Frances Hodgson Burnett - "The Head of the House of Coombe"

Ludovic Halevy - "L'Abbe Constantin, v3"

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Alfred de Vigny - "Cinq Mars, v3"

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Books: Letters of Horace Walpole, V4

H >> Horace Walpole >> Letters of Horace Walpole, V4




You will wonder how I should be concerned in this correspondence,
who never saw either of the lovers in my days. In fact, my being
dragged in is a reason for doubting the authenticity; nor can I
believe that the long letter in which I am frequently mentioned
could be written by the wretched lunatic. It pretends that Miss
Ray desired him to give her a particular account of Chatterton.
He does give a most ample one; but is there a glimpse of
probability that a being so frantic should have gone to Bristol,
and sifted Chatterton's sister and others with as much cool
curiosity as Mr. Lort could do? and at such a moment! Besides, he
murdered Miss Ray, I think, in March; my printed defence was not
at all dispersed before the preceding January or February, nor do
I conceive that Hackman could even see it. There are notes,
indeed, by the editor, who has certainly seen it; but I rather
imagine that the editor, whoever he is, composed the whole
volume. I am acquitted of' being accessory to the man's death,
which is gracious; but much blamed for speaking of his bad
character, and for being too hard on his forgeries, though I took
so much pains to Specify the innocence of them; and for his
character, I only quoted the words of his own editor and
panegyrist. I did not repeat what Dr. Goldsmith told me at the
Royal Academy, where I first heard of his death, that he went by
the appellation of the "Young Villain;" but it is not new to me,
as you know, to be blamed by two opposite parties. The editor
has in one place confounded me and my uncle; who, he says, as is
true, checked Lord Chatham for being too forward a young man in
1740. In that year I was not even come into Parliament; and must
have been absurd indeed if I had taunted Lord Chatham with youth,
who was, at least, six or seven years younger than he was; and
how could he reply by reproaching me with old age, who was then
not twenty-three? I shall make no answer to these absurdities,
nor to any part of the work. Blunder, I see, people will, and
talk of what they do not understand @ and what care I? There is
another trifling mistake of still less consequence. The editor
supposes it was Macpherson who communicated Ossian to me. It was
Sir David Dalrymple who sent me the first specimen.(383)
Macpherson did once come to me, but my credulity was then a
little shaken.

Lady Ailesbury has promised me Guinea-eggs for you, but they have
not yet begun to lay I am well acquainted with Lady Craven's
little tale, dedicated to me.(384) It is careless and incorrect,
but there are very pretty things in it. I will stop, for I fear
I have written to you too much lately. One you did not mention:
I think it was of the 28th of last month.

(381) "A View of Northumberland; with an Excursion to the Abbey
of Melrose, Scotland, in the year 1776;" by William Hutchinson,
F. A. S. Two volumes 4to.; 1778-80.-E.

(382) the work here alluded to was written by Sir Herbert Croft,
Bart. It was a compound of fact and fiction called "Love and
Madness, a Story too true, in a Series of Letters between
Parties, whose names would, perhaps, be mentioned, were they less
known or less lamented. London, 1780." The work ran through
several editions. In 1800, Sir Herbert published, "Chatterton
and Love and Madness, in a Letter from Sir Herbert Croft to Mr.
Nichols." Boswell says, that Dr. Johnson greatly disapproved of
mingling real facts with fiction, and on this account censured
"Love and Madness."-E.


(383) See vol. iii. p. 63, letter 25, note 64.-E.

(384) Entitled "The Miniature Picture."-E.



Letter 190 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.
Berkeley Square, March 30, 1780. (page 248)

I cannot be told that you are extremely ill, and refrain from
begging to hear that you are better. Let me have but one line;
if it is good, 'it will satisfy me. If you was not out of order,
I would scold you for again making excuses about the Noble
Authors; it was not kind to be so formal about a trifle.

We do not differ so much in politics as you think, for when they
grow too serious, they are so far from inflaming my zeal, they
make me more moderate: and I can as easily discern the faults on
my own side as on the other; nor would assist Whigs more than
Tories in altering the constitution. The project of annual
parliaments, or of adding a hundred members to the House of
Commons would, I think, be very unwise, and will never have my
approbation--but a temperate man is not likely to be listened to
in turbulent times; and when one has not youth and lungs, or
ambition, to make oneself attended to, one can only be silent and
lament, and preserve oneself blameless of any mischief that is
done or attempted.



Letter 191 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.
Berkeley Square, May 11, 1780. (page 248)

Mr. Godfrey, the engraver, told me yesterday that Mr. Tyson is
dead.(385) I am sorry for it, though he had left me off. A much
older friend of mine died yesterday; but of whom I must say the
same, George Montagu, whom you must remember at Eton and
Cambridge. I should have been exceedingly concerned for him a
few years ago but he had dropped me, partly from politics and
partly from caprice, for we never had any quarrel; but he was
grown an excessive humourist, and had shed almost all his friends
as well as me. He had parts, and infinite vivacity and
originality till of late years; and it grieved me much that he
had changed towards me, after a friendship of between thirty and
forty years.

I am told that a nephew of the provost of King's has preached and
printed a most flaming sermon, which condemns the whole
Opposition to the stake. Pray who is it, and on what occasion?
Mr. Bryant has published an Answer to Dr. Priestley.(386) I
bought it, but though I have a great value for the author, the
subject is so metaphysical, and so above human decision, I soon
laid it aside. I hope you can send me a good account of
yourself, though the spring is so unfavourable. Yours most
sincerely.

(385) Mr. Cole, in a letter of the 14th, says, "the loss of poor
Mr. Tyson shocked and afflicted me more than I thought it
possible I could have been afflicted: since the loss of Mr. Gray,
I have lamented no one so much. God rest his soul! I hope he is
happy; and, was it not for those he has left behind, I am so much
of a philosopher, now the affair is over, I would prefer the
exchange."-E.

(386) It was entitled "An Address to Dr. Priestley upon his
Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity Illustrated."-E.



@Letter 192 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.
Friday night, May 19, 1780. (page 249)

By tomorrow's coach you will receive a box of Guinea-hens' eggs,
which Lady Ailesbury sent me to-day from Park-place. I hope they
will arrive safe and all be hatched.

I thank you for the account of the sermon and the portrait of the
uncle. They will satisfy me without buying the former. As I
knew Mr. Joseph Spence,(387) I do not think I should have been so
much delighted as Dr. Kippis with reading his letters. He was a
good-natured, harmless little soul, but more like a silver penny
than a genius. It was a neat, fiddle-faddle, bit of sterling,
that had read good books and kept good company, but was too
trifling for use, and only fit to please a child.

I hesitate on purchasing Mr. Gough's second edition. I do not
think there was a guinea's worth of entertainment in the first;
how can the additions be worth a guinea and a half? I have been
aware of the royal author you tell me of, and have noted him for
a future edition; but that will not appear in my own time;
because, besides that, it will have the castrations in my
original copy, and other editions, that I am not impatient to
produce. I have been solicited to reprint the work, but do not
think it fair to give a very imperfect edition when I could print
it complete, which I do not choose to do, as I have an aversion
to literary squabbles: one seems to think one's self too
important when one engages in a controversy on one's writings;
and when one does not vindicate them, the answerer passes for
victor, as you see Dr. Kippis allots the palm to Dr. Milles,
though you know I have so much more to say in defence of my
hypothesis. I have actually some hopes of still more, of which I
have heard, but till I see it, I shall not reckon upon it as on
my side.

Mr. lort told me of King James's Procession to St. Paul's; but
they ask such a price for it, and I care so little for James I.,
that I have not been to look at the picture.

Your electioneering will probably be increased immediately. Old
Mr. Thomas Townshend is at the point of death.(388) The
Parliament will probably be dissolved before another session. We
wanted nothing but drink to inflame our madness, which I do not
confine to politics; but what signifies it to throw out general
censures? We old folks are apt to think nobody wise but
ourselves. I wish the disgraces of these last two or three years
did not justify a little severity more than flows from the
peevishness of years! Yours ever.

(387) See Vol. I. p, 168, letter 29.-E.

(388) The Right Hon. Thomas Townshend, son of Charles second
Viscount Townshend, many years member for the University of
Cambridge. He died a few days after the date of this letter. He
was a most elegant scholar, and lived in acquaintance and
familiarity with most of the considerable men of his time. In
early life he entered into the secretary of state's office under
his father, whom he accompanied in his journeys to Germany with
George the First and Second. At the time of his death he was in
his seventy-ninth year.-E.



Letter 193 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.
Berkeley Square, May 30, 1780. (page 250)

I hope you will bring your eggs to a fair market. At last I have
got from Bonus my altar-doors which I bought at Mr. Ives's; he
has repaired them admirably. I would not suffer him to repaint
or varnish them. There are indubitably Duke Humphrey of
Gloucester, Cardinal Beaufort, and Archbishop Kemp. The fourth I
cannot make out. It is a man in a crimson garment lined with
white, and not tonsured. He is in the stable with cattle, and
has the air of Joseph; but over his head hangs a large shield
with these arms. * * *(389) The Cornish choughs are sable on
or; the other three divisions are gules, on the first of which is
a gold crescent.

The second arms have three bulls' heads sable, horned or. The
chevron was so changed that Bonus thought it sable; but I think
it was gules, and then it would be Bullen or Boleyn. Lord de
Ferrars says, that the first are the arms of Sir Bartholomew
Tate, who he finds married a Sanders. Edmondson's new Dictionary
of Heraldry confirms both arms for Tate and Sanders, except that
Sanders bore the chevron erminc, which it may have been. But
what I wish to discover IS, whether Sir Bartholomew Tate was a
benefactor to St. Edmundsbury, whence these doors came, or was in
any shape a retainer to the Duke of Gloucester or Cardinal
Beaufort. The Duke's and Sir Bartholomew's figures were on the
insides of the doors (which I have had sawed into four panels,)
and are painted in a far superior style to the Cardinal and the
Archbishop, which are very hard and dry. The two others are so
good that they are in the style of the school of the Caracci.
They at least were painted by some Italian; the draperies have
large and bold folds, and One wonders how they could be executed
in the reign of Henry VI. I shall be very glad if you can help
me to any lights, at least about Sir Bartholomew. I intend to
place them in my chapel, as they will aptly accompany the shrine.
The Duke and Archbishop's agree perfectly with their portraits in
my Marriage of Henry VI., and prove how rightly I guessed. The
Cardinal's is rather a longer and thinner visage, but that he
might have in the latter end of life; and in the Marriage he has
the red bonnet on, which shortens his face. On the door he is
represented in the character he ought to have possessed, a pious,
contrite look, not the truer resemblance which Shakspeare drew--
"He dies, and makes no sign!"--but Annibal Caracci himself could
not paint like our Raphael poet! Pray don't venture yourself in
any more electioneering riots: you see the mob do not respect
poets, nor, I suppose, antiquaries.

P. S. I am in no haste for an answer to my queries.

(389) Here Mr. Walpole had sketched in a rough draught of the
arms.



Letter 194 To Mrs. Abington.(390)
Strawberry Hill, June 11, 1780. (page 251)

Madam,
You may certainly always command me and my house. My common
custom is to give a ticket for only four persons at a time but it
would be very insolent in me, when all laws are set at nought, to
pretend to prescribe rules. At such times there is a shadow of
authority in setting the laws aside by the legislature itself;
and though I have no army to supply their place, I declare Mrs.
Abington may march through all my dominions at the head of as
large a troop as she pleases. I do not say, as she can muster
and command; for then I am sure my house would not hold them.
The day, too, is at her own choice; and the master is her very
obedient humble servant.

(390) Now first printed.



Letter 195 To The Earl Of Strafford.
Strawberry Hill, June 12, 1780. (page 251)

My dear lord,
If the late events had been within the common proportion of news,
I would have tried to entertain your lordship with an account of
them; but they were far beyond that size, and could only create
horror and indignation. Religion has often been the cloak of
injustice, outrage, and villany: in our late tumults,(391) it
scarce kept on its mask a moment; its persecution was downright
robbery; and it was so drunk that it killed its banditti faster
than they could plunder. The tumults have been carried on in so
violent and scandalous a manner, that I trust they will have no
copies. When prisons are levelled to the ground, when the Bank
is aimed at, and reformation is attempted by conflagrations, the
savages of Canada are the only fit allies of Lord George
Gordon(392) and his crew. The Tower is much too dignified a
prison for him-but he had left no other.

I came out of town on Friday, having seen a good deal of the
shocking transactions of Wednesday night--in fact, it was
difficult to be in London, and not to see or think some part of
it in flames. I saw those of the King's Bench, New Prison, and
those on the three sides of the Fleet-market, which turned into
one blaze.(393) The town and parks are now one camp--the next
disagreeable sight to the capital being in ashes. It will still
not have been a fatal tragedy, if it brings the nation one and
all to their senses. It will still be not quite an unhappy
country, if we reflect that the old constitution, exactly as it
was in the last reign, was the most desirable of any in the
universe. It made us then the first people in Europe--we have a
vast deal of ground to recover--but can we take a better path
than that which King William pointed out to us? I mean the
system he left us at the Revolution. I am averse to all changes
of it--it fitted us just as it was.

For some time even individuals must be upon their guard. Our new
and now imprisoned apostle has delivered so many Saint Peters
from gaol, that one hears of nothing but robberies on the
highway. Your lordship's sister, Lady Browne, and I have been at
Twickenham-park this evening, and kept together, and had a
horseman at our return. Baron d'Aguilar was shot at in that very
lane on Thursday night. A troop of the fugitives had
rendezvoused in Combe Wood, and were dislodged thence yesterday
by the light horse.

I do not know a syllable but what relates to these disturbances.
The newspapers have neglected few truths. Lies, without their
natural propensity to falsehoods, they could not avoid, for every
minute produces some, at least exaggerations. We were threatened
with swarms of good Protestants `a br`uler from all quarters, and
report
sent various detachments on similar errands; but thank God they
have been but reports! Oh! when shall we have peace and
tranquility? I hope your lordship and Lady Strafford will at
least enjoy the latter in your charming woods. I have long
doubted which of our passions is the strongest--perhaps every one
of them is equally strong in some person or other-but I have no
doubt but ambition is the most detestable, and the most
inexcusable; for its mischiefs are by far the most extensive, and
its enjoyments by no means proportioned to its anxieties. The
latter, I believe, is the case of most passions--but then all but
ambition cost little pain to any but the possessor. An ambitious
man must be divested of all feeling but for himself. The torment
of others is his high-road to happiness. Were the transmigration
of souls true, and accompanied by consciousness, how delighted
would Alexander or Croesus be to find themselves on four legs,
and divested of a wish to conquer new worlds, or to heap up all
the wealth of this! Adieu, my dear lord!

(391) The riots of 1780, when Lord George Gordon raised a
no-popery cry, and assembled many thousand persons in St.
George's Fields, to accompany him to the House of Commons, with a
petition for the repeal of the act passed for the relief of the
Roman Catholics in the preceding session. The petition was, of
course, rejected; which being communicated to the mob by Lord
George, they dispersed for a while, but on that evening commenced
their work of mischief, destroying two Catholic chapels in
Duke-street and Warwick-street: Newgate and all the other prisons
were likewise fired; the Bank was attempted; and the riot was not
quelled until 210 persons were killed and 248 wounded, of whom
seventy-five died in the hospitals. Lord George was committed to
the Tower; and many of the ringleaders, after being tried by
special commissioners, suffered the extreme penalty of the
law.-E.

(392) Lord George Gordon was brother of Alexander Duke of Gordon.
He was considered not to be at all times of sound mind. Some
years after his acquittal, on the indictment preferred against
him in the Court of King's Bench as instigator of the riots, he
was convicted of a libel on Marie Antoinette and Count d'Ademar,
one of the French ministry. To avoid punishment, he fled the
country; but shortly afterwards was discovered at Birmingham in
the garb of a Jew, and committed to Newgate, pursuant to his
sentence, where he lived some time, professing the Jewish
religion, having undergone the extreme rites of it, and where he
died, in November 1793.-E.

(393) In her reply to a letter from Walpole, giving an account of
these riots, Madame du Deffand says--"Rien n'est plus affreux que
tout ce qui arrive chez vous. Votre libert`e ne me s`eduit
point; cette libert`e tant vant`ee me paroit bien plus on`ereuse
que notre esclavage; mais il ne m'appartient pas de traitor de
telles mati`eres: permettez-moi de bl`amer votre indiscr`etion,
de vous aller promener dans les rues pendant ce vacarme."-E.



Letter 196 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.
Strawberry Hill, June 15, 1780. (page 253)

You may like to know one is alive, dear Sir, after a massacre,
and the conflagration of a capital. I was in it, both on the
Friday and on the Black Wednesday; the most horrible sight I ever
beheld, and which, for six hours together, I expected to end in
half the town being reduced to ashes. I can give you little
account of the original of this shocking affair; negligence was
certainly its nurse, and religion only its godmother. The
ostensible author is in the Tower. Twelve or fourteen thousand
men have quelled all tumults; and as no bad account is come from
the country, except for a moment at Bath, and as eight days have
passed,--nay, more, since the commencement, I flatter myself the
whole nation is shocked at the scene; and that, if plan there
was, it was laid only in and for the metropolis. The lowest and
most villanous of the people, and to no great amount, were almost
the sole actors.

/I hope your electioneering riotry(394) has not, nor will mix in
these tumults. It would be most absurd; for Lord Rockingham, the
Duke of Richmond, Sir George Saville, and Mr. Burke, the patrons
of toleration, were devoted to destruction as much as the
ministers. The rails torn from Sir George's house were the chief
weapons and instruments of the mob. For the honour of the nation
I should be glad to have it proved that the French were the
engineers. You and I have lived too long for our comfort--shall
we close our eyes in peace? I will not trouble you more about
the arms I sent you: I should like that they were those of the
family of Boleyn; and since I cannot be sure they were not, why
should not I fancy them so? I revert to the prayer for peace.
You and I, that can amuse ourselves with our books and papers,
feel as much indignation at the turbulent as they have scorn for
us. It is hard at least that they who disturb nobody can have no
asylum in which to pursue their innoxious indolence Who is secure
against Jack Straw and a whirlwind? How I abominate Mr. Banks
and Dr. Solander, who routed the poor Otaheitans out of the
centre of the ocean, and carried our abominable passions amongst
them! not even that poor little specie could escape European
restlessness. Well, I have seen many tempestuous scenes, and
outlived them! the present prospect is too thick to see through-
-it is well hope never forsakes us. Adieu!

(394) Of the "electioneering riotry" going on at this time in
Cambridgeshire, Mr. Cole, in a letter of the 14th of May, gives
the following account:--"Electioneering madness and faction have
inflamed this country to such a degree, that the peace it has
enjoyed for above half a century may take as long a time before
it returns again. Yesterday, the three candidates were
nominated; the Duke of Rutland's brother, the late Mr. Charles
Yorke's son, and Sir Sampson Gideon, whose expenses for this
month have been enormous, beyond all belief. Sending my servant
on a particular message to Sir Sampson, he found him in bed, not
well, and probably half asleep; for he not only wrote the
direction to two covers which I sent him, but sealed them both,
though they were only covers. I wonder, indeed, that he is
alive, considering the immense fatigue and necessary drinking he
must undergo--a miserable hard task to get into Parliament!" The
contest terminated in the return of Lord Robert Manners, who
died, in April 1782, of the wounds he received in the great
sea-fight in the West Indies; and of Mr. Philip Yorke, who, in
1790, succeeded his uncle as Earl of Hardwicke.-E.



Letter 197 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.
Strawberry Hill, July 4, 1780. (page 254)

I answer your letter the moment I receive it, to beg you will by
no means take any notice, not even in directly and without My
name, of the Life of Mr. Baker. I am earnest against its being
known to exist. I should be teased to show it. Mr. Gough might
inquire about it--I do not desire his acquaintance; and above all
am determined, if I can help it, to have no controversy while I
live. You know I have hitherto suppressed my answers to the
critics of Richard III. for that reason; and above all things, I
hate theologic or political controversy-nor need you fear my
disputing with you, though we disagree very considerably indeed
about Papist's and Presbyterians. I hope you have not yet sent
the manuscript to Mr. Lort, and if you have not, do entreat you
to deface undecipherably what you have said about my Life of Mr.
Baker.

Pray satisfy me that no mention of it shall appear in print. I
can by no means consent to it, and I am sure you will prevent it.
Yours sincerely.



Letter 198 To The Earl Of Strafford.
Strawberry Hill, Sept. 9, 1780. (page 255)

I am very happy at receiving a letter from your lordship this
moment, as I thought it very long since we had corresponded, but
am afraid of being troublesome, when I have not the excuse of
thanking you, or something worth telling you, which in truth is
not the case at present. No soul, whether interested or not, but
deafens one about elections. I always detested them, even when
in Parliament; and when I lived a good deal at White's, preferred
hearing of Newmarket to elections; for the former, being uttered
in a language I did not understand, did not engage my attention;
but as they talked of elections in English, I could not help
knowing what they said. It does surprise me, I own, that people
can choose to stuff their heads with details and circumstances.
of which in six weeks they will never hear or think more. The
weather till now has been the chief topic of conversation. Of
late it has been the third very hot summer; but refreshed by so
little rain, that the banks of the Thames have been and are, I
believe, like those of the Manzanares. The night before last we
had some good showers, and to-day a thick fog has dissolved in
some as thin as gauze. Still I am not quite sorry to enjoy the
weather of adust climates without their tempests and insects.
Lady Cowper I lately visited, and but lately: if what I hear is
true, I shall be a gainer, for they talk of Lord Duncannon having
her house at Richmond: like your lordship, I confess I was
surprised at his choice. I know nothing to the prejudice of the
young lady;(395) but I should not have selected, for so gentle
and very amiable a man, a sister of the empress of fashion,(396)
nor a daughter of the goddess of wisdom.(397)