors, who have been installed there with
much respect, may have been as trifling personages as those
we have known and now behold consecrated to memory.
Three or four have struck me particularly, as Dr. Birch,' who
• was a worthy, good-natured soul, full of industry and ac
tivity, and running about like a young setting-dog in quest
of anything, new or old, and with no parts, taste, or judg
ment Then there is Dr. Blackwell," the most impertinent
literary coxcomb upon earth — but the editor has been so
just as to insert a very merited satire on his Court of Au
gustus. The third is Dr. Brown, that mountebank, who for a
little time raade as much noise by his Estimate, as ever quack
did by a nostrum. I do not know if I ever told you how
much I was struck the only time I ever saw him. You know
one object, and the anathemas of his Estimate was the Itahan
Opera; yet did I find him one evening, in Passion Week,
accompanying some of the Italian singers, at a concert at
Lady Carlisle's. A clergyman, no doubt, is not obliged to
be on his knees the whole week before Easter, and music
and a concert are harmless amusements ; but when Cato or
Calvin are out of character, reformation becomes ridiculous
• See vol. u. p. 58. — E.
° Dr. Thomas BlackweU, principal of the Marischal CoUege in Aber
deen. Besides the above work, he wrote " An Enquiry into the Life
and Writings of Homer," and " Letters concerning Mythology." He
died in 1757.

1780. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 75
— but poor Dr. Brown was mad,' and therefore might be in
earnest, whether he played the fool or the reformer.
You recollect, perhaps, the threat of Dr. Kippis to me,
which is to be executed on my father, for my calhng the
first edition of the Biographia the Vindicatio Britannica —
but observe how truth emerges at last ! In his new volume
he confesses that the article of Lord Arlington, which I had
specified as one of the most censurable, is the one most de
serving that censure, and that the character of Lord Arlington
is " palliated beyond all truth and reason " — words stronger
than mine — yet mine deserved to draw vengeance on my
father ! so a Presbyterian divine inverts divine judgment, and
visits the sins of the children on the parents !
Cardinal Beaton's character, softened in the first edition,
gentle Dr. Kippis pronounces " extremely detestable" — yet was
I to blame for hinting such defects in that work ! — and yet
my words are quoted to show that Lord Orrery's poetry was
ridiculously bad. In like manner, Mr. Cumberland, who
assumes the whole honour of publishing his grandfather's
Lucan, and does not deign to mention its being published
at Strawberry-hill, (though by the way I believe it will be
oftener purchased for having been printed there, than for
wearing Mr. Cumberland's name to the dedication,) and yet
he quotes me for having praised his ancestor in one of my
publications. These little instances of pride and spleen di
vert me, and then make me reflect sadly on human weak
nesses. I am very apt myself to like what flatters my opi
nions or passions, and to reject scornfully what thwarts them,
even in the same persons. The more one lives, the more one
discovers one's uglinesses in the features of others ! Adieu !
dear Sir : I hope you do not suffer by this severe season.
P. S. I remember two other instances, where my impar
tiality, or at least my sincerity, have exposed me to double
censure. You perhaps condemned my severity on Charles
the First ; yet the late Mr. Hollis wrote against me in the
newspapers, for condemning the repubhcans for their destruc-
' In September 1766, he destroyed himself in a fit of insanity. See
vol. iu. p. 90. — E.

76 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1780.
tion of ancient monuments. Some blamed me for under
valuing the Flemish and Dutch pictures in my preface to the
-Sides Walpohanai. Barry the painter, because I laughed at
his extravagances, says, in his rejection of that school, " But
I leave them to be admired by the Hon. Horace Walpole,
and such judges." Would not one think I had been their
champion !

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.
Berkeley Square, Feb. 27, 1780.
Unapt as you are to inquire after news, dear Sir, you
wish to have Admiral Rodney's victory confirmed.' I can now
assure you, that he has had a considerable advantage, and took
at least four Spanish men-of-war, and an admiral, who they
say is since dead of his wounds. We must be glad of these
deplorable successes — but I heartily wish we had no longer
occasion to hope for the destruction of any of our species —
but, alas ! it looks as if devastation would still open new
fields of blood ! The prospect darkens even at home — but,
however you and I may differ in our pohtical principles, it
would be happy if everybody would pursue theirs with as lit
tle rancour. How seldom does it happen in political contests,
that any side can count anything but its wounds ! your habi
tudes seclude you from meddling in our divisions; so do my
age and my illnesses me. Sixty-two is not a season for
bustling among young partisans. Indeed, if the times grow
perfectly serious, I shall not wish to reach sixty-three. Even
a superannuated spectator is then a miserable being; for
though insensibility is one of the softenings of old age, neither
one's feelings nor enjoyments can be accompanied with tran-
quilhty. We veterans must hide ourselves in inglorious se-
' Admiral Sir George Rodney, who had been dispatched to the relief
of Gibraltar, the garrison of which was much distressed for provisions,
after taking a convoy of Spanish ships bound to the Caraccas, fell in, on
the 16th of February, off Cape St. Vincent, with the Spanish fleet, com
manded by Don Juan Langara, which he defeated, and captured four
saU of the line. — E.

1780. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 77
curity, and lament what we cannot prevent; nor shall be
listened to, till misfortunes have brought the actors to their
senses ; and then it will be too late, or they will calm them
selves faster than we could preach — but I hope, the expe
rience of the last century will have some operation and check
our animosities. Surely, too, we shall recollect the ruin a
civil war would bring on, when accompanied by such col
laterals as French and Spanish wars. Providence alone can
steer us amidst all these rocks. I shall watch the inter
position of its aegis with anxiety and humility. It saved us
this last summer, and nothing else I am sure did; but often
the mutual folhes of enemies are the instruments of Heaven.
If it pleases not to inspire wisdom, I shall be content if it ex
tricates us by the reciprocal blunders and oversights of all
parties — of which, at least, we ought never to despair. It is
almost my systematic belief, that as cunning and penetration
are seldom exerted for good ends, it is the absurdity of man
kind that often acts as a succedaneum, and carries on and
maintains the equilibrium that Heaven designed should sub
sist. Adieu, dear Sir ! Shall we live to lay down our heads
in peace ? Yours ever.
28th. — A second volume of Sir George Rodney's exploits is
arrived to-day. I do not know the authentic circumstances,
for I have not been abroad yet but they say he has taken four
more Spanish ships of the line and five frigates ; of the for
mer, one of ninety guns. Spain was sick of the war before —
how fortunate if she would renounce it !
I have just got a new History of Leicester, in six small
volumes. It seems to be superficial ; but the author is young
and talks modestly; which, if it will not serve instead of
merit, makes one at least hope he will improve, and not grow
insolent on age and more knowledge. I have also received
from Paris a copy of an illumination from La Cite des Dames
of Christina of Pisa, in the French King's hbrary. There is
her own portrait with three allegoric figures. I have learnt
much more about ber, and of her amour with an Enghsh
peer;' but I have not time to say more at present
' John Montacute, Earl of SaUsbury ; who, arriving in Paris, as am-

78 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1780.

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.
Berkeley Square, March 6, 1780.
I HAVE this moment received your portrait in glass, dear
Sir, and am impatient to thank you for it and tell you how
much I value it It is better executed than I own I expected,
and yet I am not quite satisfied with it The drawing is
a little incorrect, the eyes too small in proportion, and the
mouth exaggerated. In short it is a strong hkeness of your
features, but not of your countenance, which is better, and
more serene. However, I am enough content to place it at
Strawberry amongst all my favourite, brittle, transitory relics,
which will soon vanish with their founder — and with his no
great unwillingness for himself.
I take it ill, that you should think I should suspect you of
asking indirectly for my Noble Authors — and much more if
you would not be so free as to ask for them directly — a most
trifling present surely — and from you who have made me a
thousand ! I know I have some copies in my old house in
Arlington-street, I hope of both volumes, I am sure of the
second. I will soon go thither and look for them.
I have gone through the six volumes of Leicester. The
author is so modest and so humble, that I am quite sorry it is
so very bad a work ; the arrangement detestable, the materials
trifling, his reflections humane but silly. He disposes all
under reigns of Roman emperors and English kings, whether
they did anything or nothing at Leicester. I am sorry I have
such predilection for the histories of particular counties and
towns : there certainly does not exist a worse class of reading.
Dr. E. made me a visit last week. He is not at all less
vociferous for his disgrace. I wish I had any Guinea-fowls. I
can easily get you some eggs from Lady Ailesbury, and will
bassador from Richard II, to demand in marriage the Princess Isabel,
daughter of Charles V, soon after the death of Castel, the husband of
Christine, was so struck with her beauty and accompUshments as to
offer her his hand. This Christine respectfully decUned ; upon which
the Earl bade adieu to love, renounced marriage, and, with her consent
brought her eldest son with him to England, to educate and protect.  E.

1780. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 79
ask her for some, that you may have the pleasure of rearing
your own chicks — but how can you bear their noise ? they
are more discordant and clamorous than peacocks. How shall
I convey the eggs?
I smiled at Dr. Kippis's bestowing the victory on Dean
Milles, and a sprig on Mr. Masters. I regard it as I should,
if the sexton of Broad-street St Giles's were to make a lower
bow to a cheesemonger of his own parish than to me. They
are all three haberdashers of small wares, and welcome to
each other's civilities. When such men are summoned to a
jury on one of their own trade, it is natural they should be
partial. They do not reason, but recollect how much them
selves have overcharged some yards of buckram. Adieu !
P. S. Mr. Pennicott has shown me a most curious and de
lightful picture. It is Rose, the royal gardener, presenting the
first pine-apple raised in England to Charles II. They are in
a garden, with a view of a good private house, such as there
are several at Sunbury and about London. It is by far the
best likeness of the King I ever saw ; the countenance cheer
ful, good-humoured, and very sensible. He is in brown,
lined with orange, and many black ribands, a large flapped
hat, dark wig, not tied up, nor yet bushy, a point cravat no
waistcoat, and a tasselled handkerchief, hanging from a low
pocket. The whole is of the smaller landscape size, and ex
tremely well coloured, with perfect harmony. It was a legacy
from London, grandson of him who was partner with Wise.

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.
^ Strawberry HiU, March 13, 1780.
You compliment me, my good friend, on a sagacity that
is surely very common. How frequently do we see portraits
that have catched the features and missed the countenance or
character, which is far more difficult to hit; nor is it unfre-
quent to hear that remark made.
I have confessed to you that I am fond of local histories.
It is the general execution of them that I condemn, and that

80 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1780.
I call " the worst kind of reading." I cannot comprehend but
that they might be performed with taste. I did mention this
winter the new edition of Atkyns's Gloucestershire, as having
additional descriptions of situations that I thought had merit.
I have just got another, a View of Northumberland, in two
volumes, quarto, with cuts;' but I do not devour it fast; for
the author's predilection is to Roman antiquities, which, such
as are found in this island, are very indifferent and inspire.
me with little curiosity. A barbarous country, so remote
from the seat of empire, and occupied by a few legions that
very rarely decided any great events, is not very interesting,
though one's own country ; nor do I care a straw for a stone
that preserves the name of a standard-bearer of a cohort, or
of a colonel's daughter. Then I have no patience to read the
tiresome disputes of antiquaries to settle forgotten names of
vanished towns, and to prove that such a village was called
something else in Antoninus's Itinerary. I do not say the
Gothic antiquities I like are of more importance ; but at least
they exist. The site of a Roman camp, of which nothing re
mains but a bank, gives me not the smallest pleasure. One
knows they had square camps — has one a clearer idea from
the spot which is barely distinguishable ? How often does it
happen, that the lumps of earth are so imperfect that it is
never clear whether they are Roman, Druidic, Danish, or
Saxon fragments: the moment it is uncertain, it is plain
they furnish no specific idea of art or history, and then I
neither desire to see or read of them, I have been diverted,
too, by another work, in which I am personally a little con
cerned. Yesterday was pubhshed an octavo, pretending to
contain the correspondence of Hackman and Miss Ray, that
he murdered.2 I doubt whether the letters are genuine ; and
' " A View of Northumberland ; with an Excursion to the Abbey of
Melrose, in Scotland, in the Year 1776 ; " by WUUam Hutchinson, F.A.S.
Two volumes 4to ; 1778-80.— E.
^ The work here alluded to was written by Sir Herbert Croft, Bart.
It was a compound of fact and fiction, called " Love and Madness a
Story too true, in a Series of Letters between Parties, whose names
would, perhaps, be mentioned, were they less known or less lamented.
London, 1780." The work ran through several editions. In 1800, Sir
Herbert pubUshed " Chatterton and Love and Madness, in a Letter

1780. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 81
yet, if fictitious, they are executed well, and enter into his
character : hers appear less natural, and yet the editors were
certainly more likely to be in possession of hers than his.
It is not probable that Lord Sandwich should have sent what
he found in her apartments to the press. No account is pre
tended to be given of how they came to light.
You will wonder how I should be concerned in this cor
respondence, who never saw either of the lovers in my days.
In fact, my being dragged in is a reason for doubting the
authenticity ; nor can I believe that the long letter in which I
am frequently mentioned could be written by the wretched
lunatic. It pretends that Miss Ray desired him to give her a
particular account of Chatterton. He does give a most ample
one ; but is there a ghmpse of probability that a being so fran
tic should have gone to Bristol, and sifted Chatterton's sister
and others with as much cool curiosity as Mr. Lort could do ?
and at such a moment ! Besides, he murdered Miss Ray, I
think, in March ; my printed defence was not at all dispersed
before the preceding January or February, nor do I conceive
that Hackman could even see it There are notes, indeed,
by the editor, who has certainly seen it ; but I rather imagine
that the editor, whoever he is, composed the whole volume. I
am acquitted of being accessory to the lad's death, which is
gracious ; but much blamed for speaking of his bad character,
and for being too hard on his forgeries, though I took so
much pains to specify the innocence of them; and for his
character, I only quoted the words of his own editor and
panegyrist. I did not repeat what Dr. Goldsmith told me at
the Royal Academy, where I first heard of his death, that he
went bythe appellation of " The Young Villain;" but it is not
new to me, as you know, to be blamed by two opposite
parties. The editor has in one place confounded me and
my uncle ; who, he says, as is true, checked Lord Chatham
for being too forward a young man in 1740. In that year
I was not even come into Parliament; and must have been
from Sir Herbert Croft to Mr. Nichols." Boswell says, that Dr. John
son greatly disapproved of mingling real facts with fiction, and on this
account censured " Love and Madness." — E.
VOL. VI. G

82 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1780.
absurd indeed if I had taunted Lord Chatham with youth,
who was, at least, six or seven years younger than he was ;
and how could he reply by reproaching me with old age, who
was then not twenty-three ? I shall make no answer to these
absurdities, nor to any part of the work. Blunder, I see,
people will, and talk of what they do not understand? and
what care I ? There is another trifling mistake of still less
consequence. The editor supposes it was Macpherson who
communicated Ossian to me. It was Sir David Dalrymple
who sent me the first specimen.' Macpherson did once come
to me, but my credulity was then a little shaken.
Lady Ailesbury has promised me Guinea-eggs for you, but
they have not yet begun to lay. I am well acquainted with
Lady Craven's little tale, dedicated to me.*^ It is careless and
incorrect but there are very pretty things in it. I will stop,
for I fear I have written to you too much lately. One you
did not mention : I think it was of the 28th of last month.

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.
Berkeley Square, March 30, 1780.
I CANNOT be told that you are extremely ill, and refrain
from begging to hear that you are better. Let me have but
one line ; if it is good, it will satisfy me. If you was not out
of order, I would scold you for again making excuses about
the Noble Authors ; it was not kind to be so formal about a
trifie. We do not differ so much in politics as you think, for when
they grow too serious, they are so far from infiaming my zeal,
they make me more moderate ; and I can as easily discern the
faults on my own side as on the other; nor would assist Whigs
more than Tories in altering the constitution. The project of
annual parliaments, or of adding a hundred members to the
House of Commons, would, I think, be very unwise, and will
never have my approbation — but a temperate man is not
' See vol. iv. p. 55. — E.
= Entitled " The Miniature Picture."— E.

1780. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 83
hkely to be hstened to in turbulent times ; and when one has
not youth and lungs, or ambition, to make oneself attended
to, one can only be silent and lament, and preserve oneself
blameless of any mischief that is done or attempted.

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.
Berkeley Square, May 11, 1780.
Mr. Godfrey, the engraver, told me yesterday that Mr.
Tyson is dead.^ I am sorry for it, though he had left me off.
A much older friend of mine died yesterday ; but of whom I
must say the same, George Montagu, whom you must remem
ber at Eton and Cambridge. I should have been exceedingly
concerned for him a few years ago ; but he had dropped me,
partly from politics and partly from caprice, for we never had
any quarrel; but he was grown an excessive humourist, and
had shed almost all his friends as well as me. He had parts,
and infinite vivacity and originality till of late years ; and it
grieved me much that he had changed towards me, after a
friendship of between thirty and forty years.
I am told that a nephew of the provost of King's has
preached and printed a most fiaming sermon, which condemns
the whole Opposition to the stake. Pray who is it and on
what occasion ? Mr. Bryant has pubhshed an Answer to Dr.
Priestley.2 I bought it, but though I have a great value for
the author, the subject is so metaphysical, and so above
human decision, I soon laid it aside. I hope you can send
me a good account of yourself, though the spring is so un
favourable. Yours most sincerely.
' Mr. Cole, in a letter of the 14th, says, " the loss of poor Mr. Tyson
shocked and afiiicted me more than I thought it possible I could have
been afflicted : since the loss of Mr. Gray, I have lamented no one so
much. God rest his soul ! I hope he is happy ; and, was it not for those
he has left behind, I am so much of a phUosopher, now the affair is over,
I would prefer the exchange." — E.
' It was entitled " An Address to Dr. Priestley upon his Doctrine of
PhUosophical Necessity IUustrated." — E.
g2

84 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1780.
TO THE REV. MR. COLE.
Friday night. May 19, 1780.
By to-morrow's coach you will receive a box of Guinear
hens' eggs, which Lady Ailesbury sent me to-day from Park-
place. I hope they will arrive safe and all be hatched.
I thank you for the account of the sermon and the por
trait of the uncle. They will satisfy me without buying
the former. As I knew Mr. Joseph Spence,* I do not think
I should have been so much delighted as Dr. Kippis with
reading his letters. He was a good-natured, harmless little
soul, but more like a silver penny than a genius. It was a
neat fiddle-faddle, bit of sterling, that had read good books
and kept good company, but was too trifling for use, and only
fit to please a child.
I hesitate on purchasing Mr. Gough's second edition. I do
not think there was a guinea's worth of entertainment in the
first ; how can the additions be worth a guinea and a half? I
have been aware of the royal author you tell me of, and have
noted him for a future edition ; but that will not appear in
my own time; because, besides that, it will have the castra
tions in my original copy, and other editions, that I am not
impatient to produce. I have been solicited to reprint the
work, but do not think it fair to give a very imperfect edition
when I could print it complete, which I do not choose to do,
as I have an aversion to literary squabbles: one seems to
think one's self too important when one engages in a contro
versy on one's writings; and when one does not vindicate
them, the answerer passes for victor, as you see Dr. Kippis
allots the palm to Dr. MiUes, though you know I have so
much more to say in defence of my hypothesis. I have actu
ally some hopes of still more, of which I have heard, but tiU
I see it I shall not reckon upon it as on my side.
Mr. Lort told me of King James's Procession to St Paul's;
but they ask such a price for it, and I care so little for
James I, that I have not been to look at the picture.
' See vol. i. p. 65.— E.

1780. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 85
Your electioneering will probably be increased immediately.
Old Mr. Thomas Townshend is at the point of death.* The
Parliament will probably be dissolved before another session.
We wanted nothing but drink to inflame our madness, which
I do not confine to politics ; but what signifies it to throw out
general censures ? We old folks are apt to think nobody wise
but ourselves. I wish the disgraces of these last two or three
years did not justify a little severity more than flows from the
peevishness of years ! Yours ever.

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.
Berkeley Square, May 30, 1780.
I HOPE you will bring your eggs to a fair market At
last I have got from Bonus my altar-doors which I bought at
Mr. Ives's; he has repaired them admirably. I would not
suffer him to repaint or varnish them. Three are indubitably
Duke Humphrey of Gloucester, Cardinal Beaufort, and Arch
bishop Kemp. The fourth I cannot make out. It is a man
in a crimson garment lined with white, and not tonsured. He
is in the stable with cattle, and has the air of Joseph ; but
over his head hangs a large shield with these arms. * * * * 2
The Cornish choughs are sable on or; the other three divi
sions are gules, on the first of which is a gold crescent.
The second arms have three bulls' heads sable, horned or.
The chevron was so changed that Bonus thought it sable ; but
I think it was gules, and then it would be Bullen or Boleyn.
Lord de Ferrars says, the first are the arms of Sir Bartholo
mew Tate, who he finds married a Sanders. Edmondson's
new Dictionary of Heraldry confirms both arms for Tate and
' The Right Hon. Thomas Townshend, son of Charles second Vis
count Townshend, many years member for the University of Cambridge.
He died a few days after the date of this letter. He was a most elegant
scholar, and Uved in acquaintance and famUiarity with most of the consi
derable men of his tiine. In early life he entered into the secretary of
state's office under his father, whom he accompanied in his journeys to
Germany with George the First and Second. At the time of his death
he was in his seventy-ninth year. — E.
' Here Mr. Walpole had sketched in a rough draught of the arms.

86 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1780.
Sanders, except that Sanders bore the chevron ermine, which
it may have been. But what I wish to discover is, whether
Sir Bartholomew Tate was a benefactor to St Edmondsbury,
whence these doors came, or was in any shape a retainer to
the Duke of Gloucester or Cardinal Beaufort The Duke's
and Sir Bartholomew's figures were on the insides of the doors
(which I have had sawed into four pannels), and are painted
in a far superior style to the Cardinal and the Archbishop,
which are very hard and dry. The two others are so good
that they are in the style of the school of the Caracci. They
at least were painted by some Italian; the draperies have
large and bold folds, and one wonders how they could be exe
cuted in the reign of Henry VI. I shall be very glad if you
can help me to any lights, at least about Sir Bartholomew.
I intend to place them in my chapel, as they will aptly ac
company the shrine. The Duke and Archbishop's agree per
fectly with their portraits in my Marriage of Henry VI, and
prove how rightly I guessed. The Cardinal's is rather a
longer and thinner visage, but that he might have in the
latter end of life ; and in the Marriage he has the red bonnet
on, which shortens his face. On the door he is represented
in the character he ought to have possessed, a pious, contrite
look, not the truer resemblance which Shakspeare drew—
" He dies, and makes no sign ! " — but Annibal Caracci him
self could not paint like our Raphael poet ! Pray don't ven
ture yourself in any more electioneering riots : you see the
mob do not respect poets, nor, I suppose, antiquaries.
P. S. I am in no haste for an answer to my queries.

TO MRS. ABINGTON.*
Strawberry HiU, June 11, 1780.
MADAM, You may certainly always command me and my house.
My common custom is to give a ticket for only four persons at
' Now first printed.

1780. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 87
a time ; but it would be very insolent in me, when all laws are
set at nought, to pretend to prescribe rules. At such times
there is a shadow of authority in setting the laws aside by the
legislature itself; and though I have no army to supply their
place, I declare Mrs. Abington may march through all my
dominions at the head of as large a troop as she pleases. I
do not say, as she can muster and command ; for then I am
sure my house would not hold them. The day, too, is at
her own choice ; and the master is her very obedient hum
ble servant

TO THE EARL OF STRAFFORD.
Strawberry HiU, June 12, 1780.
MY DEAR LORD,
If the late events had been within the common propor
tion of news, I would have tried to entertain your lordship
with an account of them ; but they were far beyond that size,
and could only create horror and indignation. Religion has
often been the cloak of injustice, outrage, and villany: in our
late tumults,* it scarce kept on its mask a moment ; its perse
cution was downright robbery; and it was so drunk, that it
killed its banditti faster than they could plunder. The tumults
have been carried on in so violent and scandalous a manner,
that I trust they will have no copies. When prisons are
levelled to the ground, when the Bank is aimed at and re
formation is attempted by conflagrations, the savages of Canada
' The riots of 1780, when Lord George Gordon raised a no-popery
cry, and assembled many thousand persons in St. George's Fields, to ac
company him to the House of Commons, with a petition for the repeal of
the act passed for the relief of the Roman Catholics in the preceding
session. Tbe petition was, of course, rejected; which being communi
cated to the mob by Lord George, they dispersed for a whUe, but on that
evening commenced their work of mischief, destroying two CathoUc
chapeh in Duke-street and Warwick-street : Newgate and all the other
prisons were Ukewise fired ; the Bank was attempted ; and the riot was
not queUed until 210 persons were kiUed and 248 wounded, of whom
seventy-five died in the hospitals. Lord George was committed to the
Tower ; and many of the ringleaders, after being tried by special com
missioners, suffered the extreme penalty of the law. — E.

88 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1780.
are the only fit allies of Lord George Gordon* and his crew.
The Tower is much too dignified a prison for him — but he
had left no other.
I came out of town on Friday, having seen a good deal of
the shocking transactions of Wednesday night — in fact, it was
difficult to be in London, and not see or think some part of it
in flames. I saw those of the King's Bench, New Prison, and
those on the three sides of the Fleet-market, which united
into one blaze.« The town and parks are now one camp —
the next disagreeable sight to the capital being in ashes. It
will StiU not have been a fatal tragedy, if it brings the nation
one and all to their senses. It will still be not quite an un
happy country, if we reflect that the old constitution, exactly
as it was in the last reign, was the most desirable of any in the
universe. It made us then the first people in Europe — we
have a vast deal of ground to recover — but can we take a
better path than that which King William pointed out to us?
I mean the system he left us at the Revolution. I am averse
to all changes of it — it fitted us just as it was.
For some time even individuals must be upon their guard.
Our new and now imprisoned apostle has delivered so many
congenial Saint Peters from gaol, that one hears of nothing
but robberies on the highway. Your lordship's sister. Lady
Browne, and I have been at Twickenham-park this evening,
and kept together, and had a horseman at our return. Baron
d'Aguilar was shot at in that very lane on Thursday night. A
' Lord George Gordon was brother of Alexander Duke of Gordon.
He was considered not to be at all times of sound mind. Some years
after his acquittal, on the indictment preferred against him in the Court
of King's Bench as instigator of the riots, he was convicted of a libel on
Marie Antoinette and Count d'Ademar, one of the French ministry. To
avoid punishment, he fled the country ; but shortly afterwards was dis
covered at Birmingham in the garb of a Jew, and committed to Newgate,
pursuant to his sentence, where he lived some time, professing the Jew
ish reUgion, having undergone the extreme rites of it, and where he
died, in November 1793. — E.
° In her reply to a letter from Walpole, giving an account of these riots,
Madame du Deffand says — " Rien n'est plus affreux que tout ce qui ar
rive chez vous. Votre liberty ne me seduit point ; cette libertl tant
vantde me paroit bien plus on^reuse que notre esclavage; mais il ne
m'appartient pas de traiter de teUes matieres : permettez-moi de blamer
votre indiscretion, de vous aller promener dans les rues pendant ce va-
carme." — B.

1780. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 89
troop of the fugitives had rendezvoused in Combe Wood, and
were dislodged thence yesterday by the light horse.
I do not know a syllable but what relates to these dis
turbances. The newspapers have neglected few truths. Lies,
without their natural propensity to falsehoods, they could not
avoid, for every minute produces some, at least exaggerations.
We were threatened with swarms of good Protestants d bruler
from all quarters, and report sent various detachments from
the metropolis on similar errands ; but thank God they have
been but reports ! Oh ! when shall we have peace and tran
quillity? I hope your lordship and Lady Strafford will at
least enjoy the latter in your charming woods. I have long
doubted which of our passions is the strongest — perhaps
every one of them is equally strong in some person or other —
but I have no doubt but ambition is the most detestable, and
the most inexcusable ; for its mischiefs are by far the most
extensive, and its enjoyments by no means proportioned to its
anxieties. The latter, I believe, is the case of most passions
—but then all but ambition cost little pain to any but the pos
sessor. An ambitious man must be divested of all feeling but
for himself. The torment of others is his high road to hap
piness. Were the transmigration of souls true, and accom
panied by consciousness, how delighted would Alexander or
CrcKSUs be to find themselves on four legs, and divested of a
wish to conquer new worlds, or to heap up all the wealth of
this ! Adieu, my dear lord !

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.
Strawberry Hill, June 15, 1780.
You may like to know one is alive, dear Sir, after a mas
sacre, and the conflagration of a capital. I was in it both on
the Friday and on the Black Wednesday; the most horrible
sight I ever beheld, and which, for six hours together, I ex
pected to end in half the town being reduced to ashes. I can
give you httle account of the original of this shocking affair ;
negligence was certainly its nurse, and religion only its god-

90 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1780.
mother. The ostensible author is in the Tower. Twelve or
fourteen thousand men have quelled all tumults ; and as no
bad account is come from the country, except for a moment at
Bath, and as eight days have passed, — nay, more, since the
commencement, — I flatter myself the whole nation is shocked
at the scene ; and that, if plan there was, it was laid only in
and for the metropohs. The lowest and most villanous of the
people, and to no great amount, were almost the sole actors.
I hope your electioneering riotry* has not, nor will mix in
these tumults. It would be most absurd ; for Lord Rocking
ham, the Duke of Richmond, Sir George Saville, and Mr.
Burke, the patrons of toleration, were devoted to destruction
as much as the ministers. The rails torn from Sir George's
house were the chief weapons and instriftnents of the mob.
For the honour of the nation I should be glad to have it
proved that the French were the engineers. You and I have
hved too long for our comfort — shall we close our eyes
in peace ? I will not trouble you more about the arms I sent
you : I should hke that they were those of the family of Bo
leyn ; and since I cannot be sure they were not, why should
not I fancy them so ? I revert to the prayer for peace. You
and I, that can amuse ourselves with our books and papers,
feel as much indignation at the turbulent as they have scorn
for us. It is hard at least that they who disturb nobody can
have no asylum in which to pursue their innoxious indolence !
Who is secure against Jack Straw and a whirlwind ? How I
abominate Mr. Banks and Dr. Solander, who routed the poor
Otaheitans out of the centre of the ocean, and carried our
abominable passions amongst them I not even that poor little
speck could escape European restlessness. Well, I have seen
many tempestuous scenes, and outlived them ! the present
prospect is too thick to see through — it is well hope never
forsakes us. Adieu !
' Of the " electioneering riotry " going on at this time in Cambridge
shire, Mr. Cole, in a letter of the 14th of May, gives the following ae-'
count: — "Electioneering madness and faction have inflamed this county
to such a degree, that the peace it has enjoyed for above half a century
may take as long a time before it returns again. Yesterday, the three
candidates were nominated ; the Duke of Rutland's brother, the late
Mr. Charles Yorke's son, and Sir Sampson Gideon, whose expenses for

1780. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 91

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.
Strawberry HiU, July 4, 1780.
I ANSWER your letter the moment I receive it, to beg you
will by no means take any notice, not even indirectly and
without my name, of the Life of Mr. Baker. I am earnest
against its being known to exist. I should be teased to show
it Mr. Gough might inquire about it — I do not desire his
acquaintance ; and above all things I am determined, if I can
help it, to have no controversy while I hve. You know
I have hitherto suppressed my answers to the critics of Rich
ard III. for that reason ; and above all things, I hate theologic
or political controversy — nor need you fear my disputing with
you, though we disagree very considerably indeed about Pa
pists and Presbyterians. I hope you have not yet sent the
manuscript to Mr. Lort, and if you have not, do entreat you
to efface undecipherably what you have said about my Life
of Mr. Baker.
Pray satisfy me that no mention of it shall appear in print.
I can by no means consent to it, and I am sure you will pre
vent it Yours sincerely.

TO THE EARL OF STRAFFORD.
Strawberry HUl, Sept. 9, 1780.
I AM very happy at receiving a letter from your lordship
this moment, as I thought it very long since we had corre
sponded, but am afraid of being troublesome, when I have not
the excuse of thanking you, or something worth telhng you,
which in truth is not the case at present No soul, whether
this month have been enormous, beyond all beUef. Sending my servant
on a particular message to Sir Sampson, he found him in bed, not well,
and probably half asleep ; for he not only wrote the direction to two
fovers which I sent him, but sealed them both, though they were only
covers. I wonder, indeed, that he is alive, considering the immense
fatigue and necessary drinking he must undergo — a miserable hard task
to get into ParUament I " The contest terminated in the return of Lord
Robert Manners, who died, in AprU 1782, of the wounds he received in
the great sea-fight in the West Indies ; and of Mr. PhiUp Yorke, who,
in 1790, succeeded his uncle as Earl of Hardwicke. — E.

92 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1780.
interested or not, but deafens one about elections. I always
detested them, even when in Parliament ; and when I lived a
good deal at White's, preferred hearing of Newmarket to elec
tions; for the former, being uttered in a language I did not
understand, did not engage my attention ; but as they talked
of elections in English, I could not help knowing what they
said. It does surprise me, I own, that people can choose to
stuff their heads with details and circumstances, of which in
six weeks they will never hear or think more. The weather
till now has been the chief topic of conversation. Of late it
has been the third very hot summer ; but ¦ refreshed by so
httle rain, that the banks of the Thames have been and are, I
believe, like those of the Manzanares. The night before last
we had some good showers, and to-day a thick fog has dis
solved in some as thin as gauze. Still I am not quite sorry to
enjoy the weather of adust climates without their tempests
and insects. Lady Cowper I lately visited, and but lately : if
what I hear is true, I shall be a gainer, for they talk of Lord
Duncannon having her house at Richmond : like your lordship,
I confess I was surprised at his choice. I know nothing to
the prejudice of the young lady ; * but I should not have se
lected, for so gentle and very amiable a man, a sister of the
empress of fashion,** nor a daughter of the goddess of wisdom.'
They talk of great dissatisfactions in the fleet. Geary and
Barrington are certainly retired. It looks, if this deplorable
war should continue, as if all our commanders by sea and land
were to be disgraced or disgusted.
The people here have christened Mr. Shirley's new house,
Spite-hall.* It is dismal to think that one may live to seventy-
seven, and go out of the world doing as ill-natured an act as
possible ! When I am reduced to detail the gazette of Twick
enham, I had better release your lordship ; but either way it
' In the foUowing November, Lord Duncannon married Henrietta-
Frances, second daughter of John first Earl Spencer. — E.
'' Georgiana, eldest daughter of John first Earl Spencer; mai-ried, in
1774, to the Duke of Devonshire. — E.
= Margaret-Georgiana, daughter of the Right Hon. Stephen Poyntz ;
married, in 1755, to John first Earl Spencer. — E.
* Because built, it was said, on purpose to intercept a view of the
Thames from his opposite neighbour.

1780. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 93
is from the utmost attention and respect for your lordship and
Lady Strafford, as I am ever most devotedly and gratefully
yours.
TO THE REV. MR. COLE.
Strawberry HUl, Sept. 27, 1780.
DEAR SIR,
I MUST inquire how you do after all your electioneering
agitations, which have growled even around your hermitage.
Candidates and their emissaries are hke Pope's authors,
" They pierce our thickets, through our groves they glide."
However, I have barred my doors ; and when I would not go
to an election for myself, I would not for any one else.
Has not a third real summer, and so very dry one, assisted
your complaints? I have been remarkably well, and better
than for these five years. Would I could say the same of
all my friends — but, alas ! I expect every day to hear that
I have lost my dear old friend Madame du Deffand.* She
was indeed near eighty-four, but retained all her interior
faculties — two days ago the letters from Paris forbade all
hopes. So I reckon myself dead as to France, where I have
kept up no other connexion.
' In the last letter Madame du Deffand ever wrote to Walpole, dated
the 22nd of August, she thus describes her situation : — " Je vous man-
dai dans ma derniere que je ne me portals pas bien ; c'est encore pis
aujourd'hui. Je Suis d'une foiblesse et d'un abattement excessifs; ma
voix est eteinte, je ne puis me soutenir sur mes jambes, je ne puis
me donner aucun mouvement, j'ai le coeur enveloppe, j'ai de la peine a
croire que cet dtat ne m'annonce une fin prochaine. Je n'ai pas la force
d'en etre effrayee ; et, ne vous devant re voir de ma vie, je n'ai rien a re-
gretter. Divertissez-vous, mon ami, le plus que vous pourrez; ne vous
aflligez point de mon ^tat ; nous etions presque perdus I'un pour I'autre ;
nous ne nous devious jamais revoir ; vous me regretterez, parce qu'on est
bien-aise de se savoir aime. Peut-etre que par la suite Wiart vous maii-
dera de mes nouvelles ; c'est une fatigue pour moi de dieter." From
this day she kept her bed. On the 8th of September Mr. Walpole had
written to her, expressing his great anxiety for her. To his inquiries
she was unable to dictate an answer. Her ante-room continued every
day crowded with the persons who had before surrounded her supper-
table. Her weakness became excessive; but she suffered no pain, and
possessed her memory, understanding, and ideas tiU within the last eight

94 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1780.
I am going at last to publish my fourth volume of Painters,
which, though printed so long, I have literally treated by
Horace's rule, " Nonumque prematur in annum." Tell me
how I shaU send it to you. Yours ever.

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.
Berkeley Square, Oct. 3, 1780.
I DID not go to Malvern, and therefore cannot certify
you, my good Sir, whether Tom Hearne mistook stone for
brass or not, though I dare to say your criticism is just.
My book, if I can possibly, shall go to the inn to-morrow,
or next day at least. You will find a great deal of rubbish
in it, with all your partiality — but I shall have done with it
I cannot thank you enough for your goodness about your
notes that you promised Mr. Grose; but I cannot possibly
be less generous and less disinterested, nor can by any means
be the cause of your breaking your word. In short, I insist
on your sending your notes to him — and as to my Life of
Mr. Baker, if it is known to exist, nobody can make me
produce it sooner than I please, nor at all if I do not please ;
so pray send your accounts, and leave me to be stout with
our antiquaries, or curious. I shall not satisfy the latter, and
don't care a straw for the former.
The Master of Pembroke (who he is, I don't know*) is
hke the lover who said,
" Have I not seen thee where thou hast not been ?"
I have been in Kent with Mr. Barrett, but was not at
Ramsgate; the Master, going thither, perhaps saw me. It
is a mistake not worth rectifying. I have no time for more,
being in the midst of the dehvery of my books. Yours ever.
days of her existence, when a lethargic insensibility took place, which
terminated in death, without effort or struggle, on the 24th of Septem
ber. She was buried, according to her own direction, in the plainest
manner, in her parish church of St. Sulpice. To Mr. Walpole she be
queathed the whole of her manuscripts, papers, letters, and books, of
every description ; with a permission to the Prince of Beauvau to take a
copy of any of the papers he might desire. — E.
' Dr. James Brown ; see vol. v. p. 318.— E.

1780. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 95

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.
Berkeley Square, Nov. 11, 1780.
I AM afraid you are not well, my good Sir ; for you are
so obligingly punctual, that I think you would have ac
knowledged the receipt of my last volume, if you were not
out of order.
Lord Dacre lent me the new edition of Mr. Gough's To
pography, and the ancient maps and quantity of additions
tempted me to buy it I have not gone through much above
half of the first volume, and find it more entertaining than
the first edition. This is no partiality ; for I think he seems
rather disposed, though civilly, to find cavils with me. In
deed, in the passage in which I am most mentioned, he not
only gives a very confused, but quite a wrong account : as in
other places, he records some trifles in my possession not
worth recording — but I know that we antiquaries are but
too apt to think, that whatever has had the honour of en
tering our ears, is worthy of being laid before the eyes of
everybody else. The story I mean is p. xi. of the preface.
Now the three volumes of drawings and tombs, by Mr. Le-
thueillier and Sir Charles Frederick, for which Mr. Gough
says I refused two hundred pounds, and are now Lord Bute's,
are not Lord Bute's, but mine, and for which I never was
offered two hundred pounds, and for which I gave sixty
pounds — full enough. The circumstances were much more
entertaining than Mr. G.'s perplexed account Bishop Lyt
telton told me Sir Charles Frederick complained of Mr. L.'s
not bequeathing them to him, as he had been a joint la
bourer with him ; and that Sir Charles wished I would not
bid against him for them, as they were to be sold by auction.
I said this was a very reasonable request, and that I was
ready to obhge Sir Charles ; but as I heard others meant to
bid high for the books, I should wish to know how far he
would go, and that I would not oppose him; but should
the books exceed the price Sir Charles was willing to give,
I should like to be at hberty to bid for them against others.

96 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1780.
However, added I, as Sir Charles (who lived then in Berke
ley-square, as I did then in Arlington-street) passes by my
door every time he goes to the House of Commons, if he will
call on me, we will make such agreement — You will scarce
believe the sequel. The dignity of Sir Charles Frederick
was hurt that I should propose his making me the first visit,
though to serve himself — nothing could be more out of my
imagination than the ceremonial of visits; though when he
was so simple as to make a point of it I could not see how in
any light I was called on to make the first visit — and so the
treaty ended; and so I bought the books. There was an
other work, I think in two volumes, which was their Diary
of their Tour, with a few slight views. Bishop Lyttelton
proposed them to me, and engaged to get them for me from
Mr. Lethueillier's sister for ten guineas. She hesitated, the
Bishop died, I thought no more of them, and they may be
what Lord Bute has. There is another assertion in Mr.
Gough, which I can authentically contradict He says Sir
Matthew Decker first introduced ananas, p. 134. My very cu
rious picture of Rose, the royal gardener, presenting the first
ananas to Charles II. proves the culture here earlier by
several years.
At page 373, he seems to doubt my assertion of Gravelot's
making drawings of tombs in Gloucestershire, because he
never met with any engravings from them. I took my ac
count from Vertue, who certainly knew what he said. I
bought at Vertue's own sale some of Gravelot's drawings of
our regal monuments, which Vertue engra;ved: but, which
is stronger, Mr. Gough himself a few pages after, viz. in
p. 387, mentions Gravelot's drawings of Tewkesbury church ;
which being in Gloucestershire, Mr. G. might haVe be
hoved me that Gravelot did draw in that county. This is a
httle hke Mr. Masters's being angry with me for taking li
berties with bishops and chancellors, and then abusing grossly
one who had been both bishop and chancellor. I forgot
that in the note on Sir Charles Frederick, Mr. Gough calls
Mr. Worseley, Wortley. In page 354, he says Rooker ex
hibited a drawing of Waltham-cross to the Royal Academy

1780. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 97
of Sciences — pray where is that academy? I suppose he
means that of painting. I find a few omissions; one very
comical; he says Penshurst was celebrated by Ben Jonson,
and seems totally in the dark as to how much more fame it
owes to Waller. We antiquaries are a little apt to get
laughed at for knowing what everybody has forgotten, and
for being ignorant of what every child knows. Do not tell
him of these things, for I do not wish to vex him. I hope
I was mistaken, and shall hear that you are well Yours ever.

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.
Berkeley Square, Nov. 24, 1780.
I AM sorry I was so much in the right in guessing you
had been ill, but at our age there is little sagacity in such
divination. In my present holidays from the gout, I have a
little rheumatism, or some of those accompaniments.
I have made several more notes to the new Topography,
but none of consequence enough to transcribe. It is well
it is a book only for the adept, or the scorners would often
laugh. Mr. Gough, speaking of some cross that has been
removed, says, there is now an unmeaning market-house in its
place. Saving his reverence and our prejudices, I doubt
there is a good deal more meaning in a market-house than in a
cross. They tell me that there are numberless mistakes. Mr.
Pennant, whom I saw yesterday, says so. He is not one
of our plodders; rather the other extreme. His corporal
spirits (for I cannot call them animal) do not allow him
time to digest anything. He gave a round jump from or
nithology to antiquity; and, as if they had any relation,
thought he understood everything that lay between them.
These adventures divert me who am got on shore, and find
how sweet it is to look back on those who are toiling in
deep waters, whether in ships, or cock-boats, or on old rotten
planks. I am sorry for the Dean of Exeter; if he dies, I
VOL. VI. H

98 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1780.
conclude the leaden mace of the Antiquarian Society will be
given to Judge Barrington,*
" Et simUi frondescet Virga metaUo."
I endeavoured to give our antiquaries a little wrench towards
taste — but it was in vain. Sandby and our engravers have
lent them a great deal — but there it stops. Captain Grose's
dissertations are as dull and silly as if they were written for
the Ostrogoth maps of the beginning of the new Topogra
phy ; and which are so square and so incomprehensible, that
they look as if they were ichnographies of the new Jeru
salem. I am delighted with having done with the profes
sions of author and printer, and intend to be most comfortr
ably lazy, I was going to say idle (but that would not be new)
for the rest of my days.
If there was a peace, I would build my offices — if there
is not soon, we shall be bankrupt — nay, I do not know what
may happen as it is. — Well ! Mr. Grose will have plenty of
ruins to engrave ! The Royal Academy will make a fine
mass, with what remains of old Somerset-house.
Adieu ! my good Sir. Let me know you are well. You
want nothing else, for you can always amuse yourself, and do
not let the foohsh world disturb you. Yours most sincerely.

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.
Berkeley Square, Nov. 30, 1780.
I AM sorry, my dear Sir, that you should be so humble
with me your ancient friend, and to whom you have ever been
so liberal, as to make an apology for desiring me to grant the
request of another person. I am not less sorry that I shall
not, I fear, be able to comply with it ; and you must have the
patience to hear my reasons. The first edition of the Anec
dotes was of three hundred, of the two first volumes ; and of
* The Hon. Daines Barrington, fourth son of John first Viscount Bar
rington, second Justice of Chester, and author of " Observations on the
Statutes," &c. He was eminent in natural history, and in several
branches of literature; and died in 1800. — E.

1780. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 99
as many of the third volume, and of the volume of Engravers.
Then there was an edition of three hundred of all four. Un
luckily I did not keep any number back of the two first
volumes, and literally have none but those I reserved for my
self. Of the other two I have two or three ; and, I believe, I
have a first, but without the cuts. If I can, with some odd
volumes that I kept for corrections, make out a decent set
the library of the University shall have them ; but you must
not promise them, lest I should not be able to perform.
Of my new fourth volume I printed six hundred; but as
they can be had, I believe not a third part is sold. This is a
very plain lesson to me, that my editions sell for their curi
osity, and not for any merit in them : and so they would if I
printed Mother Goose's Tales, and but a few. As my Anec
dotes of Painting have been published at such, distant periods,
and in three divisions, complete sets will be seldom seen ; so,
if I am humbled as an author, I may be vain as a printer ;
and, when one has nothing else to be vain of, it is certainly
very little worth while to be proud of that
I will now trust you with a secret, but beg Mr. Gough may
not know it, for he will print it directly. Though I forgot
Alma Mater, I have not forgotten my Almae Nutrices, wet or
dry, I mean Eton and King's. I have laid aside for them, and
left them in my will, as complete a set as I could, of all I have
printed, A few I did give them at first; but I have for
neither a perfect set of the Anecdotes, I mean not the two
first volumes. I should be much obliged to you, if, without
naming me, you could inform yourself if I did send to King's
those two first volumes — I believe not.
I will now explain what I said above of Mr. Gough. He
has learnt, I suppose from my engravers, that I have had some
views of Strawberry-hill engraved. Slap-dash, down it went,
and he has even specified each view in his second volume.
This curiosity is a little impertinent; but he has made me
some amends by a new blunder, for he says they are engraved
for a second edition of my Catalogue. Now I have certainly
printed but one edition, for which the prints are designed. He
says truly, that I printed but a few for use ; consequently, I
h2

100 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1780.
by no means wished the whole world should know it ; but he
is very silly, and so I will say no more about him. Dr. Lort
called yesterday, and asked if I had any message for you ; but
I had written too lately.
Mr. Pennant has been, as I think I told you, in town : by
this time I conclude he is, as Lady Townley says of fifty
pounds, all over the kingdom. When Dr. Lort returns, 1
shall be very glad to read your transcript of Wolsey's Letters ;
for, in your hand, I can read them. I will not have them but
by some very safe conveyance, and will return them with
equal care.
I can have no objection to Robin Masters being wooden-
head of the Antiquarian Society; but, I suppose, he is not
dignified enough for them. I should prefer the Judge too, be
cause a coif makes him more like an old woman, and I reckon
that Society the midwives of superannuated miscarriages. I
am grieved for the return of your head-aches — I doubt you
write too much. Yours most sincerely.
P. S. It will be civil to tell Dr. Farmer that I do not know
whether I can obey his commands ; but that I will if I can.
As to a distinguished place, I beg not to be preferred to much
better authors ; nay, the more conspicuous, the more hkely to
be stolen for the reasons I have given you, of there being few
complete sets, and true collectors are mighty apt to steal.

TO SIR DAVID DALRYMPLE.*
Dec. 11, 1780.
I SHOULD have been shamefully ungrateful. Sir, if I
could ever forget aU the favours I have received from you,
and had omitted any mark of respect to you that it was in my
power to show. Indeed, what you are so good as to thank
me for was a poor trifie, but it was all I had or shall have of
the kind. It was imperfect too, as some painters of name
have died since it was printed, which was nine years ago.
They will be added with your kind notices, should I live,
' Now first collected.

1780. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 101
which is not probable, to see a new edition wanted. Sixty-
three years, and a great deal of illness, are too speaking me
mentos not to be attended to ; and when the pubhc has been
more indulgent than one had any right to expect, it is not
decent to load it with one's dotage !
I believe. Sir, that I may have been over-candid to Hogarth,
and that his spirit and youth and talent may have hurried
him into more real caricatures than I specified; yet he cer
tainly restrained his bent that way pretty early. Charteris'
I have seen; but though some years older than you. Sir, I
cannot say I have at all a perfect idea of him : nor did I ever
hear the curious anecdote you tell me of the banker and my
father. I was much better acquainted with Archbishop Black-
bourne. He lived within two doors of my father in Downing-
street, and took much notice of me when I was near man. It
is not to be ungrateful and asperse him, but to amuse you, if
I give you some account of him from what I remember.* He
was perfectly a fine gentleman to the last, to eighty-four; his
favourite a.uthor was Waller, whom he frequently quoted. In
point of decorum, he was not quite so exact as you have been
told, Sir. I often dined with him, his mistress, Mrs. Con
wys, sat at the head of the table, and Hayter,^ his natural son
by another woman, and very like him, at the bottom, as chap
lain : he was afterwards Bishop of London. I have heard,
but do not affirm it, that Mrs. Blackbourne, before she died,
complained of Mrs. Conwys being brought under the same
roof. To his clergy he was, I have heard, very imperious.
* The notorious Colonel Francis Charteris, to whom Hogarth has ac
corded a conspicuous place in the first plate of his Harlot's Progress.
Pope describes him as " a man infamous for all manner of vices," and
thus introduces him into his third Moral Essay : —
" Riches in effect,
No grace of Heav'n, or token of th' Elect ;
Given to the fool, the mad, the vain, the evil.
To Ward, to Waters, Chartres, and the devil ! "
He died in Scotland, in 1731, at the age of sixty-two. The populace, at
his funeral, raised a great riot, almost tore the body out of the coffin,
and east dead dogs, &c. into the grave along with it. — E.
" See the note to vol. i. p. 267. — E.
* For a refutation of Walpole's assertion, that Bishop Hayter was a
natural sou of Archbishop Blackbourn's, see vol. u. p. 383. — E.

102 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1780.
One story I recollect, which showed how much he was a man
of this world ; and which the Queen herself repeated to my
father. On the King's last journey to Hanover, before Lady
Yarmouth came over, the Archbishop being with her Majesty,
said to her, « Madam, I have been with your minister Wal
pole, and he tehs me that you are a wise woman, and do not
mind your husband's having a mistress." He was a httle hurt
at not being raised to Canterbury on Wake's death, and said
to my father, " You did not think on me ; but it is true, I am
too old, I am too old." Perhaps, Sir, these are gossiping
stories, but at least they hurt nobody now.
I can say httle. Sir, for my stupidity or forgetifulness about
Hogarth's poetry, which I still am not sure I ever heard,
though I knew him so well; but it is an additional argument
for my distrusting myself, if my memory fails, which is very
possible. A whole volume of Richardson's poetry has been
published since my volume was printed, not much to the
honour of his muse, but exceedingly so to that of his piety
and amiable heart. You will be pleased, -too. Sir, with a
story Lord Chesterfield told me (too late too) of Jervas, who
piqued^himself on the reverse, on total infidelity. One day
that he had talked very indecently in that strain. Dr. Arbuth-
not, who was as devout as Richardson, said to him, " Come,
Jervas, this is all an air and affectation ; nobody is a sounder
believer than you." "I!" said Jervas, "I believe nothing."
" Yes, but you do," replied the Doctor ; " nay, you not only
believe, but practise: you are so scrupulous an observer of
the commandments, that you never make the likeness of any
thing that is in heaven, or on the earth beneath, or," &c.
I fear. Sir, this letter is too long for thanks, and that I have
been proving what I have said, of my growing superannuated ;
but having made my will in my last volume, you may look on
this as a codicil.
P. S. I had sealed my letter. Sir, but break it open, lest
you should think soon, that I do not know what I say, or
break my resolution lightly. I shall be able to send you in
about two months a very curious work that I am going to
print and is actually in the press ; but there is not a syllable

1780. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 103
of my writing in it. It is a discovery just made of two very
ancient manuscripts, copies of which were found in two or
three libraries in Germany, and of which there are more com
plete manuscripts at Cambridge. They are of the eleventh
century at lowest, and prove that painting in oil was then
known, above three hundred years before the pretended in
vention of Van Eyck. The manuscripts themselves will be
printed, with a full introductory Dissertation by the discoverer,
Mr. Raspe, a very learned German, formerly librarian to the
Landgrave of Hesse, and who writes English surprisingly
well. The manuscripts are in the most barbarous monkish
Latin, and are much such works as our booksellers publish of
receipts for mixing colours, varnishes, &c. One of the authors,
who calls himself Theophilus, was a monk ; the other, Hera-
chus, is totally unknown ; but the proofs are unquestionable.
As my press is out of order, and that besides it would take up
too much time to print them there, they will be printed here
at my expence, and if there is any surplus, it will be for
Raspe's benefit

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.
Berkeley Square, Dec. 19, 1780.
I CANNOT leave you for a moment in error, my good Sir,
when you transfer a compliment to me, to which I have not
the most slender claim, and defraud another of it to whom it
is due.
The friend of Mr. Gray, in whom authorship caused no
jealousy or variance, as Mr. Mainwaring says truly, is Mr.
Mason. / certainly never excelled in poetry, and never at
tempted the species of poetry alluded to, odes. Dr. Lort I sup
pose, is removing to a living or a prebend, at least ; I hope so.
He may run a risk if he carries his book to Lambeth. " Sono
senate venti tre ore e mezza," as Alexander VIII. said to his
nephew, when he was chosen Pope in extreme old age. My
Lord of Canterbury's is not extreme, but very tottering. I
found in Mr. Gough's new edition, that in the Pepysian Ii-

104 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1781.
brary is a view of the theatre in Dorset Gardens, and views of
four or five other ancient great mansions. Do the folk of
Magdalen ever suffer copies of such things to be taken ? If
they would, is there anybody at Cambridge that could execute
them, and reasonably ? Answer me quite at your leisure ; and,
also, what and by whom the altar-piece is, that Lord Carlisle
has given to King's. I did not know he had been of our col
lege. I have two or three plates of Strawberry more than
those you mention ; but my collections are so numerous, and
from various causes my prints have been in such confusion,
that at present I neither know where the plates or proofs are.
I intend next summer to set about completing my plan of the
Catalogue and its prints ; and, when I have found any of the
plates or proofs, you shall certainly have those you want
There are the two large views of the house, one of the cottage,
one of the library, one of the front to the road, and the chim
ney-piece in the Holbein room. I think these are all that
are finished — oh ! yes, I believe the prior's garden ; but I
have not seen them these two years. I was so ill the summer
before last, that I attended to nothing ; the little I thought of
in that way last summer, was to get out my last volume of
the Anecdotes ; now I have nothing to trouble myself about
as an editor, and that not publicly, but to finish my Catalogue
— and that will be awkwardly enough ; for so many articles
have been added to my collection since the description was
made, that I must add them in the appendix, or reprint it;
and, what is more inconvenient the positions of many of the
pictures have been changed ; and so it will be a lame piece of
work. Adieu, my dear Sir ! Yours most cordially.

TO SIR DAVID DALRYMPLE.*
Berkeley Square, Jan. 1, 1781.
Your favourable opinion of my father. Sir, is too flatter
ing to me not to thank you for the satisfaction it gave me.
Wit, I think, he had not naturally, though I am sure he had
' Now first pubUshed.

1781. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 105
none from affectation, as simplicity was a predominant feature
in his amiable composition ; but he possessed that perhaps,
most true species of wit, which flows from experience and
deep knowledge of mankind, and consequently had more in his
later than in his earlier years; which is not common to a
talent that generally flashes from spirits, though they alone
cannot bestow it. When you was once before so good. Sir, as
to suggest to me an attempt at writing my father's life, I pro
bably made you one answer that I must repeat now, which is,
that a son's encomiums would be attributed to partiality ; and,
with my deep devotion to his memory, I should ever suspect
it in myself. But I will set my repugnance in a stronger
light, by relating an anecdote not incurious. In the new edi
tion of the Biographia Britannica, Dr. Kippis, the tinker of it,
reflecting on my having called the former, Vindicatio Britan
nica, or Defence of Everybody, threatened that when he should
come to my father's life he would convince me that the new
edition did not deserve that censure. I confess I thought this
but an odd sort of historian equity, to reverse scripture and
punish the sins of children upon their fathers ! However, I
said nothing. Soon after Dr. Kippis himself called on me,
and in very gracious terms desired I would favour him with
anecdotes of my father's life. This was descending a little
from his censorial throne, but I took no notice ; and only told
him, that I was so persuaded of the fairness of my father's
character, that I chose to trust it to the most unprejudiced
hands ; and that all I could consent to was, that when he shall
have written it if he would communicate it to me, I would
point out to him any material facts, if I should find any, that
were not truly noted. This was all I could contribute. Since
that time I have seen in the second volume a very gross accu
sation of Sir Robert, at second or third hand, and to which
the smallest attention must give a negative. Sir Robert is
accused of having, out of spite, influenced the House of Com
mons to expel the late Lord Barrington for the notorious job
of the Hamburg lottery.* Spite was not the ingredient most
domineering in my father's character ; but whatever has been
' Seearaie, p. 17.— E.

106 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1781.
said of the corruption or servility of Houses of Commons,
when was there one so prostitute, that it would have expelled
one of their own members for a fraud not proved, to gratify
the vengeance of the minister? and a minister must have
been implacable indeed, and a House of Commons profligate
indeed, to inflict such a stigma on an innocent man, because
he had been attached to a rival predecessor of the minister.
It is not less strange that the Hamburgher's son should not
have vindicated his parent's memory at the opportunity of
the secret committee on Sir Robert, but should wait for
a manuscript memorandum of Serjeant Skinner after the
death of this last I hope Sir Robert will have no such
apologist !
I do not agree less with you. Sir, in your high opinion of
King Wilham. I think, and a far better judge. Sir Robert
thought that Prince one of the wisest men that ever lived.
Your bon-mot of his was quite new to me. There are two or
three passages in the Diary of the second Earl of Clarendon
that always struck me as instances of wisdom and humour at
once ; particularly his Majesty's reply to the lords who advised
him (I think at Salisbury) to send away King James; and his
few words, after long patience, to that foolish lord himself,
who harangued him on the observance of his declaration.
Such traits, and several of Queen Anne (not equally deep) in
the same journal, paint those Princes as characteristically as
Lord Clarendon's able father would have drawn them. There
are two letters in the " Nugae Antiquse" that exhibit as faith
ful pictures of Queen Elizabeth and James the First, by de
lineating them in their private life and unguarded hours.
You are much in the right. Sir, in laughing at those wise
personages, who not only dug up the corpse of Edward the
First, but restored Christian burial to his crown and robes.
Methinks, had they deposited those regalia in the treasury of
the church, they would have committed no sacrilege. I con
fess I have not quite so heinous an idea of sacrilege as Dr.
Johnson. Of aU kinds of robbery, that appears to me the
hghtest species which injures nobody. Dr. Johnson is so
pious, that in his journey to your country, he flatters himseh"

1781. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 107
that all his readers will join him in enjoying the destruction of
two Dutch crews, who were swallowed up by the ocean after
they had robbed a church.* I doubt that uncharitable
anathema is more in the spirit of the Old Testament than of
the New.

TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY.
January 3, 1781.
After I had written my note to you last night, I called
on ***** *, who gave me the dismal account of Jamaica, '^
that you will see in the Gazette, and of the damage done to
our shipping. Admiral Rowley is safe ; but they are in ap
prehensions for Walsingham. He told me too what is not in
the Gazette ; that of the expedition against the Spanish set
tlements, not a single man survives ! The papers to-day, I
see, speak of great danger to Gibraltar.
Your brother repeated to me his great desire that you
should publish your speech,* as he told you. I do not con
ceive why he is so eager for it, for he professes total despair
about America. It looks to me as if there was a wish of
throwing the blame somewhere ; but I profess I am too simple
to dive into the objects of shades of intrigues : nor do I care
about them. We shall be reduced to a miserable little island ;
' The following are Johnson's words : — " The two churches of Elgin
were stripped, and the lead was shipped to be sold in Holland : I hope
every reader wiU rejoice, that this cargo of sacrUege was lost at sea."
— E. ' On the 3rd of October occurred one of the most dreadful hurricanes
ever experienced in the West Indies. In Jamaica, Savannah La Mar,
with three hundred inhabitants, was utterly swept away by an irruption
of the sea; and at Barbadoes, on the lOth, Bridge-town, the capital of
the island, was almost levelled to the ground, and several thousands of
the inhabitants perished. — E.
' Introductory of a motion " for leave to bring in a bUl for quieting
the troubles that have for some time subsisted between Great Britain
and America, and enabling his Majesty to send out commissioners with
fuU power to treat with America for that purpose." The motion was
negatived by 123 against 81. For the speech of General Conway, and
a copy of his proposed bill, see Pari. History, vol. xxi. pp. S70. S88.— E.

108 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1781.
and from a mighty empire sink into as insignificant a country
as Denmark or Sardinia ! When our trade and marine are
gone, the latter of which we keep up by unnatural efforts, to
which our debt will put a stop, we shall lose the East Indies
as Portugal did ; and then France will dictate to us more im
periously than ever we did to Ireland, which is in a manner
already gone too ! These are mortifying reflections, to which
an Enghsh mind cannot easily accommodate itself But,
alas ! we have been pursuing the very conduct that France
would have prescribed, and more than with all her presump
tion she could have dared to expect Could she fiatter herself
that we would take no advantage of the dilatoriness and un
willingness of Spain to enter into the war ? that we would re
ject the disposition of Russia to support us ? and that our still
more natural friend, Holland,* would be driven into the league
against us ? All this has happened ; and, like an infant, we
are delighted with having set our own frock in a blaze ! I sit
and gaze with astonishment at our phrenzy. Yet why ? Are
not nations as liable to intoxication as individuals ? Are not
predictions founded on calculation oftener rejected than the
prophecies of dreamers ? Do we not act precisely like Charles
Fox, who thought he had discovered a new truth in figures,
when he preached that wise doctrine, that nobody could want
money that would pay enough for it ? The consequence was,
that in two years he left himself without the possibility of
borrowing a shilling. I am not surprised at the spirits of a
boy of parts ; I am not surprised at the people ; I do wonder
at government that games away its consequence. For what
are we now really at war with America, France, Spain, and
Holland? — Not with hopes of reconquering America; not
with the smallest prospect of conquering a foot of land from
' Mr. Henry Lawrens, president of the American councU, having been
taken by one of the King's frigates early in October 1780, on his passage
to HoUand, and it being discovered by the papers in his possession that
the American States had been long carrying on a secret correspondence
with Amsterdam, Sir Joseph Yorke, the British minister at the Hague,
demanded a satisfactory explanation ; but the same not being afforded,
hostiUties against HoUand were declared on the 28th of December
1780.— E.

1781. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 109
France, Spain, or Holland. — No; we are at war on the
defensive, to protect what is left, or more truly to stave off,
for a year perhaps, a peace that must proclaim our naked
ness and impotence. I would not willingly recur to that
womanish vision of, something may turn up in our favour !
That something must be a naval victory that will annihilate
at once all the squadrons of Europe — must wipe off forty
millions of new debt — reconcile the affections of America,
that for six years we have laboured to alienate; a;nd that
must recall out of the grave the armies and sailors that are
perished — and that must make thirteen provinces willing
to receive the law, without the necessity of keeping ten thou
sand men amongst them. The gigantic imagination of Lord
Chatham would not entertain such a chimera. Lord * * * *
perhaps would say he did, rather than not undertake; or
Mr. Burke could form a metaphoric vision that would satisfy
no imagination but his own : but I, who am nullius addictus
jurare in verba, have no hopes either in our resources or in
our geniuses, and look on my country already as undone !
It is grievous — but I shall not have much time to lament
its fall!*

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.
Berkeley Square, Feb, 7, 1781.
DEAR SIR,
I WILL not leave you a moment in suspense about the
safety of your very valuable volume, which you have so kindly
sent me, and which I have just received, with the enclosed
letters, and your other yesterday. I have not time to add
a word more at present, being full of business, having the
* To this passage the editor of Walpole's works subjoined, in March
1798, the foUowing note : — " It may be some comfort, in a moment no
less portentous and melancholy than the one here described, to recoUect
the almost unhoped-for recovery of national prosperity, which took place
from the peace of 1782 to the declaration of war against France in the
year 1793. May our exertions procure the speedy application of a simi
lar remedy to our present evils, and may that remedy be productive of
equaUy good effects ! " — E.

110 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1781.
night before last received an account of Lady Orford's death
at Pisa,* and a copy of her will, which obhges me to write
several letters, and to see my relations. She has left every
thing in her power to her Jriend Cavaher Mozzi, at Florence ;
but her son comes into a large estate, besides her great join
ture. You may imagine, how I lament that he had not
patience to wait sixteen months, before he sold his pictures !
I am very sorry you have been at all indisposed. I will
take the utmost care of your fifty-ninth volume (for which
I give you this receipt), and will restore it the instant I have
had time to go through it Witness my hand.

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.
February 9, 1781.
I HAD not time, dear Sir, when I wrote last to answer
your letter, nor do more than cast an eye on your manuscript.
To say the truth, my patience is not tough enough to go
through Wolsey's negotiations. I see that your perseverance
was forced to make the utmost efforts to transcribe them.
They are immeasurably verbose, not to mention the blunders
of the first copyist As I read only for amusement I cannot,
so late in my life, purchase information on what I do not
much care about at the price of a great deal of ennui. The
old wills at the end of your volume diverted me much more
than the obsolete pohtics. I shall say nothing about what
you call your old leaven. Everybody must judge for himself
in those matters : nor are you or I of an age to change long-
formed opinions, as neither of us is governed by self-interest
Pray tell me how I may most safely return your volume. I
value all your manuscripts so much, that I should never for
give myself, if a single one came to any accident, by your so
obligingly lending them to me. They are great treasures,
and contain something or other that must suit most tastes :
not to mention your amazing industry, neatness, legibihty,
' See vol. i. p. 170. — E.

1781. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. Ill
with notes, arms, &c. — I know no such repositories. You
will receive with your manuscript Mr. Kerrick's and Mr.
Gough's letters. The former is very kind. The inaugu
ration of the Antiquated Society is burlesque — and so is
their dearth of materials for another volume : can they ever
want such rubbish as compose their preceding annals ?
I think it probable, that story should be stone: however,
I never piqued myself on recording every mason. I have
preserved but too many that did not deserve to be men
tioned. I dare to say, that when I am gone, many more
such will be added to my volumes. I had not heard of poor
Mr. Pennant's misfortune. I am very sorry for it, for I
beheve him to be a very honest good-natured man. He cer
tainly was too lively for his proportion of understanding, and
too impetuous to make the best use of what he had. How
ever, it is a credit to us antiquaries to have one of our class
disordered by vivacity. I hope your goutiness is dissipated,
and that this last fine week has set you on your feet again.

TO THE EARL OF BUCHAN.*
Berkeley Square, Feb. 10, 1781.
I WAS honoured yesterday with your lordship's card, with
the notification of the additional honour of my being elected
an honorary member of the Society of the Antiquaries of
Scotland ; ^ a grace, my lord, that I receive with the respect
and gratitude due to so valuable a distinction ; and for which
I must beg leave, through your lordship's favour, to offer
my most sincere and humble thanks to that learned and re
spectable Society.
My very particular thanks are still more due to your lord
ship, who, in remembrance of ancient partiality, have been
pleased, at the hazard of your own judgment, to favour an old
' Now first printed.
° The Royal Society of Antiquaries of Scotland had been formed at
Edinburgh in the preceding December, when the Earl of Buchan was
elected president. — £.

112 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1781.
humble servant, who can only receive honour from, but can
reflect none on, the Society into which your lordship and your
associates have condescended to adopt him. In my best days,
my lord, I never could pretend to more than having flitted
over some flowers of knowledge. Now worn out and near the
end of my course, I can only be a broken monument to prove
that the Society of the Antiquaries of Scotland are zealous to
preserve even the least valuable remains of a former age, and
to recompense all who have contributed their mite towards
illustrating our common island. I am, &c.

TO SIR DAVID DALRYMPLE.*
Strawberry HiU, Feb. 10, 1781.
I WAS very intimate. Sir, with the last Lord Finlater
when he was Lord Deskfoord. We became acquainted at
Rome on our travels, and though, during his illness and long
residence in Scotland, we had no intercourse, I had the
honour of seeing him sometimes during his last visit to Eng
land; but I am an entire stranger to the anecdote relative
to my father and Sir William Windham. I have asked my
brother, who was much more conversant in the scenes of that
time ; for I was abroad when Sir William died, and returned
to England but about six months before my father's retire
ment so that having been at school and at Cambridge, or in
my infancy, during Sir Robert's administration, the little I
retain from him was picked up in the last three years of his
life, which is an answer. Sir, to your inquiries why, among
other reasons, I have always declined writing his life ; for I
could in reality say but httle on my own knowledge ; and yet
should have the air of being good authority, at least better
than I should truly be. My brother. Sir Edward, who is
eleven years older than I am, never heard of your anecdote.
I may add, that latterly I lived in great intimacy with the
Marchioness of Blandford, Sir William's widow, who died
' Now first collected.

1781. THE HON. HOIJACE WALPOLE. 113
but a year and a half ago at Sheene, here in my neighbour
hood; and with Lady Suffolk, who could not but be well
acquainted with the history of those times from her long
residence at court, and with whom, for the last five or six
years of her life here at Twickenham, I have had many and
many long conversations on those subjects, and yet I never
heard a word of the supposed event you mention. I myself
never heard Sir W. Windham speak but once in the House
of Commons, but have always been told that his style and
behaviour were most hberal and like a gentleman; and my
brother says, there never passed any bitterness or acrimony
between him and our father.*
I will answer you as fairly and candidly. Sir, about Archi
bald Duke of Argyll, of whom I saw at least a great deal.
I do believe Sir Robert had a full opinion of his abilities as
a most usefiil man. In fact, it is plain he had; for he de
pended on the Duke, when Lord Islay, for the management
of your part of the island, and, as I have heard at the time,
disobhged the most firm of the Scottish Whigs by that pre
ference. Sir Robert supported Lord Islay against the Queen
herself, who hated him for his attachment to Lady Suffolk;
and he was the only man of any consequence whom her Majesty
did not make feel how injudicious it was (however novel) to
prefer the interest of the mistress to that of the wife. On
my father's defeat his warm friends loudly complained of Lord
Islay as having betrayed the Scottish boroughs, at the elec
tion of Sir Robert's last Parliament, to his brother, Duke
John. It is true too, that Sir Robert always replied, " I
do not accuse him." I must own, knowing my father's man-
' Pope, in his second Dialogue for the Year 1738, has transmitted Sir
WiUiam's character to posterity —
" How can I, Pult'ney, Chesterfield, forget,
WhUe Roman spirit charms, and Attic wit }
Or Wyndham, just to freedom and the throne.
The master of our passions and his own ? "
Speaker Onslow says, " there was a spirit and power in his speaking that
always animated himself and his hearers, and with the decoration of his
manner, which was, indeed, very ornamental, produced, not only the
most attentive, respectful, but even a reverend regard, to whatever he
spoke."— E.
VOL. VI. 1

114 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1781.
ner, and that when he said but little, it was not a favourable
symptom, I did think, that if he would not accuse, at least
he did not acquit. Duke Archibald was undoubtedly a dark
shrewd man. I recollect an instance, for which I should not
chuse to be quoted just at this moment though it reflects on
nobody living. I forget the precise period, and even some of
the persons concerned ; but it was in the minority of the pre
sent Duke of Gordon, and you. Sir, can probably adjust the
dates. A regiment had been raised of Gordons. Duke Ar
chibald desired the command of it to a favourite of his own.
The Duchess-dowager insisted on it for her second husband.
Duke A. said, " Oh ! to be sure her grace must be obeyed ;"
but instantly got the regiment ordered to the East Indies,
which had not been the reckoning of a widow remarried to
a young fellow.*
At the time of the rebelhon, I remember that Duke Ar
chibald was exceedingly censured in London for coming thi
ther, and pleading that he was not empowered to take up
arms. But I believe I have more than satisfied your curiosity,
Sir, and that you will not think it very prudent to set an old
man on talking of the days of his youth.
I have just received the favour of a letter from Lord Buchan,
in which his lordship is so good as to acquaint me with the
honour your new Society of Antiquarians have done me in
nominating me an honorary member. I am certainly much
flattered by the distinction, but am afraid his lordship's par
tiality and patronage will in this only instance do him no
credit. My knowledge even of British antiquity has ever
been desultory and most superficial ; I have never studied any
branch of science deeply and solidly, nor ever but for tem-
• See Memoires of George the Second, vol. i. p. 240. " In his private
life," says Walpole, " he had more merit, except in the case of his wife,
whom, having been deluded into marrying without a fortune, he pu
nished by rigorous and unrelaxed confinement in Scotland. He had a
great thirst for books ; a head admirably turned to mechanics ; was a
patron of ingenious men, a promoter of discoveries, and one of the first
great encouragers of planting in England; most of the curious exotics
which have been familiarized to this climate being introduced by him.
He died suddenly in his chair after dinner, at his house in Argyle-build-
ings, London, AprU 15, 1761." — E.

1781. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 115
porary amusement, and without any system, suite, or method.
Of late years I have quitted every connection with societies,
not only Parhament, but those of our Antiquaries and of Arts
and Sciences, and have not attended the meetings of the
Royal Society. I have withdrawn myself in a great measure
from the world, and live in a very narrow circle idly and ob
scurely. Still, Sir, I could not decline the honour your
Society has been pleased to offer me, lest it should be thought
a want of respect and gratitude, instead of a mark of humility
and conscious unworthiness. I am so sensible of this last,
that I cannot presume to offer my services in this part of our
island to so respectable an assembly; but if you, Sir, who
know too well my limited abilities, can at any time point out
any information that is in my power to give to the Society,
(as in the case of Royal Scottish portraits, on which Lord
Buchan was pleased to consult me,) I shall be very proud to
obey your and their commands, and shall always be with great
regard their and your most obedient humble servant.
P. S. I do not know whether I ever mentioned to you or
Lord Buchan, Sir, a curious and excellent head in oil of the
Lady Margaret Douglas at Mr. Carteret's, at Hawnes in Bed
fordshire, the seat of his grandfather Lord Granville ; I know
few better portraits. It is at once a countenance of goodness
and cunning, a mixture I think pleasing. It seems to imply
that the person's virtue was not founded on folly or ignorance
of the world ; it imphes perhaps more, that the person would
combat treachery and knavery, and knew how. I could fancy
the head in question was such a character as Margaret Queen
of Navarre, sister of Francis the First, who was very free in
her conversation and writings, yet strictly virtuous ; debonnaire,
void of ambition ; yet a politician when her brother's situation
required it If your Society should give into engraving histo
ric portraits, this head would deserve an early place. There
is at Lord Scarborough's, in Yorkshire, a double portrait, per
haps by Holbein or Lucas de Heere, of Lady Margaret's
mother, Queen Margaret and her second husband.

I 2

116 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1781.

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.
DEAR SIR, Berkeley Square, March 2, 1781.
My Lady Orford ordered herself to be buried at Leghorn,
the only place in Tuscany where Protestants have burial;
therefore I suppose she did not affect to change. On the
contrary, I believe she had no preference for any sect, but
rather laughed at all. I know nothing new, neither in no
velty nor antiquitj'. I have had no gout this winter, and
therefore I call it my leap-year. I am sorry it is not yours
too. It is an age since I saw Dr. Lort. I hope illness is
not the cause. You will be diverted with hearing that I am
chosen an honorary member of the new Antiquarian Society at
Edinburgh. I accepted for two reasons : first, it is a feather
that does not demand my fiying thither; and secondly, to
show contempt for our own old fools.* To me it will be a
perfect sinecure ; for I have moulted all my pen feathers, and
shall have no ambition of neStling into their printed trans
actions. Adieu, my good Sir. Your much obhged.

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.
March S, 1781.
I DO not in the least guess or imagine what you mean by
Lord Hardwicke's pubhcation of a Walpoliana.^ Naturally
it should mean a collection of sayings or anecdotes of my
father, according to the French Anas, which began, I think,
with those of Menage. Or, is it a cohection of letters and
state-papers during his administration ? I own I am curious
to know at least what this piece contains. I had not heard
* Cole, in a letter to Mr. Gough, acquainting him with Walpole's elec
tion, adds — " The admission of a few things into our Archaeologia, has,
I fear, estranged for ever one of the most Uvely, learned, and entertain
ing members on our list." — E.
' " WalpoUana; or a few Anecdotes of Sir Robert Walpole"— an
agreeable little coUection of anecdotes relative to Sir Robert Walpole,
made by PhUip second Earl of Hardwicke ; printed in quarto, but never
pubUshed.— E.

1781. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 117
a word of it ; and, were it not for the name, I should have
very little inquisitiveness about it: for nothing upon earth
ever was duller than the three heavy tomes his lordship
printed of Sir Dudley Carleton's Negotiations, and of what
he called State-papers. Pray send me an answer as soon as
you can, at least of as much as you have heard about this
thing.

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.
Berkeley Square, March 29, 1781.
You are so good-natured that I am sure you will be
glad to be told that the report of Mr. Pennant being dis
ordered is not true. He is come to town — has been with
me, and at least is as composed as ever I saw him. He is
going to pubhsh another part of his Welch Tour, which he
can well afford; though I beheve he does not lose by his
works. An aunt is dead exceedingly rich, who had given
some thousands to him and his daughter, but suddenly
changed her mind and left all to his sister, who has most
nobly given him all that had been destined in the cancelled
will. Dr. Nash has just published the first volume of his
Worcestershire. It is a folio of prodigious corpulence, and
yet dry enough ; but then it is finely dressed, and has many
heads and views.* Dr. Lort was with me yesterday, and I
never saw him better, nor has he been much out of order.
I hope your gout has left you; but here are winds bitter
enough to give one anything. Yours ever.

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.
AprU 3, 1781.
I AM very sorry, dear Sir, that in my last letter but one,
I took no notice of what you said about Lord Hardwicke;
4
' Dr. Threadway Nash's " Collections for the History of Worcester
shire;" 1781-1799 ; in two volumes, foUo. — E.

118 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1781.
the truth was, I am perfectly indifferent about what he prints
or pubhshes. There is generally a httle indirect malice, but
so much more duhness, that the latter soon suffocates the
former. This is telling you that I could not be offended at
anything you said of him, nor am I hkely to suspect a sin
cere friend of disobliging me. You have proved the direct
contrary these forty years. I have not time to say more, but
am ever most truly yours.

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.
Berkeley Square, May 4, 1781.
I SHALL not only be ready to show Strawberry Hill, at
any time he chooses, to Dr. Farmer, as your friend, but to be
honoured with his acquaintance, though I am very shy now
of contracting new. I have great respect for his character
and abihties and judicious taste, and am very clear that he
has elucidated Shakspeare* in a more reasonable and satis
factory manner than any of his affected commentators, who
only complimented him with learning that he had not, in
order to display their own.
Pray give me timely notice whenever I am likely to see
Dr. Farmer, that I may not be out of the way when I can
have an opportunity of showing attention to a friend of yours,
and pay a small part of your gratitude to him. There shall
be a bed at his service ; for you know Strawberry cannot be
seen in a moment, nor are Englishmen so Hants as to get
acquainted in the time they are walking through a house.
But now, my good Sir, how could you suffer your preju
diced partiality to me to run away with you so extravagantly,
as to call me one of the greatest characters of the age ? You
are too honest to fiatter, too much a hermit to be interested,
and I am too powerless and insignificant to be an object of
court, were you capable of paying it from mercenary views.
I know then that it could proceed from nothing but the
' In his weU-known " Essay on the Learning of Shakspeare." — E.

1781. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 119
warmth of your heart; but if you are blind towards me, I
I am not so to myself. I know not how others feel on such
occasions, but if any one happens to praise me, all my faults
rush into my face, and make me turn my eyes inward and
outward with horror. What am I but a poor old skeleton
tottering towards the grave, and conscious of ten thousand
weaknesses, follies, and worse ! And for talents, what are mine,
but trifling and superficial ; and, compared with those of men
of real genius, most diminutive ! Mine a great character !
Mercy on me ! I am a composition of Anthony Wood and
Madame Danois,* and I know not what trumpery writers.
This is the least I can say to refute your panegyric, which I
shall burn presently ; for I will not have such an encomiastic
letter found in my possession, lest I should seem to have been
pleased with it. I enjoin you, as a penance, not to contra
dict one tittle I have said here ; for I am not begging more
compliments, and shall take it seriously ill if you ever pay me
another. We have been friends above forty years ; I am
satisfied of your sincerity and affection ; but does it become
us, at past threescore each, to be saying fine things to one
another ? Consider how soon we shall both be nothing I
I assure you, with great truth, I am at this present very
sick of my httle vapour of fame. My tragedy has wandered
into the hands of some banditti booksellers, and I am forced
to pubhsh it myself to prevent piracy.^ All I can do is to
condemn it myself, and that I shall. I am reading Mr. Pen
nant's new Welch Tour ; he has pleased me by making very
handsome mention of you; but I will not do what I have
been blaming.
My poor dear Madame du Deffand's little dog is arrived.
She made me promise to take care of it the last time I saw
her: that I will most rehgiously, and make it as happy as
' Madame d'Aulnoy, the contemporary of Perrault, and, like him, a
writer of fairy tales. She was the authoress of " The Lady's Travels in
Spain," and many other works, which have been translated into Eng
Ush.— E.
" Walpole had printed fifty copies of " The Mysterious Mother " at
Strawberry Hill as early as the year 1765; but a surreptitious edition of
it being announced in 1781, he consented to Dodsley's publishing a ge
nuine one. — E.

120 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1781.
is possible.* I have not much curiosity to see your Cambridge
Raphael, but great desire to see you, and will certainly this
summer accept your invitation, which I take much kinder
than your great character, though both flowed from the same
friendship. Mine for you is exactly what it has been ever
since you knew (and few men can boast so uninterrupted a
friendship as yours and that of — ) H. W.

TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY.
Strawberry HUl, Sunday evening. May 6, 1781.
I SUPPED with your Countess on Friday at Lord Frede
rick Campbell's, where I heard of the rehef of Gibraltar by
Darby. The Spanish fleet kept close in Cadiz : however, he
lifted up his leg, and just squirted contempt on them. As he
is disembarrassed of his transports, I suppose their ships will
scramble on shore rather than fight Well, I shall be per
fectly content with our fleet coming back in a whole skin;
it will be enough to have outquixoted Don Quixote's own,
nation. As I knew your Countess would write the next day,
I waited till she was gone out of town and would not have
much to tell you — not that I have either; and it is giving
myself an air to pretend to know more at Twickenham than
she can at Henley. Though it is a bitter north-east, I came
hither to-day to look at my lilacs, though a la glace ; and to
get from pharaoh, for which there is a rage. I doted on it
above thirty years ago ; but it is not decent to sit up all night
now with boys and girls. My nephew, Lord Cholmondeley,
the banker d h. mode, has been demohshed. He and his
' In his reply to this letter, of the 7th of May, the worthy antiquary
says — " I congratulate the little Parisian dog, that he has fallen into the
hands of so humane a master. I have a little diminutive dog, Busy, fuU
as great a favourite, and never out of my lap : I have already, in case of
an accident, ensured it a refuge from starvation and ill-usage. It is the
least we can do for poor harmless, shiftless, pampered animals that have
amused us, and we have spoUt." A brother antiquary, on reading this
passage, exclaimed, " How could Mr. Cole ever get through the tran
script of a Bishop's Registry, or a Chartulary, with Busy never out of
hislap!"— E.

1781. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 121
associate. Sir Willoughby Aston, went early t'other night to
Brookes's, before Charles Fox and Fitzpatrick, who keep a
bank there, were come ; but they soon arrived, attacked their
rivals, broke their bank, and won above four thousand pounds.
"There," said Fox, "so should all usurpers be served!"
He did still better; for he sent for his tradesmen, and paid as
far as the money would go. In the mornings he continues
his war on Lord North, but cannot break that bank. The
court has carried a secret committee for India affairs, and it
is supposed that Rumbold is to be the sacrifice; but as he
is near as rich as Lord Clive, I conclude he will escape by
the same golden key.
I told you in my last that Tonton was arrived. I brought
him this morning to take possession of his new villa, but his
inauguration has not been at all pacific. As he has already
found out that he may be as despotic as at Saint Joseph's, he
began vrith exiling my beautiful little cat; upon which, how
ever, we shall not quite agree. He then flew at one of my
dogs,* who returned it by biting his foot till it bled, but was
severely beaten for it I immediately rung for Margaret,^ to
dress his foot; but in the midst of my tribulation could not
keep my countenance ; for she cried, " Poor little thing, he
does not understand my language I" I hope she will not re
collect too that he is a Papist ! Berkeley Square, Tuesday, May 8.
I came before dinner, and find your long letter of the 3rd.
You have mistaken Tonton's sex, who is a cavaher, and a
httle of the mousquetaire still; but if I do not correct his vi
vacities, at least I shall not encourage them like my dear old
friend. You say nothing of your health; therefore, I trust it is
quite re-established: my own is most flourishing for me.
' This does not quite accord with the favourable character given of
Tonton by Madame du Deffand's secretary, Wyart, in a letter to Wal
pole : — " Je garderai," he says, " Tonton jusqu'au depart de M. Thomas
Walpole ; j'en ai le plus grand soin. II est tres doux ; U ne mord per-
sonne ; il n'dtait m^chant qu'aupres de sa maitresse." — E.
' Mr. Walpole's housekeeper.

122 ' CORRESPONDENCE OF 1781.
They say the Parhament will rise by the birthday ; not that
it seems to be any grievance or confinement to anybody. I
hope you will soon come and enjoy a quiet summer under
the laurels of your own conscience. They are at least as
spreading as anybody's else ; and the soil will preserve their
verdure for ever. Methinks we western powers might as well
make peace, since we make war so clumsily. Yet I doubt
the awkwardness of our enemies will not have brought down
our stomach. WeU, I wish for the sake of mankind there
was an end of their sufferings ! Even spectators are not
amused — the whole war has passed hke the riotous mur
murs of the upper gallery before the play begins — they
have pelted the candle-snuffers, the stage has been swept,
the music has played, people have taken their places — but
the deuce a bit of any performance ! — And when folks go
home, they will have seen nothing but a farce, that hast cost
fifty times more than the best tragedy !

TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY.
Berkeley Square, May 28, 1781.
This letter, like an embarkation, will not set out till
it has gotten its complement; but I begin it as I have just
received your second letter. I wrote to you two days ago,
and did not mean to complain ; for you certainly cannot have
variety of matter in your sequestered isle : and since you
do not disdain trifling news, this good town, that furnishes
nothing else, at least produces weeds, which shoot up in
spite of the Scotch thistles, that have choked all good fruits.
I do not know what Lady Craven designs to do with her
play ; I hope, act it only in private ; for her other was mur
dered, and the audience did not exert the least gallantry to
so pretty an authoress, though she gave them so fair an op
portunity. For my own play, I was going to pubhsh it in
my own defence, as a spurious edition was advertised here,
besides one in Ireland. My advertisement has overlaid the
former for the present, and that tempts me to suppress mine.

1781. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 123
as I have a thorough aversion to its appearance. Still, I
think I shall produce it in the dead of summer, that it may
be forgotten by winter; for I could not bear having it the
subject of conversation in a full town. It is printed; so I
can let it steal out in the midst of the first event that en
grosses the public ; and as it is not quite a novelty, I have no
fear but it will be still-bom, if it is twin with any babe that
squalls and makes much noise.
At the same time with yours I received a letter from
another cousin at Paris, who tells me Necker is on the verge,
and in the postscript says, he has actually resigned. I heard
so a few days ago ; but this is a full confirmation. Do you
remember a conversation at your house, at supper, in which
a friend of yours spoke very unfavourably of Necker, and
seemed to wish his fall ? In my own opinion they are much in
the wrong. It is true, Necker laboured with all his shoulders
to restore their finances ; yet I am persuaded that his atten
tion to that great object made him clog all their military
operations. They will pay dearer for money; but money
they will have: nor is it so dear to them, for, when they
have gotten it, they have only not to pay. A Monsieur Joly
de Fleury is comptroller-general. I know nothing of him;
but as they change so often, some able man will prove
minister at last — and there they will have the advantage
again. Lord CornwaUis's courier, Mr. Broderick, is not yet ar
rived; so you are a little precipitate in thinking America
so much nearer to being subdued, which you have often
swallowed up as if you were a minister ; and yet, methinks,
that era has been so frequently put off, that I wonder you are
not cured of being sanguine — or rather, of believing the mag
nificent lies that every trifling advantage gives birth to. If
a quarter of the Americans had joined the Royalists, that
have been said to join, all the colonies would not hold them.
But, at least, they have been like the trick of kings and
queens at cards ; where one of two goes back every turn
to fetch another. However, this is only for conversation
for the moment With such aversion to disputation, I have

124 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1781.
no zeal for making converts to my own opinion, not even on
points that touch me nearer. Thursday, May 31.
If you see the papers, you will find that there was a warm
debate yesterday on a fresh proposal from Hartley* for pa
cification with America ; in which the ministers were roundly
reproached with their boasts of the returning zeal of the
colonies ; and which, though it ought by their own accounts
to be so much nearer complete, they could not maintain to
be at all effectual; though even yesterday a report was re
vived of a second victory of Lord Comwallis. This debate
prevented another on the Marriage-bill, which Charles Fox
wants to get repealed, and which he told me he was going
to labour. I mention this from the circumstance of the
moment when he told me so. I had been to see if Lady
Ailesbury was come to town : as I came up St. James's-
street I saw a cart and porters at Charles's door; coppers
and old chests of drawers loading. In short, his success at faro
has awakened his host of creditors ; but unless his bank had
swelled to the size of the bank of England, it could not have
yielded a sop a-piece for each. Epsom, too, had been unpro-
pitious ; and one creditor has actually seized and carried off his
goods, which did not seem worth removing. As I returned
full of this scene, whom should I find sauntering by my own
door but Charles? He came up and talked to me at the
coach-window, on the Marriage-bill,'^ with as much sang-froid
as if he knew nothing of what had happened. I have no ad
miration for insensibility to one's own faults, especially when
committed out of vanity. Perhaps the whole philosophy con
sisted in the commission. If you could have been as much to
blame, the last thing you would bear well would be your own
reflections. The more marveUous Fox's parts are, the more
' On the preceding day, Mr. Hartley had moved for leave to bring in
a biU to invest the Crown with sufficient power to treat upon the means of
restoring peace with the provinces of North America. It was negatived
by 106 against 72. — E.
' On the 7th of June, Mr. Fox moved for leave to bring in a biU to
amend the act of the 26th of George the Second, for preventing clan
destine marriages. The biU passed the Commons, but was reiected bv
the Lords.— E.

1781. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 125
one is provoked at his follies, which comfort so many rascals
and blockheads, and make all that is admirable and amiable
in him only matter of regret to those who like him as I do.
I did intend to settle at Strawberry on Sunday ; but must
return on Thursday, for a party made at Marlborough-house
for Princess Ameha. I am continually tempted to retire en
tirely ; and should, if I did not see how very unfit English
tempers are for living quite out of the world. We grow abo
minably peevish and severe on others, if we are not con
stantly rubbed against and polished by them. I need not
name friends and relations of yours and mine as instances.
My prophecy on the short reign of faro is verified already.
The bankers find that all the calculated advantages of the
game do not balance pinchbeck parolis and debts of honour
able women. The bankers, I think, might have had a pre
vious and more generous reason, the very bad air of holding
a bank : — but this country is as hardened against the petite
morale, as against the greater. — What should I think of the
world if I quitted it entirely ?

TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY.
Strawberry HUl, June 3, 1781.
You know I have more philosophy about you than cou
rage, yet for once I have been very brave. There was an
article in the papers last week that said, a letter from Jersey
mentioned apprehensions of being attacked by four thousand
French. Do you know that I treated the paragraph with
scorn .? No, no ; I am not afraid for your island, when you
are at home in it, and have had time to fortify it and have
sufficient force. No, no ; it will not be surprised when you
are there, and when our fleet is returned, and Digby before
Brest However, with all my valour, I could not help going
to your brother to ask a few questions; but he had heard
of no such letter. The French would be foohsh indeed if
they ran their heads a third time against your rocks, when
watched by the most vigilant of all governors. Your nephew

126 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1781.
George* is arrived with the fleet: my door opened t'other
morning; I looked towards 'the common horizon of heads,
but was a foot and a half below any face. The handsomest
giant in the world made but one step cross my room, and
seizing my hand, gave it such a robust gripe that I squalled ;
for he crushed my poor chalk-stones to powder. When I had
recovered from the pain of his friendly salute, I said, " It
must be George Conway ! and yet is it possible ? Why, it is
not fifteen months ago since you was but six feet high !" In
a word, he is within an inch of Robert and Edward, with
larger limbs; almost as handsome as Hugh, with all the
bloom of youth; and, in short, another of those comely sons
of Anak, the breed of which your brother and Lady Hertford
have piously restored for the comfort of the daughters of
Sion. He is delighted with having tapped his warfare with
the siege of Gibraltar, and burns to stride to America. The
town, he says, is totally destroyed, and between two and three
hundred persons were killed. — Well, it is pity Lady Hertford
has done breeding: we shall want such a race to repeople
even the ruins we do not lose ! The rising generation does
give one some hopes. I confine myself to some of this year's
birds. The young Wilham Pitt ^ has again displayed paternal
oratory. The other day, on the commission of accounts, he
answered Lord North, and tore him hmb from hmb. If
' Lord George Seymour Conway, seventh son of Francis, first Earl
and Marquis of Hertford; born in 1763. — E.
^ " The young WilUam Pitt," afterwards, as Walpole anticipated, the
proud rival of Charles Fox, and for so long a period the prime-minister
of England, deUvered his maiden speech in the House of Commons, on
the 26th of February, in favour of Mr. Burke's biU for an economical
reform in the civU list. " Never," says his preceptor. Bishop TomUne,
" were higher expectations formed of "any person upon his first coming
into ParUament, and never were expectations more completely answered.
They were, indeed, much more than answered ; such were the fluency
and accuracy of language, sueh the perspicuity of arrangement, and sueh
the closeness of reasoning, and manly and dignified elocution, — generally,
even in a much less degree, the fruits of long habit and experience, 
that it could scarcely be believed to be the first speech of a young man
not yet two-and-twenty. On the foUowing day, knowing my anxiety
upon every subject which related to him, Mr. Pitt, with his accustomed
kindness, wrote to me at Cambridge, to inform me that ' he had heard
his own voice in the House of Commons,' and modestly expressed his
satisfaction at the manner in which his first attempt at parliamentary
speaking had been received." — E.

1781. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 127
Charles Fox <ould feel, one should think such a rival, with
an unspotted character, would rouse him. What, if a Pitt
and Fox should again be rivals ! A still newer orator has
appeared in the India business, a Mr. Bankes,* and against
Lord North too ; and with a merit that the very last crop of
orators left out of their rubric — modesty. As young Pitt is
modest too, one would hope some genuine English may re
vive ! ^ Tuesday, June 5.
This is the season of opening my cake-house. I have
chosen a bad spot, if I meant to retire; and calculated iU,
when I made it a puppet-show. Last week we had two or
three mastiff-days; for they were fiercer than our common
dog-days. It is cooled again ; but rain is as great a rarity as
in Egypt; and father Thames is so far from being a Nile, that
he is dying for thirst himself. But it would be prudent to
reserve paragraphs of weather till people are gone out of
town ; for then I can have little to send you else from hence.
Berkeley Square, June 6.
As soon as I came to town to-day Le Texier called on me,
and told me he has miscarried of Pygmalion. The expense
would have mounted to 150/. and he could get but sixty sub
scribers at a guinea a-piece. I am glad his experience and
success have taught him thrift. I did not expect it. Sheridan
had a heavier miscarriage last night The two Vestris had
imagined a fete ; and, concluding that whatever they designed
would captivate the town and its purses, were at the expense
of 1200/. and, distributing tickets at two guineas a-piece, dis
posed of not two hundred. It ended in a bad opera, that be-
* Henry Bankes, Esq. of Kingston Hall. He represented Corfe-
Castle from 1780 to 1826, and the county of Dorset from that time until
1831. In 1818, he published " The Civil and Constitutional History
of Rome, from the Foundation to the Age of Augustus," in two volumes,
8vo ; and died in 1834.— E.
' Mr. Wilberforce, in a letter to a friend, of the 9th of June, says—
" The papers wiU have informed you how Mr. WiUiam Pitt, second son
of the late Lord Chatham, has distinguished himself: he comes out as
his father did, a ready-made orator, and I doubt not but that I shall,
one day or other, see him the first man in the country." Life, vol. i.
p. 22.— E.

128 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1781.
gan three hours later than usual, and at quadruple the price.
There were bushels of dead flowers, lamps, country-dances —
and a cold supper. Yet they are not abused as poor Le
Texier was last year. June 8.
I conclude my letter, and I hope our present correspond
ence, very agreeably ; for your brother told me last night that
you have written to Lord Hillsborough for leave to return. If
all our governors could leave their dominions in as good
plight, it were lucky. Your brother owned, what the Gazette
with all its circumstances cannot conceal, that Lord Corn-
walUs's triumphs have but increased our losses, without leav
ing any hopes. I am told that his army, which when he
parted from Clinton amounted to seventeen thousand men,
does not now contain above as many hundred, except the de
tachments. The Gazette, to my sorrow and your greater
sorrow, speaks of Colonel O'Hara having received two dan
gerous wounds. Princess Amelia was at Marlborough-house
last night and played at faro till twelve o'clock. There ends
the winter campaign ! I go to Strawberry-hill to-morrow ;
and I hope, a I'lrlandaise, that the next letter I write to you
— will be not to write to you any more.

TO THE EARL OF STRAFFORD.
Strawberry HiU, June 13, 1781.
It was very kind, my dear lord, to recollect me so soon :
I wish I could return it by amusing you; but here I know
nothing, and suppose it is owing to age that even in town I
do not find the transactions of the world very entertaining.
One must sit up all night to see or hear anything ; and if the
town intends to do anything, they never begin to do it till
next day. Mr. Conway will certainly be here the end of
this month, having thoroughly secured his island from sur
prise, and it is not liable to be taken any other way. I wish
he was]govemor of this bigger one too, which does not seem
quite so well guaranteed.

1781. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 129
Your lordship will wonder at a visit I had yesterday : it was
from Mr. Storer, who has passed a day and night here. It
was not from my being a fellow-scholar of Vestris, but from
his being turned antiquary; the last passion I should have
thought a macaroni would have taken. I am as proud of
such a disciple as of having converted Dicky Bateman from a
Chinese to a Goth. Though he was the founder of the Sha-
rawadgi taste in England, I preached so effectually that his
every pagoda took the veil. The Methodists say, one must
have been very wicked before one can be of the elect — yet is
that extreme more distant from the ton, which avows knowing
and liking nothing but the fashion of the instant, to studying
what were the modes of five hundred years ago? I hope
this conversion will not ruin Mr. Storer's fortune under the
Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. How his Irish majesty will be
shocked when he asks how large Prince Boothby's shoe-
buckles are grown, to be answered, he does not know, but
that Charles Brandon's cod-piece at the last birth-day had
three yards of velvet in it ! and that the Duchess of Bucking
ham thrust out her chin two inches farther than ever in admi
ration of it ! and that the Marchioness of Dorset had put out
her jaw by endeavouring to imitate her !
We have at last had some rains, which 1 hope extended to
Yorkshire, and that your lordship has found Wentworth
Castle in the bloom of verdure. I always, as in duty bound,
wish prosperity to everybody and everything there, and am
your lordship's ever devoted and grateful humble servant

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.
Strawberry HiU, June 16, 1781.
Your last account of yourself was so indifferent, that I
am impatient for a better: pray send me a much better.
I know little in your way but that Sir Richard Worseley
has just published a History of the Isle of Wight with many
VOL. VI. ^

l.SO CORRESPONDENCE OF 1781.
views poorly done enough.* Mr. Bull^ is honouring me, at
least my Anecdotes of Painting, exceedingly. He has let
every page into a pompous sheet, and is adding every print
of portrait building, &c that I mention, and that he can get
and specimens of all our engravers. It will make eight
magnificent folios, and be a most valuable body of our arts.
Nichols the printer has published a new Life of Hogarth,^ of
near two hundred pages — many more, in truth, than it
required: chiefly it is the life of his works, containing aU
the variations, and notices of any persons whom he had in
view. I cannot say there are discoveries of many prints
which I have not mentioned, though I hear Mr. Gulston*
says he has fifteen such; but I suppose he only fancies so.
Mr. Nichols says our printsellers are already adding Ho
garth's name to several spurious. Mr. Stevens, I hear, has
been allowed to ransack Mrs. Hogarth's house for obsolete
and unfinished plates, which are to be completed and pub
lished. Though she was not pleased with my account of her
husband, and seems by these transactions to have encouraged
the second, I assure you I have much more reason to be
satisfied than she has, the editor or editors being much
civiller to living me than to dead Hogarth — yet I should
not have complained. Everybody has the same right to
speak their sentiments. Nay, in general I have gentler
treatment than I expected, and I think the world and I part
good friends.
I am now setting about the completion of my .^des Straw
berrianae. A painter is to come hither on Monday to make
a drawing of the Tribune, and finish T. Sandby's fine view
of the gallery, to which I could never get him to put the
' Sir Richard Worsley is better known by his splendid work, the
" Museum Worsleianum ; or, a Collection of antique Basso-relievos,
Bustos, Statues, and Gems ; with views of places in the Levant, taken
on the spot, in the years 1785-6-7;" in two volumes, folio. Sir Richard
sat many years in Parliament for the borough of Newport, and was go
vernor of the Isle of Wight ; where he died in 1805. — E.
° Richard Bull, Esq. a famous collector of portraits. — E.
' " Biographical Anecdotes of WilUam Hogarth ; and a Catalogue of
his Works, ehronolomcally arranged ; with occasional Remarks."— E.
* Joseph Gulston, Esq. also an eminent portrait collector. — E.

1781. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE, 131
last hand. They will then be engraved with a few of the
chimney-pieces, which will complete the plates. I must add
an appendix of curiosities, purchased or acquired since the
Catalogue was printed. This will be awkward, but I cannot
afford to throw away an hundred copies. I shall take care
if I can that Mr. Gough does not get fresh intelligence from
my engravers, or he will advertize my supplement, before the
book appears. I do not think it was very civil to publish
such private inteUigence, to which he had no right without
my leave ; but everybody seems to think he may do what is
good in his own eyes. I saw the other day, in a collection of
seats (exquisitely engraved), a very rude insult on the Duke of
Devonshire. The designer went to draw a view of Chiswick,
without asking leave, and was — not hindered, for he has
given it; but he says he was treated illiberally, the house
not being shown without tickets, which he not only censures,
but calls a singularity, though a frequent practice in other
places, and practised there to my knowledge for these thirty
years: so everybody is to come into your house if he
pleases, draw it whether you please or not, and by the same
rule, I suppose, put anything into his pockets that he likes.
I do know, by experience, what a grievance it is to have a
house worth being seen, and though I submit in consequence
to great inconveniences, they do not save me from many
rudenesses. Mr. Southcote* was forced to shut up his garden,
for the savages who came as connoisseurs scribbled a thou
sand brutahties, in the buildings, upon his religion. I my
self, at Canons, saw a beautiful table of oriental alabaster
that had been split in two by a buck in boots jumping up
backwards to sit upon it
I have placed the oaken head of Henry the Third over the
middle arch of the armoury. Pray tell me what the church
of Barnwell, near Oundle, was, which his Majesty endowed,
and whence his head came. Dear Sir, Yours most sincerely.

' Philip Southcote, Esq. of Wooburn Farm, Chertsey ; one of the first
places improved according to the principles of modern gardening. — E.
K 2

132 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1781.

TO THE EARL OF CHARLEMONT.*
Strawberry HUl, July 1, 1781.
I HAVE been exceedingly flattered, my lord, by receiving
a present from your lordship, which at once proves that I re
tain a place in your lordship's memory, and you think me
worthy of reading what you hke. I could not wait to give
your lordship a thousand thanks for so kind a mark of your
esteem till I had gone through the volume, which I may ven
ture to say I shall admire, as I find it contains some pieces
which I had seen, and did admire, without knowing their
author. That approbation was quite impartial. Perhaps my
future judgment of the rest will be not a httle prejudiced, and
yet on good foundation; for if Mr. Preston'^ has retained my
suflrage in his favour by dedicating his poems to your lord
ship, it must at least be allowed that I am biassed by evidence
of his taste. He would not possess the honour of your friend
ship unless he deserved it ; and, as he knows you, he would
not have ventured to prefix your name, my lord, to poems that
did not deserve your patronage. I dare to say they will meet
the approbation of better judges than I can pretend to be. I
have the honour to be, with the greatest respect, esteem, and
gratitude.

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.
Strawberry HiU, July 7, 1781.
My good Sir, you forget that I have a cousin, eldest son
of Lord Walpole, and of a marriageable age, who has the
same Christian name as I. The Miss ChurchiU he has mar
ried is my niece, second daughter of my sister. Lady Mary
* Now first coUected.
" WiUiam Preston, Esq. a young Irish gentleman, of whom Lord
Charlemont had become the friend and patron. He afterwards published
" Thoughts on Lyric Poetry, with an Ode to the Moon ;" an " Essay
on Ridicule, Wit, and Humour;" and a translation of the Argonautics
of AppoUonius Rhodius. He died in 1807. — E.

1781. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 133
Churchill; so that if I were in my dotage, I must have looked
out for another bride — in short I hope you will have no oc
casion to wish me joy of any egregious folly. I do congratulate
you on your better health, and on the Duke of Rutland's civi
lities to you. I am a little surprised at his brother, who is a
seaman, having a propensity to divinity, and wonder you ob
ject to it ; the church navigant would be an extension of its
power. As to orthodoxy, excuse me if I think it means
nothing at all but every man's own opinion. Were every man
to define his faith, I am persuaded that no two men are or
ever were exactly of the same opinion in all points ; and as
men are more angry at others for differing with them on a
single point than satisfied with their concurrence in all others,
each would deem everybody else a heretic. Old or new
opinions are exactly of the same authority, for every opinion
must have been new when first started; and no man has nor
ever had more right than another to dictate, unless inspired.
St Peter and St Paul disagreed from the earliest time, and
who can be sure which was in the right ? and if one of the
apostles was in the wrong, who may not be mistaken ? When
you will tell me which was the orthodox, and which the hete
rodox apostle, I will allow that you know what orthodoxy is.*
You and I are perhaps the two persons who agree the best
with very different ways of thinking ; and perhaps the reason
is, that we have a mutual esteem for each other's sincerity,
and, from an experience of more than forty years, are per
suaded that neither of us has any interested views.^ For my
own part I confess honestly that I am far from having the
same charity for those whom I suspect of mercenary views.
If Dr. Butler, when a private clergyman, wrote Whig pam
phlets, and when Bishop of Oxford preaches Tory sermons, I
' On Lord Sandwich's observing that he did not know the difference
between orthodoxy and heterodoxy, Bishop Warburton is said to have
repUed, " Orthodoxy, my lord, is my doxy, and heterodoxy is another
man's doxy." — E.
' Cole, in a letter to Mr. Gough, of the lOth of August, says — " Mr.
W.olpole and myself are as opposite in political matters as possible ; yet
we continue friends. Your political and religious opinions possibly may
be as dissimilar ; yet I hope we shall all meet in a better world, and be
happy."— E.

134 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1781.
should not teU him that he does not know what orthodoxy is,
but I am convinced he does not care what it is. The Duke of
Rutland seems much more liberal than Butler or I, when he
is so civil to you, though you voted against his brother. I am
not acquainted with his grace, but I respect his behaviour ; he
is above prejudices.
The story of poor Mr. Cotton* is shocking, whichever way
it happened, but most probably it was accident
I am ashamed at the price of my book, though not my
fault ; but I have so often been guilty myself of giving ridicu
lous prices for rarities, though of no intrinsic value, that I
must not condemn the same folly in others. Everything teUs
me how silly I am ! I pretend to reason, and yet am a vir
tuoso ! Why should I presume that, at sixty-four, I am too
wise to marry ? and was you, who know so many of my weak
nesses, in the wrong to suspect me of one more ? Oh ! no,
my good friend : nor do I see anything in your belief of it, but
the kindness with which you wish me felicity on the occasion.
I heartily thank you for it and am most cordially yours.

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.
Strawberry HUl, July 26, 1781.
I WILL not delay thanking you, dear Sir, for a second
letter, which you wrote out of kindness, though I have time
but to say a word, having my house full of company. I think
I have somewhere or other mentioned the " Robertus Co-
mentarius," (probably on some former information from you,
which you never forget to give me,) at least the name sounds
familiar to me ; but just now I cannot consult my papers or
books from the impediment of my guests. As I am actually
preparing a new edition of my Anecdotes, I shall very soon
have occasion to search. I am sorry to hear you complain of
the gout, but trust it will be a short parenthesis. Yours most gratefully.
' A son of Sir John Cotton, who was accidentally kUled whilst shoot
ing in his father's woods. — E.

1781. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 135

TO THE EARL OF STRAFFORD.
Strawberry Hill, August 31, 1781.
Your lordship's too friendly partiality sees talents in
me which I am sure I do not possess. With all my de
sire of amusing you, and with all my sense of gratitude
for your long and unalterable goodness, it is quite impos
sible to send you an entertaining letter from hence. The
insipidity of my life, that is passed with a few old people that
are wearing out like myself, after surviving so many of my
acquaintance, can furnish no matter of correspondence. What
few novelties I hear, come stale, and not till they have been
hashed in the newspapers ; and though we are engaged in
such big and wide wars, they produce no striking events, nor
furnish anything but regrets for the lives and millions we
fling away to no purpose ! One cannot divert when one can
only compute, nor extract entertainment from prophecies that
there is no reason to colour favourably. We have, indeed,
foretold success for seven years together, but debts and taxes
have been the sole completion.
If one turns to private life, what is there to furnish pleasing
topics? Dissipation, without object, pleasure, or genius, is
the only colour of the times. One hears every day of some
body undone, but can we or they tell how, except when it is
by the most expeditious of all means, gaming? And now,
even the loss of an hundred thousand pounds is not rare
enough to be surprising. One may stare or growl, but can
not relate anything that is worth hearing. I do not love to
censure a younger age ; but in good truth, they neither amuse
me nor enable me to amuse others.
The pleasantest event I know happened to myself last
Sunday morning, when General Conway very unexpectedly
walked in as I was at breakfast, in his way to Park-place.
He looks as well in health and spirits as ever I saw him ; and
though he stayed but half an hour, I was perfectly content as
he is at home.
I am glad your lordship likes the fourth book of The Gar-

136 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1781.
den,' which is admirably coloured. The version of Fresnoy I
think the finest translation I ever saw. It is a most beautiful
poem, extracted from as dry and prosaic a parcel of verses as
could be put together : Mr. Mason has gilded lead, and bur
nished it highly. Lord and Lady Harcourt I should think
would make him a visit, and I hope, for their sakes, wiU visit
Wentworth Castle. As they both have taste, I should be
sorry they did not see the perfectest specimen of architecture
I know. Mrs. Damer certainly goes abroad this winter. I am glad
of it for every reason but her absence. I am certain it will
be essential to her health ; and she has so eminently a classic
genius, and is herself so superior an artist, that I enjoy the
pleasure she will have in visiting Italy.
As your lordship has honoured all the productions of my
press with your acceptance, I venture to enclose the last,
which I printed to oblige the Lucans. There are many
beautiful and poetic expressions in it. A wedding, to be
sure, is neither a new nor a promising subject, nor will out
last the favours: still I think Mr. Jones's Ode^ is uncommonly
good for the occasion; at least, if it does not much charm
Lady Strafford and your lordship, I know you will receive it
kindly as a tribute from Strawberry Hill, as every homage is
due to you both from its master. Your devoted servant

TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY.
Strawberry HiU, Sept. 16, 1781.
I AM not surprised that such a mind as yours cannot
help expressing gratitude : it would not be your mind, if it
could command that sensation as triumphantly as it does your
passions. Only remember that the expression is unnecessary.
I do know that you feel the entire friendship I have for you_;
' The fourth book of Mason's " EngUsh Garden" had just made its
appearance. — E.
* Mr. afterwards Sir WUliam, Jones's Ode on the marriage of Lord
Althorp, afterwards Eai-1 Spencer, with Miss Bingham. — E.

1781. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 137
nor should I love you so well if I was not persuaded of it.
There never was a grain of anything romantic in my friend
ship for you. We loved one another from children, and as so
near relations ; but my friendship grew up with your virtues,
which I admired though I did not imitate. We had scarce
one in common but disinterestedness. Of the reverse we
have both, I may say, been so absolutely clear, that there
is nothing so natural and easy as the little moneyed trans
actions between us ; and therefore, knowing how perfectly in
different I am upon that head, and remembering the papers I
showed you, and what I said to you when I saw you last, I
am sure you will have the complaisance never to mention
thanks more. — Now, to answer your questions.
As to coming to you, as that feu gregeois Lord George
Gordon has given up the election, to my great joy, I can
come to you on Sunday next. It is true, I had rather you
visited your regiment first, for this reason : I expect summons
to Nuneham every day ; and besides, having never loved two
journeys instead of one, I grow more covetous of my time, as
I have httle left, and therefore had rather take Park-place,
going and coming, on my way to Lord Harcourt
I don't know a word of news, public or private. I am deep
in my dear old friend's papers.* There are some very delect
able ; and though I believe, nay, know, I have not quite all,
there are many which I almost wonder, after the little deli
cacy they'^ have shown, ever arrived to my hands. I dare to
say they will not be quite so just to the public; for though I
consented that the correspondence with Voltaire should be
given to the editors of his works, I am persuaded that there
are many passages at least which they will suppress, as very
contemptuous to his chief votaries : I mean, of the votaries to
his sentiments ; for, like other heresiarchs, he despised his
tools. If I live to see the edition, it will divert me to coUate
it with what I have in my hands.
You are the person in the world the fittest to encounter the
' Madame du Deffand, who died in September 1780, and left aU her
papers to Mr. Walpole. See ante, p. 93. — E.
° The executors of Madame du Deffand ; whom Walpole suspected of
having abstracted some of her papei's. — E.

138 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1781.
meeting you mention for the choice of a bridge.* You have
temper and patience enough to bear with fools and false taste.
I, so unlike you, have learned some patience with both sorts
too, but by a more summary method than by waiting to instil
reason into them. Mine is only by leaving them to their own
vagaries, and by despairing that sense and taste should ever
extend themselves. Adieu !
P. S. In Voltaire's letters are some bitter traits on the
King of Prussia, which, as he is defender of their no-faith,
I conclude will be rayes too.

TO JOHN NICHOLS, ESQ.
Strawberry HiU, Oct. 31, 1781.
I AM glad to hear. Sir, that your account of Hogarth
calls for another edition ; and I am very sensible of your great
civility in offering to change any passages that criticise my
own work. Though I am much obliged by the offer, I should
blush to myself if I even wished for that complaisance. Good
God ! Sir, what am I that I should be offended at or above
criticism or correction ? I do not know who ought to be ; I
am sure, no author. I am a private man, of no consequence,
and at best an author of very moderate abilities. In a work
that comprehends so much biography as my Anecdotes of
Painting, it would have been impossible, even with much more
diligence than I employed, not to make numberless mistakes.
It is kind to me to point out those errors ; to the world it is
justice. Nor have I reason to be displeased even with the
manner. I do remember that in many passages you have been
very civil to me. I do not recollect any harsh phrases. As
my work is partly critical as well as biographic, there too I
had no reason or right to expect deference to my opinions.
Criticism, I doubt, has no very certain rule to go by ; in mat
ters of taste it is a still more vague and arbitrary science.
As I am very sincere. Sir, in what I say, I wiU with the
' The bridge over the Thames at Henley, to the singular beauty of
which the good taste of Mr. Conway materially contributed.

1781. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 139
same integrity own, that in one or two places of your book I
think the criticisms on me are not well founded. For in
stance ; in p. 37 I am told that Hogarth did not deserve the
compliment I pay him of not descending to the indelicacy of
the Flemish and Dutch painters. It is very true that you
have produced some instances, to which I had not adverted,
where he has been guilty of the same fault though I think not
in all you allege, nor to the degree alleged : in some I think
the humour compensates for the indelicacy, which is never
the case with the Dutch ; and in one particular I think it is a
merit — I mean in the burlesque Paul before Felix, — for there.
Sir, you should recollect that Hogarth himself meant to satir
ize, not to imitate the painters of Holland and Flanders.
You have also instanced. Sir, many more portraits in his
satiric prints than come within my defence of him as not
being a personal satirist ; but in those too, with submission, I
think you have gone too far ; as, though you have cited por
traits, are they all satiric ? Sir John Gouson is the image of
an active magistrate identified ; but it is not ridiculous, unless
to be an active magistrate is being ridiculous. Mr. Pine,* I
think you allow, desired to sit for the fat friar in the Gates of
Calais — certainly not with a view to being turned into de
rision. With regard to the bloody fingers of Sigismunda, you say.
Sir, that my memory must have failed me, as you affirm that
they are unstained with blood. Forgive me if I say that I am
positive they were so originally. I saw them so, and have
often mentioned that fact Recollect, Sir, that you yourself
allow, p. 46, in the note, that the picture was continually
" altered, upon the criticism of one connoisseur or another."
May not my memory be more faithful about so striking a cir
cumstance than the memory of another who would engage to
recoUect all the changes that remarkable picture underwent ?
' John Pine the artist, who pubUshed " The Procession and Ceremo
nies at the InstaUation of the Knights of the Bath, 17th of June 1725; "
folio, 1730; and, in 1739, "The Tapestry Hangings of the House of
Lords," &c. sat for the Fat Friar in Hogarth's Gates of Calais, and re
ceived from that circumstance the name of " Friar Pine," which he
retained tUl his death. — E.

140 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1781.
I should be very happy. Sir, if I could contribute any ad
ditional hghts to your new publication; indeed, what ad
ditional hghts I have gained are from your work, which has
furnished me with many. I am going to publish a new edition
of all the five volumes of my Anecdotes of Painting, in which
I shall certainly insert what I have gathered from you. This
edition will be in five thin octavos, without cuts, to make
the purchase easy to artists and such as cannot afford the
quartos, which are grown so extravagantly dear, that I am
ashamed of it Being published too at different periods, and
being many of them cut to pieces for the heads, since the rage
for portraits has been carried so far, it is very rare to meet
with a complete set My corrected copy is now in the print
er's hands, except the last volume, in which are my additions
to Hogarth from your list, and perhaps one or two more ; but
that volume also I have left in town, though not at the print
er's, as, to complete it I must wait for his new works, which
Mrs. Hogarth is to publish. When I am settled in town. Sir,
I shall be very ready, if you please to call on me in Berkeley-
square, to communicate any additions I have made to my
account of Hogarth.

TO ROBERT JEPHSON, ESQ.*
Berkeley Square, Nov. 7, 1781.
Yesterday, Sir, I received the favour of your letter with
the inclosed prologue,^ and am extremely pleased with it;
not only as it omits mention of me, for which I give you my
warmest thanks, but as a composition. The thoughts are just
and happily expressed ; and the conclusion is so lively and well
conceived, that Mr. Harris, to whom I carried it this morn
ing, thinks it will have great effect. We are very sorry you
have not sent us an epilogue too; but, before I touch on
that I will be more regular in my details. Miss Younge has
accepted the part very gracefully ; and by a letter I have re-
' Now first printed.
' To the tragedy of the Count of Narbonne. See ante, p. 69. — E.

1781. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE, 141
ceived from her, in answer to mine, will, I flatter myself, take
care to do justice to it Nay, she is so zealous, that Mr.
Harris tells me she has taken great pains with the young
person who is to play the daughter, but whose name I cannot
at this moment recollect'
I must now confess that I have been again alarmed. I
had a message from Mr. Harris on Saturday last to tell me
that the performers had been so alert, and were so ready
with their parts, and the many disappointments that had
happened this season had been so prejudicial to him, that
it would be easy and necessary to bring out your play next
Saturday the 10th, and desired to have the prologue and
epilogue. This precipitation made me apprehend that justice
would not be done to your tragedy. Still I did not dare to
remonstrate ; nor would venture to damp an ardour which I
could not expect to excite again. Instead of objecting to his
haste, I only said I had not received your prologue and epi
logue, but had written for them and expected them every
minute, though, as it depended on winds, one could never be
sure. I trusted to accidents for delay ; at least I thought I
could contrive some, without seeming to combat what he
thought for his interest
I have not been mistaken. On receiving your prologue
yesterday, I came to town to-day and carried it to him, to
show him 1 lost no time. He told me Mr. Henderson was
not enough recovered, but he hoped would be well enough
to bring out the play on Saturday se'nnight That he had
had a rough rehearsal yesterday morning, with which he had
been charmed ; and was persuaded, and that the performers
think so too, that your play will have great effect. All this
made me very easy. There is to be a regular rehearsal on
Saturday, for which I shall stay in town on purpose ; and, if
I find the performers perfect, I think there will be no objection
to its appearance on Saturday se'nnight. I shall rather pre
fer that day to a later ; as, the Parhament not being met, it
win have a week's run before politics interfere.
' Miss Satchell.

142 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1781.
Now, Sir, for the epilogue. I have taken the liberty of
desiring Mr. Harris to have one prepared, in case yours
should not arrive in time. It is a compliment to him, (I do
not mean that he will write it himself,) will interest him stUl
more in the cause ; and, though he may not procure a very
good one, a manager may know better than we do what will
suit the taste of the times. The success of a play being
previous, cannot be hurt by an epilogue, though some plays
have been saved ; and if it be not a good one, it will not affect
you. If you send us a good one, though too late, it may be
printed with the play.
I must act about the impression just the reverse of what I
did about the performance, and must beg you would commis
sion some friend to transact that affair ; for I know nothing of
the terms, and should probably disserve you if I undertook the
treaty with the booksellers, nor should I have time to super
vise the correction of the press. In truth, it is so disagree
able a business, that I doubt I have given proofs at my own
press of being too neghgent ; and as I am actually at present
reprinting my Anecdotes of Painting, I have but too much
business of that sort on my hands. You will forgive my say
ing this, especially when you consider that my hands are
very lame, and that this morning in Mr. Harris's room, the
right one shook so, that I was forced to desire him to write
a memorandum for me.
I think I have omitted nothing material. Mr. Wroughton
is to play the Count I do not know who will speak the
prologue ; probably not Mr. Henderson, as be has been so
very iU : nor should I be very earnest for it ; for the Friar's
is so capital and so laborious a part, that I should not wish to
abate his powers by any previous exertion. Perhaps I refine
too much, but I own I think the non-appearance of a prin
cipal actor till his part opens is an advantage.
I will only add that I must beg you wiU not talk of obli
gations to me. You have at least overpaid me d'avance by the
honour you have done me in adopting the Castle of Otranto.

1781. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE, 143

TO ROBERT JEPHSON, ESQ.*
Strawberry HiU, Nov. 10, 1781.
As I have been at the rehearsal of your tragedy to-day.
Sir, I must give you a short account of it ; though I am little
able to write, having a good deal of gout in my right hand,
which would have kept me away from any thing else, and
made me hurry back hither the moment it was over, lest I
should be confined to town. Mr. Malone, perhaps, who was
at the play-house too, may have anticipated me ; for I could
not save the post to-night, nor will this go till to-morrow.
Mr. Henderson is still too ill to attend, but hopes to be
abroad by Tuesday : Mr. Hull read his part very well. Miss
Younge is perfectly mistress of her part, is pleased with it,
and I think will do it justice. I never saw her play so ably.
Miss Satchell, who is to play Adelaide, is exactly what she
should be: very young, pretty enough, natural and simple.
She has already acted Juliet with success. Her voice is not
only pleasing, but very audible ; and, which is much more rare,
very articulate : she does not gabble, as most young women
do, even off the stage. Mr. Wroughton much exceeded my
expectation. He enters warmly into his part, and with
thorough zeal. Mr. Lewis was so very imperfect in his part
that I cannot judge quite what he will do, for he could not re
peat two lines by heart ; but he looked haughtily, and as he
pleased me in Percy, which is the same kind of character, I
promise myself he will succeed in this.
Very, very few lines will be omitted ; and there will be one
or two verbal alterations to accommodate the disposition, but
which will not appear in the printed copies, of which Mr.
Malone says he will take the management. As Mr. Harris
and the players all seemed zealous and in good humour, I
would not contest some trifles ; and, indeed, they were not at
all unreasonable. I am to see the scenes on Friday, if I am
able ; and if Mr. Henderson is weU enough, the play wiU be
' Now first printed.

144 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1781.
performed on the 17 th or immediately after. Some slight
delays, which one cannot foresee, may always happen. In
truth, I httle expected so much readiness and comphance
both in manager and actors ; nor, from all I have heard of the
stage, could conceive such facilities. From the moment Mr.
Harris consented to perform your play, there has not been one
instance of obstinacy or wrongheadedness anywhere. If the
audience is as reasonable and just, you may. Sir, promise
yourself complete success.

TO ROBERT JEPHSON, ESQ.*
Strawberry HiU, Nov. 13, 1781.
I HAVE this minute. Sir, received the corrected copy of
your tragedy, which is almost all I am able to say, for I have
so much gout in this hand, and it shakes so much, that I am
scarce able to manage my pen. I will go to town if I can,
and consult Mr. Henderson on the alterations ; though I con
fess I think it dangerous to propose them so late before repre
sentation, which the papers say again is to be on Saturday if
Mr. Henderson is well enough. Mr. Malone shall have the
corrected copy for impression.
I own I cannot suspect that Mr. Sheridan will employ any
ungenerous arts against your play. I have never heard any
thing to give me suspicions of his behaving unhandsomely ;
and as you indulge my zeal and age a Uberty of speaking
hke a friend, I would beg you to suppress your sense of the
too great prerogatives of theatric monarchs. I hope you will
again and again have occasion to court the power of their
crowns ; and, therefore if not for your own, for the sake of the
public, do not declare war with them. It has not been my
practice to preach slavery; but, while one deals with and
depends on mimic sovereigns, I would act policy, especially
when by temporary passive obedience one can really lay a last
ing obligation on one's country, which your plays really are.
' Now first printed.

1781. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 145
I am glad you approve what I had previously undertaken,
Mr. Harris's procuring an epilogue ; he told me on Saturday
that he should have one. You are very happy in friends, Sir ;
which is another proof of your merit. Mr. Malone is not less
zealous than Mr. Tighe, to whom I beg my compliments.

TO ROBERT JEPHSON, ESQ.*
Berkeley Square, Nov. 18, 1781.
As Mr. Malone undertook to give you an account Sir,
by last night's post of the great success of your tragedy, I did
not hasten home to write; but stayed at the theatre, to talk
to Mr. Harris and the actors, and learn what was said, besides
the general applause. Indeed I never saw a more unpreju
diced audience, nor more attention. There was not the
slightest symptom of disapprobation to any part, and the
plaudit was great and long when given out again for Monday.
I mention these circumstances in justification of Mr. Sheridan,
to whom I never spoke in my life, but who certainly had not
sent a single person to hurt you. The prologue was exceed
ingly liked ; and, for effect, no play ever produced more tears.
In the green-room I found that Hortensia's sudden death was
the only incident disapproved, as we heard by intelligence
from the pit; and it is to be deliberated to-morrow whether it
may not be preferable to carry her off as if only in a swoon.
When there is only so slight an objection, you cannot doubt of
your full success. It is impossible to say how much justice
Miss Younge did to your writing. She has shown herself a
great mistress of her profession, mistress of dignity, passion,
and of all the sentiments you have put into her hands. The
applause given to her description of Raymond's death lasted
some minutes, and recommenced ; and her scene in the fourth
act after the Count's ill-usage, was played in the highest per
fection. Mr. Henderson was far better than I expected from
his weakness, and from his rehearsal yesterday, with which he
was much discontented himself. Mr. Wroughton was very
' Now first printed.
VOL. VI. L

146 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1781.
animated, and played the part of the Count much better than
any man now on the stage would have done. I wish I could
say Mr. Lewis satisfied me ; and that poor child Miss Satch
ell was very inferior to what she appeared at the rehearsals,
where the total silence and our nearness deceived us. Her
voice has no strength, nor is she yet at all mistress of the
stage. I have begged Miss Younge to try what she can do
with her by Monday. However, there is no danger to your
play : it is fully estabhshed. I confess I am not only pleased
on your account Sir, but on Mr. Harris's, as he has been so
very obliging to me. I am not likely to have any more in
tercourse with the stage ; but I shaU be happy if I leave my
interlude there by settling an amity between you and Mr.
Harris, whence I hope he will draw profit and you more re
nown.

TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY.
Berkeley Square, Sunday morning, Nov. 18, 1781.
I HAVE been here again for three days, tending and
nursing and waiting on Mr. Jephson's play. I have brought
it into the world, was well delivered of it, it can stand on its
own legs — and I am going back to my own quiet hill, never
likely to have anything more to do with theatres. Indeed
it has seemed strange to me, who for these three or four
years have not been so many times in a play-house, nor knew
six of the actors by sight, to be at two rehearsals, behind the
scenes, in the green-room, and acquainted with half the com
pany. The Count of Narbonne was played last night with
great applause, and without a single murmur of disappro
bation. Miss Younge has charmed me.* She played with
inteUigence that was quite surprising. The applause to one
of her speeches lasted a minute, and recommenced twice
before the play could go on. I am sure you will be pleased
with the conduct and the easy beautiful language of the
play, and struck with her acting.
' In 1786, this celebrated actress was married to Mr. Pope, the come
dian. She died in 1797, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. — E.

1781. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 147

TO ROBERT JEPHSON, ESQ.*
Strawberry HiU, Nov. 21, 1781.
I HAVE just received your two letters. Sir, and the epi
logue, which I am sorry came so late, as there are very pretty
things in it : but I believe it would be very improper to pro
duce it now, as the two others have been spoken.
I am sorry you are discontent with there being no standing
figure of Alphonso, and that I acquiesced in its being cum-
bent I did certainly yield, and I think my reasons will
justify me. In the first place, you seemed to have made a
distinction between the statue and the tomb ; and, had both
been represented, they would have made a confusion. But a
more urgent reason for my compliance was the shortness of
the time, which did not allow the preparation of an entire new
scene, as I proposed last year and this, nay, and mentioned it
to Mr. Harris. When I came to the house to see the scene
prepared, it was utterly impossible to adjust an erect figure
to it ; nor, indeed, do I conceive, were the scene disposed as
you recommend, how Adelaide could be stabbed behind he
scenes. As I never disguise the truth, I must own, — for I
did think myself so much obliged to Mr. Harris, — that I
was unwilling to heap difficulties on him, when I did not
think they would hurt your piece. I fortunately was not mis
taken : the entrance of Adelaide wounded had the utmost effect,
and I beheve much greater than would have resulted from
her being stabbed on the stage. In short, the success has
been so complete, and both your poetry and the conduct of
the tragedy are so much and so justly admired, that I flatter
myself you will not blame me for what has not produced the
smallest inconvenience. Both the manager and the actors
were tractable, I believe, beyond example ; and it is my na
ture to bear some contradiction, when it will carry material
points. The very morning, the only morning I had to settle
the disposition, I had another difficulty to reconcile, — the com-
' Now first collected. L 2

148 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1781.
petition of the two epilogues, which I was so lucky as to com
promise too. I will say nothing of my being three hours each
time, on two several days, in a cold theatre with the gout on
me; and perhaps it was too natural to give up a few points
in order to get home, for which I ask your pardon. Yet
the event shows that I have not injured you; and if 1 was
in one instance impatient, I flatter myself that my solici
tations to Mr. Harris and Miss Younge, and the zeal I have
shown to serve you, will atone for my having in one moment
thought of myself, and then only when the reasons that
weighed with me were so plausible, that without a totally
new scene, which the time would not allow, I do not see how
they could have been obviated. Your tragedy. Sir, has taken
such a rank upon the stage, that one may reasonably hope
it will hereafter be represented with all the decorations to
your mind ; and 1 admire it so truly, that I shall be glad to
have it conducted by an abler mechanist than your obedient
humble servant.

TO THE £ARL OF STRAFFORD.
Berkeley Square, Nov. 27, 1781.
Each fresh mark of your lordship's kindness and friend
ship calls on me for thanks and an answer: every other
reason would enjoin me silence. I not only grow so old,
but the symptoms of age increase so fast, that, as they ad
vise me to keep out of the world, that retirement makes me
less fit to be informing or entertaining. The philosophers
who have sported on the verge of the tomb, or they who
have ejected to sport in the same situation, both tacitly
implied that it was not out of their thoughts; and how
ever dear what we are going to leave may be, all that is
not particularly dear must cease to interest us much. If
those reflections blend themselves with our gayest thoughts,
must not their hue grow more dusky when public misfor
tunes and disgraces cast a general shade ? * The age, it is
' The fatal intelligence of the surrender of the British forces at York
Town, under the command of Lord Cornwallis, to the combined armies

1781. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 149
true, soon emerges out of every gloom, and wantons as be
fore. But does not that levity imprint a still deeper me
lancholy on those who do think? Have any of our cala
mities corrected us? Are we not revelling on the brink of
the precipice? Does administration grow more sage, or
desire that we should grow more sober? Are these themes
for letters, my dear lord ? Can one repeat common news
with indifference, while our shame is writing for future his
tory by the pens of all our numerous enemies ? When did
England see two whole armies lay down their arms and sur
render themselves prisoners? Can venal addresses efface
such stigmas, that will be recorded in every country in
Europe? Or will such disgraces have no consequences?
Is not America lost to us ? Shall we offer up more human
victims to the demon of obstinacy ; and shall we tax ourselves
deeper to furnish out the sacrifice ? These are thoughts I
cannot stifle at the moment that enforces them ; and though
I do not doubt but the same spirit of dissipation that has
swallowed up all our principles will reign again in three
days with its wonted sovereignty, I had rather be silent than
vent my indignation. — Yet I cannot talk, for I cannot think,
on any other subject. It was not six days ago, that in the
height of four raging wars I saw in the papers an account
of the Opera and of the dresses of the company ; and thence
the town, and thence of course the whole nation, were in
formed that Mr. Fitzpatrick had very little powder in
his hair.* Would not one think that our newspapers were
of America and France, under General Washington, had reached Eng
land on the 2Sth.— E.
' The following picture of fashionable Ufe at the tirae of Walpole's
lament, is by Mr. Wilberforce : — " When I left the University, so little
did I know of general society, that I came up to London stored with
arguments to prove the authenticity of Rowley's poems ; and now I was
at once immersed in polities and fashion. The very first time 1 went to
Boodle's, I won twenty-five guineas of the Duke of Norfolk. I belonged at
this time to five clubs" — MUes and Evans's, Brookes's, Boodle's, White's,
Goostree's. The first time I was at Brookes's, scarcely knowing any one,
I joined, from mere shyness, in play ,at the faro-table, where George Sel
wyn kept bank. A friend, who knew my inexperience, and regarded me
as a victim decked out for sacrifice, called to me, ' What, WUherforce !
is that you ? ' Selwyn quite resented the interference ; and, turning to
him, said, in his most expressive tone, ' O, Sir, don't interrupt Mr.Wil-

150 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1781.
penned by boys just come from school for the information
of their sisters and cousins? Had we had Gazettes and
Morning Posts in those days, would they have been fiUed
with such tittle-tattle after the battle of Agincourt or in the
more resembling weeks after tbe battle of Naseby ? Did the
French trifle equally even during the ridiculous war of the
Fronde ? If they were as impertinent then, at least they had
wit in their levity. We are monkeys in conduct, and as
clumsy as bears when we try to gambol. Oh ! my lord !
I have no patience with my country ! and shall leave it
without regret ! — Can we be proud when all Europe scorns
us? It was wont to envy us, sometimes to hate us, but
never despised us before. James the First was contemptible,
but he did not lose an America ! His eldest grandson sold
us, his younger lost us — but we kept ourselves. Now we
have run to meet the ruin — and it is coming !
I beg your lordship's pardon, if I have said too much —
but I do not believe I have. You have never sold yourself,
and therefore have not been accessary to our destruction.
You must be happy now not to have a son, who would live
to grovel in the dregs of England. Your lordship has long
been so wise as to secede from the follies of your country
men. May you and Lady Strafford long enjoy the tran
quillity that has been your option even in better days ! — and
may you amuse yourself without giving loose to such re
flections as have overflowed in this letter from your devoted
humble servant !
berforce ; he could not be better employed ! ' Nothing could be more
luxurious than the style of these clubs. Fox, Sheridan, Fitzpatrick, and
aU your leading men, frequented them, and associated upon the easiest
terms ; you chatted, played at cards, or gambled, as you pleased. I was
one of those who met to spend an evening in memory of Shakspeare, at
the Boar's-head, East-cheap. Many professed wits were present, but
Pitt was the most amusing of the party. We played a good deal at
Goostree's ; and I weU remember the intense earnestness which he dis
played when joining in those games of chance. He perceived their in
creasing fascination, and soon after suddenly abandoned them for ever."
Life, vol. i. p. 16.— E.

1781. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 151

TO THE EARL OF BUCHAN.*
Berkeley Square, Dec. 1, 1781.
I AM truly sensible of, and grateful for, your lordship's
benevolent remembrance of me, and shall receive with great
respect and pleasure the collection your lordship has been
pleased to order to be sent to me. I must admire too, my
lord, the generous assistance that you have lent to your
adopted children; but more forcibly than all I feel your
pathetic expressions on the distress of the public, which is
visible even in this extravagant and thoughtless city. The
number of houses to be let in every street, whoever runs may
read. At the time of your writing your letter, your lordship did
not know the accumulation of misfortune and disgrace that has
fallen on us ; '^ nor should I wish to be the trumpeter of my
country's calamities. Yet as they must float on the surface of
the mind, and blend their hue with all its emanations, they
suggest this reflection, that there can be no time so proper for
the institution of inquiries into past story as the moment of
the fall of an empire, — a nation becomes a theme for antiqua
ries, when it ceases to be one for an historian ! — and while its
ruins are fresh and in legible preservation.
I congratulate your lordship on the discovery of the Scottish
monarch's portrait in Suabia, and am sorry you did not hap
pen to specify of which ; but I cannot think of troubling your
lordship to write again on purpose; I may probably find it
mentioned in some of the papers I shall receive.
There is one passage in your lordship's letter in which I
cannot presume to think myself included ; and yet if I could
suppose I was, it would look like most impertinent neglect and
unworthiness of the honour that your lordship and the society
have done me, if I did not at least offer very humbly to obey it
You are pleased to say, my lord, that the members, when
* Now first coUected.
' The surrender of the British army at York-town. See ante, p. 149.
-E.

152 CORRESPONDENCE OP 1781.
authors, have agreed to give copies of such of their works as
any way relate to the objects of the institution. Amongst my
very trifling publications, I think there are none that can pre
tend even remotely to that distinction, but the Catalogue of
Royal and Noble Authors, and the Anecdotes of Painting, in
each of which are Scottish authors or artists. If these should
be thought worthy of a comer on any shelf of the society's
hbrary, I should be proud of sending, at your lordship's com
mand, the original edition of the first Of the latter I have
not a single set left but my own. But I am printing a new
edition in octavo, with many additions and corrections, though
without cuts, as the former edition was too dear for many
artists to purchase. The new I will send when finished, if I
could hope it would be acceptable, and your lordship would
please to tell me by what channel.
I am ashamed, my lord, to have said so much, or anything
relating to myself. I ask you pardon too for the slovenly
writing of my letter ; but my hand is both lame and shaking,
and I should but write worse if I attempted transcribing.
I have the honour to be, with great respect, my lord,
your lordship's most obedient and
obliged humble servant.
P. S. It has this moment started into my mind, my lord,
that I have heard that at the old castle at Aubigny, belonging
and adjoining to the Duke of Richmond's house, there are
historic paintings or portraits of the ancient house of Lennox.
I recollect too that Father Gordon, superior of the Scots Col
lege at Paris, showed me a whole-length of Queen Mary,
young, and which he believed was painted while she was
Queen of France. He showed me too the original letter she
wrote the night before her execution, some deeds of Scottish
kings, and one of King (I think Robert) Bruce, remarkable
for having no seal appendent, which. Father Gordon said, was
executed in the time of his so great distress, that he was not
possessed of a seal. I shaU be happy if these hints lead to
any investigation of use.

1781. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 153

TO ROBERT JEPHSON, ESQ.*
Berkeley Square, Dec. 3, 1781.
I HAVE not only a trembling hand, but scarce time to
save the post ; yet I write a few lines to beg you will be per
fectly easy on my account, who never differ seriously with my
friends, when I know they do not mean ill to me. I was
sorry you took so much to heart an alteration in the scenery
of your play,2 which did not seem to me very material; and
which, having since been adjusted to your wish, had no better
effect I told you that it was my fault, not Mr. Malone's,
who is warmly your friend ; and I am sure you will be sorry
if you do him injustice. I regret no pains I have taken, since
they have been crowned with your success ; and it would be
idle in either of us to recall any little cross circumstance that
may have happened, (as always do in bringing a play on the
stage,) when they have not prevented its appearance or good
fortune. Be assured. Sir, if that is worth knowing, that I
have taken no offence, and have all the same good wishes for
you that I ever had since I was acquainted with your merit
and abilities. I can easily allow for the anxiety of a parent of
your genius for his favourite offspring ; and though I have not
your parts, I have had the warmth, though age and illness
have chilled it : but, thank God ! they have not deprived me
of my good-humour, and I am most good-humouredly and sin
cerely your obedient humble servant.

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.
Berkeley Square, Dec. 30, 1781.
We are both hearty friends, my dear Sir, for I see we
have both been reproaching ourselves with silence at the
same moment. I am much concerned that you have had
cause for yours.^ I have had less, though indisposed too in
' Now first coUected. ' See ante, p. U7.— E.
^ Mr. Cole, in a letter of the 31st, says, " About six weeks ago the

154 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1781.
a part material for correspondence — my right hand, which
has been in labour of chalk-stones this whole summer, and at
times so nervous as to tremble so much, that except when
quite necessary, I have avoided a pen. I have been de
livered of such a quantity of chalky matter, that I am not
only almost free from pain, but hope to avoid a fit this win
ter. How there can be a doubt what the gout is, amazes
me ! what is it but a concretion of humours, that either stop
up the fine vessels, cause pain and inflammation, and pass
away only by perspiration; or which discharge themselves
into chalk-stones, which sometimes remain in their beds,
sometimes make their passage outwardly ? I have experienced
all three. It may be objected, that the sometimes instan
taneous removal of pain from one limb to another is too
rapid for a current of chalk — true, but not for the humour
before coagulated. As there is, evidently, too, a degree of
wind mixed with the gout niay not that wind be impreg
nated with tbe noxious effluvia, especially as the latter are
pent up in the body and may be corrupted ? — I hope your
present complaint in the foot will clear the rest of your per
son. Many thanks for your etching of Mr. Browne Willis :
I shall value it not only as I am a collector, but because he
was your friend. What shall I say about Mr. Gough ? he is
not a pleasant man, and I doubt will tease me about many
things, some of which I never cared about, and all which I
interest myself little about now, when I seek to pass my
remnant in the most indolent tranquillity. He has not been
very civil to me, he worships the fools I despise, and I con
ceive has no genuine taste ; yet as to trifling resentments,
when the objects have not acted with bad hearts, I can most
readily lose them. Please Mr. Gough, I certainly shall not;
I cannot be very grave about such idle studies as his and
my own, and am apt to be impatient, or laugh when people
gout was harassing both my feet ; on Christmas-day it shifted its quar
ters, and got into my left hand ; and inexpressible have been the pain and
torment 1 have endured, with sleepless nights, racking pain, and no rest
nor reUef by day. I hope the worst is over, as I had a comfortable sleep
for the whole night last night : but my hopes are like those in a ship in
a storm ; when one bUlow is past, another and greater is at the heels of
it : for a water-drinker my lot is hard." — E.

1781. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 155
imagine I am serious about them. But there is a stronger
reason why I shall not satisfy Mr. Gough. He is a man
to minute down whatever one teUs him that he may call
information, and whip it into his next publication. How
ever, though I am naturally very frank, I can regulate my
self by those I converse with ; and as I shall be on my guard,
I will not decline visiting Mr. Gough, as it would be illiberal
or look surly if I refused. You shall have the merit if you
please, of my assent ; and shall tell him, I shall be glad to see
him any morning at eleven o'clock. This will save you the
trouble of sending me his new work, as I conclude he will
mention it to me.
I more willingly assure you that I shall like to see Mr.
Steevens,* and to show him Strawberry. You never sent me
a person you commended, that I did not find deserved it.
You will be surprised when I tell you, that I hive only
dipped into Mr. Bryant's book, and lent the Dean's before
I had cut the leaves, though I had peeped into it enough to
see that I shall not read it. Both he and Bryant are so
diffuse on our antiquated literature, that I had rather beheve
in Rowley than go through their proofs. Mr. Warton and
Mr. Tyrwhitt have more patience, and intend to answer
them — and so the controversy will be two hundred years
' George Steevens, Esq. In 1770, this eminent scholar and learned
commentator became associated with Dr. Johnson in the edition of Shak
speare which goes by their joint names. A fourth edition, with large ,
additions, was published in 1793, in fifteen volumes octavo. In the pre
paration of it for the press, Mr. Steevens gave an instance of editorial
activity and perseverance, which is, probably, without a parallel. For a
period of eighteen months, he devoted himself solely and exclusively to
the work ; and, during that time, left his house every morning at one
o'clock with the Hampstead patrole, and proceeded, without any consi
deration of weather or season, to the chambers of his friend, Isaac Reed,
in Staple's Inn, where he found a sheet of the Shakspeare letter-press
ready for his revision : thus, while the printers were asleep, the editor
was awake ; and the fifteen large volumes were completed in the short
space of twenty months. The feat is recorded by Mr. Matthias, in the
Pursuits of Literature : —
" Him late, from Hampstead journeying to his book,
Aurora oft for Cephalus mistook ;
What time he brush'd her dews with hasty pace.
To meet the printer's dev'let face to face."
He died at Hampstead in 1800, and in his sixty-fourth year. — E.

156 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1782.
out of my reach. Mr. Bryant I did find, begged a vast
many questions, which proved to me his own doubts. Dr.
Glynn's foolish evidence made me laugh, and so did Mr.
Bryant's sensibility for me ; he says Chatterton treated me
very cruelly in one of his writings. I am sure I did not feel
it so. I suppose Bryant means under the title of Baron of
Otranto, which is written with humour. I must have been
the sensitive plant if anything in that character had hurt me !
Mr. Bryant too, and the Dean, as I see by extracts in the
papers, have decorated Chatterton with sanctimonious ho
nour — think of that young rascal's note, when, summing
up his gains and losses by writing for and against Beckford,
he says, " Am glad he is dead by Zl. 13s. %d." There was
a lad of too nice honour to be capable of forgery ! and a lad
who, they do not deny, forged the poems in the style of Os
sian, and fifty other things. In the parts I did read, Mr.
Bryant as I expected, reasons admirably, and staggered me;
but when I took up the poems called Rowley's again, I pro
test I cannot see the smallest air of antiquity but the old
words. The whole texture is conceived on ideas of the pre
sent century. The liberal manner of thinking of a monk so
long before the Reformation is as stupendous ; and where
he met with Ovid's Metamorphoses, Eclogues, and plans of
Greek tragedies, when even Caxton, a printer, took Virgil's
.Slneid for so rare a novelty, are not less incomprehensible :
though on these things I speak at random, nor have searched
for the era when the Greek and Latin classics came again
to hght — at present I imagine long after our Edward the
Fourth. Another thing struck me in my very cursory perusal of
Bryant He asks where Chatterton could find so much
knowledge of Enghsh events? I could tell him where he
might by a very natural hypothesis, though merely an hypo
thesis. It appears by the evidence, that Canninge left six
chests of manuscripts, and that Chatterton got possession of
some or several. Now what was therein so probably as a
diary drawn up by Canninge himself, or some churchwarden
or wardens, or by a monk or monks ? Is anything more

1782. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 157
natural than for such a person, amidst the events at Bristol,
to set down such other public facts as happened in the rest
of the kingdom ? Was not such almost all the materials of
our ancient story ? There is actually such an one, with
some curious collateral facts, if I am not mistaken, — for I
write by memory, — in the History of Furnese or Fountain's
Abbey, I forget which : if Chatterton found such an one,
did he want the extensive literature on which so much stress
is laid ? Hypothesis for hypothesis, — I am sure this is as
rational an one as the supposition that six chests were filled
with poems never else heard of.
These are my indigested thoughts on this matter — not
that I ever intend to digest them — for I will not, at sixty-
four, sail back into the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and
be drowned in an ocean of monkish writers of those ages or
of this ! Yours most sincerely.

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.
Berkeley Square, Jan. 27, 1782.
For these three weeks I have had the gout in my left
elbow and hand, and can yet but just bear to lay the latter
on the paper while I write with the other. However, this is
no complaint, for it is the shortest fit I have had these six
teen years, and with trifiing pain; therefore, as the fits de
crease, it does ample honour to my bootikins, regimen, and
method. Next to my bootikins, I ascribe much credit to a
diet-drink of dock-roots, of which Dr. Turton asked me for
the receipt, as the best he had ever seen, and which I will
send you if you please. It came from an old physician at
Richmond, who did amazing service with it in inveterate
scurvies, — the parents, or ancestors at least, I beheve, of all
gouts. Your fit I hope is quite gone.
Mr. Gough has been with me. I never saw a more dry
or more cold gentleman. He told me his new plan is a
series of English monuments. I do hke the idea, and offered
to lend him drawings for it.

158 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1782.
I have seen Mr. Steevens too, who is much more flowing.
I wish you had told me it was the editor of Shakspeare, for,
on his mentioning Dr. Farmer, I launched out and said, he
was by much the most rational of Shakspeare's commentators,
and had given the only sensible account of the authors our
great poet had consulted. I really meant those who wrote
before Dr. Farmer. Mr. Steevens seemed a little surprised,
which made me discover the blunder I had made, for which
I was very sorry, though I had meant nothing by it; how
ever, do not mention it I hope he has too much sense to
take it ill, as he must have seen I had no intention of offend
ing him ; on the contrary, that my whole behaviour marked
a desire of being civil to him as your friend, in which hght
only you had named him to me. Pray take no notice of it
though I could not help mentioning it as it lies on my con
science to have been even undesignedly and indirectly un-
polite to anybody you recommend. I should not, I trust,
have been so unintentionally to anybody, nor with intention,
unless provoked to it by great folly or dirtiness. Adieu I

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.
Berkeley Square, Feb. 14, 1782.
I HAVE received such treasures from you, dear Sir,
through the channel of Mr. Nichols, that I neither know how
to thank you, nor to find time to peruse them so fast as I
am impatient to do. You must complete your kindness by
letting me detain them a few days, till I have gone through
them, when I will return them most carefully by the same
intervention; and particularly the curious piece of enamel;
for though you are, as usual, generous enough to offer it to
me, I have plundered you too often already; and indeed I
have room left for nothing more, nor have that miserly ap
petite of continuing to hoard what I cannot enjoy, nor have
much time left to possess.
I have already looked into your beautiful illuminated ma
nuscript copied from Dr. Stukeley's letter, and with Anec-

1782. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 159
dotes of the Antiquaries of Bennet College ; and I have
found therein so many charming instances of your candour,
humility, and justice, that I grieve to deprive Mr. Gough for
a minute even of the possession of so valuable a tract. I will
not injure him or it, by begging you to cancel what relates to
me, as it would rob you of part of your defence of Mr. Baker.
If I wish to have it detained from Mr. Gough till the period
affixed in the first leaf, or rather to my death, which will
probably precede yours, it is for this reason only; Mr.
Gough is apt as we antiquaries are, to be impatient to tell
the world all he knows, which is unluckily much more than
the world is at all impatient of knowing. For what you call
your flaming zeal, I do not in the least object to it. We have
agreed to tolerate each other, and certainly are neither of us
infallible. I think, on what we differ most is, your calhng
my o]^iQioTas fashionable ; they were when we took them up : I
doubt it is yours that are most in fashion now, at least in this
country. The Emperor seems to be of our party ; but if I
like his notions, I do not admire his judgment which is too
precipitate to be judgment.
I smiled at Mr. Gough's idea of my declining his acquaint
ance as a member of that obnoxious Society of Antiquaries. It
is their folly alone that is obnoxious to me, and can they help
that ? I shall very cheerfully assist him.
I am glad you are undeceived about the controversial piece
in the Gentleman's Magazine, which I should have assured
you, as you now know, that it was not mine. I declared, in
my Defence,'- that I would pubhsh nothing more about that
question. I have not, nor intend it Neither was it I that
wrote the prologue to The Count of Narbonne, but Mr.
Jephson himself. On the opposite page I will add the re-
' Hannah More, in a letter to Mrs. Boscawen, says, " Many thanks
for Mr. Walpole's sensible, temperate, and humane pamphlet. I am
not quite a convert yet to his side of the Chattertonian controversy,
though this elegant writer and all the antiquaries and critics in the
world are against me ; but I like much the candid regret he everywhere
discovers at not having fostered this unfortunate lad, whose profligate
manners, however, I too much fear, would not have done credit to any
patronage. Mrs. Garrick read it, and was more interested than I have
seen her." — E.

160 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1782.
ceipt for the diet-drink : as to my regimen, I shall not specify
it. Not only you would not adopt it but I should tremble to
have you. In fact, I never do prescribe it, as I am persuaded
it would kill the strongest man in England, who was not
exactly of the same temperament with me, and who had not
embraced it early. It consists in temperance to quantity as
to eating — I do not mind the quality ; but I am persuaded
that great abstinence with the gout is dangerous ; for, if one
does not take nutriment enough, there cannot be strength
sufficient to fiing out the gout, and then it deviates to palsies.
But my great nostrum is the use of cold water, inwardly and
outwardly, on all occasions, and total disregard of precaution
against catching cold. A hat you know I never wear, my
breast 1 never button, nor wear great-coats, &c. I have often
had the gout in my face (as last week) and eyes, and instantly
dip my head in a pail of cold water, which always cures it,
and does not send it anywhere else. All this I dare do, be
cause I have so for these forty years, weak as I look; but
Milo would not have lived a week if he had played such
pranks. My diet-drink is not all of so Quixote a disposition ;
any of the faculty will tell you how innocent it is, at least
In a few days, for I am a rapid reader when I like my matter,
I will return all your papers and letters ; and in the mean
time thank you most sincerely for the use of them.

TO THE REV. MR, COLE.
February 15, 1782.
I WAS SO impatient to peruse all the hterary stores you
sent me, dear Sir, that I stayed at home on purpose to give
up a whole evening to them. I have gone through aU ; your
own manuscript which I envy Mr. Gough, his specimen, and
the four letters to you from the latter and Mr. Steevens. I
am glad they were both satisfied with my reception. In
truth, you know I am neither formal nor austere, nor have
any grave aversion to our antiquaries, though 1 do now and
then divert myself with their solemnity about arrant trifles ;

1782. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 161
yet perhaps we owe much to their thinking those trifles of
importance, or the Lord knows how they would have patience
to investigate them so indefatigably. Mr. Steevens seemed
pleasant but I doubt I shall never be demure enough to con
ciliate Mr. Gough. Then I have a wicked quality in an an
tiquary, nay, one that annihilates the essence: that is, I
cannot bring myself to a habit of minute accuracy about very
indifferent points. I do not doubt but there is a swarm of
diminutive inaccuracies in my Anecdotes — well ! if there is,
I bequeath free leave of correction to the microscopic intel
lects of my continuators. I took dates and facts from the
sedulous and faithful Vertue,* and piqued myself on little but
on giving an idea of the spirit of the times with regard to the
arts at the different periods.
The specimen you present me of Mr. Gough's detail of our
monuments is very differently treated, proves vast industry,
and shows most circumstantial fidelity. It extends, too, much
farther than I expected ; for it seems to embrace the whole
mass of our monuments, nay, of some that are vanished. It is
not what I thought, an intention of representing our modes of
dress, from figures on monuments, but rather a history of our
tombs. It is fortunate, though he may not think so, that so
many of the more ancient are destroyed, since for three or
four centuries they were clumsy, rude, and ugly. I know I
am but a fragment of an antiquary, for I abhor all Saxon
doings, and whatever did not exhibit some taste, grace, or
elegance, and some ability in the artists. Nay, if I may say
so to you, I do not care a straw for archbishops, bishops,
mitred abbots, and cross-legged knights. When you have
one of a sort, you have seen all. However, to so superficial a
student in antiquity as I am, Mr. Gough's work is not unen-
tertaining. It has frequently anecdotes and circumstances of
' George Vertue, the engraver, was born in London in 1684; and died
in 1756. Walpole has given a short sketch of his active life in his
Anecdotes of Painting in England ; a work, for the materials of which
he was, in a great measure, indebted to the collections of Vertue, which
he bought of his widow. " These collections," he says, " amounted to
nearly forty volumes, large and small : in one of his pocket-books I
found a note of his first intention of compiling sueh a work ; it was in
1713, and he continued it assiduously to his death." — E.
VOL, VI. M

162 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1782.
kings, queens, and historic personages, that interest me;
though I care not a straw about a series of bishops who had
only Christian names, or were removed from one old church to
a newer. Still I shall assist Mr. Gough with whatever he
wants in my possession. I believe he is a very worthy man,
and I should be a churl not to oblige any man who is so inno
cently employed. I have felt the selfish, the proud avarice of
those who hoard literary curiosities for themselves alone, as
other misers do money.
I observed in your account of the Count-Bishop Hervey,
that you call one of his dedicators Martin Sherlock, Esquire.'^
That Mr. Sherlock is an Irish clergyman ; I am acquaint
ed with him. He is a very amiable good-natured man, and
wants judgment not parts. He is a little damaged by aim
ing at Sterne's capricious pertness, which the original wore
out; and which, having been admired and cried up to the
skies by foreign writers of reviews, was, on the contrary, too
severely treated by our own. That injustice shocked Mr.
Sherlock, who has a good heart and much simplicity, and sent
him in dudgeon ' last year to Ireland, determined to write no
' This eccentric and original writer had published a book at Rome in
Italian, and two others at Paris, in French. The first volume of his " Let
ters from an EngUsh Traveller," translated by the Rev. John Duncombe,
appeared in London in 1779, before the author's return from the Continent,
and before it was known that he was in holy orders. The Letters were
dedicated to the Hon. and Rev. Frederick Augustus Hervey, Bishop of
Derry, and afterwards Earl of Bristol. (See ante, p. 66.) This volume was
republished, revised and corrected by the author, in 1780, and was soon
followed by " New Letters of an English Traveller." In 1781, Mr. Sher
lock had a strong inclination to revisit the Continent, and actually caused
the foUowing article to be inserted in a public journal : — " It is now gene
rally supposed, that, whoever may be honoured with the negotiation at
Vienna, Mr. Sherlock, the celebrated English traveUer and chaplain to
the Earl of Bristol, will be appointed secretary to the embassy. His great
literary and political abilities, and his polite accomplishments, are in
high estimation throughout the Continent ; and he is, perhaps, the only
EngUshman who can boast of having familiarly conversed with the seve
ral high potentates whose alliance at this important juncture it would be
desirable to obtain. His being in orders is an objection which wiU vanish,
when it is recoUected that the very same important office was, in 1708,
intended for Dr. Swift : a name which, however deservedly revered in
Great Britain and Ireland, must, in every other kingdom of Europe,
give precedence to those of Sherlock, Rousseau, and Sterne, the lumi
naries of the present century." In June of the same year he was pre
sented, by the Bishop of KUlala, with a living of 200/. a year. Upon
which occasion he wrote to his publisher, " 1 think it may be of use to

1782. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 163
more ; yet I am persuaded he wUl, so strong is his propensity
to being an author ; and if he does, correction may make him
more attentive to what he says and writes. He has no gall ;
on the contrary, too much benevolence in his indiscriminate
praise ; but he has made many ingenious criticisms. He is a
just, a due enthusiast to Shakspeare : but, alas ! he scarce
likes Richardson less.

TO THE REV. WILLIAM MASON.
[1782.?]
I HAVE been reading a new French translation of the
elder Pliny,* of whom I never read but scraps before; be
cause, in the poetical manner in which we learn Latin at
Eton, we never become acquainted with the names of the
commonest things, too undignified to be admitted into verse ;
and, therefore, I never had patience to search in a dictionary
for the meaning of every substantive. I find I shall not have
a great deal less trouble with the translation, as I am not
more familiar with their common drogues than with the Latin.
However, the beginning goes off very glibly, as I am not yet
our sale to let the world know it in the newspapers; and I am persuaded
that doubling the value of the living will make the books sell better.
The world (God bless it !) is very apt to value a man's writings accord
ing to his rank and fortune. I am sure they wiU think more highly of
my Letters, if they beUeve I have 400/. a-year, than if they think I have
only two. Pope, you know, says something like this —
' A saint in crape, is twice a saint in lawn.'
Will you then be so good as to have this paragraph put into the Morn
ing Herald, the Morning Chronicle, the Morning Post, and any other
fourth paper you choose .'' ' We hear that the Rev. Martin Sherlock,
M.A. &c. is collated to the united vicarages of Castleconner and Kil-
glass, worth 400/. a-year.' Is there any news of me in London ? Am I
abused or weU-spoken of in print .'' Are the writers as uneasy as they
used to be about my vanity ? Keep all printed things, reviews, news
papers, &c. about me, till I have an opportunity of sending for them. I
think I shall have something for you by next year ; but keep that a
secret. I wish, for your sake, I was a bishop ; for then, I will answer
for it, my works would sell well." An elegant edition of aU Mr. Sher
lock's Letters was published by Mr. Nichols in 1802, in two volumes
octavo. It is now a very scarce book. In 1788, he was coUated to the
rectory and vicarage of Skreen, and soon afterwards to the archdeaconry
of KiUala. He died in 1797.— B.
' By Poinsinet de Sivry, in twelve volumes quarto. — E. M 2

164 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1782.
arrived below the planets : but do you know that this study,
of which I have never thought since I learnt astronomy at
Cambridge, has furnished me with some very entertaining
ideas ! I have long been weary of the common jargon of
poetry. You bards have exhausted all the nature we are
acquainted with; you have treated us with the sun, moon,
and stars, the earth and the ocean, mountains and valleys,
&c. &c. under every possible aspect In short, I have longed
for some American poetry, in which I might find new ap
pearances of nature, and consequently of art. But my pre
sent excursion into the sky has afforded me more entertaining
prospects, and newer phenomena. If I was as good a poet as
you are, I would immediately compose an idyl, or an elegy,.
the scene of which should be laid in Saturn or Jupiter ; and
then, instead of a niggardly soliloquy by the light of a single
moon, I would describe a night illuminated by four or five
moons at least and they should be all in a perpendicular or
horizontal line, according as Celia's eyes (who probably in
that country has at least two pair) are disposed in longitude
or latitude. You must allow that this system would diversify
poetry amazingly. — And then Saturn's belt ! which the trans
lator says in his notes, is not round the planet's waist, like
the shingles ; but is a globe of crystal that encloses the whole
orb, as you may have seen an enamelled watch in a case of
glass. If you do not perceive what infinitely pretty things
may be said, either in poetry or romance, on a brittle heaven
of crystal, and what furbelowed rainbows they must have in
that country, you are neither the Ovid nor natural philoso
pher I take you for. Pray send me an eclogue directly upon
this plan — and I give you leave to adopt my idea of Sa-
tumian Celias having their everything quadrupled — which
would form a much more entertaining rhapsody than Swift's
thought of magnifying or diminishing the species in his Gul
liver. How much more execution a fine woman would do
with two pair of piercers ! or four ! and how much longer the
honeymoon would last if both the sexes have (as no doubt
they have) four times the passions, and four times the means
of gratifying them ! — I have opened new worlds to you. —
You must be four times the poet you are, and then you will

1782. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 165
be above Milton, and equal to Shakspeare, the only two
mortals I am acquainted with who ventured beyond the visi
ble diurnal sphere, and preserved their intellects. Dryden
himself would have talked nonsense, and, I fear, indecency,
on my plan; but you are too good a divine, I am sure, to
treat my quadruple love but platonically. In Saturn, not
withstanding their glass-case, they are supposed to be very
cold; but platonic love of itself produces frigid conceits enough,
and you need not augment the dose — But I will not dictate.
The subject is new ; and you, who have so much imagination,
will shoot far beyond me. Fontenelle would have made some
thing of the idea, even in prose; but Algarotti would dis
hearten anybody from attempting to meddle with the system
of the universe a second time in a genteel dialogue.* Good
night ! I am going to bed, — Mercy on me ! if I should dream
of Celia with four times the usual attractions !

TO THE REV, MR, COLE,
February 22, 1782.
I DOUBT you are again in error, my good Sir, about the
letter in the Gentleman's Magazine against the Rowleians,
unless Mr. Malone sent it to you ; for he is the author, and not
Mr. Steevens, from whom 1 imagine you received it.^ There
is a report that some part of Chatterton's forgery is to be pro
duced by an accomplice; but this I do not answer for, nor
know the circumstances, I have scarce seen a person who is
not persuaded that the fashion of the poems was Chatterton's
own, though he might have found some old stuff to work
upon, which very likely was the case ; but now that the poems
have been so much examined, nobody (that has an ear) can
get over the modernity of the modulations, and the recent
cast of the ideas and phraseology, corroborated by such palp-
' A translation of Count Algarotti's " Newtonianismo per Le Dame,"
by Mrs. Elizabeth Carter, under the title of " Sir Isaac Newton's Phi
losophy explained for the Use of the Ladies ; in six Dialogues of Light
and Colours," appeared in 1739. — B.
' It was afterwards published separately, under the title of " Cursory
Observations on the Poems attributed to Thomas Rowley, a priest of the
fifteenth century." — E.

166 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1782.
able pillage of Pope and Dryden. Still the boy remains a
prodigy, by whatever means he procured or produced the edi
fice erected; and still it will be found inexplicable how he
found time or materials for operating such miracles.
You are in another error about Sir Harry Englefield, who
cannot be going to marry a daughter of Lord Cadogan, unless
he has a natural one, of whom I never heard. Lord Cadogan
has no daughter by his first wife, and his eldest girl by my
niece is not five years old.* The act of the Emperor to which
I alluded, is the general destruction of convents in Flanders,
and, I suppose, in his German dominions too. The Pope
suppressed the carnival, as mourning, and proposes a journey
to Vienna to implore mercy.^ This is a httle different from
the time when the pontiffs trampled on the necks of emperors,
and called it trampling super Aspidem et Draconem. I hope
you have received your cargo back undamaged. I was much
obliged to you, and am yours ever.

TO THE HON. GEORGE HARDINGE.
March 8, 1782.
It is very pleasing to receive congratulation from a friend
on a friend's success : that success, however, is not so agree
able as the universal esteem allowed to Mr. Conway's charac
ter, which not only accompanies his triumph,^ but I believe
' Lord Cadogan married, in 1747, Frances, daughter of the first Lord
Montfort ; and secondly, in 1777, Mary, daughter of Charles ChurchiU,
Esq. by Lady Mary, daughter of Sir Robert Walpole. — E.
= The Emperor Joseph, having been restrained during the Ufetime of
Maria Theresa from acting as he wished in ecclesiastical matters, upon
her death, in November 1780, issued two ordinances respecting religwus
orders : by one forbidding the Roman CathoUcs to hold correspondence
with their chief in foreign parts; and by the other forbidding any buU or
ordinance of the Pope from being received in his dominions, untU sanc
tioned by him. In 1782, he directed the suppression of the religious
houses ; upon which he was visited at Vienna by the Pope, who was re
ceived with great respect, but was unable to procure any intermission in
the Emperor's ecclesiastical reforms. — E.
' General Conway had, on the 27th of February, distinguished him
self in the House of Commons by a motion, " That the farther pro
secution of offensive war on the continent of America, for the purpose
of reducing the revolted colonies to obedience by force, wiU be the
means of weakening the efforts of this country against her European

1782. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 167
contributed to it. To-day, I suppose, all but his character
will be reversed; for there must have been a miraculous
change if the Philistines do not bear as ample a testimony to
their Dagon's honour, as conviction does to that of a virtuous
man. In truth, I am far from desiring that the Opposition
should prevail yet : the nation is not sufficiently changed, nor
awakened enough, and it is sure of having its feelings re
peatedly attacked by more woes; the blow will have more
effect a little time hence : the clamour must be loud enough
to drown the huzzas of five hoarse bodies, the Scotch, Tories,
Clergy, Law, and Army, who would soon croak if new minis
ters cannot do what the old have made impossible ; and there
fore, till general distress involves all in complaint, and lays
the cause undeniably at the right doors, victory will be but
momentary, and the conquerors would soon be rendered more
unpopular than the vanquished ; for, depend upon it, the
present ministers would not be as decent and as harmless an
Opposition as the present. Their criminality must be legally
proved and stigmatised, or the pageant itself would soon be
restored to essence. Base money will pass till cried down. I
wish you may keep your promise of calling upon me better
than you have done. Remember, that though you have time
enough before you, I have not; and, consequently, must be
much more impatient for our meeting than you are, as I am,
dear Sir, yours most sincerely.

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.
Berkeley Square, March 9, 1782.
Though I have scarce time, I must write a line to thank
you for the print of Mr. Cowper, and to tell you how ashamed
I am that you should have so much attention to me, on the
enemies ; tend, under the present circumstances, to increase the mutual
enmity so fatal to the interests both of Great Britain and America ; and,
by preventing a happy reconeUiation with that country, to frustrate the
earnest desire graciously expressed by his Majesty, to restore the bless
ings of public tranquiUity." This motion was carried by a majority of
234 to 213 ; upon which the General moved an humble address to his
Majesty thereupon, which was carried without a division. — E.

168 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1782.
slightest wish I express, when 1 fear my gratitude is not half
so active, though it ought to exceed obligations.
Dr. Farmer has been with me ; and though it was but a
short visit, he pleased me so much by his easy simplicity and
good sense, that I wish for more acquaintance with him.
I do not know whether the Emperor will atone to you for
demolishing the cross, by attacking the crescent. The papers
say he has declared war with the Turks. He seems to me to
be a mountebank who professes curing all diseases. As power
is his only panacea, the remedy methinks is worse than the
disease. Whether Christianity will be laid aside, I cannot say.
As nothing of the spirit is left, the forms, I think, signify very
little. Surely it is not an age of morality and principle ; does
it import whether profligacy is baptized or not? I look to
motives, not to professions. I do not approve of convents:
but, if Caesar wants to make soldiers of monks, I detest his
reformation, and think that men had better not procreate than
commit murder ; nay, I believe that monks get more children
than soldiers do; but what avail abstracted speculations?
Human passions wear the dresses of the times, and carry on
the same views, though in different habits. Ambition and in
terest set up religions or pull them down, as fashion presents
a handle; and the conscientious must be content when the
mode favours their wishes, or sigh when it does not

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.
April 13, .1782.
Your partiahty to me, my good Sir, is much overseen,
if you think me fit to correct your Latin. Alas ! I have not
skimmed ten pages of Latin these dozen years. I have dealt
in nothing but Enghsh, French, and a httle Itahan ; and do
not think, if my life depended on it I could write four hues of
pure Latin. I have had occasion once or twice to speak that
language, and soon found that aU my verbs were Itahan with
Roman terminations, I would not on any account draw you
into a scrape, by depending on my skill in what I have half

1782. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 169
forgotten. But you are in the metropolis of Latium. If you
distrust your own knowledge, which I do not, especially from
the specimen you have sent me, surely you must have good
critics at your elbow to consult.
In truth, I do not love Roman inscriptions in lieu of our
own language, though, if anywhere, proper in an university ;
neither can I approve writing what the Romans themselves
would not understand. What does it avail to give a Latin
tail to a GuildhaU? Though the word used by moderns,
would major convey to Cicero the idea of a mayor ? Archi-
tectus, I believe, is the right word; but I doubt whether
veteris jam perantiqucB is classic for a dilapidated building —
but do not depend on me; consult some better judges.
Though I am glad of the late revolution,'^ a word for which
I have great reverence, I shall certainly not dispute with you
thereon. I abhor exultation. If the change produces peace,
I shall make a bonfire in my heart Personal interest I have
none ; you and I shall certainly never profit by the politics to
which we are attached. The Archaeologic Epistle I admire
exceedingly, though I am sorry it attacks Mr. Bryant, whom
I love and respect. The Dean is so absurd an oaf, that he
deserves to be ridiculed. Is anything more hyperbolic than
his preferences of Rowley to Homer, Shakspeare, and Milton?
Whether Rowley or Chatterton was the author, are the poems
in any degree comparable to those authors? is not a ridi
culous author an object of ridicule ? I do not even guess at
your meaning in your conclusive paragraph on that subject :
Dictionary-writer I suppose alludes to Johnson; but surely
you do not equal the compiler of a dictionary to a genuine
poet? Is a brickmaker on a level with Mr. Essex? Nor can
I hold that exquisite wit and satire are Billingsgate ; if they
were, Milles and Johnson would be able to write an answer
to the epistle. I do as httle guess whom you mean that got
a pension by Toryism : if Johnson too, he got a pension for
having abused pensioners, and yet took one himself, which
was contemptible enough. Still less know I who preferred
' The resignation of Lord North, and formation of the Rockingham
administration. — E .

170 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1782.
opposition to principles, which is not a very common case;
whoever it was, as Pope says,
" The way he took was strangely round about."
With Mr. Chamberlayne I was very little acquainted, nor ever
saw him six times in my hfe. It was with Lord Walpole's
branch he was intimate, and to whose eldest son Mr. Cham
berlayne had been tutor. This poor gentleman had a most
excellent character universally, and has been more feelingly
regretted than almost any man I ever knew.* This is all I am
able to tell you. I forgot to say, I am also in the dark as to
the person you guess for the author of the Epistle. It cannot
be the same person to whom it is generally attributed ; who
certainly neither has a pension nor has deserted his principles,
nor has reason to be jealous of those he laughed at; for their
abilities are far below his. I do not mean that it is his, but
is attributed to him. It was sent to me; nor did I ever see a
line of it till I read it in print. In one respect it is most
credible to be his ; for there are not two such inimitable poets
in England.^ I smUed on reading it, and said to myself, " Dr.
Glynn is well off to have escaped !" His language indeed
about me has been Billingsgate ; but peace be to his and the
' Edward Chamberlayne, Esq. recently appointed secretary of the
treasury. He was so overcome by a nervous terror of the responsibiUty
of the office, that he committed suicide, by throwing himself out of a
window on the 6th of April. On the foUowing day, Hannah More sent
the subjoined account of the melancholy event to her sister : — " Chamber
layne ! the amiable, the accompUshed, the virtuous, the religious Cham
berlayne ! in the fuU vigour of his age, high in reputation, happy in his
prospects, threw himself out of the Treasury window, was taken up
alive, and lived thirty-six hours in the most perfect possession of his
mental activity, his reUgion, and his reasoning faculties. With an
astonishing composure he settled his affairs with both worlds. He never
seemed to feel any remorse, or to reproach his conscience with the guUt
of suicide. In vain had they entreated him to accept of this place. In a
fatal moment he consented : after this, he never had a moment's peace,
and little or no sleep ; this brought on a slow nervous fever, but not to
confine him a moment. I saw him two days before. He looked pale
and eager, and talked with great disgust of his place, on my congratu
lating him on such an acquisition. We chatted away, however, and he
grew pleasant; and we parted — never to meet again."  E.
= In a review of the edition of the Works of Mason which appeared
in 1816, the Quarterly Review, after expressing a wish that this and the
Heroic Epistle to Sir WiUiam Chambers had been included in the col
lection, says, " The Archaeological Epistle was an hasty but animated
effusion, drawn forth by the Rowleian Controversy, and dressed in the

1782. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 171
manes of Rowley, if they have ghosts who never existed. The
Epistle has not put an end to that controversy, which was
grown so tiresome. I rejoice at having kept my resolution of
not writing a word more on that subject. The Dean had
swollen it to an enormous bladder; the Archaeologic poet
pricked it with a pin ; a sharp one indeed, and it burst. Pray
send me a better account of yourself if you can.

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.
Berkeley Square, May 24, 1782.
You are always kind to me, dear Sir, in all respects, but
I have been forced to recur to a rougher prescription than
ass's milk. The pain and oppression on my breast obliged
me to be blooded two days together, which removed my cold
and fever ; but, as I foresaw, left me the gout in their room.
I have had it in my left foot and hand for a week, but it
is going. This cold is very epidemic. I have at least half a
dozen nieces and great-nieces confined with it, but it is not
dangerous or lasting. I shall send you, within this day or
two, the new edition of my Anecdotes of Painting; you will
find very little new : it is a cheap edition for the use of artists,
and that at least they who really want the book, and not the
curiosity, may have it without being forced to give the out
rageous price at which the Strawberry edition sells, merely
because it is rare.
I could assure Mr. Gough, that the Letter on Chatterton
cost me very small pains. I had nothing to do but recollect
and relate the exact truth. There has been published another
piece on it, which I cannot tell whether meant to praise or
blame me, so wretchedly is it written; and I have received
another anonymous one, dated Oxford, (which may be to dis
guise Cambridge,) and which professes to treat me very
severely, though stuffed with fulsome compliments. It abuses
me for speaking modestly of myself — a fault I hope I shall
garb of old English verse, in order to obviate the argument drawn from
the difficulty of writing in the language of the fifteenth century. The
task might indeed have been performed by many ; but the sentiments
accorded with the known declarations of Mason." — Vol. xv. p. 385. — E.

17a CORRESPONDENCE OF 1782.
never mend; avows agreeing with me on the supposition of
the poems, which may be a lie, for it is not uncharitable to
conclude that an anonymous writer is a liar; acquits me of
being at all accessory to the poor lad's catastrophe ; and then,
with most sensitive nerves, is shocked to death, and finds me
guilty of it for having, after it happened, dropped, that had
he lived he might have fallen into more serious forgeries,
though I declare that I never heard that he did. To be sure,
no Irishman ever blundered more than to accuse one of an ex
post facto murder ! If this Hibernian casuist is smitten enough
with his own miscarriage to preserve it in a magazine phial,
I shall certainly not answer it, not even by this couplet which
is suggested :
So fulsome, yet so captious too, to tell you much it grieves me.
That though your flattery makes me sick, your peevishness relieves me.
Adieu, my good Sir. Pray inquire for your books, if you do
not receive them : they go by the Cambridge Fly.

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.
Berkeley Square, June 1, 1782.
I THANK you much, dear Sir, for your kind intention
about Ehzabeth of York ; but it would be gluttony and ra
pacity to accept her : I have her already in the picture of her
marriage,* which was Lady Pomfret's ; besides Vertue's print
of her, with her husband, son, and daughter-in-law. In truth
I have not room for any more pictures anywhere ; yet with
out plundering you, or without impoverishing myself, I have
supernumerary pictures with which I can furnish your va
cancies ; but I must get well first to look them out As yet I
cannot walk alone; and my posture, as you see, makes me
write iU. It is impossible to recover in such weather — never
was such a sickly time.
* This picture of the marriage of EUzabeth of York with Henry the
Seventh was painted by Mabuse, and is described in Walpole's Anec
dotes of Painting. — E.

1782. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 173
, I have not yet seen Bishop Newton's Life. I will not give
three guineas for what I would not give three-pence, his
Works; his Life,* I conclude, will be borrowed by all the
magazines, and there I shall see it.
I know nothing of Acciliator — I have forgotten some of my
good Latin, and luckily never knew any bad ; having always
detested monkish barbarism. I have just finished Mr. Pen
nant's new volume, parts of which amused me ; though I knew
every syllable that was worth knowing before, for there is not
a word of novelty ; and it is tiresome his giving such long ex
tracts out of Dugdale and other common books, and telling
one long stories about all tbe most celebrated characters in
the English history, besides panegyrics on all who showed
him their houses: but the prints are charming; though I
cannot conceive why he gave one of the Countess of Cumber
land, who never did anything worth memory, but recording
the very night on which she conceived.
The " Fair Circassian" was written by a Mr. Pratt, who has
published several works under the name of Courtney Mel-
moth.^ The play might have been written by Cumberland, it
is bad enough. I did read the latter's coxcombical Anec-
' Shortly after the death of Bishop Newton, his Works were pub
lished, with an autobiographical Memoir, in two volumes quarto. The
prelate, speaking, in this Memoir, of Johnson's Lives of the Poets, hav
ing observed, that " candour was much hurt and offended at the malevo
lence that predominated in every part," the Doctor, in a conversation
with Dr. Adams, master of Pembroke College, Oxford, thus retaliated
on his townsman : — " Tom knew he should be dead before what he said
of me would appear : he durst not have printed it while he was alive."
Dr. Adams : — "I beUeve his ' Dissertations on the Prophecies' is his
great work." Johnson : — " Why, Sir, it is Tom's great work ; but how
far it is great, or how much of it is Tom's, are other questions. I fancy
a considerable part of it was borrowed." Dr. Adams : — " He was a
very successful man." Johnson: — "I don't think so. Sir. He did
not get very high. He was late in getting what he did get, and he did
not get it by the best means. I believe he was a gross flatterer." —
Life, vol. viii p. 286.— E.
' Mr. Pratt was the author of " Gleanings in England," " Gleanings
through Wales, HoUand, and Westphalia," and many other works which
enjoyed a temporary popularity, but are now forgotten. Of Mr. Pratt, the
following amusing anecdote is related by Mr. Gifford, in the Maeviad : —
" This gentleman lately put in practice a very notable scheme. Having
scribbled himself fairly out of notice, he found it expedient to retire to
the Continent for a few months, to provoke the inquiries of Mr. Lane's
indefatigable readers. Mark the ingratitude of the creatures ! No in-

174- CORRESPONDENCE OF 1782.
dotes,* but saw nothing on myself, except mention of my
Painters. Pray what is the passage you mean on me or
Vertue? Do not write on purpose to answer this, it is not
worth while.

TO JOHN NICHOLS, ESQ.
Berkeley Square, June 19, 1782.
SIR, Just this moment, on opening your fifth volume of Mis
cellaneous Poems, I find the translation of Cato's speech into
Latin, attributed (by common fame) to Bishop Atterbury. I
can most positively assure you, that that translation was the
work of Dr. Henry Bland, afterwards Head-master of Eton
school. Provost of the college there, and Dean of Durham. I
have more than once heard my father Sir Robert Walpole say,
that it was he himself who gave that translation to Mr. Addi
son, who was extremely surprised at the fidelity and beauty of
it. It may be worth while. Sir, on some future occasion, to
mention this fact in some one of your valuable and curious
publications. I am. Sir, with great regard.
quiries were made, and Mr. Pratt was forgotten before he had crossed
the channel. Ibi omnis effusus labor — but what !
The mouse that is content with one poor hole.
Can never be a mouse of any soul :
baffled in this expedient, he had recourse to another, and, while we were
dreaming of nothing less, came before us in the foUowing paragraph : —
'A few days since died, at Basle in Switzerland, the ingenious Mr.
Pratt : his loss will be severely felt by the literary world, as he joined
to the accompUshments of the gentleman the erudition of the scholar.'
This was inserted in the London papers for several days successively ;
the country papers too ' yelled out like syllables of dolour :' at length,
while our eyes were yet wet for the irreparable loss we had sustained,
came a second paragraph as follows : — ' As no event of late has caused a
more general sorrow than the supposed death - of the ingenious Mr.
Pratt, we are happy to have it in our power to assure his numerous ad
mirers, that he is as well as they can wish, and (what they will be de
lighted to hear) busied in preparing his Travels for the press.' " — E.
' " Anecdotes of Eminent Painters, in Spain, during the Sixteenth
and Seventeenth Centuries, with cursory Remarks upon the present
State of Arts in that Kingdom."

1782. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 175

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.
Berkeley Square, June 21, 1782.
It is no trouble, my good Sir, to write to you, for I am
as well recovered as I generally do. I am very sorry you do
not, and especially in your hands, as your pleasure and com
forts so much depend on them. Age is by no means a burden
while it does not subject one to depend on others ; when it
does, it reconciles one to quitting everything ; at least I believe
you and I think so, who do not look on solitude as a calamity.
I shall go to Strawberry to-morrow, and will, as I might have
thought of doing, consult Dugdale and Collins for the Duke
of Ireland's inferior titles. Mr. Gough I shall be glad of see
ing when I am settled there, which will not be this fortnight.
I think there are but eleven parts of Marianne, and that it
breaks off in the nun's story, which promised to be very in
teresting. Marivaux never finished Marianne, nor the Paysan
Parvenu (which was the. case too with the younger Crebillon
with Les Egaremens). I have seen two bad conclusions of
Marianne by other hands.
Mr. Cumberland's brusquerie is not worth notice, nor did I
remember it Mr. Pennant's impetuosity you must overlook
too ; though I love your delicacy about your friend's memory.
Nobody that knows you will suspect you of wanting it ; but, in
the ocean of books that overflows every day, who will recollect
a thousandth part of what is in most of them ? By the num
ber of writers one should naturally suppose there were multi
tudes of readers ; but if there are, which I doubt, the latter
read only the productions of the day. Indeed, if they did read
former publications, they would have no occasion to read the
modern, which, like Mr. Pennant's, are borrowed wholesale
from the more ancient: it is sad to say, that the borrowers
add little new but mistakes. I have just been turning over
Mr. Nichols's eight volumes of Select Poems, which he has
swelled unreasonably with large coUops of old authors, most
of whom little deserved revivifying. I bought them for the
biographical notes, in which I have found both inaccuracies

176 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1782.
and blunders. For instance, one that made me laugh. In
Lord Lansdown's Beauties he celebrates a lady, one Mrs.
Vaughan. Mr. Nichols turns to the peerage of that time,
and finds a Duke of Bolton married a Lady Ann Vaughan ;
he instantly sets her down for the lady in question, and in
troduces her to posterity as a beauty. Unluckily she was a
monster, so ugly, that the Duke, then Marquis of Winchester,
being forced by his father to marry her for her great fortune,
was believed never to have consummated, and parted from her
as soon as his father died; but, if our predecessors are ex
posed to these misrepresentations, what shall we be, when
not only all private history is detailed in the newspapers, but
scarce ever with tolerable fidelity ! 1 have long said, that if a
paragraph in a newspaper contains a word of truth, it is sure
to be accompanied with two or three blunders ; yet, who will
believe that papers published in the face of the whole town
should be nothing but magazines of lies, every one of which
fifty persons could contradict and disprove ? Yet so it cer
tainly is, and future history will probably be ten tiraes falser
than all preceding. Adieu ! Yours most sincerely.

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.
Strawberry HUl, July 23, 1782.
I HAVE been more dilatory than usual, dear Sir, in re
plying to your last ; but it called for no particular answer, nor
have I now anything worth telling you. Mr. Gough and Mr.
Nichols dined with me on Saturday last I lent the former
three-and-twenty drawings of monuments out of Mr. Le-
thieuUier's books, for his large work, which will be a mag
nificent one, Mr, Nichols is, as you say, a very rapid
editor, and I must commend him for being a very accurate
one, I scarce ever saw a book so correct as his Life of Mr,
Bowyer. I wish it deserved the pains he has bestowed on
it every way, and that he would not dub so many men great.
I have known several of his heroes, who were very little men.
Dr. Mead had nothing but pretensions; and Philip Carteret

1782. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 177
Webb was a sorry knave, with still less foundation. To
what a slender total do those shrink who are the idols of
their own age ! How very few are known at all at the end
of the next century ! But there is a chapter in Voltaire
that would cure anybody of being a great man even in his
own eyes. It is a chapter in which a Chinese goes into a
bookseller's shop, and marvels at not finding any of his own
country's classics. It is a chapter that ought never to be
out of the sight of any vain author. I have just got the
catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Museum. It is every
way piteously dear ; the method is extremely puzzling, and
the contents chiefly rubbish : who would give a rush for Dr.
Birch's correspondence? many of the pieces are in print.
In truth, I set little store by a collection of manuscripts.
A work must be of little value that never could get into
print ; I mean, if it has existed half a century. The articles
that diverted me most were an absolute novelty; I knew
Henry VIII. was a royal author, but not a royal quack.
There are several receipts of his own, and this delectable
one amongst others. " The King's Grace's oyntement made
at St. James's, to coole, and dry, and comfort the  ."
Another, to the same purpose, was devised at Cawoode —
was not that an episcopal palace ? How devoutly was the
head of the church employed ! I hope that you have re
covered your spirits; and that summer, which is arrived at
last, will make a great amendment in you.

TO THE EARL OF STRAFFORD.
Strawberry HiU, August 16, 1782.
If this letter reaches your lordship, I believe it must
be conveyed by a dove; for we are all under water, and a
postman has not where to set the sole of his foot They tell
me, that in the north you have not been so drowned, which
will be very fortunate ; for in these parts everything is to be
apprehended for the corn, the sheep, and the camps : but,
in truth, all kinds of prospects are most gloomy, and even
VOL. VI. N

178 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1782.
in lesser lights uncomfortable. Here we cannot stir, but
armed for battle. Mr, Potts, who lives at Mr, Hindley's,
was attacked and robbed last week at the end of Gunners-
bury-lane, by five footpads who had two blunderbusses.
Lady Browne and I do continue going to Twickenham-park ;
but I don't know how long it will be prudent nor whether it
is so now,
I have not been at Park- place, for Mr, Conway is never
there, at least only for a night or two. His regiment was
reviewed yesterday at Ashford-common, but I did not go to
see it In truth, I have so little taste for common sights,
that I never yet did see a review in my life : I was in town
last week, yet saw not Monsieur de Grasse ; * nor have seen
the giant or the dwarf.
Poor Mrs. Clive is certainly very declining, but has been
better of late ; and, which I am glad of, thinks herself better.
All visions that comfort one are desirable : the conditions
of mortality do not bear being pryed into ; nor am I an ad
mirer of that philosophy that scrutinizes into them : the
philosophy of deceiving one's self is vastly preferable. What
signifies anticipating what we cannot prevent ?
I do not pretend to send your lordship any news, for I do
not know a tittle, nor inquire. Peace is the sole event of
which I wish to hear. For private news, I have outlived
almost all the world with which I was acquainted, and have
no curiosity about the next generation, scarce more than
about the twentieth century. I wish I was less indifferent
for the sake of the few with whom I correspond, — your lord
ship in particular, who are always so good and partial to me,
and on whom I should indubitably wait, were I fit to take a
long journey ; but as I walk no better than a tortoise, I make
a conscience of not incommodating my friends, whom I should
only confine at home. Indeed both my feet and hands are
so lame, that I now scarce ever dine abroad. Being so an-
' The Comte de Grasse, the admiral of the French fleet, which Rodney
defeated on the 12th of AprU 1782, and who had struck his flag in that
engagement to the Barfleur, and surrendered himself to Sir Samuel
Hood, landed at Portsmouth, as a prisoner of war, on the Sth of August.
— E.

1782. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 179
tiquated and insipid, I will release your lordship; and am,
with my unalterable respects to Lady Strafford, your lord
ship's most devoted humble servant.

TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY.*
Strawberiy Hill, August 20, 1782.
You know I am too reasonable to expect to hear from
you when you are so overwhelmed in business, or to write
when I have nothing upon earth to say. I would come to
town, but am to have company on Thursday, and am engaged
with Lady Cecilia fit Ditton on Friday, and on Monday I
am to dine and pass the day at Sion-hill; and, as I am
twenty years older than anybody of my age, I am forced to
rest myself between my parties. I feel this particularly at
this moment, as the allied houses of Lucan and Althorpe
have just been breakfasting here, and I am sufficiently fa
tigued. I have not been at Oatlands for years ; for consider I can
not walk, much less climb a precipice ; and the Duke of New
castle has none of the magnificence of petty princes in a ro
mance or in Germany, of furnishing calashes to those who
visit his domains. He is not undetermined about selling the
place; but besides that nobody is determined to buy it he
must have Lord Lincoln's consent.
I saw another proud prince yesterday, your cousin Sey
mour from Paris, and his daughter. She was so dishevelled,
that she looked like a pattern doll that had been tumbled
at the Custom-house.
I am mighty glad that war is gone to sleep like a paroli at
faro, and that the rain has cried itself to death; unless the
first would dispose of aU the highwaymen, footpads, and house
breakers, or the latter drown them, for nobody hereabouts
dare stir after dusk, nor be secure at home. When you have
any interval of your little campaigns, I shall hope to see you
and Lady Ailesbury here. ' Now first printed. N 2

180 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1782.

TO THE EARL OF BUCHAN.*
Strawberry HiU, Sept. 15, 1782.
I CONGRATULATE your lordship on the acquisition of a
valuable picture by Jameson. The Memoirs of your Society
I have not yet received ; but, when I do, shall read it with
great pleasure, and beg your lordship to offer my grateful
thanks to the members, and to accept them yourself.
No literature appears here at this time of the year. Lon
don, I hear, is particularly empty. Not only the shooting
season is begun, but till about seventeen days ago, there
was nothing but incessant rains, and not one summer's day.
A catalogue, in two quartos, of the Manuscripts in the British
Museum, and which thence does not seem to contain great
treasures, and Mr. Tyrwhitf s book on the Rowleian con
troversy, which is reckoned completely victorious, are all the
novelties I have seen since I left town. War and politics
occupy those who think at all — no great number neither ;
and most of those, too, are content with the events of the
day, and forget them the next. But it is too like an old man
to blame the age ; and, as I have nothing to do with it, I may
as well be silent and let it please itself. I am, with great
regard, my lord, yours, &c.

TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY.
Strawberry HUl, Sept. 17, 1782.
I HAD not time yesterday to say what I had to say about
your coming hither. I should certainly be happy to see you
and Lady Ailesbury at any time : but it would be uncon
scionable to expect it when you have scarce a whole day in
a month to pass at your own house, and to look after your
own works. Friends, I know, lay as great stress upon trifles
as upon serious points ; but as there never was a more sincere
' Now first coUected.

1782. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 181
attachment than mine, so it is the most reasonable one too,
for I always think for you more than myself Do whatever
you have to do, and be assured, that is what I like best
that you should do. The present hurry cannot last always.
Your present object is to show how much more fit you are
for your post* than any other man; by which you will do
infinite service too, and will throw a great many private acts
of good-nature and justice into the account Do you think
I would stand in the way of any of these things ? and that
I am not aware of them ? Do you think about me ? If it
suits you at any moment, come. Except Sunday next, when
I am engaged to dine abroad, I have nothing to do till the
middle of October, when I shall go to Nuneham ; and, going
or coming, may possibly catch you at Park-place.
I am not quite credulous about your turning smoke into
gold:'* it is perhaps because I am ignorant. I like Mr.
Mapleton extremely; and though I have lived so long that
I have little confidence, I think you could not have chosen
one more likely to be faithful. I am sensible that my kind
of distrust would prevent all great enterprises ; and yet I
cannot but fear, that unless one gives one's self up entirely
to the pursuit of a new object, this risk must be doubled.
But I will say no more ; for I do not even wish to dissuade
you, as I am sure I understand nothing of the matter, and
therefore mean no more than to keep your discretion awake.
The tempest of Monday night alarmed me too for the
fleet : and as I have nothing to do but to care, I feel for
individuals as well as for the public, and think of all those
who may be lost, and of all those who may be made miserable
by such loss. Indeed, I care most for individuals ; for as to
the public, it seems to be totally insensible to everything ! I
know nothing worth repeating ; and having now answered all
your letter, shall bid you good night. Yours ever.
' Mr. Conway was now commander-in-chief.
^ AUuding to the coke-ovens, for which Mr. Conway afterwards ob
tained a patent.

182 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1782.

TO THE EARL OF STRAFFORD.
Strawberry HiU, Oct. 3, 1782.
I DID think it long since I had the honour of hearing
from your lordship ; but, conscious how little I could repay
you with any entertainment, I waited with patience. In fact
I believe summer-correspondences often turn on complaints
of want of news. It is unlucky that that is generally the
season of correspondence, as it is of separation. People as
sembled in a capital contrive to furnish matter, but then
they have not occasion to write it Summer, being the sea
son of campaigns, ought to be more fertile : I am glad when
that is not the case, for what is an account of a battle but a
list of burials ? Vultures and birds of prey might write with
pleasure to their correspondents in the Alps of such events ;
but they ought to be melancholy topics to those who have
no beaks or talons. At this moment if I was an epicure
among the sharks, I should rejoice that General Elliot has
just sent the carcases of fifteen hundred Spaniards down
to market under Gibraltar;* but I am more pleased that he
dispatched boats, and saved some of those whom he had over
set What must a man of so much feeling have suffered at
being forced to do his duty so well as he has done ! I re
member hearing such another humane being, that brave old
admiral Sir Charles Wager, say, that in his life he had never
killed a fiy.
This demolition of the Spanish armada is a great event :
a very good one if it prevents a battle between Lord Howe
and the combined fleets, as I should hope ; and yet better if
it produces peace, the only political crisis to which I look
with eagerness. Were that happy moment arrived, there is
ample matter to employ our great men, if we have any, in
retrieving the affairs of this country, if they are to be re-
' On the 13th of September, when General Elliot repulsed the gi-and
attack made on Gibraltar ; and Captain Curtis, of the Brilliant, who com
manded the marine brigade upon the occasion, and his men, saved num
bers of the Spaniards, at the hazard of their own lives. — E.

1782. THE HON, HORACE WALPOLE. 183
trieved. But though our sedentary politicians write abun
dance of letters in the newspapers, full of plans of public
spirit, I doubt the nation is not sober enough to set about
its own work in earnest When none reform themselves,
little good is to be expected. We see by the excess of
highwaymen how far evils will go before any attempt is made
to cure them. I am sure, from the magnitude of this in
convenience, that I am not talking merely like an old man.
I have lived here above thirty years, and used to go every
where round at all hours of the night without any precau
tion. I cannot now stir a mile from my own house after
sunset without one or two servants with blunderbusses. I
am not surprised your lordship's pheasants were stolen: a
woman was taken last Saturday night loaded with nine geese,
and they say has impeached a gang of fourteen housebreakers
— but these are undergraduates; when they should have
taken their doctor's degrees, they would not have piddled in
such little game. Those regius-professors the nabobs have
taught men not to plunder for farthings.
I am very sensible of your lordship's kindness to my ne
phew Mr. Cholmondeley. He is a sensible, well-behaved young
man, and, I trust would not have abused your goodness.
Mr. Mason writes to me, that he shall be at York at the
end of this month. I was to have gone to Nuneham; but
the house is so little advanced, that it is a question whether
they can receive me. Mason, I doubt has been idle there.
I am sure, if he found no muses there, he could pick up none
at Oxford, where there is not so much as a bedmaker that
ever lived in a muse's family. Tonton begs his duty to all
the lambs, and trusts that Lady Strafford will not reject his
homage.
TO THE REV. MR. COLE.
Strawberry Hill, Nov. 6, 1782.
I HAD begun a letter in answer to another person, which
I have broken off on receiving yours, dear Sir, I am ex
ceedingly concerned at the bad account you give of yourself;

184 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1782.
and yet, on weighing it I flatter myself that you are not
only out of all danger, but have had a fortunate crisis, which
I hope will prolong your hfe. A bile surmounted is a pre
sent from nature to us, who are not boys : and though you
speak as weary of hfe from sufferings, and yet with proper
resignation and philosophy, it does not frighten me, as I
know that any humour and gathering, even in the gum, is
strangely dispiriting. I do not write merely from sympathis
ing friendship, but to beg that if your bile is not closed or
healing, you will let me know ; for the bark is essential, yet
very difficult to have genuine. My apothecary here, I be
lieve, has some very good, and I will send you some directly.
I will thank you, but not trouble you with an account of
myself I had no fit of the gout, nor any new complaint;
but it is with the utmost difficulty I keep the humour from
laming me entirely, especially in my hands, which are a
mine of chalk-stones ; but as they discharge themselves, I
flatter myself they prevent heavier attacks.
I do take in the European Magazine, and think it in
general one of the best. I forgot what was said of me:
sometimes I am corrected, sometimes flattered, and care for
neither. I have not seen the answer to Mr. Warton, but will
send for it.
I shall not be sorry on my own account if Dr. Lort quits
Lambeth, and comes to Saville-row, which is in my neigh
bourhood ; but I did not think a wife was the stall where he
would set up his staff.
You have given me the only reason why I cannot be quite
sorry that you do not print what you had prepared for the
press. No kind intention towards me from you surprises me
— but then I want no new proofs. My wish, for whatever
shall be the remainder of my life, is to be quiet and for
gotten. Were my course to recommence, and one could think
in youth as one does at sixty-five, I have no notion I should
have courage to appear as an author. Do you know, too,
that I look on fame now as the idlest of all visions ? but this
theme would lead me too far.
I collect a new comfort from your letter. The writing is

1783. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 185
much better than in most of your latest letters. If your
pain were not ceased, you could not have formed your letters
so firmly and distinctly. I will not say more, lest I should
draw you into greater fatigue ; let me have but a single line
in answer. Yours most cordially.*

TO GEORGE COLMAN, ESQ.^
Strawberry HUl, May 10, 1783.
DEAR SIE,
For so you must allow me to call you, after your being
so kind as to send me so valuable and agreeable a present as
your translation of Horace ^ — I wish compliment had left any
term uninvaded, of which sincerity could make use without
suspicion. Those would be precisely what I would employ in
commending your poem ; and, if they proved too simple to
content my gratitude, I would be satisfied with an offering to
truth, and wait for a nobler opportunity of sacrificing to the
warmer virtue. If I have not lost my memory, your transla
tion is the best I have ever seen of that difficult epistle.
Your expression is easy and natural, and when requisite,
poetic. In short, it has a prime merit it bas the air of an
original. Your hypothesis in your commentary is very ingenious. I
do not know whether it is true, which now cannot be known ;
but if the scope of the epistle was, as you suppose, to hint in
a delicate and friendly manner to the elder of Piso's sons that
' This is the last letter addressed by Walpole to Mr. Cole ; who died
within six weeks of the date of it. The event is thus recorded by Mr.
Gough, in the second volume of his edition of Camden's Britannia.
" At Milton, a small vUlage on the Ely road, was the retirement of the
Rev. WilUam Cole. Here, Dec. 16, 1782, in his sixty-eighth year, he
closed a life spent in learned research into the history and antiquities of
this county in particular, which nothing but his declining state of health
prevented this work from sharing the benefit of. He was buried under
the belfry of St. Clement's church in Cambridge." — E.
' Now first coUected.
' His translation of Horace's Epistola ad Pisones de Arte Poetica. — E.

186 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1783.
he had written a bad tragedy, Horace had certainly executed
his plan with great address ; and, I think, nobody will be able
to show that anything in the poem clashes with your idea.
Nay, if he went farther, and meant to disguise his object by
giving his epistle the air of general rules on poetry and tragedy,
he achieved both purposes ; and while the youth his friend was
at once corrected and put to no shame, all other readers were
kept in the dark, except you, and diverted to different scents.*
Excuse my commenting your comment, but I had no other
way of proving that I really approve both your version and
criticism than by stating the grounds of my applause. If you
have wrested the sense of the original to favour your own
hypothesis, I have not been able to discover your art ; for I do
not perceive where it has been employed. If you have given
Horace more meaning than he was intitled to, you have con
ferred a favour on him, for you have made his whole epistle
consistent a beauty all the spectacles of all his commentators
could not find out — but, indeed, they proceed on the profound
laws of criticism, you by the laws of common sense, which,
marching on a plain natural path, is very apt to arrive sooner
at the goal, than they who travel on the Appian Way ; which
was a very costly and durable work, but is very uneasy, and
at present does not lead to a quarter of the places to which it
was originally directed.
I am. Sir, with great regard, your most
obedient and obhged humble servant
' It had been the opinion of Bishop Hurd, that " it was the proper
and sole purpose of Horace simply to criticise the Roman drama;" but
Mr. Colman assumed a contrary ground. " If my partiality to my la
mented friend, Mr. Colman," says Dr. Joseph Warton, " does not mis
lead me, I should think his account of the matter the most judicious of
any yet published. He conceives that the elder Piso had written, or me
ditated, a poetical work— probably, a tragedy, and had communicated
his piece in confidence to Horace ; but Horace, either disapproving of
the work, or doubting of the poetical faculties of the elder Piso, or
both, wished to dissuade him from aU thoughts of pubUcation. With
this view he wrote his Epistle, addressing it, with a courtliness and deli
cacy perfectly agreeable to his acknowledged character, indifferently to
the whole famUy, the father and his two sons." — E.

1783. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 187
TO THE EARL OF BUCHAN.*
Strawberry HUl, May 12, 1783.
MY LORD, I DID not know, till I received the honour of your lord
ship's letter, that any obstruction had been given to your char
ter. I congratulate your lordship and the Society on the
defeat of that opposition, which does not seem to have been a
liberal one. The pursuit of national antiquities has rarely
been an object, I believe, with any university : why should
they obstruct others from marching in that track? I have
often thought the English Society bf Antiquaries have gone
out of their way when they meddled with Roman remains,
especially if not discovered within our island. Were I to
speak out, I should own that I hold most reliques of the Ro
mans that have been found in Britain, of little consequence,
unless relating to such emperors as visited us. Provincial
armies stationed in so remote and barbarous a quarter as we
were then, acted little, produced little worth being remember
ed. Tombstones erected to legionary officers and their fami
lies, now dignified by the title of inscriptions ; and banks and
ditches that surrounded camps, which we understand much
better by books and plans, than by such faint fragments, are
given with much pomp, and tell us nothing new. Your lord
ship's new foundation seems to proceed on a much more rational
and more useful plan. The biography of the illustrious of
your country will be an honour to Scotland, to those illustrious,
and to the authors: and may contribute considerably to the
general history ; for the investigation of particular lives may
bring out many anecdotes that may unfold secrets of state, or
explain passages in such histories as have been already writ
ten; especially as the manners of the times may enter into
private biography, though before Voltaire manners were rarely
weighed in general history, though very often the sources of
considerable events. I shall be very happy to see such lives
as shall be published, while I remain alive.
' Now first coUected.

188 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1783.
I cannot contribute anything of consequence to your lord
ship's meditated account of John Law. I have heard many
anecdotes of him, though none that I can warrant particularly
that of the duel for which he fied eariy.* I met the other day
with an account in some French hterary gazette, I forget
which, of his having carried off the wife of another man. Lady
Catherine Law, his wife, lived, during his power in France, in
the most stately manner. Your lordship knows, to be sure,
that he died and is buried at Venice. I have two or three
different prints of him, and an excellent head of him in crayons
by Rosalba, the best of her portraits. It is certainly very
like, for, were the flowing wig converted into a female head
dress, it would be the exact resemblance of Lady WaUingford,
his daughter, whom I see frequently at the Duchess of Mont
rose's, and who has by no means a look of the age to which
she is arrived. Law was a very extraordinary man, but not
at all an estimable one.
I don't remember whether I ever told your lordship that
there are many charters of your ancient kings preserved in the
Scots College at Paris, and probably many other curiosities. I
think I did mention many paintings of the old house of Lenox
in the ancient castle at Aubigny.
' Evelyn, in his Diary, gives the following account of this duel : —
" April 22, 1694. A very young man, named Wilson, the younger son of
one who had not above two hundred pounds a year estate, Uved in the
garb and equipage of the richest nobleman, for house, furniture, coaches,
saddle-horses, and kept a table and all things accordingly, redeemed his
father's estate, and gave portions to his sisters, being challenged by one
Laws, a Scotchman, was kiUed in a duel, not fairly. The quarrel arose
from his taking away his own sister from lodging in a house where this
Laws had a mistress ; which the mistress of the house thinking a dispa
ragement to it, and losing by it, instigated Laws to this duel. He was
taken, and condemned for murder. The mystery is, how this so young
a gentleman, very sober and of good fame, could live in such an ex
pensive manner ; it could not be discovered by all possible industry, or
entreaty of his friends to make him reveal it. It did not appear that he
was kept by women, play, coining, padding, or deaUng in chemistry ; but
he would sometimes say, that, if he should live ever so long, he had
wherewith to maintain himself in the same manner. This was a subject
of much discourse." Law was found guUty of murder, and sentence of
death was passed upon him. He, however, found means to escape, and
got clear off to the Continent. A reward of fifty pounds for his appre
hension appeared in the London Gazette of the 7th of January 1695. — E.

1783. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 189

TO THE HON. GEORGE HARDINGE,
Berkeley Square, May 17, 1783.
Though I shall not be fixed at Strawberry on this day
fortnight, I will accept your offer, dear Sir, because my time
is more at my disposal than yours, and you may not have any
other day to bestow upon me later. I thank you for your
second, which I shall read as carefully as I did the former. It
is not your fault if you have not yet made Sir Thomas Rum-
bold white as driven snow to me.* Nature has providentially
given us a powerful antidote to eloquence, or the criminal that
has the best advocate would escape. But when rhetoric and
logic stagger my lords the judges, in steps prejudice, and, with
out one argument that will make a syllogism, confutes Messrs.
Demosthenes, Tully, and Hardinge, and makes their lordships
see as clearly as any old woman in England, that belief la a
much better rule of faith than demonstration. This is just
my case : I do believe, nay, and I will believe, that no man
ever went to India with honest intentions. If he returns with
100,000Z. it is plain that I was in the right. But I have still
a stronger proof; my Lord Coke says, " Set a thief to catch a
thief;" my Lord Advocate ^ says, " Sir Thomas is a rogue :"
ergo, — I cannot give so complete an answer to the rest of your
note, as I trust I have done to your pleadings, because the
latter is in print and your note is manuscript Now, un
fortunately, I cannot read half of it ; for, give me leave to say,
that either your hand or my spectacles are so bad, that I
generally guess at your meaning rather than decipher it, and
this time the context has not served me well.
' The bill of pains and penalties against Sir Thomas Rumbold, late
governor of Madras, was at this time in its progress through the House
of Commons. On the 1st of July, the further proceedings upon the bill
were adjourned to the 1st of October; by which means the whole busi
ness fell to the ground. — E.
' Mr. Dundas, afterwards Lord MelvUle. " I think him," said Mr.
WUberforce, in June 1781, " the first speaker on the ministerial side in
the House of Commons, and there is a manliness in his character which
prevents his running away from the question ; he grants aU his adversa
ries' premises, and lights them upon their own ground." Life, vol. i. p.
21.— E.

190 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1783.

TO THE EARL OF STRAFFORD.
Strawberry HiU, June 24, 1783.
Though your lordship's partiality extends even to my
letters, you must perceive that they grow as antiquated as the
writer. News are the soul of letters : when we give them a
body of our own invention, it is as unlike to life as a statue.
I have withdrawn so much from the world, that the news
papers know everything before me, especially since they have
usurped the province of telling everything, private as well as
public; and consequently a great deal more than I should
wish to know, or like to report. When I do hear the transac
tions of much younger people, they do not pass from my ears
into my memory; nor does your lordship interest yourself
more about them than I do. Yet still, when one reduces
one's department to such narrow limits, one's correspondence
suffers by it However, as I desire to show only my gratitude
and attachment, not my wit, I shall certainly obey your lord
ship as long as you are content to read my letters, after
I have told you fairly how little they can entertain you.
For imports of French, I believe we shall have few more.
They have not ruined us so totally by the war, much less en
riched themselves so much by it but that they who have been
here, complained so piteously of the expensiveness of England,
that probably they will deter others from a similar jaunt;
nor, such is their fickleness, are the French constant to any
thing but admiration of themselves. Their Anglomanie I hear
has mounted, or descended, from our customs to our persons.
English people are in fashion at VersaUles. A Mr. EUis,*
' George EUis, Esq. ; afterwards a contributor to " The RolUad ; " a
coadjutor of Mr. Canning and Mr. Frere in " The Anti-Jacobin," and
editor of " Specimens of Ancient Eno;lish Romances," &c. He died in
181S, at the age of seventy. Sir Walter Scott, in the introduction to
the fifth canto of Marmion, thus addresses him —
" Thou, who canst give to Ughtest lay
An unpedantic moral gay.
Nor less the duUest theme bid flit
On wings of unexpected wit;
In letters as in life approved.
Example honour'd and beloved ;

1783. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 191
who wrote some pretty verses at Bath two or three years
ago, is a favourite there. One who was so, or may be still, the
Beau Dillon, came upon a very different errand ; in short, to
purchase at any price a book written by Linguet which was
just coming out, called "Antoinette." That will tell your lord
ship why the Beau Dillon'^ was the messenger.
Monsieur de Guignes and his daughters came hither ; but
it was at eight o'clock at night in the height of the deluge.
You may be sure I was much flattered by such a visit ! I was
forced to light candles to show them anything; and must
have lighted the moon to show them the views. If this is
their way of seeing England, they might as well look at it
with an opera-glass from the shore of Calais.
Mr. Mason is to come to me on Sunday, and will find me
mighty busy in making my lock of hay, which is not yet cut
I don't know why, but people are always more anxious about
their hay than their corn, or twenty other things that cost
them more. I suppose my Lord Chesterfield, or some such
dictator, made it fashionable to care about one's hay. Nobody
betrays solicitude about getting in his rents.
We have exchanged spring and summer for autumn and
winter, as well as day for night. If religion or law enjoined
people to love light, and prospects, and verdure, I should
not wonder if perverseness made us hate them; no, nor if
society made us prefer living always in town to solitude and
beauty. But that is not the case. The most fashionable
Dear ElUs ! to the bard impart
A lesson of thy magic art.
To win at once the head and heart, —
At once to charm, instruct, and mend.
My guide, my pattern, and my friend ! " — E.
' Colonel Edward Dillon. " I was particularly acquainted with him,"
savs Wraxall, in his posthumous Memoirs ; " he descended, I believe,
collaterally from the noble Irish family of the Earls of Roscommon,
though his father carried on the trade of a wine-merchant at Bourdeaux :
but he was commonly called ' Le Comte Edouard Dillon,' and ' Le Beau
Dillon.' In my estimation, he possessed little pretension to the latter
epithet ; but he surpassed most men in stature, like Lord Whitworth,
Lord Hugh Seymour, and the other individuals on whom Marie Antoi
nette cast a favourable eye. That she showed him some imprudent
marks of predilection at a baU, which, when they took place, excited
comment, is true ; but they prove only indiscretion and levity on her
part."— E.

192 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1783.
hurry into the country at Christmas and Easter, let the
weather be ever so bad ; and the finest ladies, who will go no
whither till eleven at night certainly pass more tiresome
hours in London alone than they would in the country. But
all this is no business of mine : they do what they like, and
so do I ; and I am exceedingly tolerant about people who are
perfectly indifferent to me. The sun and the seasons were
not gone out of fashion when I was young; and I may do
what I will with them now I am old : for fashion is fortunately
no law but to its devotees. Were I five-and-twenty, I dare
to say I should think every whim of my contemporaries very
wise, as I did then. In one light I am always on the side of
the young, for they only silently despise those who do not
conform to their ordonnances ; but age is very apt to be angry
at the change of customs, and partial to others no better
founded. It is happy when we are occupied by nothing more
serious. It is happy for a nation when mere fashions are a
topic that can employ its attention; for, though dissipation
may lead to graver moments, it commences with ease and
tranquillity: and they at least who live before the scene shifts
are fortunate, considering and comparing themselves with the
various regions who enjoy no parallel felicity. I confess my
reflections are couleur de rose at present. I did not much ex
pect to live to see peace, without far more extensive ruin than
has fallen on us. I will not probe futurity in search of less
agreeable conjectures. Prognosticators may see many seeds
of dusky hue ; but I am too old to look forwards. Without
any omens, common sense tells one, that in the revolution of
ages nations must have unprosperous periods. But why
should I torment myself for what may happen in twenty years
after my death, more than for what may happen in two hun
dred ? Nor shall I be more interested in the one than in the
other. This is no indifference for my country: I wish it
could always be happy; but so I do to all other countries.
Yet who could ever pass a tranquil moment, if such future
speculations vexed him ?
Adieu, my good lord ! I doubt this letter has more marks
of senility than the one I announced at the beginning. When

1783. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 193
I had no news to send you, it was no reason for tiring you
with commonplaces. But your lordship's indulgence spoils
me. Does not it look as if I thought that, because you com
mend my letters, you would like whatever I say ? Will not
Lady Strafford think that I abuse your patience ? I ask both
your pardons, and am to both a most devoted humble servant.

TO THE EARL OF STRAFFORD.
Strawberry HUl, August 1, 1783.
It would be great happiness indeed to me, my dear lord,
if such nothings as my letters could contribute to any part of
your lordship's ; but as your own partiality bestows their chief
merit on them, you see they owe more to your friendship than
to the writer. It is not my interest to depreciate them ; much
less to undermine the foundation of their sole worth. Yet it
would be dishonest not to warn your lordship, that if my
letters have had any intrinsic recommendation, they must lose
of it every day. Years and frequent returns of gout have
made a ruin of me. Dulness, in the form of indolence, grows
upon me. I am inactive, lifeless, and so indifferent to most
things, that I neither inquire after nor remember any topics
that might enliven my letters. Nothing is so insipid as my
way of passing my time. But I need not specify what my
letters speak. They can have no spirit left ; and would be
perfectly inanimate, if attachment and gratitude to your lord
ship were as liable to be extinguished by old age as our more
amusing qualities. I make no new connections ; but cherish
those that remain with all the warmth of youth and the piety
of grey hairs.
The weather here has been, and is, with very few intervals,
sultry to this moment I think it has been of service to me ;
though by overheating myself I had a few days of lameness.
The harvest is half over already all round us ; and so pure,
that not a poppy or cornflower is to be seen. Every field
seems to have been weeded like Brisco's bowling-green. If
Ceres, who is at least as old as many of our fashionable ladies,
VOL. VI. o

194 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1783.
loves tricking herself out in flowers as they do, she must be
mortified: and with more reason; for she looks weU always
with top-knots of ultramarine and vermihon, which modern
goddesses do not for half so long as they think they do. As
Providence showers so many blessings on us, I wish the peace
may confirm them ! Necessary I am sure it was ; and when
it cannot restore us, where should we have been had the war
continued? Of our situation and prospect I confess my
opinion is melancholy, not from present pohtics but from past
We flung away the most brilliant position, I doubt, for a long
season ! With politics I have totaUy done. I wish the pre
sent ministers may last; for I think better of their principles
than of those of their opponents (with a few salvos on both
sides), and so I do of their abihties. But it would be folly in
me to concern myself about new generations. How little a
way can I see of their progress !
I am rather surprised at the new Countess of Denbigh.
How could a woman be ambitious of resembhng Prometheus,
to be pawed and clawed and gnawed by a vulture?* I beg
your earldom's pardon ; but I could not conceive that a coro
net was so very tempting !
Lady Browne is quite recovered, unless she relapses from
what we suffer at Twickenham-park from a Lord Northesk," an
old seaman, who is come to Richmond on a visit to the Duke
of Montrose. I think the poor man must be out of his senses,
at least he talks us out of ours. It is the most incessant and
incoherent rhapsody that ever was heard. He sits by the
card-table, and pours on Mrs. N * * * * all that ever hap
pened in his voyages or his memory. He details the ship's
allowance, and talks to her as if she was his first-mate. Then
in the mornings he carries his daughter to town to see St
Paul's, and the Tower, and Westminster-abbey; and at night
disgorges all he has seen, till we don't know the ace of spades
from Queen Elizabeth's pocket-pistol in the armoury. Mercy
' An aUusion to Lord Denbigh's figure, and his arms blazoned on a
spread eagle. — E.
^ George, sixth Earl of Northesk, a naval officer of distinction, who
attained the rank of admiral of the white. He died in 1792. — E.

1783. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 195
on US ! And mercy on your lordship too ! Why should you
be stunned with that alarum ? Have you had your earth
quake, my lord? Many have had theirs. I assure you I
have had mine. Above a week ago, when broad awake, the
doors of the cabinet by my bed-side rattled, without a breath
of wind. I imagined somebody was walking on the leads, or
had broken into the room under me. It was between four
and five in the morning. I rang my bell. Before my servant
could come it happened again ; and was exactly like the hori
zontal tremor I felt from the earthquake some years ago. As
I had rung once, it is plain I was awake. I rang again ; but
heard nothing more. I am quite persuaded there was some
commotion ; nor is it surprising that the dreadful eruptions of
fire on the coasts of Italy and Sicily* should have occasioned
some alteration that has extended faintly hither, and contri
buted to the heats and mists that have been so extraordinary.
George Montagu said of our last earthquake, that it was so
tame you might have stroked it. It is comfortable to live
where one can reason on them without dreading them ! What
satisfaction should you have in having erected such a monu
ment of your taste, my lord, as Wentworth Castle, if you did
not know but it might be overturned in a moment and crush
you? Sir William HamUton is expected: he has been
groping in all those devastations. Of all vocations I would
not be a professor of earthquakes ! I prefer studies that are
couleur de rose ; nor would ever think of calamities, if I can do
nothing to relieve them. Yet this is a weakness of mind that
I do not defend. They are more respectable v'ho can behold
philosophically the great theatre of events, or rather this little
theatre of ours ! In some ampler sphere, they may look on
the catastrophe of Messina" as we do on kicking to pieces an
ant-hill. ' In the course of this year a series of violent earthquakes occurred in
Calabria and Sicily. In February, the city of Casal Nuova was entirely
swaUowed up ; and the Princess Gerace Grimaldi, with more than four
thousand persons, perished in an instant. The inhabitants of Scylla,
who, headed by their Prince, had descended from the rock and taken
refuge on the sea-shore, were 'aU washed away by an enormous wave, on
its return from the land which it had inundated. — E.
" Messina, and all the northern parts of Sicily, suffered greatly by the
convulsions of nature aUuded to in the preceding note. — E. o 2

196 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1783.
Bless me ! what a farrago is my letter ! It is like the ex
tracts of books in a monthly magazine ! I had no right to cen
sure poor Lord Northesk's ramhlings ! Lady Strafford will
think he has infected me. Good-night, my dear lord and
lady ! Your ever devoted.

TO THE HON, H. S. CONWAY.
Strawberry HiU, August 15, 1783.
The address from the Volunteers is curious indeed, and
upon the first face a little Irish. What ! would they throw off
our Parliament and yet amend it ? It is like correcting a
question in the House of Commons, and then voting against
it. But I suppose they rather mean to increase confusion
here, that we may not be at leisure to impede their progress;
at least this may be the intention of the leaders. Large
bodies are only led by being in earnest themselves, when their
leaders are not so : but my head is not clear enough to apply
it to different matters, nor could I do any good if it were.
Our whole system is become a disjointed chaos, and time must
digest it, or blow it up shortly. I see no way into it, nor ex
pect anything favourable but from chance, that often stops
confusion on a sudden. To restore us by any system, it
would require a single head furnished with wisdom, temper,
address, fortitude, full and undivided power, and sincere pa
triotism divested of all personal views. Where is that prodigy
to be found ? and how should it have the power, if it had aU
the rest ? And if it had the power, how could it be divested
of that power again ? And if it were not how long would it
retain its virtues ? Power and wisdom would soon unite, like
Antony and Augustus, to annihUate their coUeague virtue,
for being a poor creature like Lepidus, In short, the mass of
matter is too big for me : I am going out of the world, and
cannot trouble myself about it I do think of your part in it,
and wish to preserve you where you are, for the benefits that
you may contribute. I have a high opinion of Mr. Fox, and
beheve that by frankness you may become real friends, which

1783. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 197
would be greatly advantageous to the country. There is no
competition in my mind where you are concerned : but Fox is
the minister with whom I most wish you united, — indeed, to all
the rest I am indifferent or adverse : but, besides his superior
abUities, he has a liberality of acting that is to my taste ; it is
like my father's plainness, and has none of the paltry little
finesses of a statesman.
Your parties do not tempt me, because I am not well
enough to join in them : nor yet will they stop me, though, I
had rather find only you and Lady Ailesbury and Mrs.
Damer. I am not seriously ill ; nay, am better upon the whole
than I was last year : but I perceive decays enough in myself
to be sensible that the scale may easily be inclined to the
worst side. This observation makes me very indifferent to
everything that is not much at my heart Consequently what
concerns you is, as it has always been for above forty years, a
principal object. Adieu !

TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY.*
Strawberry HiU, Sunday, August 27, 1783.
Though I begin my letter on and have dated it Sunday,
I recollect that it may miss you if you go to town on Tues
day, and therefore I shall not send it to the post tUl to
morrow. I can give you but an indifferent account of my
self. I went to Lord Dacre's ; but whether the heat and
fatigue were too much for me, or whether the thunder turned
me sour, for I am at least as weak as small-beer, I came back
with the gout in my left hand and right foot. The latter con
fined me for three days ; but, though my ancle is still swelled,
I do not stay in my house : however I am frightened, and shall
venture no more expeditions yet ; for my hands and feet are
both so lame, that I am neither comfortable to myself or any
body else, abroad, when I must confine them, stay by myself
or risk pain, which the least fatigue gives me.
At this moment I have a worse embargo even than lame-
' Now first printed.

198 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1783.>
ness on me. The Prince d'Hessenstein has written to offer
me a visit — I don't know when. I have just answered his
note, and endeavoured to hmit its meaning to the shortest
sense I could, by proposing to give him a dinner or a break
fast I would keep my bed rather than crack our northern
French together for twelve hours.
I know nothing upon earth but my own disasters. An
other is, that aU yesterday I thought all my gold-fish stolen.
I am not sure that they are not ; but they teU me they keep
at the bottom of the water from the hot weather. It is all
to be laded out to-morrow morning, and then I shall know
whether they are gone or boiled.
Whenever the weather cools to an English consistence, I
will see you at Park-place or in town : but I think not at the
former before the end of next month, unless I recover more
courage than I have at present; for if I was to get a real fit
and be confined to my bed in such sultry days, I should not
have strength to go through it I have just fixed three new
benches round my bowling-green, that I may make four
journeys of the tour. Adieu ! Monday morning.
As I was rising this morning, I received an express from
your daughter, that she will bring Madame de Cambis and
Lady Melbourne to dinner here to-morrow. I shall be vastly
pleased with the party, but it puts Philip and Margaret to
their wit's end to get them a dinner: nothing is to be had
here ; we must send to Richmond, and Kingston, and Brent
ford; I must borrow Mr. Elhs's cook, and somebody's con
fectioner, and beg somebody's fruit for I have none of these
of my own, nor know anything of the matter : but that is
Phihp and Margaret's affair, and not mine ; and the worse the
dinner is, the more Gothic Madame de Cambis will think it
I have been emptying my pond, which was more in my
head than the honour of my kitchen ; and in the mud of the
troubled water I have found all my gold, as Dunning and
Barre did last year.* I have taken out fifteen young fish of
' In the preceding year, through the influence of Lord Shelburne, a

1783. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 199
a year and a half old for Lady Ailesbury, and reserved them
as an offering worthy of Amphitrite in the vase, in the cat's
vase,* amidst the azure flowers that blow. They are too
portly to be , carried in a smelling-bottle in your pocket. I
wish you could plan some way of a waterman's calling for
them, and transporting them to Henley. They have not
changed their colour, but will next year. How lucky it
would be, should you meet your daughter about Turnham
Green, and turn back with them !

TO THE EARL OF STRAFFORD.
Strawberry HUl, Sept. 12, 1783.
Your lordship tells me you hope my summer has glided
pleasantly, hke our Thames. I cannot say it has passed very
pleasantly to me, though, like the Thames, dry and low ; for
somehow or other I caught a rheumatic fever in the great
heats, and cannot get rid of it. I have just been at Park-
place and Nuneham, in hopes change of air would cure me ;
but to no purpose. Indeed, as want of sleep is my chief
complaint, I doubt I must make use of a very different and
more disagreeable remedy, the air of London, the only place
that I ever find agree with me when I am out of order. I
was there for two nights a fortnight ago, and slept perfectly
well. In vain has my predilection for Strawberry made me
try to persuade myself that this was all fancy ; but, I fear,
reasons that appear strong, though contrary to our inchna-
tions, must be good ones. London at this time of year is
as nauseous a drug as any in an apothecary's shop. I could
find nothing at all to do, and so went to Astley's, which
indeed was much beyond my expectation. I do not wonder
any longer that Darius was chosen king by the instructions
he gave to his horse ; nor that Caligula made his consul.
Astley can make his dance minuets and hornpipes ; which is
considerable pension had been granted to Colonel Barre, and a peerage
and pension to Mr. Dunning. — ^E.
* The china vase in which Walpole's favourite cat SeUma was drowned.
See Gray's Works, vol. i. p. 6. — E.

200 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1783.
more extraordinary than to make them vote at an election,
or act the part of a magistrate, which animals of less capa
cities can perform as dexterously as a returning officer or a
master in chancery.— But I shaU not have even Astley now:
her Majesty the Queen of France, who has as much taste
as Cahgula, has sent for the whole dramatis persona to
Paris. Sir Wilham Hamilton was at Park-place, and gave us
dreadful accounts of Calabria: he looks much older, and has
the patina of a bronze.
At Nuneham I was much pleased with the improvements
both within doors and without Mr. Mason was there ; and,
as he shines in every art was assisting Mrs. Harcourt with
his new discoveries in painting, by which he will unite mi
niature and oU. Indeed, she is a very apt and extraordinary
scholar. Since our professors seem to have lost the art of
colouring, I am glad at least that they have ungraduated
assessors. We have plenty and peace at last; consequently leisure
for repairing some of our losses, if we have sense enough to
set about the task. On what will happen 1 shall make no
conjectures, as it is not likely I should see much of what is to
come. Our enemies have humbled us enough to content
them ; and we have succeeded so ill in innovations, that surely
we shall not tempt new storms in haste.
From this place I can send your lordship nothing new or
entertaining ; nor expect more game in town, whither nothing
but search of health should carry me. Perhaps it is a vain
chase at my age ; but at my age one cannot trust to Nature's
operating cures without aiding her ; it is always time enough
to abandon one's self when no care will palliate our decays.
I hope your lordship and Lady Strafford will long be in no
want of such attentions ; nor should I have talked so much
of my own cracks, had I had anything else to tell you. It
would be silly to aim at vivacity when it is gone : and, though
a lively old man is sometimes an agreeable being, a pretend
ing old man is ridiculous. Aches and an apothecary cannot
give one genuine spirits; 'tis sufficient if they do not make
one peevish. Your lordship is so kind as to accept of me as

1783. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 201
I am, and you shall find nothing more counterfeit in me than
the sincere respect and gratitude with which I have the
honour to be your lordship's most devoted humble servant

TO THE EARL OF STRAFFORD.
Strawberry HiU, Oct. 11, 1783.
My rheumatism, I thank your lordship, is certainly
better, though not quite gone. It was very troublesome at
night till I took the bark ; but that medicine makes me sleep
like opium. — But I will say no more about it, nothing is so
troublesome as to talk of chronical complaints : has one any
right to draw on the compassion of others, when one must
renew the address daily and for months ?
The aspect of Ireland is very tempestuous.* I doubt they
will hurt us materially without benefiting themselves. If
they obtain very short parliaments, they will hurt themselves
more than us, by introducing a confusion that will prevent
their improvements. Whatever country does adopt short par
haments, will, I am entirely persuaded, be forced to recur to
their former practice; I mean, if the disorders introduced
do not produce despotism of some sort or other. I am very
sorry Mr. Mason concurs in trying to revive the Associations.'^
' The Volunteer Corps of Ireland had long entertained projects for
refoi'ming the parUamentary representation of the country, and had ap
pointed delegates for carrying that object into effect. In September
they met at Dungannon, when a plan of reform was proposed and
agreed upon, and the loth of November fixed on for a Convention at
Dublin of the representatives of the whole body of Volunteers. " Many
gentlemen," says Mr. Hardy, in his Memoirs of Lord Charlemont,
" must have seen a letter of Mr. Fox, then secretary of state, to Gene
ral Burgoyne, at that time commander-in-chief in Ireland, on the sub
ject of the Convention. It was written with the spirit of a patriot and
wisdom of a true statesman. In his ardour for a parUamentary reform,
he yielded, he said, to none of the Convention, but he dreaded the con
sequences of such a proceeding ; and would, he added, lament it as the
deepest misfortune of his life, if, by any untoward steps then taken, and
whilst he was minister, the two kingdoms should be separated, or run
the sUghtest risk of separation." — E.
' " The Yorkshire Association had been formed in 1779, from the
gentry of moderate fortunes and the more substantial yeomen, under
the pressure of those burdens which resulted from the war with America,
with the view of obtaining, first, an economical, and then a parliament-

202 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1783.
Methinks our state is so deplorable, that every healing mea
sure ought to be attempted instead of innovations. For my
own part, I expect nothing but distractions, and am not con
cerned to be so old. I am so old, that were I disposed to
novelties, I should think they little became my age. I should
be ashamed, when my hour shall come, to be caught in a
riot of country 'squires and parsons, and haranguing a mob
with a shaking head. A leader of faction ought to be young
and vigorous. If an aged gentleman does get an ascendant,
he may be sure that younger men are counting on his exit,
and only fiatter him to succeed to his infiuence, while they
are laughing at his misplaced activity. At least these would
be my thoughts, who of all things dread being a jest to the
juvenile, if they find me out of my sphere.
I have seen Lord Carhsle's play, and it has a great deal of
merit — perhaps more than your lordship would expect. The
language and images are the best part, after the two principal
scenes, which are really fine.*
I did, as your lordship knows and says, always like and
esteem Lady Fitzwilliam. I scarce know my lord ; but from
what I have heard of him in the House of Lords, have con
ceived a good opinion of his sense : of his character I never
heard any ill; which is a great testimonial in his favour,
ary reform ; but in the various changes which soon afterwards perplexed
the political world, its first object was almost forgotten, and its most im
portant character was the front of opposition which it now maintained
against that powerful aristocracy which had long ruled the county with
absolute dominion. It now declared against the Coalition administra
tion." Life of Wilberforce, vol. i. p. SI. — E.
' Of Lord CarUsle's tragedy, entitled " The Father's Revenge," Dr.
Johnson also entertained a favourable opinion. " Of the sentiments,"
he says, " I remember not one that I wished omitted. In the imagery,
I cannot forbear to distinguish the comparison of joy succeeding grief to
Ught rushing on the eye accustomed to darkness. It seems to have all
that can be desired to make it please : it is new, just, and delightful.
With the characters, either as conceived or preserved, I have no fault to
find ; but was much inclined to congratulate a writer, who, in defiance of
prejudice and fashion, made the Archbishop a good man, and scorned all
thoughtless applause which a vicious churchman would have brought
him." It was with reference to this tragedy, that Lord Byron regretted
the flippant and unjust sarcasms against his noble relation, which he had
admitted into the early editions of his " EngUsh Bards and ScMch Re
viewers," under the mistaken impression that Lord CarUsle had inten-
tionaUy slighted him. — E.

1783. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 203
when there are so many horrid characters, and when all that
are conspicuous have their minutest actions tortured to de
pose against them.
You may be sure, my dear lord, that I heartily pity Lady
Strafford's and your loss of four-legged friends. Sense and
fidelity are wonderful recommendations ; and when one meets
with them, and can be confident that one is not imposed
upon, I cannot think that the two additional legs are any
drawback. At least I know that I have had friends who
would never have vexed or betrayed me, if they had walked
on all-fours.
I have no news to send your lordship ; indeed I inquire
for none, nor wish to hear any. Whence is any good to
come ? I am every day surprised at hearing people eager for
news. If there is any, they are sure of hearing it. How can
one be curious to know one does not know what ; and per
petually curious to know? Has one nothing to do but to
hear and relate something new? — And why can one care
about nothing but what one does not know? And why is
every event worth hearing, only because one has not heard
it ? Have not there been changes enough ? divorces enough ?
bankruptcies and robberies enough? and, above all, lies
enough ? — No ; or people would not be every day impatient
for the newspaper. I own, I am glad on Sunday when there
is no paper,* and no fresh hes circulating. Adieu, my good
lord and lady ! May you long enjoy your tranquilhty, undis
turbed by villainy, folly, and madness !

TO LADY BR0WNE.2
Berkeley Square, Oct. 19, 1783.
As it is not fit my better-half should be ignorant of the
state of her worse-half, lest the gossips of the neighbourhood
should suspect we are parted ; let them know, my life, that I
• What would Walpole say, if he could witness the alteration which
has taken place in this respect since the year 1783? — E.
" Now first printed.

204 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1783.
am much better to-day. I have had a good deal of fever, and
a bad night on Wednesday ; but the last was much better, and
the fever is much diminished to-day. In short, I have so
great an opinion of town-dried air, that I expect to be well
enough to return to Twickenham on Monday ; and, if I do,
will call on you that evening ; though I have not been out of
my house yet. Indeed, it is unfortunate that so happy a
couple, who have never exchanged a cross word, and who
might claim the flitch of bacon, cannot be well — the one in
town, the other in the country.

TO GOVERNOR POWNALL.
Strawberry HiU, Oct. 27, 1783.
I AM extremely obliged to you. Sir, for the valuable com
munication made to me.* It is extremely so to me, as it does
justice to a memory I revere to the highest degree; and I
flatter myself that it would be acceptable to that part of the
world that loves truth; and that part will be the majority, as
fast as they pass away who have an interest in preferring false
hood. Happily, truth is longer-lived than the passions of in
dividuals; and, when mankind are not misled, they can dis
tinguish white from black. I myself do not pretend to be
unprejudiced; I must be so to the best of fathers: I should
be ashamed to be quite impartial. No wonder, then. Sir, if I
am greatly pleased with so able a justification; yet I am not
so bhnded, but that I can discern sohd reasons for admiring
your defence. You have placed that defence on sound and
new grounds; and, though very briefly, have very learnedly
stated and distinguished the landmarks of our constitution,
and the encroachments made on it by justly referring the
principles of liberty to the Saxon system, and by imputing the
corruptions of it to the Norman. This was a great deal too
deep for that superficial mountebank, Hume, to go; for a
mountebank he was. He mounted a system in the garb of a
* The Governor's " Character of Sir Robert Walpole." It wiU be
found among the original papers in Coxe's Life of Sir Robert. — E.

1783. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 205
phUosophic empiric, but dispensed no drugs but what he was
authorised to vend by a royal patent, and which were full of
Turkish opium. He had studied nothing relative to the
English constitution before Queen Elizabeth, and had se
lected her most arbitrary acts to countenance those of the
Stuarts: and even hers he misrepresented; for her worst
deeds were levelled against the nobihty, those of the Stuarts
against the people. Hers, consequently, were rather an obh-
gation to the people ; for the most heinous part of despotism
is, that it produces a thousand despots instead of one. Muley
Moloch cannot lop off many heads with his own hands; at
least, he takes those in his way, those of his courtiers : but
his bashaws and viceroys spread destruction everywhere. The
flimsy, ignorant, blundering manner in which Hume executed
the reigns preceding Henry the Seventh, is a proof how little
he had examined the history of our constitution.
I could say much, much more. Sir, in commendation of
your work, were I not apprehensive of being biassed by the
subject. Still, that it would not be from flattery, I will prove,
by taking the liberty of making two objections ; and they are
only to the last page but one. Perhaps you will think that
my first objection does show that I am too much biassed. I
own I am sorry to see my father compared to Sylla, The
latter was a sanguinary usurper, a monster ; the former, the
mildest, most forgiving, best-natured of men, and a fe^a/. mi
nister. Nor, I fear, will the only light in which you compare
them, stand the test Sylla resigned his power voluntarily,
insolently ; perhaps timidly, as he might think he had a better
chance of dying in his bed, if he retreated, than by continuing
to rule by force. My father did not retire by his own option.
He had lost the majority of the House of Commons. Sylla,
you say, Sir, retired unimpeached ; it is true, but covered with
blood. My father was not impeached, in our strict sense of
the word ; but to my great joy, he was in effect. A secret
committee, a worse inquisition than a jury, was named ; not to
try him, but to sift his life for crimes : and out of such a jury,
chosen in the dark, and not one of whom he might challenge,
he had some determined enemies, many opponents, and but

206 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1783.
two he could suppose his friends. And what was the conse
quence ? A man charged with every state crime almost, for
twenty years, was proved to have done — what? Paid some
writers much more than they deserved, for having defended him
against ten thousand and ten thousand libels, (some of which
had been written by his inquisitors,) all which hbels were
confessed to have been lies by his inquisitors themselves ; for
they could not produce a shadow of one of the crimes with
which they had charged him ! I must own. Sir, I think that
Sylla and my father ought to be set in opposition rather than
paralleled. My other objection is still more serious; and if I am so
happy as to convince you, I shall hope that you will alter
the paragraph ; as it seems to impute something to Sir Ro
bert of which he was not only most innocent, but of which, if
he had been guilty, I should think him extremely so, for he
would have been very ungrateful. You say he had not the
comfort to see that he had established his own family by any
thing which he received from the gratitude of that Hanover
family, or from the gratitude of that country, which he had
saved and served ! Good Sir, what does this sentence seem
to imply, but that either Sir Robert himself, or his family,
thought or think, that the Kings George I. and II, or Eng
land, were ungrateful in not rewarding his services ? Defend
him and us from such a charge ! He nor we ever had such a
thought. Was it not rewarding him to make him prime minis
ter, and maintain and support him against his enemies for
twenty years together ? Did not George I. make his eldest
son a peer, and give to the father and son a valuable patent
place in the custom-house for three lives ? Did not George II.
give my elder brother the auditor's place, and to my brother
and me other rich places for our lives ; for, though in the gift
of the first lord of the treasury, do we not owe them to the
King who made him so ? Did not the late King make my
father an earl, and dismiss him with a pension of 4000Z. a-
year for his life ? Could he or we not think these ample re
wards? What rapacious sordid wretches must he and we
have been, and be, could we entertain such an idea ? As far

1783. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 207
have we all been from thinking him neglected by his country.
Did not his country see and know these rewards ? and could
it think these rewards inadequate ? Besides, Sir, great as I
hold my father's services, they were solid and silent, not
ostensible. They were of a kind to which I hold your justifi
cation a more suitable reward than pecuniary recompenses.
To have fixed the house of Hanover on the throne, to have
maintained this country in peace and affluence for twenty
years, with the other services you record, Sir, were actions,
the eclat of which must be illustrated by time and refiection ;
and whose splendour has been brought forwarder than I wish
it had, by comparison with a period very dissimilar ! If Sir
Robert had not the comfort of leaving his family in affluence,
it was not imputable to his King or his country. Perhaps I
am proud that he did not He died forty thousand pounds in
debt. That was the wealth of a man that had been taxed as
the plunderer of his country ! Yet, with all my adoration of
ray father, I am just enough to own that it was his own fault
if he died so poor. He had made Houghton much too mag
nificent for the moderate estate which he left to support it;
and, as he never — I repeat it with truth, never — got any money
but in the South Sea and while he was paymaster, his fond
ness for his paternal seat and his boundless generosity, were
too expensive for his fortune. I will mention one instance,
which will show how little he was disposed to turn the favour
of the crown to his own profit. He laid out fourteen thousand
pounds of his own money on Richraond New Park. I could
produce other reasons too why Sir Robert's family were not
in so comfortable a situation, as the world, deluded by mis
representation, might expect to see them at his death. My
eldest brother had been a very bad economist during his
father's life, and died hiraself fifty thousand pounds in debt, or
raore ; so that to this day neither Sir Edward nor I have re
ceived the five thousand pounds a-piece which Sir Robert
left us as our fortunes. I do not love to charge the dead ;
therefore will only say, that Lady Orford (reckoned a vast
fortune, which tUl she died she never proved,) wasted vast
suras; nor did my brother or father ever receive but the

208 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1783.
twenty thousand pounds which she brought at first, and which
were spent on the wedding and christening ; I mean, including
her jewels.
I beg pardon. Sir, for this tedious detail, which is minutely,
perhaps too minutely, true ; but, when I took the liberty of
contesting any part of a work which I admire so much, I
owed it to you and to myself to assign my reasons. I trust
they will satisfy you ; and, if they do, I am sure you will alter
a paragraph against which it is the duty of the family to ex
claim. Dear as my father's memory is to my soul, I can
never subscribe to the position that he was unrewarded by the
house of Hanover.

TO GOVERNOR POWNALL.
Berkeley Square, Nov. 7, 1783.
You must allow me. Sir, to repeat my thanks for the
second copy of your tract on my father, and for your great
condescension in altering the two passages to which I pre
sumed to object; and which are not only more consonant to
exactness, but I hope, no disparagement to the piece. To
me they are quite satisfactory. And it is a comfort to me too,
that what I begged to have changed was not any refiection
prejudicial to his memory; but in the first point a paraUel
not entirely simUar in circurastances ; and, in the other, a sort
of censure on others to which I could not subscribe. With aU
my veneration for my father's memory, I should not remon
strate against just censure on him. Happily, to do justice to
him, most iniquitous calumnies ought to be removed; and
then there would remain virtues and merits enough, far to
outweigh human errors, from which the best of men, like him,
cannot be exempt. Let his enemies, ay and his friends, be
compared with hira, and then justice would be done ! Your
essay. Sir, will, I hope, sorae time or other, clear the way to
his vindication. It points out the true way of examining his
character ; and is itself, as far as it goes, unanswerable. As
such, what an obhgation it must be to. Sir, &c.

1783. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 209

TO THE EARL OF STRAFFORD.
Berkeley Square, Nov. 10, 1783.
If I consulted my reputation as a writer, which your
lordship's partiahty is so kind as to allot me, I should wait a
few days till my granary is fuller of stock, which probably it
would be by the end of next week ; but, in truth, I had rather
be a grateful, and consequently a punctual correspondent than
an ingenious one; as I value the honour of your lordship's
friendship more than such tinsel bits of farae as can fall to ray
share, and of which I am particularly sick at present as the
Public Advertiser dressed me out t'other day with a heap of
that dross, which he had pillaged from some other strolling
playwrights, who I did not desire should be plundered for me.
Indeed, when the Parliament does meet I doubt, nay hope,
it will make less sensation than usual. The orators of Dublin
have brought the flowers of Billingsgate to so high perfection,
that ours comparatively will have no more scent than a dead
dandelion. If your lordship has not seen the speeches of Mr.
Flood and Mr. Grattan,* you may perhaps stUl think that our
oyster-women can be more abusive than members of parlia
ment Since I began my letter, I hear that the meeting of the
delegates from the Volunteers is adjourned to the first of Fe
bruary.* This seems a very favourable circumstance, I don't
like a reformation begun by a Popish army ! Indeed, I did

' In the course of a debate in the Irish House of Commons, on the
28th of October, upon Sir Henry Cavendish's motion for a retrenchment
of the public expenditure, violent altercation had taken place between
the rival orators, WhUe Mr. Grattan animadverted, with disgraceful
bitterness, on the " broken beak and disastrous countenance " of his
opponent, and charged him with betraying every man who trusted in
him, Mr. Flood broadly insinuated, that Mr. Grattan had betrayed his
country for a sum of gold ; and, for prompt payment, had sold himself
to the minister. — E.
' They assembled at Dublin on the loth of November, when a plan of
reform was produced and considered by them ; and on the following day
Mr. Flood moved, in the House of Commons, for leave to bring in a biU
for the more equal representation of the people in Parliament. The
motion was rejected by 157 votes to 77. — E.
VOL, VI. P

210 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1783.
hope that peace would bring us peace, at least not more than
the discords incidental to a free government: but we seem
not to have attained that era yet ! I hope it wUl arrive,
though I may not see it, I shall not easily believe that any
radical alteration of a constitution that preserved us so long,
and carried us to so great a height will recover our affairs.
There is a wide difference between correcting abuses and re
moving landmarks. Nobody disliked more than I the strides
that were attempted towards increasing the prerogative; but
as the excellence of our constitution, above all others, con
sists in the balance established between the three powers of
King, Lords, and Commons, I wish to see that equilibrium
preserved. No single man, nor any private junto, has a right
to dictate laws to all three. In Ireland, truly, a still worse
spirit I apprehend to be at bottom ; in short it is phrensy or
folly to suppose that an army composed of three parts of
Catholics can be intended for any good purposes.
These are my sentiments, my dear lord, and, you know,
very disinterested. For myself, I have nothing to wish but
ease and tranquillity for the rest of my time. I have no enmi
ties to avenge. I do hope the present administration will last,
as I believe there are more honest men in it than in any set
that could replace them, though I have not a grain of par
tiality more than I had for their associates. Mr. Fox I think
by far the ablest and soundest head in England, and am per
suaded that the more he is tried the greater man he will
appear. Perhaps it is impertinent to trouble your lordship with my
creed, it is certainly of no consequence to anybody; but I have
nothing else that could entertain you, and at so serious a crisis
can one think of trifles ? In general I am not sorry that the
nation is most disposed to trifle ; the less it takes part, the
more leisure will the ministers have to attend to the most
urgent points. When so many individuals assume to be legis
lators, it is lucky that very few obey their institutes.
I rejoice to hear of Lady Strafford's good health, and am
her and your lordship's most faithful humble servant.

1783. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 211

TO THE EARL OF STRAFFORD.
Berkeley Square, Dec. 11, 1783.
Your lordship is so partial to me and my idle letters,
that I am afraid of writing them; not lest they should sink
below the standard you have pleased to affix to them in your
own mind, but from fear of being intoxicated into attempting
to keep them up to it which would destroy their only merit,
their being written naturally and without pretensions. Grati
tude and good breeding compel me to make due answers ; but
I entreat your lordship to be assured, that, however vain I am
of your favour, my only aim is to preserve the honour of your
friendship ; that it is all the praise I ask or wish ; and that
with regard to letter-writing, I am firmly persuaded that it is
a province in which women will always shine superiorly ; for
our sex is too jealous of the reputation of good sense, to con
descend to hazard a thousand trifles and negligences, which
give grace, ease, and familiarity to correspondence.* I will say
no raore on that subject, for I feel that I am on the brink of a
dissertation ; and though that fault would prove the truth of
my proposition, I will not punish your lordship only to con
vince you that I am in the right.

' Some excellent advice on the subject of female letter- writing, wiU be
found in a letter written, in 1809, by Lord CoUingwood to one of his
daughters : — " No sportsman," says the gaUant Admiral, " ever hits a par
tridge without aiming at it ; and skiU is acquired by repeated attempts.
When you write a letter, give it your greatest care, that it may be as
perfect in all its parts as you can make it. Let the subject be sense, ex
pressed in the most plain, intelligible, and elegant manner that you are
capable of. If in a famUiar epistle you should be playful and jocular,
guard carefully that your wit be not sharp, so as to give pain to any per
son ; and before you write a sentence, examine it, even the words of
which it is composed, that there be nothing vulgar or inelegant in them.
Remember, my dear, that your letter is the picture of your brains ; and
those whose brains are a compound of foUy, nonsense, and impertinence,
are to blame to exhibit them to the contempt of the world, or the pity of
their friends. To write a letter with negligence, without proper stops,
with crooked lines and great flourishing dashes, is inelegant; it argues
either great ignorance of what is proper, or great indifference towards
the person to whom it is addressed, and is consequently disrespectful."
Memoirs, p. 430. — E. p 2

212 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1783.
The winter is not duU or disagreeable : on the contrary, it
is pleasing, as the town is occupied on general subjects, and
not as is too common, on private scandal, private vices, and
foUies. The India-bill, air-balloons, Vestris, and the automa
ton, share all attention. Mrs. Siddons, as less a novelty, does
not engross all conversation. If abuse stUl keeps above par, it
confines itself to its prescriptive province, the ministerial hne.
In that walk it has tumbled a little into the kennel. The low
buffoonery of Lord Thurlow, in laying the caricatura of the
Coalition on the table of your lordship's House, has leveUed it
to Sadler's Wells ; and Mr. Flood, the piUar of invective,
does not promise to re-erect it ; not I conclude, from want of
having imported a stock of ingredients, but his presumptuous
debut on the very night of his entry was so wretched, and
delivered in so barbarous a brogue, that I question whether
he will ever recover the blow Mr. Courtenay gave him.* A
young man may correct and improve, and rise from a first
fall ; but an elderly formed speaker has not an equal chance.
Mr. Hamilton,^ Lord Abercorn's heir, but by no means so
laconic, had more success. Though his first essay, it was not
at all dashed by bashfulness; and though he might have
blushed for discovering so much personal rancour to Mr. Fox,
he rather seemed to be impatient to discharge it.
Your lordship sees in the papers that the two Houses of
Ireland have firmly resisted the innovations of the Volunteers.
Indeed, it was time for the Protestant proprietors to make
' Mr. Flood took his seat for Winchester on the 8th of December, and
on the same evening addressed the House in opposition to Mr. Fox's
East India biU. " He spoke," says Wraxall, " with great abiUty and
good sense, but the slow, measured, and sententious style of enunciation
which characterized his eloquence, appeared to English ears cold and
stiff : unfortunately, too, for Flood, one of his own countrymen, Cour
tenay, instantly opened on him such a battery of ridicule and wit as
seemed to overwhelm the new member. Pie made no attempt at reply,
and under these circumstances began the division. It formed a trium
phant exhibition of ministerial strength, the Coalition numbering 208 ;
while only 102 persons, of whom I was one, followed Pitt into the lobby :
yet, within twelve days afterwards he found himself first minister, and
so remained for above seventeen years." — E.
" John James Hamilton. In 1789, he succeeded his uncle as ninth
Earl of Abercorn and second Viscount HamUton ; and, in 1790, was
created Marquis of Abercorn. — E.

1784. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 213
their stand; for though the Catholics behave decently, it
would be into their hands that the prize would fall. The
delegates, it is true, have sent over a most loyal address ; but
I wish their actions raay not contradict their words ! Mr.
Flood's discomfiture here wiU, I suppose, carry him back to a
field wherein his wicked spirit may have more effect. It is a
very serious moment ! I am in pain lest your county, my
dear lord, (you know what I mean,) should countenance such
pernicious designs.

TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY.
Berkeley Square, Wednesday, May 5, 1784..
Your cherries, for aught I know, may, like Mr. Pitt
be half ripe before others are in blossom ; but at Twicken
ham, I am sure, I could find dates and pomegranates on the
quickset hedges, as soon as a cherry in swaddling-clothes on
my walls. The very leaves on the horse-chesnuts are little
snotty-nosed things, that cry and are afraid of the north-
wind, and cling to the bough as if old poker was coming to
take them away. For my part I have seen nothing hke
spring but a chimney-sweeper's garland ; and yet I have been
three days in the country — and the consequence was, that
I was glad to come back to town.
I do not wonder that you feel differently ; anything is
warmth and verdure when compared to poring over memo
rials. In truth, I think you will be much happier for being
out of Parliament You could do no good there ; you have
no views of ambition to satisfy: and when neither duty
nor ambition calls, (I do not condescend to name avarice,
which never is to be satisfied, nor deserves to be reasoned
with, nor has any place in your breast,) I cannot conceive
what satisfaction an elderly man can have in listening to the
passions or follies of others : nor is eloquence such a banquet,
when one knows that whoever the cooks are, whatever the
sauces, one has eaten as good beef or mutton before, and,
perhaps, as well dressed. It is surely time to live for one's
self, when one has not a vast while to live ; and you, I am

214 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1784.
persuaded, wiU live the longer for leading a country life.
How much better to be planting, nay, making experiments
on smoke (if not too dear), than reading apphcations from
officers, a quarter of whom you could not serve, nor content
three quarters ! You had not time for necessary exercise ;
and, I beheve, would have blinded yourself. In short if you
wiU live in the air aU day, be totally idle, and not read or
write a line by candle-light, and retrench your suppers, I
shall rejoice in your having nothing to do but that dreadful
punishment, pleasing yourself. Nobody has any claims on
you; you have satisfied every point of honour; you have
no cause for being particularly grateful to the Opposition;
and you want no excuse for living for yourself. Your re
solutions on economy are not only prudent but just; and,
to say the truth, I believe that if you had continued at the
head of the array, you would have ruined yourself. You have
too much generosity to have curbed yourself, and would have
had too httle time to attend to doing so. I know by myself
how pleasant it is to have laid up a little for those I love,
for those that depend on me, and for old servants. Moderate
wishes may be satisfied ; and, which is still better, are less
liable to disappointment
I am not preaching, nor giving advice, but congratulating
you : and it is certainly not being selfish, when I rejoice
at your being thrown by circumstances into a retired life,
though it will occasion my seeing less of you: but I have
always preferred what was most for your own honour and
happiness; and as you taste satisfaction already, it will not
diminish, for they are the first moments of passing from a
busy life to a quiet one that are the most irksome. You
have the felicity of being able to amuse yourself with what
the grave world calls trifles ; but as gravity does not hap
pen to be wisdom, trifles are full as important as what is
respected as serious; and more amiable, as generally more
innocent Most men are bad or ridiculous, sometimes both :
at least my experience tells me what my reading had told
me before, that they are so in a great capital of a sinking
country. If immortal fame is his object, a Cato may die —

1784. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 215
but he will do no good. If only the preservation of his vir
tue had been his point he might have hved comfortably at
Athens, like Atticus — who, by the way, happens to be as
immortal; though I will give him credit for having had no
such view. Indeed, I look on this country as so irrecover
ably on the verge of ruin, from its enormous debt from the
loss of America, from the almost as certain prospect of losing
India, that my pride would dislike to be an actor when the
crash may happen.
You seem to think that I might send you more news. So
I might, if I would talk of elections ; * but those, you know,
I hate, as, in general, I do all details. How Mr. Fox has
recovered such a majority I do not guess; still less do I
comprehend how there could be so many that had not voted,
after the poll had lasted so long.^ Indeed, I should be sorry
to understand such mysteries. — Of new peers, or new eleva
tions, I hear every day, but am quite ignorant which are to
be true. Rumour always creates as many as the King,
when he makes several. In fact, I do know nothing. Adieu !
P. S. The suraraer is come to town, but I hope is gone
into the country too.
' The Parliament had been dissolved in March, and a new one was
summoned to meet on the 18th of May. — E.
' Mr. Pitt says, in a letter to Mr. Wilberforce, of the 8th of April,
" Westminster goes on well, in spite of the Duchess of Devonshire and
the other women of the people ; but when the poll will close is uncer
tain." At the close of it, on the 17th of May, the numbers were, for
Hood 6694, Fox 6233, Wray 5998. Walpole, whose delicate health at
this time confined him almost entirely to his house, went in a sedan-
chair to give his vote for Mr. Fox. " Apropos of elections," writes Hannah
More to her sister, " I had Uke to have got into a fine scrape the other
night. I was going to pass the evening at Mrs. Cole's, in Lincoln's-inn
Fields. I went in a chair : they carried me through Covent-Garden : a
number of people, as I went along, desired the men not to go through
the Garden, as there were a hundred armed men, who, suspecting every
chairman belonged to Brookes's, would fall upon us. In spite of my en
treaties, the men would have persisted ; but a stranger, out of huma
nity, made them set me down; and the shrieks of the wounded — for
there was a terrible battle — intimidated the chairmen, who at last were
prevailed upon to carry me another way. A vast number of people fol
lowed me, crying out, ' It is Mrs. Fox : none but Mr. Fox's wife would
dare to come into Covent-Garden in a chair ; she is going to canvass in
the dark ! ' Though not a Uttle frightened, I laughed heartily at this ;
but shall stir no more in a chair for some time." Memoirs, vol. i. p. 315.
— E.

216 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1784.
TO MISS HANNAH MORE.*
May, a, 1784.
Mr. Walpole thanks Miss More a thousand times, not
only for so obhgingly complying with his request, but for
letting him have the satisfaction of possessing and reading
again and again her charming and very genteel poem, the
" Bas Bleu." He ought not in raodesty, to commend so
much a piece, in which he himself is flattered; but truth is
more durable than blushing, and he must be just though he
may be vain. The ingenuity with which she has introduced,
so easily, very difficult rhymes, is admirable; and though
there is a quantity of learning, it has all the air of negligence,
instead of that of pedantry. As she commands him, he will
not disobey; and, so far from giving a single copy, he gives
her his word that it shall not go out of his hands. He begs
his particular compliments to Mrs. Garrick, and is Miss
More's most devoted and much obliged hurable servant.

TO THE HON, H, S, CONWAY,
strawberry HUl, May 21, 1784.
I AM perfectly satisfied with your epitaph,^ and would
not have a syllable altered. It tells exactly what it means
to say, and, that truth being an encomium, wants no addition
or amplification. Nor do I love late language for modern
facts, nor will European tongues perish since printing has
been discovered. I should approve French least of all; it
' Walpole's intimacy with Miss Hannah More commenced in the year
1781. The following passages occur in her letters of that and the fol
lowing year : — " Mr. Walpole has done me the honour of inviting me to
Strawberry HiU : as he is said to be a shy man, I must consider this as a
great compliment." — " We dined the other day at Strawberry HiU, and
passed as delightful a day as elegant literature, high breeding, and lively
wit can afford. As I was the greatest stranger, Mr. Walpole devoted
himself to my amusement with great politeness."— E.
" An epitaph for the monument erected by the states of Jersey to the
memory of Major Pearson, kiUed in the attack of that island by the
French, in January 1781.

1784. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 217
would be a kind of insult to the vanquished: and, besidesj
the example of a hero should be held out to his countrymen
rather than to their eneraies. You must take care to have
the word caused, in the last line but one, spelt rightly, and
not cauid.
I know nothing of the Parliament but what you saw in the
papers. I came hither yesterday, and am transported, like
you, with the beauty of the country; ay, and with its per
fumed air too. The lilac-tide scents even the insides of the
rooms. I desired Lady Ailesbury to carry you Lord Melcombe's
Diary.* It is curious indeed ; not so much from the secrets
it blabs, which are rather characteristic than novel, but from
the wonderful folly of the author, who was so fond of talking
of himself, that he tells all he knew of himself, though scarce
an event that does not betray his profligacy; and (which is
still more surprising that he should disclose) almost every one
exposes the contempt in which he was held, and his conse
quential disappointments and disgraces ! Was ever any man
the better for another's experience ? What a lesson is here
against versatility ! I, who have lived through all the scenes
unfolded, ara entertained ; but I should think that to younger
readers half the book must be unintelligible. He explains
nothing but the circurastances of his own situation; and,
though he touches on many important periods, he leaves them
undeveloped, and often undetermined. It is diverting to hear
him rail at Lord Halifax and others, for the very kind of
double-dealing which he relates coolly of hiraself in the next
page. Had he gone backwards, he might have given half a
dozen volumes of his own life, with similar anecdotes and va
riations. I am most surprised, that when self-love is the whole
ground-work of the performance, there should be little or
no attempt at shining as an author, though he was one. As
he had so much wit too, I am amazed that not a feature of
it appears. The discussion in the appendix, on the late
* " The Diary of George Bubb Dodington, Baron of Melcombe Regis,
from March 8, 1749, to February 6, 1761 ; published by Henry Penrud-
docke Wyndham." See vol. ii. p. 119. — E.

218 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1784.
Prince's question for increase of allowance, is the only part
in which there is sense or honesty. There is, in the imper
fect account of Rochfort, a strong circumstance or two that
pleased me much. There are many passages that will dis
please several others throughout.
Mr. Coxe's Travels* are very different: plain, clear, sen
sible, instructive, and entertaining. It is a noble work, and
precious to me who delight in quartos: the two volumes
contain twelve hundred pages; I have already devoured a
quarter, though I have had them but three days. [The rest
of this letter is lost]

TO THE COUNTESS OF AILESBURY.
strawberry Hill, Tuesday night, June 8, 1784.
You frightened me for a minute, my dear Madam ; but
every letter since has given me pleasure, by telling me how
rapidly you recovered, and how perfectly well you are again.
Pray, however, do not give me any more such joys. I shall
be quite content with your remaining iramortal, without the
foil of any alarm. You gave all your friends a panic, and
may trust their attachment without renewing it. I received
as many inquiries the next day as if an archbishop was in
danger, and all the bench hoped he was going to heaven.
Mr. Conway wonders I do not talk of Voltaire's Memoirs.
Lord bless me ! I saw it two months ago ; the Lucans brought
it from Paris and lent it to me : nay, and I have seen most
of it before ; and I believe this an imperfect copy, for it ends
no how at all. Besides, it was quite out of my head. Lord
Melcombe's Diary put that and everything else out of my
mind. I wonder much more at Mr. Conway's not talking of
this ! It gossips about the living as famUiarly as a modern
newspaper. I long to hear what * * * * gays about it. I
wish the newspapers were as accurate ! They have been cir-
' " Travels into Poland, Russia, Sweden, and Denmark; interspersed
with Historical Relations and Political Inquiries; by WUUam Cox,
M. A.," in two volumes quarto. — E.

1784. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 219
curastantial about Lady Walsingharri s birth-day clothes, which
to be sure one is glad to know, only unluckily there is no
such person. However, I dare to say that her dress was
very becoming, and that she looked charmingly.
The raonth of June, according to custom immemorial, is as
cold as Christmas. I had a fire last night and all my rose
buds, I believe, would have been very glad to sit by it. I
have other grievances to boot ; but as they are annuals too,
— videlicet, people to see my house, — I will not torment your
ladyship with them: yet I know nothing else. None of my
neighbours are come into the country yet : one would think
all the dowagers were elected into the new Parliament
Adieu, my dear Madam !

TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY.
Strawberry HiU, June 25, 1784.
I CAN answer you very readily in your own tone, that is,
about weather and country grievances, and without one word
of news or politics ; for I know neither, nor inquire of them.*
I am very well content to be at Strulbrug, and to exist after I
have done being : and I am still better pleased that you are in
the same way of thinking, or of not thinking; for I am sure
both your health and your raind will find the benefits of living
for yourself and family only. It were not fit that the young
should concentre themselves in so narrow a circle ; nor do
the young seem to have any such intention. Let them mend
or mar the world as they please ; the world takes its own way
upon the whole: and, though there may be an uncommon
swarm of animalculse for a season, things return into their
own channel from their own bias, before any effectual nostrum
of fumigation is discovered. In the mean time, I am for giving
' " As politics spoil all conversation, Mr. Walpole, the other night,
proposed that everybody should forfeit half-a-crown who said anything
tending to introduce the idea either of ministers or opposition. I added,
that whoever even mentioned pit-coal or a, fox-skin muff, should be con
sidered as guilty ; and it was accordingly voted." Hannah More, March
8, 1784.- E.

220 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1784.
all due weight to local grievances, though with no natural
turn towards attending to them : but they serve for conversa
tion. We have no newly-invented grubs to eat our fruit;
indeed, I have no fruit to be eaten : but I should not lament
if the worms would eat my gardener, who, you know, is so
bad an one that I never have anything in my garden. I am
now waiting for dry weather to cut my hay; though nature
certainly never intended hay should be cut dry, as it always
rains all June. But here is a worse calamity ; one is never
safe by day or night : Mrs. Walsingham, who has bought your
brother's late house at Ditton, was robbed a few days ago in
the high road, within a mile of home, at seven in tbe evening.
The dii minorum gentium pilfer everything. Last night they
stole a couple of yards of lead off the pediment of the door of
my cottage. A gentleman at Putney, who has three men-
servants, had his house broken open last week, and lost some
fine miniatures, which he valued so much that he would not
hang them up. You raay imagine what a pain this gives me
in my baubles ! I have been making the round of my fortifi
cations this morning, and ordering new works.
I am concerned for the account you give me of your brother.
Life does not appear to be such a jewel as to preserve it care
fully for its own sake. I think the same of its good things :
if they do not procure arauseraent or comfort, I doubt they
only produce the contrary. Yet it is silly to repine ; for, pro
bably, whatever any man does by choice, he knows will please
him best, or at least will prevent greater uneasiness. I, there
fore, rather retract my concern ; for, with a vast fortune. Lord
Hertford might certainly do what he would: and if, at his
age, he can wish for more than that fortune will obtain, I may
pity his taste or temper ; but I shall think that you and I are
much happier who can find enjoyments in an humbler sphere,
nor envy those who have no time for trifling. I, who have
never done anything else, am not at all weary of my occupa
tion. Even three days of continued rain have not put me
out of humour or spirits. Cest beaucoup dire for an Anglais.
Adieu ! Yours ever.

1784. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 221

TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY.
Strawberry Hill, June 30, 1784.
Instead of coming to you, I am thinking of packing up
and going to town for winter, so desperate is the weather ! I
found a great fire at Mrs. Clive's this evening, and Mr. Raftor
hanging over it like a smoked ham. They tell me my hay
will be all spoiled for want of cutting; but I had rather it
should be destroyed by standing than by being mowed, as the
forraer will cost me nothing but the crop, and 'tis very dear to
make nothing but a water-souchy of it
You know I have lost a niece, and found another nephew :
he makes the fifty-fourth, reckoning both sexes. We are cer
tainly an affectionate family, for of late we do nothing but
marry one another. Have not you felt a little twinge in a
remote corner of your heart on Lady Harrington's death?*
She dreaded death so extremely that I am glad she had not a
moment to be sensible of it I have a great affection for
sudden deaths ; they save oneself and everybody else a deal of
ceremony. The Duke and Duchess of Marlborough breakfasted here
on Monday, and seemed much pleased, though it rained the
whole time with an Egyptian darkness, I should have thought
there had been deluges enough to destroy all Egypt's other
plagues : but the newspapers talk of locusts ; I suppose rela
tions of your beetles, though probably not so fond of green
fruit ; for the scene of their campaign is Queen-square, West
minster, where there certainly has not been an orchard since
the reign of Canute.
I have, at last, seen an air-balloon; just as I once did see a
tiny review, by passing one accidentally on Hounslow-heath.
I was going last night to Lady Onslow at Richmond, and over
Mr. Cambridge's field I saw a bundle in the air not bigger
than the raoon,^ and she herself could not have descended with
* See vol. i. p. 356.— E.
' " Lunardi's nest," says Hannah More, " when I saw it yesterday,
looking Uke a peg-top, seemed, 1 assure you, higher than the moon,
' riding towards her highest noon.' " — E.

222 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1784.
more composure if she had expected to find Endymion fast
asleep. It seemed to 'hght on Richmond-hill; but Mrs.
Hobart was going by, and her coiffure prevented my seeing
it alight The papers say, that a balloon has been made at
Paris representing the castle of Stockholm, in compliment to
the King of Sweden; but that they are afraid to let it off: so,
I suppose, it will be served up to him in a dessert. No great
progress, surely, is made in these airy navigations, if they are
still afraid of risking the necks of two or three subjects for the
entertainraent of a visiting sovereign. There is seldora a,fm
dejoie for the birth of a Dauphin that does not cost more lives.
I thought royalty and science never haggled about the value
of blood when experiments are in the question.
I shall wait for summer before I make you a visit. Though
I dare to say that you have converted your smoke-kilns into a
manufacture of balloons, pray do not erect a Strawberry castle
in the air for my reception, if it will cost a pismire a hair of
its head. Good night ! I have ordered my bed to be heated
as hot as an oven, and Tonton and I must go into it.

TO THE EARL OF STRAFFORD.
Strawberry Hill, August 6, 1784.
I AM very sorry, my dear lord, that I must answer your
lordship's letter by a condolence. I had not the honour of
being acquainted with Mrs. Vyse, but have heard so much
good of her, that it is impossible not to lament her.
Since this month began we have had fine weather; and
'twere great pity if we had not, when the earth is covered
with such abundant harvests ! They talk of an earthquake
having been felt in London. Had Sir William HamUton been
there, he would think the town gave itself great airs. He, I
believe, is putting up volcanos in his own country. In my
youth, phUosophers were eager to ascribe every uncommon
discovery to the Deluge ; now it is the fashion to solve every
appearance by conflagrations. If there was such an inunda
tion upon the earth, and such a furnace under it I am amazed

1784. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 223
that Noah and company were not boiled to death. Indeed, I
am a great sceptic about human reasonings ; they predominate
only for a time, like other mortal fashions, and are so often
exploded after the mode is passed, that I hold them little
more serious, though they call themselves wisdom. How
raany have I lived to see established and confuted ! For in
stance, the necessity of a southern continent as a balance was
supposed to be unanswerable; and so it was, till Captain
Cook found there was no such thing. We are poor silly ani
mals : we live for an instant upon a particle of a boundless
universe, and are much like a butterfly that should argue
about the nature of the seasons and what creates their vicis
situdes, and does not exist itself to see one annual revolution
of them !
Adieu ! my dear lord ! If my reveries are foolish, remem
ber, I give them for no better. If I depreciate human wis
dom, I am sure I do not assume a grain to myself; nor have
anything to value myself upon raore than being your lord
ship's most obliged humble servant.

TO MR. DODSLEY.*
Strawberry HiU, August 8, 1784.
I MUST beg. Sir, that you wUl tell Mr. Pinkerton, that
I am much obliged to him for the honour he is willing to do
me, though I must desire his leave to decline it. His book'^
deserves an eminent patron : I am too inconsiderable to give
any rehef to it, and even in its own line am unworthy to be
distinguished. One of my first pursuits was a collection of
medals ; but I early gave it over, as I could not afford many
branches of virtO, and have since changed or given away
several of my best Greek and Roman medals. What re
main, I shall be glad to show Mr. Pinkerton ; and, if it would
' Now first coUected.
' The first edition of Pinkerton's " Essay on Medals " was published
by Dodsley, in two volumes octavo, in this year, without the name of the
author. — E.

224 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1784.
not be inconvenient to him to come hither any morning by
eleven o'clock, after next Thursday, that he wiU appoint he
shall not only see my medals, but any other baubles here that
can amuse him. I am. Sir, your most obedient hurable
servant

TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY.
Strawberry HiU, August 14, 1784.
As Lady Cecilia Johnston offers to be postman, I cannot
resist writing a line, though I have not a word to say. In
good sooth, I know nothing, hear of nothing but robberies and
housebreaking ; consequently never think of ministers, India
directors, and such honest men. Mrs. Clive has been broken
open, and Mr. Raftor miscarried and died of the fright Lady
Browne has lost all her hveries and her temper, and Lady
Blandford has cried her eyes out on losing a lurch and almost
her wig. In short as I do not love exaggeration, I do not
believe there have been above threescore highway robberies
within this week, fifty-seven houses that have been broken
open, and two hundred and thirty that are to be stripped on
the first opportunity. We are in great hopes, however, that
the King of Spain, now he has demolished Algiers, the metro
politan see of thieves, will come and bombard Richmond,
Twickenham, Hampton-court, and all the sufiragan cities that
swarm with pirates and banditti, as he has a better knack at
destroying vagabonds than at recovering his own.
Ireland is in a blessed way ; and, as if the climate infected
everybody that sets foot there, the viceroy's aides-de-camp
have blundered into a riot that will set all the humours afloat.
I wish you joy of the summer being come now it is gone,
which is better than not coming at all. I hope Lady CecUia
will return with an account of your all being perfectly well.
Adieu ! Yours ever.

1784. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 225

TO JOHN PINKERTON, ESQ.*
Strawberry HiU, August 24, 1784.
I AM much obhged to you, Sir, for the pieces you have
sent me of your own composition.^ There is great poetic
beauty and merit in them, with great knowledge of the ancient
masters and of the best of the modern. You have talents that
will succeed in whatever you pursue, and industry to neglect
nothing that will improve them. Despise petty critics, and
confute them by making your works as perfect as you can.
I am sorry you sent rae the old manuscript ; because, as I
told you, I have so little time left to enjoy anything, that I
should think myself a miser if I coveted for a moment what I
must leave so soon. I shall be very glad. Sir, to see you
here again, whenever it is convenient to you.

TO THE EARL OF STRAFFORD.
Strawberry HiU, Sept. 7, 1784.
The summer is come at last, my lord, drest as fine as a
birth-day, though not with so many flowers on its head. In
truth, the sun is an old fool, who apes the modern people of
* This is the first of the series of letters addressed by Mr. Walpole to
Mr. Pinkerton. They are taken from his " Literary Correspondence,"
first printed in 1830, in two volumes octavo, by Dawson Turner, Esq.
M.A. F.R.S. from the originals in his valuable collection. Mr. Pinkerton
was born at Edinburgh in February 1758, and died at Paris in May
1826. " He was," says Mr. Dawson Turner, " a man of a capacious
mind, great acuteness, strong memory, restless activity, and extraordi
nary perseverance : the anecdotes contained in this correspondence afford
a striking proof of the power of talents and industry to raise their pos
sessor in the scale of society, as well as in the opinion of the world : un
fortunately, they are also calculated to read us another and not less in
structive lesson, that somewhat more is required to turn such advantages
to their fuU account ; and that the endowments of the mind, unless ac
companied by sound and consistent principles, can tend but little to the
happiness of the individual, or to the good of society." — ^E.
' In 1781, Mr. Pinkerton had published an octavo volume entitled
" Rimes;" a second edition of which, with additions, appeared in the
following year. — E.
VOL. VI. Q

226 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1784.
fashion by arriving too late : the day is going to bed before he
makes his appearance ; and one has scarce time to adraire his
embroidery of green and gold. It was cruel to behold such
expanse of corn everywhere, and yet see it all turned to a
water-souchy. If I could admire Dante, — which, asking Mr.
Hayley's pardon, I do not — 1 would have written an olio of
Jews and Pagans, and sent Ceres to reproach Master Noah
with breaking his promise of the world never being drowned
again. But this last week has restored matters to their old
channel ; and I trust we shall have bread to eat next winter,
or I- think we must have lived on apples, of which to be sure
there is enough to prevent a famine. This is all I know, my
lord ; and I hope no news to your lordship. I have exhausted
the themes of air-balloons and highwaymen ; and if you will
have my letters, you must be content with my common-place
chat on the seasons. I do nothing worth repeating, nor hear
that others do : and though 1 am content to rust myself, I
should be glad to tell your lordship anything that would
amuse you. I dined two days ago at Mrs. Garrick's with Sir
William Hamilton, who is returning to the kingdom of cinders.
Mrs. Walsingham* was there with her son and daughter. He
is a very pleasing young man ; a fine figure ; his face like hers,
with something of his grandfather Sir Charles Williams, with
out his vanity ; very sensible, and uncommonly well-bred.
The daughter is an imitatress of Mrs, Damer, and has mo
delled a bust of her brother, Mrs, Damer herself is modelling
two masks for the key-stones of the new bridge at Henley.
Sir William, who has seen them, says they are in her true
antique style, I am in possession of her sleeping dogs in
terra cotta. She asked me if I would consent to her executing
them in marble for the Duke of Richmond ? I said, gladly ;
I should like they should exist in a more durable material ;
but I would not part with the original, which is sharper and
more alive. Mr, Wyat the architect saw them here lately ; and
said, he was sure that if the idea was given to the best statu
ary in Europe, he would not produce so perfect a group,
' Charlotte, daughter of Sir Charles Hanbury WiUiams, Bart.- married
to the Kon. Robert Boyle Walsingham. — E.

1784. THE HON, HORACE WALPOLE. 227
Indeed, with these dogs and the riches I possess by Lady Di,*
poor Strawberry may vie with much prouder collections.
Adieu, my good lord ! when I fold up a letter I am ashamed
of it ; but it is your own fault. The last thing 1 should think
of would be troubling your lordship with such insipid stuff, if
you did not command it. Lady Strafford will bear me testi
raony how often 1 have protested against it.

TO JOHN PINKERTON, ESQ.^
Strawberry HUl, Sept. 27, 1784.
I HAVE read your piece, Sir, very attentively; and, as I
promised, will give you my opinion of it fairly. There is
much wit in it especially in the part of Nebuchadnezer ; and
the dialogue is very easy, and the denouement in favour of
Barbara interesting. There are, however, I think, some ob
jections to be made, which, having written so well, you may
easily remove, as they are rather faults in the mechanism than
in the writing. Several scenes seem to me to finish too
abruptly, and not to be enough connected. Juliana is not
enough distinguished, as of an age capable of more elevated
sentiments: her desire of playing at hotcockles and bhnd-
man's-buff sounds more childish than vulgar. There is an
other defect, which is in the conduct of the plot : surely there
is much too long an interval between the discovery of the
marriage of Juliana and Philip, and the anger of her parents.
The audience must expect immediate effect frora it ; and yet
the noise it is to make arrives so late, that it would have
been forgotten in the course of the intermediate scenes.
I doubt a little, whether it would not be dangerous to open
the piece with a song that must be totally incomprehensible to
at least almost all the audience. It is safer to engage their
prejudices by something captivating. I have the same objec
tion to Juliana's mistaking deposit for posset, which may give
* The number of original drawings by Lady Diana Beauclerc, at
Strawberry HiU.
° Now first collected. Q 2

228 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1784.
an ill turn : besides, those mistakes have been too often pro
duced on the stage : so has the character of Mrs. Winter, a
romantic old maid; nor does she contribute to tbe plot or
catastrophe. I am afraid that even Mrs. Vernon's aversion to
the country is far from novel ; and Mr. Colman, more ac
customed to the stage than I am, would certainly think so.
Nebuchadnezer's repartees of " Very well, thank you ! " and
bringing in Philip, when bidden to go for a rascal, are printed
in the Terrae Filius, and, I believe, in other jest-books ; and
therefore had better be omitted.
I flatter myself. Sir, you will excuse these remarks ; as they
are intended kindly, both for your reputation and interest, and
to prevent their being made by the manager, or audience, or
your friends the reviewers. I am ready to propose your piece
to Mr. Colman at any time ; but, as I have sincerely an
opinion of your parts and talents, it is the part of a friend to
wish you to be very correct, especially in a first piece ; for,
such is the ill-nature of mankind, and their want of judgment
too, that, if a new author does not succeed in a first attempt
on the stage, a prejudice is contracted against him, and may
be fatal to others of his productions, which might have pro
spered, had that bias not been taken. An established writer
for the stage may venture almost any idleness ; but a first
essay is very different.
Shall I send you your piece. Sir ; and how ? As Mr. Col-
man's theatre will not open till next summer, you wiU have
full tirae to make any alterations you please. I mean, if you
should think any of my observations well founded, and which
perhaps are very trifling. I have little opinion of my own
sagacity as a critic, nor love to make objections ; nor should
have taken so much hberty with you, if you had not pressed
it. I am sure in me it is a mark of regard, and which I never
pay to an indifferent author : ray admiration of your essay on
medals was natural, uninvited, and certainly unaffected. My
acquaintance with you since. Sir, has confirmed my opinion of
your good sense, and interested me in behalf of your works ;
and, having hved so long in the world myself, if my experience
can be of any service to you, I cannot withhold it when you

1784. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 229
ask it ; at the same time leaving you perfectly at liberty to
reject it if not adopted by your own judgment The experi
ence of old age is very likely to be balanced by the weaknesses
incident to that age. I have not however, its positiveness
yet ; and willingly abandon my criticisra to the vigour of your
judgraent.

TO JOHN PINKERTON, ESQ.*
Strawberry Hill, Oct. 6, 1784.
You have accepted my remarks with great good-humour.
Sir : I wish you may not have paid too much regard to them ;
and I should be glad that you did not rest any alterations on
my single judgment to which I have but little respect myself
I have not thought often on theatric performances, and of late
not at all. A chief ground of my observations on your piece
proceeded from having taken notice that an English audience
is apt to be struck with some familiar sound, though there is
nothing ridiculous in the passage ; and fall into a foolish laugh,
that often proves fatal to the author. Such was my objection
to hot-cockles. You have, indeed, convinced me that I did not
enough attend to your piece, as s. farce ; and, you must excuse
me, my regard for you and your wit made me consider it
rather as a short comedy. Very probably too, I have retained
the pedantic impressions of the French, and demanded more
observance of their rules than is necessary or just : yet I my
self have often condemned their too delicate rigour. Nay, I
have wished that farce and speaking harlequins were more en
couraged, in order to leave open a wider field of invention to
writers for the stage. Of late I have amply had my wish :
Mr. O'Keefe has brought our audiences to bear with every ex
travagance ; and, were there not such irresistible humour in
his utmost daring, it would be impossible to deny that he has
passed even beyond the limits of nonsense. But I confine this
approbation to his Agreeable Surprise. In his other pieces
' Now first coUected.

230 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1784.
there is much more untempered nonsense than humour. Even
that favourite performance I wondered that Mr. Colman dared
to produce.
Your remark, that a piece fuU of marked characters would
be void of nature, is most just This is so strongly my opi
nion, that I thought it a great fault in Miss Burney's Cecilia,
though it has a thousand other beauties, that she has la
boured far too much to make all her personages talk always
in character; whereas, in the present refined or depraved
state of human nature, most people endeavour to conceal
their real character, not to display it. A professional man,
as a pedantic fellow of a college or a seaman, has a charac
teristic dialect; but that is very different frora continually
letting out his ruling passion.
This brings me, Sir, to the alteration you offer in the per
sonage of Mrs. Winter, whom you wittily propose to turn
into a mermaid. I approve the idea much : I like too the
restoration of Mrs. Vernon to a plain reasonable woman.
She will be a contrast to the bad characters, and but a gra
dation to produce Barbara, without making her too glaringly
bright without any intermediate shade. In truth, as you cer
tainly may write excellently if you please, I wish you to be
stow your utmost abilities on whatever you give to the pub
lic. I am wrong when I would have a farce as chaste and
sober as a comedy ; but I would have a farce made as good
as it can be. I do not know how that is to be accomplished;
but I believe you do. You are so obliging as to offer to ac
cept a song of mine, if I have one by me. Dear Sir, I have
no more talent for writing a song than for writing an ode
like Dryden's or Gray's. It is a talent per se; and given,
like every other branch of genius, by nature alone. Poor
Shenstone was labouring through his whole life to write a
perfect song, and, in my opinion at least, never once suc
ceeded; not better than Pope did in a St. CecUian ode. I
doubt whether we have not gone a long, long way beyond
the possibUity of writing a good song. AU the words in the
language have been so often employed on simple images
(without which a song cannot be good), and such reams of

1784. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 231
bad verses have been produced in that kind, that I question
whether true simplicity itself could please now. At least we
are not likely to have any such thing. Our present choir of
poetic virgins write in the other extreme. They colour their
compositions so highly with choice and dainty phrases, that
their own dresses are not more fantastic and romantic. Their
nightingales make as many divisions as Italian singers. But
this is wandering from the subject; and, while I only meant
to tell you what I could not do myself, I' am telling you what
others do ill. I will yet hazard one other opinion, though
relative to composition in general. There are two periods
favourable to poets : a rude age, when a genius raay hazard
anything, and when nothing has been forestalled: the other
is, when, after ages of barbarism and incorrection, a master
or two produces models formed by purity and taste: Virgil,
Horace, Boileau, Corneille, Racine, Pope, exploded the li
centiousness that reigned before them. What happened?
Nobody dared to write in contradiction to the severity esta
bhshed; and very few had abilities to rival their masters.
Insipidity ensues, novelty is dangerous, and bombast usurps
the throne which had been debased by a race oi faineants.
This rhapsody will probably convince you. Sir, how much
you was mistaken in setting any value on my judgment
February will certainly be time enough for your piece to
be finished. I again beg you. Sir, to pay no deference to
my criticisms, against your own cool reflections. It is pru
dent to- consult others before one ventures on publication ;
but every single person is as liable to be erroneous as an
author. An elderly man, as he gains experience, acquires
prejudices too : nay, old age has generally two faults ; it is
too quick-sighted into the faults of the time being, and too
blind to the faults that reigned in his own youth, which,
having partaken of or having admired, though injudiciously,
he recollects with complacence.
I confess, too, that there must be two distinct views in
vsTiters for the stage, one of which is more allowable to
them than to other authors. The one is durable fame ; the
other, peculiar to dramatic authors, the view of writing to

CORRESPONDENCE OF 1784.
the present taste (and, perhaps, as you say, to the level of
the audience). I do not mean for the sake of profit; but
even high comedy must risk a little of its immortality by
consulting the ruling taste; and thence comedy always loses
some of its beauties, the transient, and some of its intelli
gibility. Like its harsher sister, satire, many of its allusions
must vanish, as the objects it aims at correcting cease to be
in vogue; and, perhaps, that cessation, the natural death of
fashion, is often ascribed by an author to his own reproofs.
Ladies would have left off patching on the Whig or Tory
side of their face, though Mr. Addison had not written his
excellent Spectator.* Probably even they who might be cor
rected by his reprimand, adopted some new distinction as
ridiculous; not discovering that his satire was levelled at
their partial animosity, and not at the mode of placing their
patches ; for, unfortunately, as the world cannot be cured of
being foolish, a preacher who eradicates one folly, does but
make room for some other.

TO THE HON, H. S, CONWAY,
Strawberry HiU, Oct, 15, 1784.
As I have heard nothing from you, I fiatter myself Lady
Ailesbury mends, or I think you would have brought her
again to the physicians : you will, I conclude, next week, as
towards the end of it the ten days they named will be expired,
I must be in town myself about Thursday, on some little busi
ness of my own.
As I was writing this, my servants called me away to see a
balloon ; I suppose Blanchard's, that was to be let off from
Chelsea this morning, I saw it from the coramon field before
the window of my round tower. It appeared about a third
of the size of the moon, or less, when setting, something
above the tops of the trees on the level horizon. It was then
' The singularly clever and witty paper here alluded to was written
by Addison himself: it is No. 81, " Female Party-spu-it Discovered by
Patches," and was pubUshed June 2, 1711. — D. T.

1784. • THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 233
descending; and, after rising and declining a httle, it sunk
slowly behind the trees, I should think about or beyond Sun-
bury, at five minutes after one. But you know I am a very
inexact guesser at measures and distances, and may be mis
taken in many miles; and you know how little I have at
tended to those airgonauts: only t'other night I diverted
myself with a sort of meditation on future airgonation, sup
posing that it will not only be perfected, but will depose
navigation. I did not finish it, because I am not skilled, like
the gentleman that used to write political ship-news, in that
style, which I wanted to perfect my essay : but in the prelude
I observed how ignorant the ancients were in supposing Icarus
melted the wax of his wings by too near access to the sun,
whereas he would have been frozen to death before he made
the first post on that road. Next, I discovered an alliance be
tween Bishop Wilkins's art of flying and his plan of an univer
sal language; the latter of which he no doubt calculated to
prevent the want of an interpreter when he should arrive at
the moon.
But I chiefly amused myself with ideas of the change that
would be made in the world by the substitution of balloons to
ships. I supposed our seaports to become deserted villages;
and Salisbury-plain, Newmarket-heath, (another canvass for
alteration of ideas,) and all downs (but the Downs) arising
into dock-yards for aerial vessels. Such a field would be
ample in furnishing new speculations. But to come to my
ship-news : —
" The good balloon Da;dalus, Captain Wing-ate, will fly in
a few days for China ; he will stop at the top of the Monument
to take in passengers.
" Arrived on Brand-sands, the Vulture, Captain Nabob ;
the Tortoise snow, from Lapland ; the Pet-en-1'air, from Ver
sailles ; the Dreadnought frora Mount Etna, Sir W. Hamilton,
commander; the Tympany, Montgolfier; and the Mine-A-in-
a-bandbox, from the Cape of Good Hope. Foundered in a
hurricane, the Bird of Paradise, from Mount Ararat. The
Bubble, Sheldon, took fire, and was burnt to her gallery ; and
the Phoenix is to be cut down to a second-rate."

234 CORRESPONDENCE OF ' 1784.
In those days Old Sarum wiU again be a town and have
houses in it There will be fights in the air with wind-guns
and bows and arrows ; and there will be prodigious increase
of land for tiUage, especially in France, by breaking up all
public roads as useless. But enough of my fooleries; for
which I ara sorry you must pay double postage.

TO JOHN PINKERTON, ESQ.*
October 27, 1784.
I WOULD not answer your letter. Sir, till I could tell you
that I had put your play into Mr. Colman's hands, which I
have done. He desired ray consent to his carrying it into the
country to read it deliberately : you shall know as soon as I
receive his determination. I am much obliged to you for the
many civil and kind expressions in your letter, and for the
friendly information you give me. Partiality, I fear, dictated
the former ; but the last I can only ascribe to the goodness of
your heart. I have published nothing of any size but the
pieces you mention, and one or two small tracts now out of
print and forgotten. The rest have been prefaces to my
Strawberry editions, and to a few other publications ; and some
fugitive pieces which I reprinted several years ago in a small
volume, and which shall be at your service, with the Cata
logue of Noble Authors.
With regard to the bookseller who has taken the trouble to
collect my writings, (amongst which I do not doubt but he
will generously bestow on me many that I did not write, ac
cording to the liberal practice of such compilers,) and who
also intends to write my life, to which (as I never did any
thing worthy of the notice of the public) he must likewise be
la volunteer contributor, it would be vain for me to endeavour
to prevent such a design. Whoever has been so unadvised as
to throw himself on the public, must pay such a tax in a
pamphlet or magazine when he dies ; but, happily, the insects
' Now first coUected.

1784. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 235
that prey on carrion are still more short-lived than the car
cases were, from which they draw their nutriment. Those
momentary abortions live but a day, and are thrust aside by
like embryos. Literary characters, when not illustrious, are
known only to a few literary men ; and, amidst the world of
books, few readers can come to my share. Printing, that
secures existence (in libraries) to indifferent authors of any
bulk, is like those cases of Egyptian mummies which in cata
combs preserve bodies of one knows not whom, and which are
scribbled over with characters that nobody attempts to read,
till nobody understands the language in which they were
written. I believe therefore it will be most wise to swim for a mo
ment on the passing current, secure that it will soon hurry me
into the ocean where all things are forgotten. To appoint a
biographer is to bespeak a panegyric ; and I doubt whether
they who coUect their works for the public, and. like me, are
conscious of no intrinsic worth, do but beg mankind to accept
of talents (whatever they were) in lieu of virtues. To antici
pate spurious publications by a comprehensive and authentic
one, is almost as great an evil : it is giving a body to scattered
atoms ; and such an act in one's old age is declaring a fond
ness for the indiscretions of youth, or for the trifles of an age
which, though more mature, is only the less excusable. It is
most true. Sir, that, so far from being prejudiced in favour of
my own writings, I am persuaded that, had I thought early as
I think now, I should never have appeared as an author.
Age, frequent illness and pain, have given me as many hours
of reflection in the intervals of the two latter, as the two latter
have disabled from reflection ; and, besides their showing me
the inutility of all our little views, they have suggested an
observation that I love to encourage in myself from the
rationality of it, I have learnt and have practised the humi
liating task of comparing myself with great authors ; and that
comparison has annihilated all the flattery that self-love could
suggest. I know how trifling my own writings are, and how
far below the standard that constitutes excellence : as for the
shades that distinguish the degrees of mediocrity, they are not

236 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1784,
worth discrimination ; and he must be very modest or easily
satisfied, who can be content to glimmer for an instant a little
more than his brethren glow-worms. Mine, therefore, you
find, Sir, is not humility, but pride. When young, I wished
for fame ; not examining whether I was capable of attaining it,
nor considering in what lights farae was desirable. There are
two sorts of honest farae; that attendant on the truly great,
and that better sort that is due to the good, I fear I did not
aim at the latter; nor discovered, till too late, that I could not
compass the former. Having neglected the best road, and
having, instead of the other, strolled into a narrow path that
led to no good worth seeking, I see the idleness of my jour
ney, and hold it more graceful to abandon my wanderings to
chance or oblivion, than to mark solicitude for trifles, which I
think so myself,
I beg your pardon for talking so much of myself; but an
answer was due to the unmerited attention which you have
paid to ray writings. I turn with more pleasure to speak on
yours. Forgive me if I shall blame you, whether you either
abandon your intention, or are too impatient to execute it.*
Your preface proves that you are capable of treating the sub
ject ably; but allow me to repeat, that it is a work that
ought not to be performed impetuously. A mere recapitula
tion of authenticated facts would be dry; a more enlarged
plan would demand much acquaintance with the characters of
the actors, and with the probable sources of measures. The
present time is accustomed to details and anecdotes ; and the
age immediately preceding one's own is less known to any
man than the history of any other period. You are young
enough. Sir, to collect information on many particulars that
wiU occur in your progress, from hving actors, at least from
their contemporaries ; and, great as your ardour may be, you
will find yourself delayed by the want of materials, and by
farther necessary inquiries. As you have variety of talents,
why should not you exercise them on works that will admit
of more rapidity ; and at the same time, in leisure moments,
' Of writing a history of the reign of George the Second.

1784. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 237
coraraence, digest and enrich your plan by collecting new
matter for it ?
In one word, I have too much zeal for your credit, not to
dissuade you from precipitation in a work of the kind you
meditate. That I speak sincerely you are sure ; as accident,
' not design, made you acquainted with my admiration of your
tract on medals. If I wish to delay your history, it must be
from wishing that it raay appear with more advantages ; and I
must speak disinterestedly, as my age will not allow me to
hope to see it if not finished soon. I should not forgive my
self if I turned you from prosecution of your work ; but, as I
am certain that my writings can have given you no opinion of
my having sound and deep judgment pray follow your own,
and allow no merit but that of sincerity and zeal to the senti
ments of yours, &c.

TO MISS HANNAH MORE.
Strawberry HUl, Nov. 13, 1784.
Thank you a thousand times, dear Madam, for your
obliging letter and the new Bristol stones you have sent me,
which would pass on a more skilful lapidary than I am for
having been briUianted by a professed artist if you had not
told me that they came shining out of a native mine, and had
no foreign diamond-dust to polish thera. Indeed, can one
doubt any longer that Bristol is as rich and warm a soil as
India? I am convinced it has been so of late years, though
I question its having been so luxuriant in Alderman Can
ning's days; and I have MORE reasons for thinking so,
than from the marvels of Chatterton. — But I will drop me
taphors, lest some nabob should take me au pie de la lettre,
fit out an expedition, plunder your city, and massacre you
for weighing too many carats.
Seriously, Madam, I am surprised — and chiefly at the kind
of genius of this unhappy female.* Her ear, as you reraark,
' Mrs. Yearsley, the milkwoman of Bristol, whose talent was discovered

238 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1784.
is perfect; but that, being a gift of nature, amazes me less.
Her expressions are more exalted than poetic ; and discover
taste, as you say, rather than discover flights of fancy and
wild ideas, as one should expect 1 should therefore advise
her quitting blank verse, which wants the highest colouring
to distinguish it from prose ; whereas her taste, and probably
good sense, might give sufficient beauty to her rhymes. Her
not being learned is another reason against her writing in
blank verse. MiUon employed aU his reading, nay, aU his
geographic knowledge, to enrich his language, and succeeded.
They who have imitated him in that particular, have been
mere monkeys ; and they who neglected it flat and poor.
Were I not persuaded by the samples you have sent me.
Madam, that this woman has talents, I should not advise
her encouraging her propensity, lest it should divert her from
the care of her family, and, after the novelty is over, leave
her worse than she was. When the late Queen patronised
Stephen Duck,* who was only a wonder at first and had not
genius enough to support the character he had promised,
twenty artisans and labourers turned poets, and starved, '^
Your poetess can scarce be more miserable than she is, and
even the reputation of being an authoress may procure her
by Miss Hannah More, who solicited for her the protection of Mrs.
Montagu, in a prefatory letter prefixed to her Poems, pubUshed in quarto,
in the year 1785. — E.
' Some of Stephen Duck the thresher's verses having been shown to
Queen CaroUne, she settled twelve shillings a-week upon him, and ap
pointed him keeper of her select library at Richmond. He afterwards
took orders, and obtained the living of Byfleet, in Surrey ; but growing
melancholy, in 1750 he threw himself into the river, near Reading, and
was drowned. Swift wrote upon hira the foUowing epigram: —
" The thresher. Duck, could o'er the Queen prevail ;
The proverb says, ' No fence against a flail ! '
From threshing corn, he turns to thresh his brains.
For which her Majesty allows him grains;
Though 'tis confest, that those who ever saw
His poems, think them all not worth a straw.
Thrice happy Duck ! employ'd in threshing stubble,
Thy toil is lessen'd, and thy profits double." — E.
2 "¦ Robert Bloomfield," says Mr. Crabbe, in his Journal for 1817,
" had better have rested as a shoemaker, or even a farmer's boy ; for he
would have been a farmer perhaps in time, and now he is an unfortunate
poet." Poor John Clare, it will be recoUected, died in a workhouse. — E.

1784. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 239
customers : but as poetry is one of your least excellencies.
Madam (your virtues will forgive me), I am sure you will
not only give her counsels for her works, but for her con
duct; and your gentleness will blend them so judiciously,
that she will mind the friend as well as the mistress. She
must remeraber that she is a Lactilla, not a Pastora; and is
to tend real cows, not Arcadian sheep.
What ! if I should go a step farther, dear Madam, and
take the liberty of reproving you for putting into this poor
woman's hands such a frantic thing as The Castle of Otranto ?
It was fit for nothing but the age in which it was written :
an age in which much was known ; that required only to be
amused, nor cared whethfer its amusements were conformable
to truth and the models of good sense; that could not be
spoiled ; was in no danger of being too credulous ; and rather
wanted to be brought back to imagination, than to be led
astray by it : — but you will have made a hurly-burly in this
poor woman's head, which it cannot develope and digest.
I will not reprove, without suggesting something in my
turn. Give her Dryden's Cock and Fox, the standard of
good sense, poetry, nature, and ease. I would recommend
others of his tales : but her imagination is already too gloomy,
and should be enlivened; for which reason I do not name
Mr. Gray's Eton Ode and Church-yard. Prior's Solomon
(for I doubt his Alma, though far superior, is too learned
for her limited reading,) would be very proper. In truth,
I think the cast of the age (I mean in its compositions) is
too sombre. The flimsy giantry of Ossian has introduced
mountainous horrors. The exhibitions at Somerset-house are
crowded with Brobdignag ghosts. Read and explain to her
a charming poetic farailiarity called the Blue-stocking Club.
If she has not your other pieces, might I take the liberty,
Madam, of begging you to buy them for her, and let me be
in your debt? And that your lessons may win their way
more easily, even though her heart be good, wiU you add a
guinea or two, as you see proper? And though I do not
love to be naraed, yet if it would encourage a subscription,
I should have no scruple. It will be best to begin mode-

240 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1784.
rately; for, if she should take Hippocrene for Pactolus, we
may hasten her ruin, not contribute to her fortune.
On recollection, you had better caU me Mr. Anybody,
than name my name, which I fear is in bad odour at Bristol,
on poor Chattertons account ; and it may be thought that I
am atoning his ghost : though, if his friends would show my
letters to him, you would find that I was as tender to him as
to your milkwoman : but that they have never done, among
other instances of their injustice. However, I beg you to
say nothing on that subject as I have declared I would not.
I have seen our excellent friend in Clarges-street : she com
plains as usual of her deafness ; but I assure you it is at least
not worse, nor is her weakness. Indeed I think both her and
Mr. Vesey better than last winter. When wiU you blue
stocking yourself and come amongst us ? Consider how many
of us are veterans ; and, though we do not trudge on foot ac
cording to the institution, we may be out at heels — and
the heel, you know. Madam, has never been privileged.

TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY.
Sunday night, Nov. 28, 1784.
I HAVE received the parcel of papers you sent me, which
I conclude come from Lord Strafford, and will apply them as
well as I possibly can, you may be sure, but with little hope
of doing any good : humanity is no match for cruelty. There
are now and then such angelic beings as Mr. Hanway and
Mr. Howard ; but our race in general is pestilently bad and
malevolent. I have been these two years wishing to pro
mote my excellent friend Mr. Porter's plan for alleviating the
woes of chimney-sweepers, but never could make impres
sion on three people ; on the contrary, have generally caused
a smile. George Conway's intelligence of hostilities commenced be
tween the Dutch and Imperialists makes me suppose that
France will support the former — or could they resist ? Yet
I had heard that France would not. Some have thought

1784. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 241
as I have done, that a combination of partition would happen
between Austria, France, and Prussia, the modem law of
nations for avoiding wars. I know nothing: so my conjec
tures may all be erroneous ; especially as one argues from
reason; a very inadequate judge, as it leaves passions, ca
prices, and accidents, out of its calculation. It does not
seem the interest of France, that the Emperor's power should
increase in their neighbourhood and extend to the sea. Con
sequently it is France's interest to protect Holland in con
cert with Prussia. This last is a transient power, and may
determine on the death of the present King; but the Im
perial is a perraanent force, and must be the enemy of France,
however present connections raay incline the scale.
In any case, I hope we shall no way be hooked into the
quarrel; not only from the impotence of our circumstances,
but as I think it would decide the loss of Ireland, which
seems tranquilhzing : but should we have any bickering with
France, she would renew the manoeuvres she practised so
fatally in America. These are my politics ; I do not know
with whose they coincide or disagree, nor does it signify a
straw. Nothing will depend on my opinion ; nor have I
any opinion about them, but when I have nothing at all to
do 1;hat amuses me more, or nothing else to fill a letter.
I can give you a sample of ray idleness, which may divert
Lady Ailesbury and your academy of arts and sciences for a
minute in the evening. It carae into ray head yesterday to
send a card to Lady Lyttelton, to ask when she would be in
town ; here it is in an heroic epistle : —
From a castle as vast as the castles on signs, —
From a hUl that all Africa's molehUls outshines.
This epistle is sent to a cottage so smaU,
That the door cannot ope if you stand in the haU,
To a lady who would be fifteen, if her knight
And old swain were as young as Methusalem quite :
It comes to inquire, not whether her eyes
Are as radiant as ever, but how many sighs
He must vent to the rocks and the echos around,
(Though nor echo nor rock in the parish is found,)
Before she, obdurate, his passion wUl meet —
His passion to see her in Portugal-street .''
VOL. VL R

24'2 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1785,
As the sixth hne goes rather too near the core, do not give a
copy of it : however, I should be sorry if it displeased ; though
I do not beheve it will, but be taken with good-humour as it
was meant*

TO MISS HANNAH MORE.
Berkeley Square, AprU S, 1785.
Had I not heard part of your conversation with Mrs.
Carter the other night. Madam, I should certainly not have
discovered the authoress of the very ingenious anticipation of
our future jargon.'^ How should I? I am not fortunate
enough to know all your talents ; nay, I question whether you
yourself suspect all you possess. Your Bas Bleu is in a style
very different from any of your other productions that I have
seen; and this letter, which shows your intuition into the
degeneracy of our language, has a vein of humour and satire
that could not be calculated from your Bas Bleu, in which
good-nature and good-humour had made a great deal of learn-
' It was taken in perfect good-humour ; and Lady Lyttelton returned
the following answer, which Mr. Walpole owned was better than his ad
dress : — " Remember'd, though old, by a wit and a beau I
I shall fancy, ere long, I 'm a Ninon I'Enclos :
I must feel impatient such kindness to meet.
And shall hasten my flight into Portugal-street." Ripley Cottage, 28th Nov.
" This is an answer to the foUowing anonymous letter, sent to Mr.
Walpole by Miss Hannah More, ridiculing the prevaiUng adoption of
French idioms into the EngUsh language. There is not in this satirical
epistle one French word nor one EngUsh idiom : —
" A Specimen of the EngUsh Language, as it wiU probably be writ
ten and spoken in the next century. In a letter from a lady to
her Jriend, in the reign of George the Fifth.
" Alamode Castle, June 20, 1840.
" DEAK MADAM,
" I NO sooner found myself here than I visited my new apart
ment, which is composed of five pieces : the smaU room, which gives
upon the garden, is practised through the great one ; and there is no
other issue. As I was quite exceeded with fatigue, I had no sooner
made my toilette, than I let myself faU on a bed of repose, where sleep
came to surprise me.
" My lord and I are on the intention to make good cheer, and a great
expense; and this country is in possession to furnish wherewithal to amuse

1785. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 243
ing wear all the ease of familiarity. I did wish you to write
another Percy, but I beg now that you will first produce a
specimen of all the various manners in which you can shine ;
for, since you are as modest as if your issue were illegitimate,
I don't know but, like some females really in fault you would
stifle some of your pretty infants, rather than be detected and
blush. In the mean tirae, I beseech you not only to print your
Specimen of the Language that is to be in fashion, but have
it entered at Stationers'-hall ; or depend upon it, if ever a copy
falls into the hands of a fine gentleman yet unborn, who shall
be able both to read and write, he will adopt your letter for
his own, and the Galimatias will give the ton to the court as
Euphues did near two hundred years ago ; and then you will
have corrupted our language instead of defending it: and
surely it is not your interest. Madam, to have pure Enghsh
grow obsolete.
If you do not promise to grant my request, I will show your
letter everywhere to those that are worthy of seeing it ; that
is, indeed, in very few places ; for you shall have the honour of
oneself. All that England has of illustrious, all that youth has of ami
able, or beauty of ravishing, sees itself in this quarter. Render yourself
here, then, my friend ; and you shall find assembled aU that there is of
best, whether for letters, whether for birth.
" Yesterday I did my possible to give to eat ; the dinner was of the
last perfection, and the wines left nothing to desire. The repast was
seasoned with a thousand rejoicing saUies, full of salt and agreement,
and one more briUiant than another. Lady Frances charmed me as for
the first time ; she is made to paint, has a great air, and has infinitely of
expression in her physiognomy ; her manners have as much of natural as
her figure has of interesting.
" I had prayed Lady B. to be of this dinner, as I had heard nothing
but good of her ; but I am now disabused on her subject : she is ]jast
her first youth, has very little instruction, is inconsequent, and subject
to caution ; but having evaded with one of her pretenders, her reputa
tion has been committed by the bad faith of a friend, on whose fidelity
she reposed herself; she is, therefore, fallen into devotion, goes no more
to spectacles, and play is detested at her house. Though she affects a
mortal serious, I observed that her eyes were of inteUigence with those
of Sir James, near whom I had taken care to plant myself, though this
is always a sacrifice which costs. Sir James is a great sayer of nothings ;
it is a spoilt mind, full of fatuity and pretension : his conversation is a
tissue of impertinences, and the bad tone which reigns at present has
put the last hand to his defects. He makes but little care of his word ;
but, as he lends himself to whatever is proposed of amusing, the women
all throw themselves at his head. Adieu ! " R 2

244 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1785.
it It is one of those compositions that prove themselves
standards, by begetting imitations ; and if the genuine parent
is unknown, it wUl be ascribed to everybody that is supposed
(in his ovra set) to have more wit than the rest of the world.
I should be diverted, I own, to hear it faintly disavowed by
some who would wish to pass for its authors : but stiU there is
more pleasure in doing justice to merit, than in drawing vain
pretensions into a scrape ; and, therefore, I think you and I
had better be honest and acknowledge it, though to you (for I
am out of the question, but as evidence) it wiU be painful ; for
though the proverb says, " TeU truth and shame the devil," I
believe he is never half so much confounded as a certain
amiable young gentlewoman, who is discovered to have more
taste and abUities than she ever ventured to ascribe to herself
even in the most private dialogues with her own heart, espe
cially when that native friend is so pure as to have no occasion
to make allowances even for self-love. For my part, I am
most seriously obliged to you. Madam, for so agreeable and
kind a communication.

TO JOHN PINKERTON, ESQ.*
June 22, 1785.
Since I received your book,^ Sir, I scarce ceased from
reading tiU I had finished it ; so admirable I found it and so
full of good sense, brightly delivered. Nay, I am pleased
with myself too for having formed the same opinions with you
' Now first collected.
" His " Letters of Literature," published this year under the name
of Heron. " It had been well for Mr. Pinkerton's reputation," observes
Mr. Dawson Turner, " had these Letters never been pubUshed at aU.
In a copy now before me, lately the property of one of our most eminent
critics, Mr. Park, I read the foUowing very just quotation, in his hand
writing : ' Multa venuste, multa tenuiter, multa cum bile.' Mr. Pink
erton himself, in his ' Walpoliana,' admits that Heron's Letters was ' a
book written in early youth, and contained many juvenile crude ideas
long since abandoned by its author.' Would that ' the crudeness of
many of the ideas ' were the worst that was to be said of it ! but we shaU
find, in the course of this correspondence, far heavier and not less just
complaints. The name of Heron, here assumed by Mr. Pinkerton, was
that of his mother." — E.

1785. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 245
on several points, in which we do not agree with the generality
of men. On some topics, 1 confess frankly, I do not concur
with you : considering how many you have touched, it would
be wonderful if we agreed on all, or I should not be sincere if
I said I did. There are others on which I have formed no
opinion ; for I should give myself an impertinent air, with no
truth, if I pretended to have any knowledge of many subjects,
of which, young as you are, you seera to have raade yourself
master. Indeed, I have gone deeply into nothing, and there
fore shall not discuss those heads on which we differ most ; as
probably I should not defend my own opinions well. There
is but one part of your work to which I will venture any ob
jection, though you have considered it much, and I little, very
little indeed, with regard to your proposal, which to me is but
two days old : I mean your plan for the iraprovement of our
language, which I allow has some defects, and which wants
correction in several particulars. The specific amendment
which you propose, and to which I object, is the addition of
a's and o's to our terminations. To change s for a in the plural
number of our substantives and adjectives would be so violent
an alteration, that I believe neither the power of Power nor
the power of Genius would be able to effect it. In raost cases
I am convinced that very strong innovations are more likely to
raake impression than small and alraost irapereeptible differ
ences, as in religion, medicine, politics, &c. ; but I do not
think that language can be treated in the same manner, espe
cially in a refined age. When a nation first emerges from
barbarism, two or three masterly writers may operate wonders ;
and the fewer the number of writers, as the number is small
at such a period, the more absolute is their authority. But
when a country has been polishing itself for two or three cen
turies, and when consequently authors are innumerable, the
most supereminent genius (or whoever is esteemed so, though
without foundation,) possesses very limited empire, and. is far
from meeting implicit obedience. Every petty writer will con
test very novel institutions : every inch of change in any lan
guage will be disputed; and the language will remain as it
was, longer than the tribunal which should dictate very bete-

246 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1785.
rogeneous alterations. With regard to adding a or o to final
consonants, consider, Sir, should the usage be adopted, what
havoc it would make ! All our poetry would be defective in
metre, or would become at once as obsolete as Chaucer; and
could we promise ourselves, that, though we should acquire
better harmony and more rhymes, we should have a new crop
of poets, to replace Milton, Dryden, Gray, and, I am sorry
you will not allow me to add. Pope ! You might enjoin our
prose to be reformed, as you have done by the Spectator in
your thirty-fourth Letter; but try Dryden's Ode by your new
institution. I beg your pardon for these trivial observations : I assure
you I could write a letter ten times as long, if I were to specify
all I hke in your work. I more than like most of it ; and I
am charmed with your glorious love of liberty, and your other
humane and noble sentiraents. Your book I shall with great
pleasure send to Mr. Colman : may I tell him, without naraing
you, that it is written by the author of the coraedy I offered to
him ? He must be struck with your very handsome and generous
conduct in printing your encomiums on hira, after his reject
ing your piece. It is as great as uncommon, and gives me as
good an opinion of your heart Sir, as your book does of your
great sense. Both assure me that you will not take ill the
liberty I have used in expressing my doubts on your plan for
amending our language, or for any I may use in dissenting
from a few other sentiments in your work ; as I shall in what
I think your too low opinion of some of the French writers,
of your preferring Lady Mary Wortley to Madame de Sevigne,
and of your esteeming Mr. Hume a man of a deeper and more
solid understanding than Mr. Gray. In the two last articles
it is impossible to think more differently than we do. In
Lady Mary's Letters, which I never could read but once, I
discovered no merit of any sort ; yet I have seen others by her
(unpublished)* that have a good deal of wit; and for Mr.
Hume, give me leave to say that I think your opinion, " that
he might have ruled a state," ought to be qualified a little ; as
' See vol. iv. p. 272. — E.

1785. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 247
in the very next page you say, his History is " a mere apology
for prerogative," and a very weak one. If he could have
ruled a state, one must presume, at best, that he would have
been an able tyrant; and yet I should suspect that a man,
who, sitting coolly in his chamber, could forge but a weak
apology for the prerogative, would not have exercised it very
wisely. I knew personally and well both Mr. Hume and Mr.
Gray, and thought there was no degree of comparison between
their understandings ; and, in fact, Mr. Hume's writings were
so superior to his conversation, that I frequently said he un
derstood nothing till he had written upon it What you say.
Sir, of the discord in his history frora his love of prerogative
and hatred of churchraen, flatters me much ; as I have taken
notice of that very unnatural discord in a piece I printed some
years ago, but did not publish, and which I will show to you
when I have the pleasure of seeing you here ; a satisfaction I
shall be glad to taste, whenever you will let me know you are
at leisure after the beginning of next week. I have the
honour to be. Sir, &c.

TO JOHN PINKERTON, ESQ.*
June 26, 1785.
I HAVE sent your book to Mr. Colman, Sir, and must de
sire you in return to offer my grateful thanks to Mr. Knight,
who has done rae an honour, to which I do not know how I
am entitled, by the present of his poetry, which is very classic,
and beautiful, and tender, and of chaste simplicity.
To yowr book. Sir, I am rauch obliged on many accounts ;
particularly for having recalled my raind to subjects of delight
to which it was grown dulled by age and indolence. In con
sequence of your reclairaing it, I asked rayself whence you
feel so much disregard for certain authors whose fame is esta
bhshed : you have assigned good reasons for withholding your
approbation from some, on the plea of their being imitators :
' Now first coUected.

248 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1785.
it was natural, then, to ask myself again, whence they had ob
tained so much celebrity. I think I have discovered a cause,
which I do not remeraber to have seen noted ; and that cause
I suspect to have been, that certain of those authors possessed
grace : — do not take rae for a disciple of Lord Chesterfield,
nor imagine that I mean to erect grace into a capital in
gredient of writing ; but I do believe that it is a perfume that
will preserve from putrefaction, and is distinct even from style,
which regards expression. Grace, I think, belongs to manner.
It is from the charm of grace that I beheve some authors, not
in your favour, obtained part of their renown ; Virgil in par
ticular: and yet I am far from disagreeing with you on his
subject in general. There is such a dearth of invention in
the jEneid, (and when he did invent it was often so fool
ishly,) so little good sense, so little variety, and so little power
over the passions, that I have frequently said, from contempt
for his matter, and from the charm of his harmony, that I be
lieve I should hke his poem better, if I was to hear it re
peated, and did not understand Latin. On the other hand, he
has more than harmony: whatever he utters is said grace
fully, and he ennobles his images, especially in the Georgics ;
or at least it is more sensible there from the humility of the
subject A Roman farmer might not understand his diction
in agriculture; but he made a Roman courtier understand
farming, the farming of that age, and could captivate a lord of
Augustus's bedchamber, and tempt him to listen to themes of
rusticity. On the contrary. Statins and Claudian, though
talking of war, would make a soldier despise them as bullies.
That graceful manner of thinking in Virgil seems to me to
be more than style, if I do not refine too much ; and I admire,
I confess, Mr. Addison's phrase, that Virgil " tossed about
his dung with an air of majesty." A style may be excellent
without grace : for instance. Dr. Swift's. Eloquence may be
stow an imraortal style, and one of more dignity; yet elo
quence may want that ease, that genteel air that flows from or
constitutes grace. Addison hiraself was master of that grace,
even in his pieces of humour, and which do not owe their
merit to style; and from that corabined secret he excels all

1785. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 249
men that ever lived, but Shakspeare, in humour, by never
dropping into an approach towards burlesque and buffoonery,
when even his humour descended to characters that in any
other hands would have been vulgarly low. Is not it clear
that Will Wimble * was a gentleman, though he always lived
at a distance from good company? Fielding had as much
humour, perhaps, as Addison ; but, having no idea of grace,
is perpetually disgusting. His innkeepers and parsons are the
grossest of their profession ; and his gentlemen are awkward,
when they should be at their ease.
The Grecians had grace in everything ; in poetry, in ora
tory, in statuary, in architecture, and, probably, in music and
painting. The Romans, it is true, were their imitators ; but,
having grace too, imparted it to their copies, which gave them
a merit that almost raises them to the rank of originals.
Horace's Odes acquired their farae, no doubt from the graces
of his manner and purity of his style, — the chief praise of
TibuUus and Propertius, who certainly cannot boast of raore
meaning than Horace's Odes.
Waller, whom you proscribe. Sir, owed his reputation to
the graces of his manner, though he frequently stumbled, and
even fell flat; but a few of his smaller pieces are as graceful
as possible : one might say that he excelled in painting ladies
in enamel, but could not succeed in portraits in oil, large as
life. Milton had such superior merit, that I will only say,
that if his angels, his Satan, and his Adam have as much
dignity as the Apollo Belvidere, his Eve has all the dehcacy
and graces of the Venus of Medicis; as his description of
Eden has the colouring of Albano. Milton's tenderness im
prints ideas as graceful as Guide's Madonnas: and the Al
legro, Penseroso, and Comus might be denominated from the
three Graces; as the Itahans gave similar titles to two or
three of Petrarch's best sonnets.
Cowley, I think, would have had grace, (for his mind was
graceful,) if he had had any ear, or if his taste had not been
vitiated by the pursuit of wit ; which, when it does not offer
' See Spectator, No. 109. WiU Wimble was a Yorkshire gentleman,
whose name was 'Thomas Morecroft. — B.

250 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1786.
itself naturally, degenerates into tinsel or pertness. Pertness
is the mistaken affectation of grace, as pedantry produces erro
neous dignity : the familiarity of the one, and the clumsiness
of the other, distort or prevent grace. Nature, that furnishes
samples of all qualities, and on the scale of gradation exhibits
all possible shades, affords us types that are more apposite
than words. The eagle is sublime, the lion majestic, the
swan graceful, the monkey pert the bear ridiculously awk
ward. I mention these, as more expressive and comprehensive
than I could make definitions of my meaning; but I will
apply the swan only, under whose wings I will shelter an
apology for Racine, whose pieces give me an idea of that bird.
The colouring of the swan is pure; his attitudes are graceful;
he never displeases you when sailing on his proper element
His feet raay be ugly, his notes hissing, not musical, his walk
not natural ; he can soar, but it is with difficulty : — still, the
impression the swan leaves is that of grace. So does Racine.
Boileau may be compared to the dog, whose sagacity is re
markable, as well as its fawning on its master, and its snarling
at those it dislikes. If Boileau was too austere to admit the
pliability of grace, he compensates by good sense and pro
priety. He is hke (for I will drop animals) an upright
magistrate, whom you respect, but whose justice and severity
leave an awe that discourages familiarity. His copies of the
ancients may be too servile ; but, if a good translator deserves
praise, Boileau deserves more. He certainly does not fall
below his originals ; and, considering at what period he wrote,
has greater merit still. By his imitations he held out to his
countrymen models of taste, and banished totally the bad taste
of his predecessors. For his Lutrin, replete with excellent
poetry, wit humour, and satire, he certainly was not obhged
to the ancients. Excepting Horace, how little idea had either
Greeks or Romans of wit and humour ! Aristophanes and
Lucian, compared with moderns, were, the one a blackguard,
and the other a buffoon. In my eyes, the Lutrin, the Dis
pensary, and the Rape of the Lock, are standards of grace
and elegance, not to be paralleled by antiquity ; and eternal
reproaches to Voltaire, whose indelicacy in the Pucelle de-

1785. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 251
graded him as much, when compared with the three authors I
have named, as his Henriade leaves Virgil, and even Lucan
whom he more resembles, by far his superiors.
The Dunciad is blemished by the offensive images of the
games ; but the poetry appears to me admirable ; and, though
the fourth book has obscurities, I prefer it to the three
others : it has descriptions not surpassed by any poet that ever
existed, and which surely a writer merely ingenious* will
never equal. The lines on Italy, on Venice, on Convents,
have all the grace for which I contend as distinct from poetry,
though united with the most beautiful ; and the Rape of the
Lock, besides the originality of great part of the invention, is
a standard of graceful writing.
In general, I believe that what I call grace, is denomi
nated elegance; but by grace I mean something higher. I
will explain myself by instances — Apollo is graceful. Mercury
elegant Petrarch, perhaps, owed his whole merit to the
harraony of his numbers and the graces of his style. They
conceal his poverty of meaning and want of variety. His
complaints, too, raay have added an interest, which, had his
passion been successful, and had expressed itself with equal
sameness, would have raade the number of his sonnets insup
portable. Melancholy in poetry, I am inclined to think, con
tributes to grace, when it is not disgraced by pitiful lamenta
tions, such as Ovid's and Cicero's in their banishments. We
respect melancholy, because it imparts a similar affection,
pity. A gay writer, who should only express satisfaction
without variety, would soon be nauseous.
Madame de Sevigne shines both in grief and gaiety.
There is too much of sorrow for her daughter's absence;
yet it is always expressed by new terms, by new images,
and often by wit, whose tenderness has a melancholy air.
' Pinkerton had said of Pope, that " he could only rank with ingenious
men," and that " his works are superabundant with superfluous and un
meaning verbiage ; his translations even replete with tautology, a fault
which is to refinement as midnight is to noon-day ; and, what is truly
surprising, that the fourth book of the Dunciad, his last pubUcation, is
more fuU of redundancy and incorrectness than his Pastorals, which are
his first."— D. T.

252 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1785.
When she forgets her concern, and returns to her natural
disposition — gaiety, every paragraph has novelty ; her allu
sions, her applications are the happiest possible. She has
the art of making you acquainted with all her acquaintance,
and attaches you even to the spots she inhabited. Her
language is correct, though unstudied ; and, when her mind
is full of any great event, she interests you with the warrath
of a dramatic writer, not with the chilling impartiality of an
historian. Pray read her accounts of the death of Turenne,
and of the arrival of King Jaraes in France, and tell me
whether you do not know their persons as if you had hved
at the time.
For my part, if you will allow me a word of digression,
(not that I have written with any method,) I hate the cold
impartiality recommended to historians: " Si vis me flere,
dolendum est primiim ipsi tibi :" but, that I may not wan
der again, nor tire, nor contradict you any more, I will
finish now, and shall be glad if you will dine at Strawberry
HUl next Sunday and take a bed there, when I will tell you
how many more parts of your book have pleased me, than
have startled my opinions, or perhaps prejudices. I have the
honour to be, Sir, with regard, &c.

TO JOHN PINKERTON, ESQ.*
Strawberry HiU, July 27, 1785.
You thank rae much raore than the gift deserved. Sir :
my editions of such pieces as I have left, are waste paper to
me, I will not sell them at the ridiculously advanced prices
that are given for them : indeed, only such as were published
for sale, have I sold at all; and therefore the duphcates that
remain with me are to me of no value, but when I can obhge
a friend with them. Of a few of my impressions I have no
copy but my own set; and, as' I could give you only an im
perfect coUection, the present was really only a parcel of
' Now first coUected.

1785. THE HON, HORACE WALPOLE. 253
fragments. My meraory was in fault about the Royal and
Noble Authors. I thought I had given them to you. I
recollect now that I only lent you my own copy ; but I have
others in town, and you shall have them when I go thither.
For Vertue's manuscript I am in no manner of haste. I
heard on Monday, in London, that the Letters were written
by a Mr. Pilkington, probably from a confounded informa
tion of Maty's Review : ray chief reason for calling on you
twice this week, was to learn what you had heard, and I shall
be rauch obliged to you for farther information; as I do not
care to be too inquisitive, lest I should be suspected of know
ing more of the matter.
There are many reasons. Sir, why I cannot come into your
idea of printing Greek. In the first place, I have two or three
engagements for ray press ; and my time of life does not allow
me to look but a httle way farther. In the next, I cannot
now go into new expenses of purchase : my fortune is very
much reduced, both by my brother's death, and by the late
plan of reformation. The last reason would weigh with me,
had I none of the others. My admiration of the Greeks was
a little like that of the mob on other points, not from sound
knowledge. I never was a good Greek scholar ; have long
forgotten what I knew of the language ; and, as I never dis
guise my ignorance of anything, it would look like affectation
to print Greek authors. I could not bear to print them, with
out owning that I do not understand them ; and such a con
fession would perhaps be as much affectation as unfounded
pretensions. I must therefore, stick to my simplicity, and
not go out of my hne. It is difficult to divest one's self of
vanity, because impossible to divest one's self of self-love. If
one runs frora one glaring vanity, one is catched by its oppo
site. Modesty can be as vain-glorious on the ground, as
Pride on a triumphal car. Modesty, however, is preferable;
for, should she contradict her professions, still she keeps her
own secret and does not hurt the pride of others. I have the
honour to be. Sir, with great regard, yours.

254 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1785.

TO JOHN PINKERTON, ESQ.*
Strawberry HiU, August 18, 1785.
I AM sorry, dear Sir, that I must give you unanswerable
reasons why I cannot print the work you recommend.'^ I
have been so rauch sohcited since I set up ray press to employ
it for others, that I was forced to make it a rule to hsten to
no such applications. I refused Lord Hardwicke to print a
publication of his ; Lady Mary Forbes, to print letters of her
ancestor. Lord Essex; and the Countess of Aldborough, to
print her father's poems, though in a piece as small as what
you mention.
These I recollect at once, besides others whose recom
mendations do not iramediately occur to my memory ; though
I dare to say they do remember them, and would resent
my breaking my rule. I have other reasons which 1 will not
detail now, as the post goes out so early : I will only beg you
not to treat me with so much ceremony, nor ever use the
word humbly to me, who am no ways intitled to such re
spect. One private gentleman is not superior to another in es
sentials: I fear the virtues of an untainted young heart are
preferable to those of an old man long conversant with the
world ; and in the soundness of understanding you have shown
and will show a depth which has not fallen to the lot of
Your sincere humble servant.

' Now first collected.
' It is impossible to say with certainty what is the work here alluded
to ; but, most probably, it was Ailred's Life of St. Ninian, of which it
appears, from a letter from the Rev. Rogers Ruding, dated August 4,
1785, that Mr. Pinkerton obtained at this time a transcript through him
from the manuscript in the Bodleian Library. Pinkerton speaks of this
manuscript, in the second volume of his Early Scottish History, p. 266,
¦ as " a meagre piece, containing very little as to Ninian's Pikish Mis
sion." The letter alluded to from Mr. Ruding shows Pinkerton to have
turned his mind to the antiquities of Scotland with great earnestness. —
D. T.

1785. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 255
TO JOHN PINKERTON, ESQ.*
Strawberry HUl, Sept. 17, 1785.
You are too modest. Sir, in asking my advice on a point
on which you could have no better guide than your own judg
ment. If I presume to give you ray opinion, it is from zeal
for your honour. I think it would be below you to make a
regular answer to anonymous scribblers in a Magazine : you
had better wait to see whether any formal reply is raade to
your book, and whether by any avowed writer ; to whom, if
he writes sensibly and decently, you may condescend to make
an answer. Still, as you say you have been misquoted, I
should not wish you to be quite silent, though I should
like better to have you turn such enemies into ridicule.
A foe who misquotes you, ought to be a welcome antagonist.
He is so humble as to confess, when he censures what you
have not said, that he cannot confute what you have said;
and he is so kind as to furnish you with an opportunity of
proving him a liar, as you may refer to your book to detect
him. This is what I would do ; I would specify, in the same Ma
gazine in which he has attacked you, your real words, and
those he has imputed to you ; and then appeal to the equity
of the reader. You may guess that the shaft comes from soracr
body whom you have censured ; and thence you raay draw a
fair conclusion, that you had been in the right to laugh at one
who was reduced to put his own words into your mouth before
he could find fault with them; and, having so done, what
ever indignation he has excited in the reader must recoil on
himself, as the offensive passages will come out to have been
his own, not yours. You might even begin with loudly con
demning the words or thoughts imputed to you, as if you re
tracted them; and then, as if you turned to your book, and
found that you had said no such thing there as what you was
ready to retract, the ridicule would be doubled on your ad
versary. ' Now first collected.

256 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1785.
Something of this kind is the most I would stoop to ; but I
would take the utmost care not to betray a grain of more
anger than is implied in contempt and ridicule. Fools can
only revenge themselves by provoking; for then they bring
you to a level with themselves. The good sense of your
work will support it ; and there is scarce a reason for defend
ing it but by keeping up a controversy, to make it more
noticed ; for the age is so idle and indifferent that few objects
strike, unless parties are formed for or against them. I re
meraber raany years ago advising sorae acquaintance of mine,
who were engaged in the direction of the Opera, to raise a
competition between two of their singers, and have papers
written pro and con. ; for then numbers would go to clap and
hiss the rivals respectively, who would not go to be pleased
with the music.

TO GEORGE COLMAN, ESQ.*
Strawberry Hill, Sept. 19, 1785.
SIR, I BEG your acceptance of a little work just printed here ;
and I offer it as a token of ray gratitude, not as pretend
ing to pay you for your last present A translation, how
ever excellent, from a very inferior Horace,* would be a most
inadequate return; but there is so much merit in the en
closed version, the language is so pure, and the imitations of
our poets so extraordinary, so much more faithful and harmo
nious than I thought the French tongue could achieve, that I
flatter myself you will excuse my troubling you with an old
performance of my own, when newly dressed by a master-
hand. As, too, there are not a great many copies printed,
and those only for presents, I have particular pleasure in
making you one of the earhest compliments.
¦ Now first printed.
' The Due de Nivernois' translation of Walpole's Essay on Garden
ing. — E.

1785. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 257

TO THE EARL OP BUCHAN.*
Strawberry HiU, Sept. 23, 1785.
Your lordship is too condescending when you incline to
keep up a correspondence with one who can expect to main
tain it but a short time, and whose intervals of health are
resigned to idleness, not dedicated, as they have sometimes
been, to literary pursuits ; for what could I pursue with any
prospect of accomplishment? or what avails it to store a
memory that must lose faster than it acquires ? Your lord
ship's zeal for illuminating your country and countrymen is
laudable ; and you are young enough to make a progress : but
a man who touches the verge of his sixty-eighth year, ought
to know that he is unfit to contribute to the amusement of
more active minds. This consideration, my lord, makes me
much decline correspondence : having nothing new to commu
nicate, I perceive that I fill my letters with apologies for
having nothing to say.
If you can tap the secret stores of the Vatican, your lord
ship will probably much enrich the treasury of letters. Rome
may have preserved many valuable documents, as for ages in
telligence from all parts of Europe centred there ; but I con
clude that they have hoarded little that might at any period
lay open the share they had in most important transactions.
History, indeed, is fortunate when even incidentally and col
laterally it lights on authentic information.
Perhaps, ray lord, there is another repository, and nearer,
which it would be worth while to endeavour to penetrate : I
raean, the Scottish College at Paris. I have heard formerly,
that numbers of papers, of various sorts, were transported at
the Reformation to Spain and Portugal: but if preserved
there, they probably are not accessible yet. If they were,
how puny, how diminutive, would all such discoveries, and
others which we might call of far greater magnitude, be to
those of Herschel, who puts up milhons of covies of worlds at
' Now first printed.
VOL. VI. S

2.58 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1785.
a beat! My conception is not ample enough to take in
even a sketch of his ghmpses ; and, lest I should lose myself
in attempting to follow his investigations, I recall my mind
home, and apply it to reflect on what we thought we knew,
when we imagined we knew something (which we deemed a
vast deal) pretty correctly. Segrais, I think, it was, who said
with much contempt to a lady who talked of her star, " Your
star ! Madam, there are but two thousand stars in all; and do
you imagine that you have a whole one to yourself?" The
foolish dame, it seems, was not more ignorant than Segrais
himself If our system includes twenty millions of worlds, the
lady had as much right to pretend to a whole ticket as the
phUosopher had to treat her like a servant-maid who buys a
chance for a day in a state lottery.
Stupendous as Mr. Herschel's investigations are, and admi
rable as are his talents, his expression of our retired comer of
the universe, seems a little improper. When a little emmet,
standing on its ant-hill, could get a peep into infinity, how
could he think he saw a corner in it ? — a retired corner ? Is
there a bounded side to infinitude ? If there are twenty mil
lions of worlds, why not as raany, and as many, and as many
more ? Oh ! one's imagination cracks ! I long to bait within
distance of home, and rest at the moon. Mr. Herschel will
content me if he can discover thirteen provinces there, well
inhabited by men and woraen, and protected by the law of
nations ; * that law, which was enacted by Europe for its own
emolument, to the prejudice of the other three parts of the
globe, and which bestows the property of whole realms on the
first person who happens to espy them, who can annex them
to the crown of Great Britain, in lieu of those it has lost be
yond the Atlantic.
I am very ignorant in astronomy, as ignorant as Segrais or
the lady, and could wish to ask many questions ; as. Whether
our celestial globes must not be infinitely magnified? Our
orreries, too, must not they be given to children, and new
ones constructed, that will at least take in our retired corner
' The then thirteen united States of America.

1785. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 259
and all its outflying constellations? Must not that host of
worlds be christened ? Mr. Herschel himself has stood god
father for his Majesty to the new Sidus. His Majesty, thank
God ! has a numerous issue ; but they and all the princes
and princesses in Europe cannot supply appellations enough
for twenty millions of new-born stars: no, though the royal
progenies of Austria, Naples, and Spain, who have each two
dozen saints for sponsors, should consent to split their bead-
rolls of names among the foundlings. But I find I talk like
an old nurse ; and your lordship at last wiU, I beheve, be
convinced that it is not worth your while to keep up a cor
respondence with a man in his dotage, merely because he has
the honour of being, my lord, your lordship's most obedient
servant.

TO JOHN PINKERTON, ESQ.*
StrawbeiTy HUl, Sept 30, 1785,
I DO not possess, nor ever looked into, one of the books
you specify ; nor Mabillon's " Acta Sanctorum," nor O'Fla-
berty's " Ogygia." My reading has been very idle, and trifling,
and desultory ; not that perhaps it has not been employed on
authors as respectable as those you want to consult, nor that
I had not rather read the deeds of sinners than Acta Sancto
rum. I have no reverence but for sensible books, and conse
quently not for a great number; and had rather have read
fewer than I have, than more. The rest may be useful on
certain points, as they happen now to be to you ; who, I am
sure, would not read them for general use and pleasure, and
are a very different kind of author. I shall like, I dare to say,
anything you do write ; but I am not overjoyed at your wading
into the history of dark ages, unless you use it as a canvass to
be embroidered with your own opinions, and episodes, and
comparisons with more recent times. That is a most enter
taining kind of writing. In general, I have seldom wasted
' Now first collected. s 2

260 CORRESPONDENCE OP 1785.
time on the origin of nations, unless for an opportunity of
smihng at the gravity of the author, or at tbe absurdity of
the manners of those ages; for absurdity and bravery com
pose almost all the anecdotes we have of them, except the
accounts of what they never did, nor thought of doing.
I have a real affection for Bishop Hoadley : he stands with
me in heu of what are called the Fathers; and I am much
obliged to you for offering to lend me a book of his : but as
my faith in him and his doctrines has long been settled,
I shall not return to such grave studies, when I have so little
time left and desire only to pass it tranquilly, and without
thinking of what I can neither propagate nor correct. When
youth made me sanguine, I hoped mankind might be set right.
Now that I am very old, I sit down with this lazy maxim;
that, unless one could cure men of being fools, it is to no pur
pose to cure them of any folly, as it is only making room for
some other. Self-interest is thought to govern every raan;
yet, is it possible to be less governed by self-interest than men
are in the aggregate ? Do not thousands sacrifice even their
lives for single men ? Is not it an established rule in France,
that every person in that kingdom should love every king
they have in his turn ? What government is formed for gene
ral happiness ? Where is not it thought heresy by the ma
jority, to insinuate that the felicity of one man ought not to be
preferred to that of miUions? Had not I better, at sixty-
eight, leave men to these preposterous notions, than return to
Bishop Hoadley, and sigh ? Not but I have a heartfelt satis
faction when I hear that a mind as hberal as his, and who
has dared to utter sacred truths, meets with approbation and
purchasers of his work. You must not however, flatter your
self. Sir, that all your purchasers are admirers. Some will
buy your book, because they have heard of opinions in it that
offend them, and because they want to find matter in it for
abusing you. Let thera : the more it is discussed, the more
strongly will your fame be estabhshed. I comraend you for
scorning any artifice to puff your book ; but you must allow
me to hope it will be attacked.
I have another satisfaction in the sale of your book ; it will

1785. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 261
occasion a second edition. What if, as you do not approve of
confuting misquoters, you simply printed a list of their false
quotations, referring to the identical sentences, at the end of
your second edition ? That will be preserving their infamy,
which else would perish where it was bom; and perhaps
would deter others from similar forgeries. If any rational op
ponent staggers you on any opinion of yours, I would retract
it ; and that would be a second triumph. I am, perhaps, too
impertinent and forward with advice : it is at best a proof of
zeal ; and you are under no obligation to follow my counsel.
It is the weakness of old age to be apt to give advice ; but I
will fairly arm you against myself, by confessing that when I
was young, I was not apt to take any.

TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY.
Strawberry HUl, Oct. 6, 1785.
I WONDERED I did iiot hear from you, as I concluded you
returned. You have made me good amends by the entertain
ing story of your travels. If I were not too disjointed for
long journeys, I should like to see much of what you have
seen ; but if I had the agUity of Vestris, I would not purchase
all that pleasure for ray eyes at the expense of my unsociabi-
hty, which could not have borne the hospitality you expe
rienced. It was always death to me, when I did travel Eng
land, to have lords and ladies receive me and show me their
castles, instead of turning me over to their housekeeper: it
hindered my seeing anything, and I was the whole time medi
tating my escape ; but Lady Ailesbury and you are not such
sensitive plants, nor shrink and close up if a stranger holds
out a hand.
I don't wonder you was disappointed with Jarvis's windows
at New College ; I had foretold their miscarriage. The old
and the new are as mismatched as an orange and a lemon, and
destroy each other ; nor is there room enough to retire back
and see half of the new; and Sir Joshua's washy Virtues
make the Nativity a dark spot from the darkness of the Shep-

262 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1785.
herds, which happened, as I knew it would, from most of
Jarvis's colours not being transparent.
I have not seen the improvements at Blenheim. I used to
think it one of the ugliest places in England; a gianf s castle,
who had laid waste aU the country round him. Everybody
now aUows the merit of Brown's achievements there.*
Of aU ydur survey I wish most to see Beau Desert War
wick Castle and Stowe I know by heart The first I had
rather possess than any seat upon earth : not that I think it
the most beautiful of all, though charming, but because I am
so intimate with aU its proprietors for the last thousand years.
I have often and often studied the new plan of Stowe : it is
pompous; but though the wings are altered, they are not
lengthened. Though three parts of the edifices in the garden
are bad, they enrich that insipid country, and the vastness
pleases me more than I can defend.
I rejoice that your jaunt has been serviceable to Lady
Ailesbury. The Charming man^ is actually with me; but
neither he nor I can keep our promise incontinently. He ex
pects two sons of his brother Sir Williara, whora he is to pack
up and send to the Peres de I'Oratoire at Paris. I expect
Lord and Lady Waldegrave to-morrow, who are to pass a few
days with me ; but both the Charming man and I will be with
you soon, I have no objection to a wintry visit: as I can
neither ride nor walk, it is more comfortable when most of
my time is passed within doors. If I continue perfectly
well, as I am, I shall not settle in town till after Christmas :
there will not be half a dozen persons there for whora I
care a straw.
' " CapabiUty Brown ; " for an account of whom, see vol. ii. p. 399.
" I took," says Hannah More, " a very agreeable lecture from my friend
Mr. Brown in his art, and he promised to give me taste by inoculation.
I am sure he has a charming one ; and he illustrates everything he says
about gardening by some literary or grammatical allusion. He told me
he compared his art to Uterary composition. ' Now, there,' said he,
pointing his finger, ' I make a comma; and there,' pointing to another
spot, ' where a more decided turn is proper, I make a colon : at another
part (where an interruption is desirable to break the view), a paren
thesis — now a fuU stop ; and then I begin another subject.' ' Memoirs,
vol. i. p. 26. — E.
' Edward Jerningham, Esq. See post, September 4, 1789. — E.

1786. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 263
I know nothing at all. The peace between the Austrian
harpy and the frogs is made. They were stout and preferred
being gobbled to parting with their money. At last, France
offered to pay the money for thera. The harpy blushed — for
the first time — and would not take it; but signed the peace,
and will plunder somebody else.
Have you got Boswell's raost absurd enormous book ? * The
best thing in it is a bon-mot of Lord Pembroke.'^ The more
one learns of Johnson, the more preposterous assemblage he
appears of strong sense, of the lowest bigotry and prejudices^
of pride, brutality, fretfulness, and vanity ; and Boswell is the
ftpe of most of his faults, without a grain of his sense. It is
the story of a mountebank and his zany.
I forgot to say, that I wonder how, with your turn, and
knowledge, and enterprise, in scientific exploits, you carae not
to visit the Duke of Bridgwater's operations; or did you
omit them, because I should not have understood a word you
told me ? Adieu !

TO THE EARL OF CHARLEMONT.^
Strawberry HiU, Nov. 23, 1785.
As your lordship has given me this opportunity, I cannot
resist saying, what I was exceedingly tempted to mention two
or three years ago, but had not the confidence. In short, my
lord, when the order of St Patrick was instituted, I had a
* The " enormous book," of which Walpole here speaks so dispa
ragingly, is BosweU's popular " Journal of his Tour to the Highlands
and Islands of Scotland with Dr. Johnson, in the autumn of 1773."
It is now incorporated with the author's general narrative of the Doc
tor's Ufe in Mr. Croker's edition of 1831 ; and not the least interesting
circumstance connected with it is, that Johnson himself read, from time
to time, BosweU's record of his sayings and doings ; and, so far from
being displeased with its minuteness, expressed great admiration of its
accuracy, and encouraged the chronicler to proceed with his grand ulte
rior proceeding. See Life, vol. i. p. viu. ed. 1835.— E.
' " Lord Pembroke said once to me at Wilton, that Dr. Johnson's
sayings would not appear so extraordinary, were it not for his bota-wow
way," Ibid, vol. iv. p. 8. — E.
' Now first coUected.

264 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1785.
mind to hint to your lordship that it was exactly the moment
for seizing an occasion that has been irretrievably lost to this
country. When I was at Paris, I found in the convent of
Les Grands Augustins three vast chambers filled with the
portraits (and their names and titles beneath) of all the
knights of the St. Esprit from the foundation of the order.
Every new knight, with few exceptions, gives his own portrait
on his creation. Of the order of St Patrick, I think but one
founder is dead yet; and his picture perhaps raay be re
trieved. I will not make any apology to so good a patriot as
your lordship, for proposing a plan that tends to the honour
of his country, which I will presume to call mine too, as it is
both by union and my affection for it, I should wish the
name of the painter inscribed too, which would excite emula
tion in your artists. But it is unnecessary to dilate on the
subject to your lordship ; who, as a patron of the arts, as well
as a patriot, will improve on my imperfect thoughts, and, if
you approve of them, can give them stabihty. I have the
honour to be, my lord, &c.

TO LADY BROWNE,*
Berkeley Square, Dec, 14, 1785.
I AM extremely obliged to your ladyship for your kind
letter ; and, though I cannot write myself, I can dictate a few
lines. This has not been a regular fit of tbe gout but a
worse case : one of my fingers opened with a deposit of chalk,*
and brought on gout and both together an inflamraation and
sweUing- almost up to my shoulder. In short I was forced to
have a surgeon, who has managed me so judiciously, that
both the inflammation and swelhng are gone ; and nothing re-
' Now first printed.
' " Neither years nor sufferings," writes Hannah More to her sister,
" can abate the entertaining powers of the pleasant Horace, which rather
improve than decay; though he himself says he is only fit to be a milk
woman, as the chalk-stones at his fingers' ends qualify him for nothing
but scoring ; but he declares he wiU not be a Bristol milk-woman. I
was obliged to recount to him aU that odious tale." Memoirs, vol. ii.
p. 14.— E.

1785. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE, 265
mains but the wound in my finger, which will heal as soon as
all the chalk is discharged. My surgeon wishes me to take
the air; but I am so afraid of a relapse, that I have not yet
consented. My poor old friend is a great loss ; * but it did not much
surprise me, and the manner comforts me. I had played at
cards with her at Mrs. Gostling's three nights before I came
to town, and found her extremely confused, and not knowing
what she did : indeed, I perceived something of the sort be
fore, and had found her much broken this autumn. It seems,
that the day after I saw her, she went to General Lister's
burial and got cold, and had been ill for two or three days.
On the Wednesday morning she rose to have her bed raade ;
and while sitting on the bed, with her maid by her, sunk
down at once, and died without a pang or a groan. Poor Mr,
Raftor is struck to the greatest degree, and for some days
would not see anybody, I sent for him to town to me ; but
he vrill not come till next week. Mrs. Prado has been so
excessively humane as to insist on his coming to her house tiU
his sister is buried, which is to be to-night.
The Duchess does not come till the 26th. Poor Miss Bun-
bury is dead ; and Mrs. Boughton, I hear, is in a very bad
way. Lord John Russell has sent the Duchess of Bedford
word, that he is on the point of marrying Lord Torrington's
eldest daughter; and they suppose the wedding is over,^
Your ladyship, I ara sure, will be pleased to hear that Lord
Euston is gone to his father, who has written a letter with the
highest approbation of Lady Euston.' You will be diverted,
too. Madam, to hear that Hecate has told Mrs. Keppel, that
she was sure that such virtue would be rewarded at last.

' The incomparable Kitty CUve; who died at Twickenham on the
6th of December, in her seventy-second year. — E.
' Lord John Russell, who, in 1802, succeeded his brother Francis as
sixth Duke of Bedford, married, at Brussels, in March 1786, Georgiana
Elizabeth, second daughter of Lord Torrington. — E.
' Lord Euston, who, in 1811, succeeded his father as fourth Duke of
Grafton, married, in November 1784, Charlotte Maria, daughter of the
Earl of Waldegrave. — E.

266 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1786.

TO MISS HANNAH MORE.
Berkeley Square, Feb. 9, 1786.
It is very cruel, my dear Madam, when you send me
such charming lines, and say such kind and fiattering things
to me and of me, that I cannot even thank you with my own
poor hand ; and yet ray hand is as much obhged to you as my
eye, and ear, and understanding. My hand was in great pain
when your present arrived. I opened it directly, and set to
reading, till your music and my own vanity composed a quiet
ing draught that glided to the ends of my fingers, and lulled the
throbs into the deliquium that attends opium when it does not
put one absolutely to sleep. I don't believe that the deity
who formerly practised both poetry and physic, when gods
got their Uvelihood by more than one profession, ever gave a
recipe in rhyme; and therefore, since Dr. Johnson has pro
hibited application to pagan divinities, and Mr. Burke has not
struck medicine and poetry out of the hst of sinecures, 1 wish
you may get a patent for life for exercising both faculties.
It would be a comfortable event for me; for, since I cannot
wait on you to thank you, nor dare ask you

• to caU your doves yourself.

and visit me in your Parnassian quality, I might send for you
as my physicianess. Yet why should not I ask you to come
and see me ? You are not such a prude as to
 blush to show compassion,
though it should

not chance this vear to be the fashion.'

And I can tell you, that powerful as your poetry is, and old as
I am, I believe a visit from you would do me as much good
almost as your verses.'^ In the meantime, I beg you to accept
' See " Florio," a poetical tale, which Miss Hannah More had re
cently pubUshed with the ''Bas Bleu." — E.
' On the llth, Hannah More paid him a visit. " I made poor Vesey,"
she says, " go with me on Saturday to see Mr. Walpole, who has had a

1786. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 267
of an addition to your Strawberry editions ; and beheve me
to be, with the greatest gratitude, your too much honoured
and most obliged humble servant.

TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY.
Sunday night, June 18, 1786.
I SUPPOSE you have been swearing at the east wind for
parching your verdure, and are now weeping for the rain that
drowns your hay. I have these calamities in common, and
my constant and particular one, — people that come to see my
house, which unfortunately is more in request than ever. Al
ready I have had twenty-eight sets, have five more tickets
given out ; and yesterday, before I had dined, three German
barons came. My house is a torment, not a comfort !
I was sent for again to dine at Gunnersbury on Friday, and
was forced to send to town for a dress-coat and a sword.
There were the Prince of Wales, the Prince of Mecklen
burg, the Duke of Portland, Lord Clanbrassil, Lord and
Lady Clermont Lord and Lady Southampton, Lord Pelham,
and Mrs. Howe. The Prince of Mecklenburg went back to
Windsor after coffee; and the Prince and Lord and Lady
Clermont to town after tea, to hear sorae new French players
at Lady William Gordon's. The Princess, Lady Barrymore,
and the rest of us, played three pools at commerce till ten. I
am afraid I was tired and gaped. While we were at the
dairy, the Princess insisted on my making sorae verses on
Gunnersbury. I pleaded being superannuated. She would
not excuse rae. I promised she should have an ode on her
long illness. Notwithstanding his sufferings, I never found him so plea
sant, so witty, and so entertaining. He said a thousand diverting things
about ' Florio;' but accused me of having imposed on the world by a
dedication fuU of falsehood; meaning the compUment to himself. I
never knew a man sufi^er pain with such entire patience. This submis
sion is certainly a most valuable part of reUgion ; and yet, alas ! he is not
religious. I must, however, do him the justice to say, that, except the
delight he has in teazing me for what he caUs over-strictness, I never
heard a sentence from him which savoured of infideUty." Memoirs,
vol. U. p. 11. — E.

268 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1786.
next birthday, which diverted the Prince ; but all would not
do. So, as I came home, I made the following stanzas, and
sent them to her breakfast next morning : —
In deathless odes for ever green
Augustus' laurels blow;
Nor e'er was grateful duty seen
In warmer strains to flow.
Oh ! why is Flaccus not alive.
Your favourite scene to sing?
To Gunnersbury's charms could give
His lyre immortal spring.
As warm as his my zeal for you.
Great princess ! could I show it :
But though you have a Horace too —
Ah, Madam ! he 's no poet.
If they are but poor verses, consider I am sixty-nine, was
half asleep, and made them alraost exterapore — and by com
mand ! However, they succeeded, and I received this gra
cious answer : —
" I wish I had a name that could answer your pretty verses.
Your yawning yesterday opened your vein for pleasing me ;
and I return you my thanks, my good Mr. Walpole, and re
main sincerely your friend,
" Amelia."
I think this is very genteel at seventy-five.
Do you know that I have bought the Jupiter Serapis as
well as the Julio Clovio !* Mr. * * * * assures me he has
seen six of the head, and not one of them so fine, or so well
preserved, I am glad Sir Joshua Rejmolds saw no more ex
cellence in the Jupiter than in the Clovio; or the Duke of
Portland, I suppose, would have purchased it as he has the
vase for a thousand pounds, I would not change, I told Sir
William Hamilton and the late Duchess, when I never thought
it would be mine, that I had rather have the head than the vase.
I shaU long for Mrs. Damer to make a bust to it and then it
* At the sale of the Duchess-dowager of Portland.

1786. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 269
will be still more valuable. I have deposited both the Illumi
nation* and the Jupiter in Lady Di.'s cabinet,^ which is worthy
of them. And here my collection winds up ; I will not pur
chase trumpery after such jewels. Besides, everything is
much dearer in old age, as one has less tirae to enjoy. Good
night !
TO RICHARD GOUGH, ESQ.
Berkeley Square, June 21, 1786.
On coming to town yesterday upon business, I found,
Sir, your very magnificent and most valuable present,^ for
which I beg you will accept my most grateful thanks. I am
impatient to return to Twickenham, to read it tranquilly. As
yet I have only had time to turn the prints over, and to read
the preface; but I see already that it is both a noble and
laborious work, and will do great honour both to you and to
your country. Yet one apprehension it has given me — I fear
not living to see the second part ! Yet I shall presume to
keep it unbound ; not only till it is perfectly dry and secure,
but, as I mean the binding should be as fine as it deserves, I
should be afraid of not having both volumes exactly alike.
Your partiality, I doubt. Sir, has induced you to insert a
paper not so worthy of the pubhc regard as the rest of your
splendid performance. My letter to Mr. Cole,* which I am
sure I had utterly forgotten to have ever written, was a hasty
indigested sketch, like the rest of my scribblings, and never
calculated to lead such well-meditated and accurate works as
yours. Having lived familiarly with Mr. Cole from our boy
hood, I used to write to him carelessly on the occasions that
occurred. As it was always on subjects of no importance, I
never thought of enjoining secrecy. I could not foresee that
* The Book of Psalms, with twenty-one iUuminations, by Don Julio
Clovio, scholar of Julio Romano. — E.
' A cabinet at Strawberry Hill, built in 1776, to receive seven incom
parable drawings of Lady Diana Beauclerc, for Walpole's tragedy of
« The Mysterious Mother."— E.
" The first volume of Mr. Gough's " Sepulchral Monuments in Great
Britain." — E. * See vol. v. p. 245.— E.

270 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1786.
such idle coraraunications would find a place in a great national
work, or I should have been more attentive to what I said.
Your taste. Sir, I fear, has for once been misled ; and I shall
be sorry for having innocently blemished a single page. Since
your partiality (for such it certainly was) has gone so far, I
flatter myself you will have retained enough to accept not a
retribution, but a trifling mark of my regard, in the little
volume that accompanies this; in which you will find that
another too favourable reader has bestowed on me raore dis
tinction than I could procure for myself, by turning my slight
Essay on Gardening* into the pure French of the last age f and,
which is wonderful, has not debased Milton by French poetry:
on the contrary, I think Milton bas given a dignity to French
poetry — nay, and harmony; both which I thought that lan
guage alraost incapable of receiving. As I would wish to
give all the value I can to my offering, I will mention, that I
have printed but four hundred copies, half of which went to
France ; and as this is an age in which mere rarities are pre
ferred to commoner things of intrinsic worth, — as I have found
by the ridiculous prices given for some of my insignificant pub
lications, merely because they are scarce, — I hope, under the
title of a kind of curiosity, my thin piece will be admitted
into your library. If you would indulge me so far. Sir, as to
let me know when I might hope to see the second part, I
would calculate how many more fits of the gout I may weather,
and would be still more strict in my regimen. I hope, at
least, that you will not wait for the engravers, but will accom-
phsh the text for the sake of the world : in this I speak dis
interestedly. Though you are much younger than I am, I
would have your part of the work secure : engravers may
always proceed, or be found ; another author cannot.
' The author of " The Pursuits of Literature"—
" Well pleased to see
Walpole and Nature may, for once, agree,"
adds, in a note, " read (it well deserves the attention) that quaint, but
most curious and learned, writer's excellent Essay on Modern Garden
ing." — E.
" Besides Walpole's Essay ongModern Gardening, the Due de Niver
nois translated Pope's Essay on Man, and a portion of MUton's Paradise
Lost, into French verse. — E.

1786. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 271
TO THE EARL OF STRAFFORD.
Strawberry Hill, August 29, 1786.
Since I received the honour of your lordship's last I
have been at Park-place for a few days- Lord and Lady
Frederick Campbell and Mrs. Damer were there. We went
on the Thames to see the new bridge at Henley, and Mrs.
Damer's colossal masks. There is not a sight in the island
more worthy of being visited. The bridge is as perfect as
if bridges were natural productions, and as beautiful as if
it had been built for Wentworth Castle ; and the masks, as
if the Romans had left them here. We saw them in a for
tunate moment ; for the rest of the time was very cold and
uncomfortable, and the evenings as chill as many we have
had lately. In short, I ara come to think that the beginning
of an old ditty, which passes for a collection of blunders, was
really an old English pastoral, it is so descriptive of our
climate : " Three children sUding on the ice
AU on a summer's day  "
I have been overwhelmed more than ever by visitants to
my house. Yesterday I had Count Oginski,* who was a
pretender to the crown of Poland at the last election, and
has been stripped of raost of a vast estate. He had on a
ring of the new King of Prussia, or I should have wished
hira joy on the death of one of the plunderers of his country.^
It has long been my opinion that the out-pensioners of
Bedlam are so numerous, that the shortest and cheapest
way would be to confine in Moorfields the few that remain
in their senses, who would then be safe ; and let the rest go
at large. They are the out-pensioners who are for destroying
poor dogs ! The whole canine race never did half so much
mischief as Lord George Gordon ; nor even worry hares,
but when hallooed on by men. As it is a persecution of
' Father of Count Michel Oginski, the associate of Kosciusko, and
author of " Memoires sur La Pologne et les Polonais, depuis 1788
jusqu'a la fin de 1815 ; " in four volumes octavo. Paris, 1826.— E.
' Frederick the Great had died on the 17th, at BerUn.— E.

272 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1780,
animals, I do not love hunting ; and what old writers men
tion as a commendation makes me hate it the more, its
being an image of war. Mercy on us ! that destruction of
any species should be a sport or a merit ! What cruel un
reflecting imps we are ! Everybody is unwiUing to die ; yet
sacrifices the lives of others to momentary pastime, or to the
still emptier vapour, fame I A hero or a sportsman who
wishes for longer hfe is desirous of prolonging devastation.
We shaU be crammed, I suppose, with panegyrics and epi
taphs on the King of Prussia ; I am content that he can now
have an epitaph. But alas ! the Emperor wUl write one for
him probably in blood ! and, while he shuts up convents for
the sake of population, will be stuffing hospitals with maimed
soldiers, besides making thousands of widows !
I have just been reading a new pubhshed history of the Col
leges in Oxford, by Anthony Wood ; and there found a feature
in a character that always offended me, that of Archbishop
Chicheley, who prompted Henry the Fifth to the invasion of
France, to divert him from squeezing the overgrown clergy.
When that priest meditated founding AU Souls, and " con
sulted his friends (who seem to have been honest men) what
great matter of piety he had best perform to God in his old age,
he was advised by them to buUd an hospital for the wounded
and sick soldiers that daily returned from the wars then had
in France ;" — I doubt his grace's friends thought as I do of
his artifice ; — " but," continues the historian, " disliking those
motions, and valuing the welfare of the deceased more than
the wounded and diseased, he resolved with hiraself to pro
mote his design, which was, to have masses said for the King,
Queen, and himself, &c. while living, and for their souls when
dead." And that mummery the old foolish rogue thought
more efficacious than ointments and medicines for the wretches
he had made ! And of the chaplains and clerks he instituted
in that dormitory, one was to teach grammar, and another
prick-song. How history makes one shudder and laugh by
turns ! But I fear I have wearied your lordship with my
idle declamation, and you will repent having coramanded me
to send you more letters.

1786. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 273

TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY.
Strawberiy HUl, Oct. 29, 1786.
I WAS sorry not to be apprised of your intention of going
to town, where I would have met you; but I knew it too late,
both as I was engaged, and as you was to return so soon.
I mean to come to Park-place in a week or fortnight : but
I should like to know what company you expect, or do not
expect ; for I had rather fill up your vacancies than be a su
pernumerary. Lady Ossory has sent me two charades made by Colonel
Fitzpatrick : the first she says is very easy, the second very
difficult. I have not corae within sight of tbe easy one ; and,
though 1 have a guess at the other, I do not believe I am
right ; and so I send them to you, who are master-general of
the CEdipuses. The first, that is so easy : —
" In concert, song, or serenade.
My first requires my second's aid.
To those residing near the pole
I would not recommend my whole."
The two last lines, I conclude, neither connect with the two
first nor will help one to deciphering them.
The difficult one : —
" Charades of aU things are the worst,
But yet my best have been my first.
Who with my second are concern'd,
WiU to despise my whole have learn'd."
This sounds like a good one, and therefore I will not tell
you my solution ; for, if it is wrong, it might lead you astray ;
and if it is right, it would prove the charade is not a good one.
Had I anything better, I would not send you charades, un
less for the name of the author.
I have had a letter from your brother, who tells me that he
VOL. VI. T

274 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1786.
has his grandson Stewart* with him, who is a prodigy. I say
to myself. Prodigies are grown so frequent.
That they have lost their name.
I have seen prodigies in plenty of late, ay, and formerly too ;
but divine as they have all been, each has had a mortal
heel, and has trodden back a vast deal of their celestial path !
I beg to be excused from any more credulity.
I am sorry you have lost your fac-totum Stokes. I sup
pose he had discovered that he was too necessary to you.
Every day cures one of reliance on others ; and we acquire
a prodigious stock of experience, by the time that we shall
cease to have occasion for any. Well ! I am not clear but
making or solving charades is as wise as anything we can do.
I should pardon professed phUosophers if they would allow
that their wisdom is only trifling, instead of calling their
trifling wisdom. Adieu !

TO THE RIGHT HON. LADY CRAVEN.^
Berkeley Square, Nov. 27, 1786.
To my extreme surprise. Madam, when I knew not in
what quarter of the known or unknown world you was re
sident or existent my maid in Berkeley-square sent me to
Strawberry-hill a note from your ladyship, offering to call on
* Robert, eldest son of Robert Stewart, by Lady Sarah-Frances Sey
mour, second daughter of Francis, first Marquis of Hertford ; afterwards
so distinguished in the poUtical world as Viscount Castlereagh. In 1821,
he succeeded his father as second Marquis of Londonderry, and died at
his seat at North Cray, in August 1822; at which time he was secretary
of state for foreign affairs. — E.
* This celebrated lady was the daughter of Augustus, fourth Earl of
Berkeley. In 1767, she was married to WiUiam, who, in 1769, succeeded
his uncle as sixth Lord Craven : she had seven chUdren by him ; but, after
a union of thirteen years, a separation taking place, she left England for
France, and travelled in Italy, Austria, Poland, Russia, Turkey, and
Greece. In 1789, she published her " Journey through the Crimea to
England." Subsequently, she settled at Anspach, and, becoming a wi
dow in September 1791, was united in the following month to the Mar
grave of Anspach; who, having sold his principality to the King of
Prussia, settled in England ; where he died in 1806. In 1825, the Mar
gravine pubUshed her Memoirs. She died at Naples in 1828. — E.

GT.Harimg,FS.Aaa.

:EiLii^iUB]EinEri, €®UfMing^j>g ®if cH^'^rigMo

I7i(M TJTB QEaG-imh BY a.KiMITEY.Jir TJJJi COIdJ'.'c'TJcW AT SIKtiWBEKECi^ SILL.

lonckni, Tiililislied'bjrKicliaxlBea-aej, 1640

1786. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 275
me for a moment, — for a whirlwind, I suppose, was waiting at
your door to carry you to Japan ; and, as balloons have not
yet settled any post-offices in the air, you could not, at least
did not give me any' direction where to address you, though
you did kindly reproach me with my sUence. I must enter
into a little justification before I proceed. I heard from you
from Venice, then from Poland, and then, having whisked
through Tartary, from Petersburgh ; but still with no direc
tions. I said to myself, " I will write to Grand Cairo, which,
probably, will be her next stage." Nor was I totally in the
wrong, for there came a letter from Constantinople, with a
design mentioned of going to the Greek islands, and orders
to write to you at Vienna ; but with no banker or other ad
dress specified.
For a great while I had even stronger reasons than these
for silence. For several months I was disabled by the gout
from holding a pen ; and you must know. Madam, that one
can't write when one cannot Write. Then, how write to la
Eianc'ee du Hoi de Garbe 1 You had been in the tent of the
Cham of Tartary, and in the harem of the Captain Pacha,
and, during your navigation of the ^gean, were possibly
fallen into the terrible power of a corsair. How could I
suppose that so many despotic infidels would part with your
charms? I never expected you again on Christian ground.
I did not doubt your having a talisman to make people in
love with you ; but anti-talismans are quite a new specific.
Well, while I was in this quandary, I received a de
lightful drawing of the Castle of Otranto; but stUl pro-
vokingly without any address. However, my gratitude for
so very agreeable and obliging a present could not rest till
I found you out I wrote to the Duchess of Richraond, to
beg she would ask your brother Captain Berkeley for a di
rection to you; and he has this very day been so good as
to send me one, and I do not lose a moment in making use
of it
I give your ladyship a million of thanks for the drawing,
which was really a very valuable gift to me. I did not even
know that there was a Castle of Otranto. When the story
T 2

276 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1787.
was finished, I looked into the map of the kingdom of Naples
for a well-sounding name, and that of Otranto was very so
norous. Nay, but the drawing is so satisfactory, that there
are two small windows, one over another, and looking into
the country, that suit exactly to the small chambers from one
of which Matilda heard the young peasant singing beneath
her. Judge how welcome this must be to the author; and
thence judge, Madam, how much you must have obliged
him. When you take another fiight towards the bounds of the
western ocean, remember to leave a direction. One cannot
always shoot flying. Lord Chesterfield directed a letter to
the late Lord Pembroke, who was always swimming, " To
the Earl of Pembroke in the Thames, over against White
hall." That was sure of finding him within a certain number
of fathom; but your ladyship's longitude varies so rapidly,
that one must be a good bowler indeed, to take one's ground
so judiciously that by casting wide of the mark one may
come in near to the jack.

TO MISS HANNAH MORE.
Berkeley Square, Jan. 1, 1787.
Do not imagine, dear Madam, that I pretend in the most
distant manner to pay you for charming poetry with insipid
prose ; much less that I acquit a debt of gratitude for flatter
ing kindness and friendship, by a meagre tale that does not
even aim at celebrating you. No ; I have but two motives for
offering you the accompanying trifle : * the first, to prove that
the moment I have finished anything, ymi are of the earliest
in my thoughts : the second, that, coming from my press, I
wish it may be added to your Strawberry editions. It is so
far from being designed for the public, that I have printed but
forty copies ; which I do not mention to raise its value, though
it will with mere collectors, but lest you should lend it and
lose it when I may not be able to supply its place.
' Christine de Pise.

1787- THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 277
Christina, indeed, has some title to connection with you,
both from her learning and her moral writings; as you are
justly entitled to a lodging in her " Cite des Dames," where I
am sure her three patronesses would place you, as a favourite
ilive of some of their still more amiable sisters, who must at
this moment be condoling with their unfortunate sister Grati
tude, whose vagabond foundling has so basely disgraced her
and herself. You fancied that Mrs. Yearsley was a spurious
issue of a muse ; and to be sure, with all their immortal vir
ginity, the parish of Parnassus has been sadly charged with
their bantlings ; and, as nobody knows the fathers, no wonder
some of the misses have turned out woful reprobates !

TO THE RIGHT HON. LADY CRAVEN.
Berkeley Square, Jan. 2, 1787.
YouK ladyship tells me, that you have kept a journal of
your travels : you know not when your friends at Paris will
give you time to put it au net; that is, I conclude and hope,
prepare it for the press. I do not wonder that those friends,
whether talismanic or others, are so assiduous, if you indulge
them : but unless they are of the former description, they are
unpardonable, if they know what they interrupt; and deserve
much more that you should wish they had fallen into a ditch,
than the poor gentlemen who sigh more to see you in sheets
of hoUand than of paper. To me the mischief is enormous.
How proud I should be to register a noble authoress of my
own country, who has travelled over more regions and farther
than any female in print ! Your ladyship has visited those
islands and shores whence formerly issued those travelling
sages and legislators who sought and imported wisdom, laws,
and religion into Greece ; and though we are so perfect as to
want none of those comraodities, the fame of those philoso
phers is certainly diminished when a fair lady has gone as far
in quest of knowledge. You have gone in an age when travels
are brought to a juster standard, by narrations being limited
to truth.

278 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1787.
Formeriy the perforraers of the longest voyages destroyed
half the merit of their expeditions by relating, not what they
had, but had not seen; a sort of communication that they
might have imparted without stirring a foot from home. Such
exaggerations drew discredit on travels, till people would not
believe that there existed in other countries anything very
different from what they saw in their own ; and because no
Patagonians, or gentry seven or eight feet high, were really
discovered, they would not believe that there were Laplanders
or pigmies of three and four. Incredulity went so far, that at
last it was doubted whether China so much as existed ; and
our countryman Sir John MandevUle* got an ill name, because,
though he gave an account of it he had not brought back its
right name : ^ at least if I do not mistake, this was the case ;
but it is long since I read^anything about the matter, and
I am willing to begin ray travels again under your ladyship's
auspices. I am sorry to hear. Madam, that by your account
Lady Mary Wortley was not so accurate and faithful as mo
dem travellers. The invaluable art of inoculation, which she
brought from Constantinople, so dear to all admirers of beauty,
and to which we owe, perhaps, the preservation of yours,
stamps her an universal benefactress; and as you rival her in
poetic talents, I had rather you would employ them to cele
brate her for her nostrum, than detect her for romancing.
However, genuine accounts of the interior of seraglios would
be precious ; and I was in hopes would become the greater
rarities, as I flattered myself that your friends the Empress of
Russia and the Emperor were determined to level Ottoman
tyranny. His Imperial Majesty, who has demolished the
prison-bars of so many nunneries, would perform a still more
Christian act in setting free so many useless sultanas ; and her
Czarish Majesty, I trust, would be as great a benefactress to
' As an instance of the monstrous exaggerations of this ancient Mun
chausen, take the foUowing : — " I am a liar if I have not seen in Java
a single sheU in which three men might completely hide themselves,
and aU white ! " He also states himself to have met with whole nations
of giants, twenty-five feet high ; and of pigmies, as many inches. — E.
' In a conversation with Mr. Windham, Dr. Johnson, a few days be
fore his death, " recommended, for an account of China, Sir John Man-
deville's Travels." See BosweU's Johnson, vol. ix. p. 317, ed. 1835. — E.

1787. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 279
our sex, by abohshing the barbarous practice that reduces us
to be of none. Your ladyship's indefatigable peregrinations
should have such great objects in view, when you have the ear
of sovereigns.
Peter the Hermit conjured up the first crusadoes against
the infidels by running about from monarch to monarch.
Lady Craven should be as zealous and as renowned; and
every fair Circassian would acknowledge, that one English
lady had repaid their country for the secret which another
had given to Europe frora their practice.

TO MISS HANNAH MORE.
Berkeley Square, Feb. 23, 1787.
DEAR MADAM,
I NOT only send you " La Cite des Dames," but Chris
tina's Life of Charles the Fifth, which will entertain you
more ; and which, when I wrote my brief history of her, I did
not know she had actually composed. Mr. Dutens told me of
it very lately, and actually borrowed it for me ; and but yes
terday my French bookseller sent me three-and-twenty other
volumes of those Memoires Historiques * which I had ordered
him to get for me, and which will keep ray eyes to the oar for
some time, whenever I have leisure to sail through such an
ocean ; and yet I shall embark with pleasure, late as it is for
me to undertake such a hugeous voyage : but a crew of old
gossips are no improper company, and we shall sit in a
warm cabin, and hear and tell old stories of past times.
Pray keep the volume as long as you please, and borrow as
many more as you please, for each volume is a detached piece.
Yet I do not suppose your friends will allow you rauch time
for reading in town; and I hope I shall often be the better
for their hindering you.*^ Yours most sincerely.
* " Collection des meiUeurs Ouvrages Fran9ais composes par des
Femmes ; " by Mademoiselle Keralio.
' Miss More, in a letter written a few days after, says — " Mr. Wal
pole is remarkably well : yesterday he sent me a very agreeable letter,
with some very thick volumes of curious French M^moii'es, desiring me,

280 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1787.

TO THE REV. HENRY ZOUCH.*
Berkeley Square, March 13, 1787.
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 Straw
berry-hill, where they are, the first time I go thither. I hope
you enjoy your health, and I have the honour to be. Sir, &c.

to

TO MISS HANNAH MORE.^
Strawberry HiU, June 15, 1787.
In your note, on going out of town, you desired rae 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 re
gard 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 remerabrance ; 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
if I like them, to send for the other twenty-three volumes ; a prettv
light undertaking, in this mad town and this short life." Memoirs
vol. ii. p. 49. — E.
' Now first printed. ' Now first coUected.

1787. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 281
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 galamatias 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 attempt
ing impossibihties ; 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* would subscribe to this last sentence.
What English heart ever excelled hers? I should almost
have said equalled, if I were not writing to one that rivals
her. The last time I saw her before I left London, Miss Burney -
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 wait
ing-room. Why should one remember people that forget them
selves ? Oh ! I am sorry I used that expression, as it is
commonly applied to such self-oblivion as Mrs.  ; and
hght and darkness are not more opposite than the forgetful-
' 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 gar
den, — 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 de
voted to such gentle purposes. My very heart is softened when I consi
der that she is now out of the way of your kind attentions, and I fear
that nothing else on earth gives her the smaUest pleasure." Memoirs,
vol. ii. p. 72.— E.
' This highly-gifted young lady had, in the preceding year, been ap
pointed keeper of the robes to the Queen. — E.

282 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1787.
ness to which I alluded, and hers. The former forgetfulness
can forget its own powers and the injuries of others ; the lat
ter 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 dif
ferent 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 thera 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 wUl 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 raeraory her very sincere humble servant.

TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY.
Strawberry HiU, June 17, 1787.
I HAVE very httle to tell you since we met but disappoint
ments, 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. WeU, my castle put on its robes,
breakfast was prepared, and I shoved another company out of

1787. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 283
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 from Lady Pembroke, to say
her Polish altitude had sent her word she had another en
gagement 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 everybody
on the road, whether they chose it or not, to corae in and eat
our soup and biscuits. Methinks this liberum veto was rather
irapertinent, 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 rayself I have not yet compassed the whole
circuit of my own garden, and I have had an inflammation in
one of ray eyes, and don't think I look as well as ray house
and my verdure ; and had rather see my hay-cocks, than the
Duchess of Polignac and Madarae Luborairski. " 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 anything. Lady Constant
was worth an hundred acs 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.

TO THE EARL OF STRAFFORD.
Strawberry HUl, July 28, 1787.
Saint Swithin is no friend to correspondence, my dear
lord. There is not only a great sameness in his own pro
ceedings, but he makes everybody 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 proclaraation 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. Swithin 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

284 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1787.
together at this season. I remember Lady Suffolk telhng 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
Princesse de LambaUe* — et voild 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 hy
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 shilhngs, which would have looked
as well, and might easily have been removed. To be sure,
this exploit, and Lord Dudley's obelisk heloio 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 dipt yews of our an
cestors ;
' Sister to the Prince de Carignan, of the royal house of Sardinia,
and wife of the Prince de LambaUe, only son to the Due de Penthievre.
She was sur-intendante de la maison de la Reine, and, from her attach
ment 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 on£ who has read the accounts of
that heart-rending event — E.

1787. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 285
Bad taste expeUas furcS., tamen usque recurret.
On the contrary, Mrs. Walsingham is making her house
at Ditton (now baptized Boyle-farm) very orthodox. Her
daughter Miss Boyle,* who has real genius, has carved three
tablets in marble with boys, designed by herself Those
sculptures are for a chimney-piece ; and she is painting pan
nels in grotesque for the library, with pilasters of glass in
black and gold. Miss Crewe, who has taste too, has de
corated a room for her mother's house at Richmond, which
was Lady Margaret Corapton's, in a very pretty manner.
How much more amiable the old women of the next age will
be, than raost of those we remeraber, 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 !
TO MISS HANNAH MORE.
Strawberry HUl, Oct. U, 1787.
MY DEAK MADAM,
I AM shocked for human nature at the repeated male
volence of this woman ! ^ The rank soil of riches we are ac
customed 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 hut 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

' Afterwards married to Lord Henry Fitzgerald.
^ 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. U. p. 80. — E.

286 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1787.
Strange, that vanity should expel gratitude ! Does not the
wretched woman owe her fame to you, as well as her af
fluence ? I can testify your labours for both. Dame Yearsley
reminds me of the Troubadours, those vagrants whom I used
to admire tiU 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 I beg your pardon for renewing so dis
gusting a subject and will never mention it again. You have
better amusement ; you love good works, a temper superior to
revenge.* 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,^ whose patience is inexhaustible, though not
insensible. Mrs. Piozzi, I hear, has two volumes of Dr. Johnson's
Letters ready for publication,^ Bruce is printing his Travels ;
which I suppose will prove that his narratives were fabulous,
' Mrs. Yearsley was a woman of strong masculine understanding, and
of a powerful independent mind, which could not brook anything 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 book
seller 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 un
reasonable asperity should have been exhibited on both sides. — G.
^ " 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 caUs ' the soft
quiet green, on which the soul loves to rest ! ' " Hannah More's Me
moirs, vol. ii. p. 80. — E.
* 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

1787. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 287
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 !* I rejoice
that their 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 out
shone them : and till they have excelled Newton, and come
near to Shakspeare, pre-eminence in genius must reraain with
us. I think they are most entitled to triumph over the Ita
lians ; as, with the most meagre and inharmonious of all lan
guages, the French have made more of that poverty in tragedy
and eloquence, than the Italians have done with the lan
guage the raost 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 Fe
bruary. 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 ?
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
Uves, anecdotes, remains, &c. of this great man, ' How many maggots
have crawled out of that great body ! ' " Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 101. — E.
' 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 aUusions 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 estabUshments, whUe they aU 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
aUowed to have given it its greatest vogue. But even now, when most
of these temporary advantages no longer exist, whoever was weU ac
quainted 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.

288 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1787.
TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY.
Berkeley Square, Nov. 11, 1787.
From violent contrary winds,' and by your letter going
to Strawberry HiU, whence I was come, I have but just re
ceived 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 aUowed to operate by those who have
not quite so much of either.
I shall be wonderful glad to see little Master Stonehenge^
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 misletoe in
your temple ; and Mason, on the contrary, will die of vexa
tion 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 ;
• Mr. Conway was at this time at his government in Jersey.
' Mr. Walpole thus calls the small Druidic temple discovered in Jer
sey, 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.

1788. THE HON. HORACE WALtOLE. 289
and, as I forget too what is Latin for Lilhputians, I will make
a bad pun, and say,  Portantur avari
PygmaUonis opes. 

Pygmalion is as well-sounding a narae for such a monarch as
Oberon. Pray do not disappoint me, but transport the ca
thedral* of your island to your domain on our continent. I
figure unborn antiquaries making pilgriraages to visit your
bridge, your daughter's bridge,^ and the Druidic temple ; and
if I were not too old to have any imagination left I would
add a sequel to Mi Li.^ Adieu !

TO THOMAS BARRETT, ESQ."
Berkeley Square, June 5, 1788.
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 at
tempts ; 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 w«re
' The Druidic temple.
" The key-stones of the centre arch of the bridge at Henley are orna
mented with heads of the Thames and Isis, designed by the Hon. Mrs.
Damer, and executed by her in Portland stone.
' One of the Hieroglyphic tales, containing a description of Park-
place. It will be found in Walpole's works.
* Of Lee, in East Kent ; whose seat was built by Mr. Wyatt, and
greatly admired by WalpOle. — E.
VOL. VI. U

290 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1788.
ripe. My house therefore is but a sketch by beginners, yours
is finished by a great master; and if Mr. Matthew hked mine,
it was en virtuose, who loves the dawnings of an art or the
glimmerings of its restoration.
I finished Mr. Gibbon a fuU fortnight ago, and was ex
tremely pleased. It is a most wonderful mass of information,
not only on history, but almost on all the ingredients of his
tory, 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 in striding backwards and for
wards from one set of princes to another, and frora one sub
ject to another ; so that without much historic knowledge,
and without much memory, and much method in one's, me
mory, it is almost irapossible 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 Cathohc or heretic, I wished Mr, Gibbon
had never heard of Mopophysites, Nestorians, or any such
fools ! But the sixth volume made ample amends ; Maho
met 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 ; * but it was impossible he
could, when people had worked themselves into an enthu
siasm of offering fifty — ay, fifty guineas for a ticket to hear
' Of his speech in Westminster-hall, on bringing forward the Begum
charge against Mr. Hastings ; upon which Mr. Burke pronounced the high
eulogium, 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 : — " Yester
day the august scene was closed for this year. Sheridan surpassed him
self ; and, though I am far from considering him as a perfect orator,
there were many beautiful passages in his speech — on justice, filial love,
&c. ; 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.

1788. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 291
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 !

TO THE EARL OF STRAFFORD.
Strawberry Hill, Tuesday night, June 17, 1788.
I GUESS, my dear lord, and only guess, that you are ar
rived 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
tovra the 1st 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 hving here
alone, or with the weird sisters of Richmond and Harapton.
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
hay 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 fort
night I have been foretelling hayraaking 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 very 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 tirae by the
side of the river.
Mr. Conway's play,* of which your lordship has seen some
account in the papers, has succeeded dehghtfully, both in
' A comedy, called " False Appearances," translated from L'Homme
du Jour of Boissy. It was first acted at the private theatre at Rich
mond-house, and afterwards at Drury-lane. — E. u 2

292 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1788.
representation and applause. The language is most genteel,
though translated from verse; and both prologue and epi
logue are charming. The former was delivered raost justly
and adrairably by Lord Derby, and tbe latter with iniraitable
spirit and grace by Mrs. Damer. Mr. Merry and Mrs.
Bruce played excellently too. But General Conway, Mrs.
Damer, and everybody 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 im
pression. 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 Ot
tomans could be punished, they deserved it, but the present
possessors have as good a prescription on their side as any
people in Europe. We ourselves are Saxons, Danes, Nor
mans ; 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. StUl, 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 hve 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 faraihes by the episodes of forage and
quarters ! Oh ! I wish Catherine and Joseph were brought to
Westminster-haU and worried by Sheridan ! I hope, too, that

1788. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 293
the poor Begums are ahve to hear of his speech ; it wiU be
some comfort though I doubt nobody thinks of restoring
them a quarter of a lac !

TO MISS HANNAH MORE.
Strawberry HiU, July 4, 1788.
I AM soundly rejoiced, my dear Madam, that the present
summer is more favourable to me than the last ; and that in
stead of not answering my letters in three months, you open
the campaign first 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 com
plaints have left you. Welcome as is your letter, it would
have been ten tiraes raore welcome bringing me that assur-
rance ; 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.* 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. Everybody reads them, nay
quotes them, though everybody knows they are stuffed with
hes or blunders. How should it be otherwise ? If any ex
traordinary event happens, who but must hear it before it de
scends 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
' 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 elopements, divorces, and sui
cides, tricked out in aU the elegancies of Mr. Topham's phraseology, I
am obliged to be contented with vUlage vices, petty iniquities, and vul
gar sins." Memoirs, vol. U. p. 77. — B.

294 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1788.
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 pubhsh all those calamities which decency to
wretched relations used in compassion to suppress, 1 mean
self-murder in particular. Mr.  's was detaUed at
length ; and to-day that of Lord  and  The
pretence is, in terrorem, like the absurd stake and high
way 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 respect
able magistrates ! Yes, much like the cobblers that Crom
well 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 thera. However, I do not pity good
people who out of virtue lose or miss any pleasures. Those
pastimes fieet 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 ; *
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 mat 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.
' Major Topham was the proprietor of the fashionable morning paper
entitled The World. " In this paper," says Mr. Gifford, in his pre
face to the Baviad, " were given the earliest specimens of those un
qualified and audacious attacks on aU private character, which the town
first smiled at for their quaintness, then tolerated for their absurdity ;
and — 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.
" WhUe the Duke of Dorset, who kept her, was ambassador at Paris.
' The Countess of Salisbury, to the fall of whose garter has been at
tributed the foundation of the order of the Garter.

1788. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 295
Well ! would we committed nothing but folhes ! 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 !

TO MISS HANNAH MORE.
Strawberry HiU, July 12, 1788.
Won't you repent 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 in
clination. 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 compli
ment and ray 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 sum
mon up courage to publish anything I have written, if I could
recall tirae past, and should yet think as I think &t present.

296 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1788.
So much for what is over and out of my power. As to writ
ing 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 raay 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 seventy? 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.'
As I am neither by a thousandth part so great nor a quar
ter so little, I wUl herewith send you a fragment that an ac
cidental rencontre set me upon writing, and which I found so
flat that I would not finish it Don't beheve 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,
' Madame du Deffand, in a letter to Walpole of the 8th of March
1778, says — "Voltaire se porte bien: il est uniquement occupg de sa
trag^die d'Irene ; on assure qu'on la jouera de demain en huit : si eUe
n'a ^as de succes, U en mourra." On the 18th, she again writes  " Le
succes de la piece a €t6 tres mediocre ; il y eut cependant beaucoup de
claquemens de mains, mais c'etait plus Voltaire qui en ^tait I'objet que
la piece." He died in the May following. — E.

1788. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 297
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.*
Of one passage I raust 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 tbe Madams Piozzi, &c. and
the host of novel-writers in petticoats, who think they iraitate
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 pro
raoted to fold rauslins, 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 !

TO THE EARL OF STRAFFORD.
Strawberry HiU, August 2, 1788.
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. Bos
cawen, that a Baron de la Garde (I am sorry there are so
many a's in the genealogy of my story,) has found in a vieille
' The French prince of the blood here spoken of, was Charles Duke
of Orleans, who being taken prisoner at the battle of Azincourt, 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.

298 CORRESPONDENCE OP 1788.
armoire five hundred more letters of Madame de Sevigne, 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.
He is more likely to be acquainted with St Catherine of
Sienna and St Undecimillia ; and therefore I had rather see
the letters theraselves. 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 TEnclos, Pope
Ganganelli, and the Princess Palatine. I have lately been
reading some fragraents of letters of the Duchess of Orleans,
which are certainly genuine, and contain some curious circum
stances; for though she was a simple gossiping old gentle
woman, 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 Ma
jesty, 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 High
ness of Orleans with an intrigue of one of her women of the
bedchamber, Mrs. Selwyn to wit; and the good Duchess en
trusted it to so many other dear friends, that at last it got into
the Utrecht Gazette, and came over hither, to the signal edi
fication of the court of Leicester-fields. This is an addi
tional reason, besides the internal evidence, for my believing
the letters genuine. This old dame was mother of the Re
gent; and when she died, somebody wrote on her tomb, Cy
gist rOisivete. This came over too; and nobody could ex
pound 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 high
nesses will imitate the practice, and write all the trifles that

1788. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 299
occupy their royal brains; for the world so at least learns
some true history, which their husbands never divulge, espe
cially if they are privy to their own history, which their minis
ters 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 comraon
article of ray 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 Thame 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 that
your lordship did not hear Mrs. Damer speak the epilogue !

TO JOHN PINKERTON, ESQ.*
Strawberry HUl, August 14, 1788.
Your intelligence of the jubUees to be celebrated in
Scotland in honour of the Revolution was welcome 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 fiatter
ing 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
¦ Now first collected.

300 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1788.
necessary ingredients of an address to a populous raeeting;
for I doubt our numerous audiences are not arrived at Olym
pic taste enough to seize with enthusiasm the eccentric flights
of Pindar. You have taken a more rational road to inspira
tion, by adhering to the genuine topics of the occasion ; and
you speak in so manly a style, that I do not beheve a raore
corapetent judge could araend 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 raedals. Our nobility
would find their vanity gratified ; for, as the pedigrees of their
steeds would soon grow tiresorae, 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 anything else.

TO MISS HANNAH MORE.*
Strawberry HiU, August 17, 1788.
DEAR MADAM,
In this great discovery of a new mine of Madame de Se
vigne's letters, my faith, I confess, is not quite firm. Do
people seU 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 shUlings of the latter pretend that
the names are effaced, whUe the wares of the former pass
' Now first collected.

1788. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 301
under borrowed names. Have we not seen, besides all the
Testamens Politiques, the spurious letters of Ninon de I'En
clos, 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 works of some classics, yet lost, may be in being, and the
remainder of sorae of the best Yet, at the rate in which they
proceed to unroll, it would take as raany 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 seragho of virgin authors
under the custody of nurses, as of blooming Circassians?
Consider, ray dear Madam, I am past seventy; or I should
not be so ungallant as to make the sraallest eoraparison be
tween the contents of the two harems. Your picture, which
hangs near my elbow, would frown, I am sure, if I had any
light meaning.

TO THE EARL OF STRAFFORD.
Strawberry HUl, Sept. 12, 1788.
My late fit of gout, though very short was a very authen
tic one, my dear lord, and the third I have had since Christ
mas. 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

302 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1788.
lordship's obhging 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 outward man, I doubt your lord
ship 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 raust perceive how insipid they are
grown, both from my decays and from 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 increase 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 dis
tance ; 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 ara 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 pre
vent visionary ideas from improving a prospect.
If, as Lady Anne ConoUy 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

1788. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 303
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 per
sonally kind speeches.
I do not find that her grace the Countess of Bristol's* will
is really known yet They talk of two wills — to be sure, in
her double capacity; and they say she has raade three co
heiresses to her jewels, the Empress of Russia, Lady Salis
bury, and the whore of Babylon.^ The first of those legatees,
I ara not sorry, is in a piteous scrape: I like the King of
Sweden no better than I do her and the Eraperor; 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
bad rivers of rain, it has not, contrary to aU precedent,
washed away our warm weather. September, a month I
generally dislike for its irresolute mixture of warm and cold,
has hitherto been pereraptorily fine. The apple and walnut-
trees bend down with fruit, as in a poetic description of Pa
radise.

TO MISS HANNAH MORE.
Strawberry Hill, Sept. 22, 1788.
I don't hke to defraud you of your compassion, my good
friend, profuse as you are of it 1 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 suW&coA yesterday !" Now me-
' The Duchess of Kingston, who died at Paris in August. — E.
' The newspapers had circulated a report, that the Duchess had be
queathed her diamonds to the Empress of Russia and his Holiness the
Pope.— E.

304 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1788.
thinks 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 ray age.
Much less shall I allow you to make apologies for your
admirable and proper conduct towards your poor protegee.'-
And now you have told me the behaviour of a certain great
dame, I will confess to you that I have known it sorae raonths
by accident — nay, and tried to repair it. I prevailed on
Lady * * * * *j 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 refiection 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 imraediately 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 na
ture 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 had 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 na-
• Ann Yearsley. See ante, p. 286. — E.

1788. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 305
tural 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
-A.nd so Dr. Warton imagines I am writing " Walpoliana !"
No, in truth, nor anything 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 ray
snuff of life flit to the last sparkle of folly, hke what chil
dren call the parson and clerk in a bit of burnt paper. You
see by ray 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 by 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 dehght too in the temperature of your piety, and
that you would not see the enthusiastic exorcist How shock
ing to suppose that the Omnipotent Creator of worlds dele
gates 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
VOL. VI. x

306 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1788.
inveigling fools into their different pales. And alas! while
folly has a shUling left there wiU be enthusiasts and quack
doctors; and there wiU be slaves whUe there are kings or
sugar-planters.* I have remarked, that though Jesuists, &c.
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 hberty, 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 incul
cated in a land where the soil produces diamonds and gold !
In short if your Bristol exorcist behoves he can cast out
devils, why does he not go to Leadenhall-street ? There is a
company whose name is legion.
By your gambols, as you caU them, after the most ungambol-
ing 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
aU our old ladies, has given itself May airs, and raust have
made your journey very pleasant Yet you will be glad to
get back to your Cowshp-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 fuU as good hay to be made in town at
Christmas as at Hampton, and some hay-makers that will wish
for you particularly. Your most sincere friend.
* 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 philo
sophy 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 get
ting as much in London. There is a fortune-teUer in Westminster who
is making Uttle less. Lavater's Physiognomy-books seU at fifteen gui
neas a set. The divining-rod is stiU 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. U. p. 120. — E.

1788. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 307

TO THE RIGHT HON. LADY CRAVEN.
Berkeley Square, Dec. 11, 1788.
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 troubhng with his dotages persons of not near
your ladyship's youth and vivacity. I have long been of
opinion that few persons know when to die; I am not so
English as to mean when to dispatch themselves — no, but
when to go out of the world. I have usually apphed this
opinion to those who have made a considerable figure ; and,
consequently, it was not adapted to myself Yet even we
cyphers ought not to fatigue the public scene when we are be
come 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 Strulbrug-
ism, 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 imraortal war: and how weak was
Garrick, when he had quitted the stage, to limp after the
tatters of fame by writing and reading pitiful poeras ; and even
by sitting to read plays which he had acted vrith 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 flrst edition of the Bath Guide ; for, even in the second,
X2

308 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1788.
he had exhausted his whole stock of inspiration, and has never
written anything tolerable since. When such unequal authors
print their works together, one may apply in a new light the
old hacked simUe 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 ex
pected, because I shall have much less to read than I in
tended. His Memoirs, I am told, are almost wholly mihtary ;
which, therefore, I shaU not read : and his poetry, I am sure,
I shaU 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 ex
cepting 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 Itahan, 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 mea
sures 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 chess-board ? Nay, will you be
lieve 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, done, desormais, are the culprits in question. En/in
done, 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

1789. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 309
excomraunicate a tongue in which your ladyship has con
descended to write;* but I only conderan 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 lan
guage, 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 1 have done, and will release you. Madam; only ob
serving, 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 per
sonage is fallen ! That consideration absorbs all others.
The two Houses are going to settle some interraediate suc
cedaneum ; and the obvious one, no doubt will be fixed on.

TO THE MISS BERRYS.''
February 2, 17—71 ' [1789.]
I AM sorry, in the sense of that word before it meant like
a Hebrew word, glad or sorry, that I am engaged this even-
' Besides writing a comedy in French, caUed " Nourjahad," Lady
Craven had translated into that language Gibber's play of " She would
and She would not." — E.
' This is the first of the series of letters addressed by Mr. Walpole to
Miss Mary and Miss Agnes Berry, and now first published from the ori
ginals in their possession. See Advertisement prefixed to the pre
sent volume. — ^E.
' The date is thus put, aUuding to his age, which, in 1789, was
seventy-one. — M. B.

310 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1789.
ing ; and I am at your command on Tuesday, as it is always
my inclination to be. It is a misfortune that words are be
come so much the current coin of society, that, like King
Wilham'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 raay be changed: but if they
mean too little, they raay seem to mean too much too, espe
cially when an old man (who is often synonymous for a miser)
parts with them. I am afraid of protesting how much I de
light in your society, lest I should seem to affect being gallant;
but if two negatives make an affirmative, why raay not two
ridicules corapose 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.

TO THE MISS BERRYS.
Berkeley Square, March 20, 1789.
Mrs. Damer had lent her Madarae de la Motte,* and I
have but this moment recovered it ; so, you see, I had not for
gotten 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 will 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 wiU 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 iUumination, as is threat
ened, we should neither get thither nor thence; especially not
the latter, if the former is impracticable.
" Quicquid delirant Reges, plectuntur Achivi." =
P. S. I have got a few hairs of Edward the Fourth's head,
not beard; they are of a darkish brown, not auburn.
' The M^moire Justificatif of Madame de la Motte, relative to her
conduct in the far-famed aflair of the necklace. — E.
' Alluding to the pubUc rejoicings on the recovery of George the
Third from his first iUness in 1788. In a letter to her sister, of the 9th

1789. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 311
TO MISS HANNAH MORE.
Berkeley Square, AprU 22, 1789.
DEAR MADAM,
As perhaps you have not yet seen the " Botanic Gar
den" (which I believe I mentioned to you), I lend it you to
read. The poetry, I think, you vrill 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 power
ful a talent has been wasted to so little purpose ; for where
is the use of describing in verse what nobody can under
stand without a long prosaic explanation of every article?
It is stUl raore 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 &c. 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 sub
ject, if anybody had composed a poem on the matches formerly
raade in the Fleet where, as Waitwell says, in " The Way of
the World," they stood like couples in rows ready to begin

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 Ulness, he many times shed
tears for Lord North's blindness. The Bishop had been to him that morn
ing : 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 gaUantly replied, ' he could not possibly go
to bed and sleep tiU he knew she was safe.' There never was so joyous,
so innocent, and so orderly a mob." Memoirs, vol. U. pp. 144-155.-^E.

312 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1789.
a country-dance ? Still, I flatter rayself, you wiU agree with
me that the author is a great poet, and could raise the pas
sions, 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 wiU perhaps be surprised at meeting a truffle converted
into a nymph, and inhabiting a palace studded with emeralds
and rubies hke 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 wiU please you too, a handsome panegyric on
the apostle of humanity, Mr. Howard.*
Mrs. Garrick, whom I had the pleasure of raeeting in her
own box at Mr. Conway's play, gave me a much better ac
count 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 Abbe 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 devo
tion of to-morrow.
A gentleman essayist has printed what he calls sorae stric
tures 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
' " I did not feel," says Miss More, in her reply, " so much gratified
in reading the poem, marveUous as I think it, as I did at the kindness
which led you to think of me when you met with anything which 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 an
notations 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, Uke the most passionate lover, the beauty of the cyclamen, or
honeysuckle; but am as indifl^erent as the most fashionable husband to
their amours, their pleasures, or their unhappiness." Memoirs, vol. U.
p. 149.— E.

1789. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. ' 313
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
coraedy, than two very bad ones. Peace be with such an
swerers ! Adieu, ray dear Madara ! Yours most cordially.

TO THE MISS BERRYS.
AprU 28, at night, 1789.
By my not saying no to Thursday, you, I trust, under
stood 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 glori
ous sirailes about everything in the world, and I defy you to
discover three bad verses in the whole stack. Dryden was but
the prototype of tlie Botanic Garden in his charraing Flower
and Leaf; and if he had less raeaning, it is true he had more
plan: and I must own, that his white velvets and green
velvets, and rubies and emeralds, were rauch 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 intel-
hgible.* ' " Modern ears," says Mr. Mathias, in the Pursuits of Literature
" are absolutely debauched by such poetry as Dr. Darwin's, which marks

314 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1789.
How strange it is, that a man should have been inspired
with such enthusiasm of poetry by poring through a micro
scope, and peeping through the key-holes of all the seraglios
of aU 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 gentleraen.
StiU, 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.

TO THE MISS BERRYS.
Strawberry HiU, Tuesday, June 23, 1789.
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 let
ter till Thursday !
I am not at all consoled for my double loss : my only com
fort is, that I flatter myself the journey and air will be of
service to you both. The latter has been of use to rae, though
the part of the element of air has been chiefly acted by the
element of water, as my poor haycocks feel! Tonton* 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
the decline of simplicity and true taste in this country. It is to Eng
land 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 po
pularity of Dr. Darwin, the admirable poem of " The Loves of the Tri
angles," the joint production of Mr. Canning and Mr. Frere, in no small
degree contributed. — E.
' A dog of Miss Berry's, left in Walpole's care during their absence
in Yorkshire.— M. B.

1789. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 315
he deserves it too, for he is perfectly good-natured and tract
able ; but he is not beautiful, like his " god-dog," as Mr. Sel
wyn, who dined here on Saturday, called my poor late favour
ite;* especially as I have had him clipped. The shearing has
brought to hght a nose an ell long ; and, 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 prin
ciples of an author, and fancied, or wished to raake others be
heve, that no Jacobite could write bad verses, nor a Whig
good. Have you shed a tear over the Opera-house ?2 or do you
agree with rae, that there is no occasion to rebuild it? The
nation has long been tired of operas, and has now a good op
portunity of dropping thera. Dancing protracted their exist
ence 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 raight resort frora 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 of retrenching
St Athanasius's Creed, as the Duke of Grafton proposed, in
order to draw good company to church, it would be more effi
cacious 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.
* The dog which had been bequeathed to Mr. Walpole by Madame du
Deffand at her death, and which was likewise called Tonton. See
antd, p. 120.— M.B.
" On the night of the 17th, the Opera-house was entirely consumed
by fire.— E.

316 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1789.
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 I dread one of you being ill. Mr. Batt* and
the Abbe Nicholls^ dined with me to-day, and I could talk of
you en pais de connoissance. They tried to persuade me that 1
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 anything else
till I have a letter.

TO MISS HANNAH MORE.
Strawberry Hill, June 23, 1789.
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 wUl, " shine
' Thomas Batt, Esq. then one of the commissioners for public ac
counts. — E.
= The Rev. Norton NichoUs, rector of Lound and BradweU, in the
county of Suffolk ; one of the most elegant scholars and accompUshed
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
wUl both be found in the fifth volume of Nichols's Illustrations of Lite
rature. — E.

1789. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 317
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 foUowing 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,* 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 perverse
ness: 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 '11 be shot if they dictated two of the best lines with
two syllables too much in each — nay, you have weakened
one of thera, " Ev'n Gardiner's mind "
is far more expressive than steadfast Gardiner's; and, as
Mrs. Boscawen says, whoever knows anything of Gardiner,
could not want that superfluous epithet; and whoever does
not, would not be the wiser for your foolish insertion — Mrs.
BoscaVen did not call it foolish, but I do. The second line,
as Mesdemoiselles the Muses handed it to you. Miss, was,
¦ " Bishop Bonner's Ghost j " 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 Io ! suddenly up started from the
chair the Ghost of Bonner; who, in a tone of just and bitter indigna
tion, uttered the foUowing verses." — E.

318 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1789.
" Have all be free and saved — "
not, " AU 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 raost new
and beautiful expression, "sponge of sins;" I should not
have been surprised, as you love verses too full of feet, if
you had 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 '11
tell you what ; I will forgive all your enormities, if you will
let me print your poem. I like to filch a little imraortahty
out of others, and the Strawberry press could never have a
better opportunity. I will not haggle for the public; I 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.*
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.
' Miss More, in her reply, says—" I send this under cover to the Bi
shop 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 not 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.

1789. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 319

TO MISS BERRY.
Strawberry HiU, June 30, 1789.
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 weight {si weight y a) against the
corner of the marble altar, on my side, and bruised the
muscles so badly, that for two days I could not move with
out screaming.* I am convinced I should have broken a rib,
but that I fell on the cavity whence two of my ribs were
reraoved, 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 ray wives return. And now
to answer your letter.
If you grow tired of the Arabian Nights, you have no raore
taste than Bishop Atterbury,'' 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
jiEneas's. What woful invention were the nasty poultry that
dunged on his dinner, and ships on fire turned into Nereids !
' 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. U. p. 158.— E.
" The foUowing are the Bishop's expressions : — " And now. Sir, for
your Arabian Tales. IU as I have been, almost ever since they came to
hand, I have read as much of them as ever I shaU 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 gathered of the
Eastern ceremonies and manners. — E.

320 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1789.
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:* I should think
not because I never saw any otber Oriental composition that
was not bombast without genius, and figurative without na
ture; 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 Sul-
taness's narratives very natural or very probable, but there
is a wildness in them that captivates. However, if you could
wade through two octavos^ of Dame Piozzi's though's and so's
and / trow's, and cannot listen to seven volumes of Schehere-
zade's narrations, I wUl sue for a divorce in foro Parnassi,
and Boccalini shall be my proctor. The cause will be a
counterpart to the sentence of the Lacedaeraonian, 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 ara so soon to re
peat; 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
" StiU with my fav'rite Berrys to remain." '
So, you was not quite satisfied, though you ought to have
been transported, with King's College Chapel, because it has
' The work entitled " MiUe et Une Nuits," was translated from an
original Arabic manuscript, in the King of France's library, by M. Gal-
land, professor of Arabic in the University of Paris. It aooeared in
1704-8, in twelve volumes.— E. ^^
" Her " Observations and Reflections made in the course of a Journey
through France, Italy, and Germany," honoured with a couplet in the
Baviad — " See Thrale's grey widow with a satchel roam.
And bring in pomp laborious nothings home."  E.
' A line from some verses that he had received. — M. B.

1789. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 321
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. Cri
ticism and comparison spoil many tastes. You should ad
mire 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 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 huraan affairs, it is fortunate when
taste happens to be regent.

TO MISS HANNAH MORE.
Strawberry HiU, July 2, 1789.
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 ray
using you ill now and then ; for is there any precedent for
gratitude not giving way to every other duty? Gratitude,
hke an earl's eldest son, is but titular, and has no place upon
trials. But I fear I ara 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 worth
less self-love ; sometimes to the rarity of the pieces, and sorae
times to the raerit 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
VOL. VI. Y

322 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1789.
side, instead of breaking a rib, camphire infused in arque
busade 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 ™y dear
Madam, I should be blameable for the reverse. If I would
live to seventy-two, ought I not to compound for the encum
brances 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 preroga
tives of old age, and to plead them against anything that I
have not a mind to do. Young raen 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 theraselves ; and shiver in a white waistcoat,
because ancient almanacks, copying the Arabian, placed the
month of June after May ; though, when the style was re
formed, 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 desir6 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 book
seller, and have a second edition ready to appear soon after
mine is finished ? The difficulty of getting my edition at first

1789. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 323
frora the paucity of the nuraber and frora 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 nuraber. I wish to raise an additional ap
petite to that which everybody 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 ray printer must
prepare ink, balls, &c. ; 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 raore, but to repeat my thanks for your con
sent, 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.

TO MISS BERRY.
Strawberry HUl, July 9, 1789.
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 weather-cock for an east wind in Yorkshire.
What a shame that I should recover from the gout and
from bruises, as 1 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 just now, as I was reading your
letter in my bedchamber, while some of my customers'^ are see
ing the house, I heard a gentleman in the armoury ask the
* The name given by Mr. Walpole to parties coming to view his
house. — M. B. y 2

324 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1789.
housekeeper as he looked at tbe bows and arrows, " Pray,
does Mr. Walpole shoot?" No, nor with pistols neither.
I leave aU weapons to Lady Salisbury* and Mr. Lenox ;'^ 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 1 believe
very momentous indeed. What httle 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 mea
sure 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 intelhgence, and therefore pretend
only to send you detached scraps. Force being still in re
quest, the Due 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 sus
pected to lean to them. In short Marshal Broglio is ap
pointed 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 VersaiUes. That he is playing a
deep game is certain. It is reported that Madame Necker
tastes previously everything he swallows.' A vast camp is
' 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' pa
troness of the art of archery and a first-rate equestrian. In Novem
ber 1835, at the age of eighty-four, she was burnt to death at Hatfield-
house. — E.
' In consequence of a dispute, concerning words said to have been
spoken at Daubigny'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.
= On the llth of July, two days after the date of this letter, Necker

1789. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 325
forming round Paris ; but the army is mutinous — the tragedy
may begin on the other side. They do talk of an engage
ment at Metz, where the French troops, espousing the po
pular cause, were attacked by two German regiments, whom
the former cut to pieces. The Duke and Duchess of Devon
shire, 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 civU 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 Mau-
peou, 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 rauch,
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 raore 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 hberty 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 I was struck
with one of his letters to La Chalotais, who was a true up-
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 di
vulging his intention to any one, he set out in the evening, with Ma
dame Necker, for Basle. See Mignet, tom. i. p. 47. — E.

326 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1789.
right patriot and martyr too. In the 221st Letter of the
sixth volume, Voltaire says to him, " Vous avez jette 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
halfpenny-worth 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 near
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 newsraonger,
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 happUy do not deal in
such wares. Adieu ! I used to think the month of Sep
tember the dullest of the whole set ; now I shall be impatient
for it.

TO MISS HANNAH MORE.
Strawberry HiU, July 10, 1789.
Though I am touchy enough vrith 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 acci
dent that made you think yourself remiss.* I enjoy your pa-
' " You wiU think me a great brute and savage, dear Sir, for not
having directly thanked you for your letter, tiU you have read my pUce
justificative, and then you wiU 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 caU 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

1789. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 327
tient'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 assuraing 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 reci
procal humility. Pray tell me how I shall convey your parcel
to you : the impression is begun. I shall not dare, vu le svjet,
to send a copy to Mrs. Garrick ; * 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 raore corrections to raake. 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 per
suaded that he makes amends by greater beauties : in such
case docility deserves the palm-branch. I do not applaud
your declining a London edition ; but you have been so tract
able, 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 pUfer from everybody they find on the road.

TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY.
Strawberry HiU, Wednesday night. [July IS, 1789.]
I WRITE a few lines only to confirm the truth of rauch
of what you will read in the papers from Paris. Worse may
already be come, or is expected every hour.
out of danger; but our attendance, day and night, on the maimed lady
and the distressed husband banished poetry from my thoughts, and sus
pended all power of writing nonsense." Miss More to Walpole. Me
moirs, vol. ii. p. 160. — E.
' Mrs. Garrick was a Roman Catholic. — E.

328 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1789.
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. Breteuil, who was
at his country-house, had been sent for to succeed hira. 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 BastiUe,* 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 re
deemed himself by pretending to be dispatched by the tiers
etat. Madame de Calonne told Dutens, that the newly en
camped 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 ^^^ then
skips imagination six-and-forty years lower, and figures their
fugitive majesties taking refuge in this country. I have be
sides another idea. If the Bastille conquers, still is it irapos
sible, 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 despot
ism 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 wUl ever summon etats again, if this moraent
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 probabihties ;
but chance and folly are apt to contradict calculation, and
' For an interesting account of the storming and destruction of the
Bastille, on the 14th of July, see Mr. Shoberl's valuable translation of
M. Thiers's " Histoiy of the French Revolution," vol. i. p. 59. — E.

1789. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 329
hitherto they seem 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 Or
leans or Mirabeau to be built du bois dont on les fait ; no, nor
Monsieur Necker.* 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, be
sides 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 won
der we so frequently complain of long rains. The saying
about St Swithin is a proof of how often they recur ; for pro
verbial sentences are the children of experience, not of pro
phecy. Good night ! In a few days I shall send you a beau
tiful little poem from the Strawberry press.

TO MISS HANNAH MORE.
Strawberry HiU, Monday night, July 20, 1789.
MY EXCELLENT FRIEND,
I NEVER shall be angry with your conscientiousness,
though I will 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.'* The seeds are sprung up
' " It was in vain," says Sir Walter Scott, " that the Marquis de BouUle
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 privUeged orders, and that the latter
would soon experience the e£Fects of their hatred. Necker calmly re
plied, 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 enlight
ened 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.
= With the view of making Bishop Porteus and Walpole better known

330 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1789.
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 partiahty, 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 anything to do with them.
According to your order, I have delivered Ghosts'^ to Mrs.
Boscawen, Mrs. Garrick, Lady Juliana Penn, Mrs. Walsing
ham, 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 episco-
palities in glass, and the brave hall, &c. &c. Though it
rained, I would crawl to Bonner's chair. In short, my satis
faction would have been complete, but for wanting the pre
sence of that jesuitess, " the good old papist."
To-morrow departs for London, to be dehvered to the
Bristol coach at the White-horse-cellar in PiccadUy, 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
to each other, Miss More had committed what she called a double
treachery, in showing to the Bishop a letter she had received from Wal
pole, and to Walpole one sent her by the Bishop. — E.
' Though the author of this poem must have been known to so many
individuals in the year 1789, the secret was so weU kept, that it was
actually printed in the Gentleman's Magazine for February 1804 as the
production of Walpole. — ^E.

1789. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 331
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 par
cel. 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 bene
volence. Adieu I pray write. I need not virite 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 hohday.

TO MISS BERRY.
Strawberry HiU, July 29, 1789.
I HAVE received two dear letters from you of the 18th
and 25th ; and though you do not accuse me, but say a thou
sand kind things to rae in the most agreeable raanner, 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 moraent I please to expect one. You
talk of raine ; but, if you knew how I hke 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 perpetuaUy. The quintessence of your last but
one was, in telling rae you are better : how fervently do I
wish to receive such accounts every post. But who can
raend but old I, in such detestable weather ? — not one hot
day ; and, if a morning shines, the evening closes with a heavy
shower.

332 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1789.
Of French news I can give you no fresher or more authen
tic account than you can collect in general from tbe news
papers ; but my present visitants and everybody else confirm
the veracity of Paris being in that anarchy that speaks the
populace domineering in the most cruel and savage raanner,
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 phrenzy force him to be so, it is impossible to foresee ;
but much may happen first. The rage seems to gain tbe pro
vinces, and threatens to exhibit the horrors of those times
when the peasants massacred the gentleraen. 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, be
cause I hear ; but draw on you for no credit. Having experi
enced last winter, in superaddition 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 dis
torted information that comes from Paris through the me
dium of London ?
You asked me in one of your letters who La Chalotais
was. I answer, premier president or avocat^general, 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 Due 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 busi
ness with, or to be sent for by, the Due de la Vrilliere, secre
tary of state ; a courtier- wretch, whose mistress used to sell
lettres de cachet for a louis.* Calonne was left to wait in the
' The Due de la VriUiere was dismissed in 1775, and succeeded by M.

1789. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 333
antechamber ; but being, as he said, suddenly called in to the
minister, as he was reading (a most natural soil for such a lec
ture) the letter of his friend, he by a second natural inadvert
ence left the fatal letter on tbe chimney-piece. The conse
quence, much more natural, was, that La Chalotais was com
raitted to the Chateau 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 Due de Choi
seul sent a counter reprieve by an express and a cross-road,
and saved him.* At the beginning of this reign he was re
stored. Paris, however, was so indignant at the treachery,
that this Calonne was hissed out of the theatre, when I was in
that capital.^ When I heard, some years after, that a Calonne
was made controUeur-general, I concluded 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 intend
ant, 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 ray finishing this : part left me at
noon, the residue are to come to-morrow. To-day I have
dined at Fulham ' along with Mrs. Boscawen ; but St Swithin
de Malesherbes. Madame du Defland's letter to Walpole of June 26,
1774, contains the following epigram on him : —
" Ministre sans talent ainsi que sans vertu.
Convert d'ignominie autant qu'on le pent etre,
Retire-toi done ! Qu'attends-tu }
Qu'on te jette par la fenetre ? " — E.
' 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.
' " 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 Chalotais." Thiers, vol. i. p. 5. — E.
' With Bishop Porteus. " I fear," writes Hannah More, on hearing of
this dinner, " I shall secretly triumph in the success of my fraud, if
has contributed to bring about any intercourse between the Abbey of
Fulhimi and the Castle of Otranto. It sounds so ancient and so feudal!

334 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1789.
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 be had ever seen so bad a winter, replied, " Yes, just such
an one last summer ! " — and here is its youngest brother I
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 ara much acquainted
with him, and do not hold hira 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 victira to
tumultuary jealousy and outrage.* 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
Due de Chatelet, lately built and superb, has been assaulted,
and the furniture sold by auction ; ^ 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 fiames 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
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 everything but
happy ; and I know a great many others who sing, and 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.
' On the 16th of July, five days after the dismissal of M. Necker, the
National Assembly obtained his recal. 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 daUy 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 As
sembly 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 quaUfied to observe closely or to guide."  E.
^ The Duke, who was colonel of the King's guard, narrowly escaped
assassination. — E.

1789. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 335
have required the King to write to every foreign power not
to harbour the execrable author, who is fied.* I fear this
conflagration will not end as rapidly as that in Holland !

TO JOHN PINKERTON, ESQ.^
Strawberry Hill, July 31, 1789.
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 close round rae the moment I have passed them,
and I retain no meraory of the ground I have trod. I greatly
admire your penetration, and read with wonder your clear dis
covery 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 re
member thera with any precise discrimination frora any other
Hyperborean nation : and all the barbarous names at tbe end
of the first volume, and the gibberish in the Appendix, was
to me as uninteUigible as if I repeated Abracadabra; and
raade no impression on me but to raise respect of your pa
tience, and admire a sagacity that could extract meaning and
suite from what seemed to me the raost indigestible of all ma
terials. You rise in my estimation in proportion to the dis
agreeable mass of your ingredients. What gave me pleasure
that I felt was the exquisite sense and wit of your Introduc
tion ; and your masterly handling and confutation of the Mac-
' After an inquiry, instituted by the National Assembly, the whole was
found to be a villanous fabrication. — E.
' Now first collected.

336 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1789.
phersons, Whitaker, &c. there and through your work. Ob
jection I have but one, I think you make yourself too much a
party against the Celts. 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 trifiing 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 dis
orders have dulled both my curiosity and attention, as well as
weakened my memory ; and I cannot fix ray 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 abihties : 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 raore 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 read by snatches and intervals ; espe
cially as the novelty, to me at least requires some helps to
connect it with the memory.

TO MISS HANNAH MORE.*
Strawben-y HUl, August 9, 1789.
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 ray edition of your Ghost,
and with the brown copy. Everybody is charmed with your
' Now first collected.

1789. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 837
poem : I have not heard one breath but of applause. In con
firmation, I enclose a note to me from the Duchess of Glou
cester, 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.*
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 Indian 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 meraory 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 rayself, I ara 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 CowsUps, sour my Strawberry HiU ;
My fruits are faUen, your blossoms flourish stiU.

' 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 wiU 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, ' Never mind whether they praise or abuse your writings ; anything
is tolerable except obUvion.'" Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 169. — E.
VOL. VI. z

338 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1789.
Mrs. Boscawen told me last night, that she had received
a long letter from you, which makes me flatter myself you
have had no return of your nervous complaints. Mrs. Wal
singham I have seen four or five times : Miss Boyle has de
corated their house most charmingly; she has not only de
signed, but carved in marble, three beautiful bas-reliefs, with
boys, for a chimney-piece; besides painting elegant pannels
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 ray Macbethian wizardess would tell me
" that Cowshp 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.

TO JOHN PINKERTON, ESQ.*
Strawberry HiU, August 14, 1789.
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, ray want of apprehension and raemory,
and ray total ignorance of the subject which I intended to
blame. I never did taste or study the very ancient his
tories 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 comraon, I forget numbers of names most famihar
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
' Now first collected.

1789. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 339
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 revert
ing 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 sraall, 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 raatter as it ought to be treated. Profound men or con
versant in the subject, like Mr. Dempster, wUl 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 think
ing me very silly ; and I am too candid to condemn any man
for thinking of rae as I deserve. I ara 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,
z 2

340 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1789.
with arguments and proofs; but, if you would adapt anti
quities 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 1 call this recipe, you, I beheve, 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, &c.

TO JOHN PINKERTON, ESQ.*
Strawberry HiU, August 19, 1789.
I WILL not use many words, but enough, I hope, to con
vince 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 at
tempted to sneer at you or your pursuits. Mine have always
been light and trifling, and tended to nothing but my casual
arauseraent ; I will not say, without a little vain ambition of
showing some parts; but never with industry sufficient to
make me apply them to anything solid. My studies, if they
could be called so, and my productions, were alike desultory.
In my latter age I discovered the futility 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,
' Now first coUected.

1789. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 341
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 the way
of making deep writings palatable to the mass of readers.
Examine my words; and I am sure you will find that if
there was anything ironic in my meaning, it was levelled
at your readers, not at you. It is ray 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 pur
pose. Do not you believe that twenty name Lucretius be
cause of the poetic coraraenceraent of his books, for five
that wade through his philosophy ?
I promised to say but httle ; and, if I have explained my
self clearly, I have said enough. It is not I hope, my cha
racter to be a flatterer : I do most sincerely think you capa
ble 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
terrainated. I do not want you to throw a few daisies on ray
grave ; and if you make the figure I augur you will, I shall
not be a witness to it Adieu, dear Sir !

TO RICHARD GOUGH, ESQ.
Strawberry HiU, August 24, 1789.
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 reraain. It appears as strange, that, when a spirit
of restoration and decoration has taken place, it should be
raixed 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' even by sight, and
' Dr. Shute Barrington; in 1791, translated to the see of Durham. — E.

342 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1789.
certainly have no credit to obstruct any of his plans. Should
I get sight of Mr. Wyatt, which it is not easy to do, I will
reraonstrate against the intended alteration; but probably
without success, as I do not suppose he has authority enough
to interpose effectually: stiU I wUl try. It is an old com
plaint with rae. Sir, that when faraihes are extinct chapters
take the freedom of removing ancient monuraents, and even
of selhng over again the sites of such torabs. A scandalous,
nay, dishonest abuse, and very unbecoming clergymen ! 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 se
veral out of the reach of such a kind of siraoniacal abuse ;
for to buy into the church, or to sell the church's land
twice over, breathes a simUar 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.*

TO THE MISS BERRYS.
Strawberry HiU, Thursday evening, Aug. 27, 1789.
I JUMPED for joy, — that is, my heart did, which is all the
remain of me that is in statu jumpante, — at the receipt of your
' 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 foUowing 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 em
ployed, and a mind more embued with the principles of Gothic architec
ture."— E.

1789. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 343
letter this morning, which tells me you approve of the house
at Teddington. How kind you was to answer so inconti
nently ! I believe you borrowed the best steed from the races.
I have sent to the landlord to corae to me to-morrow : 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 thera ; by every kind of merit, and by that super
lative one to me, your submitting to throw away so much
time on a forlorn antique — you two, who, without specifying
particulars, (and you raust, at least, be conscious that you are
not two frights,) might expect any fortune and distinctions,
and do delight all corapanies. On which side lies the won
der? Ask me no more such questions, or I will cram you
with reasons.
My poor dear niece* grows worse and worse: the raedical
people do not pretend to give us any hopes ; they only say
she may last some weeks, which I do not expect, nor do ab
sent 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 Rich
mond,^ who wanted me to meet her raother, sister,^ and Gene
ral Conway, at Goodwood next week.
I wish Lady FitzwiUiam raay 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
' The Countess of Dysart.— M. B.
' Lady Mary Bruce, daughter of the Earl of Ailesbury, by CaroUne
CampbeU, daughter of General John Campbell, afterwards Duke of
Argyle.— M. B.
' 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 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1789.
four, 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 home
bred. 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
sraall wares in which the societies at Richraond and Hamp
ton-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 wUl 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 accomrao
dating! 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 want
ing, it shall be supplied.

TO THE MISS BERRYS.
Strawberry HiU, Sept. 4, 1789.
You ask whether I will call you wise or stupid for leav
ing 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 blameable, the better ; as
increasing the stock of ideas early wiU 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,* which
was obligingly given; but as I am very proud for you, I
should have dishked your being included in a mobbish kind
* The Prince of Wales and the Duke of York were going to receive
a great entertainment at Wentworth House. — M. B.

1789. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 345
of cohue. You two are not to go where any other two misses
would have been equally prices, and where people would have
been thinking of the princes raore than of the Berrys, Be
sides, princes are so rife now, that, besides my sweet nephew*
in the Park, we have another at Richmond: the Duke of
Clarence has taken Mr. Henry Hobarf s house, point-blank
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,^ and of all the other
pious matrons a la ronde ; for his Royal Highness, to divert
lonesomeness, has brought with him  , who, being
still raore averse to solitude, declares that any tempter would
make even Paradise more agreeable than a constant tite-d-tete.
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^ 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 Richraond, 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 forgot
ten, 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 frora her husband, upon a gallantry she had with Dal
ton, the reviver of Comus and a divine. She retired into
the country; corresponded, as you see by her letters, with the
' The Duke of Gloucester.— E. ' Lady Greenwich.
" 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 mUes round." — E.

346 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1789.
smaU poets of that time; but, having no Theseus amongst
them, consoled herself, as it is said, hke Ariadne, with
Bacchus.* This might be a fable, hke that of her Cretan
Highness — no matter ; the fry of little anecdotes are so nu
merous 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.
Gra'mercy 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 alraost 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 scissars 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 ara just corae from Cambridge's, where I have not been
in an evening, time out of raind. Major Dixon, ahas " the
Charraing-man," "* is there; but I heard nothing of the Em
peror's rickets:^ a great deal, and many horrid stories, of
' Lady Luxborough died in 1756. Her letters to Shenstone were pub
lished 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 Mis
cellany, and Walpole has introduced her ladyship into his Noble Au
thors. — E.
2 Edward Jerningham, Esq. of Cossey, in Norfolk, uncle to the present
Lord Stafford. He was distinguished in his day by the name of Jer
ningham the poet ; but it was an unpoetical day. The stars of Byron,
of BaUlie, 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.
' This alludes to something said in a character which Mr. Jerningham
had assumed, for the amusement of a society some time before at Marshal
Conway's. — M. B.

1789. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 347
the violences in France; for his brother, the Chevalier Jer
ningham, is just arrived from Paris. You have heard of the
destruction of thirty-two chateaus in Burgundy, at the in
stigation of a demon, who has since been broken on the
rack. There is now assembled near Paris a body of six
teen thousand deserters, daily increasing; who, they fear,
will encamp and dictate to the capital, in spite of their mi
htia 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 raay perceive, by the forraer part of ray letter, that
I have been dipping into Spenser again, though he is no
passion of mine : there I hghted 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 Chevaliere.
She looked more feminine, as I remember her, in regimentals,
than she does now. She is at best a hen-dragoon, or an
Herculean hostess. I wonder she does not make a cam
paign in her own country, and offer her sword to the almost-
dethroned monarch, as a second Joan of Arc* Adieu ! for

' Miss More gives the following account of this extraordinary charac
ter : — " On Friday I gratified the curiosity of many years, by meeting at
dinner Madame la ChevaUfere 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 Bur
gundy ; 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 miUtary conversation. Sometimes it was, ' Quand
j'^tais colonel d'un tel regiment ;' then again, ' Non, c'etait quand
j'^tais secretaire d'ambassade du Due de Nivernois,' or ' Quand je ne-
gociais 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.

348 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1789.
three weeks 1 shaU 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.

TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY.
Strawberry HUl, Sept. 5, 1789.
You speak so unpereraptorily 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 prac
tised 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 raatter, such a
trifle is below criticism.
I am still here, in no uncertainty, God knows, about poor
Lady Dysart* of whom there are not the smallest hopes.
She grows weaker every day, and does actually stiU go out
for the air, and may languish raany days, though raost pro
bably will go off in a moment, as the water rises. She re
tains 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
' 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.

1789. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. .S49
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 I am so un-
walking, that prospects are more agreeable to me when framed
and glazed, and I look at thera 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 terap-
tation 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 sepa
rate 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 milhons 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 me
liorated, 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 parliaraents
that have preserved rational freedora. Let me know when it
will be convenient to you to receive me. Adieu !

TO MISS HANNAH MORE.
Strawberry HiU, Sept. — , 1789.
I KNOW whence you wrote last but not where you are
now ; you gave me no hint 1 believe you fly lest I should pur-

350 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1789.
sue, 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. You tell me too, that you like I should
scold you; but since you have appeared as Bonner's ghost
I think I shaU 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 flnd but a fraction of
vanity in the sum total, you wiU faU to repenting, and come
forth on Monday as humble as * * *. Then, if I huff my
heart out you wiU only simper, and stiU wrap yourself up
in your obstinate goodness. Well ! take your own way ; I
give you up to all 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.* For the poor soul itself,
I had no iU wiU to it: on the contrary, it was a curious
saraple 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 agree
able to the ideas of a mob, who do not know stones and
bars and bolts from a lettre de cachet. If the country re
mains free, the Bastille would be as tame as a ducking-
stool, now that there is no such thing as a scold. If des
potism recovers, the Bastille will rise from its ashes ! — re
cover, I fear, it will. The Etats cannot remain a mob of
kings, and will prefer a single one to a larger mob of kings
' 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 arisefrom 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.

1789. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 351
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 ver
tigo does not proraise 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 melio
rate the stock of liberty, though for some tirae their majesties
will be mighty tender of the rights of their subjects.
According to this hypothesis, I can administer some com
fort 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 atterapt will have alarmed their butchers
enough to raake thera gentler, hke 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 may be impracticable ;
but 1 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 la
bour of the human species. How many mills and inven
tions have there not been discovered to supply succeda-
neuras to the work of the hands, and which before the
discoveries would have been treated as visions ! It is true,
raanual 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

S52 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1789.
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 facto, 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 start
ing new game to invention : many excellent discoveries have
been made by men who were d la chasse of something very
different. I am not quite sure that the arts 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.*
I will not ask you about the new History of Bristol,^ be
cause 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' ceuvres of Chatterton's igno
rance, and of Mr. Barrett's too; and on two letters pre
tended 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 dairy
maid had invented Dutch tUes; it would be like Chatter
ton'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
' To this passage Miss More thus repUes :— " Your project for reliev
ing our poor slaves by machine work is so far from being wild or chime
rical, that of three persons deep and able in the concern (Mr. Wilber
force among others), not one but has thought it rational and practicable,
and that a plough may be so constructed as to save much misery." Me
moirs, vol. ii. p. 187.- — E.
= " The History and Antiquities of Bristol, by WiUiam Barrett:"
Bristol, 1789, quarto; a work which Mr. Park described as "a mot
ley compound of real and superstitious history." — E.

1789. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 353
writer stUl affirms that according to my own account my
reply was too much in the common-place style of court-
replies. Now my own words, and the truth, as they stand
in print in the very letter of raine 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 bear they do.
I have kept this letter some days in my writing-box, tUl
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 I wish you may come to Hampton before I leave
these purlieus ! Yours More and More.

TO MISS HANNAH MORE.
Strawberry Hill, Nov. 4, 1789.
I AM not surprised, ray dear Madara, that the notice of
my illness should have stimulated your predominant quahty,
your sensibihty. I 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 angehc, and has left no children. The un
expected death of Lord Waldegrave,* one of the raost amiable
of men, has not only deprived me of him, but has opened a
' George fourth Earl of Waldegi-ave, born in 1751 ; married, in 1782,
his cousin Lady Elizabeth Laura Waldegi-ave, daughter of James, the
second Earl. He died on the 22nd of October. — E.
VOL. VI. 2 A

354 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1789.
dreadful scene of calamities ! He and my niece were the
happiest and most domestic of couples.
Your kind inquiries after me have drawn these detaUs from
me, for which I make no excuse : good-nature never grudges
its pity. I, who love to force your gravity to sraUe, am seri
ously better pleased to indulge your benevolence with a sub
ject of esteera, which, though moving your compassion, wiU be
accompanied by no compunction. I wiU now answer your let
ter. Your plea, that not composition, but business, has occa
sioned your silence, is no satisfaction to me. In my present
anxious sohtude I have again read Bonner and Florio, and the
Bas Bleu ; and do you think I am pleased to learn that you
have not been writing ? Who is it says something hke this
line ? — Hannah wUl not write, and LactiUa 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 conterapt for those who can suppose such a possibility !
I ara 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 mor
tification.* You rejoice me, not my vanity, by telling rae my idea of a
mechanic succedaneum to the labour of negroes is not vision
ary, but thought practicable. Oh ! how I wish I understood
sugar and ploughs, and could marry them ! Alas ! I under
stand nothing useful. My head is as un-mechanic as it is un-
arithraetic, un-georaetric, un-raetaphysic, un-commercial : but
' Mr. Barrett was the person who first encouraged Chatterton to pub
lish the poems which he attributed to Rowley. He was a respectable
surgeon at Brii^tol. — E.

1789. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 355
will not some one of those superior heads to whom you have
talked on my indigested hint reduce it to practicabihty? How
a feasible scheme would stun those who call humanity roman
tic, and show, from the books of the Custom-house, that mur
der is a great improvement of the revenue ! Even the pre
sent situation of France is favourable. Could not Mr. Wil
berforce 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
laws, 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 sorae students in physic on the gentlest raode 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 com
mittee 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,* and yet it is natural for an historian to like to
describe times of action. Halcyon days do not furnish raatter
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
' Miss More, in her last letter, had said — " What a pity it is that
Vertot is not aUve ! that man's element was a state convufcion ; he hop
ped over peaceful intervals, as periods of no value, and only seemed to
enjoy himself when aU the rest of the world was sad. Storm and tem
pest were his halcyon days." — E. 2 A 2

356 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1790.
where they are unhappy, they give the audience full satisfac
tion, and no envy. The newspapers, no doubt, thought Dr.
Priestley could not do better than to espouse you.* He cer
tainly would be very judicious, could be obtain your consent ;
but alas ! you would soon squabble about Socinianasjw, or
some of those isms. To tell you tbe 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 dehghtful ; but don't muddify your charming simpli
city with controversial distinctions, that wUl 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 ?^
Lac mihi — novum non frigore desit.
Adieu ! my amiable friend ! Yours most sincerely.

TO MISS HANNAH MORE.
Berkeley Square, Feb. 20, 1790.
It is very provoking that people must always be hanging
or drowning themselves, or going mad, that you forsooth,
' 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.
= Ann Yearsley's tragedy, which had just been represented, with Uttle
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.

1790. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 357
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 araiable,
when you raight be ten tiraes more agreeable by writing things
that would not cost one above half-a-crown at a time.* You
are an absolutely walking hospital, and travel about into lone
and bye places, with your doors open to house stray casual
ties ! 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 sorae
such goody two or three thousand years ago that suggested
the idea of an alraa-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). If you cannot circumscribe
your own charities, you shall not stint raine. 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 op.i
portunities 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 wUl last for ever in my catalogue, and make
me iramortal ! Alas ! will they cover a raultitude of sins ?
Adieu ! I cannot jest after that sentence. Yours sincerely.

TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY.*
Strawberry HiU, June 25, 1790.
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
' 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.
' Now first printed.

358 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1790.
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 ray niece Keppel. I pity Charles Fox to
be kept on the Westrainster gridiron.* Before I carae out of
town, I was diverted by a story from the hustings : one of the
mob called 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 V
I am very sorry Mrs. Damer is so tormented, but I hope
the new infiamraation will relieve her. As I was writing that
sentence this raorning, Mesdames de Boufflers came to see
me from Richmond, and brought a Comte de Moranville to
see ray 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
am 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 sacri
fice on the altar of peace.
I stick fast at the beginning of the first volume of Bruce,*
though I am told it is the most entertaining ; but I am sick of
his vanity, and (I beheve) of his want of veracity ; 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 rae, and I trerable 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 !
* At the close of the election, on the 2nd of July, the numbers were,
for Mr. Fox 3516, Lord Hood 3217, and Mr. Home Tooke 1697. — E.
^ 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, whUe 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.

1790. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 359
TO THE EARL OF STRAFFORD.
Strawberry HiU, June 26, 1790.
I DO not forget your lordship's commands, though I do
recollect my own inabihty 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 aufait of war or peace ; I hope for the latter, nay
and expect it, because it is not yet war. Pride and anger do
not dehberate 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 bar
barity, need to be counted in making the experiment. Such
legislators are sublime empirics, and in their universal benevo
lence have very little individual sensibility. In short, the re
sult of my reflections on what has passed in Europe for these
latter centuries is, that tyrants have no consciences, and re
formers no feeling ; and the world suffers both by tbe plague
and by the cure. What oceans of blood were Luther and
Calvin the authors of being spilt ! The late French govern
ment 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 coraraonly
ruined ; while others raake fortunes on the foundation laid by
the inventors.

360 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1790.
TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY.
Strawberry HiU, Wednesday night, July 1, 1790.
It is certainly not from having anything 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 be
fore 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 shpper. However, as I am rauch
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 all Yasouses and Ozo-
ros ? 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 thorn-bush, and was forced to leave his clothes behind him ?
Is it your faith, that one of their Abyssinian Majesties plead
ed not being able to contribute towards sending for a new
Abuna,, because he had spent all his money at Venice in look
ing-glasses ? And do you really think that Peter Paez was a
Jack-of-all-trades, and built palaces and convents without as
sistance, and furnished them with his own hands ? You, who
are a little apt to contest most assertions, must have strangely
let out your creduhty !* I could put forty questions to you as
wonderful ; and, for my part, could as soon credit * * * *.
' 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, Witman, Clarke, Belzoni, and other distinguished
traveUers. Bruce never repUed 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 sUp of his foot, while
handing a lady down stairs to her carriage. A second edition of his Tra
vels was published in 1805, by Dr. Alexander Murray, from a copy which
the traveller had himself prepared for the press. — E.

1790. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 361
I am tired of raihng at French barbarity and folly. They
are raore 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 Ffete of the 14th,* I
suppose, is to draw money to Paris ; and the consequence will
be, that the deputies wiU return to the provinces drunk with
independence and self-importance, and will commit fifty times
more excesses, nlassacres, 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.^
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 soraething that is done. Why
then does he stay ? Does he wait to strike sorae great stroke,
' The grand federation in the Champ de Mars, on the anniversary of
the taking of the Bastille, thus described by M. Thiers : — " A magnifi
cent amphitheatre, formed at the further extremity, was destined for the
national authorities. The King and the president sat beside one another
on simUar 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 surpUces and tricoloured

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 pre
sident, the deputies, cried ' I swear it.' The King, standing, with his hand
outstretched towards the altar, said, ' I, King of the French, swear,' &c.
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 chUd,
and all hearts were hers." History of the Revolution, vol. i. p. 155. — E.
' On the 20th of June, a decree, that the titles of duke, count, mar
quis, viscount, baron, and chevalier should be suppressed, had been car
ried in the National Assembly by a large majority. — B.

362 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1790.
when everything is demohshed ? His glory, which consisted
in being minister though a Protestant is vanished by the de
struction of popery ; the honour of which, I suppose, he wUl
scarce assume to himself. I have vented my budget, and now
good night I I feel almost as if I could walk up to bed.

TO MISS BERRY.
Strawberry Hill, Saturday night, July 3, 1790.
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 con
sideration — I shall be excessively alarmed at your going to
the Continent when such a phrenzy 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 everywhere.
The Etats, who are as foolish as atrocious, have printed
hsts of the surnames which the late noblesse are to assume
or resume; as if people did not know their own names. I
hke 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 bar
barity, that I begin to think that our hatred of them is not

1790. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 363
national prejudice, but natural instinct ; as tame animals are
bom with an antipathy to beasts of prey.
Mrs. Damer tells me in a letter to-day, that Lady Ailes
bury was charmed with you both (which did not surprise
either of us); and says 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 aU the kindness at your determination of coming to
Twickenham in August and shall certainly say no raore
against it, though I ara certain that I shall count every day
that passes ; and when they are passed, they will leave a me
lancholy 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 wiU re
main, and will appear ten times worse ; with the aggravation
of remerabering 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 dis
sembler.* You do not mention the cathedral at Winchester, which I
have twice seen and admired; nor do you say anything 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 aU I could
to prevent his being.
The week before last I met the Marlboroughs at Lady
Di's. The Duchess'' desired to come and see Strawberry
* 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. il. p.
235.— E.
' Lady Caroline RusseU; married, in 1762, to the Duke of Marl
borough.

364 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1790.
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 behoved their brother. Lord Ro
bert* would dine with them : I thought that a little odd, as
they have just turned him out for Oxfordshire ; and I thought
a dinner no cause at the distance of four miles. In her
grace's dawdhng 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.

TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY.
Strawberry HiU, August 9, at night, 1790.
Mr. Nicholls has offered to be postman to you ; where
of, though I have nothing, or as little as nothing, to say, I
thought as how it would look kinder to send nothing in writ
ing 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 sorae 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
consol — ation 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 rauch
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
' Lord Robert Spencer, brother of the Duke of Marlborough.

1790. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 365
poor old Bedford's dotage, that still harps on conjunctions
copulative, but now disavows it, as they say, on a remon
strance from her daughter.
Nothing the third. Nothing will come of nothing, says
King Lear, and your hurable servant.

TO THE EARL OF STRAFFORD.
Strawberry HiU, August 12, 1790.
I MUST not pretend any longer, ray 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 a 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 pantorairae at Richmond for the benefit
of Edwin, jun. the comedian : * and I, hke 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 raay
be lost to the world under the garb of a ploughraan. Others
may suppose that some excellent jack-pudding may lie hidden
under red velvet and ermine. I cannot say that by the ex
periment of last night the latter hypothesis has been de
monstrated, any more than the inverse proposition in France,
where, though there seem to be raany as bloody-minded
rascals as Cromwell, I can discover none of his abilities.'^
' In the foUowing month " The FoUies 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 pa.s Russe, by Lord Barry
more and Mr. Delpini, which kept the theatre in a roar." — E.
' Gibbon, in a letter written a few months before from Lausanne to
Lord Sheffield, makes the foUowing reflections : — " The French nation

366 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1790.
They have settled nothing like a constitution; on the con
trary, they seem to protract everything but violence, as much
as they can, in order to keep their louis a day, which is more
than two-thirds of the Assembly 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 mUlions
of people could comport As they have voted an army of
an hundred and fifty thousand men, I know what their con
stitution wiU be, after passing through a civU war. In short
I detest them : they have done irreparable injury to liberty,
for no monarch wUl ever summon etats again; and all the
real service that will result from their fury wUl be, that every
King in Europe, for these twenty or perhaps thirty years to
corae, 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 victo
rious ; for I do not hhe our newspapers, and such admirers,
fall in love with heroes and heroines who raake war without a
glimpse of provocation. I do like our making peace, whe
ther we had provocation or not I am forced to deal in Eu
ropean 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 ray leave, with (your lordship knows)
every kind wish for your health and happiness.*
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 pri
vUeges of the nobles, they might have raised a solid fabric on the only
true foundation, the natural aristocracy of a great country. How dif
ferent 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 pro
vinces 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.
' This appears to have been the last letter addressed by Walpole to
the Earl of Strafford. His lordship died at Wentworth Castle, on the
loth of March following, in his seventy-ninth year. — E.

1790. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 367

TO SIR DAVID DALRYMPLE.*
Strawberry HUl, Sept. 21, 1790.
So many years. Sir, have elapsed since I saw Burleigh,
that I cannot in general pretend to recoUect the pictures
well. I do remember that there was a surfeit of pieces by
Luca Jordano and Carlo Dolce, no capital masters, and
posterior to the excellent The Earl of Exeter, who resided
long at Rome in the time of those two painters, seemed to
have employed them entirely during his sojourn there. I
was not struck raore than you. Sir, with the celebrated Death
of Seneca, though one of the best works of Jordano. Perhaps
Prior's verses hfted it to part of its farae, though even those
verses are inferior to many of that charming poet's composi
tions. Upon the whole, Burleigh is a noble palace, contains
many fine things, and the inside court struck rae with ad
miration and reverence.
The Shakspeare Gallery is truly most inadequate to its
prototypes ; but how should it be worthy of them ! If we
could recall the brightest luminaries of painting, could they
do justice to Shakspeare? Was Raphael himself as great
a genius in his art as the author of Macbeth ? and who could
draw Falstaffe, but the writer of Falstaffe ? I am entirely
of your opinion. Sir, that two of Northcote's pictures, from
King John and Richard the Third, are at the head of the
coUection. In Macklin's Gallery of Poets and Scripture, there
are much better pictures than at Boydell's. Opie's Jepthah's
Vow is a truly fine perforraance, and would be so in any
asserablage of paintings; as Sir Joshua's Death of Beaufort
is worthy of none : the Imp is burlesque, and the Cardinal
seems terrified at him as before him, when the Imp is behind
him. In Sir Thomas Hanmer's edition there is a print that
gives the fact siraply, pathetically, and with dignity, and just
as you wish it told.
My sentiments on French politics concur as much with
yours as they do on the subjects above. The National As-
' Now first coUected.

368 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1790.
serably set out too absurdly and extravagantly, not to throw
their country into the last confusion ; which is not the way
of correcting a government, but raore probably of producing
a worse, bad as the old was, and thence they will have given
a lasting wound to liberty : for what king will ever call Etats
again, if he can possibly help it ? The new legislators were
pedants, not politicians, when they announced the equality of
all men. We are all born so, no doubt abstractedly ; and phy
sically capable of being kept so, were it possible to establish
a perfect government, and give tbe same education to all men.
But are they so in the present constitution of society, under
a bad government, where raost have had no education at all,
but have been debased, brutified, by a long train and mixture
of superstition and oppression, and witnesses to the luxury
and vices of their superiors, which they could only envy and
not enjoy ? It was turning tigers loose ; and the degradation
of the nobility pointed out the prey. Could it be expected
that savages so hallooed on to outrage and void of any
notions of reciprocal duties and obhgations, would fall into
a regular system of acting as citizens under the government
of reason and justice ? It was tearing all the bonds of society,
which the experience of mankind had taught them were
necessary to the mutual convenience of all ; and no provision,
no security, was made for those who were levelled, and who,
though they enjoyed what they had by the old constitution,
were treated, or were exposed to be treated, as criminals.
They have been treated so : several have been butchered ; and
the National Assembly dare not avenge them, as they should
lose the favour of the intoxicated populace. That conduct
was senseless, or worse. With no less folly did they seem
to expect that a vast body of men, more enlightened, at least,
than the gross multitude, would sit down in patience under
persecution and deprivation of all they valued ; I mean the
nobihty and clergy, who might be stunned, but were sure of
reviving and of burning with vengeance. The insult was the
greater, as the subsequent conduct of the National Assembly
has proved more shamefully dishonest in their paying them
selves daily more than two-thirds of them ever saw perhaps in

1790. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 369
a month ; and that flagitious self-bestowed stipend, as it is void
of all patriotic integrity, will destroy their power too ; for, if
constitution-making is so lucrative a trade, others will wish
to share in the plunder of their country too ; and, even with
out a civil war, I ara persuaded the present Assembly will
neither be septennial, nor even triennial.

TO THE MISS BERRYS.
Sunday, Oct. 10, 1790. The day of your departure.
Is it possible to write to my beloved friends, and refrain
from speaking of my grief for losing you; though it is but the
continuation of what I have felt ever since I was stunned by
your intention of going abroad this autumn ? Still I will not
tire you with it often. In happy days I smiled, and called you
my dear wives — now I can only think on you as darling chil
dren of whom I am bereaved ! As such 1 have loved and do
love you ; and, charraing as you both are, I have had no occa
sion to remind rayself that I ara past seventy-three. Your
hearts, your understandings, your virtues, and the cruel
injustice of your fate,* have interested me in everything that
concerns you ; and so far from having occasion to blush for
any unbecoming weakness, I am proud of my affection for
you, and very proud of your condescending to pass so many
hours with a very old raan, when everybody admires you, and
the most insensible allow that your good sense and informa
tion (I speak of both) have formed you to converse with the
most intelligent of our sex as well as your own ; and neither
can tax you with airs of pretension or affectation. Your sim
plicity and natural ease set off all your other merits — all these
graces are lost to me, alas ! when I have no time to lose.
Sensible as I am to my loss, it will occupy but part of my
thoughts, till I know you safely landed, and arrived safely at
Turin. Not tUl you are there, and I learn so, will my anxiety
' This aUudes to Miss Berry's father having been disinherited by an
uncle, to whom he was heir at law, and a large property left to his
younger brother. — M. B.
VOL. VI. 2 B

370 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1790.
subside and settle into steady, selfish sorrow. I looked at
every weather-cock as I came along tbe road to-day, and was
happy to see every one point north-east. May they do so to
morrow !
I found here the frame for Wolsey, and to-morrow morning
Kirgate wiU place him in it; and then I shaU begin pulhng
the little parlour to pieces, that it may be hung anew to re
ceive him. I have also obeyed Miss Agnes, though with
regret; for, on trying it I found her Arcadia* would fit the
place of the picture she condemns, which shall therefore be
hung in its room ; though the latter should give way to nothing
else, nor shall be laid aside, but shall hang where I shall see
it almost as often. I long to hear that its dear paintress is
well ; 1 thought her not at all so last night. You will tell me
the truth, though she in her own case, and in that alone,
allows herself mental reservation.
Forgive me for writing nothing to-night but about you two
and myself. Of what can I have thought else ? I have not
spoken to a single person but my own servants since we
parted last night. I found a message here from Miss Howe**
to invite me for this evening — do you think I have not pre
ferred staying at horae to write to you, as this must go to
London to-morrow morning by the coach to be ready for
Tuesday's post ? My future letters shall talk of other things,
whenever I know anything worth repeating ; or perhaps any
trifle, for I am determined to forbid myself lamentations that
would weary you ; and the frequency of my letters will prove
there is no forgetfulness. If I live to see you again, you will
then judge whether I am changed ; but a friendship so rational
and so pure as mine is, and so equal for both, is not likely to
have any of the fickleness of youth, when it has none of its
other ingredients. It was a sweet consolation to the short
time that I may have left, to fall into such a society ; no won
der then that I am unhappy at that consolation being abridged.
I pique myself on no philosophy, but what a long use and
knowledge of the world had given me — the philosophy of in-
* A drawing by Miss Agnes Berry.
= Julia Howe, an unmarried sister of Admiral Earl Howe, who lived
at Richmond.

1790. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 371
difference to raost persons and events. I do pique myself on
not being ridiculous at this very late period of my hfe ; but
when there is not a grain of passion in my affection for you
two, and when you both have the good sense not to be dis
pleased at my telling you so, (though I hope you would have
despised me for the contrary,) I am not ashamed to say that
your loss is heavy to me ; and that I am only reconciled to it
by hoping that a winter in Italy, and the journeys and sea air,
will be very beneficial to two constitutions so delicate as yours.
Adieu ! my dearest friends : it would be tautology to subscribe
a name to a letter, every hne of which would suit no other
man in the world but the writer.

TO THE MISS BERRYS.
Sunday, Oct. 31, 1790.
Perhaps I am unreasonably impatient, and expect letters
before they can come. I expected a letter from Lyons three
days ago, though Mrs. Damer told me I should not have one
till to-morrow. I have got one to-day ; but alas I from
Pougues only, eleven and a half posts short of Lyons ! Oh !
may Mrs. Damer prove in the right to-morrow ! Well ! I must
be happy for the past; and that you had such dehghtful
weather, and but one little accident to your carriage. We
have had equal summer tiU Wednesday last when it blew a
hurricane. I said to it, " Blow, blow, thou winter wind, I
don't mind you now !" but I have not forgotten Tuesday the
12th ; and now I hope it will be as calm as it is to-day on Wed
nesday next, when Mrs. Damer is to sail.* I was in town on
Thursday and Friday, and so were her parents, to take our
leaves ; as we did on Friday night, supping all at Richmond-
house. She set out yesterday morning, and I returned hither.
I am glad you had the amusement of seeing the National As
serably. Did Mr. Berry find it quite so august as he intended
it should be ? Burke's paraphlet is to appear to-raorrow, and
' Mrs. Damer was going to pass the winter at Lisbon, on account of
her health. 2 B 2

372 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1790.
Calonne has pubhshed a thumping one of four hundred and
forty pages.* I have but begun it for there is such a quantity
of calculations, and one is forced to bait so often to boU mil
liards of livres down to a rob of pounds steriing, that my head
is only fiUed with figures instead of arguments, and I under
stand arithmetic less than logic.
Our war stiU hangs by a hair, they say ; and that this ap
proaching week must terminate its fluctuations. Brabant, I
am told, is to be pacified by negociations at the Hague.
Though I talk like a newspaper, I do not assume their airs;
nor give my intelligence of any sort for authentic, unless when
the Gazette endorses the articles. Thus, Lord Louvain is
made Earl of Beverley, and Lord, Earl of Digby ; but in no
Gazette, though still in the Songs of Sion, do I find that Miss
Gunning is a marchioness. It is not that I suppose you care
who gains a step in the aristocracy; but I tell you these
trifles to keep you au courant, and that at your return you
may not make only a baronial curtsey, when it should be
lower by two rows of ermine to some new-hatched countess.
This is all the news-market furnishes.
Your description of the National Asserably and of the
Champ de Mars were both admirable ; but the altar of boards
and canvass seems a type of their perishable constitution, as
their air-balloons were before. French visions are generally
full of vapour, and terminate accordingly. I have been at
Mrs. GrenviUe's'' this evening, who had a small party for the
Duchess of Gloucester : there were many inquiries after my
wives.
TO THE MISS BERRYS.
Park-place, Nov. 8, 1790.
No letter since Pougues ! I think you can guess how
uneasy I am ! It is not the fault of the wind ; which has
• This was his " Lettre sur I'Etat de la France, present et a venir ;"
of which a translation appeared in the following year. — E.
' Margaret Banks, widow of the Hon. Henry GrenviUe, who died in
1784. Their only daughter was married, in 1781, to Viscount Mahon,
afterwards Earl Stanhope.

1790. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 373
blown from every quarter. To-day I cannot hear, for no post
comes in on Mondays. What can have occasioned my re
ceiving no letter from Lyons, when, on the 18th of last month,
you were within twelve posts of it ? I am now sorry I came
hither, lest by my change of place a letter may have shuttle-
cocked about, and not have known where to find me ; and yet
I left orders with Kirgate to send it after rae, if one carae
to Strawberry on Saturday. I return thither to-morrow, but
not till after the post is corae in here. I am writing to you
now, while the company are walked out to divert my im
patience ; which, however, is but a bad recipe, and not exactly
the way to put you out of my head.
The first and great piece of news is the pacification with
Spain. The courier arrived on Thursday morning with a
most acquiescent answer to our ultimatum : what that was I
do not know, nor much care. Peace contents rae, and for my
part I shall not haggle about the terms. I have a good gene
ral digestion, and it is not a small raatter that vrill lie at my
stomach when I have no hand in dressing the ingredients.
The pacification of Brabant is likely to be volume the
second. The Emperor, and their Majesties of Great Britain
and Prussia, and his Serene Highness the Republic of Hol
land have sent a card to his turbulept Lowness of Brabant,
that they allow him but three weeks to subrait to his old
sovereign ; on proraise of a general pardon — or the choice of
threescore thousand raen ready to march without a pardon.
The third volume, expected, but not yet in the press, is a
counter-revolution in France. Of that I know nothing but
rumour; yet it certainly is not the most incredible event
that rumour ever foretold. In this country the stock of the
National Assembly is fallen down to bankruptcy. Their only
renegade, aristocrat Earl Stanhope, has, with ^fW. Russel,
scratched his narae out of the Revolution Club ; but the fatal
blow has been at last given by Mr. Burke. His pamphlet *
came out this day se'nnight and is far superior to what was
' The far-famed " Reflections on the Revolution in France ; " of
which about thirty thousand copies were sold in a comparatively short
space of time. — £.

374 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1790.
expected, even by his warmest admirers. I have read it twice ;
and though of three hundred and fifty pages, I wish I could
repeat every page by heart It is sublime, profound, and gay.
The wit and satire are equaUy briUiant ; and the whole is wise,
though in some points he goes too far : yet in general there is
far less want of judgment than could be expected frora him.
If it could be translated, — which, from the wit and metaphors
and allusions, is almost impossible, — I should think it would be
a classic book in all countries, except in present France.* To
their tribunes it speaks daggers ; though, unlike them, it uses
none. Seven thousand copies have been taken off by the
booksellers already, and a new edition is preparing. I hope
you will see it soon. There ends my gazette.
There is nobody here at present but Mrs. Hervey, Mrs. E.
Hervey, and Mrs. Cotton : but what did I find on Saturday ?
Why, the Prince of Furstemberg,^ his son, and son's go
vernor ! I was ready to turn about and go back ; but they
really proved not at all unpleasant The ambassador has not
the least German stiffness or hauteur; is extremely civil, and
so domestic a man, that he talked comfortably of his wife and
eight children, and of his fondness for them. He under
stands English, though he does not speak it The son, a
good-humoured lad of fifteen, seems well-informed : the go
vernor, a middle-aged ofiicer, speaks Enghsh so perfectly,
that even by his accent I should not have discovered him for
a foreigner. They stayed all night and went to Oxford next
morning before I rose. November 9th, at night.
This morning, before I left Park-place, I bad the relief
and joy of receiving your letter of October 24, from Lyons. It
would have been stiU more welcorae, if dated from Turin;
* A French translation, by M. Dupont, shortly after made its appear
ance, and spread the reputation of the work over aU Europe. The Em
peror of Germany, Catherine of Russia, and the French Princes trans-
mitted to Mr. Burke their warm approbation of it, and the unfortunate
Stanislaus of Poland sent him his likeness on a gold medal.  E
2 The Landgrave of Furstemberg had been sent from' the" Emperor
Leopold to notify his being elected Kmg of the Romans, and his subse
quent coronation as Emperor of Germany. — E.

1790. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 375
but as you have met with no impediments so far, I trust you
got out of France as well as through it. I do hope, too, that
Miss Agnes is better, as you say; but when one is very
anxious about a person, credulity does not take long strides in
proportion. I am not surprised at your finding voiturins, or
anybody, or anything, dearer : where all credit and all control
are swept away, every man will be a tyrant in proportion to
his necessities and his strength. Societies were invented to
temperate force : but it seems force was liberty, and much good
may it do the French with being delivered from everything but
violence ! — which I believe they will soon taste pro and con. !
You make me smile by desiring me to continue my affec
tion. Have I so much time left for inconstancy ? For three
score years and ten I have not been very fickle in my friend
ships : in all those years I never found such a pair as you and
your sister. Should I meet with a superior pair, — but they
must not be deficient in any one of the qualities which I find
in you two, — why, perhaps, I may change; but, with that
double mortgage on my affections, I do not think you are in
much danger of losing them. You shall have tiraely notice if
a second couple drops out of the clouds and falls in my way.

TO MISS BERRY.
November 11, 1790.
I HAD a letter from Mrs. Damer at Falmouth. She suf
fered much by cold and fatigue, and probably sailed on Satur
day evening last, and may be at Lisbon by this time, as you,
I trust, are in Italy.
Mr. Burke's pamphlet has quite turned Dr. Price's head.
He got upon a table at their club, toasted to our Parliaraent
becoming a National Asserably, and to admitting no more
peers of their assembly, having lost the only one they had.
They themselves are very like the French Etats : two more
members got on the table (their pulpit), and broke it down:
— so be it!

376 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1790.
The Marquisate * is just where it was — to be and not to be.
The Duchess of Argyll is said to be worse. Delia Crusca*
has published a poem, called " The Laurel of Liberty," which,
like the Enrages, has confounded and overturned all ideas.
There are gossamery tears and silky oceans — the first time, to
be sure, that anybody ever cried cobwebs, or that the sea was
made oi paduasoy.^ There is, besides, a violent tirade against
a considerable personage, who, it is supposed, the author was
jealous of, as too much favoured a few years ago by a certain
Countess. You may guess why I am not more explicit: for
the same reason I beg you not to mention it at all ; it would
be exceedingly improper. As the Parliament will meet in a
fortnight, and the town be plumper, my letters may grow more
amusing ; though, unless the weather grows worse, I shall not
contribute my leanness to its embonpoint. Adieu !

TO THE MISS BERRYS.
Strawberry HUl, Thursday, Nov. 18, 1790.
On Tuesday raorning, after my letter was gone to the
post, I received yours of the 2d (as I have all the rest) from
Turin, and it gave me very little of the joy I had so much
meditated to receive from a letter thence. And why did not
it?— because I had got one on Saturday, which anticipated
and augmented aU the satisfaction I had aUotted for Turin,
' Meaning the reported marriage of Miss Gunning to the Marquis of
Blandford. — B. ^
^ Robert Merry, Esq. who, at this time, wrote in the newspapers under
this signature, and thereby became the object of the caustic satire of the
author of the Baviad aud Maeviad —
" Lo, Delia Crusca ! in his closet pent.
He toils to give the crude conception vent :
Abortive thoughts, that right and wrong confound
Truth sacrific'd to letters, sense to sound ¦ '
False glare, incongruous images combine,'
And noise and nonsense clatter through the Une."  E.
' Besides the above, Mr. Gifford instances, from the same poem,
« moody monarchs, radiant rivers, cooUng cataracts, lazy Loires gay
Garonnes, glossy glass, mingling murder, dauntless day, lettered liffhfr.
nings, delicious dilatings, sinking sorrows, real reasoning, meUorSine
mercies, dewy vapours damp that sweep the sUent swamps" &c &c"— E

1790. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 377
You will find my Tuesday's letter, if ever you receive it,
intoxicated with Chamberry; for which, and all your kind
punctuality, I give you a million of thanks. But how cruel
to find that you found none of my letters at Turin ! There
ought to have been two at least, of October the 16th and
19th. I have since directed one thither of the 25th;
but, alas ! from ignorance, there was par Paris on none
of them; and the Lord knows at how many little Ger
man courts they may have been baiting ! I shall put par
Paris on this; but beg you will tell me, as soon as you
can, which route is the shortest and the safest; that is, by
which you are most likely to receive them. You do me
justice in concluding there has been no negligence of mine
in the case ; indeed, I have been ashamed at the multiphcity
of my letters, when I had scarce anything to tell you but my
own anxiety to hear of your being quietly settled at Florence,
out of the reach of all commotions. And how could I but
dread your being molested by some accident, in the present
state of France? and how could your healths mend in bad
inns, and till you can repose somewhere? Repose you will
have at Florence, but I shall fear the winter for you there : I
suffered raore by cold there, than by any place in my life;
and never came home at night without a pain in ray breast,
which I never felt elsewhere, yet then I was very young and
in perfect health. If either of you suffer there in any shape,
I hope you will retire to Pisa.
My inquietude, that presented so raany alarms to me be
fore you set out, has, I find, and ara grieved for it, not been
quite in the wrong. Some inconveniences I am persuaded
you have sunk : yet the diflSculty of landing at Dieppe, and
the ransack of your poor harmless trunks at Bourgoin, and the
wretched lodgings with which you were forced to take up
at Turin, count deeply with me ; and I had much rather have
lost all credit as a prophet, since I could not prevent your
journey. May it answer for your healths ! I doubt it wiU
not in any other respect as you have already found by the
voiturins. In point of pleasure, is it possible to divest my
self so radically of all self-love as to wish you may find Italy

378 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1790.
as agreeable as you did formerly ? In aU other hghts, I do
most fervently hope there will be no drawbacks on your plan.
Should you be disappointed any way, you know what a warm
heart is open to receive you back; and so will your own
Cliveden* be too.
I am glad you met the Bishop of Arras,*^ and am much
pleased that he remembers me. I saw him very frequently
at my dear old friend's,^ and liked him the best of all the
Frenchmen I ever knew. He is extremely sensible, easy,
lively, and void of prejudices. Should he fall in yoitr way
again, I beg you will tell him how sincere a regard I have
for him. He hved in the strictest union with his brother,
the Archbishop of Tours, whom I was much less acquainted
with, nor know if he be living.
I have heard nothing since my Tuesday's letter. As I
still hope its predecessors will reach you, I will not repeat
the trifling scraps of news I have sent you in them. In fact,
this is only a trial whether par Paris is a better passport
than a direction without it ; but I am grievously sorry to find
diflBculty of correspondence superadded to the vexation of
losing you. Writing to you was grown my chief occupation.
I wish Europe and its broils were in the East Indies, if they
embarrass us quiet folks, who have nothing to do with their
squabbles. The Duchess of Gloucester, who called on me
yesterday, charged me to give her compliments to you both.
Miss Foldson* has not yet sent me your pictures : I was in
town on Monday, and sent to reproach her with having twice
broken her promise; her mother told my servant that Miss
was at Windsor, drawing the Queen and Princesses. That
is not the work of a moment I am glad all the Princes are
not on the spot.
I think of continuing here till the weather grows very
bad; which it has not been at all yet, though not equal to
what I am rejoiced you have found. I have no Somerset or
' Little Strawberry HiU, which he had then thus named.
' M. de Conzies. This amiable prelate declined, in 1801, the Parisian
archiepiscopacy, proffered him by Buonaparte, and died in London, in
December 1804, in the arms of Monsieur, afterwards Charles the Tenth.
— E. " Madame du Deffand. " Afterwards Mrs. Mee.

1790. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 379
Audley street to receive me ; Mrs. Damer is gone too. The
Conways reraain at Park-place till after Christraas; it is
entirely out of fashion for woraen to grow old and stay at
home in an evening. They invite you, indeed, now and
then, but do not expect to see you till midnight; which is
rather too late to begin the day, unless one was born but
twenty years ago. I do not condemn any fashions, which
the young ought to set for the old certainly ought not;
but an oak that has been going on in its old way for an
hundred years, cannot shoot into a May-pole in three years,
because it is the mode to plant Lombardy poplars.
What I should have suffered, if your letters, like mine,
had wandered through Germany ! I, you was sure, had
written, and was in no danger. Dr, Price, who had whetted
his ancient talons last year to no purpose, has had them all
drawn by Burke, and the Revolution Club is as much ex
ploded as the Cock-lane Ghost ; but you, in order to pass a
quiet winter in Italy, would pass through a fiery furnace.
Fortunately, you have not been singed, and the letter from
Chamberry has coraposed all my panics, but has by no means
convinced me that I was not perfectly in the right to endea
vour to keep you at home. One does not put one's hand in
the fire to burn off a hangnail ; and, though health is delight
ful, neither of you were out of order enough to make a rash
experiment I would not be so absurd as to revert to old ar
guments, that happily proved no prophecies, if my great
anxiety about you did not wish, in time, to persuade you to
return through Switzerland and Flanders, if the latter is
pacified and France is not ; of which I see no likelihood.
Pray forgive me, if parts of my letters are sometiraes tire
some ; but can I appear only and always cheerful when you
two are absent, and have another long journey to make, ay,
and the sea to cross again? My fears cannot go to sleep
hke a paroli at faro till there is a new deal, in which even
then I should not be sure of winning. If I see you again,
I will think I have gained another milleleva, as I literally
once did ; with this exception, that I was vehemently against
risking a doit at the game of travelhng. Adieu !

380 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1790.
TO THE MISS BERRYS.
Strawberry HiU, Friday night, Nov. 27, 1790.
I AM waiting for a letter from Florence, not with perfect
patience, though I could barely have one, even if you did
arrive, as you intended, on the 12th ; but twenty temptations
might have occurred to detain you in that land of eye and ear
sight : my chief eagerness is to learn that you have received
at least some of my letters. I wish too to know, though I
cannot yet whether you would have me direct par Paris, or
as I did before. In this state of uncertainty I did not pre
pare this to depart this morning ; nor, though the Parliaraent
met yesterday, have I a syllable of news for you, as there will
be no debate till all the members have been sworn, which
takes two or three days. Moreover, I am still here: the
weather, though very rainy, is quite warm ; and I have much
more agreeable society at Richmond, with sraall companies
and better hours, than in town, and shall have till after Christ
mas, unless great cold drives me thither. Lady Di, Selwyn,
the Penns, the Onslows, Douglases, Mackinsys, Keenes, Lady
Mount-Edgcumbe, all stay, and some of thera raeet every
evening. The Boufllers too are constantly invited, and the
Comtesse* Emilie sometiraes carries her harp, on which they
say she plays better than Orpheus ; but as I never heard him
on earth, nor chez Proserpine, I do not pretend to decide.
Lord Fitzwilliam* has been here too; but was in the utmost
danger of being lost on Saturday night in a violent storm be
tween Calais and Dover, as the captain confessed to hira when
they were landed. Do you think I did not ache at the recollec
tion of a certain Tuesday when you were sailing to Dieppe ?

TO MISS AGNES BERRY.
Strawberry HiU, Sunday, Nov. 29, 1790.
Though I write to both at once, and reckon your letters
to corae equally from both, yet I delight in seeing your hand
' Richard, seventh and last Viscount FitzwUUam, the munificent be
nefactor to the University of Cambridge. He died in 1816. — E.

1790. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 381
with a pen as well as with a pencil, and you express yourself
as well with the one as with the other. Your part in that
which I have been so happy as to receive this moment has
singularly obhged me, by your having saved me the terror of
knowing you had a torrent to cross after heavy rain. No cat
is so afraid of water for herself, as I ara grown to be for you.
That panic, which will last for many months, adds to my
fervent desire of your returning early in the autumn, that you
may have neither fresh water nor the " silky" ocean to cross
in winter. Precious as our insular situation is, I am ready to
wish with the Frenchman, that you could somehow or other
get to it by land, — " Oui, c'est une isle toujours, je le s^ais
bien ; mais, par exemple, en allant d'alentour, n'y auroit-il pas
raoyen d'y arriver par terre?"
Correggio never pleased me in proportion to his fame : his
grace touches upon grimace; the mouth of the beautiful
Angel at Parma curls up almost into a half-moon. Still I
prefer Correggio to the laurd want of grace in Guercino, who
is to rae a German edition of Guido. I am sorry the book
seller would not let you have an Otranto. Edwards told me,
above two months ago, that he every day expected the whole
impression; and he has never mentioned it waiting for my
corrections. I will make Kirgate write to him, for I have
told you that I am still here. We have had much rain, but no
flood; and yesterday and to-day have exhibited Florentine
skies. From town I know nothing; but that on Friday, after the
King's speech. Earl Stanhope made a most frantic speech on
the National Assembly and against Calonne's book, which he
wanted to have taken up for high treason.* He was every
minute interrupted by loud bursts of laughter ; which was all
the answer he received or deserved. His suffragan Price has
' In the report of Lord Stanhope's speech, as it is given in the ParUa
mentary History, there is no expression of a wish that M. Calonne
should be " taken up for high treason." What the noble Earl said was,
that the assertion that a civU war would meet with the support of aU the
crowned heads in Europe, was a scandalous libel on the King of Eng
land, and might endanger the Uves of many natives of Scotland and Ire
land then residing in France. — E.

382 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1790.
pubhshed a short sneaking equivocal answer to Burke, in
which he pretends his triumph over the King of France
alluded to July, not to October, though his sermon was
preached in November. Credat — but not Judseus ApeUa, as
Mr. Burke so wittily says of the assignats.* Mr. GrenviUe,
the secretary of state, is made a peer, they say to assist the
Chancellor in the House of Lords : yet tbe papers pretend the
Chancellor is out of humour, and will resign ; the first may be
true, tbe latter probably not^
Richmond, my metropolis, flourishes exceedingly. The
Duke of Clarence arrived at his palace there last night, be
tween eleven and twelve, as I came from Lady Douglas.
His eldest brother and Mrs. Fitzherbert dine there to-day
with the Duke of Queensbury, as his grace, who called here
this morning, told me, on the very spot where lived Charles
the First, and where are the portraits of his principal courtiers
frora Cornbury. Queensbury has taken to that palace at last,
and has frequently corapany and rausic there in an evening.
I intend to go.
I suppose none of my Florentine acquaintance 'are still
upon earth. The handsomest woman there, of my days, was
a Madame Grifoni, my fair Geraldine : she would now be a
Methusalemess, and much raore like a frightful picture I
have of her by a one-eyed German painter. I lived then
with Sir Horace Mann, in Casa Mannetti in Via de' Santi
Apostoli, by the Ponte di Trinita. Pray, worship the works
of Masaccio, if any remain; though I think the best have
been burnt in a church. Raphael himself borrowed from him.
Fra Bartolomeo, too, is one of my standards for great ideas ;
and Benvenuto Cellini's Perseus a rival of the antique, though
' " The Assembly made in their speeches a sort of swaggering decla
ration, something, I rather think, above legislative competence ; that is,
that there is no difference in value between metallic money and their
assignats. This was a good, stout proof article of faith, pronounced
under an anathema, by the venerable fathers of this phUosophic synod.
Credat who wiU — certainly not Judceus ApeUa." — E.
' In Mr. WUberforce's Diary for this year there appears the following
entry :— " Nov. 22. Dined with Mr. Pitt. He told me of GrenvUle's
peerage, and the true reasons — distrust of Lord Thurlow. Saw Thur-
low's answer to the news. Gave Pitt a serious word or two." See Life,
vol. i. p. 284.— E.

1790. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE.
Mrs. Damer will not allow it. Over against the Perseus is a
beautiful small front of a house, with only three windows,
designed by Raphael; and another, I think, near the Porta
San Gallo, and I believe called Casa Panciatici or Pandolfini.

TO THE MISS BERRYS.
Strawberry HiU, Dec. 20, 1790 ; very late at night.
The French packet that was said to be lost on Tuesday
last, and which did hang out signals of distress, was saved,
but did not bring any letters; but three Flemish mails that
were due are arrived, and did bring letters, and, to my in
expressible joy, two from you of the 22nd and 29th of last
month, telhng me that you have received as far as No. 4 and
5 of mine. Thank all the stars in Herschell's telescope, or
beyond its reach, that our correspondence is out of the reach
of France and all its ravages ! Thank you a million of times
for all your details about yourselves ! When even the appre
hension of any danger disquiets me so much, judge whether I
do not interest myself in every particular of your pleasures
and arauseraents ! Florence was my delight, as it is yours ;
but, I don't know how, I wish you did not like it quite so
much ! and, after the gallery, how will any silver-penny of a
gallery look ? Indeed, for your Boboli, which I thought hor
rible even fifty years ago, before shepherds had seen the star
of taste in the west, and glad tidings were proclaimed to their
flocks, I do think there is not an acre on the banks of the
Thames that should vail the bonnet to it.
Of Mr. Burke's book, if I have not yet told you my opinion,
I do now ; that it is one of the finest compositions in print.
There is reason, logic, wit, truth, eloquence, and enthusiasm
in the brightest colours. That it has given a mortal stab to
sedition, I believe and hope ; because the fury of the Brabant
ers, — whom, however, as having been aggrieved, I pitied and
distinguish totally from the savage Gauls, — and the unmiti
gated and execrable injustices of the latter, have raade alraost
any state preferable to such anarchy and desolation, that in-

384 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1791.
creases every day. Admiring thus, as I do, I am very far
from subscribing to the extent of almost aU Mr. Burke's prin
ciples. The work, I have no doubt wiU hereafter be apphed
to support very high doctrines ; and to you I will say, that I
think it an Apocrypha, that, in many a council of Bishops,
wiU be added to the Old Testament. Still, such an Alman-
zor was wanting at this crisis ; and his foes show how deeply
they are wounded, by their abusive pamphlets. Their Ama
zonian aUies, headed by Kate Macaulay* and the virago Bar-
bauld, whom Mr. Burke calls our poissardes, spit their rage at
eighteen-pence a head, and wUl return to Fleet-ditch, more
fortunate in being forgotten than their predecessors, immor
talized in the Dunciad. I must now bid you good-night;
and night it is, to the tune of morning. Adieu, all three !

TO MISS BERRY.
Berkeley Square, Saturday, Jan. 22, 1791.
I HAVE been raost unwillingly forced to send you such
bad accounts of myself by my two last letters ; but, as I could
not conceal all, it was best to tell you the whole truth.
Though I do not know that there was any real danger, I
could not be so blind to my own age and weakness as not to
think that, with so much gout and fever, the conclusion
might very probably be fatal ; and therefore it was better you
should be prepared for what might happen. The danger ap
pears to be entirely over : there seems to be no more gout to
come. I have no fever, have a very good appetite, and sleep
well. Mr. Watson,'^ who is all tenderness and attention, is
persuaded to-day that I shall recover the use of my left hand ;
of which I despaired much more than of the right, as having
been seized three weeks earher. Emaciated and altered I am
incredibly, as you would find were you ever to see me again.
But this iUness has dispelled all visions ; and, as I have little
' A pamphlet, entitled " Observations on the Reflections of the Right
Hon. Edmund Burke on the Revolution in France ; in a Letter to Earl
Stanhope," was attributed to Mrs. Macaulay. — ^E.
^ His surgeon.

1791. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 387
prospect of passing another happy auturan, I must wean my
self from whatever would embitter my remaining time by dis*
appointments. Your No. 15 came two days ago, and gives me the plea
sure of knowing that you both are the better for riding, which
I hope you will continue. I am glad, too, that you are
pleased with your Duchess of Fleury and your Latin pro
fessor; but I own, except your climate and the six hundred
camels, you seem to me to have met with no treasure which
you might not have found here without going twenty miles :
and even the camels, according to Soame Jenyns' spelling,
were to be had from Carrick and other places.
I doubt you apply Tully de Amicitia too favourably : at
least, I fear there is no paragraph that countenances 73
and 27. Monday, the 24th.
I think I shall give you pleasure by telling you that I am
very sure now of recovering from the present fit. It has
almost always happened to rae, in my considerable fits of the
gout, to have one critical night that celebrates its departure :
at the end of two different fits I each tirae slept eleven hours.
Morpheus is not quite so young nor so generous now ; but
with the interruption of a few minutes, he presented me with
eight hours last night : and thence I shall date ray recovery.
I shall now begin to let in a little company ; and, as the
Parliament will raeet in a week, my letters wUl probably not
be so dull as they have been ; nor shall I have occasion, nor
be obliged, to talk so much of myself, of which I am sure
others must be tired, when I am so much tired myself.
Tuesday, the 2Sth.
Old Mrs. French * is dead at last, and I am on the point of
losing, or have lost, my oldest acquaintance and friend,
George Selwyn, who was yesterday at the extremity. These
misfortunes, though they can be so but for a short tirae, are
very sensible to the old ; but him I really loved, not only for
' An Irish lady, who, during the latter part of her life, had a country
house at Hampton Court.
VOL. VI. 2 C

386 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1791.
his infinite wit but for a thousand good quahties. Lady
Cecilia Johnstone was here yesterday. I said much for you,
and she as much to you. The Gunnings are still playing the
fool, and perhaps somebody with them ; but I cannot tell you
the particulars now. Adieu !

TO THE MISS BERRYS.
Saturday, Jan. 29, 1791.
Voici de ma propre ecriture ! the best proof that I am
recovering, though not rapidly, which is not the march of my
time of life. For these last six days I have mended raore
than I expected. My left hand, the first seized, is the most
dilatory, and of which I have least hopes. The rheumatism,
that I thought so clear and predominant, is so entirely gone,
that I now rather think it was hussar-gout attacking in fiying
squadrons the outposts. No matter which, very ill I was;
and you might see what I thought of myself: nor can I stand
many such victories. My countenance was so totally altered,
that I could not trace it myself. Its outlines have returned
to their posts, though with deep gaps. This is a true picture,
and too long an one of self; and too hideous for a bracelet
Apropos, your sweet Miss Foldson, I believe, is painting por
traits of all our Princesses, to be sent to all the Princes upon
earth ; for, though I have sent her several written duns, she
has not deigned even to answer one in writing. I don't know
whether Mrs. BuUer is not appointed Royal Academician
too ; for, though I desired the " Charming-man," who was
to dine with her that day, to tell her, above a week ago, that
I should be glad to see her, she has not taken the least notice
of it. Mr. Batt ditto ; who was at Cambridge's when I was at
the worst, and knew so, has not once inquired after me, in
town or country. So you see you have carried off your friends
frora rae as well as yourselves : and it is not them I regret ;
or rather, in fact, I outhve all my friends ! Poor Selwyn is
gone, to my sorrow; and no wonder Ucalegon feels it !* He
* This celebrated wit and amiable man died on the 25th of January

1791. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 387
has left about thirty thousand pounds to Mademoiselle Fag
niani ; * twenty of which, if she has no children, to go to those
of Lord Carlisle : the Duke of Queensberry residuary legatee.
Old French has died as foolishly as she lived, and left six
thousand pounds to you don't know whom ; but to be raised
out of her judicious collection of trumpery pictures, &c.
Pray, delight in the following story : Caroline Vernon, fille
d^honneur, lost t'other night two hundred pounds at faro, and
bade Martindale mark it up. He said he had rather have a
draft on her banker. " Oh ! willingly ;" and she gave him one.
Next morning he hurried to Druramond's, lest all her money
should be drawn out " Sir," said the clerk, " would you re
ceive the contents immediately?" "Assuredly." "Why, Sir,
have you read the note ?" Martindale took it ; it was, " Pay
to the bearer two hundred blows, well applied." The nymph
tells the story herself; and yet I think the clerk had the raore
humour of the two.
The Gunninghiad^ draws to a conclusion. The General, a
few weeks ago, to prove the equality of his daughter to any
match, literally put into the newspapers, that he himself is the
thirty-second descendant in a line from Charlemagne; — oui,
vraiment! Yet he had better have, like Prior's Madara,
" To cut things short, gone up to Adam."

in his seventy-second year. He was member for LuggershaU, surveyor-
general of the crown lands, surveyor of the meltings and clerk of the
irons in the Mint ; " and," add the newspapers of the day, " receiver-
general of waif and stray jokes." The following tribute to his memory
appeared at the time : —
" If, this gay Fav'rite lost, they yet can live,
A tear to Selwyn let the Graces give !
With rapid kindness teach Oblivion's paU
O'er the sunk foibles of the man to faU ;
And fondly dictate to a faithful Muse
The prime distinction of the Friend they lose : —
'Twas Social Wit ; which, never kindling strife,
Blaz'd in the small, sweet courtesies of life ;
Those little sapphires round the diamond shone.
Lending soft radiance to the richer stone." — E.
' Married, in 1798, to the Earl of Yarmouth ; who, in 1822, succeeded
his father as third Marquis of Hertford. — ^E.
' Meaning the strange, imagined history of a marriage supposed to
have been Ukely to take place between Miss Gunning and the Marquis
of Blandford.
2c 2

388 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1791.
However, this Carlovingian hero does not allow that the let
ters are forgeries, and rather suspects the novelist, his lady,*
for the authoress ; and if she is, probably Miss Charlemagne
is not quite innocent of the plot : though she still maintains
that her mother-in-law elect did give her much encourage
ment ; which, considering her grace's conduct about her chil
dren, is not the most incredible part of this strange story.
I have written this at twice, and will now rest Sunday evening.
I wish that complaining of people for abandoning me were
an infallible recipe for bringing them back! but I doubt it
will not do in acute cases. To-day, a ,few hours after writing
the latter part of this, appeared Mr. Batt. He asked many
pardons, and I easily forgave him; for the mortification was
not begun. He asked much after you both. I had a crowd
of visits besides; but they all come past two o'clock, and
sweep one another away before any can take root My
evenings are solitary enough, for I ask nobody to come ; nor,
indeed, does anybody's evening begin till I ara going to bed.
I have outlived daylight, as well as my cotemporaries. What
have I not survived? The Jesuits and the monarchy of
France ! and both without a struggle ! Semiramis seems to
intend to add Constantinople to the mass of revolutions ; but
is not her permanence almost as wonderful as the contrary
explosions ! I wish — I wish we may not be actually flip-
pancying ourselves into an embroil with that Ursa-major of
the North Pole. What a vixen little island are we, if we
fight with the Aurora Borealis and Tippoo Saib at the end of
Asia at the same time ! You, damsels, wiU be like the end
of the conundrum, "¦ You 've seen the man who saw these wondrous sights."
Monday evening.
I cannot finish this with my own hand, for the gout has
returned a httle into my right arm and wrist and I am not
> Mrs. Gunning was a Miss Minifie, of Fairwater, Somersetshire, and
before her marriage had published several popular novels.  E.

1791. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 389
quite so well as I was yesterday ; but I had said my say, and
have little to add. The Duchess of Gordon, t'other night,
coming out of an assembly, said to Dundas, " Mr. Dundas,
you are used to speak in public ; will you call my servant ?"
Here I receive your long letter of the 7th, 9th, and 10th,
which it is impossible for me to answer now : there is one
part to which I wish to reply, but must defer till next post
by which time I hope to have recovered my own pen. You
ask about the house of Argyll. You know I have no con
nexion with them, nor any curiosity about them. Their re
lations and mine have been in town but four days, so I know
little from them : Mrs. GrenviUe, to-day, told me the Duke
proposes to continue the same life he used to lead, with
a cribbage-table and his family. Everybody admires tbe
youngest daughter's * person and understanding. Adieu ! I
will begin to write again rayself as soon as I catn.

TO MISS BERRY.
Berkeley Square, Friday, Feb. 4, 1791.
Last post I sent you as cheerful a letter as I could, to
convince you that I was recovering. This will be less gay ;
not because I have had a little return in both arms, but be
cause I have rauch more pain in my raind than in my limbs.
I see and thank you for all the kindness of your inten
tion ; but, as it has the contrary effect from what you expect,
I am forced, for my own peace, to beseech you not to con
tinue a manoeuvre that only tantalizes and wounds me. In
your last you put together many friendly words to give me
hopes of your return; but can I be so blind as not to see
that they are vague words ? Did you mean to return in au
tumn, would you not say so ? would the most artful arrange
raent of words be so kind as those few simple ones ? In fact,
I have for some time seen how httle you mean it ; and, for
your sakes, I cease to desire it. The pleasure you expressed
' Lady Charlotte-Susan-Maria ; married, first to Colonel John Camp
beU of Islay, and secondly to the Rev. Mr. Bury. — E.

390 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1791.
at seeing Florence again, forgive me for saying, is the joy of
sight merely ; for can a httle Itahan town, and wretched Ita
lian company, and travelhng Enghsh lads and governors, be
comparable to the choice of the best company of so vast a
capital as London, unless you have taken an aversion to
England? And your renewed transports at a less and stiU
more insipid town, Pisa ! These plainly told me your thoughts,
which vague words cannot efface. You then dropped that
you could let your London house till next Christmas, and
then talked of a visit to Switzerland, and since all this,
Mrs. Damer has warned me not to expect you till next
spring. I shall not; nor do I expect that next spring. I
have little expected this next ! My dearest Madam, I allow
all my folly and unreasonableness, and give them up and
abandon them totally. I have most impertinently and ab
surdly tried, for my own sake merely, to exact frora two
young ladies, above forty years younger than myself, a pro
mise of sacrificing their rooted inclinations to my whims and
satisfaction. But my eyes are opened, my reason is re
turned, I condemn myself; and I now make you but one
request, which is, that though I am convinced it would be
with the most friendly and good-natured meaning possible,
I do implore you not to try to help me to delude myself
any more. You never knew half the shock it gave me when
I learned from Mr. Batt what you had concealed frora me,
your fixed resolution of going abroad last October ; and though
I did in vain deprecate it, — your coming to Twickenham in
September, which I know, and from my inmost soul believe,
was from mere compassion and kindness to me, — yet it did
aggravate my parting with you.
I would not repeat all this, but to prevail with you, while
I do live, and while you do condescend to have any friend
ship for me, never to let me deceive myself I have no
right to inquire into your plans, views, or designs ; and never
will question you more about them. I shall deserve to be
deluded if I do ; but what you do please to say to me, I beg
may be frank. I am, in every light too weak to stand dis
appointment now : I cannot be disappointed. You have a

1791. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 391
firmness that nothing shakes; and, therefore, it would be
unjust to betray your good-nature into any degree of in
sincerity. You do nothing that is not reasonable and right ;
and I am conscious that you bore a thousand times more
from my self-love and vanity, than any other two persons but
yourselves would have supported with patience so long. Be
assured that what I say I think, feel, and mean : derange
none of your plans for me. I now wish you to take no one
step but what is conformable to your views, interest, and
satisfaction. It would hurt me to interfere with them : I re
proach myself with having so ungenerously tried to lay you
under any diflSculties, and I approve your resolution in ad
hering steadily to your point. Two posts ago I hinted that
I was weaning myself from the anxiety of an attachment to
two persons that raust have been so uneasy to them, and has
ended so sorrowfully to rayself; but that anxiety I restrict
solely to the desire of your return: my friendship, had I
years to live, could not alter or be shaken ; and there is no
kind of proof or instance of it that I will not give you both,
while I have breath.
I have vented what I had at my heart, and feel relieved.
Do not take ill a word I have said. Be assured I can love
you as much as ever I did, and do ; though I am no longer
so unjust as to prefer my own satisfaction to yours. Here
I drop the subject : before Tuesday, perhaps, I shall be able
to talk on some other. Monday, 7th.
Though the Parliament is met, and the town, they say,
full, I have not heard a tittle of news of any sort ; and yet
my prison is a coffee-house in a morning, though I have been
far from well this whole week. Yesterday and Saturday the
gout was so painful in ray right shoulder, that I could not
stoop or turn round. To-day it is in my left elbow, and, I
doubt, coming into my right foot: in short, it seems to be
going its circle over again. I am not very sorry ; sufferings
reconcile'one to parting with one's self.
One of our nuraerous terapests threw down Mrs. Daraer's
chiraney last week, and it fell through her workshop; but

392 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1791-
fortunately touched none of her own works, and only broke
two or three insignificant casts. I suppose you know she
returns through Spain. This minute I have heard that Lord
Lothian's daughter. Lady Mary St John, and daughter-in-
law of Lady Di. Beauclerc, died yesterday, having been de
livered of a fine boy but the day before. As you are curious
to know the chief topic of conversation, it is the rival Opera-
houses, neither of which are opened yet; both saying the
other is falhng down. Taylor has published a pamphlet that
does not prove that the Marquis* is the most upright Cham-
beriain that ever dropped from the skies, nor that the skies
are quite true blue. Adieu! if no postscript to-morrow.—
None.
TO MISS BERRY.
Berkeley Square, Feb. 12, 1791.
I HAVE jeceived your two letters of January 17th and
24th with an account of your objects and plans ; and the latter
are very much what I expected, as before you receive this you
will have seen by my last. No. 18. Indeed, you most kindly
offer to break so far into your plan, as to return at the begin
ning of next winter ; but as that would, as you say, not only
be a sacrifice, but risk your healths, can anything upon earth
be more impossible than for me to accept or consent to such a
sacrifice ? Were I even in love with one of you, could I agree
to it ? and, being only a most zealous friend, do you think I
will hear of it ? Should I be a friend at all, if I wished you,
for my sake, to travel in winter over mountains, or risk the
storms at sea, that I have not forgotten when you went away ?
Can I desire you to derange a reasonable plan of economy,
that would put you quite at your ease at your return ? Have
I any pretensions for expecting, still less for asking, such or
any sacrifices ? Have I interested myself in your affairs only
to erabarrass thera ?
I do, in the most positive and soleran manner, refuse to ac
cept the smallest sacrifice of any part of your plan, but the
' Of SaUsbury.

1791. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 393
single point that would be so hard on rae. I will say not a
word more on your return, and beg your pardon for having
been so selfish as to desire it : my only request now is, that
we raay say no more about it. I am grieved that the great
distance we are at must make me still receive letters about it
for some weeks. I shall not forget how very unreasonable I
have been myself; nor shall I try to forget it lest I should be
silly again : but I earnestly desire to be totally silent on a sub
ject that I have totally abandoned, and which it is not at all
improbable I raay never have occasion to renew.
I knew the Comte de Coigny* in the year 1766 : he was
then lively and jovial. I did not think he would turn out a
writer, or even reader ; but he was agreeable. I say nothing on
France : you must know as much as I do, and probably sooner.
I will only tell you, that my opinion is not altered in a tittle.
What will happen I do not pretend to guess; but am tho
roughly persuaded that the present system, if it can be called
so, cannot take root. The flirts towards anarchy here have no
effect at all. Home Tooke before Christmas presented a
saucy libel to the House of Commons, as a fietition on his
election. The House conteraptuously voted it only frivolous
and vexatious, and disappointed him of a ray of martyrdom ;
but his fees, &c. wUl cost him three or four hundred pounds,
which never go into a mob's calculation of the ingredients of
martyrdom.* Monday morning, 14th.
I have a story to tell you, much too long to add to this ;
which I will send next post, unless I have leisure enough to
day, from people that call on me, to finish it to-day, baring be
gun it last night; and in that case I wiU direct it to Miss
Agnes. Mr. Lysons the clergyman has just been here, and
told me of a Welsh sportsman, a Jacobite I suppose, who has
very recently had his daughter christened Louisa Victoria
Maria Sobieski Foxhunter Moll Boycot The curate of the
' Great-uncle of the present Due de Coigny.
2 On the 5th of February, the committee appointed to try the merits ¦
of the petition, reported it to be frivolous and vexatious. Mr. Burke
urged the necessity of taking some step against the author of it ; but the
subject was got rid of by a motion for the order of the day.— E.

394 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1791.
minister who baptized her confirmed the truth of it to Mr.
Lysons. When Belgiojoso, the Austrian minister, was here,
and thought he could write Enghsh, he sent a letter to Miss
Kennedy, a woman of tbe town, that began, " My Kennedy
PoUy dear girl." Apropos — and not much — pray tell me
whether the Cardinal of York caUs himself King ; and whether
James the Eighth, Charles the Fourth, or what?

TO MISS AGNES BERRY.
Feb. 13, 1791.
The foUowing narrative, though only the termination of
a legend of which you know the foregoing chapters, is too
singular and too long to be added to my letter ; and therefore,
though you will receive two by the sarae post, you will not re
pine. In short, the Gunninghiad is completed — not by a
marriage, like other novels of the Minifies.* Voici how the
denouement happened.
Another supposed love-letter had come frora the Marquis *
within these few weeks; which was so iraprobable, that it
raised more suspicions, and was more closely examined ; and
thence was discovered to have been both altered and inter
lined. On this the General sent all the letters down to the
Marquis;^ desiring to be certified of their authenticity, or the
contrary. I should teU you, that all this has happened since
the death of his sister ; who kept up the high tone, and said,
her brother was not a man to be trified with. The Marquis
imraediately distinguished the two kinds ; owned the few let
ters that disclaimed all inclination for Miss Charlemagne,
disavowed the rest. Thence fell the General's wrath on his
consort; of which I have told you.
However, the General and his ducal brother-in-law thought
' The name of the famUy of Mrs. Gunning. See p. 388.
^ George-Spencer Churchill, Marquis of Blandford ; he succeeded his
father as fourth Duke of Marlborough in 1817. — E.
' General Gunning was son of John Gunning, Esq. of Castle-Coole, in
the county of Roscommon, and brother of the beautiful Miss Gunning,
married first, in 1752, to the Duke of Hamilton ; and secondly, in 1759,
to the Duke of Argyle. — E.

1791. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 395
it expedient that Miss Charly's character should be cleared as
far as possible ; she still maintaining the prodigious encourage
ment she had received frora the parents of her intended sposo.
She was ordered to draw up a narrative, which should be
laid before the Duke of Marlborough ; and, if allowed by him,
to be shown for her vindication. She obeyed ; and her former
assertions did not suffer by the new statement But one sin
gular circumstance was added: she confessed — ingenuous
maid! — that, though she had not been able to resist so
dazzling an offer, her heart was still her cousin's, the other
Marquis.* Well ! this narrative, after being laid before a confidential
junto at Argyll-house, was sent to Blenheim by the Gene
ral, by his own groom. Judge of the astonishment of the
junto, when Carloman, almost as soon as was possible, laid
before thera a short letter from the Prince of Mindleheim,* de
claring how delighted he and his Princess had been at their
son's having made choice of so beautiful and amiable a virgin
for his bride; how greatly they had encouraged the match;
and how chagrined they were, that, from the lightness and in
constancy of his temper, the proposed alliance was quite at an
end. This wonderful acquittal of the damsel the groom de
posed he had received in half-an^haur after his arrival at Blen
heim ; and he gave the most natural and unembarrassed ac
count of all the stages he had raade, going and coraing.
You may still suspect, and so did some of the council, that
every tittle of this report and of the letter were not gospel :
though I own, I thought the epistle not irreconcilable to other
parts of the conduct of their graces about their children.
Still, I defy you to guess a thousandth part of the marvellous
explanation of the mystery.
The first circumstance that struck was, that the Duke, in
his own son's name, had forgotten the d in the middle. That
was possible in the hurry of doing justice. Next, the wax
' George-William Campbell, Marquis of Lorn. He succeeded his
father as sixth Duke of Argyle in 1806. — E.
' The Emperor Joseph, in 1705, bestowed on the great Duke of Marl
borough the principaUty of Mindleheim, in Suabia. — E.

396 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1791.
was black; and nobody could discover for whom such illus
trious personages were in mourning. Well; that was no
proof one way or other. Unluckily, somebody suggested that
Lord Henry Spencer was in town, though to return the next
day to Holland. A messenger was sent to him, though very
late at night, to beg he would repair to Argyll-house. He did :
the letter was shown to him ; he laughed, and said it had not
the least resemblance to the father's hand. This was negative
detection enough ; but now comes the most positive and won
derful unravelling !
The next day the General received a letter from a gentle
man, confessing that his wife, a friend of Miss Charly, had lately
received from her a copy of a most satisfactory testimonial
from the Duke of Marlborough in her favour (though, note,
the narrative was not then gone to Blenheim) ; and begging
the gentlewoman's husband would transcribe it and send it to
her, as she wished to send a copy to a friend in the country.
The husband had done so, but had had the precaution to
write at top Copy; and before the signature had written,
signed, M, — both which words Miss had erased, and then de
livered the gentleman's identic transcript to the groom, to be
brought back as from Blenheim : which the steady groom, on
being exarained anew, confessed; and that, being bribed, he
had gone but one post and invented the rest.
You will now pity the poor General, who has been a dupe
from the beginning, and sheds fioods of tears; nay, has
actually turned his daughter out of doors, as she is banished
from Argyll-house too : and "Lady Charlotte,* to her honour,
speaks of her with the utmost indignation. In fact, there
never was a more extraordinary tissue of effrontery, folly, and
imposture. It is a strange but not a miraculous part of this strange
story, that Gunnilda is actually harboured by, and lodges with,
the old Duchess '^ in Pall-Mall, the grandmother of whora she
has miscarried, and who was the first that was big with her.
* Lady Charlotte CampbeU. See p. 389. — E.
^ Gertrude, eldest daughter of John Earl Gower, widow of John fourth
Duke of Bedford.— E.

1791. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 397
You may depend on the authenticity of this narrative, and
may guess frora whom I received all the circumstances, day
by day ; but pray, do not quote rae for that reason, nor let it
out of your hands, nor transcribe any part of it. The town
knows the story confusedly, and a raillion of false readings
there will be ; but, though you know it exactly, do not send
it back hither. You will, perhaps, be diverted by the various
ways in which it will be related. Yours, &c.
Eginhart, secretary to Charlemagne
and the Princess Gunnilda, his daughter.
P. S. Bowen is the name of the gentleraan who gave infor
mation of the letter sent to him to be copied, on hearing of
the suspected forgeries. The whole Minifry are involved in
the suspicions, as they defend the damsel, who still confesses
nothing; and it is her mother, not she, who is supposed to
have tampered with the groom ; and is discarded, too, by her
husband.

TO THE EARL OF CHARLEMONT.*
Berkeley Square, Feb. 17, 1791.
It is diflBcuh, my lord, with comraon language that has
been so prostituted in compliments, to express the real sense
of gratitude, which I do feel at ray heart for the obligation
I have to your lordship for an act of friendship as unexpected
as it was unsolicited ; which last circurastance doubles the fa
vour, as it evinces your lordship's generosity and nobleness
of temper, without surprising me. How can I thank your
lordship, as I ought, for interesting yourself, and of yourself,
to save me a little mortification, which I deserve, and should
deserve more, had I the vanity to imagine that my printing
a few copies of my disgusting tragedy would occasion dif
ferent and surreptitious editions of it ?
' Now first collected. This letter was written in consequence of one
Walpole had received, informing him that a Dublin bookseller was about
to print his tragedy of The Mysterious Mother. At this time, and indeed
until the Union took place, there was no act of parUament which regu
lated literary property in Ireland. — E.

398 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1791.
Mr. Walker has acquainted me, my lord, that your lord
ship has most kindly interposed to prevent a bookseller of
Dublin from printing an edition of "The Mysterious Mother"
without my consent; and, with the conscious dignity of a
great mind, your lordship has not even hinted to me the
graciousness of that favour. How have I merited such con
descending goodness, my lord ? Had I a prospect of longer
hfe, I never could pay the debt of gratitude ; the weightier,
as your lordship did not intend I should know that I owe it.
My gratitude can never be effaced ; and I am charmed that
it is due, and due with so much honour to me, that nothing
could bribe me to have less obhgation to your lordship, of
which I am so proud. But as to the play itself, I doubt it
must take its fate. Mr. Walker tells me the booksellers have
desired him to remonstrate to me, urging that they have
already expended fifty pounds; and Mr. Walker adds, as no
doubt would be the case, that should this edition be stifled,
when now expected, some other printer would publish it
I certainly might indemnify the present operator, but I know
too much of the craft, not to be sure, that I should be per
secuted by similar exactions ; and, alas ! I have exposed my
self but too much to the tyranny of the press, not to know
that it taxes delinquents as well as multiplies their faults.
In truth, my lord, it is too late now to hinder copies of
my play from being spread. It has appeared here, both
whole and in fragments; and, to prevent a spurious one, I
was forced to have some printed myself: therefore, if I con
sent to an Irish edition, it is from no vain desire of diffusing
the performance. Indeed, my good lord, I have lived too
long, not to have divested myself both of vanity and affected
modesty. I have not existed to past seventy-three without
having discovered the futility and triflingness of my own ta
lents : and, at the same time, it would be impertinent to pre
tend to think that there is no merit in the execution of a
tragedy, on which I have been so much flattered ; though I
am sincere in condemning the egregious absurdity of selecting
a subject so improper for the stage, and even offensive to
private readers.

1791. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 399
But I have said too much on a personal theme; and there
fore, after repeating a million of thanks to your lordship for
the honour of your interposition, I will beg your lordship, if
you please, to signify to the bookseller that you withdraw
your prohibition : but I shall not answer Mr. Walker's letter
till I have your lordship's approbation, for you are both my
lord chamberlain and hcenser ; and though I have a tolerably
independent spirit, I may safely trust myself under the ab
solute power of one, who has voluntarily protected me against
the licentiousness of those who have invaded my property,
and who distinguishes so accurately and justly between li
cence and liberty.

TO MISS AGNES BERRY.
Berkeley Square, Feb. 18, 1791.
Here is a shocking, not a fatal, codicil to GunnUda's story.
But first I should tell you, that two days after the explosion,
the Signora Madre took a postchaise and four, and drove to
Blenheim ; but, not finding the Duke and Duchess there, she
inquired where the Marquis was, and pursued him to Sir
Henry Dashwood's : finding him there, she began about her
poor daughter; but he interrupted her, said there was an
end put to all that, and desired to lead her to her chaise,
which he insisted on doing, and did. I think this another
symptom of the Minifry being accomplices to the . daughter's
enterprises. Well ! after the groom's confession, and after
Mr. Bowen had been confronted with her, and produced to
her face her note to his wife, which she resolutely disowned,
she desired the Duke of Argyll to let her take an oath on the
Bible of her perfect innocence of every circumstance of the
whole transaction ; which you may be sure he did not permit
N'importe : the next day, taking two of the Duchess of Bed
ford's servants for witnesses, she went before a justice of
peace, swore to her innocence and ignorance throughout, even
of the note to Mrs. Bowen ; and then said to the magistrate,
" Sir, from my youth you may imagine I do not know the

400 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1791.
solemnity of an oath ; but to convince you I do, I know my
salvation depends on what I have now sworn." Solve all this,
if you can ! Is it madness? Does even romance extend its
inventions so far ? or its dispensations ? It is but a burlesque
part of this wonderful tale, that old crazy Bedford exhibitb
Miss every morning on the causeway in Hyde Park ; and de
clares her protegee some time ago refused the hand of your
acquaintance, Mr. Trevelyan.* Except of the contending
Opera-houses, one can hear of nothing but Miss Gunning;
but it is now grown so disgusting a story, that I shall be glad
to hear and repeat to you no more about it.
The Pantheon has opened, and is small, they say, but
pretty and simple; all the rest ill-conducted, and from the
singers to the scene-shifters imperfect; the dances long and
bad, and the whole performance so dilatory and tedious, that
it lasted from eight to half an hour past twelve. The rival
theatre is said to be magnificent and lofty, but it is doubtful
whether it will be suffered to come to hght : in short the con
test will grow pohtics; Dieu et Mon Droit supporting the
Pantheon, and Icli Dien countenancing the Haymarket It
is unlucky that the amplest receptacle is to hold the minority !
20th.
O'Hara^ is corae to town. You will love him better than
ever. He persuaded the captain of the ship, whom you will
love for being persuaded, to stop at Lisbon, that he might
see Mrs. Damer. O'Hara has been shockingly treated !
The House of Richmond is on the point of receiving a very
great blow. Colonel Lenox, who had been dangerously ill
but was better, has relapsed, with all the worst symptoms ; '
and is too weak to be sent to the south, as the physicians re-
> Mr. Trevelyan married, in the foUowing August, Maria, daughter of
Sir Thomas Spencer WUson, Bart. On the death of his father, in 1828,
he succeeded to the title, as fifth baronet. — E.
° Afterwards lieutenant-governor of Gibraltar. He died in 1802.
' Colonel Lenox recovered from his iUness, and, in 1806, succeeded
his uncle as fourth Duke of Richmond. His grace was governor of
Canada at the period of his decease, at Montreal, in 1819 ; and was suc
ceeded by the son here anticipated ; who was born on the 3rd of August
1791.— E. "

1791. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 401
commended. Lady Charlotte is breeding, but that is very
precarious ; and should it even be a son, how many years ere
that can be a comfortable resource !
Is not it strange that London, in February and Parhament
sitting, should furnish no more paragraphs ? Yet confined at
home and in everybody's way, and consequently my room
being a coffee-house from two to four, I probably hear all
events worth relating as soon as they are born, and send you
thera before they are a week old. Indeed, I think the Gun-
ninghiana may last you a month at Pisa, where, I suppose, the
grass grows in the streets as fast as news. When I go out
again, I am likely to know less : I go but to few, and those
the privatest places I can find, which are not the common
growth of London ; nor, but to amuse you, should I inquire
after news. What is a juvenile world to me ; or its pleasures,
interests, or squabbles ? I scarce know the performers by sight
21st.
It is very hard ! The Gunnings will not let me or the
town have done with them. La Madre has advertised a
Letter to the Duke of Argyll : so he is forced to collect
counter afiidavits. The groom has deposed that she pro
mised him twenty pounds a year for his hfe, and he has
given up a letter that she wrote to him. The raother, when
she went after the Marquis, would have persuaded him to get
into her chaise ; but he would not venture being carried tp
Gretna-green, and married by force. She then wanted hira to
sign a paper, that all was over between him and her daughter.
He said, " Madam, nothing was ever begun ;" and refused.
I told you wrong : mother and daughter were not actually
in the Duchess of Bedford's house, but in Lord John Russel's,
which she lent to them ; nor were her servants witnesses to
the oath before Justice Hide, but Dr. Halifax and the apo
thecary. The Signora and her Infanta now, for privacy,
are retired into St James's-street next door to Brooks's;
whence it is supposed Miss wiU angle for unmarried Mar
quises — perhaps for Lord Titchfield.* It is lost time for
' In 1795, the Marquis of Titchfield married Miss Scott, eldest
VOL. VI. 2 D

402 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1791.
people to write novels, who can corapose such a romance as
these good folks have invented. Adieu !

TO THE MISS BERRYS.
Berkeley Square, Feb. 26, 1791.
I HAVE no letter from you to answer, nor anything new
that is the least interesting to teU you. The Duke of Argyll
has sent a gentleman with a cart-load of aflSdavits, which the
latter read to mother and daughter, in order to prevent the
pubhcation of their hbel ; but it only enraged the former, who
vows she will print all she knows, that is, anything she has
heard by their entire intimacy in the family, or, no doubt,
what she can invent or misrepresent What a Medusa !
There has been a fragment of a rehearsal in the Hay
market but still the Pantheon remains master of the field
of battle : the vanquished are preparing manifestos, but they
seldora recover the day.
Madame du Barry* is come over to recover her jewels, of
which she has been robbed — not by the National Assemhly,
but by four Jews who have been seized here and comraitted
to Newgate. Though the late Lord Barrymore acknowledged
her husband to be of his noble blood, will she own the pre
sent Earl for a relation, when she finds him turned strolling
player ! - If she regains her diamonds, perhaps Mrs. Hastings
raay carry her to court.^
If you want bigger events, you may send to the Russian
army, who will cut you fifteen thousand throats in a para
graph ; or, en attendant, you may piddle with the havoc made
at Chantilly, which has been half demohshed by the rights
of raen, as the poor old Mesdames have been stopped by the
daughter and heir of General John Scott, of Balcomie, in the county of
Fife, and in 1809, succeeded his father as fourth Duke of Portland. — E.
' The last mistress of Louis the Fifteenth. The Count du Barry,
who had disgraced his name by marrying her, claimed to be of the same
famUy with the Earls of Barrymore in Ireland. See vol. v. p. 256. — E.
' See ante, p. 365.
^ Mrs. Hastings was supposed, by the party violence of the day, to
have received immense bribes in diamonds.

1791. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 403
rights of the poissardes ; for, as it is true that extremes meet
the moment despotism was hurled from the throne, it de
volved to the mob, whose majesties, not being able to write
their names, do not issue lettres de cachet, but execute their
wills with their own hands; for hanging, which degrades an
executioner, ne deroge pas in sovereigns — witness the Czar
Peter the Great, Muley Ishraael, and raany rehgious and
gracious African raonarchs.
After eleven weeks of close confinement, I went out yes
terday to take the air ; but was soon driven back by rain and
sleet which soon ripened to a tempest of wind and snow, and
continued all night: it does not freeze, but blows so hard,
that I shall sally out no more till the weather has recovered
its temper — I do not mean that I expect Pisan skies. 28th.
It was on Saturday that I began this ; it is now Monday,
and I have no letter from you, though we have had dozens
of east winds. I am sorry to find that it costs above six
weeks to say a word at Pisa and have an answer in London.
This makes correspondence very uncomfortable ; you will be
talking to me of Miss Gunning, when, perhaps, she may be
sent to Botany Bay, and be as much forgotten here as tlie
Monster.'- Still she has been a great resource this winter ;
for, though London is apt to produce Wilkeses, and George
Gordons, and Mrs. Rudds, and Home Tookes, and other
phenomena, wet and dry, the present season has been very
unprolific ; and we are forced to iraport French news, as we
used to do fashions and Operas comiques. The Mesdames
are actually set out : I shall be glad to hear they are safe at
Turin, for are there no poissardes but at Paris ?* Natio pois-
sarda est

' A vagabond so called, from his going about attempting to stab at wo
men with a knife. His first aim had probably been at their pockets, which
having in several instances missed and wounded his intended victims,
fear and a love of the marvellous dubbed him with the name of the Mon
ster. The wretch, whose name was Renwick Williams, was tried for
the offence at the Old BaUey, in July 1790, and found guUty of a mis
demeanour. — E.
^ After numerous interruptions, the King's aunts were permitted by
the National Assembly to proceed to Italy. — E.
2d 2

404 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1791.
Mr. Gibbon writes that he has seen Necker, and found him
StiU devoured by ambition,* and I should think by morti
fication at the foolish figure he has made. Gibbon admires
Burke to the skies, and even the rehgious parts, he says.^
Monday evening.
The east winds are making me amends ; one of them has
brought me twins. I am sorry to find that even Pisa's sky
is not quite sovereign, but that you have both been out of
order, though, thank God ! quite recovered both. If a Flo
rentine March is at all like an English one, I hope you wiU
not remove thither tUl AprU. Some of its months, I am sure,
were sharper than those of our common wear are. Pray be
quite easy about me : I am entirely recovered, though, if
change were bad, we have scarce had one day without every
variety of bad weather, with a momentary leaf-gold of sun.
I have been out three times, and to-day have made five-
and-twenty visits, and was let in at six ; and, though a httle
fatigued, am still able, you see, to finish my letter. You seera
to think I palhated my illness : I certainly did not tell you
that I thought it doubtful how it would end ; yet I told you all
the circumstances, and surely did not speak sanguinely.
I wish, in No. 20, you had not again named October or
November. I have quite given up those raonths, and am
' " I have passed," says Gibbon, in a letter to Lord Sheffield, " four
days at the castle of Copet with Necker ; and could have wished to
have shown him as a warning to any aspiring youth possessed with the
demon of ambition. With aU the means of private happiness in his
power, he is the most miserable of human beings : the past, the present,
and the future, are equally odious to him. When I suggested some
domestic amusement of books, building, &c. he answered, with a deep
tone of despair, ' Dans I'^tat oil je suis, je ne puis sentir que le coup de
vent qui m'a abbatu.' How different from the conscious cheerfulness
with which our friend Lord North supported his fall ! Madame Necker
maintains more external composure, mais le diable n'y perd rien. It is
true that Necker wished to be carried into the closet, like old Pitt, on
the shoulders of the people, and that he has been ruined by the demo
cracy which he had raised. I believe him to be an able financier, and
know him to be an honest man." — E.
' The foUowing are Gibbon's expressions : — " Burke's book is a most
admirable medicine against the French disease ; which has made too
much progress even in this happy country. I admire his eloquence, I
approve his politics, I adore his chivalry, and I can forgive even his
superstition." — E.

1791. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 405
vexed I ever pressed for them, as they would break into your
reasonable plans, for which I abandon any foolish ones of my
own. But I am a poor philosopher, or rather am like all
philosophers, have no presence of mind, and must study my
part before I can act it. I have now settled myself not to
expect you this year — do not unsettle me : I dread a dis
appointment, as I do a relapse of the gout; and therefore
cut this article short that I may not indulge vain hopes.
My affection for you both is unalterable : can I give so strong
a proof as by supplicating you, as I do earnestly, to act as is
most prudent for your healths and interest? A long journey
in November would be the worst part you could take, and I
beseech you not to think of it: for rae, you see I take a
great deal of killing, nor is it so easy to die as is iraagined.
Thank you, my dearest Miss Agnes, for your postscript I
love to see your hand-writing ; and yet do not press for it as
you are shy : though I address myself equally to both, and
consult the healths of both in what I have recommended above.
Here is a postscript for yours : Madame du Barry was to go
and swear to her jewels before the Lord Mayor. Boydell,
who is a little better bred than Monsieur BaiUy,* made ex
cuses for being obhged to administer the oath chez lui, but
' M. Bailly, the learned astronomer. He was president of the first
National Assembly, and in July 1789 appointed mayor of Paris; in
which situation he gave great offence to the people, in July 1791, by
ordering martial law to be proclaimed against a mob which had assem
bled in the Champ de Mars to frame an addi-ess, recommending the de
position of Louis. For this step, which was approved of by the Assembly,
he was arrested, tried, condemned, and put to death on the 1 1th of No
vember 1793. The details of this event are horrible. " The weather,"
says M. Thiers, " was cold and rainy. Conducted on foot, he manUested
the utmost composure amidst the insults of a barbarous populace, whom
he had fed while he was mayor. On reaching the foot of the scaffold,
one of the wretches cried out, that the field of the federation ought not
to be poUuted by his blood. The people instantly rushed upon the guU-
lotine, bore it off, and erected it again upon a dung-hUl on the bank of
the Seine, and opposite to the spot where Bailly had passed his life and
composed his invaluable works. This operation lasted some hours : mean
while, he was compelled to walk several times round the Champ de Mars,
bareheaded, and with his hands pinioned behind him. Some pelted him
with mud, others kicked and struck him with sticks. He feU exhausted.
They lifted him up again. ' Thou tremblest !' said a soldier to him.
' My friend,' replied the old man, ' it is cold.' At length he was deU
vered over to the executioner ; and another iUustrious scholar, and one of
tbe most virtuous of men, was then taken from it." Vol. iU. p. 207. — E.

406 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1791.
begged she would name her hour; and, when she did, he
fetched her himself in the state-coach, and had a mayor-royal
banquet ready for her.* She has got most of her jewels again.
I want the King to send her four Jews to the National As
sembly, and tell them it is the change or la monnoie of Lord
George Gordon, the Israelite.
Colonel Lenox is much better: the Duchess of Leinster
had a letter from Goodwood to-day which says he rides out.
I am glad you do. I said nothing on " the Charming-man's"
poem. I fear I said too much to him myself. He said, others
liked it; and showed me a note from Mr. Burke, that was
hyperbole itself. I wish him so well, that I am sorry he
should be so flattered, when, in truth, he has no genius.'^
There is no novelty, no plan, and no suite in his poetry;
though many of the lines are pretty. Dr. Darwin alone can
exceed his predecessors.
Let me repeat to both, that distance of place and time can
make no alteration in my friendship. It grew from esteem for
your characters, and understandings, and tempers; and be
came affection from your good-natured attentions to me, where
there is so vast a disproportion in our ages. Indeed, that
complaisance spoiled rae; but I have weaned myself of my
own self-love, and you shall hear no more of its dictates.
' See post, p. 408. — E.
' Mr. Gifford was of Walpole's opinion, and has, in consequence, ac
corded to " The Charming-man " a prominent situation in the Baviad —
" See sniv'ling Jerningham at fifty weep
O'er love-lorn oxen and deserted sheep."
To the poem here alluded to, and which was entitled " Peace, Ignominy,
and Destruction," the satirist thus alludes : — " I thought I understood
something of faces ; but I must read my Lavater over again I find. That
a gentleman, with the ' physionomie d'un mouton qui reve,' should sud
denly start up a new Tyrtaeus, and pour a dreadful note through a
cracked war-trump, amazes me : well, fronti nulla fides shall henceforth
be my motto." In a note to the Pursuits of Literature, Mr. Mathias
directs the attention of Mr. Jerningham to the following beautiful lines in
Dryden's Epistle to Mr. Julien, Secretary of the Muses : —
" AU his care
Is to be thought a Poet fine and fair ;
Small beer and gruel are his meat and drink.
The diet he prescribes himself to think ;
Rhyme next his heart he takes at morning peep.
Some love-epistles at the hour of sleep ;
And when his passion has been bubbling long.
The scum at last boils up into a song." — E.

1791. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 407

TO THE MISS BERRYS.
Berkeley Square, March 5, 1791.
One may live in a vast capital, and know no more of
three parts of it than of Carthage. When I was at Florence,
I have surprised some Florentines by telling thera, that Lon
don was built, like their city, (where you often cross the
bridges several times in a day,) on each side of the river; and
yet that I had never been but on one side; for then I had
never been in Southwark. When I was very young, and in
the height of the opposition to ray father, ray mother wanted
a large parcel of bugles ; for what use I forget As they were
then out of fashion, she could get none. At last she was
told of a quantity in a little shop in an obscure alley in the
City. We drove thither ; found a great stock ; she bought it,
and bade the proprietor send it horae. He said, " Whither?"
" To Sir Robert Walpole's." He asked coolly, « Who is Sir
Robert Walpole?"
This is very hke Carabridge, who tells you three stories to
make you understand a fourth. In short, t'other raorning a
gentleman made me a visit and asked if I had heard of the
great misfortune that had happened? The Albion Mills
are burnt down. I asked where they were ; supposing they
were powder-mUls in the country, that had blown up. I had
literally never seen or heard of the spacious lofty building at
the end of Blackfriars Bridge. At first it was supposed
maliciously burnt, and it is certain the mob stood and en
joyed the conflagration, as of a monopoly ; but it had been on
fire, and it was thought extinguished. The building had cost
a hundred thousand pounds; and the loss in corn and flour
is calculated at a hundred and forty thousand. I do not
answer for the truth of the sums ; but it is certain that the
Palace-yard and part of St James's Park were covered with
half-burnt grain.*
' The fire took place on the morning of the 2nd of March. There was
no reason for any particular suspicion, except the general dislike in the
lower classes of the people, arising from a notion, that the undertaking
enhanced the price of corn and decreased the value of labour. — E.

408 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1791.
This accident and my introduction, have helped me to a
good part of my letter; for you must have observed, that even
in this overgrown town the winter has not been productive of
events. Good night ! I have two days to wait for a letter
that I may answer. Stay ; I should tell you, that I have been
at Sir Joseph Banks's hterary saturnalia,* where was a Parisian
watch-maker, who produced the smallest automaton that I
suppose was ever created. It was a rich snuff-box, not too
large for a woman. On opening the lid, an enamelled bird
started up, sat on the rim, turned round, fluttered its wings,
and piped in a delightful tone the notes of different birds;
particularly the jug-jug of the nightingale. It is the prettiest
plaything you ever saw; the price tempting — only five hun
dred pounds. That economist the Prince of Wales, could
not resist it, and has bought one of those dickybirds. If the
maker finds such customers, he will not end like one of his
profession here, who made the serpent in Orpheus and Eu
rydice ; ^ and who fell so deeply in love with his own works,
that he did nothing afterwards but make serpents, of all sorts
and sizes, till he was ruined and broke. I have not a tittle to
add — but that the Lord Mayor did not fetch Madame du
Barry in the City-royal coach ; but kept her to dinner. She
is gone ; but returns in April,

TO MISS BERRY.
Strawberry HiU, Saturday, March 19, 1791.
I DID not begin my letter on customary Friday, because
I had nothing new to teU or to say. The town hes faUow—
not an incident worth repeating as far as I know. Parhament
manufactures only bills, not politics. I never understood any
thing useful; and, now that ray tirae and connections are
shrunk to so narrow a compass, what business have I with
business ? As 1 have mended considerably for the last four
' Sir Joseph Banks, while president of the Royal Society, had a weekly
evening reception of all persons distinguished in science or the arts.
' A celebrated opera.

1791. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 409
days, and as we have had a fortnight of soft warm weather,
and a south-west wind to-day, I have ventured hither for
change of air, and to give orders about some repairs at Clive
den ; which, by the way, Mr. Henry Bunbury, two days ago,
proposed to take off my hands for his life. I really do not
think I accepted his offer. I shall return to town on Monday,
and hope to find a letter to answer — or what will this do?
Berkeley Square, Monday evening.
I ara returned, and find the only letter I dreaded, and the
only one, I trust, that I shall ever not be irapatient to receive
froiii you. Though ten thousand times kinder than I deserve,
it wounds my heart; as 1 find 1 have hurt two of the persons
I love the best upon earth, and whom I am most constantly
studying to please and serve. That I soon repented of my
murraurs, you have seen by ray subsequent letters. The
truth, as you may have perceived, though no excuse, was, that
I had thought myself dying, and should never see you more ;
that I was extremely weak and low when Mrs. Damer's letter
arrived, and mentioned her supposing I should not see you
till spring twelvemonth. That terrible sentence recalled Mr.
Batt's being the first to assure me of your going abroad, when
I had concluded you had laid aside the design. I did sin
cerely allow that in both instances you had acted from ten
derness in concealing your intentions ; but, as I knew I could
better bear the information from yourselves than from others,
I thought it unfriendly to let me learn from others what in
terested me so deeply : yet I do not in the least excuse my
conduct; no, I conderan it in every light, and shall never for
give rayself if you do not promise rae to be guided entirely by
your own convenience and inclinations about your return. I
am perfectly weU again, and just as hkely to hve one year
as half an one. Indulge your pleasure in being abroad whUe
you are there. I ara now reasonable enough to enjoy your
happiness as my own ; and, since you are most kind when I
least desei-ve it, how can I express ray gratitude for giving
up the scruple that was so distressing to rae ! Convince rae
you are in earnest by giving me notice that you will write to

410 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1791.
Charing-cross while the Neapolitans are at Florence.* I will
look on that as a clearer proof of your forgiving my criminal
letter, than your return before you like it. It is most sure
that nothing is raore solid or less personal than my friendship
for you two ; and even my complaining letter, though unjust
and unreasonable, proved that the nearer I thought myself to
quitting the world, the more my heart was set on my two
friends ; nay, they had occupied the busiest moments of my
Ulness as well as the most fretful ones. Forgive then, my
dearest friends, what could proceed from nothing but too ira
patient affection. You say most truly you did not deserve my
complaints : your patience and temper under them make me
but the raore in the wrong ; and to have hurt you, who have
known but too rauch grief, is such a contradiction to the
whole turn of ray mind ever since I knew you, that I believe
ray weakness from illness was beyond even what I suspected.
It is sure that when I am in my perfect senses, the whole
bent of my thoughts is to proraote your and your sister's
felicity ; and you know nothing can give me satisfaction like
your allowing me to be of use to you. I speak honestly, not
withstanding my unjust letter; I had rather serve you than
see you. Here let rae finish this subject : I do not think I
shall be faulty to you again.
The Mother Gunning has published her letter to the Duke
of Argyll, and it disappoints everybody. It is neither roraan-
tic, nor entertaining, nor abusive, but on the General and Mr.
and Mrs. Bowen, and the General's groom. On the Bowens
it is so imraeasurably scurrilous, that I think they raust prose
cute her. She accuses them and her husband of a conspiracy
to betray and ruin his own daughter, without even attempting
to assign a motive to them. Of the House of Argyll she says
not a word. In short, it is a most dull incoherent rhapsody,
that gives no account at all of the story that gave origin to her
' His correspondents, to settle his mind as to the certainty of their
return at the time they had promised, had assured him, that no financial
difficulties should stand in the way ; which is what he means by sending
to Charing-cross (to Drummond his banker). No such difficulties oc
curred. The correspondence, therefore, with Charing-cross never took
place.— M. B.

1791. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 411
book, and at which no mortal could guess from it; and the
246 pages contain nothing but invectives on her four supposed
enemies, and endless tiresome encomiums on the virtues of her
glorious darling, and the unspottable innocence of that harm
less lambkin. I would not even send it to you if I had an
opportunity — you would not have patience to go through it ;
and there, I suppose, the absurd legend will end. I am
heartily tired of it. Adieu !
P. S. That ever / should give you two an uneasy moment !
Oh ! forgive rae : yet I do not deserve pardon in my own
eyes ; and less in my own heart.

TO THE MISS BERRYS.
Berkeley Square, Sunday, March 27, 1791.
Though I begin my despatch to-day, I think I shall
change my post-days, as I hinted, from Tuesdays to Fridays ;
not only as more commodious for learning news for you,
but as I do not receive your letters generally but on Mondays,
I have less time to answer. I have an additional reason for
delay this week. Mr. Pitt has notified that he is to de
liver a message from the King to-morrow, to the House of
Commons on the situation of Europe; and should there be
a long debate, I may not gather the particulars tiU Tuesday
morning, and if my levee lasts late, shall not have time to
write to you. Oh ! now are you all impatience to hear that
message ; I am sorry to say that I fear it is to be a warlike
one. The Autocratrix swears, d — n her eyes ! she will hack
her way to Constantinople through the blood of one hundred
thousand more Turks, and that we are very impertinent for
sending her a card with a sprig of olive. On the other hand,
Prussia bounces and huffs and claims our promise of help
ing him to make peace by helping him to make war ; and so,
in the most charitable and pacific way in the world, we are,
they say, to send twenty ships to the Baltic, and half as many
to the Black Sea, — this little Britain, commonly called Great

412 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1791.
Britain, is to dictate to Petersburg and Bengal, and cover
Constantinople under those wings that reach from the North
Pole to the farthest East ! I am mighty sorry for it, and
hope we shall not prove a jackdaw that pretends to dress
itself in the plumes of imperial eagles !
If we bounce abroad, we are more forgiving at home :
a gentleman who hves at the east end of St James's Park
has been sent for by a lady who has a large house at the
west end,* and they have kissed and are friends ; which he
notified by toasting her health in a bumper at a club the
other day. I know no circumstances, but am glad of it; I
love peace, public or private : not so the chieftains of the
contending theatres of harmony. Taylor, in wondrous re
spectful terms and full of aflliction, has printed in the
newspapers an advertisement, declaring that the Marquis's
honour the Lord Chamberlain ^ did in one season, and
that an unprofitable one, send orders (you know, that is
tickets of admission without paying) into the Opera-house,
to the loss of the raanagers of four hundred pounds — ser
vants, it is supposed, and Hertfordshire voters eke: and
moreover, that it has been sworn in Chancery that his lord
ship, not as lord charaberlain, has stipulated with Gallini and
O'Reilly that he, his heirs and assigns, should preserve the
power of giving those detrimental orders in perpetuity. The
iraraunity is a little new : forraer chamberlains, it seems,
even durante officio, have not exercised the privilege — if they
had it
One word more of the Gunnings. Captain Bowen in
formed the authoress, by the channel of the papers, that he
shaU prosecute her for the libel. She answered, by the same
conveyance, that she is extremely glad of it. But there is a
diSiculty — unless the prosecution is criminal, it is thought
that Madam being femme couverte, the charge must be made
against her husband ; and, to be sure, it would be droll that
the General should be attacked for not hindering his wife
from writing a libel, that is more virulent against him himself
' The Queen and the Prince of Wales.
'^ The Marquis of Salisbury.

1791. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 413
than anybody ! Another little circumstance has come out :
till the other day he did not know that he had claimed de
scent from Charlemagne in the newspapers ; which, there
fore, is referred to the sarae manufacture as the other
forgeries. The General said, " It is true, I am well born ; but
I know no such famUy in Ireland as the Charlemagnes."
Lord Ossory has just been here, and told me that Gun
nilda has written to Lord Blandford, in her own narae and
hand, begging his pardon (for proraising herself marriage in
his name), but imputing the first thought to his grandmother,
whom she probably inspired to think of it This letter the
Duchess of Marlborough carried to the Duchess of Bedford,
to open her eyes on her protegee, but with not much success ;
for what signify eyes, when the rest of the head is gone ? She
only said, " You may be easy, for both mother and daughter,
are gone to France " — no doubt, on finding her grace's raoney
not so forthcoraing as her countenance, and terrified by Cap
tain Bowen's prosecution — and there, I hope, will terminate
that strange story; for in France there is not a marquis left
to marry her. One has heard of nothing else for these seven
months ; and it requires some ingenuity to keep up the at
tention of such a capital as London for above half a year
together. I supped on Thursday at Mrs. BuUer's with the Conways
and Mount-Edgcumbes ; and the next night at Lady Ailes
bury's with the same company, and Lady Augusta Clavering.*
You know, on the famous night at your house when Gunnilda
pretended that ber father had received Lord Blandford's
appointment of the wedding-day, we suspected, when they
were gone, that we had seen doubts in Lady Augusta's face,
and I desired her uncle. Lord Frederick, to ask her if we had
guessed right ; but she protests she had then no suspicion.
I have determined to send this away on Tuesday, whether
I know the details of the temple of Janus to-morrow in tirae or
not, that you may give yourselves airs of importance, if the
Turin ministers pretend to tell you news of your own country
* Eldest daughter pf John Duke of Argyle.

414 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1791.
that you do not know. You may say, your charg6 des affaires
sent you word of the King's raessage; and you may be myste
rious about the rest ; for mystery in the diplomatic dictionary
is construed knowledge, though, hke a Hebrew word, it means
the reverse too. Sunday night.
I have been at White Pussy's* this evening. She asked
much after you's. I did not think her lord looked as if he
would drive Prince Potemkin out of Bulgaria ; but we trust
that a new Frederick of Prussia and a new William Pitt wiU.
Could they lay Catherine in the Black Sea, as ghosts used to
be laid in the Red, the world would be obhged to them.

TO MISS BERRY.
Strawberry HiU, Sunday night, AprU 3, 1791.
Oh ! what a shocking accident ! Oh ! how I detest your
going abroad more than I have done yet in iqy crossest mood !
You escaped the storra on the 10th of October, that gave me
such an alarra ; you passed unhurt through the cannibals of
France and their republic of larrons and poissardes, who terri
fied rae sufficiently; but I never expected that you would
dash yourself to pieces at Pisa ! ^ You say I love truth, and
that you have told me the exact truth ; but how can fear be
lieve ?
How I hate a party of pleasure ! It never turns out well ;
fools fall out and sensible people fall down ! Still I thank
you a mUhon of times for writing yourself If Miss Agnes
had written for you, I confess I should have been ten times
more alarmed than I am ; and yet I am alarmed enough.
Not to torment you more with my fears, when I hope you
are almost recovered, I will answer the rest of your letter.
* Elizabeth Cary, wife of Lord Amherst, at this time commander-in-
chief. ^ Miss Berry had fallen down a bank in the neighbourhood of Pisa,
and received a severe cut on the nose.

1791. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 415
General O'Hara I have unluckily not met yet He is so dis
persed, and I am so confined in my resorts and so seldom
dine from home, that I have not seen him, even at General
Conway's. When I do, can you imagine that we shall not
talk of you two — yes ; and your accident, I am sure, will be
the chief topic. "As our fleets are to dethrone Catherine
Petruchiar, O'Hara will probably not be sent to Siberia.
Apropos to Catherine and Petruchio. I supped with their
representatives, Kemble and Mrs. Siddons, t'other night at
Miss Farren's : the Hothams * were there too, and Mrs. An
derson, '^ who treated the players with acting as many charac
ters as ever they did, particularly Gunnilda and Lady Clack-
mannan.3 Mrs. Siddons is leaner, but looks well : she has
played Jane Shore and Desdemona, and is to play in the
Gamester ; all the parts she will act this year. Kemble, they
say, shone in Othello,
Mrs. Damer has been received at Elvas with all military
honours, and a banquet, by order of Mello, forraerly ambas
sador here. It was handsome in him, but must have dis
tressed her, who is so void of ostentation and love of show.
Miss Boyle,* who no more than Miss Pulteney,^ has let herself
be snapped up by lovers of her fortune, is going to Italy for a
year with Lord and Lady Maiden.^ Berkeley Square, Monday after dinner.
Mirabeau is dead;'' ay, miraculously; for it was of a pu-
* Sir Charles Hotham Thompson, married to Lady Dorothy Hobart,
sister of John second Earl of Buckinghamshire.
' A daughter of Lady Cecilia Johnstone's, married to a brother of
Charles Anderson Pelham, Lord Garborough.
' A nickname, which had been given by the writer to a lady of the
society. * Afterwards married to Lord Henry Fitzgerald.
" Afterwards married to Sir James Murray.
^ Lord Maiden, afterwards Earl of Essex, was a first cousin of Miss
Boyle's. This journey did not take place.
' Mirabeau died on the 2nd of April, at the age of forty-two, a victim
to his own debaucheries. His friend, M. Dupont, says of him, that
" trusting to the strength of his constitution, he gave himself up, with
out restraint, to every Kind of pleasure." Madame de Stael states, that
he suffered crueUy in the last days of his life, and when no longer able
to speak, wrote to his physician for a dose of opium, in the words of

416 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1791.
trid fever (that began in his heart). Dr. Price is dying also.*
That Mr. Berry, with so much good nature and good sense
should be staggered, I do not wonder. Nobody is more de
voted to hberty than I am. It is therefore that I abhor the
National Assembly, whose outrageous violence has given, I
fear, a lasting wound to the cause; for anarchy is despotism in
the hands of thousands. A hon attacks but when hungry or
provoked ; but who can live in a desert full of hyajnas ? —
nobody but Mr. Bruce; and we have only his word for it
Here is started up another corsair ; one Paine, from America,
who has published an answer to Mr. Burke.^ His doctrines
go to the extremity of levelling ; and his style is so coarse,
that you would think he meant to degrade the language as
much as the government : here is one of his delicate para
graphs : — " We do not want a king, or lords of the bedcham
ber, or lords of the kitchen," &c. This rhetoric, I suppose,
was calculated for our poissardes.

TO MISS BERRY.
Berkeley Square, Friday night AprU 15, 1791.
My preface wiU be short; for I have nothing to tell, and
a great deal that I am waiting most impatiently to hear ; all
which, however, maybe couched in these two phrases, — "I
ara quite recovered of my fall, and my nose will not be the
worse for it" — for with all my pretences, I cannot help hav
ing that nose a little upon my spirits ; though if it were flat
I should love it as much as ever, for the sake of the head and
heart that belong to it. I have seen O'Hara, with his face as
Hamlet, " to die — to sleep !" His obsequies were celebrated with great
pomp, and his body placed in the Pantheon, by the side of that of Des
cartes. In two short years, his ashes were removed, by order of the Con
vention, and scattered abroad by the populace ; who, at the same time,
burned his bust in the Place de Greve. — E.
' Dr. Price died on the 19th of AprU. — E.
' This was the first part of the " Rights of Man," in answer to the
celebrated " Reflections." At the commencement of the year, Paine
had pubUshed at Paris, under the borrowed name of Achille Duchatellet,
a tract recommending the abolition of royalty. — E.

1791. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 417
ruddy and black, and his teeth as white as ever ; and as fond
of you two, and as grieved for your fall, as anybody — but I.
He has got a better regiment Strawberry HiU, Sunday night, past eleven.
You chose your time ill for going abroad this year:
England never saw such a spring since it was fifteen years
old. The warmth, blossoms, and verdure are unparalleled.
I am just come from Richmond, having first called on Lady
Di. who is designing and painting pictures for prints to
Dryden's Fables.* Oh ! she has done two most beautiful; one
of Emily walking in the garden, and Palamon seeing her from
the tower: the other, a noble, free composition of Theseus
parting the rivals, when fighting in the wood. They are not
as you will imagine, at all like the pictures in the Shakspeare
GaUery : no ; they are worthy of Dryden.
I can tell you nothing at all certain of our war with Russia.
If one believes the weather-glass of the stocks, it will be
peace: they had fallen to 71, and are risen again, and soberly,
to 79. Fawkener, clerk of the council, sets out to-day or to
morrow for Berlin ; probably, I hope, with an excuse. In the
present case, I had much rather our ministers were bullies
than heroes: no mortal likes the war. The court-majority
lost thirteen of its former number at the beginning of the
week, which put the Opposition into spirits; but, pursuing
their motions on Friday, twelve of the thirteen were re-
covered.2 Lord Onslow told me just now, at Madame de
BouflSers's, that Lady Salisbury was brought to bed of a son
and heir 3 last night, two hours after she came from the
Opera ; and that Madame du Barry dined yesterday with the
' A splendid edition of the Fables of Dryden, ornamented with en
gravings, from the elegant and fascinating pencil of Lady Diana Beau
clerc, was published in folio, in 1797. — B.
" On the 12th of April, a series of resolutions, moved by Mr. Grey,
the object of which was to pronounce the armament against Russia inex
pedient and unnecessary, were, after a warm debate, negatived by 252
against 172. A similar motion, made on the 15th, by Mr. Baker, was
rejected by a majority of 254 to 162. — E.
" James-Brownlow- WiUiam Gascoyne CecU. In 1823, he succeeded
his father as second Marquis of SaUsbury. — E.
VOL. VI. 2 E

418 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1791.
Prince of Wales, at the Duke of Queensberry's, at Richmond.
Thus you have all my news, such as it is ; and I flatter my
self no English at Pisa or Florence can boast of better in
telhgence than you — but for you, should I care about Madame
du Barry or my Lady Salisbury, or which of them hes in or
hes out ? Berkeley Square, Monday, AprU 18.
Oh ! what a dear letter have I found, and from both at
once ; and with such a delightful bulletin ! I should not be
pleased with the idleness of the pencil, were it not owing to
the chapter of health, which I prefer to everything. You
order me to be particular about my own health: I have
nothing to say about it but that it is as good as before my
last fit. Can I expect or desire more at my age ? My am
bition is to pass a summer, with you two established at Clive
den. I shall not reject more if they come ; but one must not
be presumptuous at seventy-three ; and though my eyes, ears,
teeth, motion, have still lasted to make life comfortable, I do
not know that I should be enchanted if surviving any of
thera ; and, having no desire to becorae a phUosopher, I had
rather be naturally cheerful than affectedly so : for patience I
take to be only a resolution of holding one's tongue, and not
coraplaining of what one feels — for does one feel or think the
less for not owning it ?
Though London increases every day, and Mr. Herschell has
just discovered a new square or circus somewhere by the New
Road in the Via Lactea, where the cows used to be fed, I be
lieve you will think the town cannot hold all its inhabitants ;
so prodigiously the population is augmented. I have twice
been going to stop my coach in Piccadilly, (and the same
has happened to Lady Ailesbury,) thinking there was a mob;
and it was only nyraphs and swains sauntering or trudging.
T'other morning, i. e. at two o'clock, I went to see Mrs.
Garrick and Miss Hannah More at the Adelphi, and was
stopped five times before I reached Northumberland-house;
for the tides of coaches, chariots, curricles, phaetons, &c. are
endless. Indeed, the town is so extended, that the breed of
chairs is almost lost ; for Hercules and Atlas could not carry

1791. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 419
anybody from one end of this enormous capital to the other.
How magnified would be the error of the young woman at
St Helena, who, some years ago, said to a captain of an In-
diaraan, "I suppose London is very empty, when the India
ships come out" Don't make me excuses, then, for short let
ters ; nor trouble yourself a moment to lengthen them. You
compare little towns to quiet times, which do not feed history;
and most justly. If the vagaries of London can be comprised
once a week in three or four pages of small quarto paper, and
not always that, how should httle Pisa furnish an equal ex
port? When Pisa was at war with the rival republic of
Milan, Machiavel was put to it to describe a battle, the
slaughter in which araounted to one man slain ; and he was
trampled to death, by being thrown down and battered in his
husk of complete armour; as I remeraber reading above fifty
years ago at Florence. Eleven at night.
Oh ! mercy ! I am just corae from Mrs. BuUer's, baring
left a very pleasant set at Lady Herries'* — and for such a col
lection ! Eight or ten women and girls, not one of whom
I knew by sight ; a German Count as stiff and upright as the
inflexible Dowager of Beaufort ; a fat Dean and his wife, he
speaking Cornish, and of baring dined to-day at Lambeth;
four young oflScers, friends of the boy Buller,'^ who played
with one of them at tric-trac, while the others made with the
Misses a stUl raore noisy comraerce ; and not a creature but
Mrs. Cholmondely, who went away immediately, and her son,
who was speechless with the head-ache, that I was the least
acquainted with: and, to add to my sufferings, the Count
would talk to me of les beaux arts, of which he knows no more
than an oyster. At last carae in Mrs. Blair, whom I know as
little; but she asked so kindly after you two, and was so
anxious about your fall and your return, that I grew quite
fond of her, and beg you would love her for my sake, as I do
for yours. Good night !
I have this moment received a card frora the Duchess-dow-
' The wife of the banker in St. James's-street.
' Mrs. BuUer's only child. 2 E 2

420 CORRESPONDENfCE OF 1791.
ager of Ancaster, to summon me for to-morrow at three
o'clock — I suppose to sign Lord Cholmondeley's marriage-
articles with her daughter.* The wedding is to be this day
sevennight Save me, my old stars, from wedding-dinners !
But I trust they are not of this age. I should sooner expect
Hymen to jump out of a curricle, and walk into the Duchess's
dressing-room in boots and a dirty shirt

TO MISS BERRY.
Strawberry HiU, AprU 23, 1791.
To-day, when the town is staring at the sudden resigna
tion of the Duke of Leeds,^ asking the reason, and gaping to
know who will succeed him, I am come hither with an in
difference that might pass for phUosophy ; as the true cause is
not known, which it seldom is. Don't tell Europe; but I
really am come to look at the repairs of Cliveden, and how
they go on ; not without an eye to the hlacs and the apple-
blossoms : for even self can find a corner to wriggle into,
though friendship may fit out the vessel. Mr. Berry raay,
perhaps, wish I had more pohtical curiosity ; but as I must
return to town on Monday for Lord Cholmondeley's wedding,
I may hear before the departure of the post if the seals are
given : for the Duke's reasons, should they be assigned, shall
one be certain? His intention was not even whispered till
Wednesday evening. The news frora India, so long ex
pected, are not couleur de rose, but de sang : a detachraent has
been defeated by Tippoo Saib, and Lord Cornwallis is gone to
take the command of the army himself. Will the East be
more propitious <o him than the West ?
The abolition of the slave-trade has been rejected by the
House of Comraons,^ though Mr. Pitt and Mr. Fox united
* Lady Charlotte Bertie.
= Francis Godolphin Osborne, fifth Duke of Leeds. In 1776, he was
appointed a lord of the bedchamber, and in 1783, secretary of state for
foreign affairs. He was succeeded in the office by Lord GrenviUe. — E.
' The numbers on the division were, for the abolition 88, against it
163.— E.

1791. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 421
earnestly to carry it: but commerce chinked its purse, and
that sound is generally prevalent with the majority; and
humanity's tears, and eloquence's figures and arguments, had
no more effect than on those patrons of liberty, the National
Assembly of France ; who, while they proclaim the rights of
men, did not choose to admit the sable moiety of mankind to
a participation of those benefits.
Captain Bowen has published a little pamphlet of affidavits,
which prove that Gunnilda attempted to bribe her father's
groom to perjure himself; but he begged to be excused.
Nothing raore appears against the raother, but that Miss pre
tended her mamma had an aversion to Lord Lorn, (an aversion
to a Marquis!) and that she did not dare to acquaint so
tender a parent with her lasting passion for him. Still I am
persuaded that both the mother and the aunt were in the plot,
whatever it was. I saw Lady Cecilia last night, and made all
your speeches, and received their value in return for you.
Good Hannah More is killing herself by a new fit of bene
volence, about a young girl with a great fortune, who has
been taken from school at Bristol to Gretna Green, and can
not be discovered ; nor the apothecary who stole her. Mrs.
Garrick, who suspects, as I do, that Miss Europa is not very
angry with Mr. Jupiter, had very warm words, a few nights
ago, at the Bishop of London's, with Lady Beaumont; but I
diverted the quarrel by starting the stale story of the Gunning.
You know Lady Beaumont's eagerness : she is ready to hang
the apothecary with her own hands ; and he certainly is cri
minal enough. Poor Hannah lives with attorneys and Sir
Sampson Wright;* and I have seen her but once since she
came to town. Her ungrateful protegee, the milkwoman, has
pubhshed her tragedy, and dedicated it to a patron as worthy
as herself, the Earl-bishop of Derry.^
* In a letter, written on this day. Miss More says, — " My time has been
literaUy passed with thief-takers, oflScers of justice, and such pretty kind
of people." The young lady, who was an heiress and only fourteen
years of age, had been trepanned away from school. AU the efforts to
discover the victim proved fruitless ; the poor girl having been betrayed
into a marriage and carried to the Continent. — E.
' The Earl of Bristol; for an account of whom, see ante, p. 66. — E.

422 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1791.
At night.
Well! cur wedding is over very properly, though with
little ceremony ; for the men were in frocks and white waist
coats ; most of the women in white, and no diamonds but on
the Duke's wife; and nothing of ancient fashion but two
bride-maids. The endowing purse, I beheve, has been left
off, ever since broad-pieces were called in and melted down.
We were but eighteen persons in all, chiefly near relations of
each side ; and of each side a friend or two : of the first sort,
the Greatheds. Sir Peter Burrell gave away the bride. The
poor Duchess-mother wept excessively : she is now left quite
alone; her two daughters married, and her other children
dead- — she herself, I fear, in a very dangerous way. She goes
directly to Spa, where the new-married are to meet her. We
all separated in an hour-and-a-hal£ The Elliot girl* was
there, and is pretty: she rolls in the nuraerous list of my
nephews and nieces.
I am now told that our Indian skirmish was a victory, and
that Tippoo Saib, and all his cavalry and elephants, ran away ;
but sure I am, that the first impression made on me by those
who spread the news, was not triumphant ; nor can I enjoy
success in that country, which we have so abominably usurped
and plundered. You raust wait for a new secretary of state
till next post The Duke of Leeds is said to have resigned
from bad health. The Dues de Richeheu* and De Pienne,
and Madame de St Priest, are arrived here. Mr. Fawkener
* A natural daughter of Lord Cholmondeley.
" Armand-Emanuel du Plessis, Due de Richelieu. He had just suc
ceeded to the title, by the death of his father. In the preceding year, he
had entered a volunteer into the service of Catherine the Second, and
distinguished himself at the siege of Ismael, not more by his bravery
than his humanity ; as appears by the foUowing anecdote recorded in the
" Histoire de la NouveUe Russie," tom. iii. p. 217 : — " Je sauvai la vie a
une fille de dix ans, dont I'innocence et la candeur formaient un contraste
bien frappant avec la rage de tout ce qui m'environnait. En arrivant
sur le bastion ou commen9a le carnage, j'apper9us un groupe de quatre
femmes egorg^es, entre lesqueUes cet enfant, d'une figure charmante,
cherchait un asile centre la fureur de deux Kosaks qui ^talent sur le
point de la massacrer : ce spectacle m'attira bient6t, et je n'he'sitai pas,
comme on pent le croire, a prendre entre mes bras cette infortun^e, que
les barbares voulaient y poursuivre encore." Lord Byron has para
phrased the affecting incident in the eighth canto of Don Juan : 

1791. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 423
does not go to Berhn till Wednesday : still the stocks do not
believe in the war.
I have exhausted my gazette ; and this being both Easter
and Newmarket week, I may possibly have nothing to tell you
by to-morrow se'nnight's post and may wait tUl Friday se'n
night: of which I give you notice, lest you should think I
have had a fall, and hurt ray nose ; which I know gives one's
friend a dreadful alarra. Good night !
P. S. I never saw such a blotted letter : I don't know how
you will read it. I am so earnest when writing to you two,
that I omit hah" the words, and write too small; but I will try
to mend.

TO MISS BERRY.
Berkeley Square, May 19, 1791.
A LETTER from Florence (that of April 20th) does satisfy
me about your nose — till I can see it with my own eyes; but
I will own to you now, that my alarm at first went much far
ther. I dreaded lest so violent a fall upon rubbish might not
have hurt your head ; though all your letters since have proved
how totally that escaped any danger. Yet your great kind-
" Upon a taken bastion, where there lay
Thousands of slaughtered men, a yet warm gi-oup
Of murder'd women, who had found their way
To this vain refuge, made the good heart droop
And shudder ; — while, as beautiful as May,
A female chUd of ten years tried to stoop
And hide her little palpitating breast
Araidst the bodies luU'd in bloody rest.
Two villainous Cossacques pursued the child
With flashing eyes, and weapons. * * *
Don Juan raised his little captive fi-om
The heap, a moment more had made her tomb."
In 1803, the Duke returned to Russia, and was nominated civil and
raUitary governor of Odessa ; " and to his administration," says Bishop
Heber, " and not to any natural advantages, the town owes its pros
perity." On the restoration of Louis the Eighteenth, he was appointed
first gentleman of the bed-chamber ; and in 1815, president of the
councU and minister for foreign affairs. He finaUy retired from office in
1820, and died in 1822.— E.

424 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1791.
ness in vn-iting to me yourself so immediately did not tran
quillize me, and only proved your good-nature — but I will not
detail my departed fears, nor need I prove my attachment to
you two. If you were really my wives, I could not be raore
generally applied to for accounts of you ; of which I am proud.
I should be ashamed if, at my age, it were a ridiculous at
tachment ; but don't be sorry for having been circumstantial.
My fears did not spring thence; nor did I suspect your not
having told the whole — no ; but I apprehended the accident
might be worse than you knew yourself
Poor Hugh Conway,* though his life has long been safe, still
suffers at times from his dreadful blow, and has not yet been
able to come to town : nor would Lord Chatham's humanity
put his ship into commission ; which made him so unhappy,
that poor Horatia,'' doating on him as she does, wrote to beg
he might be employed ; preferring her own misery in parting
with him to what she saw him suffer. Araiable conduct ! but
happily, her suit did not prevail.
I am not at all surprised at the private interviews between
Leopold' and C. I am persuaded that the first must and will
take raore part than he has yet seemed to do, and so will
others too ; but as speculations are but guesses, I will say no
more on the subject now ; nor of your Enghsh and Irish tra
vellers, none of whom I know. I have one general wish, that
you may be amused while you stay, by the natives of any na
tion : and I thank you a thousand times for confirming your
intention of returning by the beginning of November ; which I
should not desire coolly, but from the earnest wish of putting
you in possession of Cliveden while I live : which everybody
would approve, at least not wonder at (Mr. Batt to whom I
have communicated my intention, does extremely) ; and the
rest would follow of course, as I had done the same for Mrs.
Clive. I smiled at your making excuses for your double let
ter. Do you think I would not give twelve pence to hear
' Lord Hugh Seymour Conway, brother of the then Marquis of Hert
ford. " Lady Horatia Waldegrave, his wife.
^ The Emperor Leopold, then at Florence ; whither he had returned
from Vienna, to inaugurate his son in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany.  ^E.

1791. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 425
more of you and your proceedings, than a single sheet would
contain ?
The Prince is recovered ; that is all the domestic news,
except a most memorable debate last Friday, in the House of
Commons. Mr. Fox had most imprudently thrown out a
panegyric on the French revolution.* His raost considerable
friends were much hurt, and protested to him against such
sentiments. Burke went much farther, and vowed to attack
these opinions. Great pains were taken to prevent such alter
cation, and the Prince of Wales is said to have written a dis
suasive letter to Burke: but he was imraovable; and on
Friday, on the Quebec- bUl, he broke out, and sounded a
trurapet against the plot which he denounced as carrying on
here. Prodigious clamours and interruption arose from Mr.
Fox's friends: but he, though still applauding the French,
burst into tears and lamentations on the loss of Burke's friend
ship, and endeavoured to make atonement ; but in vain, though
Burke wept too. In short it was the most affecting scene
possible; and undoubtedly an unique one, for both tbe com
manders were earnest and sincere.^ Yesterday, a second act
was expected ; but mutual friends prevailed, that the contest
' In the course of his speech on the 15th of April, during the debate
on the armament against Russia, Mr. Fox had said, that " he for one
admired the new constitution of France, considered altogether, as the
most stupendous and glorious edifice of liberty which had been erected
on the foundation of human integrity in any time or country." As soon
as he had sat down Mr. Burke rose, in much visible emotion ; but was
prevented from proceeding by the general cry of question. Mr. Fox re
gretted the injudicious zeal of those who would not suffer him to reply
on the spot : " the contention," he said, " might have been fiercer and
hotter, but the remembrance of it would not have settled so deep, nor
rankled so long, in the heart." — E.
^ With the debate of this day terminated a friendship which had lasted
more than the fourth part of a century. Mr. Wilberforce, in his Diary
of the 6th of May, states, that he had endeavoured to prevent the quar
rel ; and in a letter to a friend, on the following day, he speaks of " the
shameful spectacle of last night; more disgraceful almost, and more
affecting, than the rejection of my motion for the abolition of the slave
trade — a long tried and close worldly connection of five-and-twenty-years
trampled to pieces in the conflict of a single night ! " The foUowing
anecdote, connected with this memorable evening, is related by Mr.
Curwen, at that time member for Carlisle, in his Travels in Ireland : —
" The most powerful feelings were manifested on the adjournment of
the House. While I was waiting for my carriage, Mr. Burke came to
me and requested, as the night was wet, I would set him down. As soon

426 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1791.
should not be renewed : nay, on tbe same bUl, Mr. Fox made
a profession of his faith, and declared he would venture his
life in support of the present constitution by King, Lords, and
Commons. In short, I never knew a wiser dissertation, if the
newspapers deliver it justly; and I think all the writers in
England cannot give more profound sense to Mr. Fox than he
possesses. I know no more particulars, having seen nobody
this morning yet What shall I tell you else ? We have ex
pected Mrs. Damer from last night; and perhaps she raay
arrive before this sets out to-morrow. Friday morning. May 13th.
Last night we were at Lady Frederick Campbell's, — the
usual cribbage party, Conways, Mount-Edgcumbes, John-
stones. At past ten Mrs. Damer was announced I Her
parents ran down into the hall, and I scrambled down some of
the stairs. She looks vastly well, was in great spirits, and not
at all fatigued; though she came from Dover, had been twelve
hours at sea from Calais, and had rested but four days at
Paris from Madrid. We supped, and stayed till one o'clock ;
and I shall go to her as soon as I am dressed. Madrid and
the Escurial she owns have gained her a proselyte to paint
ing, which her statuarism had totally engrossed — in her, no
wonder. Of Titian she had no idea, nor have I a just one,
though great faith, as at Venice all his works are now coal-
black : but Rubens, she says, amazed her, and that in Spain
he has even grace. Her father, yesterday morning, from pain
remaining still in his shoulder from his fall, had it examined
by Dr. Hunter ; and a little bone of the collar was found to
be broken, and he must wear his arm for some tirae in a shng.
Miss Boyle, I heard last night, had consented to marry Lord
as the carriage-door was shut, he complimented me on my being no
friend to the revolutionary doctrines of the French ; on which he spoke
with great warmth for a few minutes, when he paused to afford me an
opportunity of approving the view he had taken of those measures in the
House. At the moment I could not help feeling disinclined to disguise
my sentiments : Mr. Burke, catching hold of the check-string, furiously
exclaimed, ' You are one of these people ! set me down ! ' With some
difficulty I restrained him; — we had then reached Charing-cross: a
silence ensued, which was preserved till we reached his house in Gerard-
street,-when he hurried out of the carriage without speaking," — E.

G-P.Httixhn^.PS.A.det

"W. Greatbatch, sculp..

FROM A DRMrma- BY li.COSWAr, R.A.IU THE COLLECTION AI STRAWBERRT SIIL.

1791. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 427
Henry Fitzgerald. I think they have both chosen well — but
I have chosen better. Adieu ! Care spose !

TO MISS BERRY.
Berkeley Square, Thursday, May 19, 1791.
Your letter of the 29th, for which you are so good as to
make excuses on not sending it to the post in tirae, did arrive
but two days later than usual ; and as it is now two months from
the 16th of March, and I have had so raany certificates of tbe
prosperous state of your pretty nose, I attributed the delay to
the elements, and took no panic. But how kindly punctual
you are, when you charge yourself with an irregularity of two
days ! and when your letters are so charmingly long, and in
terest me so much in all you do ! But raake no more excuses.
I reproach myself with occasioning so much waste of your
time, that you might employ every hour; for it is impossible
to see all that the Medicis had collected or encouraged in the
loveliest little city, and in such beautiful environs — nor had I
forgotten the Cascines, the only spot containing English ver
dure. Mrs. Damer is as well, if not better, than she has been
a great while : her looks surprise everybody ; to which, as she
is tanned, her Spanish complexion contributes. She and I
called, the night before last, on your friend Mrs. Cholmeley ;
and they are to make me a visit to-morrow morning, by their
own appointment. At Dover Mrs. Damer heard the Gun
nings are there : here, they are forgotten.
You are learning perspective, to take riews: I ara glad.
Can one have too many resources in one's-self ? Internal ar
mour is more necessary to your sex, than weapons to ours.
You have neither professions, nor politics, nor ways of getting
money, like men ; in any of which, whether successful or not,
they are employed. Scandal and cards you will both always
hate and despise, as much as you do now ; and though I shall
not flatter Mary so rauch as to suppose she will ever equal
the extraordinary talent of Agnes in painting, yet, as Mary,

428 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1791.
like the scriptural Martha, is occupied in raany things, she
is quite in the right to add the pencil to her other arause
raents. I knew the Duchesse de Brissac* a httle, and but a httle, in
1766. She was lively and seemed sensible, and had an ex
cellent character. Poor M. de Nivernois 1- to be deprived of
that only remaining chUd too ! — but how many French one
pities, and how many more one abhors ! How dearly will
even liberty be bought (if it shall prove to be obtained, which
I neither think it is or will be,) by every kind of injustice and
violation of consciences ! How little conscience can they have,
who leave to others no option but between perjury and starv
ing ! The Prince de Chimay I do not know.
After answering the articles of yours, I shall add what I can
of new. After several weeks spent in search of precedents
for trials ceasing or not on a dissolution of Parliament, the
Peers on Monday sat till three in the morning on the report;
when the Chancellor and Lord Hawkesbury fought for the
cessation, but were beaten by a large majority ; which showed
that Mr. Pitt' has more weight (at present) in that House too,
than — the diamonds of Bengal. Lord Hawkesbury protested.
The trial recommences on Monday next, and has already cost
the public fourteen thousand pounds ; the accused, I sup
pose, much more.
' The Due de Brissac was at this time commandant-general of Louis
the Sixteenth's constitutional guard. In the foUowing year he was
denounced ; and in the early days of September put to death at Ver
sailles, for his attachment to his unfortunate sovereign. — E.
' The Due de Nivernois, who, at this time, was employed about the
person of Louis the Sixteenth, was denounced by the infamous Chaumette,
and cast into prison in September 1793; where he remained tiU 1796.
He died in 1798.— E.
^ In Mr. Wilberforce's Diary of the 22nd of December, there is the
foUowing entry : — " Hastings's impeachment question. Pitt's astonishing
speech. This was almost the finest speech he ever deUvered : it was one
which you would say at once he never could have made if he had not
been a mathematician. He put things by as he proceeded, and then
returned to the very point from which he had started, with the most
astonishing clearness. He had all the lawyers against him, but carried
a majority of the House, mainly by the force of this speech. It pleased
Burke exceedingly. ' Sir,' he said, ' the right honourable gentleman
and I have often been opposed to one another, but his speech to-night
has neutralized my opposition ; nay. Sir, he has dulcified me.' " Life,
vol. i. p. 286.— E.

1791. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 429
The Countess of Albany* is not only in England, in Lon
don, but at this very moment I believe, in the palace of
St James's — not restored by as rapid a revolution as the
French, but, as was observed last night at supper at Lady
Mount- Edgcumbe's, by that topsy-turvy-hood that character
izes the present age. Within these two months the Pope has
been burnt at Paris; Madame du Barry, mistress of Louis
Quinze, has dined with the Lord Mayor of London, and the
Pretender's widow is presented to the Queen of Great Britain !
She is to be introduced by her great-grandfather's niece, the
young Countess of Ailesbury.^ That curiosity should bring
her hither, I do not quite wonder — still less, that she abhorred
her husband; but methinks it is not very well-bred to his
family, nor very sensible; but a new way oi passing eldest.
Apropos : I hear there is a medal struck at Rome of her
brother-in-law, as Henry the Ninth ; which, as one of their
Papal majesties was so abominably mean as to deny the
royal title to the brother, though for Rome he had lost a
crown, I did not know tbey allow his brother to assume. I
should be much obliged to you if you could get me one of
those medals in copper ; ay, and one of his brother, if there
was one with the royal title. I have the father's and mother's,
and all the Popes', in copper; but my Pope, Benedict the
Fourteenth, is the last and therefore I should be glad of one of
each of his successors, if you can procure and bring them with
little trouble. I should not be sorry to have one of the Grand
Duke and his father ; but they should be in copper, not only
for my suite, but they are sharper than in silver. Thursday night.
Well ! I have had an exact account of the interview of the
two Queens, from one who stood close to them. The Dowager
was announced as Princess of Stolberg. She was well-dressed,
* Louisa MaximUiana de Stolberg Goedern, wife of the Pretender.
After the death of Charles Edward in 1788, she travelled in Italy and
France, and lived with her favourite, the celebrated Alfieri, to whom
she is stated to have been privately man-ied. She continued to reside at
Paris, until the progress of the revolution compeUed her to take refuge
in England.— E.
' Lady Anne Rawdon, sister to the first Marquis of Hastings.

430 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1791.
and not at all embarrassed. The King talked to her a good
deal ; but about her passage, the sea, and general topics : the
Queen in the same way, but less. Then she stood between
tbe Dukes of Gloucester and Clarence, and had a good deal
of conversation with the former ; who, perhaps, may have met
her in Italy. Not a word between her and the Princesses :
nor did I hear of the Prince ; but he was there, and probably
spoke to her. The Queen looked at her earnestly. To add
to the singularity of the day, it is the Queen's birth-day.
Another odd accident : at the Opera at the Pantheon, Madame
d'Albany was carried into the King's box, and sat there. It
is not of a piece with her going to court, that she seals with
the royal arms. I have been told to-night, that you will not
be able to get rae a medal of the royal Cardinal, as very few
were struck, and only for presents ; so pray give yourself but
little trouble about it.
Boswell has at last published his long-promised Life of
Dr. Johnson, in two volumes in quarto. I will give you an
account of it when I have gone through it I have already
perceived, that in writing the history of Hudibras, Ralpho has
not forgot himself — nor will others, I believe, forget him !

TO MISS BERRY.
Berkeley Square, May 26, 1791.
I AM rich in letters from you : I received that by Lord
Elgin's courier first as you expected, and its elder the next
day. You tell me mine entertain you ; tant mieux. It is ray
wish, but my wonder ; for I live so httle in the world, that I
do not know the present generation by sight : for, though I
pass by them in the streets, the hats with valences, the folds
above the chin of the ladies, and the dirty shirts and shaggy
hair of the young men, who have levelled nobUity almost as
much as the mobUity in France have, have confounded all in-
diriduahty. Besides, if I did go to public places and assem-
bhes, which my going to roost earlier prevents, the bats and
owls do not begin to fly abroad tUl far in the night, when they

1791. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 431
begin to see and be seen. However, one of the empresses of
fashion, the Duchess of Gordon, uses fifteen or sixteen hours
of her four-and-twenty. I heard her journal of last Monday.
She first went to Handel's rausic in the Abbey; she then
clambered over the benches, and went to Hastings's trial in
the Hall ; after dinner, to the play ; then to Lady Lucan's
assembly; after that to Ranelagh, and returned to Mrs.
Hobart's faro-table ; gave a ball herself in the evening of that
morning, into which she must have got a good way ; and set
out for Scotland the next day. Hercules could not have
achieved a quarter of her labours in the same space of time.
What will the Great Duke think of our Amazons, if he has
letters opened, as the Emperor was wont ! One of our Ca
millas,* but in a freer style, I hear, he saw (I fancy, just before
your arrival) ; and he must have wondered at the famiharity
of the dame, and the nincompoophood of her Prince. Sir
Williara Hamilton is arrived — his Nymph of the Attitudes ^
was too prudish to visit the rambling peeress.
The rest of my letter must be hterary; for we have no
news. Boswell's book is gossiping;' but, having numbers of
' Lady Craven ; who was at this time in Italy with the Margravine of
Anspach. Lord Craven died at Lausanne in September, and the lady
was married to the Margrave in October foUowing. — E.
^ Miss Harte, married, in the following September, to Sir WilUam Ha
milton — the lady, the infatuated attachment to whom has been said to
have been " the only cloud that obscured the bright fame of the immor
tal Nelson." By the following passage in a letter, written by Romney
the painter to Hayley the poet on the 19th of June, it will be seen, that
she had not been many days in England, before a warm passion for her
was engendered in the breast of the artist : — " At present, and for the
greatest part of the summer, I shall be engaged in painting pictures
from fhe divine lady : I cannot give her any other epithet ; for I think
her superior to aU womankind. She asked me if you would not write
my life : I told her you had begun it — then, she said, she hoped you
would have much to say of her in the life ; as she prides herself in being
my model."— E.
' On the first appearance of his most interesting and instructive Life of
Dr. Johnson, a considerable outcry was raised against poor Boswell. On
the subject of this outcry, Mr. Croker, in the introduction to his valu
able edition of the work, published in 1831, makes the foUowing excel
lent observations : — " Whatever doubts may have existed as to the pru
dence or the propriety of the original publication — however naturally
private confidence was alarmed, or individual vanity offended — the
voices of criticism and complaint were soon drowned in the general ¦
applause. And, no wonder : the work combines within itself the four

432 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1791.
proper naraes, would be raore readable, at least by me, were
it reduced from two volumes to one: but there are woful
longueurs, both about bis hero and himself, the fldus Achates ;
about whom one has not the smallest curiosity. But I wrong
the original Achates : one is satisfied with his fidelity in keep
ing his master's secrets and weaknesses, which modern led-
captains betray for their patron's glory and to hurt their own
enemies; which Boswell has done shamefuUy, particularly
most entertaining classes of writing — biography, memoirs, familiar let
ters, and that assemblage of literary anecdotes, which the French have
taught us to distinguish by the termination Ana. It was a strange and
fortuitous concurrence, that one so prone to talk, and who talked so well,
should be brought into such close contact and confidence with one so
zealous and so able to record. Dr. Johnson was a man of extraordinary
powers ; but Mr. Boswell had qualities, in their own way, almost as rare.
He united lively manners with indefatigable dUigence, and the volatile
curiosity of a man about town with the drudging patience of a chronicler.
With a very good opinion of himself, he was quick in discerning, and
frank in applauding, the excellencies of others. His contemporaries,
indeed, not without some colour of reason, occasionally complained of
him as vain, inquisitive, troublesome, and giddy ; but his vanity was
inoffensive — his curiosity was commonly directed towards laudable
objects — when he meddled, he did so, generally, from good-natured
motives — and his giddiness was only an exuberant gaiety, which never
failed in the respect and reverence due to literature, morals, and religion ;
and posterity gratefully acknowledges the taste, temper, and talents
with which he selected, enjoyed, and described that polished and intel
lectual society which stiU lives in his work, and without his work
had perished I" Mr. Croker's edition of the work is the eleventh ; and
since its appearance, a twelfth, in ten pocket volumes, with embellish
ments, has been given to the world by Mr. Murray, of which thou
sands are understood to have been called for. Whenever Walpole, in
the course of his correspondence, has had occasion to introduce the
name of Boswell, he has uniformly spoken so disparagingly of him,
that it is but justice to his memory to append to the above extract, a
passage or two, in which other writers have recorded their estimation of
him. Mr. Burke told Sir James Mackintosh, that " he thought John
son appeared greater in Boswell's volumes than even in his own."
Sir Walter Scott, speaking of the Doctor, says, " he yet is, in our
mind's eye, a personification as lively as that of Siddons in Lady
Macbeth, or Kemble in Cardinal Wolsey ; and all this arises from
his having found in Boswell such a biographer as no man but himself
ever had." In the opinion of the Edinburgh Reviewers, Boswell was
" the very prince of retail wits and philosophers," and his Life of
Johnson is pronounced to be " one of the best books in the world —
a great, a very great work :" while the Quarterly Review considers it
" the richest dictionary of wit and wisdom any language can boast, and
that to the influence of Boswell we owe, probably, three-fourths of what
is most entertaining, as well as no inconsiderable portion of whatever is
most instructive, in aU the books of memoirs that have subsequently
appeared." — E.

1791. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 433
against Mrs. Piozzi, and Mrs. Montagu, and Bishop Percy.
Dr. Blagden says justly, that it is a new kind of libel, by
which you may abuse anybody, by saying some dead person
said so and so of somebody alive. Often, indeed, Johnson
made the raost brutal speeches to living persons ; for though
he was good-natured at bottora, he was very Ul-natured at top.
He loved to dispute, to show his superiority. If his opponents
were weak, he told them they were fools ; if they vanquished
hira, he was scurrilous — to nobody more than to Boswell
himself, who was contemptible for flattering him so grossly,
and for enduring tbe coarse things he was continually vomit
ing on Boswell's own country, Scotland. I expected, amongst
the excommunicated, to find myself, but am very gently
treated. I never would be in the least acquainted with John
son; or, as Boswell calls it I had not a just value for him;
which the biographer imputes to my resentment for the Doc
tor's putting bad arguments (purposely, out of Jacobitism,)
into the speeches which he wrote fifty years ago for my father,
in the Gentleman's Magazine ; which I did not read then,
or ever knew Johnson wrote till Johnson died, nor have
looked at since. Johnson's blind Toryism and known brutality
kept me aloof; nor did I ever exchange a syllable with him :
nay, I do not think I ever was in a room with him six times
in my days. Boswell carae to me, said Dr. Johnson was
writing the Lives of the Poets, and wished I would give him
anecdotes of Mr. Gray. I said, very coldly, I had given what
I knew to Mr. Mason. Boswell huraraed and hawed, and
then dropped, " I suppose you know Dr. Johnson does not ad
mire Mr. Gray." Putting as much contempt as I could into
my look and tone, I said, "Dr. Johnson don't ! — humph !" —
and with that monosyllable ended our interview. After the
Doctor's death, Burke, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and Boswell
sent an ambling circular-letter to me, begging subscriptions
for a monument for him — the two last I think, impertinently;
as they could not but know my opinion, and could not suppose
I would contribute to a monument for one who had endea
voured, poor soul ! to degrade my friend's superlative poetry.
I would not deign to write an answer ; but sent down word by
VOL. VI. 2 F

434 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1791-
my footman, as I would have done to parish ofBcers with a brief,
that I would not subscribe. In the two new volumes John
son says, and very probably did, or is made to say, that Gray's
poetry is dull, and that he was a dull man ! * The same oracle
dislikes Prior, Swift, and Fielding. If an elephant could write
a book, perhaps one that had read a great deal would say, that
an Arabian horse is a very clumsy ungraceful animal. Pass
to a better chapter !
Burke has published another pamphlet ^ against the French
Revolution, in which he attacks it stiU more grievously. The
beginning is very good ; but it is not equal, nor quite so in
judicious as parts of its predecessor; is far less brUliant as
well as much shorter: but were it ever so long, his mind
overflows with such a torrent of images, that he cannot be
tedious. His invective against Rousseau is admirable, just
and new.3 Voltaire he passes almost contemptuously. I wish
he had dissected Mirabeau too; and I grieve that be has
omitted the violation of the consciences of the clergy, nor
stigmatized those universal plunderers, the National As
sembly, who gorge themselves with eighteen livres a-day;
which to many of them would, three years ago, have been
astonishing opulence.
' Dr. Johnson's attack upon Gray was undoubtedly calculated to give
gi-eat offence to Walpole : — " Sir, he was duU in company, dull in his
closet, dull everywhere : he was dull in a new way, and that made many
people think him great : he was a mechanical poet." — E.
= This was the " Letter from Mr. Burke to a Member of the National
Assembly." — E.
' " We have had," says Mr. Burke, " the great professor and founder
of the philosophy of vanity in England. As I had good opportunities of
knowing his proceedings, almost from day to day, he left no doubt on my
mind that he entertained no principle, either to influence his heart or to
guide his understanding, but vanity; with this vice he was possessed to a
degree little short of madness. Benevolence to the whole species, and
want of feeling for every individual with whom the professors come in
contact, form the character of the new phUosophy. Setting up for an
unsocial independence, this their hero of vanity refuses the just price of
common labour, as weU as the tribute which opulence owes to genius, and
which, when paid, honours the giver and the receiver : and then he pleads
his beggary as an excuse for his crimes. He melts with tenderness for
those only who touch him by the remotest relation ; and then, without one
natural pang, casts away, as a sort of offal and excrement, the spawn of
his disgustful amours, and sends his children to the hospital of found
lings. The bear loves, Ucks, and forms her young ; but bears are not
philosophers." — E.

1791. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 435
When you return, I shall lend you three volumes in quarto
of another work,* with which you will be delighted. They are
state-letters in the reigns of Henry the Eighth, Mary, Eliza
beth, and James ; being the correspondence of the Talbot and
Howard families, given by a Duke of Norfolk to the Herald's-
office; where they have lain for a century neglected, buried
under dust, and unknown, till discovered by a Mr. Lodge, a
genealogist who, to gratify his passion, procured to be made
a poursuivant. Oh ! how curious they are ! Henry seizes an
alderman who refused to contribute to a benevolence ; sends
him to the army on the borders ; orders him to be exposed in
the front line ; and if that does not do, to be treated with the
utmost rigour of military discipline. His daughter Bess is
not less a Tudor. The mean, unworthy treatment of the
Queen of Scots is striking ; and you will find how Elizabeth's
jealousy of her crown and her avarice were at war, and how
the more ignoble passion predominated. But the most amus
ing passage is one in a private letter, as it paints the awe of
children for their parents a little differently from modern
habitudes. Mr. Talbot, second son of the Earl of Shrews
bury, was a member of the House of Commons, and was mar
ried. He writes to the Earl his father, and tells him, that a
young woraan of a very good character, has been recom
mended to him for chambermaid to his wife, and if his lord
ship does not disapprove of it, he will hire her. There are
many letters of news, that are very entertaining too — but it is
nine o'clock, and I raust go to Lady Cecilia's. Friday.
The Conways, Mrs. Daraer, the Farrens, and Lord Mount-
Edgcurabe supped at the Johnstones'. Lord Mount-Edg
cumbe said excellently, that " Mademoiselle D'Eon is her own
widow." I wish I had seen you both in your court-plis, at
your presentation ; but that is only one wish amongst a thou
sand. ' This was Lodge's " Illustrations of British History, Biography, and
Manners, in the Iteigns of Henry the Eighth, Edward the Sixth, Mary,
Elizabeth, and James the First;" a work which has also been highly
praised by Mr. Gifford, Sir Walter Scott, Sir Egerton Brydges, Mr.
Park, and others. — E. 2 F 2

436 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1791.

TO THE MISS BERRYS.
Berkeley Square, June 2, 1791.
To the tune of the Cow with the crumpled Horn, &c.
" This is the note that nobody wrote.
" This is the groom that carried the note that nobody wrote.
« This is Ma'am Gunning, who was so very cunning, to exa
mine the groom that carried the note that nobody wrote.
" This is Ma'am Bowen, to whom it was owing, that Miss
Minify Gunning was so very cunning, to examine the groom
that carried the note that nobody wrote.
" These are the Marquisses shy of the horn, who caused
the maiden all iox-Lorn, to become on a sudden so tattered
and torn, that Miss Minify Gunning was so very cunning, to
examine the groora, &c.
" These are the two Dukes, whose sharp rebukes raade the
two Marquesses shy of the horn, and caused the maiden all
iov-Lom, &c.
" This is the General somewhat too bold, whose head was
so hot, though his heart was so cold ; who proclaimed himself
single before it was meet and his wife and his daughter
turned into the street to please the two Dukes, whose sharp
rebukes," &c.
This is not at all new ; I have heard it once or twice im
perfectly, but could not get a copy till now; and I think it
will divert you for a moment though the heroines are as
much forgotten as Boadicea ; nor have I heard of them since
their arrival at Dover.
Well ! I have seen Madame d'Albany, who has not a ray of
royalty about her. She has good eyes and teeth ; but I think
can have had no more beauty than remains, except youth.
She is civil and easy, but German and ordinary. Lady Ailes
bury made a small assemblage for her on Monday, and ray
curiosity is satisfied. Mr. Conway and Lady A., Lord and
Lady Frederick Campbell, and Mrs. E. Hervey and Mrs.
Hervey, breakfasted with rae that morning at Strawberry, at

1791. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 437
the desire of the latter, who had never been there ; and whose
commendations were so promiscuous, that I saw she did not
at all understand the style of the place. The day was north
easterly and cold, and wanting rain ; and I was not sorry to
return into town. I hope in five months to like staying there
much better. Mrs. Damer, who returned in such Spanish
health, has already caught an Enghsh north-eastern cold;
with pain in all her hmbs, and a httle fever, and yesterday
was not above two hours out of bed. Her father came to
me from her before dinner, and left her better; and I shall
go to her presently; and, this not departing till to-morrow,
I hope to give you a still more favourable account. These
two days raay boldly assurae the name of June, without the
courtesy of England. Such weather makes me wish myself
at Strawberry, whither I shall betake myself on Saturday.

TO THE MISS BERRYS.
Berkeley Square, June 8, 1791.
Your No, 84, that was interrupted, and of which the
last date was of May 24th, I received on the 6th, and if I
could find fault it would be in the length ; for I do not ap
prove of your writing so much in hot weather, for, be it
known to you ladies, that from the first of the month, June is
not more June at Florence. My hay is crumbling away; and
I have ordered it to be cut as a sure way of bringing rain.
I have a selfish reason, too, for remonstrating against long
letters. I feel the season advancing, when mine will be
piteous short; for what can I tell you from Twickenham in
the next three or four months ? Scandal from Richmond and
Hampton Court or robberies at my own door ? The latter,
indeed, are blown already. I went to Strawberry on Satur
day, to avoid the birth-day crowd and squibs and crackers.
At six I drove to Lord Strafford's, where his goods are to be
sold by auction ; his sister, Lady Anne,* intending to puU
' Lady Anne Wentworth, married to the Right Honourable Thomas
ConoUy.

438 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1791.
down the house and rebuild it. I returned a quarter before
seven ; and in the interim between my Gothic gate and Ashe's
nursery, a gentleraan and gentlewoman, in a one-horse chair
and in the broad face of the sun, had been robbed by a single
highwayman, sans mask. Ashe's mother and sister stood and
saw it; but having no notion of a robbery at such an hour in
the high-road and before their men had left work, concluded
it was an acquaintance of the robber's. I suppose Lady
CecUia Johnstone wiU not descend from her bedchamber to
the drawing-room without life-guard men.
The Duke of Bedford* echpsed the whole birth-day by his
clothes, equipage, and servants : six of the latter walked on
the side of the coach to keep off the crowd — or to tempt it;
for their liveries were worth an argosie. The Prince was
gorgeous too : the latter is to give Madarae d'Albany a dinner.
She has been introduced to Mrs. Fitzherbert You know I
used to call Mrs. Cosway's'^ concerts Charon's boat; now, me
thinks, London is so. I am glad Mrs. C. is with you ; she is
pleasing — but surely it is odd to drop a child and her hus
band and country, all in a breath !
I am glad you are disfranchised of the exiles. We have
several, I am told, here ; but I strictly confine myself to those
I knew formerly at Paris, and who all are quartered on Rich
mond Green. I went to them on Sunday evening, but found
them gone to Lord FitzwUliam's, the next house to Madame
de Boufilers', to hear his organ ; whither I followed them, and
returned with them. The Comtesse Emihe played on her
harp ; then we all united at loto. I went home at twelve, un-
' Francis, fifth Duke of Bedford. He died at Woburn, in March
1802, at the early age of thirty-one; upon which event, Mr. Fox, in
moving for a new writ for Tavistock, in the room of his brother John,
who succeeded to the dukedom, pronounced an eloquent eulogium on
the deceased — the only speech he could ever be prevailed upon to revise
for publication. — E.
^ Maria Cosway, the wife of the eminent painter, and herself distin
guished for her proficience both in painting and music. She was a native
of Italy, but of English parentage ; and being passionately fond of music,
her soirees in Pail-Mall, and afterwards in Stratford-place, were attended
by all the fashion of the town. In consequence of iU-health, accompa
nied by her brother, who had gained, as a student in painting, the Aca
demy's gold medal, she had left England for Italy ; where she remained
about three years. — E.

1791. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 439
robbed; and Lord Fitzwilliam, who asked much after you
both, was to set out the next morning for Dublin, though in
tending to stay there but four days, and be back in three
weeks. I am sorry you did not hear all Monsieur de LaUy Tol-
lendal's * tragedy, of which I have had a good account. I like
his tribute to his father's memory.^ Of French pohtics you
must be tired; and so am I. Nothing appears to me to pro
mise their chaos duration ; consequently, I expect more chaos,
the sediment of which is commonly despotism. Poland ought
to make the French blush — but that, they are not apt to do on
any occasion. Let us return to Strawberry. The house of
Sebright breakfasted there with me on Monday ; the daughter
had given me a drawing, and I owed her a civility. Thank
you for reminding me of falls : in one sense I am more liable
to them than when you left me, for I ara sensibly rauch
weaker since my last fit ; but that weakness makes me move
much slower, and depend more on assistance. In a word,
there is no care I do not take of myself: my heart is set on
installing you at Cliveden ; and it will not be my fault if I do
not preserve myself till then. If another summer is added, it
* The celebrated Count LaUy de ToUendal. In 1789, he was one of
the most eloquent members of the Constituent Assembly ; but disapprov
ing of the principles that prevailed, he retired into Switzerland. Gibbon,
in a letter of the 15th of December of that year, says of him, " LaUy is
an amiable man of the world, and a poet : he passes the winter here ;
you know how much I prefer a quiet select society to a crowd of names
and titles : what happy countries are England and Switzerland, if they
know and preserve their happiness!" Having returned to France in
1792, he was sent to the Abbaye ; whence he escaped during the massacres
which took place in the prisons in September, and effected his retreat to
England, where he found an asylum in the house of Lord Sheffield. On
the restoration of the Bourbons, he was created a peer of France, and
died in 1830. The subject of the tragedy above alluded to was the fall
of the Eari of Strafford.— E.
° The unfortunate Count de LaUy, governor of Pondicherry ; who, on the
surrender of the place to the Engli^ in 1761, was made prisoner of war,
and sent to England. In the Chatham Correspondence, there is a letter
from him to Mr. Pitt, written in English ; in which he says, " When I
shaU have seen and heard here of Mr. Pitt aU I have already read of him, I
shall always remember I am his prisoner, and liberty to me, though a
Frenchman, is of an inestimable value; therefore, I earnestly beg your
interest with his Majesty to gi-ant me leave; to repair to my native soil."
The desired permission was granted; but no sooher had he reached
Paris, than he was thrown into the Bastille, and after being confined

440 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1791.
wiU be happiness indeed — but I ara not presumptuous, and
count the days only tiU Noveraber. I am glad you, on your
parts, repose till your journey commences, and go not into
sultry crowded lodgings at the Ascension. I was at Venice in
summer, and thought airing on stinking ditches pestilential,
after enjoying the delicious nights on the Ponte di Triniti at
Florence, in a linen night-gown and a straw hat with impro-
visatori, and music, and the coffee-houses open with ices —
at least such were the customs fifty years ago !
The Duke of St Albans has cut down all the brave old
trees at Hanworth, and consequently reduced his park to
what it issued from — Hounslow-heath: nay, he has hired a
meadow next to mine, for the benefit of embarkation; and
there lie all the good old corpses of oaks, ashes, and chesnuts,
directly before your windows, and blocking up one of my views
of the river ! but so impetuous is the rage for building, that
his grace's timber will, I trust not annoy us long. There
will soon be one street from London to Brentford; ay, and
from London to every rillage ten miles round ! Lord Camden
has just let ground at Kentish Town for building fourteen
several years, brought to trial for treachery and found guilty. When his
sentence was pronounced, " the excess of his indignation," says Voltaire,
" was equal to his astonishment : he inveighed against his judges, and,
holding in his hand a pair of compasses, which he used for tracing maps
in his prison, he struck it against his heart ; but the blow was not
sufficient to take away life ; he was dragged into a dung-cart, with a gag
in his mouth, lest, being conscious of his innocence, he should convince
the spectators of the injustice of his fate." Madame du Deffand, in
giving to Walpole, on the lOth of January 1766, an account of this hor
rible scene, having stated, that the populace " battait des mains pendant
I'ex^cution," he returned her an answer, in a high degree honourable to
his moral feelings : — " Ah ! Madame, Madame, quelles horreurs me
racontez-vousla! Qu'on ne dise jamais que les Anglais sent durs et
f^roces. Veritablement ce sent les Fran^ais qui le sont. Oui, oui, vous
etes des sauvages. des Iroquois, vous autres. On a bien massacr^ des
gens chez nous, mais a-t-on jamais vu battre des mains pendant qu'on
mettait a mort un pauvre malheureux, un officier general, qui avait langui
pendant deux ans en prison ? un homme, enfin, si sensible a I'honneur,
qu'U n'avait pas voulu se sauver ! si touch^ de la disgrace, qu'il chercha
a avaler les grilles de sa prison plutot que de se voir expos^ a I'ignominie
publique ; et c'est exactement cette honn^te pudeur qui fait qu'on le
traine dans un tombereau, et qu'on lui met un bMUon a la bouche comme
au dernier des scelerats. Mon Dieu! que je suis aise d'avoir quitte
Paris avant cette horrible scfene ! je me serais fait dechirer, ou mettre a
la BastiUe."— E.

1791. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 441
hundred houses — nor do I wonder ; London is, I am cer
tain, much fuller than ever I saw it I have twice this spring
been going to stop my coach in Piccadilly, to inquire what
was the matter, thinking there was a mob — not at all ; it was
only passengers. Nor is there any complaint of depopulation
from the country : Bath shoots out into new crescents, cir
cuses, and squares every year: Birmingham, Manchester,
Hull, and Liverpool would serve any King in Europe for a
capital, and would make the Empress of Russia's mouth
water. Of the war with Catherine Slay-Czar I hear not a
breath, and thence conjecture it is dozing into peace.
Mr. Dundas has kissed hands for secretary of state ; and
Bishop Barrington, of Salisbury, is transferred to Durham,
which he affected not to desire, having large estates by his
wife in the south — but from the triple-mitre downwards, it
is almost always true, what I said some years ago, that " nolo
episcopari is Latin for / lie." Tell it not in Gath that I say
so ; for I am to dine to-morrow at the Bishop of London's, at
Fulham, with Hannah Bonner, my imprimee. This raorning
I went with Lysons the Reverend to see Dulwich College,
founded in 1619 by AUeyn, a player, which I had never seen
in ray raany days. We were received by a smart divine, tr^s
bien poudre, and with black satin breeches — but they are
giving new wings and red satin breeches to the good old
hostel too, and destroying a gallery with a very rich ceiling ;
and nothing will remain of ancient but the front and an hun
dred mouldy portraits, among apostles, sibyls, and Kings of
England. On Sunday I shall settle at Strawberry; and then
woe betide you on post-days ! I cannot make news without
straw. The Johnstones are going to Bath, for the healths of
both; so Richmond will be my only staple. Adieu, all three !

TO THE MISS BERRYS.
Strawberry HiU, June 14, 1791.
I PITY you ! what a dozen or fifteen uninteresting letters
are you going to receive ! for here I ara, unhkely to have

442 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1791.
anything to teU you worth sending. You had better corae
back incontinently — but pray do not prophesy any more;
you have been the death of our summer, and we are in close
mourning for it in coals and ashes. It froze hard last night:
I went out for a moment to look at my haymakers, and was
starved. The contents of an Enghsh June are, hay and ice,
orange-flowers and rheumatisms ! I am now cowering over the
fire. Mrs. Hobart had announced a rural breakfast at Sans-
Souci last Saturday ; nothing being so pastoral as a fat grand
mother in a row of houses on Ham Common. It rained early
in the morning : she dispatched post-boys, for want of Cupids
and zephyrs, to stop the nymphs and shepherds who tend
their flocks in Pall Mall and St. James's-street ; but half of
them missed the couriers and arrived. Mrs. Montagu was
more splendid yesterday morning, and breakfasted seven hun
dred persons on opening her great roora, and the roora with
the hangings of feathers. The King and Queen had been
with ber last week. I should like to have heard the orations
she had prepared on the occasion. I was neither City-mouse
nor Country-mouse. I did dine at Fulham on Saturday with
the Bishop of London: Mrs. Boscawen, Mrs. Garrick, and
Hannah More were there ; and Dr. Beattie, whom I had
never seen. He is quiet simple, and cheerful, and pleased
rae. There ends my tale, this instant Tuesday ! How shall
I fill a couple of pages more by Friday morning ! Oh ! ye
ladies on the Common, and ye uncommon ladies in London,
have pity on a poor gazetteer, and supply me with eclogues or
royal panegyrics ! Moreover — or rather more under — I
have had no letter from you these ten days, though the east
wind has been as constant as Lord Derby. I say not this in
reproach, as you are so kindly punctual ; but as it stints me
from having a single paragraph to answer. I do not admire
specific responses to every article; but they are great re
sources on a dearth.
Madarae de Boufflers is ill of a fever, and the Duchesse de
Biron* goes next week to Switzerland; — raais qu'est que cela
' Araelie de Boufflers, wife of Armand-Louis de Gontaut, Due de
Bii'on, better known in England by the title of Due de Lauzan. By a

1791, THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 443
vous fait ? I must eke out this with a few passages that I
think will divert you, from the heaviest of all books, Mr. Ma
lone's Shakspeare, in ten thick octavos, with notes, that are
an extract of all the opium that is spread through the works
of all the bad play-wrights of that age. Mercy on the poor
gentleman's patience ! Amongst his other indefatigable re
searches, he has discovered some lists of effects in the custody
of the property-man to the Lord Admiral's company of
players, in 1598. Of those effects he has given eight pages — •
you shall be off for a few items ; viz. " My Lord Gaffe's [Caia-
phas's] gerchen [jerkin] and his hoose [hose] ; one rocke, one
tombe, one Hellemought [Hell-mouth], two stepelles and
one chyme of belles, one chaine of dragons, two coffines, one
buUe's head, one vylter, one goste's crown, and one frame for
the heading of black Jone ; one payer of stayers for Fayeton,
and bowght a robe for to goo invisabell." The pair of stairs
for Phaeton reminds one of Hogarth's Strollers dressing in a
barn, where Cupid on a ladder is reaching Apollo's stockings,
that are hanging to dry on the clouds ; as the steeples do of a
story in L'Histoire du Theatre Fran9ois : Jodelet, who not
only wrote plays, but invented the decorations, was to exhibit
of both before Henry the Third. One scene was to represent
a view of the sea, and Jodelet had bespoken two rochers ; but
not having tirae to rehearse, what did he behold enter on either
side of the stage, instead of two rochers, but two clochers /
Who knows but my Lord Admiral bought them?
letter from Madame Necker to Gibbon, the Duchesse appears to have
been at Lausanne in October ; but in the following September, " tempt
ed," says Gibbon, " by some faint, and, I fear, fallacious hope of clemency
to the women," she was induced to revisit France, and perished by the
guillotine, in one of Robespierre's bloody proscriptions. See vol. v. pp.
133, 400. The Due was entrusted with the command of the army of the
republic in La Vendee ; but, being reproached with having suffered Niort
to be besieged and with not having seconded Westermann, he was de
nounced at the bar of the Convention, delivered over to the revolutionary
tribunal, and condemned to death. He suffered on the 31st of December
1793, and his words upon the scaffold are said to have been, " I have
been false to my God, my order, and my king : I die full of faith and re
pentance." See his " Memoires," in two volumes 8vo. published in
1802.— E.

444 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1791.
Berkeley Square, Thursday, 16th.
I am come to town for one night having promised to be at
Mrs. BuUer's this evening with Mrs. Damer, and I believe
your friend, Mrs. Cholmeley, whom I have seen two or three
times lately and like much. Three persons have called on
me since I came, but have not contributed a tittle of news
to my journal. If I hear nothing to-night, this must depart
empty as it is, to-morrow morning, as I shall for Strawberry ;
I hope without finding a new mortification, as I did last time.
Two companies had been to see my house last week ; and one
of the parties, as vulgar people always see with the ends of
their fingers, had broken off the end of my invaluable Eagle's
bill, and to conceal their mischief, had pocketed the piece.
It is true it had been restored at Rome, and ray corafort is,
that Mrs. Daraer can repair the daraage — but did the fools
know that? It almost provokes one to shut up one's house,
when obhging begets injury ! Friday noon.
This moraent I receive your 35th, to which I have nothing
to answer, but that I beheve Fox and Burke are not very
cordial ; though I do not know whether there has been any
forraal reconcihation or not. The Parliaraent is prorogued ;
and we shall hear no more of them, I suppose, for some
months ; nor have I learnt anything new, and am returning to
Strawberry, and must finish.

TO MISS BERRY.
Strawberry Hill, June 23, 1791.
Woe is me ! I have not an atom of news to send you,
but that the second edition of Mother Hubbard's Tale was
again spoiled on Saturday last by the rain; yet she had an
ample assemblage of corapany from London and the neigh
bourhood. The late Queen of France, Madame du Barry,
was there; and the late Queen of England, Madame d'Al
bany, was not. The forraer, they say, is as much altered as
her kingdom, and does not retain a trace of her forraer powers.

1791. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 445
I saw her on her throne in the chapel of Versailles;* and,
though then pleasing in face and person, I thought her un pea
pass'ee. What shall I tell you more? that Lord Hawkesbury is
added to the cabinet-council — que vous importel and that Dr.
Robertson has published a Disquisition into the Trade of the
Ancients with India ;'^ a sensible work — but that will be no
news to you till you return. It was a peddling trade in those
days. They now and then picked up an elephant's tooth, or
a nutmeg, or one pearl, that served Venus for a pair of pend
ants, when Antony had toasted Cleopatra in a bumper of its
fellow ; which shows that a couple was iraported : — but, alack !
the Romans were so ignorant, that waiters from the Tres Ta-
bernae, in St. ApoUo's-street, did not carry horae sacks of dia
monds enough to pave the Capitol — I hate exaggerations, and
therefore I do not say, to pave the, Appian Way. One author,
I think, does say, that the wife of Fabius Pictor, whom he
sold to a proconsul, did present Livia' with an ivory bed, inlaid
with Indian gold ; but, as Dr. Robertson does not mention it
to be sure he does not believe the fact well authenticated.
It is an anxious moment with the poor French here: a
strong notion is spread, that the Prince of Conde will soon
make some attempt; and the National Assembly, by their
pompous blustering, seem to dread it. Perhaps the moment
is yet too early, till anarchy is got to a greater head ; but as
to the duration of the present revolution, I no raore expect it
than I do the raillenniura before Christraas. Had the revo-
' See vol. V. p. 256.— E.
'^ This work, which was the last labour of the historian, was suggested
by the perusal of Major RenneU's " Memoir of a Map of Hindostan."
In sending a copy of it to Gibbon, he says, " No man had formed a
more decided resolution of retreating early from public view, and of
spending the eve of life in the tranquillity of professional and domestic
occupations ; but, directly in the face of that purpose, I step forth with
a new work, when just on the brink of threescore and ten. My book
has met with a reception beyond what the spe lentus, pavidusque futuri,
dared to expect. I find, however, like other parents, that I have a
partial fondness for this child of my old age ; and cannot set my heart
' quite at rest, until I know your opinion of it." — E.
' This aUudes to the stories told at the time of an ivory bed, inlaid
with gold, having been presented to Queen Charlotte by Mrs. Hastings,
the wife of the governor-general of India.

446 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1791.
lutionists had the sense and raoderation of our ancestors, or of
the present Poles, they might have delivered and blessed their
country: but riolence, injustice, and savage cruelty, tutored
by inexperienced pedantry, produce offspring exactly re
sembling their parents, or turn their eneraies into sirailar
demons. Barbarity will be copied by revenge.
Lord Fitzwilliam has flown to Dublin and back. He re
turned to Richmond on the fourteenth day frora his departure,
and the next raorning set out for France : no courier can do
more. In my last, the description of June for orange-flowers,
pray read roses : the east winds have starved all the former ;
but the latter, having been settled here before the wars of
York and Lancaster, are naturalized to the climate, and reck
not whether June arrives in summer or winter. They blow by
their own old-style almanacks. Madame d'Albany might have
found plenty of white ones on her own tenth of June ; but, on
that very day, she chose to go to see the King in the House
of Lords, with the crown on his head, proroguing the Parlia
ment* What an odd rencontre ! Was it philosophy or in-
sensibUity ? I believe it is certain that her husband was in
Westminster-hall at the coronation.
The patriarchess of the Methodists, Lady Huntingdon, is
dead. Now she and Whitfield are gone, the sect will probably
decline : a second crop of apostles seldom acquire the infiu
ence of the founders. To-day's paper declares upon its say-
so, that Mr. Fawkener is at hand, with Catherine Slay-Czar's^
* " The Bishop of London," writes Hannah More, " carried me to
hear the King make his speech in the House of Lords. As it was quite
new to me, I was very well entertained ; but the thing that was most
amusing was to see, among the ladies, the Princess of Stolberg, Countess
of Albany, wife to the Pretender, sitting just at the foot of that throne,
which she might once have expected to have mounted ; and what divert
ed the party, when I put them in mind of it, was, that it happened to be
the loth of June, the Pretender's birth-day. 1 have the honour to be
very much like her ; and this opinion was confirmed yesterday, when we
met again." — Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 343. — E.
" Walpole rarely makes mention of Catherine without an aUusion to
the murder of the Czar Peter. In a letter written to Madame du
Deffand, in 1769, he thus indignantly denounces Voltaire's applauses of
the Empress: — "Voltaire me fait hoiTeur avec sa Catdrine ; le beau
sujet de badinage que I'assassinat d'un man, et I'usurpateur de son
trone ! II n'est pas mal, dit-il, qu'on ait une faute a reparer : eh ! com
ment re'parer un meurtre.? Est-ce en retenant des poetes a ses gages.?

1791. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 447
acquiescence to our terms ; but I have not entire faith in a
precursor on such an occasion, and from Holland too. It
looks more hke a courier to the stocks ; and yet I am in little
expectation of a war, as I believe we are boldly determined to
remain at peace. And now my pen is quite dry — you are
quite sure not from laziness, but from the season of the year,
which is very anti- correspondent Adieu !

TO MISS BERRY.
Strawberry HiU, Tuesday night, July 12, 1791.
I HAD had no letter from you for ten days, I suppose
from west winds ; but did receive one this morning, which had
been three weeks on the road : and a charming one it was.
Mr. Batt — who dined with me yesterday, and stayed till after
breakfast to-day, — being here, I read part of it to hira; and he
was as rauch delighted as I was with your happy quotation of
incedit Begina. If I could spare so rauch room, I might fill
this paper with all he said of you both, and with all the
friendly kind things he begged me to say to both from him.
Last night I read to him certain Reminiscences; and this
morning he slipped from me, and walked to Cliveden, and
hopes to see it again much more agreeably. I hope so too,
and that I shall be with him.
I wish there were not so raany fetes at Florence ; they are
worse for you both than Itahan sultriness : but, if you do go to
thera, I am glad you have more northern weather. News
I have none, but that Calonne arrived in London on Sunday :
you may be sure I do not know for what In a word, I have
no more opinion of his judgment than of his integrity. Now
I must say a syllable about myself; but don't be alarmed ! It
is not the gout ; it is worse : it is the rheuraatism, which I
have had in ray shoulder ever since it attended the gout last
Deceraber. It was almost gone tUl last Sunday, when, the
en payant des historiens mercenaires, et en soudoyant des philosophes
ridicules a miUe lieues de son pays .'' Ce sont ces ames viles qui chan-
tent un Auguste, et se taisent sur ses prescriptions." — E.

448 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1791.
Bishop of London preaching a charity sermon in our church,
whither I very, very seldom venture to hobble, I would go to
hear him ; both out of civility, and as I ara very intimate with
him. The church was crammed; and, though it rained, every
window was open. However, at night I went to bed ; but at
two I waked with such exquisite pain in my rheumatic right
shoulder, that I think I scarce ever felt greater torture from
the gout.
TO THE MISS BERRYS.
Strawberry HUl, July 26, 1791.
Ten months are gone of the longest year that ever was
born — a baker's year, for it has thirteen months to the
dozen ! As our letters are so long interchanging, it is not ber
ginning too early to desire you will think of settling the stages
to which I must direct to you in your route. Nay, I don't
know whether it is not already too late : I am sure it will be,
if I am to stay for an answer to this ; but I hope you will have
thought on it before you receive this. I am so rauch recovered
as to have been abroad. I cannot say my arm is glib yet;
but if I waited for tbe total departure of the rheumatism, I
might stay at horae till the national debt is paid. My fair
writing is a proof of my lameness : I labour as if I were en
graving; and drop no words, as I do in my ordinary hasty
scribbling. Lady Cecilia tells me, that her nephew, Mr. West* who was
with you at Pisa, declares he is in love with you both ; so I
am not singular. You two raay hke to hear this, though no
novelty to you; but it will not satisfy Mr. Berry, who will be
iirfpatient for news frora Birmingham : but there are no more,
nor any-whence else. There has not been another riot in
any of the three kingdoms. The viUain Paine carae over for
the Crown and Anchor;'^ but finding that his pamphlet had
' The Honourable Septimus West, uncle of the present Earl of Dela-
warr. He died of consumption in October 1793.
^ The great dinner at the Crown and Anchor tavern, in celebration of
the anniversary of the French revolution. — E.

1791. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 449
not set a straw on fire, and that the 14th of July was as httle
in fashion as the ancient gunpowder-plot he dined at another
tavern with a few quaking conspirators; and probably is
returning to Paris, where he is engaged in a controversy with
the Abbe Sieyes, about the plus or minus of rebellion. The
rioters in Worcestershire, whom I mentioned in my last, were
not a detachment from Birrainghara, but volunteer incen
diaries from tbe capital ; who went, according to the rights of
men, with the mere view of plunder, and threatened gentlemen
to burn their houses, if not ransomed. Eleven of these dis
ciples of Paine are in custody; and Mr. Merry, Mrs. Bar-
bauld, and Miss Helen WiUiams will probably have subjects
for elegies. Deborah and Jael, I believe, were invited to the
Crown and Anchor, and had let their nails grow accordingly :
but, somehow or other, no poissonniires were there, and the
two prophetesses had no opportunity that day of exercising
their talents or talons. Their French allies, cock and hen,
have a fairer field open ; and the Jacobins, I think, will soon
drive the National Assembly to be better royalists than ever
they were, in self-defence.
You have indeed surprised rae by your account of the
strange credulity of poor King Louis's escape in safety! In
these villages we heard of his flight late in the evening, and,
the very next morning, of his being retaken.* Much as he, at
least the Queen, has suffered, I am persuaded the adventure
has hastened general confusion, and will increase the royal
party ; though perhaps their Majesties, for their personal safe
ties, had better have awaited the natural progress of anarchy.
The enormous deficiencies of money, and the total insubordi
nation of the army, both apparent and uncontradicted, from
the reports made to the National Assembly, show what is
coming. Into what such a chaos will subside, it would be
silly to attempt to guess. Perhaps it is not wiser in the
exiles to expect to live to see a re-settlement in their favour.
One thing I have for these two years thought probable to
' The flight of the Royal Family of France to, and return from,
Varennes. VOL. VI. 2 G

450 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1791.
arrive — a division, at least a dismemberment of France.
Despotism could no longer govern so unwieldy a machine ; a
repubhc would be stiU less hkely to hold it together. If
foreign powers should interfere, they will take care to pay
themselves with what is a leur bienseance ; and that in reahty,
would be serving France too. So much for my speculations !
and they have never varied. We are so far from intending to
new-model our government and dismiss the Royal Family,
annihilate the peerage, cashier the hierarchy, and lay open the
land to the first occupier, as Dr. Priestley, and Tom Paine,
and the Revolution Club humbly proposed, that we are even
encouraging the breed of princes. It is generally believed
that the Duke of York is going to marry the Princess of
Prussia, the King's daughter by his first wife, and his favour
ite child. I do not aflirm it; but many others do.*
Thursday night, late.
Lady Di. has told me an extraordinary fact. Catherine
Slay-Czar sent for Mr. Fawkener,^ and desired he will order
for her a bust of Charles Fox ; and she will place it between
Demosthenes and Cicero (pedantry she learnt from her French
authors, and which our school-boys would be above using) ;
for his eloquence has saved two great nations from a war —
by his opposition to it ientend : so the peace is no doubt
made. She could not have addressed her compliment worse
than to Mr. Fawkener, sent by Mr. Pitt, and therefore so
addressed ; and who, of all men, does not love Mr. Fox : and
Mr. Fox, who has no vain-glory, will not care a straw for the
flattery, and will understand it too. Good night !
¦ The marriage of the Duke of York with Frederica Charlotte Ulrica
Catherine, eldest daughter of the King of Prussia, was solemnized, first
in Prussia, on the 29tli of September, and again in England, on the 23rd
of November 1791. For Walpole's account of her Royal Highness's
visit to Strawberry HiU, see his letter to the Miss Berrys of the 25th
of September 1793.— E.
' Mr. Fawkener was the son of Sir Everard Fawkener. He was one
of the principal clerks of the privy council, and had been sent on a secret
mission to Russia. — E.

1791. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 451

TO MISS BERRY.
Strawberry HiU, August 17, 1791.
No letter from Florence this post, though I am wishing
for one every day ! The illness of a friend is bad, but is aug
mented by distance. Your letters say you are quite re
covered ; but the farther you are from me, the oftener I want
to hear that recovery repeated : and any delay in hearing re
vives my apprehensions of a return of your fever. I am em
barrassed, too, about your plan. It grows near to the time
you proposed beginning your journey. I do not write with
any view to hastening that, which I trust will entirely depend
on the state of your health and strength ; but I am impatient
to know your intentions : in short, I feel that, from this time
to your arrival, my letters will grow very tiresome. I have
heard to-day, that Lord and Lady Sheffield, who went to
visit Mr. Gibbon at Lausanne, met with great trouble and
impertinence at almost every post in France. In Switzerland
there is a furious spirit of democracy, or demonocracy. They
made great rejoicings on the re-capture of the King of France.
Oh ! why did you leave England in such a turbulent era !
When will you sit down on the quiet banks of the Thames ?
Wednesday night.
Since I began my letter, I have received yours of the 2nd,
two days later than usual ; and a most comfortable one it is.
My belief and my faith are now of the same religion. I do be
lieve you quite recovered. You, in the mean tirae, are talking
of my rheuraatism — quite an old story. Not that it is gone,
though the pain is. The lameness in my shoulder remains,
and I ara writing on ray lap: but the complaint is put upon
the estabhshment ; like old servants, that are of no use, fill up
the place of those that could do soraething, and yet stUl re
raain in the house.
I know nothing new, public or private, that is worth tell
ing. The stocks are transported with the pacification with
Russia, and do not care for what it has cost to bully the Em-
2 G 2

452 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1791.
press to no purpose; and say, we can afford it. Nor can
Paine and Priestley persuade thera that France is much hap
pier than we are, by having ruined itself The poor French
here are in hourly expectation of as rapid a counter-revolu
tion as what happened two years ago. Have you seen the
King of Sweden's letter to his minister, enjoining him to look
dismal, and to take care not to be knocked on the head for so
doing? It deserves to be framed with M. de BouUle's bra
vado.* You say you will write me longer letters when you
know I am well. Your recovery has quite the contrary effect
on me : I could scarce restrain my pen while I had appre
hensions about you; now you are well, the goose-quill has
not a word to say. One would think it had belonged to a
physician. I shall fiU my vacuum with some lines that Gene
ral Conway has sent me, written by I know not whom, on
Mrs. Harte, Sir Wilham HamUton's pantomime mistress, or
wife, who acts all the antique statues in an Indian shawl.
I have not seen her yet, so am no judge ; but people are mad
about her wonderful expression, which I do not conceive ; so
few antique statues having any expression at all, nor being
designed to have it. The ApoUo has the symptoms of dig
nified anger ; ^ the Laocoon and his sons, and Niobe and her
family, are all expression ; ^ and a few more : but what do the
' " The Marquis de Bouill^, in order to draw upon himself the indig
nation of the Assembly, addressed to it a letter, which might be called
mad, but for the generous motive which dictated it. He avowed him
self the sole author of the King's journey, though, on the contrary, he
had opposed it. He declared, in the name of the Sovereign, that Paris
should be responsible for the safety of the Royal Family, and that the
slightest injury offered to them should be signally avenged. The Assem
bly winked at this generous bravado, and threw the whole blame on
BouiUe ; who had nothing to fear, for he was already abroad." Thiers,
vol. i. p. 197.— E.
' " In his eye
And nostril beautiful disdain, and might
And majesty, flash their full lightnings by,
Developing in that one glance the Deity." Byron. — E.
' "Go see
Laocoon's torture dignifying pain —
A father's love and mortal's agony
With an immortal's patience blending : — Vain
The struggle ; vain, against the coiling strain
And gripe, and deepening of the dragon's grasp.
The old man's clench ; the long euvenom'd chain
Rivets the living Unks, — the enormous asp
Enforces pang on pang, and stifles gasp on gasp." Ibid. — E.

1791. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 453
Venuses, Floras, Hercules, and a thousand others tell, but
the magic art of the sculptor, and their own graces and pro
portions ?
I have been making up some pills of patience, to be taken
occasionally, when you have begun your journey, and I do not
receive your letters regularly ; which may happen when you
are on the road. I recommend you to St James of Compost-
antimony, to whom St. Luke was an ignorant quack. Adieu !

TO THE MISS BERRYS.
Berkeley Square, Tuesday, Aug. 23, 1791.
I AM come to town to meet Mr. Conway and Lady Ailes
bury ; and, as I have no letter from you yet to answer, I will
tell you how agreeably I have passed the last three days;
though they might have been improved had you shared them,
as I wished, and as I sometimes do wish. On Saturday even
ing I was at the Duke of Queensberry's (at Richmond,
s'entend) with a small company: and there were Sir William
Hamilton and Mrs. Harte ; who, on the 3rd of next month,
previous to their departure, is to be made Madame I'Envoyee
a Naples, the Neapolitan Queen having promised to receive
her in that quality. Here she cannot be presented, where
only such over-virtuous wives as the Duchess of Kingston and
Mrs. Hastings — who could go with a husband in each hand
— are adraitted. Why the Margravine of Anspach, with the
same pretensions, was not I do not understand ; perhaps she
did not attempt it. But I forget to retract, and make amende
honorable to Mrs. Harte. I had only heard of her attitudes ;
and those, in dumb show, I have not yet seen. Oh ! but she
sings admirably ; has a very fine, strong voice ; is an excellent
buffa, and an astonishing tragedian. She sung Nina in the
highest perfection; and there her attitudes were a whole
theatre of grace and various expressions.
The next evening I was again at Queensberry-house, where
the Comtesse Emilie de Boufflers played on her harp, and
the Princesse di Castelcigala, the Neapolitan minister's wife,
danced one of her country dances, with castanets, very prettUy,

454 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1791.
with her husband. Madame du Barry was there too, and I
had a good deal of frank conversation with her about Mon
sieur de Choiseul; having been at Paris at the end of his
reign and the beginning of hers, and of which I knew so much
by my intimacy with the Duchesse de Choiseul.
On Monday was the boat-race. I was in the great room
at the Castle, with the Duke of Clarence, Lady Di., Lord
Robert Spencer,* and the House of Bouverie,'^ to see the boats
start from the bridge to Thistleworth, and back to a tent
erected on Lord Dysart's meadow, just before Lady Di.'s win
dows ; whither we went to see them arrive, and where we had
breakfast. For the second heat, I sat in ray coach on the
bridge ; and did not stay for the third. The day had been
coined on purpose, with my favourite south-east wind. The
scene, both up the river and down, was what only Richraond
upon earth can exhibit The crowds on those green velvet
meadows and on the shores, the yachts, barges, pleasure and
small boats, and the windows and gardens lined with spec
tators, were so delightful, that when I came home from that
vivid show, I thought Strawberry looked as dull and soli
tary as a hermitage. At night there was a ball at the Castle,
and illuminations, with the Duke's cypher, &c. in coloured
lamps, as were the houses of his Royal Highness's tradesmen.
I went again in the evening to the French ladies on the
Green, where there was a bonfire ; but, you may believe, not
to the ball.
Well ! but you, who have bad a fever withyg'to, had rather
hear the history of the new soi-disante Margravine. She has
been in England with her foolish Prince, and not only notified
their marriage to the Earl ^ her brother, who did not receive
it propitiously, but his Highness informed his lordship by a
letter, that they have an usage in his country of taking a wife
with the left hand ; that he had espoused his lordship's sister
in that manner ; and intends, as soon as she shall be a widow,*
' Brother to Lady Diana Beauclerc.
' The famUy of the Hon. Edward Bouverie, brother to the Earl of
Radnor. ' Of Berkeley.
^ Lady Craven became a widow in the following month, and was mar
ried to the Margrave of Anspach in October. See ante, p. 274.

1791. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 455
to marry her with his right hand also. The Earl rephed, that
he knew she was married to an English peer, a most respect
able man, and can know nothing of her marrying any other
man ; and so they are gone to Lisbon. Adieu !

TO THE MISS BERRYS.
Strawberry HUl, Sept. 11, 1791.
Though I am delighted to know, that of thirteen dole
ful months but two remain, yet how full of anxiety will they
be ! You set out in still hot weather, and will taste very cold
before you arrive ! Accidents, inns, roads, mountains, and
the sea, are all in my map ! — but I hope no slopes to be run
down, no fetes for a new Grand Duke. I should dread your
raeeting arraies, if I had much faith in the counter-revolution
said to be on the anvil. The French ladies in my vicinage (a
word of the late Lord Chatham's coin) are all hen-a-hoop on
the expectation of a grand alliance formed for that purpose,
and I believe think they shall be at Paris before you are in
England; but I trust one is more certain than the other.
That folly and confusion increase in France every hour, I have
no doubt and absurdity and contradictions as rapidly. Their
constitution, which they had voted should be immortal and
unchangeable, — though they deny that anything antecedent
to themselves ought to have been so, — they are now of opinion
must be revised at the commencement of next century; and
they are agitating a third constitution, before they have thought
of a second, or finished the first ! Bravo ! In short Louis
Onze could not have laid deeper foundations for despotism
than these levellers, who have rendered the name of liberty
odious — the surest way of destroying the dear essence I
I have no news for you, but a sudden match patched up for
Lord Blandford, with a little more art than was employed by
the fair Gunnilda. It is with Lady Susan Stewart Lord
Galloway's daughter, contrived by and at tbe house of her re
lation and Lord Blandford's friend. Sir Henry Dashwood ; and

456 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1791.
it is to be so instantly, that her grace, his mother, will scarce
have time to forbid the bans.*
We have got a codicil to suraraer, that is as delightful as, I
believe, the seasons in the Fortunate Islands. It is pity it
lasts but tUl seven in the evening, and then one reraains with
a black chimney for five hours. I wish the sun was not so
fashionable as never to come into the country till autumn and
the shooting season ; as if Niobe's children were not hatched
and fiedged before the first of September. Apropos, Sir Wil
ham Hamilton has actually married his Gallery of Statues,
and they are set out on their return to Naples. I am sorry I
did not see her attitudes, which Lady Di. (a tolerable judge !)
prefers to anything she ever saw : still I do not much care. I
have at this moment a commercial treaty with Italy, and hope
in two months to be a greater gainer by the exchange ; and I
shall not be so generous as Sir William, and exhibit my wives
in pantomime to the public. 'Tis well I am to have the
originals again; for that wicked swindler. Miss Foldson, has
not yet given up their portraits.
The newspapers are obliged to live upon the diary of the
King's motions at Weymouth. Oh ! I had forgot Lord
Cornwallis has taken Bangalore by storm, promises Serin-
gapatara, and Tippoo Saib has sued for peace. Diamonds
will be as plenty as potatoes, and gold is as common as cop
per-money in Sweden. I was told last night, that a director
of the Bank affirms, that two millions five hundred thousand
pounds, in specie, have already been remitted or brought over
hither from France since their revolution.

TO THE MISS BERRYS.
Strawberry HiU, Friday night late, Sept. 16, 1791.
As I am constantly thinking of you two, I ara as con
stantly writing to you, when I have a vacant quarter of an
hour. Yesterday was red-lettered in the almanacks of Straw-
' The marriage took place four days after the date of this letter. — E.

1791. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 457
berry and Cliveden, supposing you set out towards thera,
as you intended; the sun shone all day, and the moon at
night, and all nature, for three miles round, looked gay.
Indeed, we have had nine or ten days of such warmth and
serenity, (here called heat,) as I scarce remeraber when the
year begins to have grey, or rather yellow hairs. All win
dows have been flung up again and fans ventilated; and it
. is true that hay-carts have been transporting hay-cocks, from
a second crop, all the morning from Sir Francis Basset's
island opposite to my windows. The setting sun and the
long autumnal shades enriched the landscape to a Claude
Lorrain. Guess whether I hoped to see such a scene next
year : if I do not, may you ! at least it will make you talk of
me ! The gorgeous season and poor partridges, I hear, have
emptied London entirely, and yet Drury-lane is removed to
the Opera-house. Do you know that Mrs. Jordan is acknow
ledged to be Mrs. Ford, and Miss Brunton* Mrs. Merry,
but neither quits the stage? The latter's captain, I think,
might quit his poetic profession, without any loss to the
public. My gazettes will have kept you so much au courant,
that you will be as ready for any conversation at your return,
as if you had only been at a watering-place. In short, a
votre intention, and to make my letters as welcorae as I can,
I listen to and bring horae a thousand things, which other
wise I should not know I heard.
Lord Buchan is screwing out a little epheraeral farae from
instituting a jubilee for Thomson.^ I fear I shall not make
my court to Mr. Berry, by owning I would not give this
' An actress of considerable talent and personal attractions. Her
sister, also a popular actress, was married, in 1807, to the Earl of
Craven. — E.
' The jubilee took place on the 22nd of September, at Ednam-hiU.
On crowning the first edition of " The Seasons" with a wreath of bays.
Lord Buchan delivered an eulogy on the poet, containing the following
singular passage : — " I think myself happy to have this day the honour
of endeavouring to do honour to the memory of Thomson, which has
been profanely touched by the rude hand of Samuel Johnson ; whose
fame and reputation indicate the decline of taste in a country that, after
having produced an Alfred, a Wallace, a Bacon, a Napier, a Newton, a
Buchanan, a Milton, a Hampden, a Fletcher, and a Thomson, can submit
to be buUied by an overbearing pedant." — E.

458 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1791.
last week's fine weather for all the four Seasons in blank
verse. There is more nature in six hues of L' Allegro and
Penseroso, than in all the laboured imitations of MUton.
What is there in Thomson of original ?
Berkeley Square, Monday night, 19th.
You have alarmed me exceedingly, by talking of return
ing through France, against which I thought myself quite
secure, or I should not have pressed you to stir, yet I have
been making all the inquiries I could amongst the foreign
ministers at Richmond, and I cannot find any belief of the
march of armies towards France. Nay, the Comte d'Artois
is said to be gone to Petersburgh ; and he raust bring back
forces in a balloon, if he can be tirae enough to interrupt
your passage through Flanders. One thing I must pre
mise, if, which I deprecate, you should set foot in France;
I beg you to burn, and not bring a scrap of paper with you.
Mere travelhng ladies, as young as you, I know have been
stopped and rified, and detained in France to have their
papers examined; and one was rudely treated, because the
name of a French lady of her acquaintance was mentioned
in a private letter to her, though in no political light Calais
is one of the worst places you can pass ; for, as they suspect
money being remitted through that town to England, the
search and delays there are extremely strict and rigorous.
The pleasure of seeing you sooner would be bought infinitely
too dear by your meeting with any disturbance ; as my im
patience for your setting out is already severely punished by
the fright you have given me. One charge I can wipe off;
but it were the least of my faults. I never thought of your
settling at Cliveden in November, if your house in town is
free. All my wish was, that you would come for a night to
Strawberry, and that the next day I might put you in pos
session of Cliveden. I did not think of engrossing you from
all your friends, who raust wish to embrace you at your
return. Tuesday.
1 am told that on the King's acceptance of the constitution.

1791. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 459
there is a general amnesty published, and passports taken off.
If this is true, the passage through France, for mere fo
reigners and strangers, may be easier and safer ; but be as
sured, of all, I would not embarrass your journey unneces
sarily ; but for Heaven's sake ! be well informed. I advise
nothing : I dread everything where your safeties are in ques
tion, and I hope Mr. Berry is as timorous as I ara. My
very contradictions prove the anxiety of my mind, or I should
not torment those I love so much ; but how not love those
who sacrifice so much for me, and who, I hope, forgive all
my unreasonable inconsistencies. Adieu ! adieu !

TO THE MISS BERRYS.
Strawberry HiU, Sept. 25, 1791.
How I love to see my numeros increase.* I trust they
will not reach sixty ! In short, I try every nostrum to make
absence seem shorter; and yet with all my conjuration, I
doubt the next five or six weeks will, like the harvest-moon,
appear of a greater magnitude than all the moons of the year,
its predecessors. I wish its successor, the hunter's-moon,
could seem less in proportion ; but, on the contrary ! I hate
travelhng, and roads, and inns myself: while you are on
your way, I shall fancy, like Don Quixote, that every inn
is the castle of sorae necroraancer, and every windraill a
giant ; and these will be ray smallest terrors.
Whether this will meet or follow you, I know not. Yours
of the 5th of this month arrived yesterday, but could not
direct me beyond Basle. I must, then, remain still in ig
norance whether you will take the German or French route.
It is now, I think, certain that there will no atterapt against
France be made this year. Still I trust that you will not
decide till you are assured that you may come through
France without trouble or molestation; and I still prefer
Germany, though it will protract your absence.
' Mr. Walpole numbered all the letters written by him to the Miss
Berrys during their residence abroad. — E.

460 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1791.
I am sorry you were disappointed of going to Valombroso.
Milton has made everybody wish to have seen it ; which is my
wish, for though I was thirteen months at Florence (at twice),
I never did see it In fact I was so tired of seeing when I
was abroad, that I have several of these pieces of repentance
on my conscience, when they come into my head ; and yet I
saw too much, for the quantity left such a confusion in my
head, that I do not remeraber a quarter clearly. Pictures,
statues, and buildings were always so much my passion, that,
for the tirae, I surfeited myself; especially, as one is carried to
see a vast deal that is not worth seeing. They who are in
dustrious and correct and wish to forget nothing, should go
to Greece, where there is nothing left to be seen, but that
ugly pigeon- house, the Temple of the Winds, that fly-cage,
Demosthenes's lanthorn, and one or two fragments of a por
tico, or a piece of a column crushed into a mud wall ; and
with such a morsel, and many quotations, a true classic an
tiquary can compose a whole folio, and call it Ionian An
tiquities ! * Such gentry do better still when they journey
to Egypt to visit the pyramids, which are of a form which
one would think nobody could conceive without seeing, though
their form is all that is to be seen ; for it seems that even
prints and measures do not help one to an idea of mag
nitude : indeed, measures do not ; for no two travellers have
agreed on the measures. In that scientific country, too, you
may guess that such or such a vanished city stood within five
or ten miles of such a parcel of land ; and when you have
conjectured in vain, at what some rude birds, or rounds
or squares, on a piece of an old stone may have signified,
you may amuse your readers with an account of the rise of
the Nile, some feats of the Mamelukes, and finish your work
with doleful tales of the robberies of the wild Arabs. One
benefit does arise from travelling : it cures one of liking what
is worth seeing; especiaUy if what you have seen is bigger
than what you do see. Thus, Mr. Gilpin, having visited all
' The first volume of " Ionian Antiquities," in imperial folio, edited
by R. Chandler, N. Revett, and W. Pais, was published in 1769; a
second, edited by the Society of Dilettanti, appeared in 1797. — E.

1791. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 461
the lakes, could find no beauty in Richmond-hiU. If he
would look through Mr. Herschell's telescope at the pro
fusion of worlds beyond worlds, perhaps he would find out
that Mount Atlas is but an ant-hill ; and that the sublime and
beautiful may exist separately.

TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY.
Strawberry HiU, Sept. 27, 1791.
Yo0R letter was most welcome, as yours always are;
and I answer it immediately, though our post comes in so late
that this will not go away till to-morrow. Nay, I write,
though I shall see you on Sunday, and have not a tittle to
tell you. I lead so insipid a life, that though I am content
with it, it can furnish me with nothing but repetitions. I
scarce ever stir from home in a morning ; and most evenings
go and play at loto with the French at Richmond, where I
am heartily tired of hearing of nothing but their absurd coun
trymen, — absurd, both democrates and aristocrates. Calonne
sends them gross lies, that raise their hopes to the skies : and
in two days they hear of nothing but horrors and disappoint
ments ; and then, poor souls ! they are in despair. I can say
nothing to corafort them, but what I firmly believe, which is,
that total anarchy must come on rapidly. Nobody pays the
taxes that are laid ; and which, intended to produce eighty
millions a month, do not bring in six. The new Assembly
will fall on the old,* probably plunder the richest and cer
tainly disapprove of much they have done; for can eight
hundred new ignorants approve of what has been done by
twelve hundred almost as ignorant and who were far from
half agreeing ? And then their immortal constitution (which,
besides, is to be mightily mended nine years hence) will die
before it has cut any of its teeth but its grinders. The
' The Constitutional Assembly closed its sittings on the 30th of Sep
tember ; having, during the three years of its existence, enacted thirteen
hundred laws and decrees, relative to legislation, or to the general admi
nistration of the state. The first sitting of the Legislative Assembly
took place on the foUowing day. — E.

462 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1791.
exiles are enraged at their poor King for saring his own hfe
by a forced acceptance : * and yet I know no obhgation he has
to his noblesse, who all ran away to save their own lives;
not a gentleman, but the two poor gendarmes at VersaiUes,
having lost their hves in his defence. I suppose La Fayette,
Barnave,^ the Lameths, &c. will run away, too,* when the new
tinkers and cobblers, of whom the present elect are and will
be composed, proceed on the levelling system taught them
by their predecessors, who, like other levellers, have taken
good care of themselves. Good Dr. Priestley's friend, good
Monsieur Condorcet has got a place in the treasury of one
thousand pounds a year : — ex una disce omnes ! And thus a
set of rascals, who might, with temper and discretion, have
obtained a very wholesome constitution, witness Poland !
have committed infinite mischief, infinite cruelty, infinite in
justice, and left a shocking precedent against liberty, unless
the Poles are as much adraired and imitated as the French
ought to be detested.
I do not believe the Emperor will stir yet; he, or his
ministers, must see that it is the interest of Germany to let
France destroy itself. His interference yet might unite and
consolidate, at least check further confusion : and though I
rather think that twenty thousand men might march from
one end of France to the other, as, though the officers often
rallied, French soldiers never were stout; yet, having no
officers, no discipline, no subordination, little resistance might
be expected. Yet the enthusiasm that has been spread might
turn into courage. Still it were better for Caesar to wait.
Quarrels amongst themselves will dissipate enthusiasm ; and,
if they have no foreign eneray, they will soon have spirit
enough to turn their swords against one another, and what
' The King, on the 14th of September, had accepted the new constitu
tion, and sworn to maintain it. — E.
' For expressing his opinion, that the new constitution inclined too
much to a democracy, Barnave, after fifteen months' imprisonment at
Grenoble, was tried before the revolutionary tribunal, condemned to
death, and guiUotined on the 29th of November 1793. — E.
' The two Lameths, Charles and Alexander, fled the country. The
latter, having fallen into the hands of the Austrians with La Fayette,
shared his captivity, tiU December 1795. — E.

1791. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 463
enthusiasm remains will soon be converted into the inve
teracy of faction. This is speculation, not prophecy; I do
not pretend to guess what will happen : I do think I know
what will not; I mean, the system of experiments that
they call a constitution cannot last. Marvellous indeed
would it be, if a set of mihtary noble lads, pedantic acade
micians, curates of villages, and country advocates, could
in two years, amidst the utmost confusion and altercation
amongst themselves, dictated to or thwarted by obstinate
clubs of various factions, have achieved what the wisdom of
all ages and all nations has never been able to compose — a
system of government that would set four-and-twenty mil
lions of people free, and contain them within any bounds !
This, too, without one great man amongst them. If they
had had, as Mirabeau seemed to promise to be, but as we
know that he was, too, a consummate villain, there would
soon have been an end of their vision of hberty. And so
there will be still, unless, after a civil war, they split into
small kingdoms or commonwealths. A little nation may be
free; for it can be upon its guard. Millions cannot be so;
because, the greater number of men that are one people, the
more vices, the more abuses there are, that will either re
quire or furnish pretexts for restraints ; and if vices are the
mother of laws, the execution of laws is the father of power :
— and of such parents one knows the progeny.

TO MISS HANNAH MORE.
Berkeley Square, Sept. 29, 1791.
MY DEAR MADAM,
I HAVE been very sorry, but not at all angry, at not hear
ing from you so long. With all your friendly and benevolent
heart I know by experience how little you love writing to
your friends ; and I know why : you think you lose moments
which you could employ in doing more substantial good ; and
that your letters only pamper our minds, but do not feed or
clothe our bodies : if they did, you would coin as rauch paper

464 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1791.
as the French do in assignats. Do not imagine now that you
have committed a wicked thing by writing to me at last : com
fort yourself, that your conscience, not temptation, forced you
to write; and be assured, I am as grateful as if you had
written from choice, not from duty, your constant spiritual di
rector. I have been out of order the whole summer, but not very ill
for above a fortnight I caught a painful rheumatism by going
into a very crowded church on a rainy day, where all the win
dows were open, to hear our friend the Bishop of London
preach a charity sermon here at Twickenham. My gout
would not resign to a new incumbent, but came too ; and
both together have so lamed my right arm, though I am now
using it that I cannot yet extend it entirely, nor lift it to the
top of my head. However, I am free from pain ; and as Pro
vidence, though it supplied us originally with so many boun
ties, took care we might shift with succedaneums on the loss
of several of them, 1 am content with what remains of my
stock; and since all my fingers are not useless, and that I
have not six hairs left, I am not much grieved at not being
able to comb my head. Nay, should not such a shadow as I
have ever been, be thankful, that at the eve of seventy-five I
ara not yet passed away ?
I am so little out of charity with the Bishop for having been
the innocent cause of the death of my shoulder, that I am
heartily concerned for him and her on Mrs. Porteus's acci
dent* It may have marbled her complexion, but I am per
suaded has not altered her lively, amiable, good-humoured
countenance. As I know not where to direct to them, and as
you cannot suppose it a sin for a sheep to write to its pastor
on a week-day, I wish you would mark the interest I take in
their accident and escape from worse mischief
I thank you raost cordially for your inquiry after my wives.
I am in the utmost perplexity of mind about them ; torn be
tween hopes and fears. I believe them set out from Florence
on their return since yesterday se'ennight, and consequently
' An overturn in a carriage.

1791. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 465
feel all the joy and irapatience of expecting thera in five or six
weeks : but then, besides fears of roads, bad inns, accidents,
heats and colds, and the sea to cross in November at last, all
my satisfaction is dashed by the uncertainty whether they come
through Germany or France. I have advised, begged, im
plored, that it may not be through those Iroquois, Lestryons,
Anthropophagi, the Franks ; and then, hearing passports were
abolished, and the roads more secure, I half consented, as
they wished it and the road is much shorter ; and then I re
pented, and have contradicted myself again. And now I know
not which route they will take ; nor shall enjoy any comfort
from the thoughts of their return, till they are returned safe.
'Tis well I am doubly guaranteed, or who knows, as I am
as old almost as both her husbands together, but Mrs. B 
might haveXes^t a longing eye towards me ? How I laughed
at hearing of her throwing a second muckender to a Methu-
salera ! a fat, red- faced veteran, with a portly hillock of flesh.
I conclude all her grandfathers are dead ; or, as there is no
prohibition in the table of consanguinity against male ances
tors, she would certainly have stepped back towards the
Deluge, and ransacked her pedigrees on both sides for some
kinsman of the patriarchs. I could titter a plusieurs reprises ;
but I am too old to be improper, and you are too modest to
be impropered to: and so I will drop the subject at the
herald's office.
I am happy at and honour Miss Burney's resolution in cast
ing away golden, or rather gilt chains : others, out of vanity,
would have worn them tUl they had eaten into the bone. On
that charming young woman's chapter I agree with you per
fectly ; not a jot on Deborah *****, whom you admire : I
have neither read her verses, nor will. As I have not your
aspen conscience, I cannot forgive the heart of a woraan that
is party per pale blood and tenderness, that curses our clergy
and feels for negroes. Can I forget the 14th of July, when
they all contributed their faggot to the fires that her presby-
tyrants (as Lord Melcorabe called thera) tried to hght in
every Sraithfield in the island; and which, as Price and
Priestley applauded in France, it would be folly to suppose
VOL. VI. 2 H

466 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1791.
they did not only wish, but meant to kindle here ? Were they
ignorant of the atrocious barbarities, injustice, and violation of
oaths coramitted in France ? Did Priestley not know that the
clergy there had no option but between starving and perjury ?
And what does he think of the poor man executed at Bir
mingham, who declared at his death, he had been provoked
by the infamous hand-bill ? I know not who wrote it. No,
my good friend : Deborah may cant rhymes of compassion, but
she is a hypocrite ; and you shall not make me read her, nor,
with all your sympathy and candour, can you esteem her.
Your compassion for the poor blacks is genuine, sincere from
your soul, most amiable ; hers, a measure of faction. Her
party supported the abolition, and regretted the disappoint
ment as a blow to the good cause. I know this. Do not let
your piety lead you into the weakness of respecting the bad,
only because they hoist the flag of religion, while they carry a
stiletto in the flag-staff. Did not they, previous to the 14th
of July, endeavour to corrupt the guards ? What would have
ensued, had they succeeded, you must tremble to think !
You tell rae nothing of your own health. May I flatter my
self it is good ? I wish I knew so authentically ! and I wish
I could guess when I should see you, without your being
staked to the fogs of the Tharaes at Christmas; I cannot
desire that Adieu, ray very valuable friend ! I ara, though
unworthy, yours raost cordially.

TO MISS BERRY.
Strawberry HUl, Oct. 9, 1791.
It wiU be a year to-raorrow since you set out: next
morning came the storm that gave rae such a panic for you !
In March happened your fall, and the wound on your nose ;
and in July your fever. For sweet Agnes I have happily had
no separate alarm : yet I have still a month of apprehension
to come for both ! All this mass of vexation and fears is to
be corapensated by the transport at your return, and by the
complete satisfaction on your instaUation at Cliveden. But

1791. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 467
could I beheve, that when my clock had struck seventy-four,
I could pass a year in such agitation ! It raay be taken for
dotage; and I have for sorae time expected to be superannu
ated : but, though I task myself severely, I do not find my in
tellects irapaired ; though I may be a bad judge rayself. You
may, perhaps, perceive it by my letters ; and don't imagine I
am laying a snare for flattery. No ! I am only jealous about
myself, that you two may have created such an attachment
without owing it to my weakness. Nay, I have some coifs
hmbs left, which I as little suspected as my anxieties.
I went with General Conway, on Wednesday morning, from
Park-place to risit one of my ante-diluvian passions, — not a
Statira or Roxana, but one pre-existent to myself, — one
Windsor Castle ; and I was so delighted and so juvemle, that,
without attending to anything but my eyes, I stood full two
hours and a half, and found that half my lameness consists in
my indolence. Two Berrys, a Gothic chapel, and an historic
castle, are anodynes to a torpid mind. I now fancy that old
age was invented by the lazy. St George's Chapel, that I
always worshipped, though so dark and black that I could see
nothing distinctly, is now, being cleaned and decorated, a scene
of hghtness and graces. Mr. Conway was so struck with its
Gothic beauties and taste, that he owned the Grecian style
would not admit half the variety of its imagination. There is
a new screen prefixed to the choir, so airy and harmonious,
that I concluded it Wyat's ; but it is by a Windsor architect
whose narae I forget Jarvis's window, over the altar, after
West, is rather too sombre for the Resurrection, though it ac
cords with the tone of the choirs ; but the Christ is a poor
figure, scrambling to heaven in a fright, as if in dread of being
again buried alive, and not ascending calmly in secure dignity:
and there is a Judas below, so gigantic, that he seems more
Ukely to burst by his bulk, than through guilt In the
midst of all this solemnity, in a small angle over the lower
stalls, is cramraed a small bas-relief, in oak, with the story of
Margaret Nicholson, the King, and the Coachman, as ridi
culously added and as clumsily executed as if it were a monk
ish miracle. Some loyal zealot has broken away the blade of
2 H 2

468 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1791.
the knife, as if the sacred wooden personage would have been
in danger still. The Castle itself is smugged up, is better
glazed, has got some new stools, clocks, and looking-glasses,
much embroidery in silk, and a gaudy, clumsy throne, with a
medalhon at top of the King's and Queen's heads, over their
own — an odd kind of tautology, whenever they sit there !
There are several tawdry pictures, by West of the history of
the Garter; but the figures are too sraall for that majestic
place. However, upon the whole, I was glad to see Windsor
a httle revived.
I had written thus far, waiting for a letter, and happily re
ceive your two from Bologna together ; for which I give you
a million of thanks, and for the repairs of your coach, which I
trust will contribute to your safety : but I will swallow ray
apprehensions, for I doubt I have torraented you with them.
Yet do not wonder, that after a year's absence, my affection,
instead of waning, is increased. Can I help feeling the in
finite obligation I have to you both, for quitting Italy that
you love, to humour Methusalem? — a Methusalem that is
neither king nor priest, to reward and bless you ; and whom
you condescend to please, because he wishes to see you once
more ; though he ought to have sacrificed a momentary glimpse
to your far more durable satisfaction. Instead of generosity,
I have teased, and I fear, wearied you, with lamentations and
disquiets; and how can I make you amends? What plea
sure, what benefit can I procure for you in return? The
most disinterested generosity, such as yours is, gratifies noble
minds ; but how paltry am I to hope that the reflections of
your own minds will compensate for all the amusements you
give up to Make languor smile, and smooth the bed of death !
I may boast of having no foolish weakness for your persons,
as I certainly have not ; but
The soul's dark cottage, batter'd and decay'd.
Lets in new selfishness through chinks that time has made.
And I have been as avaricious of hoarding a few moments of
agreeable society, as if I had coveted a few more trumpery

1791. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 469
guineas in ray strong-box ! and then I have the assurance to
tell you I am not superannuated ! Oh ! but I am !
The Bolognese school is my favourite, though I do not hke
Guercino, whora I call the German Guido, he is so heavy and
dark. I do not, like your friend, venerate Constantinopohtan
paintings, which are scarce preferable to Indian. The cha
racters of the Italian comedy were certainly adopted even
from the persons of its several districts and dialects. Pan
taloon is a Venetian, even in his countenance; and I once
saw a gentleman of Bergamo, whose face was an exact Harle
quin's mask.
I have scarce a pen-ful of news for you; the world is at
Weymouth or Newmarket En attendant voici the Gunnings
again ! The old gouty General has carried off his tailor's
wife; or rather, she him — whither, I know not Probably,
not far ; for the next day the General was arrested for three
thousand pounds, and carried to a spunging-house, whence he
sent Cupid with a link to a friend, to beg help and a crutch.
This amazing folly is generaUy believed ; perhaps because the
folly of that race is amazing — so is their whole story. The
two beautiful sisters were going on the stage, when they are
at once exalted almost as high as they could be, were count-
essed and double-duchessed ; and now the rest of the family
have dragged themselves through all the kennels of the news
papers ! Adieu ! forgive all my pouts. I will be perfectly
good-humoured when I have nothing to vex me !

TO JOHN PINKERTON, ESQ.*
Berkeley Square, Dec. 26, 1791.
As I am sure of the sincerity of your congratulations,*
I feel much obhged by them, though what has happened
destroys my tranquillity; and, if what the world reckons
' Now first collected.
^ Mr. Walpole had succeeded to the title of Earl of Orford on the
5th of December, upon the death of his nephew George, the third
Earl.— E.

470 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1791.
advantages could compensate the loss of peace and ease,
would ill indemnify rae, even by thera. A sraall estate,
loaded with debt and of which I do not understand the raa
nageraent, and am too old to learn; a source of law-suits
amongst ray near relations, though not affecting me ; endless
conversations with lawyers, and packets of letters to read
every day and answer, — all this weight of new business is
too much for the rag of hfe that yet hangs about me, and
was preceded by three weeks of anxiety about my unfoi"-
tunate nephew, and a daily correspondence with physicians
and mad-doctors, falling upon me when I had been out of
order ever since July. Such a mass of troubles made me very
seriously ill for some days, and has left me and still keeps
me so weak and dispirited, that, if I shall not soon be able
to get some repose, ray poor head or body will not be able
to resist For the erapty title, I trust you do not suppose it
is anything but an incurabrance, by larding my busy mornings
with idle visits of interruption, and which, when I am able
to go out, I shall be forced to return. Surely no raan of
seventy-four, unless superannuated, can have the sraallest
pleasure in sitting at home in his own room, as I almost
always do, and being called by a new name !
It will seem personal, and ungrateful too, to have said so
much about my own triste situation, and not to have yet
thanked you. Sir, for your kind and flattering offer of letting
me read what you have finished of your history ; but it was
necessary to expose my position to you, before I could ven
ture to accept your proposal, when I am so utterly incapable
of giving a quarter of an hour at a time to what I know, by
my acquaintance with your works, will deraand all my atten
tion, if I wish to reap the pleasure they are formed to give
me. It is most true that for these seven weeks I have not
read seven pages, but letters, states of account, cases to be
laid before lawyers, accounts of farms, &c. &c., and those
subject to mortgages. Thus are my mornings occupied : in
an evening my relations and a very few friends come to rae ;
and, when they are gone, I have about an hour to raidnight
to write answers to letters for the next day's post, which I

1792. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 471
had not time to do in the morning. This is actually my
case now. I happened to be quitted at ten o'clock, and
would not lose the opportunity of thanking you, not knowing
when I could command another hour.
I by no raeans would be understood to decline your oblig
ing offer. Sir : on the contrary, I accept it joyfully, if you can
trust me with your manuscript for a little time, should I have
leisure to read it but by sraall snatches, which would be
wronging you, and would break all connexion in my head.
Criticism you are too great a writer to want; and to read
critically is far beyond my present power. Can a scrivener,
or a scrivener's hearer, be a judge of composition, style, pro
found reasoning, and new lights and discoveries, &c. ? But
my weary hand and breast must finish. May I ask the fa
vour of your calling on me any morning, when you shall
happen to come to town? You will find the new-old lord
exactly the sarae admirer of yours.

TO MISS HANNAH MORE.
Berkeley Square, Jan. 1, 1792.
MY MUCH-ESTEEMED FRIEND,
I HAVE not SO long delayed answering your letter from
the pitiful revenge of recollecting how long your pen is fetch
ing breath before it replies to mine. Oh ! no ; you know I
love to heap coals of kindness on your head, and to draw you
into little sins, that you may forgive yourself, by knowing
your tirae was employed on big virtues. On the contrary,
you would be revenged ; for here have you, according to your
notions, inveigled me into the fracture of a commandraent;
for I am writing to you on a Sunday, being the first moraent
of leisure that I have had since I received your letter. It
does not indeed clash with ray rehgious ideas, as I hold
paying one's debts as good a deed, as praying and reading
sermons for a whole day in every week, when it is impossible
to fix the attention to one course of thinking for so many
hours for fifty-two days in every year. Thus you see I can

47? CORRESPONDENCE OF 1792.
preach too. But seriously, and indeed I am little disposed
to cheerfulness now, I am overwhelmed with troubles, and
with business — and business that I do not understand; law,
and the management of a ruined estate, are subjects ill-suited
to a head that never studied anything that in worldly lan
guage is called useful. The tranquiUity of ray remnant of
life wiU be lost or so perpetually interrupted, that I expect
little comfort ; not that 1 am already intending to grow rich,
but the moment one is supposed so, there are so many alert
to turn one to their own account that I have more letters
to write to satisfy, or rather to dissatisfy them, than about
my own affairs, though the latter are all confusion. I have
such missives, on agriculture, pretensions to livings, offers of
taking care of my game as I am incapable of it, self-recom
mendations of raaking ray robes, and round hints of taking
out my writ that at least I raay narae a proxy, and give
my dormant conscience to somebody or other ! I trust you
think better of my heart and understanding than to suppose
that I have listened to any one of these new friends. Yet,
though I have negatived all, I have been forced to answer
some of them before you ; and that will convince you how
cruelly ill I have passed my time lately, besides having been
made ill with vexation and fatigue. But I am tolerably well
again. For the other empty metamorphosis that has happened
to the outward man, you do me justice in concluding that
it can do nothing but tease rae ; it is being called naraes in
one's old age. I had rather be my lord mayor, for then I
should keep the nickname but a year ; and raine I raay retain
a httle longer, not that at seventy-five I reckon on becoming
my Lord Methusalem. Vainer, however, I believe I am al
ready become; for I have wasted almost two pages about
myself, and said not a tittle about your health, which I raost
cordiaUy rejoice to hear you are recovering, and as fervently
hope you will entirely recover. I have the highest opinion
of the element of water as a constant beverage; baring so
deep a conviction of the goodness and wisdom of Providence,
that I am persuaded that when it indulged us in such a luxu-

1792. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 473
rious variety of eatables, and gave us but one drinkable, it
intended that our sole liquid should be both wholesome and
corrective. Your systera I know is different ; you hold that
mutton and water were the only cock and hen that were
designed for our nourishment; but I am apt to doubt whe
ther draughts of water for six weeks are capable of restoring
health, though some are strongly impregnated with mineral
and other particles. Yet you have staggered rae : the Bath
water by your account is, like electricity, compounded of con
tradictory qualities ; the one attracts and repels ; the other
turns a shiUing yellow, and whitens your jaundice. I shall
hope to see you (when is that to be?) without alloy.
I must finish, wishing you three hundred and thirteen days
of happiness for the new year that is arrived this morning :
the fifty-two that you hold in commendam, I have no doubt
will be rewarded as such good intentions deserve. Adieu, ray
too good friend ! My direction shall talk superciliously to
the postraan ;* but do let me continue unchangeably your
faithful and sincere, Horace Walpole.^

TO THOMAS BARRETT, ESQ.
Berkeley Square, May 14, 1792.
DEAR SIR,
Though my poor fingers do not yet write easily, I can
not help inquiring if Mabeuse^ is arrived safely at Lee, and
fits his destined stall in the library. My amendment is far
slower, comme de raison, than ever ; and my weakness much
greater. Another fit I doubt, wUl confine me to my chair,
if it does not do more ; it is not worth haggling about that
Dr. Darwin has appeared, superior in some respects to
the former part The Triumph of Flora, beginning at the
fifty-ninth line, is most beautifully and enchantingly imagined ;
' He means franking his letter by his newly-acquired title of Earl of
Orford. " This is the last letter signed Horace Walpole.— E.
' A capital picture by that master, then lately purchased by Mr.
Barrett.— E.

474 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1792.
and the twelve verses that by miracle describe and compre
hend the creation of the universe out of chaos, are in my
opinion the most subhme passage in any author, or in any
of the few languages with which I am acquainted. There are
a thousand other verses most charming, or indeed all are so,
crowded with most poetic imagery, gorgeous epithets and
style: and yet these four cantos do not please me equaUy
with the Loves of the Plants. This seems to me almost
as much a rhapsody of unconnected parts; and is so deep,
that I cannot read six lines together and know what they
are about till I have studied them in the long notes, and
then perhaps do not comprehend them; but all this is ray
fault, not Dr. Darwin's. Is he to blame, that I am no na
tural philosopher, no chemist, no metaphysician ? One mis
fortune will attend this glorious work ; it will be little read
but by those who have no taste for poetry, and who will be
weighing and criticising his positions, without feeling the
imagination, harmony, and expression of the versification.
Is not it extraordinary, dear Sir, that two of our very best
poets. Garth and Darwin, should have been physicians? I
believe they have left all the lawyers wranghng at the turn
pike of Parnassus. Adieu, dear Sir ! Yours most cordially.

TO MISS HANNAH MORE.*
Strawberry HiU, Aug. 21, 1792.
MY DEAR SAINT HANNAH,
1 HAVE frequently been going to write to you, but checked
myself. You are so good and so bad, that I feared I should in
terrupt some act of benevolence on one side; and on the other,
that you would not answer my letter in three raonths. I am
glad to find, as an Irishman would say, that the way to make
you answer is not to speak first But, ah ! I am a brute to
upbraid any moment of your silence, though I regretted it
when I hear that your kind intentions have been prevented
' Now first coUected.

1792. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 475
by frequent cruel pain ! and that even your rigid abstemi
ousness does not remove your coraplaints. Your heart is
always aching for others, and your head for yourself Yet
the latter never hinders the activity of the former. What
must your tenderness not feel now, when a whole nation of
monsters is burst forth ? The second massacre of Paris has
exhibited horrors that even surpass the former.* Even the
Queen's women were butchered in the ThuiUeries, and the
tigers chopped off the heads from the dead bodies, and
tossed them into the fiames of the palace. The tortures of
the poor King and Queen, from the length of their duration,
surpass all example; and the brutal insolence with which
they were treated on the 10th, all invention. They were
dragged through the Place Vendorae to see the statue of
Louis the Fourteenth in fragments, and told it was to be the
King's fate ; and he, the most harmless of men, was told he
is a monster ; and this after three years of sufferings. King,
and Queen, and children were shut up in a room, without
nourishment, for twelve hours. One who was a witness has
come over, and says he found the Queen sitting on the floor,
trembling like an aspen in every limb, and her sweet boy
the Dauphin asleep against her knee ! She has not one
woman to attend her that she ever saw, but a companion
of her raisery, the King's sister, an heroic virgin saint, who,
on the former irruption into the palace, flew to and clung to
her brother, and being mistaken for the Queen, and the
hellish fiends wishing to murder her, and somebody aiming
to undeceive them, she said, "Ah ! ne les detrompez pas !"*
' From the 2nd to the 6th of September, these infernal atrocities
proceeded uninterrupted, protracted by the actors, for the sake of the
daily pay of a louis to each M. Thiers states, that Billaud Varennes
appeared publicly among the assassins, and encouraged what were cal
led the labourers. " My friends," said he, " by taking the lives of vU-
lains you have saved the country. France owes you eternal gratitude,
and the municipality ofl^ers you twenty livres a-piece, and you shall be
paid immediately." AU the reports of the time difltr in their estimate
of the number of the victims. " That estimate," says M. Thiers, " varies
from six to twelve thousand in the prisons of France." Vol. ii. p. 45. —
E. ' This fact is confirmed by M. Thiers. " During the irruption of the
populace into the ThuUleries, on the 20th of June, Madame Elizabeth,"

476 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1792.
Was not that sentence tbe sublime of innocence ? But why
do I wound your thrilling nerves with the relation of such
horrible scenes? Your blackmanity^ must allow some of its
tears to these poor victims. For my part I have an abhor
rence of politics, if one can so term these tragedies, which
make one harbour sentiments one naturally abhors ; but can
one refrain without difficulty from exclaiming such wretches
should be exterminated ? They have butchered hecatombs
of Swiss, even to porters in private houses, because they often
are, and always are called, Le Suisse. Think on fifteen
hundred persons, probably more, butchered on the 10th,* in
the space of eight bours. Think on premiums voted for the
assassination of several princes, and do not think that such
execrable proceedings have been confined to Paris ; no, Avig
non, Marseilles, &c. are still smoking with blood ! Scarce
the Alecto of the North, the legislatress and the usurper of
Poland, has occasioned the spilling of larger torrents !
1 am almost sorry that your letter arrived at this crisis ; I
cannot help venting a little of what haunts me. But it is bet
ter to thank Providence for the tranquilhty and happiness we
enjoy in this country, in spite of the phUosophizing serpents
we have in our bosom, the Paines, the Tookes, and the Wool-
stoncrofts. 1 am glad you have not read the tract of the
last-mentioned writer. I would not look at it, though assured
it contains neither metaphysics nor politics; but as she en
tered the lists on the latter, and borrowed her title from the
demon's book, which aimed at spreading the wrongs of raen,
she is excommunicated from the pale of my hbrary. We have
he says, " foUowed the King from window to window, to share his dan
ger. The people, when they saw her, took her for the Queen. Shouts
of ' There 's the Austrian !' were raised in an alarming manner. The
national grenadiers, who had surrounded the Princess, endeavoured to
set the people right. ' Leave them,' said that generous sister, ' leave
them in their error, and save the Queen ! ' " Vol. i. p. 306. — E.
» An allusion to the lively interest Miss More was taking in the abo
Ution of the slave trade. — E.
' At the storming of the ThuiUeries. " The MarseiUais," says M.
Thiers, " made themselves masters of the palace : the rabble, with
pikes, poured in after them, and the rest of the scene was soon but one
general massacre ; the unfortunate Swiss in vain begged for quarter, at
the same time throwing down their arms ; they were butchered without
mercy." Vol. i. p. 380.— E.

1792. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 477
had enough of new systems, and the world a great deal too
much, already.
Let us descend to private hfe. Your friend Mrs. Boscawen,
I fear, is unhappy : she has lost raost suddenly her son-in-law,
Admiral Leveson. Mrs. Garrick I have scarcely seen this
whole summer. She is a liberal Pomona to me — I will not
say an Eve; for though she reaches fruit to me, she will
never let me in, as if I were a boy, and would rob her orchard.
As you interest yourself about a certain trumpery old per
son, I with infinite gratitude will add a line on hira. He is
very tolerably well, weak enough certainly, yet willing to be
contented ; he is satisfied with knowing that he is at his best.
Nobody grows stronger at seventy-five, nor recovers the use
of lirabs half lost; nor — though neither deaf nor blind, nor in
the latter most material point at all impaired ; nor, as far as
he can find on strictly watching himself, much damaged as to
comraon uses in his intellects — does the gentleman expect to
avoid additional decays, if his life shall be further protracted.
He has been too fortunate not to be most thankful for the
past, and most submissive for what is to come, be it more or
less. He forgot to say, that the warmth of his heart towards
those he loves and esteems has not suffered the least dimi
nution, and consequently he is as fervently as ever Saint
Hannah's most sincere friend and humble servant,
Orford.

TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY.
Strawberry Hill, August 31, 1792.
Your long letter and my short one crossed one another
upon the road. I knew I was in your debt; but I had no
thing to say but what you know better than I ; for you read
all the French papers, and I read none, as they have long
put me out of all patience : and besides, 1 hear so rauch of
their horrific proceedings, that they quite disturb me, and
have given me what I call the French disease; that is, a
barbarity that I abhor, for I cannot help wishing destruc
tion to thousands of huraan creatures whora I never saw.

478 correspondence of 1792.
But when men have worked themselves up into tigers and
hyaenas, and labour to communicate their appetite for blood,
what signifies whether they walk on two legs or four, or
whether they dwell in cities, or in forests and dens ? Nay,
the latter are the more harmless wild beasts ; for they only
cranch a poor traveller now and then, and when they are
famished with hunger : the others, though they have dined,
cut the throats of some hundreds of poor Swiss for an after
noon's luncheon. Oh ! the execrable nation !
I cannot tell you any new particulars, for Mesdames de
Cambis and d'Hennin, my chief informers, are gone to Good
wood to the poor Duchesse de Biron, of whose recovery 1
am impatient to hear ; and so I am of the cause of her very
precipitate flight and panic. She must I think, have had
strong motives; for two years ago I feared she was much
too courageous, and displayed her intrepidity too publicly.
If I did not always condemn the calling bad people mud
people, I should say all Paris is gone distracted : they fur
nish provocation to every species of retaliation, by publish
ing rewards for assassination of kings and generals, and can
not rest without incensing all Europe against them.
The Duchess of York gave a great entertainment at Oat
lands on her Duke's birthday ; sent to his tradesmen in town
to come to it, and allowed two guineas a-piece to each for
their carriage ; gave them a dance, and opened the ball
herself with the Prince of Wales. A company of strollers
came to Weybridge to act in a barn: she was solicited to
go to it and did out of charity, and carried all her servants.
Next day a Methodist teacher came to preach a charity
sermon in the same theatre, and she consented to hear it
on the same motive ; but her servants desired to be excused,
on not understanding English. "Oh!" said the Duchess,
*' but you went to the comedy, which you understood less,
and you shall go to the sermon ;" to which she gave hand
somely, and for them. I like this.
Tack this to my other fragment, and then, I trust, I shall
not be a defaulter in correspondence. I own I am become
an indolent poor creature : but is that strange ? With

1793. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 479
seventy-five years over my head, or on the point of being
so ; with a chalk-stone in every finger ; with feet so limping,
that I have been but twice this whole summer round my own
small garden ; and so much weaker than I was, can I be very
comfortable, but when sitting quiet and doing nothing ? All
my strength consists in ray sleep, which is as vigorous as at
twenty: but with regard to letter-writing, I have so many
to write on business which I do not understand, since the
unfortunate death of my nephew, that though I make them
as brief as possible, half-a-dozen short ones tire me as much
as a long one to an old friend ; and as the busy ones must
he executed, I trespass on the others, and remit them to
another day. Norfolk has come very mal-apropos into the
end of my life, and certainly never entered into my views
and plans; and I, who could never learn the multiplication
table, was not intended to transact leases, direct repairs of
farm-houses, settle fines for church lands, negociate for lower
ing interest on mortgages, &c. In short, as I was told
formerly, though I know several things, I never understood
anything useful. Apropos, the letter of which Lady Cecilia
Johnstone told you is not at all worth your seeing. It was an
angry one to a parson who oppresses my tenants, and will go
to law with them about tythes. She came in as I was writing
it; and as I took up the character of parson myself, and
preached to him as pastor of a flock which it did not become
him to lead into the paths of law, instead of those of peace,
I thought it would divert and showed it to her. Adieu !
I have been writing to you till midnight, and my poor fingers
ache. Yours ever.

TO MISS HANNAH MORE.
Berkeley Square, Feb. 9, 1793.
MY HOLY HANNAH,
With your innate and usual goodness and sense, you
have done me justice by guessing exactly at the cause of my
long silence. You have been apt to tell me that my letters

480 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1793.
diverted you. How then could I write, when it was im
possible but to attrist you ! when I could speak of nothing
but unparaUeled horrors ! and but awaken your sensibihty,
if it slumbered for a moment ! What mind could forget the
10th of August and the 2d of September; and that the
black and bloody year 1792 has plunged its murderous dag
ger StiU deeper, and already raade 1793 stiU raore detestably
memorable ! though its victim* has at last been rewarded for
four years of torture by forcing from him every kind of proof
of the most perfect character that ever sat on a throne. Were
these, alas ! themes for letters ? Nay, am I not sure that
you have been still more shocked by a crime that passes
even the guilt of shedding the blood of poor Louis, to hear
of atheism avowed, and the avowal tolerated by monsters
calling themselves a National Assembly ! But I have no
words that can reach the criminality of such inferno-human
beings, but must compose a term that aims at conveying
my idea of them. For the future it will be sufficient to
call them the French ; I hope no other nation will ever de
serve to be confounded with them !
Indeed, my dear friend, I have another reason for wishing
' On the 21st of January, Louis the Sixteenth had been beheaded in the
Place Louis Quinze, erected to the memory of his grandfather. M.
Thiers thus concludes his account of this horrible event : — '' At ten
minutes past ten, the carriage stopped. Louis, rising briskly, stepped
out into the Place. Three executioners came up ; he refused their as
sistance, and stripped off his clothes himself ; but, perceiving that they
were going to bind his hands, he betrayed a movement of indignation,
and seemed ready to resist. M. Edgeworth, whose every expression was
then sublime, gave him a last look, and said, ' Suifer this outrage, as a
last resemblance to that God who is about to be your reward.' At these
words the victim, resigned and submissive, sufl^ered himself to be bound
and conducted to the scafi'old. All at once, Louis took a hasty step,
separated himself from the executioners, and advanced to address the
people. ' Frenchmen,' said he, in a firm voice, ' I die innocent of the
crimes which are imputed to me ; I forgive the authors of my death, and
1 pray that my blood may not fall upon France.' He would have con
tinued, but the drums were instantly ordered to beat: their rolUng
drowned the voice of the Prince; the executioners laid hold of him, and
M. Edgeworth took his leave in these memorable words, ' Son of St.
Louis, ascend to heaven !' As soon as the blood flowed, furious wretches
dipped their pikes and their handkerchiefs in it, spread themselves
throughout Paris, shouting Vive la Republique ! vive la nation ! and even
went to the gates of the Temple to display their brutal and factious joy."
Vol. ii. p. 228. — B.

1793. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 481
to burn ray pen entirely: all my ideas are confounded and
overturned ; I do not know whether all I ever learned in the
seventy first years of my seventy-five was not wrong and
false : common sense, reasoning, calculation, conjecture from
analogy and from history of past events, all, all have been
baffled; nor am I sure that what used to be thought the
result of experience and wisdom was not a mass of mis
takes. Have I not found, do I not find, that the invention
of establishing metals as the signs of property was an useless
discovery, or at least only useful till the art of making paper
was found out? Nay, the latter is preferable to gold and
silver. If the ores were adulterated and cried down, nobody
would take them in exchange. Depreciate paper as much as you
will, and it will still serve all the purposes of barter. Trades
men still keep shops, stock them with goods, and deliver their
comraodities for those coined rags. Poor Reason, where art
thou? To show you that raeraory and arguraent are of no value,
at least with me, I thought a year or two that this paper-
mint would soon blow up, because I remembered that when
Mr. Charles Fox and one or two more youths of brilliant
genius first came to light, and into vast debts at play, they
imparted to the world an important secret which they had
discovered. It was, that nobody needed to want money, if
they would pay enough for it. Accordingly, they borrowed of
Jews at vast usury : but as they had made but an incoraplete
calculation, the interest so soon exceeded the principal, that
the system did not maintain its ground for above two or three
years. Faro has proved a more substantial speculation. But
1 miscarried in applying my remembrance to the assignats,
which still maintain their ground against that long-decried
but as long-adored corrupter of virtue, gold.* Alack ! I do
' " The causes which at this time put assignats apparently on a par
with specie were the following. A law forbade, under heavy penalties,
the traSic in specie, that is, the exchange at a loss of the assignat against
money : another law decreed very severe penalties against those who, in
purchases, should bargain for diiferent prices according as payment was
to be made in paper or in cash : by a last law, it was enacted, that hid
den gold, silver, or jewels, should belong partly to the state, partly to the
VOL. VI. 2 1

482 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1793.
not hear that rirtue has flourished more for the destruction of
its old enemy !
Shall I add another truth ? I have been so disgusted and
fatigued by hearing of nothing but French massacres, &c.
and found it so impossible to shift conversation to any other
topic, that before I had been a month in town, I wished
Miss Gunning would revive, that people might have at least
one other subject to interest the ears and tongues of the
public. But no wonder universal attention is engrossed by
the present portentous scene ! It seems to draw to a ques
tion, whether Europe or France is to be depopulated; whe
ther civilization can be recovered, or the republic of Chaos
can be supported by assassination. We have heard of the
golden, silver, and iron ages ; the brazen one existed, while
the French were only predominantly insolent. What the
present age will be denominated, I cannot guess. Though
the paper age would be characteristic, it is not emphatic
enough, nor specifies the enormous sins of the fiends that
are the agents. I think it may be styled the diabolic age:
the Duke of Orleans has dethroned Satan, who since his
fall has never instigated such crimes as Orleans has per
petrated.*
informer. Thenceforth people could neither employ specie in trade nor
conceal it ; it became troublesome ; it exposed the holders to the risk of
being considered as suspected persons ; they began to be afraid of it,
and to find the assignat preferable for daily use." Thiers, vol. iii. p.
213.— E.
' Louis- Philippe-Joseph, Duke of Orleans, who had relinquished his
titles and called himself Philippe Egalite, and become a member of the
National Convention, in giving his vote for the death of his kinsman,
had read these words : — " Exclusively governed by my duty, and con
vinced that aU those who have resisted the sovereignty of the people
deserve death, my vote is for death ! " The atrocity of this vote occa
sioned great agitation in the assembly ; it seemed as if, by this single
vote, the fate of the Monarch was irrevocably sealed. On the 6th of
November, in the same year, the Duke was himself brought before the
revolutionary tribunal, and condemned on account of the suspicions
which he had excited in all the parties. " Odious," says M. Thiers, " to
the emigrants, suspected by the Girondins and the Jacobins, he inspired
none of those regrets which aiford some consolation for an unjust death.
A universal disgust, an absolute scepticism, were his last sentiments ; and
he went to the scaffold with extraordinary composure and indifference.
As he was drawn along the Rue St. Honorl, he beheld his palace with a
dry eye, and never belied for a moment his disgust of men and of life."
Vol. Ui. p. 205.— E.

1793. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 483
Let rae soften ray tone a httle, and harraonise your poor
mifid by sweeter accents. In this deluge of triuraphant
enorraities, what traits of the sublirae and beautiful- may be
gleaned! Did you hear of Madame Elizabeth, the King's
sister? a saint like yourself. She doted on her brother, for
she certainly knew his souh In the tumult in July, hearing
the populace and the poissardes had broken into the palace,
she fiew to the King, and by embracing him tried to shield
his person. The populace took her for the Queen, cried out
" Voila cette chienne, cette Autrichienne !" and were pro
ceeding to violence. Somebody, to save her, screamed " Ce
n'est pas la Reine, c'est  ." The Princess said, " Ah !
mon Dieu ! ne les detrompez pas." If that was not the
most sublime instance of perfect innocence ready prepared
for death, I know not where to find one. Sublirae indeed,
too, was the sentence of good father Edgeworth, the King's
confessor, who, thinking his royal penitent a httle dismayed
just before the fatal stroke, cried out " Montez, digne fils de
St. Louis ! Le ciel vous est ouvert" The holy martyr's
countenance brightened up, and he subraitted at once. Such
victims, such confessors as those, and Monsieur de Males
herbes, repair some of the breaches in human nature made
by Orleans, Condorcet Santerre, and a legion of evil spirits.
The tide of horrors has hurried me much too far, before
I have vented a note of my most sincere concern for your
bad account of your health. I feel for it heartily, and wish
your frame were as sound as your soul and understanding.
What can I recomraend? I am no physician but for my
own fiirasy texture; which by studying, and by contradict
ing all advice, I have drawn to this great age. Patience,
temperance, nay, abstinence, are already yours; in short,
you want to be corrected of nothing but too much piety,
too much rigour towards yourself, and too much sensibility
for others. Is not it. possible to serve mankind, without
feeling too great pity? Perhaps I am a httle too much
hardened, I am grown too little alarmed for the health of
my friends, from being become far raore indifferent to life ;
I look to the nearness of my end, as a delivery from specta-
2l 2

484 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1793.
cles of woe. We have even amongst us monsters, more cri
minal, in speculation at least, than the French. They had
cause to wish for correction of a bad government; though,
till taught to dislike it three-fourths of the country, I main
tain, adored theirs. We have the perfectest ever yet devised ;
but if to your numerous readings of little pamphlets you would
add one more, called " Village Politics,"* infinitely superior to
anything on the subject, clearer, better stated, and compre
hending the whole mass of matter in the shortest compass,
you will be more mistress of the subject than any man in
England. I know who wrote it but will not tell you, be
cause you did not tell me.

TO MISS HANNAH MORE.
Berkeley Square, March 23, 1793.
I SHALL certainly not leave off taunting your virtues,
my excellent friend, for I find it sometimes makes you cor
rect them. I scolded you for your raodesty in not acquaint
ing me with your " Village Politics" even after they were
published; and you have already conquered that unfriendly
delicacy, and announced another piece of which you are in
labour. Still I see there wanted your ghostly father, the
Bishop of London, to enjoin you to be quite shameless and
avow your natural child.^ I do approve his doctrine : calhng
it by your own name will make its fortune. If, hke Rous
seau, you had left your babe among the enfans trouves, it
might never be heard of more than his poor issue have been ;
for I can but observe that the French patriots, who have
made such a fuss with his ashes, have not taken the smaUest
' A little work which Miss More had just pubUshed anonymously. The
sale of it was enormous. Many thousands were sent by government to
Scotland and Ireland. Several persons printed large editions of it at
their own expense ; and in London only many hundred thousands were
circulated. — E.
* Miss More had informed Walpole, that she was occupied in writing
her " Remarks" on the atheistical speech of M. Dupont, made in the
National Convention ; and to which the Bishop of London had recom
mended her to put her name. — E.

1793. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 485
pains to attempt to discover his real progeny, which might
not have been impossible by collating dates and circum
stances. I am proud of having imitated you at a great dis
tance, and been persuaded, much against my wUl and prac
tice, to let my narae be put to the second subscription for the
poor French clergy, as it was thought it might tend to ani
mate that consumptive contribution.
I am impatient for your pamphlet not only as being yours,
but hoping it will invigorate horror against French atheism,
which I am grieved to say did not by any means make due
impression. I did very early apply to your confessor, to beg
he would enjoin his clergy to denounce that shocking ira-
piety ; I could alraost recommend to you to add a slight post
script on the massacre of that wretch Manuel. I do not
love such insects as we are dispensing judgments ; yet if
the punishraent of that just victim might startle such profane
criminals, it might be charity to suggest the hint to them. 24th.
I must modify the massacre of Manuel: he has been a
good deal stabbed, but will, they say, recover.* Perhaps it
is better that some of those assassins should live to acknow
ledge, that " Do not to others what you would not have done
to you" is not so silly a maxim as most of the precepts of
morality and justice have lately been deemed by ptiilosophers
and legislators — titles self-assumed by men who have abolished
all other titles; and who have disgraced and debased the
former denoraination, and under the latter have enjoined
triple perjuries, and at last cannot fix on any code which
should exact more forswearing. I own I am pleased that
that ruffian pedant Condorcet's new constitution was too
clumsy and unwieldy to go down the throats of those who
' Manuel was deeply implicated in the massacres of 1792 ; in conse
quence of which he was nominated a deputy to the National Convention.
He resigned his seat in January 1793, and retired to Montargis, where
he narrowly escaped assassination. He was afterwards seized as a sus
pected person. On being brought before the revolutionary tribunal, he
reminded his judges of his services, and desired it might be engraved on
his tombstone, that he had occasioned the events of the loth of August.
He was guillotined in November 1793. — E.

486 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1793.
have swallowed everything else. I did but just cast my
eyes on the beginning and end, and was so lucky as to ob
serve the hypocrite's contradiction: he sets out with decla
ration of equality, and winds up with security of property;
that is, we will plunder everybody, and then entail the spoils
on ourselves and our {wrong) heirs.*
Well ! that bloody chaos seems recoihng on themselves !
It looks as if civil war was bursting out in many provinces,
and will precipitate approaching famine. When, till now,
could one make such a reflection without horror to one's
self? But, alas ! have not the French brought it to the
question, whether Europe or France should be laid deso
late? Religion, morality, justice, have been stabbed, torn
up by the roots : every right has been trampled under foot.
Marriage has been profaned and undermined by law; and
no wonder, that amidst such excesses, the poor arts have
shared in the common ruin ! And who have been the per
petrators of, or advocates for, such universal devastation?
Philosophers, geometricians, astronomers — a Condorcet, a
Bailly, a Bishop of Autun, and a Doctor Priestley, and the
last the worst. The French had seen grievances, crying
grievances ! yet not under the good late King. But what
calamities or dangers threatened or had fallen on Priestley,
but want of papal power, like his predecessor Calvin? If
you say his house was burnt — but did he intend the fire
should blaze on that side of the street ? Your charity may
believe him innocent but your understanding does not. WeU !
I am glad to hear he is going to America ; I hope he will not
bring back scalping, even to that National Asserably of which
he was proud of being elected a raember ! I doubt if Car
touche would have thought it an honour. It was stuck up in
' In the following July, Condorcet was accused of being an accompUce
with Brissot, and, to save his life, concealed himself in the house of
Madame Verney, where he remained eight months. Having at length
learned that death was denounced against all who harboured a proscribed
individual, he fled in disguise from Paris. He wandered about for some
time, untU, driven by hunger, he entered a smaU public-house at Clamar,
where he was arrested as a suspicious person, and thrown into prison.
On the foUowing morning, March 2S, 1794, he was found dead on the
floor of his room, having apparently swallowed poison, which he always
carried about with him. — E.

1793. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 487
Lloyd's coffee-house lately, that the Duke of Orleans was
named « Chef de la Repubhque." I thought it should be
" Chef de la Lie pubhque."

TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY.
Strawberry HUl, June 13, 1793.
I THANK you much for all your inforraation — some parts
made me smile : yet, if what you heard of your brother proves
true, I rather think it deplorable ! How can love of money,
or the stUl vainer of all vanities, ambition of wearing a high
but most insignificant office, which even poor Lord Sahs
bury could execute, tempt a very old man, who loves his
ease and his own way, to stoop to wait hke a footman be
hind a chair, for hours, and in a court whence he had been
cast ignominiously ? I believe I have more pride than most
men alive : I could be flattered by honours acquired by merit
or by some singular action of 6clat ; but for titles, ribands,
offices of no business, which anybody can fill, and must be
¦ given to many, I should just as soon be proud of being the top
'squire in a country village.* It is only worse to have waded
to distinction through dirt hhe Lord Auckland.^
All this shifting of scenes may, as you say, be food to the
Fronde — Sed defendit numerus. It is perfectly ridiculous to
use any distinction of parties but the ins and the outs. Many
years ago I thought that the wisest appellations for con
tending factions ever assumed, were those in tbe Roman
empire, who called theraselves the greens and the blues : it
was so easy, when they changed sides, to slide frora one
colour to the other; and then a blue might plead that he had
never been true blue, but always a greenish blue ; and vice versa.
I allow that the steadiest party-man may be staggered by
novel and unforeseen circumstances. The outrageous pro-
* On the 29th of this month, the Earl of Hertford was created a Mar
quis. He died on the 14th of June, in the foUowing year, at the age of
seventy-five. — E.
^ On the 23rd of May, WiUiam Eden, Lord Auckland, had been
created an English peer. — E.

488 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1793.
ceedings of the French republicans have wounded the cause
of liberty, and wiU, I fear, have shaken it for centuries ; for
Condorcet and such fiends are worse than the imperial and
royal dividers of Poland. But I do not see why detestation
of anarchy and assassination must immediately make one fall
in love with garters and seals.
I am sitting by the fire, as I have done ever since I came
hither; and since I do not expect warm weather in June, I
am wishing for rain, or I shall not have a mouthful of hay,
nor a noseful of roses. Indeed, as 1 have seen several fields
of hay cut, I wonder it has not brought rain, as usual. My
creed is, that rain is good for hay, as I conclude every cli
mate and its productions are suited to each other. Provi
dence did not trouble itself about its being more expensive
to us to make our hay over and over ; it only took care it
should not want water enough. Adieu !

TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY.
Strawberry Hill, Wednesday night, late, July 17, 1793.
I AM just come from dining with the Bishop of London
at Fulham, where I found Lord and Lady Frederick Camp
bell, who told me of the alarm you had from hearing some
screams that you thought Lady Ailesbury's, and the dis
order brought upon you by flying to assist her. I do not
at all wonder at your panic, and rejoice it was not founded,
and that you recovered so soon. I am not going to preach
against your acting so naturally : but as you have some com
plaint on your breast, 1 must hope you will remember this
accident, and be upon your guard against both sudden and
rapid exertions, when you have not a tantamount call. I
conclude the excessive heat we have had for twelve complete
days contributed to overpower you.
It is much cooler to-day, yet still delicious ; for be it known
to you that 1 have enjoyed weather worthy of Africa,* and
' Bishop Porteus, writing to Miss More on the 12th of August, says,
" Your friend Lord Orford and myself are, I believe, the only persons in

1793. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 489
yet without swallowing mouthfuls of muskitos, nor expect
ing to hear hyaenas howl in the viUage, nor to find scorpions
in ray bed. Indeed, all the way I carae horae, I could but
gaze at the fehcity of my countrymen. The road was one
string of stage-coaches loaded within and without with noisy
joUy folks, and chaises and gigs that had been pleasuring
in clouds of dust; every door and every window of every
house was open, lights in every shop, every door with women
sitting in the street, every inn crowded with jaded horses, and
every ale-house full of drunken topers ; for you know the
English always announce their sense of heat or cold by drink
ing. Well ! it was impossible not to enjoy such a scene of
happiness and afiluence in every village, and amongst the
lowest of the people ; and who are told by villanous scrib
blers, that they are oppressed and miserable. New streets,
new towns, are rising every day and everywhere; the earth
is covered with gardens and crops of grain.
How bitter to turn from this Elysium to the Temple at
Paris ! The fiends there have now torn her son frora the
Queen ! * Can one believe that they are human beings, who
'midst all their confusions sit coolly meditating new tortures,
new anguish for that poor, helpless, miserable woman, after
four years of unexampled sufferings ? Oh ! if such crimes
are not made a dreadful lesson, this world might becorae a
theatre of cannibals !
I hope the checks in Bretagne are legends coined by mis
creants at Paris. What can one believe ? Well, I will go
to bed, and try to dream of peace and plenty ; and though
the kingdom who are worthy of the hot weather — the only true genuine
summer we have had for the last thirty years ; we both agreed that it
was perfectly celestial, and that it was quite scandalous to huff it away
as some people did. A few days before it arrived, all the world was
complaining of the dreadfully cold north-east wind ; and in three days
after the warmer weather came in everybody was quarrelling with the
heat, and sinking under the rays of the sun. Such is that consistent and
contented thing called human nature !"^E.
' Marie Antoinette was separated from her sister, her daughter, and
her son, by virtue of a decree which ordered the trial. Weber, in his
memoirs of her, states, that the separation from her son was so touching,
so heart-rending, that the very gaolers who witnessed the scene con
fessed, when they were giving an account of it to the authorities, that
they could not refrain from tears. — E.

490 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1793.
my lawn is burnt, and ray peas and beans, and roses and
strawberries parched, 1 will bear it with patience till the
harvest is got in. Saint Swithin can never hold his water
for forty days, though he can do the contrary. Good-night !

TO THE MISS BERRYS.*
Tuesday night, 8 o'clock, Sept. 17, 1793.
MY BELOVED SPOUSES,
Whom I love better than Solomon loved his one spouse —
or his one thousand. I lament that the summer is over ; not
because of its uniquity, but because you two made it so de
lightful to me, that six weeks of gout could not sour it Pray
take care of yourselves — not for your own sakes, but for
mine ; for, as I have just had my quota of gout, I may, pos
sibly, expect to see another summer; and, as you allow that I
do know my own, and when I wish for anything and have it,
am entirely satisfied, you may depend upon it that I shall be
as happy with a third summer, if I reach it, as I have been
with tbe two last.
Consider, that I have been threescore years and ten looking
for a society that I perfectly like ; and at last there dropped
out of the clouds into Lady Herries's room two young
gentlewomen, who I so little thought were sent thither on
purpose for me, that when I was told they were the charming
Miss Berrys, I would not even go to the side of the chamber
where they sat But, as Fortune never throws anything at
one's head without hitting one, I soon found that the charm
ing Berrys were precisely ce qu'il me fallait ; and that though
young enough to be my great-grand-daughters, lovely enough
to turn the heads of all our youths, and sensible enough, if
said youths have any brains, tO set all their heads to rights
again. Yes, sweet damsels, I have found that you can bear
to pass half your time with an ante-diluvian, without discover
ing any ennui or disgust ; though his greatest merit towards
' The Miss Berrys were at this time in Yorkshire.

1793. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 491
you is, that he is not one of those old fools who fancy they are
in love in their dotage. I have no such vagary ; though I am
not sorry that some folks think I am so absurd, since it frets
their selfishness. The Mackinsys, Onslows, Miss Pelham,
and Madame de Cambis have dined here ; and to-morrow I
shall have the Hamptonians and other Richmondists. I must
repeat it ; keep in mind that both of you are delicate, and not
strong. If you return in better health, I shall not repine at
your journey. Good night !

TO THE MISS BERRYS.
Strawberry HiU, Wednesday, 3 o'clock, Sept. 25, 1793.
Everything has gone au mieux. The rain vented itself
to the last drop yesterday ; and the sun, as bright as the Bel
videre, has not had a wrinkle on his brow since eight o'clock
this morning ; qay, be has been warm, and gilded the gallery
and tribune with sterling rays; the Thames quite full with
the last deluges, and the verdure never fresher since it was
born. The Duchess of York arrived punctually at twelve, in
a high phaeton, with Mrs. Ewert, and Bude on horseback. On
the step of the gate was a carpet and the court matted. I re
ceived the Princess at the side of her chaise, and, when en
tered, kissed her hand. She had meant to ride ; but had hurt
her foot, and was forced to sit raost of the time she was here.
We had many civil contests about my sitting too ; but I re
sisted, and held out till after she had seen the house and
drank chocolate in the round drawing-room ; and then she
commanded General Bude to sit that I might have no excuse:
yet I rose and fetched a salver, to give her the chocolate
myself, and then a glass of water. She seemed much pleased,
and commended rauch ; and I can do no less of her, and with
the strictest truth. She is not near so small as I had ex
pected ; her face is very agreeable and lively ; and she is so
good-humoured, and so gracious, and so natural, that I do not
beheve Lady Mary Coke* would have made a quarter so
* Lady Mary Coke, youngest daughter of John Duke of Argyle, mar-

492 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1793.
pleasing a Duchess of York ; nor have been in half so sweet
a temper, unless by my attentions de vieille cour. I was
sorry my Eagle * had been forced to hold its tongue. To-mor
row I shall go to Oatlands, with my thanks for the honour ;
and there, probably, will end my connexions with courts, be
gun with George the First great-great-great-grandfather to
the Duchess of York ! It sounds as if there could not have
been above three generations more before Adam.
Great news ! How eager Mr. Berry will look ! — but it is
not from armies or navies ; not from the murderers at Paris,
nor from the victims at Grodno. No ! it is only an event in
the little world of me. This morning, to receive my Princess,
I put on a silver waistcoat that I had made three years ago
for Lord Cholmondeley's marriage, and have not worn since.
Considering my late illness, and how many hundredweight of
chalk I have been venting these ten years, I concluded my
wedding garment would wrap round me like my night-gown ;
but, lo ! it was grown too tight for me. I shall be less sur
prised, if, in my next century, and under George the Tenth,
I grow as plump as Mrs. Ellis.
Methinks 1 pity you, when all the world is in arms, and
you expect to hear that Saul Duke of Brunswick has slain his
thousands, and David Prince of Cobourg his ten thousands, to
be forced to read the platitudes that I send you, because
I have nothing better to amuse me than writing to you.
Well ! you know how to get rid of my letters. Good night.
I reckon you are at Brumpton,^ and have had no accidents, I
hope, on the road.
ried to Lord Coke, eldest son of the Earl of Leicester. After his death
she fancied an attachment existed between herself and the Duke of York,
brother of George the Third ; which she likewise fancied had ended
in an undeclared marriage. — M. B.
' The antique marble eagle in the gallery at Strawberry HiU, round
the neck of which was to have been suspended some lines which Lord
Orford had written, extolling the Duke of York's military fame and
conquests in Holland, which the unfortunate issue of the campaign
obliged him to suppress. — E.
' The seat of Sir George Cayley, Bart, near Scarborough.

1793. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 49.3

TO THE MISS BERRYS.
Strawberry Hill, Oct. 6, 1793.
You are welcome to Scarborough both, and buon provi-
faccia! As you, Mrs. Mary, have been so mistaken about
your sister, I shall allow nobody for the future to take a panic
about either, but myself I am rejoiced the journey seems
hitherto to answer so well ; but, do you know, " it is very in
convenient to my Lord Castlecomer." I am forced to eat all
the game of your purparties, as well as ray own thirds.
Pray did not you think that the object of the grand alliance
was to reduce France ? No such thing ! at least their views
have changed ever since they heard of your setting out
Without refining too much, it is clear to me that all they
think on now, is to prevent my sending you news. Does any
army stir? Is not the Duke of Brunswick gone to sleep
again, like a paroli at faro, or like a paroli at Torbay, which
cocks one corner, but never wins a septleva ? That Lord Ad
miral reminds me of a trait of poor Don Carlos, which helped
on his death-warrant. He one day raade a little book, which
he intituled " The Travels of Philip the Second, King of
Spain." It contained his Majesty's removals from his capital
to his country palaces, and back again. Well ! if all those
monarchs are so pitiful as to set their wits against you, I will
balk them. I will do as other folks do ; I will make news my
self — not to-night ; for I have no invention by me at present :
besides, you are apt to sift news too shrewdly.
But, before I coin a report for you, I must contradict one.
If you should hear in Yorkshire, that I am appointed aide-de
camp to the Duke of York, you may safely contradict it. It
could only arise from the Duchess of York's visit to me ; just
as, the year before you came to Cliveden, your predecessor,
Sir Robert Goodere, literally told me, that he heard that
Princess Elizabeth had been sent to rae for two days for the
air. On questioning him roundly, I discovered that he had
heard no such thing ; but had conjectured so, on seeing two
of the Duchess of Gloucester's servants pass before his door

494 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1793.
from or to the Pavihons ; which ought not to have puzzled the
goose's imagination a moment — but thus reports originate !
Monday night, 7th.
I come from Mrs. Jeffries at Richmond, but return not
a battle richer than I went; though I saw the secretary-
ab-war* there, and even the panic-raaster-general, who had
not a single alarm to bestow on a poor soul who is hunger
ing and thirsting for news, good or bad, to send to you.
Sir George Yonge, indeed, did tell us, that thirty Jacobins,
who had disguised themselves as priests, to bring scandal
on their countrymen of that profession, but who, the Bishop
of Leon declares, are none of their clergy, have been de
tected and seized, and are to be sent away to-morrow. Home
news from Richmond. Your friend Mr. Dundas was robbed
this morning at eleven o'clock at Cranford-bridge. He hap-
bened to tell them he is a surgeon ; on which they insisted on
his giving them his case of instruments. I suspect they are
French surgeons, and will poison the instruments for the first
wound they dress. You see bow I labour in your service,
though my crops are small. An old Duchess of Rutland,
mother of the late Duchess of Montrose, whenever a visiter
told her some news or scandal, cried to her daughter, " Lucy,
do step into next room, and make a memorandum of what
Lady Greenwich, or Lady M.M. or N.N. has been teUing
us." " Lord ! Madam, to be sure it cannot be true." " No
matter, child; it will do for news into the country." It is
for want of such prudent provision pour le convent, that so
many people are forced to invent off-hand. You cannot say
I am so thoughtless : you receive every morsel piping-hot
as it comes from the bakers. One word about our glorious
weather, and I have done. It even improves every day. I
kept the window wide open till dinner-time to-day, and
could do nothing but gaze at the brilliant beauty of the
verdure. It is so equal to ordinary Julys, that one is sur
prised to see the sun set before six o'clock. Good-night !
' Sir George Yonge.

1793. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 495

TO MISS HANNAH MORE.*
strawberry HiU, Oct. 1793.
Though it would make me happy, my dear Madam, if
you were more corresponding, yet I must not reproach your
silence, nor wish it were less; for all your moments are so
dedicated to goodness, and to unwearied acts of benevolence,
that you raust steal from charity, or purloin from the repose
you want any that you bestow on me. Do not I know, too,
alas ! how indifferent your health is ? You sacrifice that to
your duties : but can a friend, who esteems you so highly as
I do, he so selfish as to desire to cost you half an hour's head
ache ? No, never send me a line that you can employ better ;
that would trespass on your ease.
Of the trash written against you I had never even heard.^
Nor do I believe that they gave you any other disquiet than
what arose from seeing that the worthiest and most humane
intentions are poison to some human beings. Oh ! have not
the last five years brought to light such infernal malevolence,
such monstrous crimes, as mankind had grown civihzed
enough to disbelieve when they read anything similar in for
mer ages; if, indeed, anything similar has been recorded.
But I must not enter into what I dare not fathom. Catherine
Slay-Czar triumphs over the good honest Poles ; and Louis
Seize perishes on a scaffold, the best of men : while whole
assemblies of fiends, calling theraselves men, are from day to
day meditating torment and torture for his heroic widow ; on
whom, with all their power and malice, and with every page,
footman, and chambermaid of hers in their reach, and with the
rack in their hands, they have not been able to fix a speck.
Nay, do they not talk of the inutility of evidence? What
other virtue ever sustained such an ordeal? But who can
wonder, when the Almighty hiraself is called by one of those
wretches, the soi-disant God.
' Now first collected.
' Three abusive answers to Miss More's pamphlet against M. Dupont
had just been published. — E.

496 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1793.
You say their outrageous folly tempts you to smile ' — yes,
yes: at times I should have laughed too, if I could have
dragged my muscles at once from the zenith of horror to the
nadir of contempt: but their abominations leave one leisure
enough to leap from indignation to mirth. I abhor war and
bloodshed as much as you do; but unless the earth is purged
of such monsters, peace and morality will never return. This
is not a war of nation and nation ; it is the cause of every
thing dear and sacred to civilized man, against the unbounded
licentiousness of assassins, who massacre even the generals
who fight for them — not that I pity the latter ; but to whom
can a country be just that rewards its tools with the axe?
What animal is so horrible as one that devours its own young
ones? That execrable nation overwhelms all moralizing. At any
other minute the unexpected death of Lady Falmouth would
be striking : yet I am sorry for Mrs. Boscawen. I have been
ill for six weeks with the gout, and am just recovered : yet I
remember it less than the atrocities of France ; and I remember,
if possible, with greater indignation, their traitors here at
home; amongst whom are your antagonists. Do not apologize
for talking of them and yourself. Punish them not by answer
ing, but by supporting the good cause, and by stigmatizing
the most impudent impiety that ever was avowed.
Mrs. Garrick dined here to-day, with some of tbe quahty
of Hampton and Richmond. She appears quite well, and
was very cheerful : I wish you were as well recovered. Do
you remember how ill I found you both last year in the
Adelphi ? Adieu ! thou excellent champion, as well as prac-
tiser, of all goodness. Let the vile abuse vented against you
be balm to your mind : your writings must have done great
service, when they have so much provoked the enemy. All
who have rehgion or principle must revere your name. Who
would not be hated by Duponts and Dantons ? — and if ab-
' Miss More had said, — " These mad monkeys of the Convention do
contrive to enliven my unappeasable indignation against them with occa
sional provocatives to mirth. How do you like the egregious inventions
of the anniversary foUies of the lOth of August } " — E.

1793. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 497
horrence of atheism implies Popery, reckon it a compliment
to be called Papist The French have gone such extravagant
lengths, that to preach or practise massacres is, with them,
the sole test of merit — of patriotism. Just in one point only
they have merit; they sacrifice the blackest criminals with as
much alacrity as the most innocent or the most virtuous : but
I beg your pardon ; I know not how to stop when I talk of
these ruffians. Yours, most cordially and raost sincerely.

TO THE MISS BERRYS.
Strawberry HiU, Tuesday evening, eight o'clock, Oct. 15, 1793.
Though I do not know when it will have its whole
lading, I must begin my letter this very moraent to tell
you what I have just heard. I called on the Princesse
d'Hennin, who has been in tovm a week. I found her quite
alone, and I thought she did not answer quite clearly about
her two knights : the Prince de Poix has taken a lodging in
town, and she talks of letting her house here, if she can.
In short, I thought she had a little of an Ariadne-air — but
this was not what I was in such a hurry to tell you. She
showed me several pieces of letters, I think from the Duchesse
dp Bouillon : one says, the poor Duchesse de Biron is again
arrested and at the Jacobins,* and with her " une jeune
etourdie, qui ne fait que chanter toute la joum^e;" and
who, think you, may that be ? — only our pretty little wicked
Duchesse de Fleury ! by her singing and not sobbing, I sup
pose she was weary of her Tircis, and is glad to be rid of
him. This new blow, I fear, will overset Madame de Biron
again. The rage at Paris seems to increase daily or hourly ;
they either despair, or are now avowed banditti. I tremble
so much for the great and most suffering victim of aU, the
Queen, that one cannot feel so much for many, as several
perhaps deserve : but her tortures have been of far longer
' The Duchesse perished under the guiUotine in the foUowing year.
See ant^, p. 441. — E.
VOL. VI. 2 K

498 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1793.
duration than any martyrs, and more various ; and her courage
and patience equal to her woes ! *
My poor old friend, the Duchesse de la Vahere, past
ninety and stone-deaf, has a guard set upon her, but in her
own house ; her daughter, the Duchesse de ChatiUon, mother
of the Duchesse de la TreraouiUe, is arrested ; and thus the
last, with her attachraent to the Queen, must be miserable in
deed ! — But one would think I feel for nothing but Duchesses :
the crisis has crowded them together into my letter, and into
a prison; — and to be prisoner among cannibals is pitiable
indeed ! Thursday morning, 17th, past ten.
I this moment receive the very comfortable twin-letter. I
am so conjugal, and so much in earnest upon the article
of recovery, that I cannot think of a pretty thing to say to
very pretty Mrs. Stanhope; nor do I know what would be a
pretty thing in these days. I raight come out with some old-
fashioned compliraent, that would have been very genteel
In good Queen Bess's golden day, when I was a dame of honour.
Let Mrs. Stanhope* imagine that I have said all she deserves:
I certainly think it, and will ratify it, when I have learnt the
' On the 16th of October, a few hours after Walpole had penned the
above letter, the unfortunate Marie Antoinette was conducted, amidst a
great concourse of the populace, to the fatal spot, where, ten months
before, Louis the Sixteenth had perished. " Sorrow had blanched her
once beautiful hair ; but her features and air commanded the admiration
of all who beheld her. Her cheeks, pale and emaciated, were occasion
ally tinged with a, vivid colour at the mention of those she had lost.
When led out to execution, she was dressed in white ; she had cut off
her hair with her own hands. Placed in a tumbrel, with her arms tied
behind her, she was taken to the Place de la Revolution. She listened
with calmness to the exhortations of the ecclesiastic who accompanied
her, and cast an indifferent look at the people who had so often ap
plauded her beauty and her grace, and who now as warmly applauded
her execution. On reaching the foot of the scaffold, she perceived the
TuUeries, and appeared to be moved ; but she hastened to ascend the
fatal ladder, and gave herself up with courage to the executioner. The
infamous wretch exhibited her head to the people, as he was accustomed
to do when he had sacrificed an illustrious victim. The Jacobins were
overjoyed. ' Let these tidings be carried to Austria,' said they ; 'the
Romans sold the ground occupied by Hannibal ; we strike off the heads
that are dearest to the sovereigns who have invaded our territoiy.' "
See Thiers, vol. iii. p. 196, and LacreteUe, tom. xi. p. 261. — E.
' The wife of Colonel Stanhope, brother of the Earl of Harrington.

1793. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 499
language of tbe nineteenth century; but I really am so
ancient, that as Pythagoras imagined he had been Panthoides
Euphorbus in the Trojan war, I am not sure that I did not
ride upon a pillion behind a gentleman-usher, when her Ma
jesty Ehzabeth went in procession to St Paul's on the defeat
of the Arraada ! Adieu ! the postraan puts an end to my idle
speculations — but, Scarborough for ever ! with three huzzas !

TO THE MISS BERRYS.
Strawberry HiU, Nov. 7, 1793.
I OFTEN lay the egg of my journals two or three days be
fore they are hatched. This may make some of my articles
a little stale before you get them ; but then you know tbey
are the more authentic, if the Echo has not told me to unsay
them — and, if a Prince of Wales drops a thumping victory
at my door as he goes by, you have it hot out of the oven —
though, as happened lately, not half baked.*
The three last newspapers are much more favourable than
you seemed to expect Nieuport has been saved ; Ostend is
safe. The Royalists in La Vendee are not demolished, as the
Convention of Liars asserted. Strasbourg seems likely to
fall. At Toulon even the Neapolitans, on whora you cer
tainly did not reckon, have behaved like heroes. As Adrairal
Gravina is so hearty, though his master makes no progress in
France, I suspect that the sovereign of so many home king
doms is a little afraid of trusting his army beyond the borders,
lest the Catalans should have something of the old — or new
leaven. In the raean tirae, it is still more provoking to hear
of Catherine Slay-Czar sitting on her throne and playing with
royal marriages, without sending a single ship or regiment to
support the cause of Europe, and to punish the Men of the
Mountain, who really are the assassins that tbe Crusaders
supposed or believed existed in Asia ! Oh ! Marie Antoi
nette, what a contrast between you and Petruchia !
' This aUudes to some false report of the time. 2 K 2

500 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1793.
Domestic news are scanty, but dismal, and you have seen
them anticipated ; as the loss of the young Lord Montague*
and Mr. Burdett^ drowned in a cataract in Switzerland, by
their own obstinate folly.^ Mr. Tickell's death was a deter
mined measure, and more shocking than the usual mode by a
pistol. He threw himself from one of the uppermost windows
of the palace at Hampton Court into the garden — an im
mense height ! Sorae attribute his despair to debts ; some to
a breach with his political friends. I was not acquainted
with, but am sorry for him, as I hked his writings.*
Our weather remains unparagoned; Mrs. Hastings is not
more brUhant: the elms are evergreens. I a httle regret
your not seeing how beautiful Cliveden can be on the 7th of
November; ay, and how warm. Then the pheasants, par
tridges, and hares from Houghton, that you lose : they would
have exceeded Camacho's wedding, and Sancho Panza would
have talked chapters about them. I am forced to send thera
about the neighbourhood, as if I were making interest to be
chosen for the united royal burghs of Richmond and Hamp
ton Court. — But all this is not worth sending : I must wait for
a better bouche. I want Wurmser to be Caesar, and send me
more Coraraentaries de Bello Gallico. What do you say to
those wretches who have created Death an endless Sleep,^ that
nobody may boggle at any crime for fear of hell .-" Methinks
they have no reason to dread the terrors of conscience in any
Frenchman !

' Lord Viscount Montague was the last male heir of a most noble and
ancient family, in a lineal descent from the Lady Lucy Nevill. — E.
' Charles Sedley Burdett, second son of Francis Burdett, Esq. and
brother of Francis, who, on the death of his grandfather. Sir Robert Bur
dett, in 1797, succeeded to the baronetcy. — E.
' They insisted on shooting down the great faU of the Rhine at Schaff
hausen in a boat, against the remonstrances of the neighbouring in
habitants, and their refusal of every bribe, either to assist or accompany
them. They and their boat were shattered to pieces, and their remains
were found some days after, at a considerable distance from the scene of
their mad exploit.
'' Richard Tickell, Esq. author of " Anticipation," the " Wreath of
Fashion," and other poems. He was a commissioner of the stamp-oflSce,
and brother-in-law to Richard Brinsley Sheridan. — E.
° " C'est ici I'asile du sommeil eternel, " was the repubUcan inscription
over all the pubUc cemeteries. Pache, Hubert, and Chaumette, the leaders

1793. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 501
November lOth.
Hiatus non deflendus; for I have neither beard a word,
nor had a word to say these three days. Victories do not
come every tide, like mackerel, or prizes in the Irish lottery.
Yesterday's paper discounted a httle of Neapolitan valour;
but as even the Dutch sometimes fight upon recollection, and
as there was no account yet of O'Hara's arrival at Toulon, I
hope he will laugh or example lor' Signori into spirit.
You will wonder at ray resuming my letter, when I profess
having nothing to add to it; but yours of the 7th is just
arrived, and I could not make this coraraenced sheet lie quiet
in ray writing-box: it would begin gossiping with your let
ter, though I vowed it shall not set out till to-morrow. " Why,
you empty thing," said I, " how do you know but there may
have been a Gazette last night, crammed with vast news,
which, as no paper comes out on Sundays, we shall not learn
here; and would you be such a goose as to creep through
Brentford and Hammersmith and Kensington, where the
beUs may be drinking some general's health, and wUl scoff
you for asking whose ? Indeed you shall not stir before to
morrow. Lysons is returned from Gloucestershire, and is to
dine here to-day ; and he wiU at least bring us a brick, like
Harlequin, as a pattern of any town that we may have taken.
Moreover, no post sets out from London on Sunday nights,
and you would only sit guzzling — I don't mean you, Miss
Berry, but you, my letter — with the clerks of the post-office.
Patience till to-morrow."
We have had some rain, even this last night; but the
weather is fine all day, and quite warm. I beheve it has
made an assignation with the Glastonbury Thorn, and that
of the municipality, publicly expressed their determination to dethrone the
King of Heaven, as weU as the kings of the earth. Gobel, the constitu
tional Bishop of Paris, disowned at the bar of the Convention the exist
ence of a God. On the lOth of November, a female, whom they termed
the Goddess of Reason, was admitted within the bar, and placed on the
right hand of the president. After receiving the fraternal hug, she was
mounted on a magnificent car, and conducted to the church of Notre
Dame, to take the place of the Holy of Holies ; and thenceforth that
ancient and imposing cathedral was caUed " the Temple of Reason."
See Thiers, vol. Ui. p. 225, and LacreteUe, tom. xi. p. 306.— E.

502 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1793.
they are to dance together on old Christmas-day. What could
I do with myself in London? AU my playthings are here,
and I have no playfellows left there! Lady Herries's and
poor Mrs. Hunter's* are shut upi. Even the "one game raore
at cribbage"'' after supper is on table, which is not ray su
prerae felicity, though accompanied by tbe Tabor and Pipe, ' is
in the country — or, to say all in a word. North Audley-street
is in Yorkshire ! Reading composes httle of my pastime, either
in town or country. A catalogue of books and prints, or a
dull history of a county, amuse me sufficiently ; for now I can
not open a French book, as it would keep alive ideas that I
want to banish from my thoughts. When I am tired at home,
I go and sit an hour or two with the ladies of Murray,* or the
Doyleys, and find them conversable and comfortable ; and my
pessime aller is Richmond. Monday morning, llth.
Lysons' has been drawing churches in Gloucestershire, and
digging out a Roman villa and mosaic pavement near Ciren
cester, which he means to publish : but he knew nothing out
landish; so if the newspaper does not bring me something
fresh for you presently, this limping letter must set out with
its empty wallet. Mrs. Piozzi is going to publish a book on
English Synonyraes. Methinks she had better have studied
them, before she stuffed her Travels with so many vulgar
isms !^
' Widow of Dr. John Hunter.
^ A manner of designating the Countess of Ailesbury.
' Two old ladies of his society, whom he thus caUed.
¦• Sisters to the great Earl of Mansfield.
^ Samuel Lysons, Esq. brother of the Rev. Daniel Lysons, of whom a
notice has been given at p. 345, and author of several works relating to
the Roman Antiquities of Great Britain. He also published, in conjunc
tion with his brother, the earlier volumes of the " Magna Britannica."
In 1804, he succeeded Mr. Astle as keeper of the records in the "Tower
of London ; which office he held tiU his death in 1819. Mr. Mathias, in
November 1797, described him as " one of the most judicious, best-
informed, and most learned amateur antiquaries in the kingdom in his
department ; " and his work on the remains of the Roman viUa and pave
ments near Gloucester, as " such a specimen of ingenuity, unwearied
zeal, and critical accuracy in delineating and Ulustrating the fragments
of antiquity, as rarely had been equaUed, certainly never surpassed."
See Pursuits of Literature. — E.
" The foUowing is Mr. Gifford's opinion of the qualifications of the

1793. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 503

TO MISS BERRY.
Berkeley Square, Wednesday, Dec. 4, 1793.
I BEGIN my last letter to Bransby, that I may have it
ready to send away the moraent I shall have anything worth
telling ; which I certainly have not yet. What is becorae of
Lord Howe and Co. you raay guess if you please, as every
body is doing — I 'm weary of conjectures —
but shall not end them like Cato, because I take the fate of
a whole fieet a little more likely to come to a solution than
doubts in metaphysics; and if Lord Howe should at last
bring home two or three French men-of-war, one would not
be out of the way to receive them. In the mean time, let us
chat as if the destiny of half Europe were not at this moment
in agitation.
I went on Monday evening with Mrs. Damer to the little
Haymarket, to see " The Children in the Wood," having heard
so much of my favourite, young Bannister, in that new piece ;
which, by the way, is well arranged, and near being fine.* He
more than answered ray expectation, and all I had heard of
him. It was one of the most admirable performances I ever
saw : his transports of despair and joy are incomparable, and
his various countenances would be adequate to the pencil of
Salvator Rosa. He made me shed as many tears as I sup-
lady for such a work : — " Though 'no one better knows his own house'
than I the vanity of this woman ; yet the idea of her undertaking it had
never entered my head ; and I was thunderstruck when I first saw it
announced. To execute it with any tolerable degree of success, required
a rare combination of talents, among the least of which may be num
bered neatness of style, acuteness of perception, and a more than com
mon accuracy of discrimination ; and Mrs. Piozzi brought to the task, a
jargon long since become proverbial for its vulgarity, an utter incapacity
of defining a single term in the language, and just as much Latin from
a child's syntax as sufficed to expose the ignorance she so anxiously
labours to conceal." See Baviad and Maeviad. — E.
' See the Memoirs of this admirable comedian, by Mr. Adolphus,
recently published in two volumes octavo. The drama here spoken of
was the production of Mr. Morton, and formed from the ancient ballad
of the cruel uncle who murdered his brother's children in a wood, that
he might inherit the family estate. — E.

504 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1793.
pose the original old ballad did when I was six years old.
Bannister's merit was the more striking, as, before " The Chil
dren in the Wood," he had been playing the saUor in « No
Song no Supper," with equal nature. I wish I could hope to
be as much pleased to-morrow night, when I am to go to Jer-
ninghara's play ; but there is no Bannister at Covent-garden !
On Sunday night I found the Corate de Coigni * at Lady
Lucan's. He was to set out the next morning with Lord
Moira's expedition as a common soldier. This sounded decent
and well; but you may guess that he had squeezed a httle
Frenchism into his intention, and had asked for a vessel and
sorae soldiers to attend him. I don't know whether he has
condescended to go without them. I asked him about his
daughter: be said, he did not believe she was in prison.
Others say, it is the Duchesse de Fleury, her mother-in-law.
I have been surprised at not seeing or hearing anything of
poor Fleury;^ but I am told he has been forced to abscond,
having narrowly escaped being arrested by a coachmaker, to
whom he owed five hundred pounds for carriages : which, to
be sure, he must have had, or bespoken, at Paris before the
revolution. Thursday noon.
Yesterday carae a letter to the Admiralty, notifying that
Lord Howe has taken five of the Brest squadron : but this in
telligence is derived through so many somebodys, that handed
it to somebodys, that I am not much inclined, except by wish
ing it true, to believe it. However, the wind is got much
more to the west, and now we shall probably not remain
much longer in total darkness. Three o'clock.
Another account is come to Mrs. Nugent's ^ frora her hus
band, with the same story of the five captive French men-of-
war ; and so that reading is admitted : but for my part I will
admit nothing but under Lord Howe's own hand. It is tire-
' Younger brother of the Due de Coigni, the grand-ecuyer bf Marie
Antoinette, and great-uncle of the present Due de Coigni.
' The Due de Fleury, the Count de Coigni's son-in-law.
' The wife of Admiral Nugent.

1793. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 505
some to be hke the scene in Amphitryon, and cry one minute
" Obvious, obvious ! " and the next " Dubious, dubious ! "
Such fluctuability is fit only for a stock-jobber. Adieu ! I
must dress and dine, or I shall not be ready to wait on your
grandfather Seton.*

TO THE MISS BERRYS.
Friday, December 13, 1793.
You will not wonder at my dulness about the time of
your setting out, and of the gttes you are to make on the road:
you are used to my fits of incomprehension ; and, as is natu
ral at my age, I believe they increase. What augmented
them was my eagerness to be sure of every opportunity of
sending you tbe earliest intelligence of every event that may
happen at this critical period. That impatience has some
times raade rae too precipitate in my information. I believed
Lord Howe's success too rapidly: you have seen by all the
newspapers, that both the ministers and the public were
equally credulous, from tbe collateral channels that imported
such. assertions ! Well ! if you have been disappointed of cap
turing five or six French men-of-war, you must at present
stay your appetite by some handsome slices of St. Domingo,
and by plentiful goblets of French blood shed by the Duke of
Brunswick ; which we firmly believe, though the official in
telligence was not arrived last night His Highness, who has
been so serene for above a year, seems to have waked to some
purpose; and, which is not less propitious, his victory indi
cates that his principal, the King of Prussia, has added no
more French jewels to his regalia. I shall like to hear the
National Convention accuse him of being bribed by a con
trary Pitfs diamond."
Here is another comfortable symptom : it looks as if Robes
pierre would give up Barrere. How fortunate that Beel-
zebubs and Molochs peach one another, hke human highway-
' He means Mr. Jerningham's play, the Siege of Berwick.
' He means bribed by the then prime minister.

506 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1793.
men ! I will tell you a reflection I have made, and which
shows how the worst monsters counteract their own councils.
Many formerly, who meant to undermine rehgion, began by
sapping the belief of a devil. Now, by denying God, they
have restored Satan to his throne, or will ; though the present
system is a repubhc of fiends. The Pandemonium below re
calls its agents, as if they were only tribunes of the people
elected by temporary factions. Barnave, called the Butcher
in the first Convention, is gone, like Orleans and Brissot If
we do not presume to interpret judgments, I wonder the mon
sters themselves do not: enough has happened already to
warn them of their own fate !
The Conways are in town for two or three days : they came
for Mr. Jerningham's play. Harris had at last allowed him
the fourth night; and he had a good night. I have a card
from Lady Amherst for Monday; and shall certainly go, as
my lord behaved so nobly about your cousin.* I have another
from the Margravine of Anspach, to sup at Hararaersraith;
whither I shall certainly not go, but plead the whole list of
chronical disterapers. Do you think, if the whole circle of
Princes of Westphalia were to ask rae for next Thursday even
ing,^ that I would accept the invitation ?
Saturday, Dec. 14, 1793.
I am glad this is to be the last of ray gazettes. I am tired
of notifying and recalling the articles of news : not that I am
going to dis-laurel tbe Duke of Brunswick ; but not a sprig
is yet come in confirmation. Mihtary critics even conjecture,
by the journals frora Manheim and Frankfort that the Ger
man victories have not been much more than repulses of the
French, and have been bought dearly. I have inclined to be
heve the best frora Wurmser; but I confess my best hopes
are from the factions of Paris. If the gangrene does not gain
the core, how calculate the duration ? It has already baffled
all computation, all conjecture. One wonders now that
1 Lord Amherst, then commander-in-chief, had appointed a cousin of
Miss Berry's to an ensigncy, on his recommendation.
' When the persons addressed were to arrive in London.

1793. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 507
France, in its totahty, was not more fatal to Europe than
even it was. Is not it astonishing, that after five years of
such havoc, such emigrations, expulsions, massacres, annihila
tion of coraraerce, evanition of specie, and real or impending
famine, they can still furnish and support armies against us
and the Austrians in Flanders, against the Duke of Bruns
wick and Wurraser, against us at Toulon, against the King
of Sardinia, against Spain, against the Royalists in La Vendee,
and along the coast against our expedition under Lord Moira ;
and though we have got fifteen of their men-of-war at Toulon,
they have sixteen, or more, at Brest and are still impertinent
with a fry of privateers ? Consider, too, that all this spirit is
kept up by the most extravagant lies, delusions, rhodomontade ;
by the extirpation of the usual root of enthusiasm, religion;
and by the terror of murder, that ought to revolt all mankind.
If such a system of destruction does not destroy itself, there is
an end of that ignis fatuus, human reason; and French policy
must govern, or exterminate mankind.
I this moment received your Thursday's note, with that for
your housekeeper, who is in town, and with those sweet
words, " You need not leave a card ; we shall be at home."
I do not believe I shall send you an excuse. Marshal Con
way has stepped in to tell me, he has just met with his
nephew. Lord Yarmouth,* who has received a letter from a
foreign minister at Manheim, who asserts all the Duke of
Brunswick's victories, and the destruction or dispersion of the
French army in that quarter. The Earl maintains, that the
King of Prussia's pohtics are totally changed to the right
and that eighteen thousand more of his troops have joined
the alhes. I should like to know, and to have the Convention
know, that the murder of the Queen of France has operated
this revulsion.
I hope I send you no more falsehoods — at least, you must
allow, that it is not on bad authority. If Lord Howe bas
disappointed you, will you accept the prowess of the virago
his sister, Mrs. Howe.'^ As soon as it was known that her
' The present Marquis of Hertford.
* A person of distinguished abUities. She possessed an extraordinary

508 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1794.
brother had failed, a Jacobin mob broke her windows, mis
taking them for his. She hfted up the sash, and harangued
them ; told them, that was not the house of her brother, who
lives in the other part of Grafton-street, and that she herself
is a widow, and that thai house is hers. She stilled the
waves, and they dispersed quietly.
There ! There end ray volumes, to my great satisfaction !
If we are to have any bonfires or illuminations, you will be
here to light them yourselves. Adieu to Yorkshire !

TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY.
Berkeley Square, Jan. 10, 1794.
I CERTAINLY Sympathize with you on the reversed and
gloomy prospect of affairs, too extensive to detail in a letter ;
nor indeed do 1 know anything more than I collect from
newspapers and public reports ; and those are so overcharged
with falsehoods on all sides, that, if one waits for truth to
emerge, one finds new subjects to draw one's attention be
fore firm belief can settle its trust on any. That the mass
and result are bad, is certain ; and though I have great ala
crity in searching for comforts and grounds of new hopes, I
am puzzled as much in seeking resources, as in giving pre
sent credit. Reasoning is out of the question: all calcula
tion is baffled : nothing happens that sense or experience
said was probable. I wait to see what will happen, without
a guess at what is to be expected. A storm, when the Par
liament meets, will no doubt be attempted. How the mi
nisters are prepared to combat it I don't know, but I hope
force of mind, clearness of understanding, and remarkable powers of
thought and combination. She retained them unimpaired to the great age
of eighty-five, by exercising them daily, both in the practice of mathe
matics and in reading the two dead languages ; of which, late in life, she
had made herself mistress. To those acquirements must be added warm
and lively feelings, joined to a perfect knowledge of the world, and of the
society of which she had always been a distinguished member. Mr.
Walpole, from misinformation of her conduct towards a friend of his in
earlier life, had never done justice to her character — a mistake, in which
she did not participate, relative to him. — M. B.

1794. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 509
sufficiently, if it spreads no farther: at lea&t I think they
have no cause to fear the new leader who is to make the
attack. I have neither seen Mr. Wilson's book* nor his answerers.
So far frora reading political pamphlets, I hunt for any books,
except modern novels, that will not bring France to my
mind, or that at least will put it out for a time. But every
fresh person one sees, revives the conversation : and except
ing a long succession of fogs, nobody talks of anything else ;
nor of private news do I know a tittle. Adieu !

TO MISS BERRY.
Thursday evening, April 16, 1794.
I AM delighted that you have such good weather for your
villeggiatura. The sun has not appeared here to-day; yet it
has been so warm, that he may not be gone out of town, and
only keeps in because it is unfashionable to be seen in Lon
don at Easter. All my evening customers are gone, except
Mrs. Damer, and she is at home to-night with the Greatheds
and Mrs. Siddons, and a few more; and she had a mind I
should go to her. I had a mind too ; but think rayself still
too weak : after confinement for fourteen weeks, it seems for
midable to sally forth. I have heard no novelty since you
went, but of raore progress in Martinico ; on which it is said
there is to be a Gazette, and which, I suppose, gave a sraall
fillip to the stocks this morning : though my Jew, whom I
saw again this morning, ascribed the rise to expectation in
the City of news of a counter-revolution at Paris; — but a
revolution to be, generally proves an addled egg.
The Gazette arrives, and little of Martinico remained un-
conquered. The account from Sir Charles Gray is one con
tinued panegyric on the conduct of our officers, soldiers, and
' It was entitled " A Letter, Commercial and Political, addressed to
the Right Hon. WilUam Pitt; by Jasper Wilson, jun. Esq." The real
author was Dr. Currie, the friend of Mr. Wilberforce ; who commends it,
" as exhibiting originality of thought and force of expression, and solv
ing finely the phenomena of revolutions." See Life, vol. ii. p. 13. — E.

510 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1794.
sailors ; who do not want to be driven on a fa Dumourier, by
cannon behind them and on both sides. A good quantity of
artUlery and stores is taken too, and only two officers and
about seventy men killed. There is a codicil to the Gazette,
with another post taken — the map, I suppose, knows where ;
I do not — but you, who are a geographess, will, or easily find
it out At ray levee before dinner, I had Mrs. BuUer, Lady Lucan,
Sir Charles Blagden, Mr. Coxe, and Mr. Gough. This was
a good day; I have not always so welcome a circle. I have
run through both volumes of Mrs. Piozzi. Here and there
she does not want parts, has some good translations, and
stories that are new; particularly an admirable bon-mot of
Lord Chesterfield, which I never heard before, but dashed
with her cruel vulgarisms: see vol. ii. p. 291. The story, I
dare to say, never happened, but was invented by the Earl
himself, to introduce his reply. The sun never was the em
blem of Louis Quinze, but of Louis Quatorze ; in whose time
his lordship was not ambassador, nor the Czarina Erapress :
nor, foohsh as some ambassadors are, could two of them pro
pose devices for toasts ; as if, like children, they were playing
at pictures and mottoes : and what the Signora styles a public
toast, the Earl, I conclude, called a great dinner then. I have
picked out a motto for her work in her own words, and
written it on the title-page : " Simplicity cannot please with
out eloquence ! " Now I think on't, let rae ask if you have
been as much diverted as you was at first ? and have not two
such volumes soraetimes set you o'yawning ? It is comic, that
in a treatise on synonymous words, she does not know which
are and which are not so. In the chapter on worth, she
says, " The worth even of money fluctuates in our state ;" in
stead of saying, in this country. Her very title is wrong ; as
she does not even mention synonymous Scottish words: it
ought to be called, not British, but English Synonymy.
Mr. Courtenay has published some epistles in rhyme, in
which he has honoured me with a dozen lines, and which are
really some of the best in the whole set — in ridicule of my

1794. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE, 511
writings. One couplet, I suppose, alludes to my Strawberry
Verses on you and your sister. Les voici —
" Who to love tunes his note, with the fire of old age.
And chirps the trim lay in a trim Gothic cage ! "
If I were not as careless as I am about literary fame, still this
censure would be harmless indeed; for, except the exploded
story of Chatterton, of which I washed myself as white as
snow, Mr. Courtenay falls on my choice of subjects — as of
Richard the Third and tbe Mysterious Mother — and not on
the execution ; though I fear there is enough to blame in the
texture of thera. But this new piece of criticism, or whatever
it is, made me laugh, as I am offered up on the tomb of ray
poor mad nephew ; who is celebrated for one of bis last frantic
acts, a publication in some monthly magazine, with an ab
surd hypothesis on " the moon bursting from the earth, and
the earth frora the sun, soraehow or other:" but how, in
deed, especially frora Mr. Courtenay's paraphrase, I have too
much sense to comprehend. However, I am much obliged to
him for having taken such pains to distinguish me from my
lunatic precursor, that even the European Magazine, when I
shall die, will not be able to confound us. Richard tbe Third
would be sorry to have it thought hereafter, that I had ever
been under the care of Dr. Munro. Well ! good night !

TO MISS HANNAH MORE.
April 27, 1794.
This is no plot to draw you into comraitting even a good
deed on a Sunday, which I suppose the literality of your
conscience would haggle about, as if the day of the week
constitutes the sin, and not the nature of the crime. But
you raay defer your answer till to-night is becorae to-morrow
by the clock having struck one; and then you may do an
innocent thing without any guilt, which a quarter of an hour
sooner you would think abominable. Nay, as an Irishman
would say, you need not even read this note till the canonical
hour is past.

512 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1794.
In short my dear Madam, I gave your obliging message
to Lady Waldegrave, who will be happy to see you on Tues
day, at one o'clock. But as her staircase is very bad, as
she is in a lodging, I have proposed that this meeting, for
which I have been pimping between two female saints, may
be held here in my house, as I had the utmost difficulty
last night in climbing her scala santa, and I cannot under
take it again. But if you are so good as to send me a fa
vourable answer to-morrow, I will take care you shall find
her here at the tirae I raentioned, with your true adrairer.

TO THE MISS BERRYS.
Strawberry Hill, Saturday night, Sept. 27, 1794.
I HAVE been in town, as I told you I should, but gleaned
nothing worth repeating, or I would have written this morn
ing before I came away. The Churchills left me on Thurs
day, and were succeeded by the Marshal and Mr. Taylor, who
dined and stayed all night. I am now alone, baring reserved
this evening to answer your long, and Agnes's short letter;
but in this single one to both, for I have not matter enough
for a separate maintenance.
I went yesterday to Mrs. Damer, and had a glimpse of ber
new house; literally a glimpse, for I saw but one room on
tbe first floor, where she had lighted a fire, that I might not
mount two fiights: and as it was eight o'clock, and quite
dark, she only opened a door or two, and gave me a cats-eye
view into them. One blemish I had descried at first; the house
has a corner arrival, hke her father's. Ah, me ! who do not
love to be led through the public. I did see the new bust of
Mrs. Siddons, and a very mistressly performance it is indeed.
Mrs. Damer was surprised at my saying I should expect you
after another week ; she said, you had not talked of returning
near so soon. I do not mention this, as if to gainsay your in
tention; on the contrary, I hope and beg you will stay as
long as either of you thinks she finds the least benefit from it;
and after that too, as long as you both like to stay. I re-

1794. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 513
preached myself so sadly, and do still, for having dragged you
frora Italy sooner than you intended, and I am so grateful for
your having bad that complaisance, that unless I grow quite
superannuated, I think I shall not be so selfish as to combat
the inclination of either again. It is natural for me to delight
in your company ; but I do not even wish for it, if it lays you
under any restraint I have lived a thousand years to little
purpose, if I have not learned that half a century raore than
the age of one's friends is not an agriment de plus.
I wish you had seen Canterbury some years ago, before
they whitewashed it; for it is so coarsely daubed, and thence
the gloom is so totally destroyed, and so few tombs remain
for so vast a raass, that I was shocked at the nudity of the
whole. If you should go thither again, raake the Cicerone
show you a pane of glass in the east window, which does
open, and exhibits a raost delicious view of the ruins of St.
Austin's. Mention of Canterbury furnishes me with a very suitable
opportunity for telling you a remarkable story, which I had
from Lady Onslow t'other night and which was related to her
by Lord Ashburnhara, on whose veracity you raay depend.
In the hot weather of this last summer, his lordship's very old
uncle, the Bishop of Chichester,' was waked in his palace at
four o'clock in the morning by his bed-chamber door being
opened, when a female figure, all in white, entered, and sat
down near him. The prelate, who protests he was not fright
ened, said in a tone of authority, but not with the usual triple
adjuration, "Who are you?" Not a word of reply; but the
personage heaved a profound sigh. The Bishop rang the
bell; but tbe servants were so sound asleep, that nobody
heard hira. He repeated his question : still no answer ; but
another deep sigh. Then the apparition took some papers
out of the ghost of its pocket and began to read them to
itself. At last when the Bishop had continued to ring, and
nobody to come, the spectre rose and departed as sedately as
' The Right Rev. Sir WiUiam Ashburnham, Bart. His lordship died
at a very advanced age, in September 1797. He was the father of the
bench, and the only bishop not appointed by George the Third. — E.
VOL. VI. 2 L

514 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1794.
it had arrived. When the servants did at length appear,
the Bishop cried, "Well! what have you seen?" "Seen,
ray lord !" " Ay, seen; or who, what is the woraan that has
been here?" "Woman! my lord!" (I beheve one of the
fellows smiled ; though, to do her justice. Lady Onslow did
not say so.) In short when my lord had related his rision,
his domestics did humbly apprehend that his lordship had been
dreaming; and so did his whole family the next raorning, for
in this our day even a bishop's household does not believe in
ghosts : and yet it is raost certain that the good raan had been
in no dreara, and told nothing but what he had seen ; for, as
the story circulated, and diverted the ungodly at the prelate's
expense, it carae at last to the ears of a keeper of a mad-house
in the diocese, who came and deposed, that a feraale lunatic
under his care had escaped from his custody, and, finding the
gate of the palace open, had marched up to my lord's cham
ber. • The deponent further said, that his prisoner was always
reading a bundle of papers. I have known stories of ghosts,
soleranly authenticated, less credible ; and I hope you wiU be
lieve this, attested by a father of our own church.
Sunday night, 28th, 1794.
I have received another letter frora dear Mary, of the
26th ; and here is one for sweet Agnes enclosed. By her ac
count of Broadstairs, I thought you at the North Pole ; but if
you are, the whales must be metaraorphosed into gigs and
whiskies, or split into thera, as heathen gods would have done,
or Rich the harlequin. You talk of Margate, but say nothing
of Kingsgate, where Charles Fox's father scattered buildings
of aU sorts, but in no style of architecture that ever appeared
before or has since, and in no connexion with or to any
any other, and in all directions ; and yet the oddity and nura
ber made that naked, though fertile soil, smile and look cheer
ful. Do you remeraber Gray's bitter hues on him and his
vagaries and history?*
' Entitled " Impromptu, suggested by a view, in 1766, of the seat and
ruins of a deceased Nobleman, at Kingsgate, Kent." See Gray's Works,
vol. i. p. 161, ed. 1836.— E.

1794. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 515
I wish on your return, if in good weather, you would con
trive to visit Mr. Barrett's at Lee ; it is but four mUes from
Canterbury. You will see a child of Strawberry prettier than
the parent, and so executed and so finished ! There is a de
licious closet, too, so flattering to me ; and a prior's hbrary so
antique, and that does such honour to Mr. Wyat's taste ! Mr.
Barrett, I am most sure, would be happy to show his house to
you ; and I know, if you tell him that I beg it, be will pro
duce the portrait of Anne of Cleve by Holbein, in the iden
tic ivory-box, turned like a Provence rose, as it was brought
over for Henry the Eighth. It will be a great favour, and it
must be A fine day; for it lives in cotton and clover, and
he justly dreads exposing it to any damp. He has sorae
other good pictures; and the whole place is very pretty,
though retired.
The Sunday's paper announces a dismal defeat of Clairfait ;
and now, if true, I doubt the French will drive the Duke of
York into Holland, and then into the sea ! Ora pro nobis !
P. S. If this is not a long letter, I do not know what is.
The story of the ghost should have arrived on this, which is
St Goose's-day, or the commemoration of the ignoble army of
martyrs, who have suffered in the persecution under that gor
mandizing archangel St. Michael.

TO MISS BERRY.
Strawberry HiU, Tuesday, Oct 7, 1794.
Your answer, which I own arrived a day sooner than I
flattered myself it would — I wish it could have told me how
you passed the storm of Sunday night — has not only reheved
me from all anxiety on the subject but has made me exceed
ingly happy ; for though I mistook you for a moment, it has
proved to me, that I had judged perfectly rightly of your ex
cellent and most uncommon understanding. Astonished I
was, no doubt, while I conceived that you wished to be placed
in a situation so unworthy of your talents and abilities and
2 L 2

516 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1794.
knowledge, and powers of conversation.* I never was of a
court myself; but from my birth and the position of my father,
could but for my first twenty years, know rauch of the nature
of the beast; and, frora my various connections since, I have
seldom missed farther opportunities of keeping up ray ac
quaintance even with the interior. The world in general is
not ignorant of the coraplexion of most courts ; though ambi
tion, interest, and vanity are always willing to leap over their
information, or to fancy they can counteract it : but I have no
occasion to probe that delusion, nor to gainsay your random
opinion, that a court life may be eligible for women. Yes, for
the idle ones you specify, perhaps so;— for respectable women
I think much less than even for men. I do not raean with
regard to what is called their character ; as if there were but
one virtue with which women have any concern — I speak of
their understanding, and consequential employment of their
time. In a court there must be much idleness, even without
dissipation; and amongst the female constituents, much self-
importance ill-founded ; some ambition, jealousy, envy — and
thence hatred, insincerity, little intrigues for credit and — but
I am talking as if there were any occasion to dissuade you
from what you despise ; and I have only stated what occa
sioned my surprise at your thinking of what you never did
think at all.
StUl, while I did suppose that in any pore of your heart
there did lurk such a wish, I did give a great gulp and swal
lowed down all attempts to turn your thoughts aside from it
— and why ? Yes, and you must be ready to ask me, how
such a true friend could give into the hint without such nurae
rous objections to a plan so unsuitable for you ! Oh ! for
strong reasons too. In the first place, I was sure, that, with
out my almost century of experience, your good sense must
have anticipated all my arguments. You often confute my
desultory logic on points less important, as I frequently find ;
but the true cause of ray assenting, without suffering a sigh to
* This aUudes to a wish he supposed Miss Berry to have had for a
nomination in the household of CaroUne Princess of Wales, then form
ing.— M. B.

1794. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 517
escape me was, because I was conscious that I could not dis
suade you fairly, without a grain or more of seZf mixing in the
argument. I would not trust myself with myself I would
not act again as I did when you was in Italy ; and answered
you as fast as I could, lest self should relapse. Yet, though
it did not last an hour, what a combat it was ! What a blow
to my dream of happiness, should you be attached to a court !
for though you, probably, would not desert Chveden entirely,
how distracted would your tirae be ! — But I will not enter
into the detail of my thoughts ; you know how many posts
they travel in a moraent when my brain is set at work, and
how firmly it believes all it imagines : besides the defalcation
of your society, 1 saw the host of your porphyrogeniti, from
top to bottom, bursting on my tranquillity. But enough; I
conquered all these dangers, and still another objection rose :
when I bad discovered the only channel I could open to your
satisfaction, I had no little repugnance to the emissary I was
to employ.* Though it is ray intention to be equitable to him,
I should be extremely sorry to give him a shadow of claim on
me ; and you know those who might hereafter be glad to con
clude, that it was no wonder they should be disappointed,
when gratitude on your account had been my motive. — But
my cares are at an end ; and though I have laboured through
two painful days, the thorns of which were sharpened, not im
peded, by the storm, I ara rejoiced at the blunder I raade,
as it has procured me the kindest ^^^ most heart-dictated,
and most heartfelt letter, that ever was written ; for which I
give you millions of thanks. Forgive my injurious surmise ;
for you see, that though you can wound ray affection, you can
not aUay its eagerness to please you, at the expense of my own
satisfaction and peace.
Having stated with raost precise truth all I thought re
lated to yourself, I do resurae and repeat all I have said both
in this and my former letter, and renew exactly the same
offers to my sweet Agnes, if she has the least wish for what I
supposed you wished. Nay, I owe still more to her; for I
' His nephew, Lord Cholmondeley.

518 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1794.
think she left Italy more unwiUingly than you did, and grati
tude to either is the only circumstance that can add to ray
affection for either. I can swallow my objections to trying my
nephew as easUy for her as for you; but having had two days
and a half for thinking the whole case over, I have no sort of
doubt but the whole establishment must be completely settled
by this time ; or that at most if any places are not fixed yet,
it must be from the strength and variety of contending in
terests: and, besides, the new Princess will have fewer of
each class of attendants than a Queen; and I shall not be
surprised if there should already be a hrouiUerie between the
two courts about some or many of the nominations: and
though the interest I thought of trying was the only one I
could pitch upon, I do not, on reflection, suppose that a per
son just favoured has favour enough aheady to recomraend
others. Hereafter that may be better ; and a still more feasible
method, I think, would be to obtain a promise against a
vacancy ; which, at this great open moment nobody wUl think
of asking, when the present is so uppermost in their minds :
and now my head is cool, perhaps I could strike out more
channels, should your sister be so inclined. But of that we
will talk when we meet Thursday.
I have received the second letter that I expected, and it
makes me quite happy on all the points that disquieted me ;
on the court, on the tempest, and I hope on privateers, as you
have so little time to stay on Ararat, and the winds that
terrify me for you, will, I trust, be as formidable to them.
Above all, I rejoice at your approaching return; on which I
would not say a syllable seriously, not only because I would
have you please yourselves, but that you may profit as much
as possible by change of air. I retract all my mistake ; and
though, perhaps, I may have fioundered on with regard to A.,
still I have not time to correct or write any part of it over
again. Besides, every word was the truth of my heart; and
why should not you see what is or was in it? Adieu !

1794. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 519

TO THE MISS BERRYS.
October 17, 1794.
I HAD not the least doubt of Mr. Barrett's showing you the
greatest attention : he is a raost worthy man, and has a most
sincere friendship for me, and I was sure would mark it to any
persons that I love. I do not guess what your criticisms on
his hbrary will be : I do not think we shall agree in them ; for
to me it is the most perfect thing I ever saw, and has the
most the air it was intended to have — that of an abbot's
library, supposing it could have been so exquisitely finished
three hundred years ago. But I ara sorry he wiU not force
Mr. Wyat to place the Mabeuse over the chimney; which is
the sole defect, as not distinguished enough for the principal
feature of the room. My closet is as perfect in its way as the
library ; and it would be difficult to suspect that it had not
been a remnant of the ancient convent, only newly painted
and gilt My cabinet, nay, nor house, convey any conception ;
every true Goth raust perceive that they are raore the works
of fancy than of iraitation.
I beheve the less that our opinions will coincide, as you
speak so shghtingly of the situation of Lee, which I adraire.
What a pretty circurastance is the little river ! and so far from
the position being insipid, to me it has a tranquil cheerful
ness that harmonizes with the house, and seems to have been
the judicious selection of a wealthy abbot, who avoided osten
tation, but did not choose austere gloorath. I do not say
that Lee is as gay as a watering-place upon a naked beach.
I am very glad, and much obliged to you for having consented
to pass the night at Lee. I am sure it made Mr. Barrett
very happy. I shall let him know how pleased you was ; and
I too, for his attentions to you.
The mass of politics is so inauspicious, that if I tapped it
I should not finish ray letter for the post and my reflections
would not contribute to your amusement ; which I should be
sorry to interrupt, and which I beg you to pursue as long as
it is agreeable to you. It is satisfaction enough to me to

520 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1794.
know you are happy ; and it is my study to make you so, as
far as my httle power can extend : and, as I promised you on
your condescension in leaving Italy at my prayer, I will never
object to whatever you hke to do, and will accept, and wait
with patience for, any moments you will bestow on your de
voted, Orford.

TO THE REV. WILLIAM BELOE.*
Strawberry HiU, Dec. 2, 1794.
I DO beg and beseech you, good Sir, to forgive me, if
I cannot possibly consent to receive the dedication you are
so kind and partial as to propose to me. I have in the raost
positive, and almost uncivil manner, refused a dedication or
two lately. Compliments on virtues which the persons ad
dressed, like me, seldom possessed, are happily exploded and
laughed out of use. Next to being ashamed of baring good
qualities bestowed on me to which I should have no title,
it would hurt to be praised on my erudition, which is raost
superficial ; and on my trifling writings, all of which turn on
most trifling subjects. They amused rae while writing them ;
may have amused a few persons; but have nothing sohd
enough to preserve them frora being forgotten with other
things of as light a nature. I would not have your judgment
called in question hereafter, if somebody reading your Aulus
Gellius should ask, "What were those writings of Lord O.
which Mr. Beloe so much comraends ? Was Lord O. raore
than one of the mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease?" In
to that class I raust sink; and I had rather do so iraper-
ceptibly, than to be plunged down to it by the interposi
tion of the hand of a friend, who could not gainsay the
sentence. ' Rector of Allhallows, London Wall, prebendary of Pancras in St.
Paul's cathedral, and prebendary of Lincoln. In 1791, he published a
translation of Herodotus, and in 1795, the translation of the " Attic
Nights of Aulus GeUius," referred to in the above letter. He was also
the author of "Anecdotes of Literature and Scarce Books," in six vo
lumes octavo; and after his death, which took place in 1817, appeared
" The Sexagenarian, or RecoUections of a Literary Life;" which, though
a posthumous pubUcation, was printed under his inspection. — E.

1795. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 521
For your own sake, ray good Sir, as well as in pity to
my feelings, who am sore at your offering what I cannot
accept, restrain the address to a mere inscription. You are
allowed to be an excellent translator of classic authors ; how
unclassic would a dedication in the old-fashioned manner ap
pear ! If you had published a new edition of Herodotus or
Aulus Gellius, would you have ventured to prefix a Greek
or Latin dedication to some modern lord with a Gothic title ?
Still less, had those addresses been in vogue at Rorae, would
any Roraan author have inscribed his work to Marcus, the
incorapetent son of Cicero, and told the unfortunate off
spring of so great a raan, of his high birth and declension of
ambition ? which would have excited a laugh on poor Marcus,
who, whatever may have been said of him, had more sense
than to leave proofs to the public of his extreme inferiority to
his father.

TO MISS HANNAH MORE.
Berkeley Square, Saturday night, Jan. 24, 1795.
MY BEST MADAM,
I wiLii never more complain of your silence ; for I am
perfectly convinced that you have no idle, no unemployed
moments. Your indefatigable benevolence is incessantly oc
cupied in good works ; and your head and your heart make
the utraost use of the excellent quahties of both. You have
given proofs of the talents of one, and you certainly do not
wrap the still more precious talent of the other in a napkin.
Thank you a thousand times fOr your most ingenious plan ;
may great success reward you !
I sent one instantly to the Duchess of Gloucester, whose
piety and zeal imitate yours at a distance ; but she says she
cannot afford to subscribe just at this severe moment when
the poor so much want her assistance, but she wiU on the
thaw, and should have been flattered by receiving a plan
from yourself. I sent another to Lord Harcourt, who, I
trust, wiU show it to a much greater lady; and I repeated

522 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1795.
some of the facts you told me of the foul fiends, and their
anti-More activity. I sent to Mr. White for half a dozen
more of your plans, and will distribute them wherever I have
hopes of their taking root and blossoming. To-morrow I
will send him my subscription;* and I flatter myself you
will not think it a breach of Sunday, nor will I make this
long, that I may not widen that fracture. Good-night ! How
calm and comfortable must your slumbers be on the pillow
of every day's good deeds ! Monday.
Yesterday was dark as raidnight. Oh ! that it raay be
the darkest day in all respects that we shall see ! But these
are themes too voluminous and dismal for a letter, and which
your zeal tehs me you feel too intensely for rae to increase,
when you are doing all in your power to counteract them.
One of my grievances is, that the sanguinary inhumanity
of the tiraes has almost poisoned one's compassion, and makes
one abhor so many thousands of our own species, and rejoice
when they suffer for their crimes. I could feel no pity on
reading the account of the death of Condorcet (if true, though
I doubt it). He was one of the greatest monsters exhibited
by history ; and is said to have poisoned hiraself frora faraine
and fear of the guUlotine ; and would be a new instance of
what I suggested to you for a tract, to show, that though we
must not assume a pretension to judging of dirine judgments,
yet we raay beheve that the economy of Providence has so
disposed causes and consequences, that such villains as Dan-
ton, Robespierre, the Duke of Orleans, &c. &c. &c. do but
dig pits for theraselves. I wiU check myself, or I shall wan
der into the sad events of the last five years, down to the
rage of party that has sacrificed Holland ! What a fund
for reflection and prophetic apprehension ! May we have
as much wisdom and courage to stem our malevolent ene
mies, as it is plain, to our lasting honour, we have had
charity to the French emigrants, and have bounty for the
poor who are suffering in this dreadful season !
* To the fund for promoting the printing and dispersion of the works
sold at the Cheap Repository.

1795. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 523
Adieu, thou excellent woman ! thou reverse of that hyaena
in petticoats, Mrs. Wolstoncroft, who to this day discharges
her ink and gall on Maria Antoinette, whose unparalleled
sufferings have not yet stanched that Alecto's blazing ferocity.
Adieu ! adieu ! Yours from my heart
P. S. I have subscribed five guineas at Mr. White's to
your plan.
TO MISS HANNAH MORE.
Berkeley Square, Feb. 13, 1795.
I RECEIVED your letter and packet of lays and virelays,
and heartUy wish they may fall in bad ground, and produce
a hundred thousand fold, as I doubt is necessary. How I
admire the activity of your zeal and perseverance I Should
a new church ever be built, I hope in a side chapel there
will be an altar dedicated to St Hannah, Virgin and Mar
tyr ; and that your pen, worn to the bone, will be enclosed
in a golden reliquaire, and preserved on the shrine.
These few words I have been forced to dictate, having had
the gout in my right hand above this fortnight; but I trust
it is going off. The Duchess was much pleased with your
writing to her, and ordered me to thank you. Your friend
Lady Waldegrave is in town, and looks very well. Adieu,
best of woraen ! Yours most cordially.*
' In a letter to her sister, dated from Fulham Palace, Miss More says,
— " Lord Orford has presented me with Bishop Wilson's edition of the
Bible, in three volumes quarto, superbly bound in morocco (Oh ! that he
would himself study that blessed book), to which, in the foUowing most
flattering inscription, he attributes my having done far more good than
is true — To his excellent friend,
MISS HANNAH MORE,
THE BOOK,
which he knows to be the dearest object of her study,
and by which,
to the great comfort and relief
of nnmberlesB afflicted and distressed individuals,
she has profited beyond any person with whom he is acquainted,
is offered,
as a mark of his esteem and gratitude,
by her sincere
and obliged humble servant,
HORACE, EARL OF ORFORD,
1795."

524i CORRESPONDENCE OF 1795.

TO WILLIAM ROSCOE, ESQ.
Berkeley Square, AprU 4, 1795.
To judge of ray satisfaction and gratitude on receiving
the very acceptable present of your book,* Sir, you should
have known ray extreme impatience for it from the instant
Mr. Edwards had kindly favoured me with the first chapters.
You may consequently conceive the mortification I felt at not
being able to thank you immediately both for the volume and
the obliging letter that accompanied it, by my right arm and
hand being swelled and rendered quite immoveable and use
less, of which you will perceive the remains if you can read
these lines which I am forcing myself to write, not without
pain, the first moraent I have power to hold a pen ; and it will
cost me some time, I believe, before I can finish ray whole
letter, earnest as I ara. Sir, to give a loose to my gratitude.
If you ever had the pleasure of reading such a delightful
book as your own, imagine. Sir, what a comfort it must be
to receive such an anodyne in the midst of a fit of the gout
that has already lasted above nine weeks, and which at first
I thought raight carry me to Lorenzo de' Medici before he
should come to me !
The complete volume has more than answered the ex
pectations which the sample had raised. The Grecian sim
plicity of the style is preserved throughout; the same ju
dicious candour reigns in every page ; and without allowing
yourself that hberty of indulging your own bias towards good
or against criminal characters, which over-rigid critics pro
hibit your artful candour compels your readers to think
with you, without seeming to take a part yourself You
have shown from bis own virtues, abilities, and heroic spirit,
why Lorenzo deserved to have Mr. Roseoe for his biogra
pher. And since you have been so. Sir, (for he was not
completely known before, at least not out of Italy,) I shall
be extremely mistaken if he is not henceforth allowed to
* His History of the Life of Lorenzo de' Medici.

1795. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 525
be, in various lights, one of the most excellent and greatest
men with whom we are well acquainted, especially if we re
flect on tbe shortness of his life and the narrow sphere in
which he had to act. Perhaps I ought to blame my ovm
ignorance, that I did not know Lorenzo as a beautiful poet :
I confess I did not. Now I do, I own I admire some of his
sonnets more than several — yes, even of Petrarch ; for Lo
renzo's are frequently more clear, less alembiques, and not
inharmonious as Petrarch's often are from being too crowded
with words, for which roora is raade by nuraerous elisions,
which prevent the softening alternacy of vowels and conso
nants. That thicket of words was occasioned by the em
barrassing nature of the sonnet ; a form of composition I do
not love, and which is almost intolerable in any language
but Italian, which furnishes such a profusion of rhymes.
To our tongue tbe sonnet is mortal, and the parent of in
sipidity. The imitation in some degree of it was extremely
noxious to a true poet our Spenser; and he was the more
injudicious by lengthening his stanza in a language so barren
of rhymes as ours, and in which several words, whose termi
nations are of similar sounds, are so rugged, uncouth, and
unmusical. The consequence was, that many lines which
he forced into the service to complete the quota of his stanza
are unmeaning, or silly, or tending to weaken the thought he
would express.
Well, Sir : but if you have led me to admire the composi
tions of Lorenzo, you have made me intimate with another
poet, of whom I had never heard nor had the least suspicion ;
and who, though writing in a less harmonious language than
Italian, outshines an able master of that country, as may be
estimated by the fairest of all comparisons — which is, when
one of each nation versifies the same ideas and thoughts.
That novel poet I boldly pronounce is Mr. Roseoe. Se
veral of his translations of Lorenzo are superior to the ori
ginals, and the verses more poetic ; nor ara I bribed to give
this opinion by the present of your book, nor by any par
tiality, nor by the surprise of finding so pure a writer of
history as able a poet Some good judges to whom I have

526 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1795.
shown your translations entirely agree with me. I wiU name
one most competent judge, Mr. Hoole, so admirable a poet
hiraself, and such a critic in Itahan, as he has proved by a
translation of Ariosto. That I am not flattering you. Sir, I
will demonstrate; for I am not satisfied with one essential
line in your version of the most beautiful, I think, of all
Lorenzo's stanzas. It is his description of Jealousy, in page
268, equal, in my bumble opinion, to Dryden's delineations of
the Passions, and the last line of which is —
Mai dorme, ed ostinata a se sol crede.
The thought to me is quite new, and your translation I
own does not come up to it. Mr. Hoole and I hamraered
at it, but could not content ourselves. Perhaps by altering
your last couplet you raay enclose the whole sense, and make
it equal to the preceding six.
I will not ask your pardon, Sir, for taking so much liberty
with you. You have displayed so much candour and so
much modesty, and are so free from pretensions, that I am
confident you will allow that truth is the sole ingredient that
ought to compose deserved incense; and if ever comraenda-
tion was sincere, no praise ever flowed with purer veracity
than all I have said in this letter does from the heart of. Sir,
your infinitely obliged humble servant.

TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY.
Strawberry HUl, July 2, 1795.
I will write a word to you, though scarce time to write
one, to thank you for your great kindness about the soldier,
who shall get a substitute if he can. As you are, or have
been in town, your daughter will have told you in what a
bustle I am, preparing — not to resist, but to receive an
invasion of royalties to-morrow; and cannot even escape
them like Admiral Cornwallis, though seeming to make a
semblance; for I am to wear a sword, and have appointed
two aides-de-camp, my nephews, George and Horace Churchill

1795. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 527
If I fall, as ten to one but I do, to be sure it wiU be a su
perb tumble, at the feet of a Queen and eight daughters of
Kings; for, besides the six Princesses, I am to have the
Duchess of York and the Princess of Orange ! Woe is me,
at seventy-eight, and with scarce a hand and foot to ray
back ! Adieu ! Yours, &c. A Poor Old Remnant.

TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY.
Strawberry HiU, July 7, 1795.
I AM not dead of fatigue with ray royal visitors, as I ex
pected to be, though I was on my poor lame feet three whole
hours. Your daughter, who kindly assisted me in doing the
honours, will tell you the particulars, and how prosperously
I succeeded. The Queen was uncoraraonly condescending
and gracious, and deigned to drink my health when I pre
sented her with the last glass, and to thank me for all ray
attentions. Indeed ray raeraory de la vieille cour was but once
in default. As I had been assured that her Majesty would
be attended by her chamberlain, yet was not, I had no glove
ready when I received her at the step of her coach : yet she
honoured me with her hand to lead her up stairs; nor did
I recoUect my omission when I led her down again. Still,
though gloveless, I did not squeeze the royal hand, as Vice-
chamberlain Smith did to Queen Mary.*
You will have stared, as I did, at the Elector of Hanover
deserting his ally the King of Great Britain, and making
peace with the monsters. But Mr. Fawkener, whom I saw
at my sister's on Sunday, laughs at the article in the news
papers, and says it is not an unknown practice for stock
jobbers to hire an emissary at the rate of five hundred pounds,
and dispatch to Franckfort, whence he brings forged at
testations of some marvellous political event, and spreads it
' It is said that Queen Mary asked some of her attendant ladies what
a squeeze of the hand was supposed to intimate. They said, "¦ Love."
" Then," said the Queen, " my Vice-chamberlain must be violently in
love with me, for he always squeezes my hand.''

528 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1796.
on 'Change, which produces such a fluctuation in the stocks
as amply overpays the expense of his mission.
This was all I learnt in the single night I was in town.
I have not read the new French constitution, which seems
longer than probably its reign wUl be. The five sovereigns
will, I suppose, be the first guiUotined. Adieu ! Yours ever.

TO MISS BERRY.
Strawberry HiU, Tuesday, Aug. 16, 1796.
Though I this morning received your Sunday's full
letter, it is three o'clock before I have a moment to begin an
swering it ; and must do it myself, for Kirgate is not at home.
First came in Mr. Barrett and then Cosway, who has been
for some days at Mr. Udney's, with his wife : she is so afflicted
for her only little girl, that she shut herself up in her cham
ber, and would not be seen.* The man Cosway does not seem
to think that much of the loss belonged to him : he romanced
with his usual vivacity. Next arrived Dr. Burney, on his way
to Mrs. Boscawen. He asked me about deplorable " Camilla."
Alas ! I had not recovered of it enough to be loud in its
praise. I ara glad, however, to hear that she has realized
about two thousand pounds ; and the worth, no doubt, of as
much in honours at Windsor ; where she was detained three
days, and where even M. D'Arblay was allowed to dine.
I rejoice at your bathing promising so well. If the beauti
ful fugitive 2 from Brighthelmstone dips too, the waves will be
still raore salutary : —
Venus, orta mari, mare preestat eunti.
I like your going to survey castles and houses : it is whole-
soraer than drawing and writing toraes of letters ; — which,
you see, I cannot do.
' The loss of her only chUd threw Mrs. Cosway upon art once more.
To mitigate her grief, she painted several large pictures for chapels ; and
afterwards visited Italy, where she formed a college at Lodi for the edu
cation of young ladies. On the estabUshment of peace, she returned to
England, where she remained tUl the death of her husband in 1821 ;
after which she returned to Lodi. — E.
' The Countess of Jersey, mother to the present Earl.

1796. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 529
Wednesday, after breakfast.
When I came home from Lady Mendip's last night, I
attempted to finish this myself; but my poor fingers were so
tired by all the work of the day, that it will require Sir Wil
liam Jones's gift of tongues to interpret my pothooks. One
would think Arabic characters were catching ; for Agnes had
shown me a volume of their poems, finely printed at Cam
bridge, with a version which Mrs. Douglas had lent to her,
and said were very simple, and not in the inflated style of the
East. You shall judge : in the first page I opened, I found a
storm of lightning that had burst into a laugh. I resurae the
thread of my letter. You had not exarained Arundel Castle
enough ; for you do not mention the noble monuments, in ala
baster, of the Fitz-Alans, one of whom bragged of having
married Adeliza, widow of Henry the First In good sooth,
they were somewhat defaced by Cromwell having mounted
his cannon on the roof to batter the castle ; of which, when I
saw it be had left little but ruins; and they were choked up
by a vile modern brick house, which I know Solomon has
pulled down : for he carae hither two years ago to consult me
about Gothicizing his restoration of the castle. I recom
mended Mr. Wyat, lest he should copy the temple of Jeru
salem. So you found a picture of your predecessor I* She had had
a good figure : but I had rather it had been a portrait of her
aunt, Mrs. Arabella Fermor, the heroine of the Lock, of whom
I never saw a resemblance. You did not, I suppose, see the
giknt, who, the old Duke told me, used to walk araong the
ruins, but who, to be sure, Duke Soloraon ^ has laid in a Red
Sea of claret There are other splendid seats to be seen
within your reach; as Petworth, and Standstead, and Up-
Park: but I know why I guess that you may even be of
parties, more than once, at the last
' A portrait of Margaret Trefusis, Countess of Orford, widow of the
eldest brother of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford.
' Charles Howard, eleventh Duke of Norfolk, so caUed by Lord Or
ford, for having his portrait executed in painted glass for the window of
his great dining-room, at Arundel Castle, as Solomon entertaining the
Queen of Sheba.
VOL. VI. 2 M

530 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1796.
As Agnes says, she bas promised I should give you an ac
count of a visit I have lately had, I will, if I have time, before
anybody comes in. It was from a Mr. Pentycross, a clergyraan
and schoolmaster of WaUingford, of whom I had heard nothing
for eight-and-twenty years ; and then having only known him
as a Blue-coat boy from Kingston : and how that happened,
he gave me this account last week. He was born with
a poetic impetus, and walked over hither with a copy of verses
by no raeans despicable, which he begged old Margaret to
bring up to rae. She refused ; he supphcated. At last she
told him that her master was very learned, and that, if be
would write soraething in the learned languages, especially
in French, she would present his poem to me. In the mean
time, she yielded ; I saw him, and let her show him the house.
I think he sent me an ode or two afterwards, and I never
heard his name again till this winter, when I received a letter
frora hira from his place of residence, with high compliraents
on some of my editions, and beseeching me to give him a
print of rayself, which I did send to him. In the Christmas
holidays he came to town for a few days, and called in Berke
ley-square; but it was when I was too ill to see anybody.
He then left a most modest and hurable letter, only begging
that, some tirae or other, I Would give him leave to see Straw
berry Hill. I sent hira a note by Kirgate, that should he
corae to town in suramer, and I should be well enough, he
should certainly see ray house. Accordingly, about a fort
night ago, I let him know, that if he could fix any day in this
month, I would give him a dinner and a bed. He jumped at
the ofler, named Wednesday last, and came. However, I con
sidered that to pass a whole day with this unknown being
might be rather too much. I got Lysons, the parson, from
Putney, to meet him : but it would not have been necessary, for
I found my Blue-coat boy grown to be a very sensible, rational,
learned, and reraaining a most modest personage, with an
excellent taste for poetry — for he is an enthusiast for Dr.
Darwin : but alas ! infinitely too learned for me ; for in the
evening, upon questioning him about his own vein of poetry,
he humbly drew out a paper, with proposition forty-seven of

1796. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 531
Euchd turned into Latin verse. I shrunk back and cried,
" Oh ! dear Sir, how little you know rae ! I have forgotten
alraost the little Latin I knew, and was always so incapable of
learning raatheraatics, that I could not even get by heart
the multiplication-table, as blind Professor Sanderson honestly
told me, above threescore years ago, when I went to his lec
tures at Cambridge." After the first fortnight, he said to
me, "Young man, it would be cheating you to take your
money; for you never can learn what I am trying to teach
you." I was exceedingly mortified, and cried; for, being a
prime minister's son, I had firmly believed all the fiattery with
which I had been assured that my parts were capable of any
thing. I paid a private instructor for a year; but at the
year's end, was forced to own Sanderson had been in the
right; and here luckily ends, with ray paper, my Penticru-
sade !

TO MISS BERRY.
Strawberry Hill, August 24, 1796.
Bathe on, bathe on and wash away all your coraplaints ;
the sea air and such an oriental season raust cure everything
but positive decay and decrepitude. On me they have no
more effect than they would have on an Egyptian queen who
has been embowelled and preserved in her sycamore etui ever
since dying was first invented, and people notwithstanding
liked to last for ever, though even in a pyramid. In short
Mr.  has teased me so much about jumbling my relics,
that I have aired them every morning in the coach for this
fortnight ; and yet you see,* I cannot write ten lines together !
Lady Cecilia lets me call on her at twelve, and take her with
me : and yet I grow tired of it, and shall not have patience to
continue, but shall remain, I believe, in my mummyhood.
I begin by giving myself a holiday to-day, in order to answer
your letter of the 21st; while Lady Waldegrave, who is with
me, and who has brought her eldest son, whom, poor soul !
' The remainder of this letter is in the hand-writing of Kirgate.
2 M 2

532 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1796.
she cannot yet bear to call Lord Waldegrave, is gone to the
Pavilion. Here is a letter for you from Hannah More, un
sealed indeed, for chiefly a mon intention. Be so good as to
tell her how little I am really recovered ; but that I wUl ham
mer out a few words as fast, that is, as slowly as I can to her,
in return.
I am scandalized at the slovenly neglect of the brave chapel
of the Fitz-Alans.* I thought the longer any peer's genealogy
had been spun out, the prouder he was of the most ancient
coronets in it ; but since Solomon despises tbe Arundels for not
having been dukes, I suppose he does not acknowledge Adam
for a relation ; who, though he bad a tolerably numerous pro
geny, his grace does not allow to have been the patriarch of
the Mowbrays and Howards, as the devil did not make Eve
a duchess, though he has made the wives of some other folks
so, and may propose to make one more so some time or
other. News I have none ; but that Wurmsur seems to have put a
little spoke into the wheel of the French triumphal car in
Italy;. iand as those banditti have deigned to smile on the
Duke of Wirtemberg, I suppose they mean to postpone im
posing a heavy contribution on him till he shaU have received
the fortune of the Princess Royal. Adieu !

TO MISS HANNAH MORE.
Strawberry HiU, August 29, 1796.
You are not only the most beneficent, but the most
benevolent of human beings. Not content with being a
perfect saint yourself, which (forgive me for saying) does not
always imply prodigious compassion for others ; not satisfied
with being the most disinterested, nay, the reverse of all
patriots, for you sacrifice your very slender fortune, not to
improve it, but to keep the poor honest instead of corrupting
thera; and you write pohtics as siraply, intelligibly, and un-
* In Arundel church. It has since been put in a state of repair by
the present Duke of Norfolk.

1796. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 533
artfully, not as cunningly as you can to mislead. Well, with
aU these giant virtues, you can find room and time in your
heart and occupations for harbouring and exercising what
those monkeys of pretensions, the French, invented and caUed
les petites morales, which were to supply society with fili-
grain duties, in the room of aU virtues, which they abohshed
on their road to the adoption of philosophy and atheism. Yes,
though for ever busied in exercising services and charities
for individuals, or for whole bodies of people, you do not
leave a cranny empty into which you can slip a kindness.
Your inquiry after me to Miss Berry is so friendly, that I
cannot trust solely to her thanking you for your letter, as
I am sure she will, having sent it to ber as she is bathing
in the sea at Bognor Rocks ; but I must with infinite gra
titude give you a brief account of myself — a very poor one
indeed raust I give. Conderaned as a cripple to my couch
for the rest of my days I doubt I am. Though perfectly
healed, and even without a scar, my leg is so weakened that
I have not recovered the least use of it nor can raove cross
my chamber unless lifted up and held by two servants This
constitutes rae totally a prisoner. But why should not I be
so ? What business had I to hve to the brink of seventy-
nine? And why should one litter the world at that age?
Then, I thank God, I have vast blessings; I have pre
served ray eyes, ears, and teeth; I have no pain left;
and I would bet with any dormouse that it cannot outsleep
me. And when one can aflbrd to pay for every rehef, com
fort, or assistance that can be procured at fourscore, dares
one coraplain? Must not one reflect on the thousands of
old poor, who are suflering martyrdom, and have none of
those alleviations ? O my good friend, I must consider my
self as at my best; for if I drag on a little longer, can I ex
pect to reraain even so tolerably. Nay, does the world pre
sent a pleasing scene ? Are not the devils escaped out of
the swine, and overrunning the earth headlong? What a
therae for meditation, that the excellent huraane Louis Seize
should have been prevented from saving himself by that mon
ster Drouet, and that that execrable wretch should be saved

534 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1796.
even by those, some of whom one may suppose he meditated
to massacre; for at what does a Frenchman stop? But I
wiU quit this shocking subject and for another reason too:
' I omitted one of ray losses, almost the use of my fingers:
they are so lame that I cannot write a dozen lines legibly,
but am forced to have recourse to my secretary. I will only
reply by a word or two to a question you seem to ask ; how
I like " Camilla?" I do not care to say how little. Alas ! she
has reversed experience, which I have long thought reverses
its own utility by coming at the wrong end of our life when
we do not want it This author knew the world and pene
trated characters before she had stepped over the threshold ;
and, now she has seen so much of it she has little or no in
sight at all : perhaps she apprehended having seen too much,
and kept the bags of foul air that she brought from the Cave
of Tempests too closely tied.
Adieu, thou who mightest be one of the cleverest of
women if thou didst not prefer being one of the best ! And
when I say one of the best, I have not engaged my vote for
the second. Yours most gratefully.

TO RICHARD GOUGH, ESQ.
Berkeley Square, Dec. 5, 1796.
DEAR SIR,
Being struck with the extreme cold of last week, it has
brought a violent gouty inflammation into one of ray legs, and
I was forced to be instantly brought to town very ill. As
soon as I was a httle recovered, I found here your most
magnificent present of the second volume of Sepulchral Mo
numents, the most splendid work I ever saw, and which I
congratulate myself on having lived long enough to see.
Indeed, I congratulate my country on its appearance ex
actly at so illustrious a moment when the patriotism and
zeal of London have exhibited so astonishing marks of their
opulence and attachment to the constitution, by a voluntary
subscription of seventeen millions of money in three days.

1796. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 535
Your book. Sir, appearing at that very instant, will be a
monument of a fact so unexampled in history ; the treasure
of fine prints with which it is stowed, well becomes such a
production and such a work, the expense of which becomes it
too. I am irapatient to be able to sit up and exaraine it
raore, and ara sure my gratitude will increase in proportion.
As soon as I shall receive the coraplete sheets, I will have
the whole work bound in the raost superb manner that can
4)0 : and though, being so infirm now, and just entered into
my eightieth year, I am not likely to wait on you, and thank
you, I shall be happy to have an opportunity, whenever you
come this way, of telling you in person how much I am
charmed with so splendid a monument of British glories, and
which will be so proud an ornament to the libraries of any
nation.

TO MISS BERRY.
Thursday, December 15, past noon, 1796.
I HAD no account of you at all yesterday, but in Mrs.
Damer's letter, which was rather better than the preceding ;
nor have I had any letter before post to-day, as you proraised
me in hers. I had, indeed, a humorous letter frora a puss
that is about your house,* which is more comfortable; as I
think she would not have written cheerfully if you had not
been in a good way. I would answer it, but I am grown a
dull old Tabby, and have no " Quips and cranks and wanton
wiles" left; but I shall be glad to see her when she follows
you to town, which I earnestly hope will not pass Saturday.
My horses will be with you on Friday night.
The House of Commons sat till half an hour after three
this raorning, on Mr. Pitt's loan to the Emperor ; when it
was approved by a majority of above two hundred. Mr. Fox
was more temperate than was expected; Mr. Grey did not
* This was written by Miss Seton, in the name of a kitten at Little
Strawberry Hill, with whose gambols Lord Orford had been much
amused. — M. B. 2 M 4

536 CORRESPONDENCE OF 1797.
speak; Mr. Sheridan was very entertaining: several were
convinced and voted for Mr. Pitt who had gone down de
termined against it. The Prince came to town t'other day
Ul, was blooded twice, but has now a strong eruption upon
his skin, which wiU probably be of great service to him. Sir
Charles Blagden has been with the Duchess of Devonshire,
and found her rauch better than he expected. Her look is lit
tle altered : she sufiers but little, and finds herself benefited
by being electrified.
I have received a compliment to-day very little expected
by a superannuated old Etonian. Two tickets frora the gen
tlemen of Westminster School, for their play on Monday next
I excused myself as civilly and respectfully as I could, on my
utter impossibility of attending thera. Adieu ! I hope this
will be the last letter I shall write before I see you.*

TO THE COUNTESS OF OSSORY.
January 13, 1797.
You distress me infinitely by showing my idle notes,
which I cannot conceive can amuse anybody. My old-
' Very soon after the date of the above letter, the gout, the attacks of
which were every day becoming more frequent and longer, made those with
whom Lord Orford had been living at Strawberry HiU very anxious that
he should remove to Berkeley Square, to be nearer assistance, in case of
any sudden seizure. As his correspondents, soon after his removal, were
likewise estabUshed in London, no more letters passed between them.
When not immediately suffering from pain, his mind was tranquil and
cheerful. He was stiU capable of being amused, and of taking some part
in conversation : but, during the last weeks of his Ufe, when fever was
superadded to his other iUs, his mind became subject to the cruel hallu
cination of supposing himself neglected and abandoned by the only per
sons to whom his memory clung, and whom he always desired to see.
In vain they recaUed to his recoUection how recently they had left him,
and how short had been their absence : it satisfied him for the moment,
but the same idea recurred as soon as he had lost sight of them. At
last, nature sinking under the exhaustion of weakness, obUterated all
ideas but those of mere existence, which ended, without a struggle, on
the 2nd of March 1797.— M. B.

1797. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 537
fashioned breeding impels me every now and then to reply
to the letters you honour me with writing ; but in truth very
unwillingly, for I seldom can have anything particular to say.
I scarce go out of my own house, and then only to two or
three very private places, where I see nobody that really
knows anything; and what I learn comes from newspapers,
that collect intelligence from coffee-houses — consequently,
what I neither believe nor report. At home I see only a
few charitable elders, except about fourscore nephews and
nieces of various ages, who are each brought to me once a
year, to stare at me as the Methusalem of the family; and
they can only speak of their own contemporaries, which in
terest me no raore than if they talked of their dolls, or bats
and balls. Must not tbe result of all this. Madam, make me
a very entertaining correspondent? and can such letters be
worth showing? or can I have any spirit when so old, and
reduced to dictate ? Oh ! my good Madam, dispense with
me from such a task, and think how it must add to it to
apprehend such letters being shown. Pray send me no raore
such laurels, which I desire no raore than their leaves when
decked with a scrap of tinsel, and stuck on twelfth-cakes
that he on the shop-boards of pastrycooks at Christraas. I
shaU be quite content with a sprig of roseraary thrown after
me, when the parson of the parish comraits my dust to dust.
TUl then, pray. Madam, accept the resignation of your an
cient servant, Orford.

THE END.

PRINTED BY SAMUEL BENTLEY,
Bangor House, Shoe Lane.

3 9002 00831 7514

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