The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford Volume II Part 10

You must not pretend to be concerned at having missed one here, when I had repeatedly begged you, to let me know what day you would call; and even after you had learnt that I was to come the next day, you paraded by my house with all your matrimonial streamers flying, without even saluting the future castle. To punish this slight, I shall accept your offer of a visit on the return of your progress; I shall be here, and Mrs. leneve will not.

I feel for the poor Handasyde.(182) If I wanted examples for to deter one from making all the world happy, from obliging, from being always in good-humour and spirits, she should be my memento. You find long wise faces every day, that tell you riches cannot make one happy. No, can't they? What pleasantry is that poor woman fallen from! and what a joyous feel must Vanneck(183) have expired in, Who could call and think the two Schutzes his friends, and leave five hundred pounds apiece to their friendship-. nay, riches made him so happy, that, in the overflowing of his satisfaction, he has bequeathed a hundred pounds apiece to eighteen fellows, whom he calls his good friends, that favoured him with their company on Fridays. He took it mighty kind that Captain James de Normandie, and twenty such names, that came out of the Minories, would constrain themselves to live upon him once a week.

I should like to visit the castles and groves of your old Welsh ancestors with you: by the draughts I have seen, I have always imagined that Wales preserved the greatest remains of ancient days, and have often wished to visit Picton Castle, the seat of my Philipps-progenitors.

Make my best compliments to your sisters, and with their leave make haste to this side of the world; you will be extremely welcome hither as soon and for as long as you like; I can promise you nothing very agreeable, but that I will try to get our favourite Mr. Bentley to meet you. Adieu!

(182) The widow of Brigadier-General Handasyde.-E.

(183) The legacies bequeathed by Gerard Vanneck amounted altogether to more than a hundred thousand pounds. The residue of his property he left to his brother, Joshua Vanneck, ancestor of Lord Huntingfield.-E.

81 Letter 30 To Sir Horace Mann.

Arlington Street, September 20, 1750.

I only write you a line to answer some of your questions, and to tell you that I can't answer others.

I have inquired much about Dr. Mead, but can't tell you any thing determinately: his family positively deny the foundation of the reports, but every body does 'not believe their evidence. Your brother is positive that there is much of truth in his being undone, and even that there will be a sale of his collection(184) when the town comes to town. I wish for Dr.

Cocchi's sake it be false. I have given your brother Middleton's last piece to send you. Another fellow of Eton(185) has popped out a sermon against the Doctor since his death, with a note to one of the pages, that is the true sublime of ecclesiastic absurdity. He is speaking against the custom of dividing the Bible into chapters and verses, and says it often enc.u.mbers the sense. This note, though long, I must transcribe, for it would wrong the author to paraphrase his nonsense:--"It is to be wished, therefore, I think, that a fair edition were set forth of the original Scriptures, for the use of learned men in their closets, in which there should be no notice, either in text or margin, of chapter, or verse, or paragraph, or any such arbitrary distinctions, (now mind,) and I might go so far as to say even any pointing or stops. It could not but be matter of much satisfaction, and much use, to have it in our power to recur occasionally to such an edition, where the understanding might have full range, free from any external influence from the eye, and the continual danger of being either confined or misguided by it." Well, Dr. Cocchi, do English divines yield to the Romish for refinements in absurdity! did one ever hear of a better way (if making sense of any writing than by reading it without stops! Most of the parsons that read the first and second lessons practise Mr.

Cooke's method of making them intelligible, for they seldom observe any stops. George Selwyn proposes to send the man his own sermon, and desire him to scratch out the stops, in order to help it to some sense.

For the questions in Florentine politics, and who are to be your governors, I am totally ignorant, you must ask Sir Charles Williams; he is the present ruling star of our negotiations.

His letters are as much admired as ever his verses were. He has met the ministers of the two angry empresses, and pacified Russian savageness and Austrian haughtiness. He is to teach the monarch of Prussia to fetch and carry, .@;, unless they happen to treat in iambics, or begin to settle the limits of'

Parna.s.sus instead of' those of Silesia. As he is so good a pacifier, I don't know but we may want his a.s.sistance at home before the end of the winter:

"With secretaries, secretaries jar, And rival bureaus threat approaching war."

Those that deal in elections look still higher, and snuff a new Parliament; but I don't believe the King ill, for the Prince is building baby-houses at Kew; and the Bishop of Oxford has laid aside his views on Canterbury, and is come roundly back to St.

James's for the deanery of St. Paul's.(186) I could not help being diverted the other day with the life of another Bishop of Oxford, one Parker, who, like Secker, set out a Presbyterian, and died King James the Second's arbitrary master of Maudlin College.(187)

M'Lean is condemned, and will hang. I am honourably mentioned in a Grub-street ballad for not having contributed to his sentence. There are as many prints and pamphlets about him as about the earthquake. His profession grows no joke: I was sitting in my own dining-room on Sunday night, the clock had not struck eleven, when I heard a loud cry of "Stop thief!" a highwayman had attacked a postchaise in Picadilly, within fifty yards of this house: the fellow was pursued, rode over the watchman, almost killed him, and escaped. I expect to be robbed some night in my own garden at Strawberry; I have a pond of gold fish, that to be sure they will steal to burn like old lace; and they may very easily, for the springs are so much sunk with this hot summer that I am forced to water my pond once a week! The season is still so fine, that I yesterday, in Kensington town, saw a horse-chestnut tree in second bloom.

As I am in town, and not within the circle of Pope's walks, I may tell you a story without fearing he should haunt me with the ghost of a satire. I went the other day to see little Spence,(188) who fondles an old mother in imitation of Pope.

The good old woman was mighty civil to me, and, among other chat, said she supposed I had a good neighbour in Mr. Pope.

"Lord! Madam, he has been dead these seven years!"--"Ah! ay, Sir, I had forgot." When the poor old soul dies, how Pope will set his mother's spectre upon her for daring to be ignorant "if Dennis be alive or dead!"(189)

(184) His collection was not sold till after his death, in the years 1754 and 1755.

(185) William Cooke.

(186) Dr. Secker. In November he was appointed to the said deanery.-E.

(187) There is the following entry in Evelyn's Diary for March 23, 1687-8: "Dr. Parker, Bishop of Oxford, who so lately published his extraordinary treatise about transubstantiation, and for abrogating the test and penal laws, died. He was esteemed a violent, pa.s.sionate, haughty man; but yet being pressed to declare for the church of Rome, he utterly refused it. A remarkable end."-E.

(188) The Rev. Joseph Spence, author of an Essay on Pope's Odyssey, Polymetus, etc. See vol. i. pp. 27, 65. (He was always strongly attached to his mother. When on his travels, in 1739, he thus wrote to her:--"I am for happiness in my own way, and according to my notions of it, I might as well, and better, have it in living with you, at our cottage in Birchanger, than in any palace. As my affairs stand at present, 'tis likely that we shall have enough to live quite at our ease: when I desire more than that, may I lose what I have!"-E.)

(189) "I was not born for courts or great affairs; I pay my debts, believe, and say my prayers; Can sleep without a poem in my head, Nor know if Dennis be alive or dead."

Pope, Prologue to Satires.-E.

83 Letter 31 To Sir Horace Mann.

Arlington Street, Oct. 18, 1750.

I had determined so seriously to write to Dr. Cocchi a letter myself to thank him for his Baths of Pisa, that it was impossible not to break my resolution. It was to be in Italian, because I thought their superlative issimos would most easily express how much I like it, and I had already gathered a tolerable quant.i.ty together, of entertaining, charming, useful, agreeable, and had cut and turned them into the best sounding!

Tuscan adjectives I could find in my memory or my Crusca: but, alack! when I came to range them, they did not fadge at all; they neither expressed what I would say, nor half what I would say, and so I gave it all up, and am reduced to beg you would say it all for me; and make as many excuses and as many thanks for me as you can, between your receiving this, and your next going to bully Richcourt, or whisper Count Lorenzi. I laughed vastly at your idea of the latter's hopping into matrimony; and I like as much Stainville's jumping into Richcourt's place. If your pedigree, which is on its journey, arrives before his fall, he will not dare to exclude YOU from the libro d'oro-- -why, child, you will find yourself as sumptuously descended as

--"All the blood of all the Howards."

or as the best-bred Arabian mare, that ever neighed beneath Abou-al-eb-saba-bedin-lolo-ab-alnin! But pray now, how does cet homme l'a, as the Princess used to call him, dare to tap the chapter of birth! I thought he had not had a grandfather since the creation, that was not born within these twenty years!-But come, I must tell you news, big news! the treaty of commerce with Spain is arrived signed. n.o.body expected it would ever come, which I believe is the reason it is reckoned so good; for autrement one should not make the most favourable conjectures, as they don't tell us how good it is. In general, they say, the South Sea Company is to have one hundred thousand pounds in lieu of their annual ship; which, if it is not over and above the ninety-five thousand pounds that was allowed to be due to them, it appears to me only as if there were some halfpence remaining when the bill was paid, and the King of Spain had given them to the company to drink his health. What does look well for the treaty is, that stocks rise to highwater mark; and what is to me as clear, is, that the exploded Don Benjamin(190) has repaired what the patriot Lord Sandwich had forgot, or not known to do at Aix-la-Chapelle. I conclude Keene will now come over and enjoy the Sabbath of his toils. He and Sir Charles are the plenipotentiaries in fashion. Pray, brush up your Minyhood and figure too: blow the coals between the Pope and the Venetians, till the Inquisition burns the latter, and they the Inquisition. If you should happen to receive instructions on this head, don't wait for St. George's day before you present your memorial to the Senate, as they say Sir Harry Wotton was forced to do for St. James's, when those aquatic republicans had quarrelled with Paul the Fifth, and James the First thought the best way in the world to broach a schism was by beginning it with a quibble. I have had some Protestant hopes too of a civil war in France, between the King and his clergy: but it is a dull age, and people don't set about cutting one another's throats with any spirit! Robbing is the only thing that goes on with any vivacity, though my friend Mr. M'Lean is hanged.

The first Sunday after his condemnation, three thousand people went to see him; he fainted away twice with the heat of his cell. You can't conceive the ridiculous rage there is of going to Newgate; and the prints that are published of the malefactors, and the memoirs of their lives and deaths set forth with as much parade as--as--Marshal Turenne's--we have no General's worth making a parallel.

The pasquinade was a very great one.(191) When I was desiring YOU to make speeches for me to Dr. Cocchi, I might as well have drawn a bill upon you too in Mr. Chute's name: for I am sure he will never write himself. Indeed, at present he is in his brother's purgatory, and then you will not wonder if he does nothing but pray to get Out of it. I am glad you are getting into a villa: my castle will, I believe, begin to rear its battlements next spring. I have got an immense cargo of painted gla.s.s from Flanders: indeed, several of the pieces are Flemish arms; but I call them the achievements of the old Counts of Strawberry. Adieu!

(190) Benjamin Keene, afterwards knight of the bath, amba.s.sador at Madrid, was exceedingly abused by the Opposition in Sir Robert Walpole's time, under the name of Don Benjamin, for having made the convention in 1739. [Mr. Pelham, in a letter to Mr. Pitt of the 12th of October 1750, announcing the signing of the treaty with Spain, says, "I hope and believe, when you see it and consider the whole, you will be of opinion, that my friend Keene has acted ably, honestly, and bravely; but, poor man! he is so sore with old bruises, that he still feels the smart, and fears another thrashing." See Chatham Correspondence, vol. i. P. 50.)

(191) It alluded to the quarrel between the Pope and the Venetians. Marforio asked Pasquin, "Perche si triste?"- -"Perche mon avremo pi'u Comedia, Pantalone 'e part.i.to."-D.

84 letter 32 To Sir Horace Mann.

Arlington Street, Nov. 19, 1750.

I stayed to write to you, till I could tell you that I had seen Mr. Pelham and Mr. Milbank, and could give you some history of a new administration--but I found it was too long to wait for either. I pleaded with your brother as I did with you against visiting your friends, especially when, to encourage me, he told me that you had given them a very advantageous opinion of me. That is the very reason, says I, why I don't choose to see them: they will be extremely civil to me at first; and then they will be told I have horns and hoofs., and they will shun me, which I should not like. I know how unpopular I am with the people with whom they must necessarily live; and, not desiring to be otherwise, I must either seek your friends where I would most avoid them, or have them very soon grow to avoid me. However, I went and left my name for Mr. Pelham, where your brother told me he lodged, eight days ago; he was to come but that night to his lodgings, and by his telling your brother he believed I had not been, I concluded he would not accept that for a visit; so last Thursday, I left my name for both--to-day is Monday, and I have heard nothing of them--very likely I shall before you receive this--I only mention it to show you that you was in the wrong and I in the right, to think that there would be no empress.e.m.e.nt for an acquaintance. Indeed, I would not mention it, as you will dislike being disappointed by any odd behaviour of your friends, if it were not to justify myself, and convince you of my attention in complying with whatever you desire of me. The King, I hear, commands Mr. Pelham's dancing; and he must like Mr. Milbank, as he distinguished himself much in a tournament of bears at Hanover.

For the Ministry, it is all in shatters: the Duke of Newcastle is returned more averse to the Bedfords than ever: he smothered that Duke with embraces at their first meeting, and has never borne to be in the room with him since. I saw the meeting of Octavia and Cleopatra;(192) the Newcastle was all haughtiness and coldness. Mr. Pelham, who foresaw the storm, had prudently prepared himself for the breach by all kind of invectives against the house of Leveson. The ground of all, besides Newcastle's natural fickleness and jealousy, is, that the Bedford and Sandwich have got the Duke. A crash @as been expected, but people now seem to think that they will rub on a little longer, though all the world seems indifferent whether they will or not. Mankind is so sick of all the late follies and changes, that n.o.body inquires or cares whether the Duke of Newcastle is prime minister, or whom he will a.s.sociate with him. The Bedfords have few attachments, and Lord Sandwich is universally hated. The only difficulty is, who shall succeed them; and it is even a question whether some of the old discarded must not cross over and figure in again. I mean, it has even been said, that Lord Granville(193) will once more be brought upon the stage:-if he should, and should push too forward, could they again persuade people to resign with them?

The other nominees for the secretaryship are, Pitt, the Vienna Sir Thomas Robinson, and even that formal piece of dulness -,it the Hague, Lord Holderness. The talk of the Chancellor's being president, in order to make room, by the promotion of the Attorney to the seals, for his second son(194) to be solicitor, as I believe I once mentioned to you, is revived; though he told Mr. Pelham, that if ever he retired, it should be to Wimple.(195) In the mean time, the Master of the Horse, the Groom of the Stole, the Presidentship, (vacant by the nomination of Dorset to Ireland in the room of Lord Harrington, who is certainly to be given up to his master's dislike,) and the Blues, are still vacant. Indeed, yesterday I heard that Honeywood(196) was to have the latter. Such is the Interregnum of our politics! The Prince's faction lie still, to wait the event, and the disclosing of the new treaty. Your friend Lord Fane,(197) some time ago had a mind to go to Spain: the Duke of Bedford, who I really believe is an honest man, said very bluntly, "Oh! my lord, n.o.body can do there but Keene." Lord North is made governor to Prince George with a thousand a-year, and an earl's patent in his pocket; but as the pa.s.sing of the patent is in the pocket of time, it would not sell for much.

There is a new preceptor, one Scott,(198) recommended by Lord Bolingbroke. You may add that recommendation to the chapter of our wonderful politics. I have received your letter from Fiesoli Hill; poor Strawberry blushes to have you compare it with such a prospect as yours. I say nothing to the abrupt sentences about Mr. B. I have long seen his humour--and a little of your partiality to his wife.

We are alarmed with the distemper being got among the horses: few have died yet, but a farrier who attended General Ligonier's dropped down dead in the stable. Adieu!

(192) The d.u.c.h.eSSES of Newcastle and Bedford.

(193) "So anxious was the Duke of Newcastle to remove his colleague, that he actually proposed either to open a negotiation with Earl Granville for settling a new administration, or to conciliate the Duke of c.u.mberland, without the interposition of Mr. Pelham, by agreeing to subst.i.tute Lord Sandwich in the room of the Duke of Bedford."

c.o.xe's Pelham, vol. ii. p. 137.-E.

(194) Charles Yorke.-D.

(195) Wimpole the Chancellor's seat in Cambridgeshire.

(196) Sir Philip Honeywood, knight of the bath.

(197) Lord Viscount Fane, formerly minister at Florence.

(198) c.o.xe states, that Mr. Scott was recommended to the Prince of Wales by Lord Bathurst, at the suggestion of Lord Bolingbroke, and that he was favoured by the Princess.-E.