The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford Volume IV Part 63

(673) Lady Greenwich.

(674) The " little Daniel" of the Pursuits of Literature, brother of Samuel Lysons, the learned antiquary, and author of "The Environs, twelve miles round London," in four volumes quarto--

"Nay once, for Purer air o'er rural ground, With little Daniel went his twelve miles round."-E.

(675) Lady Luxborough died in 1756. Her letters to Shenstone were published in 1775. In the first leaf of the original ma.n.u.script there is an autograph of the poet, describing them as being "written with abundant ease politeness, and vivacity; in which she was scarce equalled by any woman of her time." Some of her verses are printed in Dodsley's Miscellany, and Walpole has introduced her ladyship into his n.o.ble Authors.-E.

(676) Edward Jerningham, Esq. Of Cossey, in Norfolk, uncle to the present Lord Stafford. He was distinguished in his day by the name of Jerningham the poet; but it was an unpoetical day.

The stars of Byron, of Baillie, and of Scott, had not risen On the horizon. The well merited distinction of Jerningham was the friendship, affection, and intimacy which his amiable character had impressed on the author, and on all of his society mentioned in these letters.-M.B.

(677) This alludes to something said in a character which Jerningham had a.s.sumed, for the amus.e.m.e.nt of a society some time before at Marshal Conway's.-M.B.

(678) Miss More gives the following account of this extraordinary character:--"On Friday I gratified the curiosity of many years, by meeting at dinner Madame la Chevali'ere D'Eon - she is extremely entertaining, has universal information, wit, vivacity, and gaiety. Something too much of the latter (I have heard) when she has taken a bottle or two of Burgundy; but this being a very sober party, she was kept entirely within the limits of decorum.

General Johnson was of the party, and it was ridiculous to hear her military conversation. Sometimes it Was, 'Quand j''etais colonel d'un tel regiment;' then again, 'Non, c'Rait quand j''etais secr'etaire d'amba.s.sade du Duc de Nivernois,' or, 'Quand je n'egociais la paix de Paris.' She is, to be sure, a phenomenon in history; and, as such, a great curiosity. But one D'Eon is enough, and one slice of her quite sufficient." Memoirs, vol. ii.

p. 156.-E.

Letter 345 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.

Strawberry Hill, Sept. 5, 1789. (PAGE 440)

You speak so unperemptorily of your motions, that I must direct to you at random: the most probable place where to hit you, I think, will be Goodwood; and I do address this thither, because I am impatient to thank you for your tale, which is very pretty and easy and genteel. It has made me make a reflection, and that reflection made six lines; which I send you, not as good, but as expressing my thoughts on your writing so well in various ways which you never practised when you was much younger. Here they are:

The Muse most wont to fire a youthful heart, To gild your setting sun reserved her art; To crown a life in virtuous labours pa.s.s'd, Bestow'd her numbers and her wit at last; And, when your strength and eloquence retire, Your voice in notes harmonious shall expire.

The swan was too common a thought to be directly specified, and, perhaps, even to be alluded to: no matter, such a trifle is below criticism.

I am still here, in no uncertainty, G.o.d knows, about poor Lady Dysart (679) of whom there are not the smallest hopes. She grows weaker every day, and does actually still go out for the air, and may languish many days, though most probably will go off in a moment, As the water rises. She retains her senses perfectly, and as perfectly her unalterable calmness and patience, though fully sensible of her situation. At your return from Goodwood, I shall like to come to you, if you are unengaged, and ready to receive me. For the beauties of Park-place, I am too well acquainted with them, not, like all old persons about their contemporaries, to think it preserves them long after they are faded; and am so unwalking, that prospects are more agreeable to me when framed and glazed, and I look at them through a window.

It is yourselves I want to visit, not your verdure. Indeed, except a parenthesis of scarce all August, there has been no temptation to walk abroad; and the tempter himself would not have persuaded me, if I could, to have climbed that long-lost mountain whence he could show one even the Antipodes. It rained incessantly all June and all July; and now again we have torrents every day.

Jerningham's brother, the Chevalier, is arrived from Paris, and does not diminish the horrors one hears every day. They are now in the capital dreading the sixteen thousand deserters who hover about them. I conclude that when in the character of banditti the whole disbanded army have plundered and destroyed what they can, they will congregate into separate armies under different leaders, who will hang Out different principles, and the kingdom will be a theatre of civil wars; and, instead of liberty, the nation will get petty tyrants, perhaps petty kingdoms: and when millions have suffered, or been sacrificed, the government will be no better than it was, all owing to the intemperance of the 'etats, who might have obtained a good const.i.tution, or at least one much meliorated, if they had set out with discretion and moderation. They have left too a sad lesson to despotic princes, who will quote this precedent of frantic 'etats, against a.s.sembling any more, and against all the examples of senates and parliaments that have preserved rational freedom. Let me know when it will be convenient to you to receive me. Adieu!

(679) Her ladyship, who was the daughter of Sir Edward Walpole and the first wife of Lionel, fourth Earl of Dysart, died on the day this letter was written.-E.

Letter 346 To Miss Hannah More.

Strawberry Hill, Sept. -, 1789. (PAGE 441)

I know whence you wrote last, but not where you are now; you gave me no hint. I believe you fly lest I should pursue, and as if you were angry that I have forced you to sprout into laurels.

Yet you say you are vain of it, and that you are no philosopher.

Now, if you are vain I am sure you are a philosopher; for it is a maxim of mine, and one of my own making, that there never was a philosopher that did not love sweetmeats. ou tell me too, that you like I should scold you but since you have appeared as Bonner's ghost, I think I shall feel too much awe; for though (which I never expected would be in my power) I have made you stand in a white sheet, I doubt my respect is increased. I never did rate you for being too bad, but too good: and if, when you make up your week's account, YOU find but a fraction of vanity in the sum total, you will fall to repenting, and Come forth On Monday as humble as * * *. Then, if I huff my heart Out, you will only simper, and still wrap yourself up in your obstinate goodness. Well! take your own way; I give you Up to your abominable virtues, and will go answer the rest of your letter.

I congratulate you on the demolition of the Bastille; I mean as you do, of its' functions.(680) For the poor soul itself, I had no ill will to it: on the contrary, it was a curious sample of ancient castellar dungeons, which the good folks the founders took for palaces: yet I always hated to drive by it, knowing the miseries it contained. Of itself it did not gobble up prisoners to glut its maw, but received them by command. The destruction of it was silly, and agreeable to the ideas of a mob, who do not know stones and bars and bolts from a lettre de cachet. If the country remains free, the Bastille would be as tame as a ducking-Stool, now that there is no such thing as a scold. If despotism recovers, the Bastille will rise from its ashes!-- recover, I fear, it will. The 'Etats cannot remain a mob of kings, and will prefer a single one to a larger mob of kings and greater tyrants. The n.o.bility, the clergy, and people of property will wait, till by address and Money they can divide the people; or, whoever gets the larger or more victorious army into his hands, will be a Cromwell or a Monk. In short, a revolution procured by a national vertigo does not promise a crop of legislators. It is time that composes a good const.i.tution: it formed ours. We were near losing it by the lax and unconditional restoration of Charles the Second. The revolution was temperate, and has lasted; and, though it might have been improved, we know that with all its moderation it disgusted half the nation, who would have brought back the old sores. I abominate the Inquisition as much as you do: yet if the King of Spain receives no check like his cousin Louis, I fear he will not be disposed to relax any terrors. Every crowned head in Europe must ache at present; and the frantic and barbarous proceedings in France will not meliorate the stock of liberty, though for some time their majesties will be mighty tender of the rights of their subjects.

According to this hypothesis, I can administer some comfort to you about your poor negroes. I do not imagine that they will be emanc.i.p.ated at once; but their fate will be much alleviated, as the attempt will have alarmed their butchers enough to make them gentler, like the European monarchs, for fear of"provoking the disinterested, who have no sugar plantations, to abolish the horrid traffic.

I do not understand the manoeuvre of sugar, and, perhaps, am going to talk nonsense, as my idea maybe impracticable; but I Wish human wit, which is really very considerable in mechanics and merchantry, could devise some method of cultivating canes and making sugar without the manual labour of the human" species.

How many mills and inventions have there not been discovered to supply succedaneums to the works of the hands, which before the discoveries would have been treated as visions! It is true, manual labour has sometimes taken it very ill to be excused, and has destroyed such mills; but the poor negroes would not rise and insist upon being worked to death. Pray talk to some ardent genius, but do not name me; not merely because I may have talked like an idiot, but because my ignorance might, ipso C fiacto, stamp the idea with ridicule. People, I know, do not love to be put out of their old ways: no farmer listens at first to new inventions in agriculture; and I don't doubt but bread was originally deemed a new-fangled vagary, by those who had seen their fathers live very comfortably upon acorns. Nor is there any harm in starting new game to invention: many excellent discoveries have been made by men who were a la cha.s.se of something very different. I am not quite sure that the art of making gold and of* living for ever have been yet found out: yet to how many n.o.ble discoveries has the pursuit of those nostrums given birth! Poor chymistry, had she not had such glorious objects in view! If you are sitting under a cowslip at your cottage, these reveries may amuse you for half an hour, at least make you smile; and for the ease of your conscience, which is always in a panic, they require no answer.(681)

I will not ask you about the new history of Bristol,(682) because you are too good a citizen to say a word against your native place; but do pray cast your eye on the prints of The cathedral and castle, the chef-d',oeuvres of Chatterton's ignorance, and of Mr. Barrett's too; and on two letters pretended to have been sent to me, and which never were sent. If my incredulity had wavered, they would have fixed it. I wish the milkwoman would a.s.sert that Boadicea's dairymaid had invented Dutch tiles; it would be like Chatterton's origin of heraldry and painted gla.s.s, in those two letters. I must, however, mention one word about myself. In the new fourth volume of the Biographia Britannica I am more candidly treated about that poor lad than usual: yet the writer still affirms, that, according to my own account, my reply was too much in the-commonplace style of court replies. Now my own words, and the truth, as they stand in print in the very letter of mine which this author quotes, were, "I wrote him a letter with as much kindness and tenderness as if I had been his guardian." Is this by my own account a court-reply? Nor did I conceive, for I never was a courtier, that courtiers are wont to make tender replies to the poor; I am glad to hear they do.

I have kept this letter some days in my writing-box, till I could meet with a stray member of parliament, for it is not worth making you pay for: but when you talk to me I cannot help answering incontinently; besides, can one take up a letter at a long distance, and heat one's reply over again with the same interest that it occasioned at first? Adieu! I wish you may come to Hampton before I leave these purlieus! Yours More and More.

(680) Miss More had written to Walpole,--"Poor France! though I am sorry that the lawless rabble are so triumphant, I cannot help hoping that some good will arise from the sum of human misery having been so considerably lessened at one blow by the destruction of the Bastille. The utter extinction of the Inquisition, and the redemption of Africa, I hope yet to see accomplished." Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 170.-E.

(681) To this pa.s.sage Miss More thus replies:--"Your project for relieving our poor slaves by machine work is so far from being wild or chimerical, that of three persons deep and able in the concern (Mr. Wilberforce among others), not one but has thought it rational and practicable, and that a plough may be so constructed as to save much misery." Memoirs, vol. ii. p.

187.-,E.

(682) "The History and Antiquities of Bristol, by William Barrett:" Bristol, 1789, quarto; a Work which Mr. Park described as " a motley compound of real and superst.i.tious history."-E.

Letter 347 To Miss Hannah More.

Strawberry Hill, Nov. 4, 1789. (PAGE 444)

I am not surprised, my dear Madam, that the notice of my illness should have stimulated your predominant quality, your sensibility. 1 cannot do less in return than relieve it immediately, by a.s.suring you that I am in a manner recovered; and should have gone out before this time, if my mind were as much at ease as my poor limbs. I have pa.s.sed, five months most uncomfortably; the two last most unhappily. In June and September I had two bad falls by my own lameness and weakness, and was much bruised; while I was witness to the danger, and then to the death, of my invaluable niece, Lady Dysart. She was angelic, and has left no children. The unexpected death of Lord Waldegrave(683) one of the most amiable of men, has not only deprived me of him, but has opened a dreadful scene of calamities! he and my niece were the happiest and most domestic of couples.

Your kind inquiries after me have drawn these details from me, for which I make no excuse; good-nature never grudges its pity.

I, who love to force your gravity to smile, am seriously better pleased to indulge your benevolence with a subject of esteem, which, though moving your compa.s.sion, will be accompanied by no compunction. I will now answer your letter. Your plea, that not composition, but business, has occasioned your silence, is no satisfaction to me. In my present anxious solitude I have again read Bonner and Florio, and the Bas Bleu; and do you think I am much pleased to learn that you have not been writing? Who is it says something like this line?--

Hannah will not write, and Lactilla will.

They who think her Earl Goodwin will outgo Shakspeare, might be in the right, if they specified in what way. I believe she may write worse than he sometimes did, though that is not easy; but to excel him--oh! I have not words adequate to my contempt for those who can suppose such a possibility!

I am sorry, very sorry, for what you tell me of poor Barrett's fate. Though he did write worse than Shakspeare, it is great pity he was told so, as it killed him; and I rejoice that I did not publish a word in contradiction of the letters which he said Chatterton sent to me, as I was advised to do. I might have laughed at the poor man's folly, and then I should have been miserable to have added a grain to the poor man's mortification.(684)

you rejoice me, not my vanity, by telling me my idea of a mechanic succedaneum to the labour of negroes is not visionary, but thought practicable. Oh! how I wish I understood sugar ploughs, and could marry them! Alas! I understand nothing useful. My head is as un-mechanic as it is un-arithmetic, un-geometric, un-metaphysic, uncommercial; but will not some one of those superior heads to whom you have talked on my indigested hint reduce it to practicability'! How a feasible scheme would stun those who call humanity romantic, and show, from the books of the Custom-house, that murder is a great improvement of the revenue! Even the present situation of France is favourable.

Could not Mr. Wilberforce obtain to have the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of the negroes started there? The Jews are claiming their natural rights there; and blacks are certainly not so great defaulters as the Hebrews, though they too have undergone ample persecutions.

Methinks, as Lord George Gordon is in correspondence with the 'Etats, he has been a little remiss in not signing the pet.i.tion of those of his new communion.

The 'Etats are detestable and despicable; and, in fact, guilty of the outrages of the Parisian and provincial mobs. The mob of twelve hundred, not legislators, but dissolvers of all law, unchained the mastiffs that had been tied up, and were sure to worry all who fell in their way. To annihilate all laws, however bad, and to have none ready to replace them, was proclaiming anarchy. What should one think of a mad-doctor, who should let loose a lunatic, suffer him to burn Bedlam, chop off the heads of the keepers, and then consult with some students in physic on the gentlest mode of treating delirium? By a late vote I see that the twelve hundred praters are reduced to five hundred: Vive la reine Billingsgate! the Thalestris who has succeeded Louis Quatorze! A committee of those Amazons stopped the Duke of Orleans, who, to use their style, I believe is not a barrel the better herring.

Your reflections on Vertot's pa.s.sion for revolutions are admirable,(685) and yet it is natural for an historian to like to describe times of action. Halcyon days do not furnish matter for talents; they are like the virtuous couple in a comedy, a little insipid. Mr. Manly and Lady Grace, Mellefont and Cynthia, do not interest one much. Indeed, in a tragedy where they are unhappy, they give the audience full satisfaction, and no envy. The newspapers, no doubt, thought Dr. Priestley could not do better than to espouse you.(686) He certainly would be very judicious, could he obtain your consent; but, alas! you would squabble about Socinianism, or some of those isms. To tell you the truth, I hate all those Constantinopolitan jargons, that set people together by the ears about pedantic terms. When you apply scholastic phrases as happily and genteelly as you do in your Bas Bleu, they are delightful; but don't muddify your charming simplicity with controversial distinctions, that will sour your sweet piety. Sects are the bane of charity, and have deluged the world with blood.

I do not mean, by what I am going to say, to extort another letter from you before I have the pleasure of seeing you at Hampton; but I really shall be much obliged to you for a single line soon, only to tell me if Miss Williams is at Stoke with the d.u.c.h.ess of Beaufort. To a short note, cannot you add a short P.

S. on the fate of Earl Goodwin?(687) Lac mihi novum non frigore desit.

Adieu! my amiable friend! Yours most sincerely.

(683) George fourth Earl of Waldegrave born in 1751; married, in 1782, his cousin Lady Elizabeth Laura Waldegrave, daughter of James, the second Earl. He died on the 22d of October.-E.

(684) Mr. Barrett was the person who first encouraged Chatterton to publish the poems which he attributed to Rowley. He was a respectable surgeon at Bristol.-E.

(685) Miss More, in her last letter, had said--"What a pity it is that Vertot is not alive that man's element was a state convulsion; he hopped over peaceful intervals, as periods of no value, and only seemed to enjoy himself when all the rest of the world was sad. Storm and tempest were his halcyon days."-E.

(686) In her letter to Walpole Miss More had said,--"I comforted myself., that your two fair wives were within reach of your elbow-chair, and that their pleasant society would somewhat mitigate the sufferings of your confinement. Apropos of two wives--when the newspapers the other day were pleased to marry me to Dr. Priestley, I am surprised they did not rather choose to bestow me on Mr. Madan, as his wife is probably better broken in to these eastern usages, than Mrs. Priestley may be. I never saw the Doctor but once in my life, and he had then been married above twenty years." Memoirs, vol. ii. P. 188.-E.

(687) Ann Yearsley's tragedy, which had just been represented, with little success, at the Bath and Bristol theatres. In reply to Walpole's query, Miss More says, "There are, I dare say, some Pretty Pa.s.sages in it, but all seem to bring it in guilty of the crime of dullness; which I take to be the greatest fault in dramatic composition."-E.