The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford Volume I Part 60

The doctors differ that direct the state.

Craterus, wild as Thompson, rules and raves, A slave himself yet proud of making slaves; Fondly believing that his mighty parts Can guide all councils and command all hearts; Give shape and colour to discordant things, Hide fraud in ministers and fear in kings.

Presuming on his power, such schemes he draws For bribing Iron(945) and giving Europe laws, That camps, and fleets, and treaties fill the news, And succours un.o.btain'd and unaccomplish'd views.

"Like solemn Burton grave Plumbosus acts; He thinks in method, argues all from facts; Warm in his temper, yet affecting ice, Protests his candour ere he gives advice; Hints he dislikes the schemes he recommends, And courts his foes-and hardly courts his friends; Is fond of power, and yet concerned for fame- >From different parties would dependents claim Declares for war, but in an awkward way, Loves peace at heart, which he's afraid to say; His head perplex'd, altho' his hands are pure- An honest man,-but not a hero sure!"

I beg you will never tell me any news till it has past every impression of the Dutch gazette; for one is apt to mention what is wrote to one: that gets about, comes at last to, the ears of the ministry, puts them in a fright, and perhaps they send to beg to see your letter. Now, you know one should hate to have one's private correspondence made grounds for a measure,-especially for an absurd one, which is just possible.

If I was writing to any body but you, who know me so well, I should be afraid this would be taken for pique and pride, and be construed into my thinking all ministers inferior to my father but, my dear Harry, you know it was never my foible to think over-abundantly well of him. Why I think as I do of the great geniuses, answer for me, Admiral Matthews, great British Neptune, bouncing in the Mediterranean, while the Brest squadron is riding in the English Channel, and an invasion from Dunkirk every moment threatening your coasts: against which you send for six thousand Dutch troops, while you have twenty thousand of your own in Flanders, which not being of any use, you send these very six thousand Dutch to them, with above half of the few of your own remaining in England; a third part of which half of which few you countermand, because you are again alarmed with the invasion, and yet let the six Dutch go, who came for no other end but to protect you. And that our naval discretion may go hand-in-hand with our military, we find we have no force at home; we send for fifteen ships from the Mediterranean to guard our coasts, and demand twenty from the Dutch. The first fifteen will be here, perhaps in three months. Of the twenty Dutch, they excuse all but six, of which six they send all but four; and your own small domestic fleet, five are going to the West Indies and twenty a hunting for some Spanish ships that are coming from the Indies. Don't it put you in mind of a trick that is done by calculation: Think of a number: halve it-double it-and ten-subtract twenty-add half the first number-take away all you added: now, what remains?

That you may think I employ my time as idly as the great men I have been talking of, you must be informed that every night constantly I go to Ranelagh; which has totally beat Vauxhall.

n.o.body goes any where else-every body goes there. My Lord Chesterfield is so fond of it, that he says he has ordered all his letters to be directed thither. If you had never seen it, I would make you a most pompous description of it, and tell you how the floor is all of beaten princes-you can't set your foot without treading on a Prince of Wales or Duke of c.u.mberland. The company is universal: there is from his Grace of Grafton down to Children out of the Foundling Hospital- from my Lady Townshend to the kitten--from my Lord Sandys to your humble cousin and sincere friend.

(943) Now first printed.

(944) Dr. Henry Bland, head-master, and from 1732 to his death, in 1746, provost of Eton College. In No. 628 of the Spectator is a Latin version by him of Cato's soliloquy.-E.

(945) This is [email protected] W.

377 Letter 142 To Sir Horace Mann.

London, June 29, 1744.

Well, at last this is not to be the year of our captivity!

There is a cl.u.s.ter of good packets come at once. The Dutch have marched twelve thousand men to join our army; the King of Sardinia (but this is only a report) has beaten the Spaniards back over the Varo, and I this moment hear from the Secretary's office, that Prince Charles has undoubtedly pa.s.sed the Rhine at the head of fourscore thousand men-where, and with what circ.u.mstances, I don't know a word; ma basta cos'i.

It is said, too, that the Marquis de la Ch'etardie(946) is sent away from Russia: but this one has no occasion to believe. False good news are always produced by true good, like the waterfall by the rainbow. But why do I take upon me to tell you all this?-you, who are the centre of ministers and business! the actuating genius in the conquest of Naples! You cannot imagine how formidable you appear to me. My poor little, quiet Miny, with his headache and 'epuis.e.m.e.nts, and Cocchio, and coverlid of cygnet's down, that had no dealings but with a little spy-abb'e at Rome, a civil whisper with Count Lorenzi,(947) or an explanation on some of Goldsworthy's absurdities, or with Richcourt about some sbirri,(948) that had insolently pa.s.sed through the street in which the King of Great Britain's arms condescended to hang! Bless me! how he is changed, become a trafficking plenipotentiary with Prince lobkowitz, Cardinal Albani(949) and Admiral Matthews! Why, my dear child, I should not know you again; I should not dare to roll you up between a finger and thumb like wet brown paper.

Well, heaven prosper your arms! But I hate you, for I now look upon you as ten times fatter than I am.

I don't think it would be quite unadvisable for Bistino(950) to take a journey hither. My Lady Carteret would take violently to any thing that came so far as to adore her grandeur. I believe even my Lady Pomfret would be persuaded he had seen the star of their glory travelling westward to direct him. For my part, I expect soon to make a figure too in the political magazine, for all our Florence set is coming to grandeur; but you and my Lady Carteret have outstripped me.

I remain with -the Duke of Courtland in Siberia-my father has actually gone thither for a long season. I met my Lady Carteret the other day at Knaptons,(951) and desired leave to stay while she sat for her picture. She is drawn crowned with corn, like the G.o.ddess of Plenty, and a mild dove in her arms, like Mrs. Venus. We had much of my lord and my lord. The countess-mother was glad my lord was not there-he was never satisfied with the eyes; she was afraid he would have had them drawn bigger than the cheeks. I made your compliments abundantly, and cried down the charms of the picture as politically as if' you yourself had been there in person.

To fill up this sheet, I shall transcribe some very good lines published to-day in one of the papers, by I don't know whom, on Pope's death.

"Here lies, who died, as most folks die, in hope, The mouldering, more ign.o.ble part of Pope; The hard, whose sprightly genius dared to wage Poetic war with an immoral age; Made every vice and private folly known In friend and foe--a stranger to his own Set Virtue in its loveliest form to view, And still professed to be the sketch he drew.

As humour or as interest served, his verse Could praise or flatter, libel or asperse: Unharming innocence with guilt could load, Or lift the rebel patriot to a G.o.d: Give the censorious critic standing laws- The first to violate them with applause; The just translator and the solid wit, Like whom the pa.s.sions few so truly hit: The scourge of dunces whom his malice made- The impious plague of the defenceless dead: To real knaves and real fools a sore- Beloved by many but abhorr'd by more, If here his merits are not full exprest, His never-dying strains shall tell the rest."

Sure the greater part was his true character; Here is another epitaph by Rolli;(952) which for the profound fall in some of the verses', especially in the last, will divert you.

"Spento 'e il Pope: de' poeti Britanni Uno de' lumi che sorge in mille anni: Pur si vuol che la macchia d'Ingrato N'abbia reso il fulgor men sereno: Stato fora e pi'u giusto e pi'u grato.

Men lodando e biasmando ancor meno."

(946) French amba.s.sador at the court of St. Petersburg, and for some time a favourite of the Empress Elizabeth. The report of his disgrace was correct. He died in 1758.-E.

(947) A Florentine, but employed as minister by France.

(948) The officers of justice, who are reckoned so infamous in Italy, that the foreign ministers have always pretended to hinder them from pa.s.sing through the streets where they reside.

(949) Cardinal Alexander Albani, nephew of Clement XI. was minister of the Queen of Hungary at Rome.

(950) Giovanni Battista Uguecioni, a Florentine n.o.bleman, and great friend of the Pomfrets.

(951) George Knapton, a portrait painter. Walpole says, he was well versed in the theory of painting, and had a thorough knowledge of the hands of the good masters. He died at Kensington, in 1778, at the age of eighty.-E.

(952) Paolo Antonio Rolli, composer of the operas, translated and published several things. [Thus. .h.i.tched into the Dunciad-

"Rolli the feather to his ear conveys Then his nice taste directs our operas."

Warburton says, "He taught Italian to some fine gentlemen, who affected to direct the operas."

379 Letter 143 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.

Arlington Street, July 20, 1744.

My dearest Harry, I feel that I have so much to say to you, that I foresee there will be but little method in my letter; but if, upon the whole, you see My meaning, and the depth of my friendship for you, I am content.

It was most agreeable to me to receive a letter of confidence from you, at the time I expected a very different one from you; though, by the date of your last, I perceive you had not then received some letters, which, though I did not see, I must call simple, as they could only tend to make you uneasy for some months. I should not have thought of communicating a quarrel to you at a distance, and I don't conceive the sort of friendship of those that thought it necessary. When I heard it had been wrote to you, I thought it right to myself to give you my account of it, but, by your brother's desire, suppressed my letter, and left it to be explained by him, who wrote to you so sensibly on it, that I shall say no more but that I think myself so ill-used that it will prevent my giving you thoroughly the advice you ask of me for how can I be sure that my resentment might not make me see in a stronger light the reasons for your breaking off an affair(953) which you know before I never approved?

You know my temper is so open to any body I love that I must be happy at seeing you lay aside a reserve with me, which is the only point that ever made me dissatisfied with you. That silence of yours has, perhaps, been one of the chief reasons that has always prevented my saying much to you on a topic which I saw was so near your heart. Indeed, its being so near was another reason; for how could I expect you would take my advice, even if you bore it? But, my dearest Harry, how can I advise you now? Is it not gone too far -for me to expect you should keep any resolution about it, especially in absence, which must be destroyed the moment you meet again? And if ever you should marry and be happy, won't you reproach me with having tried to hinder it? I think you as just and honest as I think any man living; but any man living in that circ.u.mstance would think I had been prompted by private reasons. I see as strongly as you can all the arguments for your breaking off; but, indeed, the alteration of your fortune adds very little strength to what they had before. You never had fortune enough to make such a step at all prudent: she loved you enough to be content with that; I can't believe this change will alter her sentiments, for I must do her the justice to say that it is plain she preferred you with nothing to all the world. I could talk upon this head, but I will only leave you to consider, without advising YOU On either side, these two things-whether you think it honester to break off with her after such engagements as yours (how strong I don't know), after her refusing very good matches for you, and show her that she must think of making her fortune; or whether you will wait with her till some amendment in your fortune can put it in your power to marry her. '

My dearest Harry, you must see why I don't care to say more on this head. My wishing it could be right for you to break off with her (for, without it is right, I would not have you on any account take such a step) makes it impossible for me to advise it; and therefore, I am sure you will forgive my declining, an act of friendship which your having put in my power gives me the greatest satisfaction. But it does put something else in my power, which I am sure nothing can make me decline, and for which I have long wanted an opportunity.

Nothing could prevent my being unhappy at the smallness of your fortune, but its throwing it into my way to offer you to share mine. As mine is so precarious, by depending on so bad a const.i.tution, I can only offer you the immediate use of it.

I do that most sincerely. My places still (though my Lord Walpole has cut off three hundred pounds a-year to save himself the trouble of signing his name ten times for once) bring me in near two thousand pounds a-year. I have no debts, no connexions; indeed, no -way to dispose of it particularly.

By living with my father, I have little real use for a quarter of it. I have always flung it away all in the most idle manner; but, my dear Harry, idle -,is I am, and thoughtless, I have sense enough to have real pleasure in denying myself baubles, and in saving a very good income to make a man happy, for whom I have a just esteem and most sincere friendship. I know the difficulties any gentleman and man of spirit must struggle with, even in having such an offer made him, much more in accepting it. I hope you will allow there are some in making it. But hear me: if there is such a thing as friendship in the world, these are the opportunities of exerting it, and it can't be exerted without it is accepted.

I must talk of myself to prove to you that it will be right for 'you to accept it. I am sensible of having more follies and weaknesses, and fewer real good qualities than most men.

I sometimes reflect on this, though I own too seldom. I always want to begin acting like a man, and a sensible one, which I think I might b, if I would. Can I begin better, than by taking care of my fortune for one I love? You have seen (I have seen you have) that I am fickle, and foolishly fond of twenty new people; but I don't really love them-I have always loved you constantly: I am willing to convince you and the world, what I have always told you, that I loved you better than any body. If I ever felt much for any thing, which I know may be questioned, it was certainly my mother. I look on you as my nearest relation by her, and I think I can never do enough to show my grat.i.tude and affection to her. For these reasons, don't deny me what I have set my heart on-the making your fortune easy to you.

[The rest of this letter is wanting.]

(953) This was an early attachment of Mr. Conway's. By his having complied with the wishes and advice of his friends on this subject, and got the better of his pa.s.sion, he probably felt that he, in some measure, owed to Mr. Walpole the subsequent happiness of his life, in his marriage with another person. (the lady alluded to was Lady Caroline Fitzroy, afterwards Countess of Harrington, whose sister, Lady Isabella, had, three years before, married Mr. Conway's elder brother, afterwards Earl and Marquis of Hertford.]

381 Letter 144 To Sir Horace Mann.

Arlington Street, July 22, 1744.

I have not written to you, my dear child, a good while, I know but, indeed, it was from having nothing to tell you. You know I love you too well for it to be necessary to be punctually proving it to you; so, when I have nothing worth your knowing, I repose myself upon' the persuasion that you must have of my friendship. But I will never let that grow into any negligence, I should say, idleness, which is always mighty ready to argue me out of every thing I ought to do; and letter-writing is one of the first duties that the very best people let perish out of their rubric. Indeed, I pride myself extremely in having been so good a correspondent; for, besides that every day grows to make one hate writing, more, it is difficult, you must own, to keep up a correspondence of this sort with any spirit, when long absence makes one entirely out of all the little circ.u.mstances of each other's society, and which are the soul of letters. We are forced to deal only in great events, like historians; and, instead of being Horace Mann and Horace Walpole, seem to correspond as Guicciardin and Clarendon would:

Discedo Alceus puncto Illius; ille meo quis!

Quis nisi Callimachus?

Apropos to writing histories and Guicciardin; I wish to G.o.d, Boccalini was living! never was such an opportunity for Apollo's playing off a set of looks, as there is now! The good city of London, who, from long dictating to the government, are now come to preside over taste and letters, have given one Carte,(954) a Jacobite parson, fifty pounds a-year, for seven years, to write the history of England; and four aldermen and six common councilmen are to .inspect his materials and the progress of the work. Surveyors and common sewers turned supervisors of literature! To be sure, they think a history of England is no more than Stowe's Survey of the Parishes!

Instead of having books published with the imprimatur of an university, they Will be printed, as churches are whitewashed, John Smith and Thomas Johnson, churchwardens.

But, brother historian, you will wonder I should have nothing to communicate, when all Europe is bursting with events, and every day "big with the fate of Cato and of Rome." But so it is; I know nothing; Prince Charles's great pa.s.sage of the Rhine has. .h.i.therto produced nothing, more: indeed, the French armies are moving towards him from Flanders; and they tell us, ours is crossing the Scheldt to attack the Count de Saxe, now that we arc equal to him, from our reinforcement and his diminutions. In the mean time, as I am at least one of the princ.i.p.al heroes of my own politics, being secure of any invasion, I am going to leave all my lares, that is, all my antiquities, household G.o.ds and paG.o.ds, and take a journey into Siberia for six weeks, where my father's grace of Courland has been for some time.