Books: Letters of Horace Walpole, V4

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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 circumstance 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 assured, 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 God! 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 quantity 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 pass away only by
perspiration; or which discharge themselves into chalk-stones,
which sometimes remain in their beds, sometimes make their
passage 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 pass 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 assent; 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 assure 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 title 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 classics 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 manuscripts, 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 harassing 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 associated 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 space 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
appetite of continuing to hoard what I cannot enjoy, nor have
much time left to possess.

I have already looked into your beautiful illuminated manuscript
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 assist him.

I am glad you are undeserved about the controversial piece in the
Gentleman's Magazine, which I should have assured 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 quantity 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
button, 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 manuscript,
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 circumstantial fidelity. It extends, too, much
farther than I expected; for it seems to embrace the whole mass
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
circumstances 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 assist 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 hoard 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 assiduously 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 embassy. 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 (God 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--

'A saint in crape, is twice a saint in lawn.'

Will you then be so good as to have this paragraph put into the
Morning Herald, the Morning Chronicle, the Morning Post, and any
other fourth paper you choose? 'We hear that the Rev. Martin
Sherlock, M.A., etc., is collated to the united vicarages of
Castleconner and Rilglass, worth 400 a-year.' Is there any news
of me in London? Am I abused or well-spoken of in print? Are
the writers as uneasy as they used to be about my vanity? Keep
all printed things, reviews, newspapers, etc., about me, till I
have an opportunity of sending for them. I think I shall have
something for you by next week; but keep that a secret. wish,
for your sake, I was a bishop; for then, I will answer for it, my
works would sell well." An elegant edition of all Mr. Sherlock's
Letters was published by Mr. Nichols in 1802, in two volumes
octavo. It is now a very scarce book. In 1788, he was collated
to the rectory and vicarage of Streen, and soon afterwards to the
archdeaconry of Killala. He died in 1797.-E.