The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford Volume II Part 67

(942) The King.

(943) M'untz left Mr. Walpole, and published another account himself.

(944) Laura, this eldest daughter of Sir Edward Walpole, married to Dr. Frederick Keppel, afterwards Dean of Windsor and Bishop of Exeter.

(945) Maria, second daughter, married first to James second Earl of Waldegrave, and afterwards to William Henry Duke of Gloucester, brother to King George the Third.

(946) Edward, only son of Sir Edward Walpole. He died young.

448 Letter 283 To The Rev. Henry Zouch.

Strawberry Hill, September 14, 1758.

Sir, Though the approaching edition of my Catalogue is so far advanced that little part is left now for any alteration, yet as a book of that kind is always likely to be reprinted from the new persons who grow ent.i.tled to a place in it, and as long as it is in my power I shall wish to correct and improve it, I must again thank you, Sir, for the additional trouble you have given yourself. The very first article strikes me much. May I ask where, and in what page of what book, I can find Sir R.

Cotton's account of Richard II.(947) being an author: does not he mean Richard I.?

The Basilicon Doron is published in the folio of K. James's works, and contains instructions to his son, Prince Henry. In return, I will ask you where you find those verses of Herbert; and I would also ask you, how you have had time to find and know so much?

Lord Leicester, and much less the Duke of Monmouth, will scarce, I fear, come under the description I have laid down to myself of authors. I doubt the first did not compose his own Apology.

Did the Earl of Bath publish, or only design to publish, Dionysius?(948) Shall I find the account in Usher's Letters?

Since you are so very kind, Sir, as to favour me with your a.s.sistance, shall I beg, Sir, to prevent my repeating trouble to you, just to mark at any time where you find the notices you impart to Me; for, though the want of a citation is the effect of my ignorance, it has the same consequence to you.

I have not the Philosophical Transactions, but I will hereafter examine them on the hints you mention, particularly for Lord Brounker,(949) who I did not know had written, though I have often thought it probable he did. As I have considered Lord Berkeley's Love-letters, I have no doubt but they are a fiction, though grounded on a real story.

That Lord Falkland was a writer of controversy appears by the list of his works, and that he is said to have a.s.sisted Chillingworth: that he wrote against Chillingworth, you see, Sir, depends upon very vague authority; that is, upon the a.s.sertion of an anonymous person, who wrote so above a hundred years ago.

James, Earl of Marlborough, is entirely a new author to me--at present, too late. Lord Raymond I had inserted, and he will appear in the next edition.

I have been as unlucky, for the present, about Lord Totness.

In a collection published in Ireland, called Hibernica, I found, but too late, that he translated another very curious piece, relating to Richard II. However, Sir, with these, and the very valuable helps I have received from you, I shall be able, at a proper time, to enrich another edition much.

(947) Mr. Walpole takes no notice of Richard II. as an author; but Mr. park inserts this prince as a writer of ballads. In a letter to Archbishop Usher, Sir Robert Cotton requested his grace to procure for him a poem by Richard II. which that prelate had pointed out.-C.

(948) Spelman's is the only English translation of the Antiquities of Dionysius Halicarna.s.sensis, known to be printed.-C.

(949) He wrote several papers in the Philosophical Transactions, and also translated Descartes' Music Compendium.- C.

449 Letter 284 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.(950) Arlington Street, Sept. 19, 1758.

I have all my life laughed at ministers in my letters; but at least with the decency of obliging them to break open the seal.

You have more n.o.ble frankness, and send your satires to the post with not so much as a wafer, as my Lord Bath did sometimes in my father's administration. I scarce laughed more at the inside of your letter than at the cover--not a single b.u.t.ton to the waistband of its beseeches, but all its nakedness fairly laid open! what was worse, all Lady Mary c.o.ke's nakedness was laid open at the same time. Is this your way of treating a dainty widow! What will Mr. Pitt think of all this? will he begin to believe that you have some spirit, when, with no fear of Dr. Shebbeare's example(951) before your eyes, you speak your Mind so freely, without any modification? As Mr. Pitt may be cooled a little to his senses, perhaps he may now find out, that a grain of prudence is no bad ingredient in a ma.s.s of courage; in short, he and the mob are at last undeceived, and have found, by sad experience that all the cannon of France has not been brought into Hyde Park. An account, which you will see in the Gazette, (though a little better disguised than your letters,) is come that after our troops had been set on sh.o.r.e, and left there, till my Lord Howe went somewhere else, and cried Hoop! having nothing else to do for four days to amuse themselves, nor knowing whether there was a town within a hundred miles, went staring about the country to see whether there were any Frenchmen left in France; which Mr. Pitt, in very fine words, had a.s.sured them there was not, and which my Lord Howe, in very fine silence, had confirmed. However, somehow or other, (Mr. Deputy Hodges says they were not French, but Papists sent from Vienna to a.s.sist the King of France,) twelve battalions fell upon our rear-guard, and, which General Blighe says is "very Common," (I suppose he means that rashness and folly should run itself' into a sc.r.a.pe,)--were all cut to pieces or taken. The town says, Prince Edward (Duke of York) ran hard to save himself; I don't mean too fast, but scarcely fast enough; and the General says, that Lord Frederick Cavendish, your friend, is safe; the thing he seems to have thought of most, except a little vain parade of his own self-denial on his nephew. I shall not be at all surprised if, to show he was not in the wrong, Mr. Pitt should get ready another expedition by the depth of winter, and send it in search of the cannons and colours of these twelve battalions.

Pray Heaven your letter don't put it in his head to give you the command! It is not true, that he made the King ride upon one of the cannons to the Tower.

I was really touched with my Lady Howe's advertis.e.m.e.nt,(952) though I own at first it made me laugh; for seeing an address to the voters for Nottingham signed "Charlotte Howe," I concluded (they are so manly a family) that Mrs. Howe,(953) who rides a fox-chase, and dines at the table d'h'ote at Grantham, intended to stand for member of Parliament.

Sir John Armitage died on board a ship before the landing; Lady Hardwickc's nephew, Mr. c.o.c.ks, scarce recovered of his Cherbourg wound, is killed.' He had seven thousand pounds a year, and was volunteer. I don't believe his uncle and aunt advised his venturing so much money.

My Lady Burlington is very ill, and the distemper shows itself oddly; she breaks out all over in-curses and blasphemies. Her maids are afraid of catching them, and will hardly venture into her room.

On reading over your letter again, I begin to think that the connexion between Mr. Pitt and my dainty widow is stronger than I imagined. One of them must have caught of the other that n.o.ble contempt which makes a thing's being impossible not signify. It sounds very well in sensible mouths; but how terrible to be the chambermaid or the army of such people! I really am in a panic, and having some mortal impossibilities about me which a dainty widow might not allow to signify, I will balance a little between her and my Lady Carlisle, who, I believe, knows that impossibilities do signify. These were some of my reflections on reading your letter again; another was, that I am now convinced you sent your letter open to the post on purpose; you knew It was so good a letter that every body ought to see it-and yet you would pa.s.s for a modest man!

I am glad I am not in favour enough to be consulted by my Lord d.u.c.h.ess(954) on the Gothic farm; she would have given me so many fine and unintelligible reasons why it should not be as it should be, that I should have lost a little of my patience.

You don't tell me if the goose-board in hornbean is quite finished; and have you forgot that I actually was in t'other goose-board, the conjuring room?

I wish you joy on your preferment in the militia, though I do not think it quite so safe an employment as it used to be. If George Townshend's disinterested virtue should grow impatient for a regiment, he will persuade Mr. Pitt that the militia arc the only troops in the world for taking Rochfort. Such a scheme would answer all his purposes - would advance his own interest, contradict the Duke's opinion, who holds militia cheap, and by the ridiculousness of the attempt would furnish very good subjects to his talent of buffoonery in black-lead.

The King of Prussia you may believe is in Petersburg, but he happens to be in Dresden. Good night! Mine and Sir Harry Hemlock's services to my Lady Ailesbury.

(950) Now first printed.

(951) Dr. Shebbeare had just before been sentenced to fine, imprisonment, and the pillory for his Sixth Letter to the People of England. The under-sheriff, however, allowed him to stand on, instead of in, the pillory; for which lenity he was prosecuted.-E.

(952 On the news of the death of Lord Howe reaching the dowager Lady Howe, she addressed the gentry, clergy, and freeholders of Nottingham, whom the deceased represented in Parliament, in favour of his next younger brother, Colonel Howe, to supply his place in the House of Commons. "Permit me," she says, "to implore the protection of every one of you, as the mother of him whose life has been lost in the service of his country."

The appeal was responded to, and Colonel, afterwards General Sir William Howe, was returned.-E.

(953) The Hon. Caroline Howe, daughter of the above-mentioned lady , who married her namesake, John Howe, Esq. of Hemslop.-E.

(954) The d.u.c.h.ess of Norfolk. She had planted a game of the goose in hornbean, at Worksop.

451 Letter 285 To Sir Horace Mann.

Strawberry Hill, Sept. 22, 1758.

The confusion of the first accounts and the unwelcomeness of the subject, made me not impatient to despatch another letter so quickly after my last. However, as I suppose the French relations will be magnified, it is proper to let you know the exact truth. Not being content with doing nothing at St.

Maloes, and with being suffered to do all we could at Cherbourg, (no great matter,) our land and sea heroes, Mr. Pitt and Lord Howe, projected a third--I don't know what to call it.

It seems they designed to take St. Maloes, but being disappointed by the weather, they--what do you think? landed fifteen miles from it, with no object nor near any--and lest that should not be absurd enough, the fleet sailed away for another bay, leaving the army with only two cannons. to scramble to them across the country as they could. Nine days they were staring about France; at last they had notice of twelve battalions approaching, on which they stayed a little before they hurried to the transports. The French followed them at a distance, firing from the upper grounds. When the greatest part were reimbarked, the French descended and fell on the rear, on which it Was necessary to sacrifice the Guards to secure the rest. Those brave young men did wonders--that is, they were cut to pieces with great intrepidity. We lost General Dury and ten other officers; Lord Frederick Cavendish with twenty-three others were taken prisoners. In all we have lost seven hundred men, but more shamefully for the projectors and conductors than can be imagined, for no shadow of an excuse can be offered for leaving them so exposed with no purpose or possible advantage, in the heart of an Enemy's country. What heightens the distress. the army sailed from Weymouth with a full persuasion that they were to be sacrificed to the vainglorious whims of a man of words(955) and a man(956) of none!

"Three expeditions we have sent, And if you bid me show where I know as well as those who went, To St. Maloes, Cherbourg, nowhere."

Those, whose trade or amus.e.m.e.nt is politics, may comfort themselves with their darling Prussian; he has strode back over 20 or 30,000 Russians,(957) and stepped into Dresden. They even say that Daun is retired. For my part, it is to inform you, that I dwell at all on these things. I am shocked with the iniquities I see and have seen. I abhor their dealings.

"And from my soul sincerely hate Both Kings and Ministers of State!"

I don't know whether I can attain any goodness by shunning them, I am sure their society is contagious Yet I will never advertise my detestation, for if I professed virtue, I should expect to be suspected of designing to be a minister. Adieu!

you are good, and wilt keep yourself so.

sept. 25th.

I had sealed my letter, but as it cannot go away till to-morrow, I open it again on receiving yours of Sept. 9th. I don't understand Marshal Botta's being so well satisfied with our taking Louisbourg. Are the Austrians disgusted with the French? Do they begin to repent their alliance? or has he so much sense as to know what improper allies they have got? It is very right in you who are a minister, to combat hostile Ministers--had I been at Florence, I should not have so much contested the authority of the Abb'e de Ville's performance: I have no more doubt of' the convention of Closter-Severn having been scandalously broken, than it was shamelessly disavowed by those who commanded it.

In our loss are included some of our volunteers; a Sir John Armitage, a young man of fortune, just come much into the world, and engaged to the sister(958) of the hot-headed and cool-tongued Lord Howe; a Mr. c.o.c.ks, nephew of lady Hardwicke, who could not content himself with seven thousand pounds a-year, without the addition of an ensign's commission - he was not quite recovered of a wound he had got at CHerbourg. The royal volunteer, Prince Edward, behaved with much spirit.

Adieu!

(955) Mr. Pitt.-D.