Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon - "The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins)"

Rudyard Kipling - "Life's Handicap"

Herbert Jenkins - "The Life of George Borrow"

Julius Wellhausen - "Prolegomena to the History of Israel"

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Books: Letters of Horace Walpole, V4

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




By your gambols, as you call them, after the most ungambolling
peeress in Christendom, and by your jaunts, I conclude, to my
great satisfaction, that you are quite well. Change of scene and
air are good for your spirits; and September, like all our old
ladies, has given itself May airs, and must have made your
journey very pleasant. Yet you will be glad to get back to your
Cowslip-green, though it may offer you nothing but Michaelmas
daisies. When you do leave it, I wish you could persuade Mrs.
Garrick to settle sooner in London. There is full as good hay to
be made in town at Christmas at Hampton, and some hay-makers that
will wish for you particularly. Your most sincere friend.

(623) Ann Yearsley. See ant`e, p. 395, letter 313.-E.

(624) In the letter to which this is a reply, Miss More had
said-- "in vain do we boast of the enlightened eighteenth
century, and conceitedly talk as if human reason had not a
manacle left about her, but that philosophy had broken down all
the strongholds of prejudice, ignorance, and superstition: and
yet at this very time Mesmer has got an hundred thousand pounds
by animal magnetism in Paris, and Mainanduc is getting as much in
London. There is a fortune-teller in Westminster who is making
little less. Lavater's Physiognomy-books sell at fifteen guineas
a set. The divining-rod is still considered as oracular in many
places. Devils are cast out by seven ministers; and, to complete
the disgraceful catalogue, slavery is vindicated in print, and
defended in the House of Peers." Memoirs, vol. ii. P. 120.-E.



Letter 324 To The Right Hon. Lady Craven.
Berkeley Square, Dec. 11, 1788. (page 411)

It is agreeable to your ladyship's usual goodness to honour me
with another letter; and I may say, to your equity too, after I
had proved to Monsieur Mercier, by the list of dates of my
letters, that it was not mine, but the post's fault, that you did
not receive one that I had the honour of writing to you above a
year ago. Not, Madam, that I could wonder if you had the
prudence to drop a correspondence with an old superannuated man;
who, conscious of his decay, has had the decency of not
troubling, with his dotages persons of not near your ladyship's
youth and vivacity. I have been of opinion that few persons know
when to die; I am not so English as to mean when to despatch
themselves--no, but when to go out of the world. I have usually
applied this opinion to those who have made a considerable
figure; and, consequently, it was not adapted to myself. Yet
even we ciphers ought not to fatigue the public scene when we are
become lumber. Thus, being quite out of the question, I will
explain my maxim, which is the more wholesome, the higher it is
addressed. My opinion,
then, is, that when any personage has shone as much as is
possible in his or her best walk, (and, not to repeat both
genders every minute, I will use the male as the common of the
two,) he should take up his Strulbrugism, and be heard of no
more. Instances will be still more explanatory. Voltaire ought
to have pretended to die after Alzire, Mahomet, and Semiramis,
and not have produced his wretched last pieces: Lord Chatham
should have closed his political career with his immortal war:
and how weak was Garrick, when he had quitted the stage, to limp
after the tatters of fame by writing and reading pitiful poems;
and even by sitting to read plays which he had acted with such
fire and energy! We have another example in Mr. Anstey; who, if
he had a friend upon earth, would have been obliged to him for
being knocked on the head, the moment he had published the first
edition of the Bath Guide; for, even in the second, he had
exhausted his whole stock of inspiration, and has never written
any thing tolerable since. When Such unequal authors print their
works together, one man may apply in a new light the old hacked
simile of Mezentius, who tied together the living and the dead.

We have just received the works of an author, from whom I find I
am to receive much less entertainment than I expected, because I
shall have much less to read than I intended. His Memoirs, I am
told, are almost wholly military; which, therefore, I shall not
read: and his poetry, I am sure, I shall not look at, because I
should not understand it. What I saw of it formerly, convinced
me that he would not have been a poet, even if he had written in
his own language: and, though I do not understand German, I am
told it is a fine language - and I can easily believe that any
tongue (not excepting our old barbarous Saxon, which, a bit of an
antiquary
as I am, I abhor,) is more harmonious than French. It was
curious absurdity, therefore, to pitch on the most unpoetic
language in Europe, the most barren, and the most clogged with
difficulties. I have heard Russian and Polish sung, and both
sounded musical; but, to abandon one's own tongue, and not adopt
Italian, that is even sweeter, and softer, and more copious, than
the Latin, was a want of taste that I should think could not be
applauded even by a Frenchman born in Provence. But what a
language is the French, which measures verses by feet that never
are to be pronounced; which is the case wherever the mute e is
found! What poverty of various sounds for rhyme, when, lest
similar cadences should too often occur, their mechanic bards are
obliged to marry masculine and feminine terminations as
alternately as the black and white squares of a chessboard? Nay,
will you believe me, Madam,--yes, you will, for you may convince
your own eyes,-that a scene of Zaire begins with three of the
most nasal adverbs that ever snorted together in a breath?
Enfin, donc, desormais, are the culprits in question. Enfin
donc, need I tell your ladyship, that the author I alluded to at
the beginning of' this long tirade is the late King of Prussia?

I am conscious that I have taken a little liberty when I
excommunicate a tongue in which your ladyship has condescended to
write;(625) but I only condemn it for verse and pieces of
eloquence, of which I thought it alike incapable, till I read
Rousseau of Geneva. It is a most sociable language, and charming
for narrative and epistles. Yet, write as well as you will in
it, you must be liable to express yourself better in the speech
natural to you and your own country has a right to understand all
your works, and is jealous of their not being as perfect as you
could make them. Is it not more creditable to be translated into
a foreign language than into your own? and will it not vex you to
hear the translation taken for the original, and to find
vulgarisms that you could not have committed yourself? But I have
done, and will release you, Madam; only observing, that you
flatter me with a vain hope, when you tell me you shall return to
England, some time or other. Where will that time be for me! and
when it arrives, shall I not be somewhere else?

I do not pretend to send your ladyship English news, nor to tell
you of English literature. You must before this time have heard
of the dismal state into which our chief personage is fallen!
That consideration absorbs all others. The two houses are going
to settle some intermediate succedaneum; and the obvious one, no
doubt, will be fixed on.

(625) Besides writing a comedy in French, called "Nourjahad,"
Lady Craven had translated into that language Cibber's play of
"She would and She would not."-E.



Letter 325 \To The Miss Berrys.(626)
February 2, 17-71(627) [1789.) (page 413)

I am sorry, in the sense of that word before it meant, like a
Hebrew word, glad or sorry, that I am engaged this evening; and I
am at your command on Tuesday, as it is always my inclination to
be. It is a misfortune that words are become so much the current
coin of society, that, like King William's shillings, they have
no impression left; they are so smooth, that they mark no more to
whom they first belonged than to whom they do belong, and are not
worth even the twelvepence into which they may be changed: but if
they mean too little, they may seem to mean too much too,
especially when an old man (who is often synonymous for a miser)
parts with them. I am afraid of protesting how much I delight in
your society, lest I should seem to affect being gallant; but if
two negatives make an affirmative, why may not two ridicules
compose one piece of sense? and therefore, as I am in love with
you both, I trust it is a proof of the good sense of your devoted
H. WALPOLE.

(626) This is the first of a series of letters addressed by Mr
Walpole to Miss Mary and Miss Agnes Berry, and now first
published from the original in their possession.-E.

(627) The date is thus put, alluding to his age, which, in'1789
was seventy-one.-M. B.



letter 326 To The Miss Berrys.
Berkeley Square, March 20, 1789. (page 413)

Mrs. Damer had lent her Madame de la Motte,(628) and I have but
this moment recovered it; so, you see, I had not forgotten it any
more than my engagements to you: nay, were it not ridiculous at
my age to use a term so almost run out as never, I would add,
that you may find I never can forget you. I hope you are not
engaged this day sevennight, but will allow me to wait on you to
Lady Ailesbury, which I will settle with her when I have your
answer. I did mention it to her in general, but have no day free
before Friday next, except Thursday; when, if there is another
illumination, as is threatened, we should neither get thither nor
thence; especially not the latter, if the former is
impracticable.

"Quicquid delirant Reges, plectuntur Achivi."(629)

P. S. I have got a few hairs of Edward the Fourth's head, not
beard; they are of a darkish brown, not auburn.

(628) The M`emoire Justificatif of Madame de la Motte, relative
to her conduct in the far-famed affair of the necklace.-E.

(629) Alluding to the public rejoicings on the recovery of George
the Third from his first illness in 1788. In a letter to her
sister of the 9th of March, Miss More relates the following
particulars:--"A day or two ago I dined at the Bishop of
London's, with Dr. Willis. As we had nobody else at dinner but
the Master of the Rolls, I was indulged in asking the doctor all
manner of impertinent questions. He never saw, he said, so much
natural sweetness and goodness of mind, united to so much piety,
as in the King. During his illness, he many time shed tears for
Lord North's blindness. The Bishop had been to him that morning:
he told him that he wished to return his thanks to Almighty God
in the most public manner, and hoped the Bishop would not refuse
him a sermon. He proposed going to St. Paul's to do it. He
himself has named one of the Psalms for the thanksgiving-day, and
the twelfth of Isaiah for the lesson."


On the 17th, she again writes--"The Queen and Princesses came to
see the illuminations, and did not get back to Kew till after one
O'clock. When the coach stopped, the Queen took notice of a fine
gentleman who came to the coach-door without his hat. This was
the King, who came to hand her out. She scolded him for being up
and out so late; but he gallantly replied, 'he could not Possibly
go to bed and sleep till he knew she was safe.' There never was
so joyous, so innocent, and so orderly a mob." Memoirs, vol. ii.
Pp. 144- 155-E.



Letter 327 To Miss Hannah More.
Berkeley Square, April 22, 1789. (page 414)

Dear Madam,
As perhaps you have not yet seen the "Botanic Garden" (which I
believe I mentioned to you), I lend it you to read. The poetry,
I think, you will allow most admirable; and difficult it was, no
doubt. If you are not a naturalist, as well as a poetess,
perhaps you will lament that so powerful a talent has been wasted
to so little purpose; for where is the use of describing in verse
what nobody can understand without a long prosaic explanation of
every article? It is still more unfortunate that there is not a
symptom of plan in the whole poem. The lady-flowers and their
lovers enter in pairs or trios, or etc. as often as the couples
in Cassandra. and you are not a whit more interested about one
heroine and her swain than about another. The similes are
beautiful, fine, and sometimes sublime: and thus the episodes
will be better remembered than the mass of the poem itself, which
one cannot call the subject; for could one call it a subject, if
any body had composed a poem on the matches formerly made in the
Fleet, where, as Waitwell says, in "The Way of the World," they
stood like couples in rows ready to begin a country-dance?
Still, I flatter myself you will agree with me that the author is
a great poet, and could raise the passions, and possesses all the
requisites of the art. I found but a single bad verse; in the
last canto one line ends e'er long. You will perhaps be
surprised at meeting a truffle converted into a nymph, and
inhabiting a palace studded with emeralds and rubies like a
saloon in the Arabian Nights! I had a more particular motive for
sending this poem to you: you will find the bard espousing your
poor Africans. There is besides, which will please you too, a
handsome panegyric on the apostle of humanity, Mr. Howard.(630)

Mrs. Garrick, whom I had the pleasure of meeting in her own box
at Mr. Conway's play, gave me a much better account of your
health which delighted me. I am sure, my good friend, you
partake of my joy at the great success of his comedy. The
additional character of the Abb`e pleased much: it was added by
the advice of the players to enliven it; that is, to stretch the
jaws of the pit and galleries. I sighed silently; for it was
originally so genteel and of a piece, that I was sorry to have it
tumbled by coarse applauses. But this is a secret. I am going
to Twickenham for two days on an assignation with the spring, and
to avoid the riotous devotion of to-morrow.

A gentleman essayist has printed what he calls some strictures on
my Royal and Noble Authors, in revenge for my having spoken
irreverently (on Bishop Burnet's authority) of the Earl of
Anglesey, who had the honour, it seems, of being the gentleman's
grandfather. He asks me, by the way, why it was more ridiculous
in the Duke of Newcastle to write his two comedies, than in the
Duke of Buckingham to write "The Rehearsal?" Alas! I know but
one reason; which is, that it is less ridiculous to write one
excellent comedy, than two very bad ones. Peace be with such
answerers! Adieu, my dear Madam! Yours most cordially.

(630) "I did not feel," says Miss More, in her reply, "so much
gratified in reading the poem, marvellous as I think it, as I did
at the kindness which led you to think of me when you met with
any thing that you imagined would give me pleasure. Your
strictures, which are as true as if they had no wit in them,
served to embellish every page as I went on, and were more
intelligible and delightful to me than the scientific annotations
in the margin. The author is, indeed, a poet; and I wish, with
you, that he had devoted his exuberant fancy, his opulence of
imagery, and his correct and melodious versification. to
subjects more congenial to human feelings than the intrigues of a
flower-garden. I feel, like the most passionate ]over, the
beauty of the cyclamen, or honeysuckle; but am as indifferent as
the most fashionable husband to their amours, their pleasures, or
their unhappiness." Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 149.-E.



Letter 328 To The Miss Berrys.
April 28, at night, 1789. (page 415)

By my not saying no to Thursday, you, I trust, understood that I
meant yes; and so I do. In the mean time, I send you the most
delicious poem upon earth. If you don't know what it is all
about, or why; at least you will find glorious similes about
every thing in the world, and I defy you to discover three bad
verses in the whole stack. Dryden was but the prototype of the
Botanic Garden in his charming Flower and Leaf; and if he had
less meaning, it is true he had more plan: and I must own, that
his white velvets and green velvets, and rubies and emeralds,
were much more virtuous gentlefolks than most of the flowers of
the creation, who seem to have no fear of Doctors' Commons before
their eyes. This is only the Second Part; for, like my 'king's
eldest daughter' in the Hieroglyphic Tales, the First Part is not
born yet:--no matter. I can read this over and over again for
ever; for though it is so excellent, it is impossible to remember
any thing so disjointed, except you consider it as a collection
of short enchanting poems,--as the Circe at her tremendous
devilries in a church; the intrigue of the dear nightingale and
rose; and the description of Medea; the episode of Mr. Howard,
which ends with the most sublime of lines--in short, all, all;
all is the most lovely poetry. And then one sighs, that such
profusion of poetry, magnificent and tender, should be thrown
away on what neither interests nor instructs, and, with all the
pains the notes take to explain, is scarce intelligible.'

How strange it is, that a man should have been inspired with such
enthusiasm of poetry by poring through a microscope, and peeping
through the keyholes of all the seraglios of all the flowers in
the universe I hope his discoveries may leave any impression but
of the universal polygamy going on in the vegetable world, where,
however, it is more gallant than amongst the human race; for you
will find that they are the botanic ladies who keep harams, and
not the gentlemen. Still, I will maintain that it is much better
that we should have two wives than your sex two husbands. So
pray don't mind Linnaeus and Dr. Darwin: Dr. Madan had ten times
more sense. Adieu! Your doubly constant Telypthorus.

(631) "Modern ears," says Mr. Matthias, in the Pursuits of
Literature, "are absolutely debauched by such poetry as Dr.
Darwin's, which marks the decline of simplicity and true taste in
this country. It is to England what Seneca's prose was to Rome:
abundat dulcibus vitiis. Dryden and Pope are the standards of
excellence in this species of writing in our language; and when
young minds are rightly instituted in their works, they may,
without much danger, read such glittering verses as Dr. Darwin's.
They will then perceive the distortion of the sentiment, and the
harlotry of the ornaments." To the short-lived popularity of Dr.
Darwin, the admirable poem of "The Loves of the Triangles'" the
joint production of Mr. Canning and Mr. Frere, in no small degree
contributed.-E.



Letter 329 To The Miss Berrys.
Strawberry Hill, Tuesday, June 23, 1789. (PAGE 416)

I am not a little disappointed and mortified at the post bringing
me no letter from you to-day; you promised to write on the road.
I reckon you arrived at your station on Sunday evening: if you do
not write till next day, I shall have no letter till Thursday!

I am not at all consoled for my double loss: my only comfort is,
that I flatter myself the journey and air will be of service to
you both. The latter has been of use to me, though the part of
the element of air has been chiefly acted by the element of
water, as my poor haycocks feel! Tonton (632) does not miss you
so much as I do, not having so good a taste; for he is grown very
fond of me, and I return it for your sakes, though he deserves it
too, for he is perfectly good-natured and tractable; but he is
not beautiful, like his " god-dog,(633) as Mr. Selwyn, who dined
here on Saturday, called my poor late favourite; especially as I
have had him clipped. The shearing has brought to light a nose
an ell long; an as he has now nasum rhinocerotis, I do not doubt
but he will be a better critic in poetry than Dr. Johnson, who
judged of harmony by the principles of an author, and fancied, or
wished to make others believe, that no Jacobite could write bad
verses, nor a Whig good.

Have you shed a tear over the Opera-house?(634) or do you agree
with me, that there is no occasion to rebuild it? The nation has
long been tired of operas, and has now a good opportunity of
dropping them. Dancing protracted their existence for some time;
but the room after. was the real support of both, and was like
what has been said of your sex, that they never speak their true
meaning but in the postscript of their letters. Would not it be
sufficient to build an after-room on the whole emplacement, to
which people might resort from all assemblies? It should be a
codicil to all the diversions of London; and the greater the
concourse, the more excuse there would be for staying all night,
from the impossibility of ladies getting their coaches to drive
up. To be crowded to death in a waiting-room, at the end of an
entertainment, is the whole joy; for who goes to any diversion
till the last minute of it? I am persuaded that, instead if
retrenching St. Athanasius's Creed, as the Duke of Grafton
proposed, in order to draw good company to church, it would be
more efficacious if the Congregation were to be indulged with an
After-room in the vestry; and, instead of two or three being
gathered together, there would be all the world, before the
prayers would be quite over.

Thursday night

"Despairing, beside a clear stream
A shepherd forsaken was laid;"--

not very close to the stream, but within doors in sight of it;
for in this damp weather a lame old Colin cannot lie and despair
with any comfort on a wet bank: but I smile against the grain,
and am seriously alarmed at Thursday being come, and no letter!
I dread one of you being ill. Mr. Batt(635) and the Abb`e
Nicholls(636) dined with me to-day, and I could talk of you en
pais de connoissance. They tried to persuade me that I have no
cause to be in a fright about you; but I have such perfect faith
in the kindness of both of you, as I have in your possessing
every other virtue, that I cannot believe but some sinister
accident must have prevented my hearing from you. I wish Friday
was come! I cannot write about any thing else till I have a
letter.

(632) A dog of Miss Berry's left in Walpole's care during their
absence in Yorkshire.-M.B.

(633) The dog which had been bequeathed to Mr. Walpole by Madame
du Deffand at her death, and which was likewise called Tonton.
See ant`e, p. 275, letter 217.-M.B.

(634) on the night of the 17th, the Opera-house was entirely
consumed by fire.-E.

(635) Thomas Batt, Esq. then one of the commissioners for public
accounts.-E.

(636) The Rev. Norton Nicholls, rector of Lound and Bradwell in
the county of Suffolk; one of the most elegant scholars and
accomplished gentlemen of the day. He died in November 1809, in
his sixty-eighth year. " It was his singular good fortune," says
Mr. Dawson Turner, , to have been distinguished in his early life
by the friendship of Gray the poet; while the close of his days
was cheered and enlivened and dignified by the friendship, and
almost constant society, of a Man scarcely inferior to Gray in
talent and acquirements Mr. Mathias; who has embalmed his memory
in an Italian Ode and a biographical Memoir; which latter is a
beautiful specimen of that kind of composition.,, They will both
be found in the fifth volume of Nicholls's Illustrations of
Literature.-E.



Letter 330 To Miss Hannah More.
Strawberry Hill, June 23, 1789. (PAGE 418)

Madam Hannah,
You are an errant reprobate, and grow wickeder and wickeder every
day. You deserve to be treated like a negre; and your favourite
Sunday, to which you are so partial that you treat the other poor
six days of the week as if they had no souls to be saved, should,
if I could have my will, "shine no Sabbath-day for you." Now,
don't simper, and look as innocent as if virtue would not melt in
your mouth. Can you deny the following charges?--I lent you "The
Botanic Garden," and you returned it without writing a syllable,
or saying, -where you were or whither you was going; I suppose
for fear I should know how to direct to you. Why, if I did send
a letter after you, could not you keep it three months without an
answer, as you did last year?

In the next place, you and your nine accomplices, who, by the
way, are too good in keeping you company, have clubbed the
prettiest poem imaginable,(637) and communicated it to Mrs.
Boscawen, with injunctions not to give a copy of it; I suppose,
because you are ashamed of having written a panegyric. Whenever
you do compose a satire, you are ready enough to publish it; at
least, whenever you do, you will din one to death with it. But
now, mind your perverseness: that very pretty novel poem, and I
must own it is charming, have you gone and spoiled, flying in the
faces of your best friends the Muses, and keeping no measures
with them. I'll be shot if they dictated two of the best lines
with two syllables too much in each--nay, you have weakened one
of them,

"Ev'n Gardiner's mind"

is far more expressive than steadfast Gardiner's; and, as Mrs.
Boscawen says, whoever knows any thing of Gardiner, could not
want that superfluous epithet; and whoever does not, would not be
the wiser for your foolish insertion--Mrs. Boscawen did not call
it foolish, but I do. The second line, as Mesdemoiselles the
Muses handed it to you, Miss, was,