The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford Volume IV Part 43

I congratulate your lordship on the discovery of the Scottish monarch's portrait in Suabia, and am sorry you did not happen to specify of which; but I cannot think of troubling your lordship to write again on purpose; I may probably find it mentioned in some of the papers I shall receive.

There is one pa.s.sage in your lordship's letter in which I cannot presume to think myself included; and yet if I could suppose I was, it would look like most impertinent neglect and unworthiness of the honour that your lordship and the society have done me, if I did not at least offer. very humbly to obey it. You are pleased to say, my lord, that the members, when authors, have agreed to give copies of such of their works as any way relate to the objects of the inst.i.tution. Amongst my very trifling publications, I think there are none that can pretend even remotely to that distinction, but the Catalogue of Royal and n.o.ble Authors, and the Anecdotes of Painting, in each of which are Scottish authors or artists. If these should be thought worthy of a corner on any shelf of the society's library, I should be proud sending, at your lordship's command, the original edition of the first. Of the latter I have not a single set left but my own. But I am printing a new edition in octavo, with many additions and corrections, though without cuts, as the former edition was too dear for many artists to purchase. The new I will send when finished, if I could hope it would be acceptable, and your lordship would please to tell me by what channel.

I am ashamed, my lord, to have said so much, or any thing relating to myself. I ask your pardon too for the slovenly writing of my letter; but my hand is both lame and shaking, and I should but write worse if I attempted transcribing.

I have the honour to be, with great respect, my lord, your lordship's most obedient and obliged humble servant.

P. S. It has this moment started into my mind, my lord, that I have heard that at the old castle at Aubigny, belonging and adjoining to the Duke of Richmond's house, there are historic paintings or portraits of the ancient house of Lennox. I recollect too that Father Gordon, superior of the Scots College at Paris, showed me a whole-length of Queen Mary, young, and which he believed was painted while she was Queen of France. He showed me too the original letter she wrote, the night before her execution, some deeds of Scottish kings, and one of King (I think Robert) Bruce, remarkable for having no seal appendent, which Father Gordon said was executed in the time of his so great distress, that he was not possessed of a seal. I shall be happy if these hints lead to any investigations of use.

(460) Now first collected.

(461) The surrender of the British army at Yorktown. See ant'e, p. 296, letter 234.-E.

Letter 236 To Robert Jephson, Esq.(462) Berkeley Square, Dec. 3, 1781. (page 299)

I have not only a trembling hand, but scarce time to save the post; yet I write a few lines to beg you will be perfectly easy on my account, who never differ seriously with my friends, when I know they do not mean ill to me. I was sorry you took so much to heart an alteration in the scenery of your play,(463) which did not seem to me very material; and which, having since been adjusted to your wish, had no better effect. I told you that it was my fault, not Mr. Malone's, who is warmly your friend; and I am sure you will be sorry if you do him injustice. I regret no pains I have taken, since they have been crowned with your success; and it would be idle in either of us to recall any little cross circ.u.mstance that may have happened, (as always do in bringing a play on the stage,) when they have not prevented its appearance or good fortune. Be a.s.sured, Sir, if that is worth knowing, that I have taken no offence, and have all the same good wishes for you that I ever had since I was acquainted with your merit and abilities. I can easily allow for the anxiety of a parent of your genius for his favourite offspring; and though I have not your parts, I have had the warmth, though age and illness have chilled it: but, thank G.o.d! they have not deprived me of my good-humour, and I am most good-humouredly and sincerely your obedient humble servant.

(462) Now first collected.

(463) See ant'e, p. 295, letter 233.-E.

Letter 237 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.

Berkeley Square, Dec. 30, 1781. (page 299)

We are both hearty friends, my dear Sir, for I see we have both been reproaching ourselves with silence at the same moment. I am much concerned that you have had cause for yours.(464) I have had less, though indisposed too in a part material for correspondence--my hand, which has been in labour of chalk-stones this whole summer, and at times so nervous as to tremble so much, that, except when quite necessary, I have avoided a pen. I have been delivered of such a quant.i.ty of chalky matter, that I am not only almost free from pain, but hope to avoid a fit this winter.

How there can be a doubt what the gout is, amazes me! what is it but a concretion of humours, that either Stop up the fine vessels, cause pain and inflammation, and pa.s.s away only by perspiration; or which discharge themselves into chalk-stones, which sometimes remain in their beds, sometimes make their pa.s.sage outwardly? I have experienced all three. It may be objected, that the sometimes instantaneous removal of pain from one limb to another is too rapid for a current of chalk--true, but not for the humour before coagulated. As there is, evidently, too, a degree of wind mixed in the gout, may not that wind be impregnated with the noxious effluvia, especially as the latter are pent up in the body and may be corrupted? I hope your present complaint in the foot will clear the rest of your person.

Many thanks for your etching of Mr. Browne Willis: I shall value it not only as I am a collector, but because he was your friend.

What shall I say about Mr. Gough? He is not a pleasant man, and I doubt will tease me about many things, some of which I have never cared about, and all which I interest myself little about now, when I seek to pa.s.s my remnant in the most indolent tranquillity. He has not been very civil to me, he worships the fools I despise, and I conceive has no genuine taste; yet as to trifling resentments, when the objects have not acted with bad hearts, I can most readily lose them. Please Mr. Gough, I certainly shall not; I cannot be very grave about such idle studies as his and my own, and am apt to be impatient, or laugh when people imagine I am serious about them. But there is a stronger reason why I shall not satisfy Mr. Gough. He is a man to minute down whatever one tells him that he may call information, and whip it into his next publication. However, though I am naturally very frank, I can regulate myself by those I converse with; and as I shall be on my guard, I will not decline visiting Mr. Gough, as it would be illiberal or look surly if I refused. You shall have the merit, if you please, of my a.s.sent; and shall tell him, I shall be glad to see him any morning at eleven o'clock. This will save you the trouble of sending me his new work, as I conclude he will mention it to me.

I more willingly a.s.sure you that I shall like to see Mr.

Steevens,(465) and to show him Strawberry. You never sent me a person you commended, that I did not find deserved it.

You will be surprised when I tell you, that I have only dipped into Mr. Bryant's book, and lent the Dean's before I had cut the leaves, though I had peeped into it enough to see that I shall not read it. Both he and Bryant are so diffuse on our antiquated literature, that I had rather believe in Rowley than go through their proofs. Dr. Warton and Mr. Tyrwhitt have more patience, and intend to answer them--and so the controversy will be two hundred years out of my reach. Mr. Bryant, I did find, begged a vast many questions, which proved to me his own doubts. Dr.

Glynn's foolish evidence made me laugh, and so did Mr. Bryant's sensibility for me; he says that Chatterton treated me very cruelly in one of his writings. I am sure I did not feel it so.

I suppose Bryant means under the t.i.tle of Baron of Otranto, which is written with humour. I must have been the sensitive plant if any thing in that character had hurt me! Mr. Bryant too, and the Dean, as I see by extracts in the papers, have decorated Chatterton with sanctimonious honour--think of that young rascal's note, when, summing up his gains and losses by writing for and against Beckford, he says, "Am glad he is dead by three pounds 13 shillings 6pence." There was a lad of too nice honour to be capable of forgery! and a lad who, they do not deny, forged the poems in the style of Ossian, and fifty other things.

In the parts I did read, Mr. Bryant, as I expected, reasons admirably, and staggered me; but when I took up the poems called Rowley's again, I protest I cannot see the smallest air of antiquity but the old words. The whole texture is conceived on ideas of the present century. The liberal manner of thinking of a monk so long before the Reformation is as stupendous; and where he met with Ovid's Metamorphoses, eclogues, and plans of Greek tragedies, when even Caxton, a printer, took Virgil's AEneid for so rare a novelty, are not less incomprehensible: though on these things I speak at random, nor have searched for the era when the Greek and Latin cla.s.sics came again to light-at present I imagine long after our Edward the Fourth.

Another thing struck me in my very cursory perusal of Bryant. He asks where Chatterton could find so much knowledge of English events? I could tell him where he might, by a very natural hypothesis, though merely an hypothesis. It appears by the evidence, that Canninge left six chests of ma.n.u.scripts, and that Chatterton got possession of some or several. Now what was therein so probably as a diary drawn up by Canninge himself, or some churchwarden or wardens, or by a monk or monks? Is any thing more natural than for such a person, amidst the events at Bristol, to set down other public facts as happened in the rest of the kingdom? Was not such almost all the materials of our ancient story? There is actually such an one, with some curious collateral facts, if I am not mistaken,--for I write by memory,-- in the History of Furnese or Fountains Abbey, I forget which: if Chatterton found such an one, did he want the extensive literature on which so much stress is laid. Hypothesis for hypothesis,--I am sure this is as rational an one as the supposition that six chests were filled with poems never else heard of.

These are my indigested thoughts on this matter--not that I ever intend to digest them--for I will not, at sixty-four, sail back into the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and be drowned in an ocean of monkish writers of those ages or of this! Yours most sincerely.

(464) Mr. Cole, in a letter of the 31st says, "About six weeks ago, the gout was hara.s.sing both my feet; on Christmas-day it shifted its quarters, and got into my left hand; and inexpressible have been the pain and torment I have endured, with sleepless nights, racking pain, and no rest nor relief by day. I hope the worst is over, as I had a comfortable sleep for the whole night last night: but my hopes are like those in a ship in a storm; when one billow is past, another and greater is at the heels of it: for a water-drinker my lot is hard."-E.

(465) George Steevens, Esq. In 1770, this eminent scholar and learned commentator became a.s.sociated with Dr. Johnson, in the edition of Shakspeare which goes by their joint names. A fourth edition, with large additions, was published in 1793, in fifteen volumes octavo. In the preparation of it for the press, Mr.

Steevens gave an instance of editorial activity and perseverance, which is, probably, without a parallel. For a period of eighteen months, he devoted himself solely and exclusively to the work; and, during that time, left his house every morning at one o'clock with the Hampstead patrols, and proceeded, without any consideration of weather or season, to the chambers of his friend, Isaac Reed, in Staple's Inn, where he found a sheet of the Shakspeare letterpress was ready for his revision: thus, while the printers were asleep, the editor was @ awake; and the fifteen large volumes were completed in the short s.p.a.ce of twenty months. The feat is recorded by Mr. Matthias, in the Pursuits of Literature:

"Him late, from Hampstead journeying to his book, Aurora oft for Cophalus mistook; What time he brush'd her dews with hasty pace, To meet the printer's dev'let face to face."

He died at Hampstead in 1800, and in his sixty-fourth year.-E.

Letter 238 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.

Berkeley Square, Jan. 27, 1782. (page 302)

For these three weeks I have had the gout in my left elbow and hand, and can yet but just bear to lay the latter on the paper while I write with the other. However, this is no complaint, for it is the shortest fit I have had these sixteen years, and with trifling pain: therefore, as the fits decrease, it does ample honour to my bootikins regimen, and method. Next to my bootikins, I ascribe much credit to a diet-drink of dock-roots, of which Dr. Turton asked me for my receipt, as the best he had ever seen, and which I will send you if you please. It came from an old physician at Richmond, who did amazing service with it in inveterate scurvies,--the parents, or ancestors, at least, I believe, of all gouts. Your fit I hope is quite gone.

Mr. Gough has been with me. I never saw a more dry or more cold gentleman. He told me his new plan is a series of English monuments. I do like the idea, and offered to lend him drawings for it.

I have seen Mr. Steevens too, who is much more flowing. I wish you had told me it was the editor of Shakspeare, for, on his mentioning Dr. Farmer, I launched out and said, he was by much the most rational of Shakspeare's commentators, and had given the only sensible account of the authors our great poet had consulted. I really meant those -who Wrote before Dr. Farmer.

Mr. Steevens seemed a little surprised, which made me discover the blunder I had made. For which I was very sorry, though I had meant nothing by it; however, do not mention it. I hope be has too much sense to take it ill, as he must have seen I had no intention of offending him; on the contrary, that my whole behaviour marked a desire of being civil to him as your friend, in which light only you had named him to me. Pray take no notice of it, though I could not help mentioning it, as it lies on my conscience to have been even undesignedly and indirectly unpolite to any body you recommend. I should not, I trust, have been so unintentionally to any body, nor with intention, unless provoked to it by great folly or dirtiness. Adieu!

Letter 239 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.

Berkeley Square, Feb. 14, 1782. (page 303)

I have received such treasures from you, dear Sir, through the channel of Mr. Nichols, that I neither know how to thank you, nor to find time to peruse them so fast as I am impatient to do. You must complete your kindness by letting me detain them a few days, till I have gone through them, when I will return them most carefully by the same intervention; and particularly the curious piece of enamel; for though you are, as usual, generous enough to offer it to me, I have plundered you too often already; and indeed I have room left for nothing more, nor have that miserly appet.i.te of continuing to h.o.a.rd what I cannot enjoy, nor have much time left to possess.

I have already looked into your beautiful illuminated ma.n.u.script copied from Dr: Stukeley's letter, and with Anecdotes of the Antiquaries of Bennet College; and I have found therein so many charming instances of your candour, humility, and justice, that I grieve to deprive Mr. Gough for a minute even of the possession of so valuable a tract. I will not Injure him or it, by begging you to cancel what relates to me, as it would rob you of part of your defence of Mr. Baker. If I wish to have it detained from Mr. Gough till the period affixed in the first leaf, or rather to my death, which will probably precede yours, it is for this reason only: Mr. Gough is apt, as we antiquaries are, to be impatient to tell the world all he knows, which is unluckily much more than the world is at all impatient of knowing. For what you call your flaming zeal, I do not in the least object to it. We have agreed to tolerate each other, and certainly are neither of us infallible. I think, on what we differ most is, your calling my opinions fashionable; they were when we took them up: I doubt it is yours that are most in fashion now, at least in this country. The Emperor seems to be of our party; but, if I like his notions, I do not admire his judgment, which is too precipitate to be judgment.

I smiled at Mr. Gough's idea of my declining his acquaintance as a member of that Obnoxious Society of Antiquaries. It is their folly alone that is obnoxious to me, and can they help that? I shall very cheerfully a.s.sist him.

I am glad you are undeserved about the controversial piece in the Gentleman's Magazine, which I should have a.s.sured You, as you now know, that it was not mine. I declared, in my Defence,(466) that I would publish nothing more about that question. I have not, nor intend it. Neither was it I that wrote the prologue to the Count of Narbonne, but Mr. Jephson himself. On the opposite page I will add the receipt for the diet-drink: as to my regimen, I shall not specify it. Not only you would not adopt it, but I should tremble to have you. In fact, I never do prescribe it, as I am persuaded it would kill the strongest man in England, who was not exactly of the same temperament with me, and who had not embraced it early. It consists in temperance to quant.i.ty as to eating--I do not mind the quality; I am persuaded that great abstinence with the gout is dangerous; for, if one does not take nutriment enough, there cannot be strength sufficient to fling out the gout, and then it deviates to palsies. But my great nostrum is the use of cold water, inwardly and outwardly, on all occasions, and total disregard of precaution against catching cold. A hat you know I never wear, my breast I never b.u.t.ton, nor wear great-coats, etc. I have often had the gout in my face (as last week) and eyes, and instantly dip my head in a pail of cold water, which always cures it, and does not send it anywhere else. All this I do, because I have so for these forty years, weak as I look; but Milo would not have lived a week if he had played such pranks. My diet-drink is not all of so Quixote a disposition; any of the faculty will tell you how innocent it is, at least. In a few days, for I am a rapid reader when I like my matter, I will return all your papers and letters; and in the mean time thank you most sincerely for the use of them.

(466) Hannah More, in a letter to Mrs. Boscawen, says, "Many thanks for Mr. Walpole's sensible, temperate, and humane pamphlet. I am not quite a convert yet to his side in the Chatertonian controversy, though this elegant writer and all the antiquaries and critics are against me: I like much the candid regret he every where discovers at not having fostered this unfortunate lad, whose profligate manners, however, I too much fear, would not have done credit to any patronage. Mrs. Garrick read it, and was more interested than I have ever seen her."-E.

Letter 240 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.

February 15, 1782. (page 304)

I was SO impatient to peruse all the literary stores you sent me, my dear Sir, that I stayed at home on purpose to give up a whole evening to them. I have gone through all; your own ma.n.u.script, which I envy Mr. Gough, his specimen, and the four letters to you from the latter and Mr. Steevens. I am glad they were both satisfied with my reception. In truth, you know I am neither formal nor austere, nor have any grave aversion to our antiquities, though I do now and then divert myself with their solemnity about arrant trifles; yet perhaps we owe much to their thinking those trifles of importance, or the Lord knows how they would have patience to investigate them so indefatigably. Mr.

Steevens seemed pleasant, but I doubt I shall never be demure enough to conciliate Mr. Gough. Then I have a wicked quality in an antiquary, nay, one that annihilates the essence: that is, I cannot bring myself to a habit of minute accuracy about very indifferent points. I do not doubt but there is a swarm of diminutive inaccuracies in my Anecdotes--well! if there is, I bequeath free leave of correction to the microscopic intellects of my continuators. I took dates and facts from the sedulous and faithful Vertue,(467) and piqued myself on little but on giving an idea of the spirit of the times with regard to the arts at the different periods.

The specimen you present me of Mr. Gough's detail of our monuments is very differently treated, proves vast industry, and shows most circ.u.mstantial fidelity. It extends, too, much farther than I expected; for it seems to embrace the whole ma.s.s of our monuments, nay, of some that are vanished. It is not what I thought, an intention of representing our modes of dress, from figures on monuments, but rather a history of our tombs. It is fortunate, though he may not think so, that so many of the more ancient are destroyed, since for three or four centuries they were clumsy, rude, and ugly. I know I am but a fragment of an antiquary, for I abhor all Saxon doings, and whatever did not exhibit some taste, grace, or elegance, and some ability in the artists. Nay, if I may say so to you, I do not care a straw for archbishops, bishops, mitred abbots, and cross-legged knights.

When you have one of a sort, you have seen all. However, to so superficial a student in antiquity as I am, Mr. Gough's work is not unentertaining. It has frequently anecdotes and circ.u.mstances of kings, queens, and historic personages, that interest me though I care not a straw about a series of bishops who had only Christian names, or were removed from one old church to a newer. Still I shall a.s.sist Mr. Gough with whatever he wants in my possession. I believe he is a very worthy man, and I should be a churl not to oblige any man who is so innocently employed. I have felt the selfish, the proud avarice of those who h.o.a.rd literary curiosities for themselves alone, as other misers do money.

I observed in your account of the Count-Bishop Hervey, that you call one of his dedicators Martin Sherlock, Esquire.(468) That Mr. Sherlock is an Irish clergyman; I am acquainted with him. He is a very amiable good-natured man, and wants judgment, not parts. He is a little damaged by aiming at Sterne's capricious pertness which the original wore out; and which, having been admired and cried up to the skies by foreign writers of reviews, was, on the contrary, too severely treated by our own. That injustice shocked Mr. Sherlock, who has a good heart and much simplicity, and sent him in dudgeon last year to Ireland, determined to write no more; yet I am persuaded he will, so strong Is his propensity to being an author; and if he does, correction may make him more attentive to what he says and writes. He has no gall; on the contrary, too much benevolence in his indiscriminate praise; but he has made many ingenious criticisms. He is a just, a due enthusiast to Shakspeare: but, alas! he scarce likes Richardson less.

(467) George Vertue, the engraver, was born in London in 1684, and died in 1756. Walpole has given a short sketch of his active life in his Anecdotes of Painting in England; a work, for the materials of which he was in a great measure, indebted to the collections of Vertue, which he bought of his widow. "These collections," he says, "amounted to nearly forty volumes, large and small: in one of his pocket-books I found a note of his first intention of compiling such a work; it was in 1713, and he continued it a.s.siduously to his death."-E.

(468) This eccentric and original writer had published a book at Rome in Italian, and two others at Paris, in French. The first volume of his "Letters from an English Traveller," translated by the Rev. John Duncombe, appeared in London in 1779, the author's return from the Continent, and before it was known he was in holy orders. The Letters were dedicated to the Hon. and Rev.

Frederick Augustus Hervey, Bishop of Derry, and afterwards Earl of Bristol. (See ant'e, p. 236, letter 182.) This volume was republished, revised and corrected by the author, in 1780, and was soon followed by "New Letters of an English Traveller." In 1781, Mr. Sherlock had a strong inclination to revisit the Continent, and actually caused the following article to be inserted in a public journal:--"It is now generally supposed, that, whoever may be honoured with the negotiation at Vienna, Mr.

Sherlock, the celebrated English traveller and chaplain to the Earl of Bristol, will be appointed secretary to his emba.s.sy. His great literary and political accomplishments, are in high estimation throughout the Continent; and he is, perhaps, the only Englishman who can boast of having familiarly conversed with the high potentates whose alliance at this important juncture it would be desirable to obtain. His being in orders is an objection which will vanish, when it is recollected that the very same important office was, in 1708, intended for Dr. Swift: a name which, however deservedly revered in Great Britain and Ireland, must, in every other kingdom of Europe, give precedence to those of Sherlock, Rousseau, and Sterne, the luminaries of the present century." In June of the same year he was presented, by the Bishop of Killala, with a living of 200 pounds a-year. Upon which occasion he wrote to his publisher, "I think it may be of use to our sale to let the world know it in the newspaper; and I am persuaded that doubling the value of the living will make the books sell better. The world (G.o.d bless it!) is very apt to value a man's writing according to his rank and fortune. I am sure they will think more highly of my Letters, if they believe I have 400 a-year, than if they think I have only two. Pope, you know, says something like this--