Books: Letters of Horace Walpole, V4

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(481) "Anecdotes of Eminent Painters, in Spain during the
Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, with Cursory Remarks upon
the present State of Arts in that Kingdom."

Letter 248 To John Nichols, Esq.
Berkeley Square, June 19, 1782. (page 315)

Sir,
Just this moment, on opening your fifth volume of Miscellaneous
Poems, I find the translation of Cato's speech into Latin,
attributed (by common fame) to Bishop Atterbury. I can most
positively assure you, that that translation was the work of Dr.
Henry Bland, afterwards Head-master of Eton school, Provost of
the college there, and Dean of Durham. I have more than once
heard my father Sir Robert Walpole say, that it was he himself
who gave that translation to Mr. Addison, who was extremely
surprised at the fidelity and beauty of it. It may be worth
while, Sir, on some future occasion, to mention this fact in some
one of your valuable and curious publications. I am, Sir, with
great regard.

Letter 249 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.
Berkeley Square, June 21, 1782. (page 315)

It is no trouble, my good Sir, to write to you, for I am as well
recovered as I generally do. I am very sorry you do not, and
especially in your hands, as your pleasure and comforts so much
depend on them. Age is by no means a burden while it does not
subject one to depend on others; when it does, it reconciles one
to quitting every thing; at least I believe you and I think so,
who do not look on solitude as a calamity. I shall go to
Strawberry to-morrow, and will, as I might have thought of doing,
consult Dugdale and Collins for the Duke of Ireland's inferior
titles. Mr. Gough I shall be glad of seeing when I am settled
there, which will not be this fortnight. I think there are but
eleven parts of Marianne, and that it breaks off in the nun's
story, which promised to be very interesting. Marivaux never
finished Marianne, nor the Paysan Parvenu (which was the case too
with the younger Cr`ebillon with Les Egaremens.) I have seen two
bad conclusions of Marianne by other hands. Mr. Cumberland's
brusquerie is not worth notice, nor did I remember it. Mr.
Pennant's impetuosity you must overlook too; though I love your
delicacy about your friend's memory. Nobody that knows you will
suspect you of wanting it; but, in the ocean of books that
overflows every day, who will recollect a thousandth part of what
is in most of them? By the number of writers one should
naturally suppose there were multitudes of readers; but if there
are, which I doubt, the latter read only the productions of the
day. Indeed, if they did read former publications, they would
have no occasion to read the modern, which, like Mr. Pennant's,
are borrowed wholesale from the more ancient: it is sad to say,
that the borrowers add little new but mistakes. I have just been
turning over Mr. Nichols's eight volumes of Select Poems, which
he has swelled unreasonably with large collops of old authors,
most of whom little deserved revivifying. I bought them for
the biographical notes, in which I have found both inaccuracies
and blunders. For instance, one that made me laugh. In Lord
Lansdown's Beauties he celebrates a lady, one Mrs. Vaughan *
Mr. Nichols turns to the peerage of that time, and finds a Duke
of Bolton married a Lady Ann Vaughan; he instantly sets her down
for the lady in question, and introduces her to posterity as a
beauty. Unluckily, she was a monster, so ugly, that the Duke,
then Marquis of Winchester, being forced by his father to marry
her for her great fortune, was believed never to have
consummated' and parted from her as soon as his father died; but,
if our predecessors are exposed to these misrepresentations, what
shall we be, when not only all private history is detailed in the
newspapers, but scarce ever with tolerable fidelity! I have long
said, that if a paragraph in a newspaper contains a word of
truth, it is sure to be accompanied with two or three blunders;
yet, who will believe that papers published in the face of the
whole town should be nothing but magazines of lies, every one of
which fifty persons could contradict and disprove? Yet so it
certainly is, and future history will probably be ten times
falser than all preceding. Adieu! Yours most sincerely.

Letter 250 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.
Strawberry Hill, July 23, 1782. (page 316)

I have been more dilatory than usual, dear Sir, in replying to
your last; but it called for no particular answer, nor have I now
any thing worth telling you. Mr. Gough and Mr. Nichols dined
with me on Saturday last. I lent the former three-and-twenty
drawings of monuments out of Mr. Lethieullier's books, for his
large work, which will be a magnificent one. Mr. Nichols is, as
you say, a very rapid editor, and I must commend him for being a
very accurate one. I scarce ever saw a book so correct as his
Life of Mr. Bowyer. I wish it deserved the pains he has bestowed
on it every way, and that he would not dub so many men great. I
have known several of his heroes who were very little men. Dr.
Mead had nothing but pretensions; and Philip Carteret Webb was a
sorry knave, with still less foundation. To what a slender total
do those shrink who are the idols of their own age! How very few
are known at all at the end of the next century! But there is a
chapter in Voltaire that would cure any body of being a great man
even in his own eyes. It is a chapter in which a Chinese goes
into a bookseller's shop, and marvels at not finding any of his
own country's classics. It is a chapter that ought never to be
out of the sight of any vain author. I have just got the
catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Museum. It is every way
piteously dear; the method is extremely puzzling, and the
contents chiefly rubbish: who would give a rush for Dr. Birch's
correspondence? many of the pieces are in print. In truth, I
set little store by a collection of manuscripts. A work must be
of little value that never could get into print; I mean, if it
has existed half a century. The articles that diverted me most
were an absolute novelty; I knew Henry VIII. was a royal author,
but not a royal quack. There are several receipts of his own,
and this delectable one amongst others. "The King's Grace's
oyntement made at St. James's, to coole, and dry, and comfort the
--." Another, to the same purpose, was devised at Cawoode,--was
not that an episcopal palace? How devoutly was the head of the
church employed! I hope that you have recovered your spirits;
and that summer, which is arrived at last, will make a great
amendment in you.

Letter 251To The Earl Of Strafford.
Strawberry Hill, August 16, 1782. (page 317)

If this letter reaches your lordship, I believe it must be
conveyed by a dove; for we are all under water, and a postman has
not where to set the sole of his foot. They tell me, that in the
north you have not been so drowned, which will be very fortunate:
for in these parts every thing is to be apprehended for the corn,
the sheep, and the camps: but, in truth, all kinds of prospects
are most gloomy, and even in lesser lights uncomfortable. Here
we cannot stir, but armed for battle. Mr. Potts, who lives at
Mr. Hindley's, was attacked and robbed last week at the end of
Gunnersbury-lane, by five footpads who had two blunderbusses.
Lady Browne and I do continue going to Twickenham park; but I
don't know how long it will be prudent, nor whether it is so now.

I have not been at Park-place, for Mr. Conway is never there, at
least only for a night or two. His regiment was reviewed
yesterday at Ashford-common, but I did not go to see it. In
truth, I have so little taste for common sights, that I never yet
did see a review in my life: I was in town last week, yet saw not
Monsieur de Grasse;(482) nor have seen the giant or the dwarf.

Poor Mrs. Clive is certainly very declining, but has been better
of late; and which I am glad of, thinks herself better. All
visions that comfort one are desirable: the conditions of
mortality do not bear being pryed into; nor am I an admirer of
that philosophy that scrutinizes into them: the philosophy of
deceiving one's self is vastly preferable. What signifies
anticipating what we cannot prevent?

I do not pretend to send your lordship any news, for I do not
know a tittle, nor inquire. Peace is the sole event of which I
wish to hear. For private news, I have outlived almost all the
world with which I was acquainted, and have no curiosity about
the next generation, scarce more than about the twentieth
century. I wish I was less indifferent, for the sake of the few
with whom I correspond,-your lordship in particular, who are
always so good and partial to me, and on whom I should
indubitably wait, were I fit to take a long journey; but as I
walk no better than a tortoise, I make a conscience of not
incommodating my friends, whom I should Only Confine at home.
Indeed both my feet and hands are so lame, that I now scarce ever
dine abroad. Being so antiquated and insipid, I will release
your lordship; and am, with my unalterable respects to Lady
Strafford, your lordship's most devoted humble servant.

(482) The Comte de Grasse, the admiral of the French fleet which
Rodney defeated on the 12th of April, 1782, and who had struck
his flag in that engagement to the Barbeur, and surrendered
himself to Sir Samuel Hood, landed at Portsmouth, as a prisoner
of war, on the 5th of August.-E.

Letter 252 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.(483)
Strawberry Hill, August 20, 1782. (page 318)

You know I am too reasonable to expect to hear from you when you
are so overwhelmed in business, or to write when I have nothing
upon earth to say. I would come to town, but am to have company
on Thursday, and am engaged with Lady Cecilia at Ditton on
Friday,
and On Monday I am to dine and pass the day at Sion-hill; and, as
I am twenty years older than any body of my age, I am forced to
rest myself between my parties. I feel this particularly at this
moment, as the allied houses of Lucan and Althorpe have just been
breakfasting here, and I am sufficiently fatigued.

I have not been at Oatlands for years; for consider I cannot
walk, much less climb a precipice; and the Duke of Newcastle has
none of the magnificence of petty princes in a romance or in
Germany, of furnishing calashes to those who visit his domains.
He is not undetermined about selling the place; but besides that
nobody is determined to buy it, he must have Lord Lincoln's
consent.

I saw another proud prince yesterday, your cousin Seymour from
Paris, and his daughter. She was so dishevelled, that she looked
like a pattern doll that had been tumbled at the Custom-house.

I am mighty glad that war has gone to sleep like a paroli at
faro, and that the rain has cried itself to death; unless the
first would dispose of all the highwaymen, footpads, and
housebreakers, or the latter drown them, for nobody hereabouts
dare stir after dusk, nor be secure at home. When you have any
interval Of Your little campaigns, I shall hope to see you and
Lady Ailesbury here.

(483) Now first printed.

Letter 253 To The Earl Of Buchan.(484)
Strawberry Hill, Sept. 15, 1782. (page 319)

I congratulate your lordship on the acquisition of a valuable
picture by Jameson. The Memoirs of your Society I have not yet
received; but when I do, shall read it with great pleasure, and
beg your lordship to offer my grateful thanks to the members, and
to accept them yourself.

No literature appears here at this time of the year. London, I
hear, is particularly empty. Not only the shooting season is
begun, but till about seventeen days ago, there was nothing but
incessant rains, and not one summer's day. A catalogue, in two
quartos, of the Manuscripts in the British Museum, and which
thence does not seem to contain great treasures, and Mr.
Tyrwhitt's book on the Rowleian controversy, which is reckoned
completely victorious, are all the novelties I have seen since I
left town. War and politics occupy those who think at all-no
great number neither; and most of those, too, are content with
the events of the day, and forget them the next. But it is too
like an old man to blame the age; and, as I have nothing to do
with it, I may as well be silent and let it please itself. I am,
with great regard, my lord, yours, etc.

(484) Now first collected.

Letter 254 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.
Strawberry Hill, Sept. 17, 1782. (page 319)

I had not time yesterday to say what I had to say about your
coming hither. I should certainly be happy to see you and Lady
Ailesbury at any time: but it would be unconscionable to expect
it when you have scarce a whole day in a month to pass at your
own house, and to look after your own works. Friends, I know,
lay as great stress upon trifles as upon serious points; but as
there never was a more sincere attachment than mine, so it is the
most reasonable one too for I always think for you more than
myself. Do whatever you have to do, and be assured, that is what
I like best that you should do. The present hurry cannot last
always. Your present object is to show how much more fit you are
for your post(485) than any other man; by which you will do
infinite service too, and will throw a great many private acts of
good-nature and justice into the account. Do you think I would
stand in the way of any of these things? and that I am not aware
of them? Do you think about me? If it suits you at any moment,
come. Except Sunday next, when I am engaged to dine abroad, I
have nothing to do till the middle of October, when I shall go to
Nuneham; and, going or coming, may possibly catch you at
Park-place.

I am not quite credulous about your turning smoke into gold:(486)
it is perhaps because I am ignorant. I like Mr. Mapleton
extremely; and though I have lived so long, that I have little
confidence, I think you could not have chosen one more likely to
be faithful. I am sensible that my kind of distrust would
prevent all great enterprises; and yet I cannot but fear, that
unless one gives one's self' up entirely to the pursuit of a new
object, this risk must be doubled. But I will say no more; for I
do not even wish to dissuade you, as I am sure I understand
nothing of the matter, and therefore mean no more than to keep
your discretion awake.

The tempest of Monday night alarmed me too for the fleet: and as
I have nothing to do but to care, I feel for individuals as well
as for the public, and think of all those who may be lost, and of
all those who may be made miserable by such loss. Indeed, I care
most for individuals; for as to the public, it seems to be
totally insensible to every thing! I know nothing worth
repeating; and having now answered all your letter, shall bid you
good night. Yours ever.

(485) Mr. Conway was now commander-in-chief.

(486) Alluding to the coke-ovens, for which Mr. Conway afterwards
obtained a patent.

Letter 255 To The Earl Of Strafford.
Strawberry Hill, Oct. 3, 1782. (page 320)

I did think it long since I had the honour of hearing from your
lordship; but, conscious how little I could repay you with any
entertainment, I waited with patience. In fact, I believe
summer-correspondences often turn on complaints of want of news.
it is unlucky that that is generally the season of
correspondence, as it is of separation. People assembled in a
capital contrive to furnish matter, but then they have not
occasion to write it. Summer, being the season of campaigns,
ought to be more fertile: I am glad when that is not the case,
for what is an account of battles but a list of burials?
Vultures and birds of prey might write with pleasure to their
correspondents in the Alps of such events; but they ought to be
melancholy topics to those who have no beaks or talons. At this
moment if I was an epicure among the sharks, I should rejoice
that General Elliot has just sent the carcases of fifteen hundred
Spaniards down to market under Gibraltar;(487) but I am more
pleased that he despatched boats, and saved some of those whom he
had overset. What must a man of so much feeling have suffered at
being forced to do his duty so well as he has done! I remember
hearing such another humane being, that brave old admiral Sir
Charles Wager, say, that in his life be had never killed a fly.

This demolition of the Spanish armada is a great event: a very
good one if it prevents a battle between Lord Howe and the
combined fleets, as I should hope; and yet better if it produces
peace, the only political crisis to which I look with eagerness.
Were that happy
moment arrived, there is ample matter to employ our great men, if
we have any, in retrieving the affairs of this country, if they
are to be retrieved. But though our sedentary politicians write
abundance of letters in the newspapers, full of plans of public
spirit, I doubt the nation is not sober enough to set about its
own work in earnest. When none reform themselves, little good is
to be expected, We see by the excess of highwaymen how far evils
may go before any attempt is made to cure them. I am sure, from
the magnitude of this inconvenience, that I am not talking merely
like an old man. I have lived here above thirty years, and used
to go every where round at all hours of the night without any
precaution. I cannot now stir a mile from my own house after
sunset without one or two servants with blunderbusses. I am not
surprised your lordship's pheasants were stolen: a woman was
taken last Saturday night loaded with nine geese, and they say
has impeached a gang Of fourteen housebreakers -but these are
undergraduates; when they should have taken their doctor's
degrees, they would not have piddled in such little game. Those
regius-professors the nabobs have taught men not to plunder for
farthings.

I am very sensible of your lordship's kindness to my nephew Mr.
Cholmondeley. He is a sensible, well-behaved young man, and, I
trust, would not have abused your goodness. Mr. Mason writes to
me, that he shall be at York at the end of this month. I was to
have gone to Nuneham; but the house is so little advanced, that
it is a question whether they can receive me. Mason, I doubt, has
been idle there. I am sure, if he found no muses there, he could
pick up none at Oxford, where there is not so much as a bedmaker
that ever lived in a muse's family. Tonton begs his duty to all
the lambs, and trusts that Lady Strafford will not reject his
homage.

(487) On the 13th of September, when General Elliot repulsed the
grand attack made on Gibraltar - and Captain Curtis of the
Brilliant, who commanded the marine brigade upon the occasion,
and his men, saved numbers of the Spaniards, at the hazard of
their own lives.-E.

Letter 256 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.
Strawberry Hill, Nov. 5, 1782. (page 321)

I had begun a letter in answer to another person, which I have
broken off on receiving yours, dear Sir. I am exceedingly
concerned at the bad account you give of yourself; and yet on
weighing it, I flatter myself that you are not Only out of all
danger, but have had a fortunate crisis, which I hope will
Prolong your life. A bile surmounted is a present from nature to
us, who are not boys: and though you speak as weary of life from
sufferings, and yet with proper resignation and philosophy, it
does not frighten me, as I know that any humour and gathering,
even in the gum, is strangely dispiriting. I do not write merely
from sympathizing friendship, but to beg that if your bile is not
closed or healing, you will let me know; for the bark is
essential, yet very difficult to have genuine. My apothecary
here, I believe, has some very good, and I will send you some
directly.

I will thank you, but not trouble you with an account of myself.
I had no fit of the gout, nor any new complaint; but it is with
the utmost difficulty I keep the humour from laming me entirely,
especially in my hands, which are a mine of chalk-stones; but, as
they discharge themselves, I flatter myself they prevent heavier
attacks.

I do take in the European Magazine, and think it in general one
of the best. I forgot what was said of me: sometimes I am
corrected, sometimes flattered, and care for neither. I have not
seen the answer to Mr. Warton, but will send for it.

I shall not be sorry on my own account if Dr. Lort quits Lambeth,
and comes to Saville-row, which is in my neighbourhood; but I did
not think a wife was the stall where he would set up his staff.

You have given me the only reason why I cannot be quite sorry
that you do not print what you had prepared for the press. No
kind intention towards me from you surprises me-but then I want
no new proofs. My wish, for whatever shall be the remainder of
my life is to be quiet and forgotten. Were my course to
recommence, and one could think in youth as one does at
sixty-five, I have no notion I should have courage to appear as
an author. Do you know, too, that I look on fame now as the
idlest of all visions? but this theme would lead me too far.

I collect a new comfort from your letter. The writing is much
better than in most of your latest letters. If your pain were
not ceased, you could not have formed your letters so firmly and
distinctly. I will not say more, lest I should draw you into
greater fatigue; let me have but a single line in answer. Yours
most cordially.(488)

(488) This is the last letter addressed by Walpole to Mr. Cole;
who died within six weeks of the date of it. The event is thus
recorded by Mr. Gough, in the second volume of his edition of
Camden's Britannia. "At Milton a small village on the Ely road,
was the retirement of the Rev. William Cole. Here, Dec. 16,
1782, in his sixty-eighth year, he closed a life spent in learned
research into the history and antiquities of this county in
particular, which nothing but his declining state of health
prevented this work from sharing the benefit of. He was buried
under the belfry of St. Clement's Church in Cambridge."-E.

Letter 257 To George Colman, Esq.(489)
Strawberry Hill, May 10, 1783. (page 322)

Dear Sir,
For so you must allow me to call you, after your being so kind as
to send me so valuable and agreeable a present as your
translation of Horace(490)--I wish compliment had left any term
uninvaded, Of which sincerity could make use without suspicion.
Those would be precisely what I would employ in commending your
poem; and, if they proved too simple to content my gratitude, I
would be satisfied with an offering to truth, and wait for a
nobler opportunity of sacrificing to the warmer virtue. If I
have not lost my memory, your translation is the best I have ever
seen of that difficult epistle. Your expression is easy and
natural, and when requisite, poetic. In short, it has a prime
merit, it has the air of an original.

Your hypothesis in your commentary is very ingenious. I do not
know whether it is true, which now cannot be known; but if the
scope of the epistle was, as you suppose, to hint in a delicate
and friendly manner to the elder of Piso's sons that he had
written a bad tragedy, Horace had certainly executed his plan
with great address; and, I think, nobody will be able to show
that any thing in the poem clashes with your idea. Nay, if he
went farther, and meant to disguise his object, by giving his
epistle the air of general rules on poetry and tragedy, he
achieved both purposes; and while the youth his friend was at
once corrected and put to no shame, all other readers were kept
in the dark, except you, and diverted to different scents.(491)
Excuse my commenting your comment, but I had no other way of
proving that I really approve both your version and criticism
than by stating the grounds of my applause. If you have wrested
the sense of the original to favour your own hypothesis, I have
not been able to discover your art; for I do not perceive where
it has been employed. If you have given Horace more meaning than
he was intitled to, you have conferred a favour on him, for you
have made his whole epistle consistent, a beauty all the
spectacles of all his commentators could not find out-but,
indeed, they proceed on the profound laws of criticism, you by
the laws of common sense, which, marching on a plain natural
path, is very apt to arrive sooner at the goal, than they who
travel on the Appian Way; which was a very costly and durable
work, but is very uneasy, and at present does not lead to a
quarter of the places to which it was originally directed.

I am, Sir, with great regard, your most
obedient and obliged humble servant.

(489) Now first collected.

(490) His translation of Horace's Epistola ad Pisones de Arte
Poeticae.-E.

(491) It had been the opinion of Bishop Hurd, that - it was the
proper and sole purpose of ,Horace simply to criticise the Roman
drama;" but Mr. Colman assumed a contrary ground. "If my
partiality to my lamented friend, Mr. Colman," says Dr. Joseph
Warton, "does not mislead me, I should think his account of the
matter the most judicious of any yet published. He conceives
that the elder Piso had written, or meditated, a Poetical
work-probably, a tragedy, and had communicated his piece in
confidence to Horace; but Horace, either disapproving of the
work, or doubting of the poetical faculties of the elder Piso, or
both, wished to dissuade him from all thoughts of publication.
With this view he wrote his Epistle, addressing it, with a
courtliness and delicacy perfectly agreeable to his acknowledged
character, indifferently to the whole family, the father and his
two sons."-E.