The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford Volume III Part 52

Letter 221 To The Right Hon. William Pitt.(669) Arlington Street, Aug. 29, 1764. (page 343)

Sir, As you have always permitted me to offer you the trifles printed at my press, I am glad to have one to send you of a little more consequence than some in which I have had myself too great a share. The singularity of the work I now trouble you with is greater merit than its rarity; though there are but two hundred copies, of which only half are mine.(670) If it amuses an hour or two of your idle time, I am overpaid. My greatest ambition is to pay that respect which every Englishman owes to your character and services; and therefore you must not wonder if an inconsiderable man seizes every opportunity, however awkwardly, of a.s.suring you, Sir, that he is Your most devoted, etc.

(669) Now first collected.

(670) The Life of Lord Herbert of Cherbury. See ant'e, p. 329, letter 214.-E.

Letter 222 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.

Strawberry Hill, Aug. 29, 1764. (page 343)

Dear sir, Among the mult.i.tude of my papers I have mislaid, though not lost, the account you was so good as to give me of your ancestor Toer, as a painter. I have been hunting for it to insert it in the new edition of my Anecdotes. It is not very reasonable to save myself trouble at the expense of yours; but perhaps you can much sooner turn to your notes, than I find your letter. Will you be so good as to send me soon all the particulars you recollect of him. I have a print of Sir Lionel Jenkins from his painting.

I did not send you any more orange flowers, as you desired; for the continued rains rotted all the latter blow: but I had made a vast potpourri, from whence you shall have as much as you please, when I have the pleasure of seeing you here, which I should be glad might be in the beginning of October, if it suits your convenience. At the same time you shall have a print of Lord Herbert, which I think I did not send you.

P. S. I trust you will bring me a volume or two of your MSS. of which I am most thirsty.

Letter 223 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.

September 1, 1764. (page 344)

I send you the reply to the Counter-address;(671) it is the lowest of all Grub-street, and I hear is treated so. They have nothing better to say, than that I am in love with you, have been so these twenty years, and am no giant. I am a very constant old swain: they might have made the years above thirty; it is so long I have the same unalterable friendship for you, independent of being near relations and bred up together. For arguments, so far from any new ones, the man gives up or denies most of the former.

I own I am rejoiced not only to see how little they can defend themselves, but to know the extent of their malice and revenge.

They must be sorely hurt, to be reduced to such scurrility. Yet there is one paragraph, however, which I think is of George Grenville's own inditing. It says, "I flattered, solicited, and then basely deserted him." I no more expected to hear myself accused of flattery, than of being in love with you; but I shall not laugh at the former as I do at the latter. Nothing but his own consummate vanity could suppose I had ever stooped to flatter him! or that any man was connected with him, but who was low enough to be paid for it. Where has he one such attachment?

You have your share too. The miscarriage at Rochfort now directly laid at your door! repeated insinuations against your courage. But I trust you will mind them no more than I do, excepting the flattery, which I shall not forget, I promise them.

I came to town yesterday on some business, and found a case.

When I opened it, what was there but my Lady Ailesbury's most beautiful of all pictures!(672) Don't imagine I can think it intended for me: or that, if it could be so, I would hear of such a thing. It is far above what can be parted with, or accepted.

I am serious--there is no letting such a picture, when one has accomplished it, go from where one can see it every day. I should take the thought equally kind and friendly, but she must let me bring it back, if I am not to do any thing else with it, and it came by mistake. I am not so selfish as to deprive her of what she must have such pleasure in seeing. I shall have more satisfaction in seeing it at Park-place; where, in spite of the worst kind of malice, I shall persist in saying my heart is fixed. They may ruin me, but no calumny shall make me desert you. Indeed your case would be completely cruel, if it was more honourable for your relations and friends to abandon you than to stick to you. My option is made, and I scorn their abuse as much as I despise their power.

I think of coming to you on Thursday next for a day or two, unless your house is full, or you hear from me to the contrary.

Adieu! Yours ever.

(671) A pamphlet written by Mr. Walpole, in answer to another, called ,An Address to the Public on the late Dismissal of a General Officer."

(672) A landscape executed in worsteds by Lady Ailesbury. It is now at Strawberry Hill.

Letter 224 To The Rev. Dr. Birch.

September 3, 1764. (page 345)

Sir, I am extremely obliged to you for the favour of your letter, and the enclosed curious one of Sir William Herbert. It would have made a very valuable addition to Lord Herbert's Life, which is now too late; as I have no hope that Lord Powis will permit any more to be printed. There were indeed so very few, and but half of those for my share, that I have not it in my power to offer you a copy, having disposed of my part. It is really a pity that so singular a curiosity should not be public; but I must not complain, as Lord Powis has been so good as to indulge my request thus far. I am, Sir, Your much obliged humble servant, H. W.

Letter 225 To The Earl Of Hertford.

Strawberry Hill, Oct. 5, 1764. (page 345)

My dear lord, Though I wrote to you but a few days ago, I must trouble you with another line now. Dr. Blanchard, a Cambridge divine, and who has a good paternal estate in Yorkshire, is on his travels, which he performs as a gentleman; and, therefore, wishes not to have his profession noticed. He is very desirous of paying his respects to you, and of being countenanced by you while he stays at Paris.

It will much oblige a particular friend of mine, and consequently me, if you will favour him with your attention. Every body experiences your goodness, but in the present case I wish to attribute it a little to my request.

I asked you about two books, ascribed to Madame de Boufflers. if they are hers, I should be glad to know where she found, that Oliver Cromwell took orders and went over to Holland to fight the Dutch. As she has been on the spot where he reigned (which is generally very strong evidence), her countrymen will believe her in spite of our teeth; and Voltaire, who loves all anecdotes that never happened, because they prove the manners of the times, will hurry it into the first history he publishes. I, therefore, enter my caveat against it; not as interested for Oliver's character, but to save the world from one more fable. I know Madame de Boufflers will attribute this scruple to my partiality to Cromwell (and, to be sure, if we must be ridden, there is some satisfaction when the man knows how to ride). I remember one night at the Duke of Grafton's, a bust of Cromwell was produced: Madame de Boufflers, without uttering a syllable, gave me the most speaking look imaginable, as much as to Say, Is it possible you can admire this man! Apropos: I am sorry to say the reports do not cease about the separation,(673) and yet I have heard nothing that confirms it.

I once begged you to send me a book in three volumes, called "Essais sur les Moeurs;" forgive me if I put you in mind of it, and request you to send me that, or any other new book. I am wofully in want of reading, and sick to death of all our political stuff; which, as the Parliament is happily at the distance of three months, I would fain forget till I cannot help hearing of it. I am reduced to Guicciardin, and though the evenings are so long, I cannot get through one of his periods between dinner and supper. They tell me Mr. Hume has had sight of King James's journal:(674) I Wish I could see all the trifling pa.s.sages that he will not deign to admit into history. I do not love great folks till they have pulled off their buskins and put on their slippers, because I do not care sixpence for what they would be thought, but for what they are.

Mr. Elliot brings us woful accounts of the French ladies, of the decency of their conversation, and the nastiness of their behaviour.

n.o.body is dead, married, or gone mad, since my last. Adieu!

P. S. I enclose an epitaph on Lord Waldegrave, written by my brother,(675) which I think you will like, both for the composition and the strict truth of it.

Arlington Street, Friday evening.

I was getting into my postchaise this morning with this letter in my pocket, and Coming to town for a day or two, when I heard the Duke of c.u.mberland was dead: I find it is not so. he had two fits yesterday at Newmarket, whither he would go. The Princess Amelia, who had observed great alteration in his speech, entreated him against it. He has had too some touches of the gout, but they were gone off, or might have prevented this attack. I hear since the fits yesterday, which are said to have been but slight, that his leg is broken out, and they hope will save him. Still, I think, one cannot but expect the worst.

The letters yesterday, from Spa, give a melancholy account of the poor Duke of Devonshire as he cannot drink the waters they think of removing him; I suppose, to the baths at Aix-la-Chapelle; but I look on his case as a lost one. There's a chapter for moralizing! but five-and-forty, with forty thousand pounds a-year and happiness wherever he turned him! My reflection is, that it is folly to be unhappy at any thing, when felicity itself is such a phantom.

(673) Of the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess of Grafton.-E.

(674) Since published, under the generous patronage of George the Third, by Dr. Clarke, his Majesty's librarian. The work is, however, not what Mr. Walpole contemplated: it is not a journal of private feelings, interests, and actions, but a relation rather of public affairs; and though the notes of James II. were undoubtedly the foundation of the work, it was, in truth, written by another hand, and that too a hand the least likely to have given us the kind of memoirs which Mr. Walpole justly thinks would have been so valuable. When an eminent person writes his own memoirs, we have, at least, the motives which he thinks it creditable to a.s.sign to his conduct--he has, generally the candour of vanity, and even when he has not that candour, he is sometimes blinded into discovering truth unawares; but nothing can be more futile and fastidious than the meagre notes of the original actor, fresh woven and discoloured by the hands of an obsequious servant, who conceals all the facts he cannot explain, and all the motives he cannot justify. Such memoirs resemble the real life as the skeleton does the living man.-C.

(675) Sir Edward Walpole, K.B., second son of Sir Robert, and the father of Ladies Dysart and Waldegrave, and Mrs. Keppel.-E.

Letter 226 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.

Strawberry Hill, Oct. 5, 1764. (page 347)

It is over with us!--if I did not know your firmness, I would have prepared you by degrees; but you are a man, and can hear the worst at once. The Duke of c.u.mberland is dead. I have heard it but this instant. The Duke of Newcastle was come to breakfast with me, and pulled out a letter from Lord Frederick, with a hopeless account of the poor Duke of Devonshire. Ere I could read it, Colonel Schutz called at the door and told my servant this fatal news! I know no more--it must be at Newmarket, and very sudden; for the Duke of Newcastle had a letter from Hodgson, dated on Monday, which said the Duke was perfectly well, and his gout gone:--Yes, to be sure, into his head. Princess Amelia had endeavoured to prevent his going to Newmarket, having perceived great alteration in his speech, as the Duke of Newcastle had.

Well! it will not be. Every thing fights against this country!

Mr. Pitt must save it himself--or, what I do not know whether he will not like as well, share in overturning its liberty--if they will admit him; -which I question now if they will be fools enough to do.

You see I write in despair. I am for the whole, but perfectly tranquil. We have acted with honour, and have nothing to reproach ourselves with. We cannot combat fate. We shall be left almost alone; but I think you will no more go with the torrent than I will. Could I have foreseen this tide of ill fortune, I would have done just as I have done; and my conduct shall show I am satisfied I have done right. For the rest, come what come may, I am perfectly prepared and while there is a free spot of earth upon the globe, that shall be my country. I am sorry it will not be this, but to-morrow I shall be able to laugh as usual. What signifies what happens when one is seven-and-forty, as I am to-day!

"They tell me 'tis my birthday"--but I will not go on with Antony, and say

----"and I'll keep it With double pomp of sadness."

No. when they can smile, who ruin a great country'. sure those who would have saved it may indulge themselves in that cheerfulness which conscious integrity bestows. I think I shall come to you next week; and since we have no longer any plan of operations to settle, we will look over the map of Europe, and fix upon a pleasant corner for our exile--for take notice, I do not design to fall upon my dagger, in hopes that some Mr. Addison a thousand years hence may write a dull tragedy about me. I will write my own story a little more cheerfully than he would; but I fear now I must not print it at my own press. Adieu! You was a philosopher before you had any occasion to be so: pray continue so; you have ample occasion! Yours ever, H. W.

Letter 227 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.