The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford Volume IV Part 27

I am not in the least acquainted with the Mr. Bridges you mention, nor know that I ever saw him. The tomb for Mr. Gray is actually erected, and at the generous expense of Mr. Mason, and with an epitaph of four lines,(316) as you heard, and written by him--but the scaffolds are not yet removed. I was in town yesterday, and intended to visit it, but there is digging a vault for the family of Northumberland, which obstructs the removal of the boards.

I rejoice in your amendment, and reckon it among my obligations to the fine weather, and hope it will be the most lasting of them. Yours ever.

(316) "No more the Grecian Muse unrivall'd reigns; To Britain let the nations homage pay: She felt a Homer's fire in Milton's strains, A Pindar's rapture in the lyre of Gray."-E.

Letter 143 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.

Strawberry Hill, August 15, 1778. (page 194)

Your observation of Rowley not being mentioned by William of Wyrcestre, is very strong, indeed, dear Sir, and I shall certainly take notice of it. It has suggested to me that he is not named by Bale or Pitts(317)--is he? Will you trouble yourself to look? I conclude he is not, or we should have heard of it. Rowley is the reverse of King Arthur, and all those heroes that have been expected a second time; he is to come again for the first time-I mean, as a great poet. My defence amounts to thirty pages of the size of this paper: yet I believe I shall not publish it. I abhor a controversy; and what is it to me whether people believe in an impostor or not? Nay, shall I convince every body of my innocence, though there is not the shadow of reason for thinking I was to blame? If I met a beggar in the street, and refused him sixpence, thinking him strong enough to work, and two years afterwards he should die of drinking, might not I be told I had deprived the world of a capital rope-dancer? In short, to show one's self sensible to such accusations, would only invite more; and since they accuse me of contempt, I will have it for my accusers.

My bra.s.s plate for Bishop Walpole was copied exactly from the print in Dart's Westminster, of the tomb of Robert Dalby, Bishop of Durham, with the sole alteration Of the name. I shall return, as soon as I have time, to Mr. Baker's Life; but I shall want to Consult you, or, at least, the account of him in the new Biographia, as your notes want some dates. I am not satisfied yet with what I have sketched; but I shall correct it. My small talent was grown very dull. This attack about Chatterton has a little revived it; but it warns me to have done , for, if*one comes to want provocatives,-the produce will soon be feeble.

Adieu! Yours most sincerely.

(317) John Bale, Bishop of Ossory. The work to which Walpole alludes is his "Catalog's Scriptorum ill.u.s.trium Majoris Brytannie." Basle, 1557-E.--John Pitts wrote, in opposition to Bale, "De ill.u.s.tribus Angliae Scriptoribus." Paris, 1619.-E.

Letter 144 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.

Strawberry Hill, August 21, 1778. (page 195)

I think it so very uncertain whether this letter will find you, that I write merely to tell you I received yours to-day. I recollect nothing particularly worth seeing in Suss.e.x that you have not seen (for I think you have seen Coudray and Stansted, and I know you have Petworth), but Hurst Monceaux, near Battle; and I don't know whether it is not pulled down. The site of Arundel Castle is fine, and there are some good tombs of the Fitzalans at the church, but little remains of the castle; in the room of which is a modern brick house; and in the late Duke's time the ghost of a giant walked there, his grace said--but I suppose the present Duke has laid it in the Red Sea of claret.

Besides Knowle and Penshurst, I should think there were several seats of old families in Kent worth seeing; but I do not know them. I poked out Summer-hill(318) for the sake of the Babylonienne in Grammont; but it is now a mere farmhouse. Don't let them Persuade you to visit Leeds Castle, which is not worth seeing.

You have been near losing me and half a dozen fair cousins today.

The Goldsmiths, Company dined in Mr. Shirley's field, next to Pope's. I went to Ham with my three Waldegrave nieces and Miss Keppel, and saw them land, and dine in tents erected for them, from the opposite sh.o.r.e. You may imagine how beautiful the sight was in such a spot and in such a day! I stayed and dined at Ham, and after dinner Lady Dysart, with Lady Bridget Tollemache took our four nieces on the water to see the return of the barges but were to set me down at Lady Browne's. We were, with a footman and the two watermen, ten in a little boat. As we were in the middle of the river, a larger boat full of people drove directly upon us on purpose. I believe they were drunk. We called to them, to no purpose; they beat directly against the middle of our little skiff--but, thank you, did not do us the least harm--no thanks to them. Lady Malpas was in Lord Strafford's garden, and gave us for gone. In short, Neptune never would have had so beautiful a prize as the four girls.

I hear an express has been sent to * * * * to offer him the mastership of the horse. I had a mind to make you guess, but you never can--to Lord Exeter! Pray let me know the moment you return to Park-place.

(318) Formerly a country-seat of Queen Elizabeth, and the residence of Charles the Second when the court was at Tunbridge.- E.

Letter 145 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.

Strawberry Hill, August 22, 1778. (page 196)

I beg YOU Will feel no uneasiness, dear Sir, at having shown my name to Dr. Glynn. I Can never suspect you, who are giving me fresh proofs of your friendship, and solicitude for my reputation, of doing any thing unkind. It is true I do not think I shall publish any thing about Chatterton. IS not it an affront to innocence, not to be perfectly satisfied in her? My pamphlet, for such it would be, is four times as large as the narrative in your hands, and I think Would not discredit me--but, in truth, I am grown much fonder of truth than fame; and scribblers or their patrons shall not provoke me to sacrifice the one to the other.

Lord Hardwicke, I know, has long been my enemy,--latterly, to get a sight of the Conway Papers, he has paid great court to me, which, to show how little I regarded his enmity, I let him see, at least the most curious. But as I set as little value on his friendship, I did not grant another of his requests. Indeed, I have made more than one foe by not indulging the vanity of those who have made application to me; and I am obliged to them, when they augment my contempt by quarrelling with me for that refusal.

It was the case of Mr. Masters, and is now of Lord Hardwicke. He solicited me to reprint his Boeotian volume of Sir Dudley Carleton's Papers, for which he had two motives. The first he inherited from his father, the desire of saving money; for though his fortune is so much larger than mine, he knew I would not let out my press for hire, but should treat him with the expense, as I have done for those I have obliged. The second was, that the rarity of my editions makes them valuable, and though I cannot make men read dull books, I can make them purchase them. His lordship, therefore, has bad grace in affecting to overlook one, whom he had in vain courted, yet he again is grown my enemy, because I would not be my own. For my Writings, they do not depend on him or the venal authors he patronizes (I doubt very frugally), but On their own merits or demerits. It is from men of sense they must expect their sentence, not from b.o.o.bies and hireling authors, whom I have always shunned, with the whole fry of minor wits, critics, and monthly censors. I have not seen the Review you mention, nor ever do, but when something particular is pointed out to me. Literary squabbles I know preserve one's name, when one's work will not; but I despise the fame that depends on scolding till one is remembered, and remembered by whom? The scavengers of literature! Reviewers are like s.e.xtons, who in a charnel-house can tell you to what John Thompson or to what Tom-Matthews such a skull or such belonged--but who wishes to know? The fame that is only to be found in such vaults, is like the fires that burn unknown in tombs, and go out as fast as they are discovered. Lord Hardwicke is welcome to live among the dead if he likes',,it, and can contrive to live nowhere else.

Chatterton did abuse me under the t.i.tle of Baron of Otranto,(319) but unluckily the picture is more like Dr. Milles and Chatterton's own devotees' than to me, who am but a recreant antiquary, and, as the poor lad found by experience, did not swallow every fragment that 'Was offered to me as an antique; though that is a feature he has bestowed Upon me.

I have seen, too, the criticism you mention on the Castle of Otranto, in the preface to the Old English Baron.(320) It is not at all oblique, but, though mixed with high compliments, directly attacks the visionary part, which, says the author or auth.o.r.ess, makes one laugh. I do a.s.sure you, I have not had the smallest inclination to return that attack. It would even be ungrateful, for the work is a professed imitation of mine, only stripped of the marvellous; and so entirely stripped, except in one awkward attempt at a ghost or two, that it is the most insipid dull nothing you ever saw. It certainly does not make me laugh; but what makes one doze, seldom makes one merry.

I am very sorry to have talked for near three pages on what relates to myself, who should be of no consequence, if people did not make me so, whether I will or not.- My not replying to them, I hope, is a proof I do not seek to make myself the topic of conversation. How very foolish are the squabbles of authors!

They buzz and are troublesome, to-day, and then repose for ever on some shelf in a college' library, close by their antagonists, like Henry VI. and Edward IV. at Windsor.

I shall be in town in a few days, and will send You the heads of painters, which I left there; and along with them for yourself a translation of a French play,(321) that I have just printed there. It is not for your reading, but as one of the Strawberry editions, and one of the rarest; for I have printed but seventy-five copies. It was to oblige Lady Craven, - the translatress; and will be an aggravation of my offence to Sir Dudley's State Papers.

I hope this Elysian summer, for it has been above Indian, has dispersed all your complaints. Yet it does not agree with fruit; the peaches and nectarines are shrivelled to the size of damsons, and half of them drop. Yet you remember what portly bellies the peaches had at Paris, where it is generally as hot. I suppose our fruit-trees are so accustomed to rain, that they don't know how to behave without it. Adieu!

P. S. I can divert you with a new adventure that has happened to me in the literary way. About a month ago, I received a letter from Mr. Jonathan Scott, at Shrewsbury, to tell me he was possessed of MS. of Lord Herbert's Account of the Court of France,(322) which he designed to publish by subscription, and which he desired me to subscribe to, and to a.s.sist in the publication. I replied, that having been obliged to the late Lord Powis and his widow, I could not meddle with any such thing, without knowing that it had the consent of the present Earl and his mother.

Another letter, commending my reserve, told me Mr. Scott had applied for it formerly, and would again now. This showed me they did not consent. I have just received a third letter, owning the approbation has not yet arrived; but to keep me employed in the mean time, the modest Mr. Scott, whom I never saw, nor know more of than I did of Chatterton, proposes to me to get his fourth son a place in the civil department in India: the father not choosing it should be in the military, his three eldest sons being engaged in that branch already. If this fourth son breaks his neck, I suppose it will be laid to my charge!

Yours ever.

(319) Chatterton exhibited a ridiculous portrait of Walpole: in the "Memoirs of a Sad Dog,"

under the character of "the redoubted Baron Otranto, who has spent his whole life in conjectures."-E.

(320) The Old English Baron, a romance of considerable repute which has been frequently reprinted, was the production of Clara Reeve. This Ingenious lady had published, in 1772, a translation of Barclay's Latin romance of Argenis, under the t.i.tle of "The Phoenix, or the History of Polyarchus and Argenis." She was born at Ipswich, in 1738, died there in 1808.-E.

(321) "the Sleep Walker;" Strawberry Hill, 1778. It was translated from the French of M. Pont de Veyle, by Lady Craven, afterwards Margravine of Ans.p.a.ch.-E.

(322) By Lord Herbert's Account of the Court of France, Mr. Scott most probably referred to his "Letters written during his residence at the French Court" and which were first published from the originals, in the edition of his Life which appeared in 1826.-E.

Letter 146 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.

September 1, 1778. (page 198)

I have now seen the Critical Review, with Lord Hardwicke's note, in which I perceive the sensibility of your friendship for me, dear Sir, but no rudeness on his part. Contemptuous it was to reprint Jane Sh.o.r.e's letter without any notice of my having given it before: the apology, too, is not made to me-but I am not affected by such incivilities, that imply more ill-will than boldness. As I expected more from your representation, I believe I expressed myself with more warmth than the occasion deserved; and, as I love to be just, I will, now I am perfectly cool, be so to Lord Hardwicke. His dislike of me was meritorious in him, as I conclude it was founded on my animosity to his father, as mine had been, from attachment to my own who was basely betrayed by the late Earl. The present has given me formerly many peevish marks of enmity; and I suspect, I don't know if justly, that he was the mover of the cabal in the Antiquarian Society against me- -but all their Misunderstandings were of a size that made me smile rather than provoked me. The Earl, as I told you, has since been rather wearisome in applications to me; which I received rather civilly, but encouraged no farther. When he wanted me to be his printer, I own I was not good Christian enough, not to be pleased with refusing, and yet in as well-bred excuses as I could form, pleading what was true at the time, as you know, that I had laid down my press-but so much for this idle story. I shall think no more of it, but adhere to my specific system. The antiquarians will be as ridiculous as they used to be; and, since it is impossible to infuse taste into them, they will be as dry and dull as their predecessors. One may revive what perished, but it will perish again, if more life is not breathed into it than it enjoyed originally. Facts, dates, and names will never please the mult.i.tude, unless there is some style and manner to recommend them, and unless some novelty is struck out from their appearance. The best merit of the society lies in their prints; for their volumes, no mortal will ever touch them but an antiquary. Their Saxon and Danish discoveries are not worth more than monuments of the Hottentots; and for Roman remains in Britain, they are upon a foot with what ideas we should get of Inigo Jones, if somebody was to publish views of huts and houses, that our officers run up at Senegal and Goree.

Bishop Lyttelton used to torment me with barrows and Roman camps, and I would as soon have attended to the turf graves in our churchyards. I have no curiosity to know how awkward and clumsy men have been in the dawn of arts, or in their decay.

I exempt you entirely from my general censure on antiquaries, both for your singular modesty in publishing nothing yourself, and for collecting stone and bricks for others to build with. I wish your materials may ever fall into good hands--perhaps they will! our empire is falling to pieces! we are relapsing to a little island. n that state men are apt to inquire how great their ancestors have been; and, when a kingdom is past doing any thing, the few that are studious look into the memorials of past time; nations, like private persons, seek l.u.s.tre from their progenitors, when they have none in themselves, and the farther they are from the dignity of their source. When half its colleges are tumbled down, the ancient university of Cambridge will revive from your Collections,(323) and you will be a living witness that saw its splendour.

Since I began this letter, I have had another curious adventure.

I was in the Holbein chamber, when a chariot stopped at my door.

A letter was brought up--and who should be below but--Dr. Kippis.

The letter was to announce himself and his business, flattered me on My Writings, desired my a.s.sistance, and particularly my direction and aid for his writing the life of my father. I desired he would walk up, and received him very civilly, taking not the smallest notice of what you had told me of his flirts at me in the new Biographia. I told him if I had been applied to, I could have pointed out many errors in the old edition, but as they were chiefly in the printing, I supposed they would be corrected. With regard to my father's life, I said, it might be partiality, but I had such confidence in my father's virtues, that I was satisfied the more his life was examined, the clearer they would appear. That I also thought that the life of any man written under the direction of his family, did n.o.body honour; and that, as I was persuaded my father's would stand the test, I wished that none of his relations should interfere in it. That I did not doubt but the Doctor would speak impartially, and that was all I desired. He replied, that he did suppose I thought in that manner, and that all he asked was to be a.s.sisted in facts and dates. I said, if he would please to write the life first, and then communicate it to me, I would point out any errors in facts that I should perceive. He seemed mightily well satisfied-and so we parted-but is it not odd. that people are continually attacking me, and then come to me for' a.s.sistance?-- but when men write for profit, they are not very delicate.

I have resumed Mr. Baker's life, and pretty well arranged my plan; but I shall have little time to make any progress till October, as I am going soon to make some visits. Yours ever.

(323) His valuable Collections, in about a hundred volumes, in folio fairly written in his own band, Mr. Cole, on his death in 1782, left to the British Museum, to be locked up for twenty years. His Diary, as will be seen by a specimen or two, is truly ludicrous:--Jan. 25, 1766. Foggy. My beautiful Parrot died at ten at night, without knowing the Cause of his illness, he being very well last night.--Feb. 1. Fine day, and cold. Will. Wood carried three or four loads of dung Baptized William, the son of William Grace, blacksmith, whom I married about six months before. March 3. I baptized Sarah, the b.a.s.t.a.r.d daughter of the Widow Smallwood, of Eton, aged near fifty, whose husband died about a year ago.--March 6, Very fine weather. My man was blooded. I sent a loin Of pork and a spare-rib to Mr.

Cartwright, in London.--27. I sent my two French wigs to my London barber to alter, they being made so miserably I could not wear them.--June 17. I went to our new Archdeacon's visitation at Newport-Pagnel. took young H. Travel with me on my dun horse, in order that he might hear the organ, he being a great psalm-singer. The most numerous appearance of clergy that I remember: forty-four dined with the Archdeacon; and what is extraordinary, not one smoked tobacco. My new coach-horse ungain.--Aug. 16. Cool day. Tom reaped for Joe Holdom. I cudgelled Jem for staying so long on an errand," etc.-E.

Letter 147 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.

Strawberry Hill, Sept. 18, 1778. (page 200)

I have run through the new articles in the Biographia, and think them performed but by a heavy hand. Some persons have not trusted the characters of their ancestors, as I did my father's, to their own merits. On the contrary, I have met with one whose corruption is attempted to be palliated by imputing its punishment to the revenge of my father-which, by the way, is confessing the guilt of the convict. This was the late Lord Barrington,(324) who, i believe, was a very dirty fellow; for, besides being expelled the House of Commons on the affair of the Harburgh lottery, he was reckoned to have twice sold the Dissenters to the court; but in short, what credit can a Biographia Britannica, which ought to be a standard work, deserve, when the editor is a mercenary writer, who runs about to relations for direction, and adopts any tale they deliver to him?

This very instance is proof that it is not a jot more creditable than a peerage. The authority is said to be a nephew of Judge Foster, (consequently, I suppose, a friend of Judge Barrington), and he pretends to have found a sc.r.a.p of paper, n.o.body knows on what occasion written, that seems to be connected with nothing, and is called a palliative, if not an excuse of Lord Barrington's crime. A man is expelled from Parliament for a scandalous job, and it is called a sufficient excuse to say the minister was his enemy; and this nearly forty years after the death of both! and without any impeachment of the justice of the sentence: instead of which we are told that Lord Barrington was suspected of having offended Sir Robert Walpole, who took that opportunity of being revenged.

Supposing he did--which at most you see is a suspicion--grounded on a suspicion--it would at least Imply, that he had found a good opportunity. A most admirable acquittal! Sir Robert Walpole was expelled for having endorsed a note that was not for his own benefit, nor ever supposed to be, and it Was the act of a whole outrageous party; yet, abandoned as parliaments sometimes are, a minister would not find them very complaisant In gratifying his private revenge against a member without some crime. Not a syllable is said of any defence the culprit made:; and,' had my father been guilty of such violence and injustice, it is totally incredible that he, whose minutest acts and his most innocent were so rigorously scrutinized, tortured, and blackened, should never have heard that act of power complained of. The present Lord Barrington who opposed him, saw his fall, and the secret committee appointed' to canva.s.s his life, when a retrospect of twenty years was desired and only ten allowed, would certainly have pleaded for the longer term, had he had any thing to say, in behalf of his father's sentence. Would so warm a patriot then, though so obedient a courtier now, have suppressed the charge to this hour? This Lord Barrington, when I was going to publish the second edition of my n.o.ble Authors, begged it as a favour of me suppress all mention of his father--a strong presumption that he was ashamed of him. I am well repaid! but I am certainly 11 record that good man. I shall-and s ow at liberty to hall take notice of the satisfactory manner in which his sons have whitewashed their patriarch. I recollect a saying of the present peer that will divert you when contrasted with forty years of servility which even in this age makes him a proverb. It was in his days of virtue. He said, "If I should ever be so unhappy as to have a place that would make it necessary for me to have a fine coat on a birthday, I would pin a bank-bill on my sleeve."

He had a place in less than two years, I think--and has had almost every place that every administration could bestow.(325) Such were the patriots that opposed that excellent man, my father; allowed by all parties as incapable of revenge as ever minister was--but whose experience of mankind drew from him that memorable saying, "that very few men ought to be prime ministers, for it is not fit many should know how bad men are;"--one can see a little of it without being a prime minister. "one shuns mankind and flies to books, one meets with their meanness and falsehood there, too! one has reason to say, there is but one good, that is G.o.d. Adieu! Yours ever.

(324) John Shute, first Viscount Barrington in the peerage of Ireland, expelled the House of Commons in February 1723, for having promoted, abetted, and carried on that fraudulent undertaking, the Harburgh lottery. This lottery took its name from the place where it Was to be drawn, the town and port of Harburgh, on the river Elbe, where the projector was to settle a trade for the woollen manufacture between England and Germany. Lord Barrington was distinguished for theological learning, and published "Miscellanea Critica" and an "Essay on the several Dispensations of G.o.d to Mankind." He died in 1734, leaving five sons, who had the rare fortune of each rising to high stations in the church, the state, the law, the army, and the navy.-E.