The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford Volume II Part 73

482 Letter 310 To Sir David Dalrymple.(1016) Strawberry Hill, March 25, 1759.

I should not trouble you, Sir, so soon again with a letter, but some questions and some pa.s.sages in yours seem to make it necessary. I know nothing of the Life of Gustavus, nor heard of it, before it was advertised. Mr. Harte(1017) was a favoured disciple of Mr. Pope, whose obscurity he imitated more than his l.u.s.tre. Of the History of the Revival of Learning I have not heard a word. Mr. Gray a few years ago began a poem on that subject; but dropped it, thinking it would cross too much upon some parts of the Dunciad. It would make a signal part of a History of Learning which I lately proposed to Mr. Robertson.

Since I wrote to him, another subject has started to me, which would make as agreeable a work, both to the writer and to the reader, as any I could think of; and would be a very tractable one, because capable of being extended or contracted as the author should please. It is the History of the House of Medici.(1018) There is an almost unknown republic, factions, banishment, murders, commerce, conquests, heroes, cardinals, all of a new stamp, and very different from what appear in any other country. There is a scene of little polite Italian courts, where gallantry and literature were uncommonly blended, particularly in that of Urbino, which without any violence might make an episode. The Popes on the greater plan enter of course. What a morsel Leo the Tenth! the revival of letters!(1019) the torrent of Greeks that imported them! Extend still farther, there are Catherine and Mary, Queens of France.

In short, I know nothing one could wish in a subject that would not fall into this--and then it is a Complete Subject, the family is extinct: even the state is so, as a separate dominion.

I could not help smiling, Sir, at being taxed with insincerity for my encomiums on Scotland. They were given in a manner a little too serious to admit of irony, and (as partialities cannot be supposed entirely ceased) with too much risk of disapprobation in this part of the world, not to flow from my heart. My friends have long known my opinion on this point, and it is too much formed on fact for me to retract it, if I were so disposed. With regard to the magazines and reviews, I can say with equal and great truth, that I have been much more hurt at a gross defence of me than by all that railing.

Mallet still defers his life of the Duke of Marlborough;(1020) I don't know why: sometimes he says he will stay till the peace; sometimes that he is translating it, or having it translated into French, that he may not lose that advantage.

(1016) Now first collected.

(1017) Walter Harte was tutor to Mr. Stanhope, Lord Chesterfield's natural son, and through bis lordship's interest made canon of Windsor. Dr. Johnson describes him as a scholar, and a man of the most companionable talents he had ever known."

"Poor man!" he adds, "he left London the day of the publication of his book, that he might be out of the way of the great praise he was to receive; and he was ashamed to return, when he found how ill his book had succeeded. It was unlucky in coming out on the same day with Robertson's History of Scotland." See Boswell, vol. viii. p. 53. Lord Chesterfield writes to his son, on the 30th of March, "Harte's work will, upon the whole, be a very curious and valuable history. You will find it dedicated to one of your acquaintance, who was forced to prune the luxuriant praises bestowed upon him, and yet has left enough of all conscience to satisfy a reasonable man."-E.

(1018) It was afterwards written in five volumes in quarto, from authentic doc.u.ments furnished by the Great-Duke himself.

It was published in Florence in 1781, and was ent.i.tled "Istoria del Gran Ducato di Toscana sotto il Governo delta Casa Medici, per Riguccio Galuzzi."-E.

(1019) Mr. Roscoe's Life of Lorenzo do' Medici appeared in 1796, and his Life and Pontificate of Leo the Tenth in 1805.-E.

(1020) See vol. i. p. 393, letter 151.

484 Letter 311 To Sir Horace Mann.

Arlington Street, April 11, 1759.

I have waited and waited, in hopes of sending you the rest of Martinico or Guadaloupe; nothing else, as you guessed, has happened, or I should -have told you. But at present I can stay no longer, for I, who am a little more expeditious than a squadron, have made a conquest myself, and in less than a month since the first thought started. I hurry to tell you, lest you should go and consult the map of Middles.e.x, to see -whether I have any dispute about boundaries with the neighbouring Prince of Isleworth, or am likely to have fitted out a secret expedition upon Hounslow Heath--in short, I have married, that is, am marrying, my niece Maria,(1021) my brother's second daughter, to Lord Waldegrave.(1022) What say you? A month ago I was told he liked her.--does he? I jumbled them together, and he has Already proposed. For character and credit, he is the first match in England-for beauty, I think she is. She has not a fault in her face and person, and the detail is charming. A warm complexion tending to brown, fine eyes, brown hair, fine teeth, and infinite wit and vivacity. Two things are odd in this match; he seems to have been doomed to a Maria Walpole--if his father had lived, he had married my sister;(1023) and this is the second of my brother's daughters that has married into the house of Stuart. Mr. Keppel(1024) comes from Charles, Lord Waldegrave from James II. My brother has luckily been tractable, and left the whole management to me. My family don't lose any rank or advantage, when they let me dispose of them--a knight of the garter for my niece; 150,000 pounds for my Lord Orford if he would have taken her;(1025) these are not trifling establishments.

It were miserable after this to tell you that Prince Ferdinand has cut to pieces two or three squadrons of Austrians. I frame to myself that if I was commander-in-chief. I should on a sudden appear in the middle of Vienna, and oblige the Empress to give an Archd.u.c.h.ess with half a dozen provinces to some infant prince or other, and make a peace before the bread wagons were come up. Difficulties are nothing; all depends on the sphere in which one is placed.

You must excuse my alt.i.tudes I feel myself very impertinent just now, but as I know it, I trust I shall not be more so than is becoming.

The Dutch cloud is a little dispersed; the privy council have squeezed out some rays of sunshine by restoring One Of' their ships, and by adjudging that we captors should prove the affirmative of contraband goods, instead of the goods proving themselves so: just as if one was ordered to believe that if a blackamoor is christened Thomas, he is a white. These distinctions are not quite adapted to the meridian of a flippant English privateer's comprehensions: however, the murmur is not great yet. I don't know what may betide if the minister should order the mob to be angry with the Ministry, nor whether Mr. Pitt or the mob will speak first. He is laid up with the gout, and it is as much as the rest of the administration can do to prevent his flying out. I am sorry, after you have been laying in such bales of Grotius and Puffendorf, that you must be forced to correct the text by a Dutch comment. You shall have the pamphlet you desire, and Lord Mansfield's famous answer to the Prussian manifesto, (I don't know whether it is in French,) but you must now read Hardwickius usum Batavorum.(1026)

We think we have lost Fort St. David, but have some scanty hopes of a victorious codicil, as our fleet there seems to have had the superiority. The King of Spain is certainly not dead, and the Italian war in appearance is blown over. This summer, I think, must finish all war, for who will have men, who will have money to furnish another campaign? Adieu!

P. S. Mr. Conway has got the first regiment of dragoons on Hawley's death.

(1021) Maria, second daughter of Sir Edward Walpole, afterwards married to William Henry, Duke of Gloucester, brother of King George III.

(1022) James, second Earl of Waldegrave, knight of the garter, and governor of George Prince of Wales, afterwards George III.

(1023) Lady Maria Churchill, daughter of Sir Robert Walpole.

(1024) Frederick Keppel, fourth son of William Anne, Earl of Albemarle, by Lady Anne Lennox, daughter of the first Duke of Richmond.

(1025) Miss Nichols, afterwards Marchioness of Carnarvon.

(1026) Philip Yorke, Earl of Hardwicke.

485 Letter 312 To George Montagu, Esq.

Arlington Street, April 26, 1759.

Your brother, your Wetenhalls, and the ancient Baron and Baroness Dacre of the South, are to dine with me at Strawberry Hill next Sunday. Divers have been the negotiations about it: your sister, you know, is often impeded by a prescription or a prayer; and I, on the other hand, who never rise in the morning, have two b.a.l.l.s on my hands this week to keep me in bed the next day till dinner-time. Well, it is charming to be so young! the follies of the town are so much more agreeable than the wisdom of my brethren the authors, that I think for the future I shall never write beyond a card, nor print beyond Mrs.

Clive's benefit tickets. Our great match approaches; I dine at Lord Waldegrave's presently, and suppose I shall then hear the day. I have quite reconciled my Lady Townshend to the match (saving her abusing us all), by desiring her to choose my wedding clothes; but I am to pay the additional price of being ridiculous. to which I submit; she has chosen me a white ground with green flowers. I represented that, however young my spirits may be, my bloom is rather past; but the moment I declared against juvenile colours, I found it was determined I should have nothing else: so be it. T'other night I had an uncomfortable situation with the d.u.c.h.ess of Bedford: we had played late at loo at Lady Joan Scot's; I came down stairs with their two graces of Bedford and Grafton: there was no chair for me: I said I will walk till I meet one. "Oh!" said the d.u.c.h.ess of Grafton, "the d.u.c.h.ess of Bedford will set you down:" there were we charmingly awkward and complimenting: however, she was forced to press it, and I to accept it; in a minute she spied a hackney chair--"Oh! there is a chair,-but I beg your pardon, it looks as if I wanted to get rid of you, but indeed I don't; only I am afraid the Duke will want his supper." You may imagine how much I was afraid of making him wait. The ball at Bedford-house, on Monday, was very numerous and magnificent.

The two Princes were there, deep hazard, and the Dutch deputies, who are a proverb for their dulness: they have brought with them a young Dutchman, who is the richest man of Amsterdam. I am amazed Mr. Yorke has not married him! But the delightful part of the night was the appearance of the Duke of Newcastle, who is veering round again, as it is time to betray Mr. Pitt. The d.u.c.h.ess(1027) was at the very upper end of the gallery, and though some of the Pelham court were there too, yet they showed so little cordiality to this revival of connexion, that Newcastle had n.o.body to attend him but Sir Edward Montagu, who kept pushing him all up the gallery. From thence he went into the hazard-room, and wriggle(], and shuffled, and lisped, and winked, and spied, till he got behind the Duke of c.u.mberland, the Duke of Bedford, and Rigby; the first of whom did not deign to notice him; but he must come to it. You would have died to see Newcastle's pitiful and distressed figure,--n.o.body went near him: he tried to flatter people, that were too busy to mind him; in short, he was quite disconcerted; his treachery used to be so sheathed in folly, that he was never out of countenance; but it is plain he grows old. To finish his confusion and anxiety, George Selwyn, Brand, and I, went and stood near him, and in half whispers, that he might hear, said, "Lord, how he is broke! how old he looks!" then I said, "This room feels very cold: I believe there never is a fire in it." Presently afterwards I said, "Well, I'll not stay here; this room has been washed to-day."

In short, I believe we made him take a double dose of Gascoign's powder when he went home. Next night Brand and I communicated this interview to Lord Temple, who was in agonies; and yesterday his chariot was seen in forty different parts of the town. I take it for granted that Fox will not resist these overtures, and then we shall have the paymastership, the secretaryship of Ireland, and all Calcraft's regiments once more afloat.

May 1.

I did not finish this letter last week, for the picture could not set out till next Thursday. Your kin brought Lord Mandeville with them to Strawberry; he was very civil and good-humoured, and I trust I was so too. My nuptialities dined here yesterday. The wedding is fixed for the 15th. The town, who saw Maria set out in the Earl's coach, concluded it was yesterday. He notified his marriage to the Monarch last Sat.u.r.day, and it was received civilly. Mrs. Thornhill is dead, and I am inpatient to hear the fate of Miss Mildmay. the Princes Ferdinand and Henry have been skirmishing, have been beaten, and have beat, but with no decision.

The ball at Mr. Conolly's(1028) was by no means delightful.

the house is small, it was hot, and was composed Of young Irish. I was retiring when they went to supper, but was fetched back to sup with Prince Edward and the d.u.c.h.ess of Richmond, who is his present pa.s.sion. He had chattered as much love to her as would serve ten b.a.l.l.s. The conversation turned on the Guardian--most unfortunately the Prince asked her if she should like Mr. Clackit--"No, indeed, Sir," said the d.u.c.h.ess. Lord Tavistock(1029) burst out into a loud laugh, and I am afraid none of the company quite kept their countenances. Adieu! This letter is gossiping enough for any Mrs. Clackit, but I know you love these details.

(1027) Gertrude d.u.c.h.ess of Bedford, daughter of Earl Gower.

(1028) Thomas Conolly, Esq., son of Lady Anne Conolly, sister of Thomas Earl of Strafford, and who inherited great part of her brother's property. Mr. Conolly was married to Lady Louisa Lenox, sister of the Duke of Richmond, and of Lady Holland.

They died without issue.-E.

(1029) Francis Marquis of Tavistock, only son of John Duke of Bedford. He died before his father, in 1767, in consequence of a fall from his horse when hunting.-E.

487 Letter 313 To Sir Horace Mann.

Strawberry Hill, May 10, 1759.

The laurels we began to plant in Guadaloupe do not thrive--we have taken half the island, and despair of the other half which we are gone to take. General Hobson is dead, and many of our men-it seems all climates are not equally good for conquest-Alexander and Caesar would have looked wretchedly after a yellow fever! A hero that would have leaped a rampart, would perhaps have shuddered at the thought of being scalped.

Glory will be taken in its own way, and cannot reconcile itself to the untoward barbarism of America. In short, if we don't renounce expeditions, our history will be a journal of miscarriages. What luck must a general have that escapes a flux, or being shot abroad--or at home! How fatal a war has this been! From Pondicherry to Canada, from Russia to Senegal, the world has been a great bill of mortality? The King of Prussia does not appear to have tapped his campaign yet--he was slow last year; it is well if he concludes this as thunderingly as he did the last. Our winter-politics are drawn to the dregs. The King is gone to Kensington, and the Parliament is going out of town. The ministers who don't agree, will, I believe, let the war decide their squabbles too. Mr. Pitt will take Canada and the cabinet-council together, or miscarry in both. There are Dutch deputies here, who are likely to be here some time: their negotiations are not of an epigrammatic nature. and we are in no hurry to decide on points which we cannot well give up, nor maintain without inconvenience. But it is idle to describe what describes itself by not being concluded.

I have received yours of the 7th of last month, and fear you are quite in the right about a history of the house of Medici-- yet it is pity it should not be written!(1030) You don't, I know, want any spur to incite you to remember me and any commission with which I trouble you; and therefore you must not take it in that light, but as the consequence of my having just seen the Neapolitan book of Herculaneum, that I mention it to you again. Though it is far from being finely engraved, yet there are bits in It that make me wish much to have it, and if you could procure it for me, I own I should be pleased. Adieu!

my dear Sir.

(1030) See ant'e, p. 483, letter 310.

488 Letter 314 To The Rev. Henry Zouch.

Strawberry Hill, May 14, 1759.

Sir, You accuse me with so much delicacy and with so much seeming justice, that I must tell you the truth, cost me what it will.

It is in fact, I own, that I have been silent, not knowing what to say to you, or how not to say something about your desire that I would attend the affair of the navigation of Calder in Parliament. In truth, I scarce ever do attend private business on solicitation. If I attend, I cannot help forming an opinion, and when formed I do not care not to be guided by it, and at the same time it is very unpleasant to vote against a person whom one went to serve. I know nothing of the merits of the navigation in question, and it would have given me great pain to have opposed, as it might have happened, a side espoused by one for whom I had conceived such an esteem as I have for you, Sir. I did not tell you my scruples, because you might have thought them affected, and because, to say the truth, I choose to disguise them. I have seen too much of the parade of conscience to expect that an ostentation of it in me should be treated with uncommon lenity. I cannot help having scruples; I can help displaying them; and now, sir, that I have made you my confessor, I trust you will keep my secret for my sake, and give me absolution for what I have committed against you.

I certainly do propose to digest the materials that Vertue had collected(1031) relating to English arts; but doubting of the merit of the subject, as you do, Sir, and not proposing to give myself much trouble about it, I think, at present, that I shall still call the work his. However, at your leisure, I shall be much obliged to you for any hints. For n.o.bler or any other game, I don't think of it; I am sick of the character of author; I am sick of the consequences of it; I am weary Of Seeing my name in the newspapers; I am tired with reading foolish criticisms on me, and as foolish defences of me; and I trust my friends will be so good as to let the last abuse of me pa.s.s unanswered. It is called "Remarks" on my Catalogue, asperses the Revolution more than it does my book, and, in one word, is written by a non-juring preacher, who was a dog-doctor. Of me he knows so little, that he thinks to punish me by abusing King William! Had that Prince been an author, perhaps I might have been a little ungentle to him too. I am not dupe enough to think that any body wins a crown for the sake of the people. Indeed, I am Whig enough to be glad to be abused; that is, that any body may write what they please; and though the Jacobites are the only men who abuse outrageously that liberty of the press which all their labours tend to demolish, I would not have the nation lose such a blessing for their impertinences. That their spirit and projects revive is certain. All the histories of England, Hume's, as you observe, and Smollett's more avowedly, are calculated to whiten the house of Stuart. All the magazines are elected to depress writers of the other side, and as it has been learnt within these few days, France is preparing an army of commentators1032) to ill.u.s.trate the works of those professors.

But to come to what ought to be a particular part of this letter. I am very sensible, Sir, to the confidence you place in me, and shall a.s.suredly do nothing to forfeit it; at the same time, I must take the liberty you allow me, of making some objections to your plan. As your friend, I must object to the subject. It is heroic to sacrifice one's own interest to do good, but I would be sure of doing some before I offered myself up. You will make enemies; are you sure you shall make proselytes? I am ready to believe you have no ambition now-- but may you not have hereafter? Are bishops corrigible or placable? Few men are capable of forgiving being told their faults in private; who can bear being told of them publicly?- -Then, you propose to write in Latin: that is, you propose to be read by those only whom you intend to censure, and whose interest it will be to find faults in your work. If I proposed to attack the clergy, I would at least call in the laity to hear my arguments, and I fear the laity do not much listen to Latin. In Short, Sir, I wish much to see something of your writing, and consequently I wish to see it in a shape in which it would give me most pleasure.