The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford Volume IV Part 8

At Buckden, in the Bishop's palace, I saw a print of Mrs.

Newcome: I Suppose the late mistress of St. John's. Can you tell me where I can procure one? Mind, I insist that you do not serve me as you have often done, and send me your own, if you have one. I seriously will not accept it, nor ever trust you again. On the staircase, in the same palace, there is a picture of two young men, in the manner of Vandyck, not at all ill done; do you know who they are, or does any body? There is a worse picture, in a large room, of some lads, which, too, the housemaid did not know. Adieu! dear Sir, yours ever.

Letter 48To The Rev. Mr. Cole.

Strawberry Hill, Nov. 7, 1772. (page 73)

Dear Sir, I did receive the print of Mrs. Newcome, for which I am extremely obliged to you, with a thousand other favours, and should certainly have thanked you for it long ago, but I was then, an(I am now, confined to my bed with the gout in every limb, and in almost every joint. I have not been out of my bedchamber these five weeks to-day and last night the pain returned violently into one of my feet; so that I am now writing to you in a most uneasy posture, which will oblige me to be very short.

Your letter, which I suppose was left at my house in Arlington street by Mr. Ess.e.x, was brought to me this morning. I am exceedingly sorry for his disappointment, and for his coming without writing first; in which case I might have prevented his journey. I do not know, even, whither to send to him, to tell him how impossible it is for me just now, in my present painful and hopeless situation, to be of any use to him. I am so weak and faint, I do not see even my nearest relations, and G.o.d knows how long it will be before I am able to bear company, much less application. I have some thoughts, as soon as I am able, of removing to Bath; so that I cannot guess when it will be in my power to consider duly Mr. Ess.e.x's plan with him. I shall undoubtedly, if ever capable of it, be ready to give him my advice, such as it is; or to look over his papers, and even to correct them, if his modesty thinks me more able to polish them than he is himself. At the same time, I must own, I think he will run too great a risk by the expense. The engravers in London are now arrived at such a pitch of exorbitant imposition, that, for my own part, I have laid aside all thoughts of having a single plate more done.

Dear Sir, pray tell Mr. Ess.e.x how concerned I am for his mischance, and for the total impossibility I am under of seeing him now. I can write no More, but I shall be glad to hear from you on his return to Cambridge: and when I am recovered, you may be a.s.sured how glad I shall be to talk his plan over with him. I am his and Your obliged humble servant.

Letter 49 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.

(page 74)

I have had a relapse, and not been able to use my hand, or I should have lamented with you on the plunder of your prints by that Algerine hog.(80) I pity you, dear Sir, and feel for your awkwardness, that was struck dumb at his rapaciousness. The beast has no sort of taste neither-and in a twelvemonth will sell them again. I regret particularly one print, which I dare to say he seized, that I gave you, Gertrude More; I thought I had another, and had not; and, as you liked it, I never told you so. This Muley Moloch used to buy books, and now sells them. He has hurt his fortune, and ruined himself, to have a Collection, without any choice of what it should be composed.

It is the most underbred swine I ever saw; but I did not know it was so ravenous. I wish you may get paid any how; you see by my writing how difficult it is to me, and therefore will excuse my being short.

(80) This letter may want some explanation. A gentleman, a collector of prints, and a neighbour of Mr. Walpole's, had just before requested to see Mr. Cole's collection, and on Mr.

Cole's offering to accommodate him with such heads as he had not, he selected and took away no less than one hundred and eighty-seven of the most rare and valuable.

Letter 50 To The Countess Of Ailesbury.

Arlington Street, Dec. 20, 1772. (page 74)

Indeed, Madam, I want you and Mr. Conway in town. Christmas has dispersed all my company, and left nothing but a loo-party or two. If all the fine days were not gone out of town, too, I should take the air in a morning; but I am not yet nimble enough, like old Mrs. Nugent, to jump out of a postchaise into an a.s.sembly.

You have a woful taste, my lady, not to like Lord Gower's bonmot.

I am almost too indignant to tell you of a most amusing book in six volumes, called "Histoire Philosophique et Politique du commerce des Deux Indes."(81) It tells one every thing in the world;--how to make conquests, invasions, blunders, settlements, bankruptcies, fortunes, etc.; tells you the natural and historical history of all nations; talks commerce, navigation, tea, coffee, china, mines, salt, spices; of the Portuguese, English, French, Dutch, Danes, Spaniards, Arabs, caravans, Persians, Indians, of Louis XIV. and the King of Prussia; of La Bourdonnais, Dupleix, and Admiral Saunders; of rice, and women that dance naked; of camels, ginghams, and muslin; of millions of millions of livres, pounds, rupees, and cowries; of iron cables, and Circa.s.sian women; of Law and the Mississippi; and against all governments and religions. This and every thing else is in the two first volumes. I cannot conceive what is left for the four others. And all is so mixed, that you learn forty new trades and fifty new histories in a single chapter. There is spirit, wit, and clearness and, if there were but less avoirdupois weight in it, it would be the richest book in the world in materials--but figures to me are so many ciphers, and only put me in mind of children that say, an hundred hundred hundred millions. However, it has made me learned enough to talk about Mr. Sykes and the Secret Committee,(82) which is all that any body talks of at present, and yet Mademoiselle Heinel(83) is arrived. This is all I know, and a great deal too, considering I know nothing, and yet, were there either truth or lies, I should know them; for one hears every thing in a sick room. Good night both!

(81) By the Abb'e Raynal. sensible of the faults of his work, the Abb'e visited England and Holland to obtain correct mercantile information, and, on his return, published an improved edition at Geneva, in ten volumes, octavo. Hannah More relates, that, when in England, the Abb'e was introduced to Dr. Johnson, and advancing to shake his band, the Doctor drew back and put it behind him, and afterwards replied to the expostulation of a friend--"Sir, I will not shake hands with an infidel." The Parliament of Paris ordered the work to be burnt, and the author to be arrested; but he retired to Spain, and, in 1788, the National a.s.sembly cancelled the decree pa.s.sed against him. He died at Pa.s.sy in 1794, at the age of eighty-five.-E.

(82) Upon indian affairs.

(83) See ante, p. 59, letter 34.

Letter 51 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.

Arlington Street, Jan. 8, 1773. (page 75)

In return to your very kind inquiries, dear Sir, I can let you know, that I am quite free from pain, and walk a little about my room, even without a stick: nay, have been four times to take the air in the park. Indeed, after fourteen weeks this is not saying much; but it is a worse reflection, that when one is subject to the gout, and far from young, one's worst account will probably be better than that after the next fit. I neither flatter myself on one hand, nor am impatient on the other--for will either do one any good? one must bear one's lot whatever it be.

I rejoice Mr. * * * * has justice,(84) though he had no bowels.

How Gertrude More escape' him I do not guess. It will be wrong to rob you of her, after she has come to you through so many hazards--nor would I hear of it either, if you have a mind to keep her, or have not given up all thoughts of a collection since you have been visited by a Visigoth.

I am much more impatient to see Mr. Gray's print, than Mr.

What-d'ye-call-him's answer to my Historic Doubts.(85) He may have made himself very angry; but I doubt whether he will make me at all so. I love antiquities; but I scarce ever knew an antiquary who knew how to write upon them. Their understandings seem as much in ruins as the things they describe. For the Antiquarian Society, I shall leave them in peace with Whittington and his Cat. As my contempt for them has not, however, made me disgusted with what they do not understand, antiquities, I have published two numbers of Miscellanies, and they are very welcome to mumble them with their toothless gums. I want to send you these--not their gums, but my pieces, and a Grammont,(86) of which I have printed only a hundred copies, and which will be extremely scarce, as twenty-five copies are gone to France. Tell me how I shall convey them safely.

Another thing you must tell me, if you can, is, if you know any thing ancient of the Freemasons Governor Pownall,(87) a Whittingtonian, has a mind they should have been a corporation erected by the popes. As you see what a good creature I am, and return good for evil, I am engaged to pick up what I can for him, to support this system, in which I believe no more than in the pope: and the work is to appear in a volume of the Society's pieces. I am very willing to oblige him, and turn my cheek, that they may smite that, also. Lord help them! I am sorry that they are such numsculls, that they almost make me think myself something! but there are great authors enough to bring me to my senses again. Posterity, I fear, will cla.s.s me with the writers of this age, or forget me with them, not rank me with any names that deserve remembrance. If I cannot survive the Milles's, the What-d'ye-call-him's, and the compilers of catalogues of topography, it would comfort me very little to confute them. I should be as little proud of success as if I had carried a contest for churchwarden.

Not being able to return to Strawberry Hill, where all my books and papers are, and my printer lying fallow, I want some short bills to print. Have you any thing you wish printed? I can either print a few to amuse ourselves, or, if very curious, and not too dry, could make a third number of Miscellaneous Antiquities.

I am not in any eagerness to see Mr. What-d'ye-call-him's pamphlet against me; therefore pray give yourself no trouble to get it for me. The specimens I have seen of his writing take off all edge from curiosity. A print of Mr. Gray will be a real present. Would it not be dreadful to be commended by an age that had not taste enough to admire his Odes? Is not it too great a compliment to me to be abused too? I am ashamed!

Indeed our antiquaries ought to like me. I am but too much on a par with them. Does not Mr. Henshaw come to London? Is he a professor, or only a lover of engraving? If the former, and he were to settle in town, I would willingly lend him heads to copy. Adieu!

(84) The gentleman who had carried off so many of Mr.

Cole's prints. He now fully remunerated Mr. Cole in a valuable present of books.

(85) Mr. Master's pamphlet, printed at the expense of the Antiquarian Society in the second volume of the Archaeologia.

(86) "M'emoires du Comte de Grammont, nouvelle edition, augment'ee de Notes et Eclairciss.e.m.e.ns n'ecessaires, par M.

Horace Walpole." Strawberry Hill, 1772, 4to. To the M'emoires was prefixed the following dedication to Madame du Deffand:-- "L'Editeur VOUS Consacre cette edition, comme un monument de son amiti'e, de son admiration, et de son respect, a vous dont les gr'aces, l'esprit, et le gout retracent an si'ecle present le si'ecle de Louis XIV., et les agr'emens de l'auteur de ces Memoires."

(87) Thomas Pownall, Esq. the antiquary, and a constant contributor to the Archaeologia. Having been governor of South Carolina and other American colonies, he was always distinguished from his brother John, who was likewise an antiquary, by the t.i.tle of Governor.-E.

Letter 52 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.

Arlington Street, Feb. 18, 1773. (page 77)

The most agreeable ingredient of your last, dear Sir, is the paragraph that tells me you shall be in town in April, when I depend on the pleasure of seeing you; but, to be certain, wish you would give me a few days' law, an let me know, too, where you lodge. Pray bring your books, though the continuation of the Miscellaneous Antiquities is uncertain. I thought the affectation of loving veteran anecdotes was so vigorous, that I ventured to print five hundred copies., One, hundred and thirty only are sold. I cannot afford to make the town perpetual presents; though I find people exceedingly eager to obtain them when I do; and if they will not buy them, it is a sign of such indifference, that I shall neither bestow my time, nor my cost, to no purpose. All I desire is, to pay the expenses, which I can afford much less than my idle moments. Not but the operations of-my press have often turned against myself in many shapes. I have told people many things they did not know, and from fas.h.i.+on they have bought a thousand things out of my hands, which they do not understand, and only love en pa.s.sant. At Mr. West's sale, I got literally nothing: his prints sold for the frantic sum of 1495 pounds 10 s.h.i.+llings. Your and my good friend Mr. Gulston threw away above 200 pounds there.

I am not sorry Mr. Lort has recourse to the fountainhead: Mr.

Pownall's system of Freemasonry is so absurd and groundless, that I am glad to be rid of intervention. I have seen the former once: he told Me he was willing to sell his prints, as the value of them is so increased--for that very reason I did not want to purchase them.

Paul Sanby promised me ten days ago to show Mr. Henshaw's engraving which I received from Dr. Ewen) to Bartolozzi, and ask his terms, thinking he would delight in So Very promising a scholar; but I have heard nothing since, and therefore fear there is no success. Let me, however, see the young man when he comes, and I will try if there is any other way of serving him.

What shall I say to you, dear Sir, about Dr. Prescot? or what I say to him? It hurts me not to be very civil, especially as any respect to my father's memory touches me much more than any attention to myself, which I cannot hold to be a quarter so well founded. Yet, how dare I write to a poor man, who may do, as I have lately seen done by a Scotchwoman that wrote a play,(88) and printed Lord Chesterfield's and Lord Lyttelton's letters to her, as Testimonia fluctorum: I will therefore beg you to make my compliments and thanks to the master, and to make them as grateful as you please, provided I am dispensed with giving any certificate under my hand. You may plead my illness, which, though the fifth month ended yesterday, is far from being at an end, My relapses have been endless - I cannot yet walk a step: and a great cold has added an ague in my cheek, for which I am just going to begin the bark. The prospect for the rest of my days is gloomy. The case of my poor nephew still more deplorable - he arrived in town last night, and bore his Journey tolerably-but his head is in much more danger of not recovering than his health; though they give us hopes of both. But the evils of life are not good subjects for letters--why afflict one's friends? Why make commonplace reflections? Adieu! Yours ever.

(88) "Sir Harry Gaylove; or, Comedy in Embryo;" by Mrs. Jane Marshall. It was printed in Scotland by subscription, but not acted. in the preface, she complains bitterly of the managers of the three London theatres, for refusing her the advantages of representing her performance.-E.

Letter 53 To The Rev. William Mason.(89) March 2, 1773. (page 78)

What shall I say? How shall I thank you for the kind manner in which you submit your papers to my correction? But if you are friendly, I must be just. I am so far from being dissatisfied, that I Must beg to shorten your pen, and in that respect only would I wish, with regard to myself, to alter your text. I am conscious that in the beginning of the differences between Gray and me, the fault was mine. I was young, too fond of my own diversions; nay, I do not doubt, too much intoxicated by indulgence, vanity, and the insolence of my situation, as a prime minister's Son, not to have been inattentive to the feelings of one, I blush to say, that I knew was obliged to me; of one, whom presumption and folly made me deem not very superior in parts, though I have since felt my infinite inferiority to him. I treated him insolently. He loved me, and I did not think he did. I reproached him with the difference between us, when he acted from the conviction of knowing that he was my superior. I often disregarded his wish of seeing places, which I would not quit my own amus.e.m.e.nts to visit, though I offered to send him thither without me.

Forgive me, if I say that his temper was not conciliating, at the same time that I confess to you, that he acted a most friendly part had I had the sense to take advantage of it. He freely told me my faults. I declared I did not desire to hear them, nor would correct them. You will not wonder,, that with the dignity of his spirit, and the obstinate carelessness of mine the breach must have widened till we became incompatible.

After this confession, I fear you will think I fall short in the words I wish to have subst.i.tuted for some of yours. If you think them inadequate to the state of the case, as I own they are, preserve this letter and let some future Sir John Dalrymple produce it to load my memory; but I own I do not desire that any ambiguity should aid his invention to forge an account) for me. If you would have no objection, I would propose your narrative should run thus, [Here follows a note, which is inserted verbatim in Mason's Life of Gray.(90)] and contain no more, till a more proper time shall come for publis.h.i.+ng the truth, as I have stated it to you. While I am living, it is not pleasant to see my private disagreements discussed in magazines and newspapers.

(89) This and the following letter are from Mr. mitford's valuable edition of Gray's Works. See vol. iv. pp. 216, 218.- E.

(90) "In justice to the memory of so respectable a friend, Mr.