The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford Volume II Part 62

Sir Charles Williams's disorder appears to have been lightheadedness from a fever; he goes about again; but the world, especially a world of enemies, never care to give up their t.i.tle to a man's madness, and will consequently not believe that he is yet in his senses.(885)

Lord Bristol certainly goes to Spain; no successor is named for Turin. You know how much I love a prescriptive situation for you, and how I should fear a more eminent one--and yet you see I notify Turin being open, if you should care to push for it.

It is not to recommend it to you that I tell you of it, but I think it my duty as your friend not to take upon me to decide for you without acquainting you.

I rejoice at Admiral Osborn's Success. I am not patriot enough to deny but that there are captains and admirals whose glory would have little charms for me; but Osborn was a steady friend of murdered Byng!

The Earl and Countess of Northumberland have diverted the town with a supper, which they intended should make their court to my Lady Yarmouth; the dessert was a cha.s.se at Herenhausen, the rear of which was brought up by a chaise and six containing a man with a blue riband and a lady sitting by him! Did you ever hear such a vulgarism! The person complimented is not half so German, and consequently suffered martyrdom at this clumsy apotheosis of her concubinage. Adieu!

(885) On hearing, at Padua, of Sir Charles's indisposition, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, in a letter to her daughter, the Countess of Bute, on the 17th of July, breaks out into the following striking reflections:--"I hear that my old acquaintance is much broken, both in his spirits and const.i.tution. How happy might that man have been, if there had been added to his natural and acquired endowments a dash of morality! If he had known how to distinguish between false and true felicity; and, instead of seeking to increase an estate already too large, and hunting after pleasures that have made him rotten and ridiculous, he had bounded his desires of wealth, and followed the dictates of his conscience! His servile ambition has gained him two yards of red riband and an exile into a miserable country, where there is no society, and so little taste, that I believe he suffers under a dearth of flatterers. This is said for the use of your growing sons, whom I hope no golden temptations will induce to marry women they cannot love, or comply with measures they do not approve.

All the happiness this world can afford is more within reach than is generally supposed. A wise and honest man lives to his own heart, without that silly splendour that makes him a prey to knaves, and which commonly ends in his becoming one of the fraternity." Works, vol. iii. p. 160.-E.

419 Letter 259 To The Rev. Dr. Birch.

Arlington Street, May 4, 1758.

Sir, I thought myself very unlucky in being abroad when you were so good as to call here t'other day. I not only lost the pleasure of your company, but the opportunity of obtaining from you (what however I will not despair of) any remarks you may have made on the many errors which I fear you found in my book.(886) The hurry in which it was written, my natural carelessness and insufficiency, must have produced many faults and mistakes. As the curiosity of the world, raised I believe only by the smallness Of the number printed, makes it necessary for me to provide another edition, I should be much obliged to whoever would be enough my friend to point out my wrong judgments and inaccuracies,--I know n.o.body, Sir, more capable Of both offices than yourself, and yet I have no pretensions to ask so great a favour, unless your own zeal for the cause of literature should prompt you to undertake a little of this task. I shall be always ready to correct my faults, never to defend them.

(886) " The Catalogue of Royal and n.o.ble Authors," of which Walpole had just printed three hundred copies, at the Strawberry Hill press.-E.

420 Letter 260 To George Montagu, Esq.

Arlington Street, May 4, 1758.

You are the first person, I believe, that ever thought of a Swiss transcribing Welsh, unless, like some commentator on the Scriptures, you have discovered great affinity between those languages, and that both are dialects of the Phoenician. I have desired your brother to call here to-day, and to help us in adjusting the inscriptions. I can find no Lady Cutts in your pedigree, and till I do, cannot accommodate her with a coronet.

My book is marvellously in fashion, to my great astonishment.

I did not expect so much truth and such notions of liberty would have made their fortune in this our day. I am preparing an edition for publication, and then I must expect to be a little less civilly treated. My Lord Chesterfield tells every body that he subscribes to all my opinions; but this mortifies me about as much as the rest flatter me I cannot, because it is my own case, forget how many foolish books he has diverted himself with commending The most extraordinary thing I have heard about mine is, that it being talked of at lord Arran's table, Doctor King, the Dr. King of Oxford, said of the pa.s.sage on my father; "It is very modest, very genteel, and VEry TRUE."

I asked my Lady Cardigan if she would forgive my making free with her grandmother;(887) she replied very sensibly, "I am sure she would not have hindered any body from writing against me; why should I be angry at any writing against her?"

The history promised you of Dr. Brown is this. Sir Charles Williams had written an answer to his first silly volume of the Estimate,(888) chiefly before he came over, but finished while he was confined at Kensington. Brown had lately lodged in the same house, not mad now, though he has been so formerly. The landlady told Sir Charles, and offered to make affidavit that Dr. Brown was the most profane cursor and swearer that ever came into her house. Before I proceed in my history, I will tell you another anecdote of this great performer: one of his antipathies is the Opera, yet the only time I ever saw him was in last Pa.s.sion-week singing the Romish Stabat mater with the Mingotti, behind a harpsichord at a great concert at my Lady Carlisle's. Well--in a great apprehension of Sir Charles divulging the story of his swearing, Brown went to Dodsley in a most scurrilous and hectoring manner, threatening Dodsley if he should publish any thing personal against him; abusing Sir Charles for a coward and most abandoned man, and bidding Dodsley tell the latter that he had a cousin in the army who would call Sir Charles to account for any reflections on him, Brown. Stay; this Christian message from a divine, who by the way has a chapter in his book against duelling, is not all: Dodsley refused to carry any such message, unless in writing.

The Doctor, enough in his senses to know the consequences of this, refused; and at last a short verbal message, more decently worded, was agreed on. To this Sir Charles made Dodsley write down this answer: "that he could not but be surprised at Brown's message, after that he Sir Charles, had, at Ranby's desire, sent Brown a written a.s.surance that he intended to say nothing personal of him--nay, nor should yet, unless Brown's impertinence made it necessary." This proper reply Dodsley sent: Brown wrote back, that he should send an answer to Sir Charles himself; but bid Dodsley take notice, that printing the works of a supposed lunatic might be imputed to the printer himself, and which he, the said Doctor, should chastise. Dodsley, after notifying this new and unprovoked insolence to me, Fox, and Garrick, the one friend of Sir Charles, the other of Brown, returned a very proper, decent, yet firm answer, with a.s.surances of repaying chastis.e.m.e.nt of any sort. Is it credible? this audacious man sent only a card back, saying, "Footman's language I never return, J. Brown."

You know how decent, humble, inoffensive a creature Dodsley is; how little apt to forget or disguise his having been a footman!

but there is no exaggerating this behaviour by reflections. On the same card he tells Dodsley that he cannot now accept, but returns his present of the two last volumes of his collection of poems, and a.s.sures him that they are not soiled by the reading. But the best picture of him is his own second volume, which beats all the Scaligers and Scioppins's for vanity and insolent impertinence. What is delightful; in the first volume he had deified Warburton, but the success of that trumpery has made Warburton jealous, and occasioned a coolness--but enough of this jackanapes.

Your brother has been here, and as he is to go to-morrow, and the pedigree is not quite finished, and as you will be impatient, and as it is impossible for us to transcribe Welsh which we cannot read without your a.s.sistance, who don't understand it neither, we have determined that the Colonel should carry the pedigree to you; you will examine it and bring it with you to Strawberry, where it can be finished under your own eye, better than it is possible to do without. Adieu! I have not writ so long a letter this age.

(887) Sarah, d.u.c.h.ess of Marlborough.

(888) Estimate of the Manners of the Times. See ant'e, p. 232, letter 119.-E.

422 Letter 261 To Sir Horace Mann.

Arlington Street, May 31, 1758.

This is rather a letter of thanks than of course, though I have received, I verily believe, three from you since my last.

Well, then, this is to thank you for them too--chiefly for that of to-day, with the account of the medals you have purchased for me from Stosch, and those your own munificence bestows on me. I am ashamed to receive the latter; I must positively know what you paid for the former; and beg they may all be reserved till a very safe opportunity. The price for the Ganymede is so monstrous that I must not regret not having it--yet if ever he should lower, I should still have a hankering, as it is one of the finest medals I ever saw. Are any of the others in silver?

old Stosch had them so. When any of the other things I mentioned descend to more mortal rates, I would be sorry to lose them.

Should not you, if you had not so much experienced the contrary, imagine that services begot grat.i.tude? You know they don't--Shall I tell you what they do beget?--at best, expectations of more services. This is my very case now--you have just been delivered of one trouble for me--I am going to get you with twins--two more troubles. In the first place, I shall beg you to send me a case of liqueurs; in the next all the medals in copper of my poor departed friend the Pope, for whom I am as much concerned as his subjects have reason to be.

I don't know whether I don't want samples of his coins, and the little pieces struck during the sede vacante. I know what I shall want, any authentic anecdotes of the conclave. There!

are there commissions enough? I did receive the Pope's letter on my inscription, and the translation of the epitaph on Theodore, and liked both much, and thought I had thanked you for them--but I perceive I am not half so grateful as troublesome.

Here is the state of our news and politics. We thought our foreign King(889) on the road to Vienna: he is now said to be prevented by Daun, and to be reduced to besiege Olmutz, which has received considerable supplies. Accounts make Louisbourgh reduced to wait for being taken by us as the easiest way of avoiding being starved.--In short, we are to be those unnatural fowl, ravens that carry bread. But our biggest of all expectations is from our own invasion of France, which took post last Sunday; fourteen thousand landmen, eighteen ships of the line, frigates, sloops, bombs, and four volunteers, Lord Downe, Sir James Lowther, Sir John Armitage, and Mr. Delaval-- the latter so ridiculous a character, that it has put a stop to the mode that was spreading. All this commanded by Lord Anson, who has beat the French; by the Duke of Marlborough, whose name has beaten them; and by Lord George Sackville, who is to beat them. Every port and town on the coast of Flanders and France have been guessed for the object. It is a vast armament, whether it succeeds or is lost.

At home there are seeds of quarrels. Pratt the attorney-general has fallen on a necessary extension of the Habeas Corpus to private cases. The interpreting world ascribes his motive to a want of affection for my Lord Mansfield, who unexpectedly is supported by the late Chancellor, the Duke of Newcastle, and that part of the ministry; and very expectedly by Mr. Fox, as this is likely to make a breach between the united powers. The bill pa.s.sed almost unanimously through our House. It will have a very different fate in the other, where Lord Temple is almost single in its defence, and where Mr. Pitt seems to have little influence. If this should produce a new revolution, you will not be surprised. I don't know that it will; but it has already shown how little cordiality subsists since the last.

I had given a letter for you to a young gentleman of Norfolk, an only son, a friend of Lord Orford, and of much merit, who was going to Italy with Admiral Broderick. He is lost in that dreadful catastrophe of the Prince George--it makes one regret him still more, as the survivors mention his last behaviour with great encomiums.

Adieu! my dear child! -when I look back on my letter, I don't know whether there would not be more propriety in calling you my factor.

P. S. I cannot yet learn who goes to Turin: it was offered upon his old request, to my Lord Orford but he has declined it.

(889) The King of Prussia.

423 Letter 262 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.

Arlington Street, June 4, 1758.

The Habeas Corpus is finished, but only for this year. Lord Temple threatened to renew it the next; on which Lord Hardwicke took the party of proposing to order the judges to prepare a bill for extending the power of granting the writ in vacation to all the judges. This prevented a division; though Lord Temple, who protested alone t'other day, had a flaming protest ready, which was to have been signed by near thirty. They sat last night till past nine. Lord Mansfield spoke admirably for two hours and twenty-five minutes. Except Lord Ravensworth and the Duke of Newcastle, whose meaning the first never knows himself, and the latter's n.o.body else, all who spoke spoke well: they were Lord Temple, Lord Talbot, Lord Bruce, and Lord Stanhope, for; Lord Morten, Lord Hardwicke, and Lord Mansfield, against the bill.(890) T'other day in our House, we had Lady Ferrars' affair: her sister was heard, and Lord Westmoreland, who had a seat within the bar. Mr. Fox opposed the settlement; but it pa.s.sed.

The Duke of Grafton has resigned. Norborne Berkeley has converted a party of pleasure into a campaign, and is gone with the expedition,(891) without a shirt but what he had on, and what is lent him. The night he sailed he had invited women to supper. Besides him, and those you know, is a Mr. Sylvester Smith. Every body was asking, "But who is Sylvester Smith?"

Harry Townshend replied, "Why, he is the son of Delaval, who was the son of Lowther, who was the son of Armitage, who was the son of Downe."(892)

The fleet sailed on Thursday morning. I don't know why, but the persuasion is that they will land on this side Ushant, and that we shall hear some events by Tuesday or Wednesday. Some believe that Lord Anson and Howe have different destinations.

Rochfort, where there are twenty thousand men, is said positively not to be the place. the King says there are eighty thousand men and three marshals in Normandy and Bretagne.

George Selwyn asked General Campbell, if the ministry had yet told the King the object?

Mademoiselle de l'Enclos is arrived,(893) to my supreme felicity. I cannot say very handsome or agreeable: but I had been prepared on the article of her charms. I don't say, like Henry VIII. of Anne of Cleves, that she is a Flanders mare, though to be sure she Is rather large: on the contrary, I bear it as well as ever prince did who was married by proxy-and she does not find me frica.s.s'e dans de la neige."(894) Adieu!

P. S. I forgot to tell you of another galanterie I have had, -a portrait of Queen Elizabeth left here while I was out of town.

The servant said it was a present, but he had orders not to say from whom.

(890) Lord Bute thus bewails the fate of the bill, in a letter to Mr. Pitt of the same day: "What a terrible proof was Friday, in the House of Lords, of the total loss of public spirit, and the most supreme indifference to those valuable rights, for the obtaining which our ancestors freely risked both life and fortune! These are dreadful clouds that hang over the future accession, and damp the hopes I should otherwise entertain of that important day." Chatham Correspondence, vol. i. p. 317.-E.

(891) The expedition against St. Maloes.

(892) All these gentlemen had been volunteers on successive expeditions to the coast of France.

(893) The portrait of ninon de l'Enclos.

(894) Madame de S'evign'e, in her letters to her daughter, reports that Ninon thus expressed herself relative to her son, the Marquis de Sevign'e, who was one of her lovers.

424 Letter 263 To Dr. Ducarel.