The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford Volume II Part 69

Cunningham is made quartermaster-general to this equipment; these things don't look as if your interest was increased. As Lord George has sent over his commands for Cunningham, might not his art at the same time have suggested some application to you--tell me, do you think he would ask this command for himself I, who am not of so honest and sincere a nature as you are, suspect that this hint is sent to you with some bad view-I don't mean on Lord Milton's part, who I dare say is deceived by his readiness to serve you; and since you do me the honour of letting me at all judge for you, which in one light I think I am fit to do, I mean, as your spirit naturally makes you overlook every thing to get employed, I would wish you to answer to Lord Milton,,"that you should desire of all things to have had this command, but that having been discouraged from asking what you could not flatter yourself would be granted, it would look, you think, a vain offer, to sue for what is now given away, and would not be consistent with your honour to ask when it is too late." I hint this, as such an answer would turn their arts on themselves, if, as I believe, they mean to refuse you, and to reproach you with asking too late.

If the time is come for Mr. Pitt to want you, you will not long be unemployed; if it is not, then you would get nothing by asking. Consider, too, how much more graceful a reparation of your honour it will be, to have them forced to recall you, than to force yourself on desperate service, as if you yourself, not they, had injured your reputation.

I can say nothing now on any other chapter, this has so much engrossed all my thoughts. I see no one reason upon earth for your asking now. If you ever should ask again, you will not want opportunities; and the next time you ask, will have just the same merit that this could have, and by asking in time, would be liable to none of the objections of that sort which I have mentioned! Adieu! Timeo Lord George et dona.

(970) Now first printed.

(971) To the command of an expedition against Martinique.-E.

(972) Mr. Fox.

(973) Lord Bute says, in a letter to Mr. Pitt, of the 8th of September, "With regard to Clarke, I know him well: he must be joined to a general in whom he has confidence, or not thought of. Never was man so cut out for bold and hardy enterprises; but the person who commands him must think in the same way of him, or the affair of Rochfort will return." Chatham Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 350.-E.

459 Letter 290 To The Rev. Henry Zouch.

Strawberry Hill, Oct. 21st, 1758.

Sir, Every letter I receive from you is a new obligation, bringing me new information; but, sure, my Catalogue was not worthy of giving you so much trouble. Lord Fortescue is quite new to me: I have sent him to the press. Lord Dorset's poem it will be unnecessary to mention separately, as I have already said that his works are to be found among those of the minor poets.

I don't wonder, Sir, that you prefer Lord Clarendon to Polybius; nor can two authors well be more unlike: the former(974) wrote a general history in a most obscure and almost unintelligible style; the latter-, a portion of private history, in the n.o.blest style in the world. Whoever made the comparison, I will do them the justice to believe that they understood bad Greek better than their own language in its elevation.

For Dr. Jortin's Erasmus, which I have very nearly finished, it has given me a good opinion of the author, and he has given me a very bad one of his subject. By the Doctor's labour and impartiality, Erasmus appears a begging parasite, who had parts enough to discover truth, and not courage enough to profess it: whose vanity made him always writing; yet Ills writings ought to have cured his vanity, as they were the most abject things in the world. Good Erasmus's honest mean was alternate time-serving. I never had thought much about him, and now heartily despise him.

When I speak my opinion to you, Sir, about what I dare say you care as little for as I do, (for what is the merit of a mere man of letters?) it is but fit I should answer you as sincerely on a question about which you are so good as to interest yourself. that my father's life is likely to be written, I have no grounds for believing. I mean I know n.o.body that thinks of it. For myself, I certainly shall not, for many reasons, which you must have the patience to hear. A reason to me myself is, that I think too highly of him, and too meanly of myself, to presume I am equal to the task. They who do not agree with me in the former part of my position, will undoubtedly allow the latter part. In the next place, the very truths that I should relate would be so much imputed to partiality, that he would lose of his due praise by the suspicion of my prejudice. In the next place, I was born too late in his life to be acquainted with him in the active part of it. Then I was at school, at the university, abroad, and returned not till the last moments of his administration. What I know of him I could only learn from his own mouth in the last three years of his life; when, to my shame, I was so idle, and young, and thoughtless, that I by no means profited of his leisure as I might have done; and, indeed, I have too much impartiality in my nature to care, if I could, to give the world a history, collected solely from the person himself of whom I should write. With the utmost veneration for his truth, I can easily conceive, that a man who had lived a life of party, and who had undergone such persecution from party, should have had greater bias than he himself could be sensible of. The last, and that a reason which must be admitted, if all the others are not--his papers are lost. Between the confusion of his affairs, and the indifference of my elder brother to things of that sort, they were either lost, burnt, or what we rather think, were stolen by a favourite servant of my brother, who proved a great rogue, and was dismissed in my brother's life; and the papers were not discovered to be missing till after my brother's death. Thus, Sir, I should want vouchers for many things I could say of much importance. I have another personal reason that discourages me from attempting this task, or any other, besides the great reluctance that I have to being a voluminous author. Though I am by no means the learned man you are so good as to call me in compliment; though, on the contrary, nothing can be more superficial than my knowledge, or more trifling than my reading,--yet, I have so much strained my eyes, that it is often painful to me to read even a newspaper by daylight. In short, Sir, having led a very dissipated life, in all the hurry of the world of pleasures scarce ever read, but by candlelight, after I have come home late at nights. As my eyes have never had the least inflammation or humour, I am a.s.sured I may still recover them by care and repose. I own I prefer my eyes to any thing I could ever read, much more to any thing I could write. However, after all I have said, perhaps I may now and then, by degrees, throw together some short anecdotes of my father's private life and particular story, and leave his public history to more proper and more able hands, if such will undertake it. Before I finish on this chapter, I can a.s.sure you he did forgive my Lord Bolingbroke(975)--his nature was forgiving: after all was over, and he had nothing to fear or disguise, I can say with truth, that there were not three men of whom he ever dropped a word with rancour. What I meant of the clergy not forgiving Lord Bolingbroke, alluded not to his doctrines, but to the direct attack and war he made on the whole body. And now, Sir, I will confess my own weakness to you. I do not think so highly of that writer, as I seem to do in my book; but I thought it would be imputed to prejudice in me, if I appeared to undervalue an author of whom so many persons of sense still think highly. My being Sir Robert Walpole's son warped me to praise, instead of censuring, Lord Bolingbroke. With regard to the Duke of Leeds, I think you have misconstrued the decency of my expression. I said, Burnet had treated him severely; that is, I chose that Burnet should say so, rather than myself. I have never praised where my heart condemned. Little attentions, perhaps, to worthy descendants, were excusable in a work of so extensive a nature, and that approached so near to these times. I may, perhaps, have an opportunity at one day or other of showing you some pa.s.sages suppressed on these motives, which yet I do not intend to destroy.

Crew, Bishop of Durham, was is abject a tool as possible. I would be very certain he is an author before I should think him worth mentioning. If ever you should touch on Lord Willoughby's sermon, I should be obliged for a hint of it. I actually have a printed copy of verses by his son, on the marriage of the Princess Royal; but they are so ridiculously unlike measure, and the man was so mad and so poor,(976) that I determined not to mention them.

If these details, Sir, which I should have thought interesting to no mortal but myself', should happen to amuse you, I shall be glad; if they do not, you will learn not to question a man who thinks it his duty to satisfy the curiosity of men of sense and honour, and who, being of too little consequence to have secrets, is not ambitious of the less consequence of appearing to have any.

P. S. I must ask you one question, but to be answered entirely at your leisure. I have a play in rhyme called Saul, said to be written by a peer. I guess Lord Orrery. If ever you happen to find out, be so good to tell me.

(974) It is evident that Mr. Walpole has here transposed, contrary to his meanings the references to lord Clarendon and Polybius: the latter wrote the general history, the former the portion of history.-C.

(975) This alludes to an epigrammatic pa.s.sage in the article "Bolingbroke" in the n.o.ble Authors. "He wrote against Sir Robert Walpole, who did forgive him; and against the clergy, who never will forgive him."@.

(976) this seems a singular reason for excluding him from a list of authors@-C.

462 Letter 291 To George Montagu, Esq.

Arlington Street, Oct. 24, 1758.

I am a little sorry that my preface, like the show-cloth to a sight, entertained you more than the bears it invited you in to see. I don't mean that I am not glad to have written any thing that meets your approbation, but if Lord Whitworth's work is not better than my preface, I fear he has much less merit than I thought he had.

Your complaint of your eyes makes me feel for you: mine have been very weak again, and I am taking the bark, which did them so much service last year. I don't know how to give up the employment of them, I mean reading; for as to writing, I am absolutely winding up my bottom, for twenty reasons. The first, and perhaps the best, I have writ enough. The next; by what I have writ, the world thinks I am not a fool, which was just what I wished them to think, having always lived in terror of that oracular saying Ermu naidex luchoi, which Mr. Bentley translated with so much more parts than the vain and malicious hero could have done that set him the task, --I mean his father, the sons of heroes are loobies. My last reason is, I find my little stock of reputation very troublesome, both to maintain and to undergo the consequences--it has dipped me in erudite correspondences--I receive letters every week that compliment my learning; now, as there is nothing I hold so cheap as a learned man, except an unlearned one, this t.i.tle Is insupportable to me; if' I have not a care, I shall be called learned, till somebody abuses me for not being learned, as they, not I, fancied I was. In short, I propose to have nothing more to do with the world, but divert myself in it as an obscure pa.s.senger--pleasure, virt'u, politics, and literature, I have tried them all, and have had enough of them.

Content and tranquillity, with now and then a little of three of them, that I may not grow morose, shall satisfy the rest of a life that is to have much idleness, and I hope a little goodness; for politics--a long adieu! With some of the Cardinal de Retz's experience, though with none of his genius, I see the folly of taking a violent part without any view, (I don't mean to commend a violent part with a view, that is still worse;) I leave the state to be scrambled for by Mazarine, at once cowardly and enterprising, ostentatious, jealous, and false; by Louvois, rash and dark; by Colbert, the affecter of national interest, with designs not much better; and I leave the Abb'e de la Rigbi'ere to sell the weak Duke of Orleans to whoever has money to buy him, or would buy him to get money; at least these are my present reflections--if I should change them to-morrow, remember I am not only a human creature, but that I am I, that is, one of the weakest of human creatures, and so sensible of my fickleness that I am sometimes inclined to keep a diary of my mind, as people do of the weather. To-day you see it temperate, to-morrow it may again blow politics and be stormy; for while I have so much quicksilver left, I fear my pa.s.sionometer will be susceptible of sudden changes. What do years give one? Experience; experience, what? Reflections; reflections, what? nothing that I ever could find--nor can I well agree with Waller, that

"The soul's dark cottage, batter'd and decay'd, Lets in new light through c.h.i.n.ks that time has made."

c.h.i.n.ks I am afraid there are, but instead of new light, I find nothing but darkness visible, that serves only to discover sights of Wo. I look back through my c.h.i.n.ks--I find errors, follies, faults; forward, old age and death, pleasures fleeting from me, no virtues succeeding to their place--il faut avouer, I want all my quicksilver to make such a background receive any other objects!

I am glad Mr. Frederick Montagu thinks so well of me as to be sure I shall be glad to see him without an invitation. For you, I had already perceived that you would not come to Strawberry this year. Adieu!

463 Letter 292 To Sir Horace Mann.

Strawberry Hill, Oct. 24, 1758.

It is a very melancholy present I send you here, my dear Sir; yet, considering the misfortune that has befallen us, perhaps the most agreeable I could send you. You will not think it the bitterest tear you have shed when you drop one over this plan of an urn inscribed with the name of your dear brother, and with the testimonial of my eternal affection to him! This little monument is at last placed over the pew of your family at Linton, and I doubt whether any tomb was ever erected that spoke so much truth of the departed, and flowed from so much sincere friendship in the living. The thought was my own, adopted from the antique columbaria, and applied to Gothic.

The execution of the design was Mr. Bentley's, who alone, of all mankind, could unite the grace of Grecian architecture and the irregular lightness and solemnity of Gothic. Kent and many of our builders sought this, but have never found it. Mr.

Chute, who has as much taste @s Mr. Bentley, thinks this little sketch a perfect model. The soffite is more beautiful than any thing of either style separate. There is a little error in the inscription; it should be Horatius Walpole posuit. The urn is of marble, richly polished; the rest of stone. On the whole, I think there is simplicity and decency, with a degree of ornament that destroys neither.

What do you say in Italy on the a.s.sa.s.sination of the King of Portugal? Do you believe that Portuguese subjects lift their hand against a monarch for gallantry? Do you believe that when a slave murders an absolute prince, he goes a walking with his wife the next morning and murders her too'! Do you believe the dead King is alive? and that the Jesuits are as wrongfully suspected of this a.s.sa.s.sination as they have been of many others they have committed? If you do believe this, and all this, you are not very near turning Protestants. It is scarce talked of here, and to save trouble, we admit just what the Portuguese minister is ordered to publish. The King of Portugal murdered, throws us two hundred years back--the King of Prussia not murdered, carries us two hundred years forward again.

Another King, I know, has had a little blow: the Prince de Soubise has beat some Isenbourgs and Obergs, and is going to be Elector of Hanover this winter. There has been a great sickness among our troops in the other German army; the Duke of Marlborough has been in great danger, and some officers are dead. Lord Frederick Cavendish is returned from France. He confirms and adds to the amiable accounts we had received of the Duc d'Aiguillon's behaviour to our prisoners. You yourself, the pattern of attentions and tenderness, could not refine on what he has done both in good-nature and good-breeding: he even forbad any ringing of bells or rejoicings wherever they pa.s.sed--but how your representative blood will curdle when you hear of the absurdity of one of your countrymen: the night after the ma.s.sacre at St. Cas, the Duc d'Aiguillon gave a magnificent supper of eighty covers to our prisoners--a Colonel Lambert got up at the bottom of the table, and asking for a b.u.mper, called out to the Duc, "My Lord Duke, here's the Roy de France!" You must put all the English you can crowd into the accent. My Lord Duke was so confounded at this preposterous compliment, which it was impossible for him to return, that he absolutely sank back into his chair and could not utter a syllable: our own people did not scorn to feel more.

You will read and hear that we have another expedition sailing, somewhither in the West Indies. Hobson, the commander, has in his whole life had but one stroke of a palsy, so possibly may retain half of his understanding at least. There is great tranquillity at home, but I should think not promising duration. The disgust in the army on the late frantic measures will furnish some warmth probably to Parliament--and if the French should think of returning our visits, should you wonder?

There are even rumours of some stirring among your little neighbours at Albano--keep your eye on them--if you could discover any thing in time, it would do you great credit.

Apropos to them,, I will send you an epigram that I made the other day on Mr. Chute's asking why Taylor the oculist called himself Chevalier.

Why Taylor the quack calls himself Chevalier, 'Tis not easy a reason to render; Unless he would own, what his practice makes clear, That at best he is but a Pretender.

465 Letter 293 To George Montagu, Esq.

Arlington Street, Nov. 26, 1758.

How can you make me formal excuses for sending me a few covers to frank? Have you so little right to any act of friendship from me, that you should apologize for making me do what is scarce any act at all? However, your man has not called for the covers, although they have been ready this fortnight.

I shall be very glad to see your brother in town, but I cannot quite take him in full of payment. I trust you will stay the longer for coming the later. There is not a syllable of news.

The Parliament is met, but empty and totally oppositionless.

Your great Cu moved in the lords, but did not shine much. The great Cu of all Cues is out of order, not in danger, but certainly breaking.

My eyes are performing such a strict quarantine, that you must excuse my brevity. Adieu.

465 Letter 294 To Sir Horace Mann.

Arlington Street, Nov. 27, 1758.

it seems strange that at this time of the year, with armies still in the field and Parliaments in town, I should have had nothing to tell you for above a month--yet so it was. The King caught cold on coming to town, and was very ill,(977) but the gout, which had never been at court above twice in his reign, came, seized his foot a little, and has promised him at least five or six years more--that is, if he will take care of himself; but yesterday, the coldest day we have felt, he would go into the drawing-room, as if he was fond of showing the new stick @e is forced to walk with.

The Parliament is all harmony, and thinks of nothing but giving away twelve more millions. Mr. Pitt made the most artful speech he ever made: provoked, called for, defied objections; promised enormous expense, demanded never to be judged by events. Universal silence left him arbiter of his own terms.

In short, at present he is absolute master, and if he can coin twenty millions may command them. He does every thing, the Duke of Newcastle gives every thing. As long as they can agree in this part.i.tion, they may do what they will.

We have been in great anxiety for twenty-four hours to learn the fate of Dresden, and of the King of resources, as Mr.

Beckford called the King of Prussia the other day. We heard that while he was galloped to raise the siege of Neiss, Marshal Daun was advanced to Dresden; that Schmettau had sent to know if he meant to attack it, having orders to burn the Fauxbourgs and defend it street by street; that Daun not deigning a reply, the Conflagration had been put in execution; that the King was posting back, and Dohna advancing to join him. We expect to hear either of the demolition of the city, or of a b.l.o.o.d.y decision fought under the walls--an account is just arrived that Daun(978) is retired, thus probably the campaign is finished, and another year of ma.s.sacre to come. One could not but be anxious at such a crisis-one felt for Dresden, and pitied the Prince Royal shut up in his own capital, a mere spectator of its destruction; one trembled for the decisive moment of the life of such a man as the King of Prussia. It is put off--yet perhaps he will scarce recover so favourable a moment. He had a.s.sembled his whole force, except a few thousands left to check the Swedes. Next year this force must be again parcelled out against Austrians, Russians, Swedes, and possibly French. He must be more than a King Of resources if he can for ever weather such tempests!