Jean de La Fontaine - "The Tales and Novels, v12: Monks of Catalonia & The Cradle"

John Lothrop Motley - "The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1580 82"

Ella Wheeler Wilcox - "Poems of Experience"

Hon. Geo. W. Peck - "Peck's Bad Boy With the Cowboys"

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Books: Letters of Horace Walpole, V4

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




Dear Sir, pray tell Mr. Essex how concerned I am for his
mischance, and for the total impossibility I am under of seeing
him now. I can write no More, but I shall be glad to hear from
you on his return to Cambridge: and when I am recovered, you
may be assured how glad I shall be to talk his plan over with
him. I am his and Your obliged humble servant.



Letter 49 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.
(page 74)

I have had a relapse, and not been able to use my hand, or I
should have lamented with you on the plunder of your prints by
that Algerine hog.(80) I pity you, dear Sir, and feel for your
awkwardness, that was struck dumb at his rapaciousness. The
beast has no sort of taste neither-and in a twelvemonth will
sell them again. I regret particularly one print, which I dare
to say he seized, that I gave you, Gertrude More; I thought I
had another, and had not; and, as you liked it, I never told
you so. This Muley Moloch used to buy books, and now sells
them. He has hurt his fortune, and ruined himself, to have a
Collection, without any choice of what it should be composed.
It is the most underbred swine I ever saw; but I did not know
it was so ravenous. I wish you may get paid any how; you see
by my writing how difficult it is to me, and therefore will
excuse my being short.

(80) This letter may want some explanation. A gentleman, a
collector of prints, and a neighbour of Mr. Walpole's, had just
before requested to see Mr. Cole's collection, and on Mr.
Cole's offering to accommodate him with such heads as he had
not, he selected and took away no less than one hundred and
eighty-seven of the most rare and valuable.




Letter 50 To The Countess Of Ailesbury.
Arlington Street, Dec. 20, 1772. (page 74)

Indeed, Madam, I want you and Mr. Conway in town. Christmas has
dispersed all my company, and left nothing but a loo-party or
two. If all the fine days were not gone out of town, too, I
should take the air in a morning; but I am not yet nimble enough,
like old Mrs. Nugent, to jump out of a postchaise into an
assembly.

You have a woful taste, my lady, not to like Lord Gower's bonmot.
I am almost too indignant to tell you of a most amusing book in
six volumes, called "Histoire Philosophique et Politique du
commerce des Deux Indes."(81) It tells one every thing in the
world;--how to make conquests, invasions, blunders, settlements,
bankruptcies, fortunes, etc.; tells you the natural and
historical history of all nations; talks commerce, navigation,
tea, coffee, china, mines, salt, spices; of the Portuguese,
English, French, Dutch, Danes, Spaniards, Arabs, caravans,
Persians, Indians, of Louis XIV. and the King of Prussia; of La
Bourdonnais, Dupleix, and Admiral Saunders; of rice, and women
that dance naked; of camels, ginghams, and muslin; of millions of
millions of livres, pounds, rupees, and cowries; of iron cables,
and Circassian women; of Law and the Mississippi; and against all
governments and religions. This and every thing else is in the
two first volumes. I cannot conceive what is left for the four
others. And all is so mixed, that you learn forty new trades and
fifty new histories in a single chapter. There is spirit, wit,
and clearness and, if there were but less avoirdupois weight in
it, it would be the richest book in the world in materials--but
figures to me are so many ciphers, and only put me in mind of
children that say, an hundred hundred hundred millions. However,
it has made me learned enough to talk about Mr. Sykes and the
Secret Committee,(82) which is all that any body talks of at
present, and yet Mademoiselle Heinel(83) is arrived. This is all
I know, and a great deal too, considering I know nothing, and
yet, were there either truth or lies, I should know them; for one
hears every thing in a sick room. Good night both!

(81) By the Abb`e Raynal. sensible of the faults of his work,
the Abb`e visited England and Holland to obtain correct
mercantile information, and, on his return, published an improved
edition at Geneva, in ten volumes, octavo. Hannah More relates,
that, when in England, the Abb`e was introduced to Dr. Johnson,
and advancing to shake his band, the Doctor drew back and put it
behind him, and afterwards replied to the expostulation of a
friend--"Sir, I will not shake hands with an infidel." The
Parliament of Paris ordered the work to be burnt, and the author
to be arrested; but he retired to Spain, and, in 1788, the
National Assembly cancelled the decree passed against him. He
died at Passy in 1794, at the age of eighty-five.-E.

(82) Upon indian affairs.

(83) See ante, p. 59, letter 34.



Letter 51 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.
Arlington Street, Jan. 8, 1773. (page 75)

In return to your very kind inquiries, dear Sir, I can let you
know, that I am quite free from pain, and walk a little about
my room, even without a stick: nay, have been four times to
take the air in the park. Indeed, after fourteen weeks this is
not saying much; but it is a worse reflection, that when one is
subject to the gout, and far from young, one's worst account
will probably be better than that after the next fit. I
neither flatter myself on one hand, nor am impatient on the
other--for will either do one any good? one must bear one's lot
whatever it be.

I rejoice Mr. * * * * has justice,(84) though he had no bowels.
How Gertrude More escape' him I do not guess. It will be wrong
to rob you of her, after she has come to you through so many
hazards--nor would I hear of it either, if you have a mind to
keep her, or have not given up all thoughts of a collection
since you have been visited by a Visigoth.

I am much more impatient to see Mr. Gray's print, than Mr.
What-d'ye-call-him's answer to my Historic Doubts.(85) He may
have made himself very angry; but I doubt whether he will make
me at all so. I love antiquities; but I scarce ever knew an
antiquary who knew how to write upon them. Their
understandings seem as much in ruins as the things they
describe. For the Antiquarian Society, I shall leave them in
peace with Whittington and his Cat. As my contempt for them
has not, however, made me disgusted with what they do not
understand, antiquities, I have published two numbers of
Miscellanies, and they are very welcome to mumble them with
their toothless gums. I want to send you these--not their
gums, but my pieces, and a Grammont,(86) of which I have
printed only a hundred copies, and which will be extremely
scarce, as twenty-five copies are gone to France. Tell me how
I shall convey them safely.

Another thing you must tell me, if you can, is, if you know any
thing ancient of the Freemasons Governor Pownall,(87) a
Whittingtonian, has a mind they should have been a corporation
erected by the popes. As you see what a good creature I am,
and return good for evil, I am engaged to pick up what I can
for him, to support this system, in which I believe no more
than in the pope: and the work is to appear in a volume of the
Society's pieces. I am very willing to oblige him, and turn my
cheek, that they may smite that, also. Lord help them! I am
sorry that they are such numsculls, that they almost make me
think myself something! but there are great authors enough to
bring me to my senses again. Posterity, I fear, will class me
with the writers of this age, or forget me with them, not rank
me with any names that deserve remembrance. If I cannot
survive the Milles's, the What-d'ye-call-him's, and the
compilers of catalogues of topography, it would comfort me very
little to confute them. I should be as little proud of success
as if I had carried a contest for churchwarden.

Not being able to return to Strawberry Hill, where all my books
and papers are, and my printer lying fallow, I want some short
bills to print. Have you any thing you wish printed? I can
either print a few to amuse ourselves, or, if very curious, and
not too dry, could make a third number of Miscellaneous
Antiquities.

I am not in any eagerness to see Mr. What-d'ye-call-him's
pamphlet against me; therefore pray give yourself no trouble to
get it for me. The specimens I have seen of his writing take
off all edge from curiosity. A print of Mr. Gray will be a
real present. Would it not be dreadful to be commended by an
age that had not taste enough to admire his Odes? Is not it
too great a compliment to me to be abused too? I am ashamed!
Indeed our antiquaries ought to like me. I am but too much on
a par with them. Does not
Mr. Henshaw come to London? Is he a professor, or only a lover
of engraving? If the former, and he were to settle in town, I
would willingly lend him heads to copy. Adieu!

(84) The gentleman who had carried off so many of Mr.
Cole's prints. He now fully remunerated Mr. Cole in a valuable
present of books.

(85) Mr. Master's pamphlet, printed at the expense of the
Antiquarian Society in the second volume of the Archaeologia.

(86) "M`emoires du Comte de Grammont, nouvelle edition,
augment`ee de Notes et Eclaircissemens n`ecessaires, par M.
Horace Walpole." Strawberry Hill, 1772, 4to. To the M`emoires
was prefixed the following dedication to Madame du Deffand:--
"L'Editeur VOUS Consacre cette edition, comme un monument de
son amiti`e, de son admiration, et de son respect, a vous dont
les gr`aces, l'esprit, et le gout retracent an si`ecle present
le si`ecle de Louis XIV., et les agr`emens de l'auteur de ces
Memoires."

(87) Thomas Pownall, Esq. the antiquary, and a constant
contributor to the Archaeologia. Having been governor of South
Carolina and other American colonies, he was always
distinguished from his brother John, who was likewise an
antiquary, by the title of Governor.-E.



Letter 52 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.
Arlington Street, Feb. 18, 1773. (page 77)

The most agreeable ingredient of your last, dear Sir, is the
paragraph that tells me you shall be in town in April, when I
depend on the pleasure of seeing you; but, to be certain, wish
you would give me a few days' law, an let me know, too, where
you lodge. Pray bring your books, though the continuation of the
Miscellaneous Antiquities is uncertain. I thought the
affectation of loving veteran anecdotes was so vigorous, that I
ventured to print five hundred copies., One, hundred and thirty
only are sold. I cannot afford to make the town perpetual
presents; though I find people exceedingly eager to obtain them
when I do; and if they will not buy them, it is a sign of such
indifference, that I shall neither bestow my time, nor my cost,
to no purpose. All I desire is, to pay the expenses, which I can
afford much less than my idle moments. Not but the operations
of-my press have often turned against myself in many shapes. I
have told people many things they did not know, and from fashion
they have bought a thousand things out of my hands, which they do
not understand, and only love en passant. At Mr. West's sale,
I got literally nothing: his prints sold for the frantic sum of
1495 pounds 10 shillings. Your and my good friend Mr. Gulston
threw away above 200 pounds there.

I am not sorry Mr. Lort has recourse to the fountainhead: Mr.
Pownall's system of Freemasonry is so absurd and groundless,
that I am glad to be rid of intervention. I have seen the
former once: he told Me he was willing to sell his prints, as
the value of them is so increased--for that very reason I did
not want to purchase them.

Paul Sanby promised me ten days ago to show Mr. Henshaw's
engraving which I received from Dr. Ewen) to Bartolozzi, and
ask his terms, thinking he would delight in So Very promising a
scholar; but I have heard nothing since, and therefore fear
there is no success. Let me, however, see the young man when
he comes, and I will try if there is any other way of serving
him.

What shall I say to you, dear Sir, about Dr. Prescot? or what I
say to him? It hurts me not to be very civil, especially as
any respect to my father's memory touches me much more than any
attention to myself, which I cannot hold to be a quarter so
well founded. Yet, how dare I write to a poor man, who may do,
as I have lately seen done by a Scotchwoman that wrote a
play,(88) and printed Lord Chesterfield's and Lord Lyttelton's
letters to her, as Testimonia fluctorum: I will therefore beg
you to make my compliments and thanks to the master, and to
make them as grateful as you please, provided I am dispensed
with giving any certificate under my hand. You may plead my
illness, which, though the fifth month ended yesterday, is far
from being at an end, My relapses have been endless - I cannot
yet walk a step: and a great cold has added an ague in my
cheek, for which I am just going to begin the bark. The
prospect for the rest of my days is gloomy. The case of my
poor nephew still more deplorable - he arrived in town last
night, and bore his Journey tolerably-but his head is in much
more danger of not recovering than his health; though they give
us hopes of both. But the evils of life are not good subjects
for letters--why afflict one's friends? Why make commonplace
reflections? Adieu! Yours ever.

(88) "Sir Harry Gaylove; or, Comedy in Embryo;" by Mrs. Jane
Marshall. It was printed in Scotland by subscription, but not
acted. in the preface, she complains bitterly of the managers
of the three London theatres, for refusing her the advantages
of representing her performance.-E.



Letter 53 To The Rev. William Mason.(89)
March 2, 1773. (page 78)

What shall I say? How shall I thank you for the kind manner in
which you submit your papers to my correction? But if you are
friendly, I must be just. I am so far from being dissatisfied,
that I Must beg to shorten your pen, and in that respect only
would I wish, with regard to myself, to alter your text. I am
conscious that in the beginning of the differences between Gray
and me, the fault was mine. I was young, too fond of my own
diversions; nay, I do not doubt, too much intoxicated by
indulgence, vanity, and the insolence of my situation, as a
prime minister's Son, not to have been inattentive to the
feelings of one, I blush to say, that I knew was obliged to me;
of one, whom presumption and folly made me deem not very
superior in parts, though I have since felt my infinite
inferiority to him. I treated him insolently. He loved me,
and I did not think he did. I reproached him with the
difference between us, when he acted from the conviction of
knowing that he was my superior. I often disregarded his wish
of seeing places, which I would not quit my own amusements to
visit, though I offered to send him thither without me.
Forgive me, if I say that his temper was not conciliating, at
the same time that I confess to you, that he acted a most
friendly part had I had the sense to take advantage of it. He
freely told me my faults. I declared I did not desire to hear
them, nor would correct them. You will not wonder,, that with
the dignity of his spirit, and the obstinate carelessness of
mine the breach must have widened till we became incompatible.

After this confession, I fear you will think I fall short in
the words I wish to have substituted for some of yours. If you
think them inadequate to the state of the case, as I own they
are, preserve this letter and let some future Sir John
Dalrymple produce it to load my memory; but I own I do not
desire that any ambiguity should aid his invention to forge an
account) for me. If you would have no objection, I would
propose your narrative should run thus, [Here follows a note,
which is inserted verbatim in Mason's Life of Gray.(90)] and
contain no more, till a more proper time shall come for
publishing the truth, as I have stated it to you. While I am
living, it is not pleasant to see my private disagreements
discussed in magazines and newspapers.

(89) This and the following letter are from Mr. mitford's
valuable edition of Gray's Works. See vol. iv. pp. 216, 218.-
E.

(90) "In justice to the memory of so respectable a friend, Mr.
Walpole enjoins me to charge himself with the chief blame in
their quarrel - confessing that more attention and
complaisance, more deference to a warm friendship, superior
judgment and prudence, might have prevented a rupture that gave
such uneasiness to them both and a lasting concern
to the survivor; though, in the year 1744, a reconciliation was
effected between them, by a lady who wished well to both
parties."-E.



Letter 54 To The Rev. William Mason.
Strawberry Hill, March 27, 1773. (page 79)

I have received your letter, dear Sir, your manuscript, and
Gray's letters to me. Twenty things crowd upon my pen, and
jostle, and press to be laid. As I came here to-day for a
little air, and to read you undisturbed, they shall all have a
place in due time. But having so safe a conveyance for my
thoughts, I must begin with the uppermost of them, the Heroic
Epistle. I have read it so very often, that I have got it by
heart; and now I am master of all its beauties, I confess I
like it infinitely better than I did, though I liked it
infinitely before. There is more wit, ten times more delicacy
of irony, as much poetry, and greater facility than and as in
the Dunciad. But what Signifies what I think? All the world
thinks the same. No soul has, I have heard, guessed within an
hundred miles. I catched at Anstey's name, and have,
contributed to spread that notion. It has since been called
Temple Luttrell's, and, to my infinite honour, mine; Lord -----
- swears he should think so, if I did not praise it so
excessively. But now, my dear Sir, that you have tapped this
mine of talent, and it runs so richly and easily, for Heaven's
sake, and for England's sake, do not let it rest! You have a
vein of irony, and satire, etc.

I am extremely pleased with the easy unaffected simplicity of
your manuscript (Memoirs of Gray), and have found scarcely any
thing I could wish added, much less retrenched, unless the
paragraph on Lord Bute,(91) which I don't think quite clearly
expressed; and yet perhaps too clearly, while you wish to
remain unknown as the author of the Heroic Epistle,(92) since
it might lead to suspicion. For as Gray asked for the place,
and accepted it afterwards from the Duke of Grafton, it might
be thought that he, or his friend for him, was angry with the
author of the disappointment. I can add nothing to your
account of Gray's going abroad with me. It was my own thought
and offer, and cheerfully accepted. Thank you for inserting my
alteration. As I am the survivor, any Softening would be
unjust to the dead. I am sorry I had a fault towards him. It
does not wound me to own it; and it must be believed when I
allow it, that not he, but I myself, was in the wrong.

(91) This paragraph was suppressed-E.

(92) In March, 1798, Mr. Matthias suggested, in the Pursuits of
Literature, that Walpole's papers would possibly lead to the
discovery of the author of the far-famed Heroic Epistle to Sir
William Chambers. By Thomas Warton, the poet-laureate, it was
supposed to have been "written by Walpole, and buckrum'd by
Mason;" and Mr. Croker, in a note to his edition of Boswell's
Johnson, says of it, "there can be no doubt that it was the
joint production of Mason and Walpole; Mason supplying the
poetry and Walpole the points;" while the Quarterly Review,
vol. xv. p. 385, observes, that "when it is remembered that no
one then alive, with the same peculiar taste and the same
political principles, could have written such poetry, we must
either ascribe the Heroic Epistle to Mr. Mason, or suppose,
very needlessly and improbably, that one person supplied the
matter and another shaped it into verse; but, the personal
insolence displayed in this poem to his Sovereign, which was
probably the true reason for concealing the writer's -the
principles of genuine taste which abound in it--the bitter and
sarcastic strain of indignation against a monstrous mode of bad
taste then beginning to prevail in landscape gardening, and,
above all, a vigorous flow of spirited and harmonious verse,
all concur to mark it as the work of our independent and
uncourtly bard," The above letter settles the long-disputed
point, and fixes the sole authorship of this exquisite poem on
Mason.-E.



Letter 55 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.
Arlington Street, April 7, 1773. (page 80)

I have now seen the second volume of the Archaeologia, or Old
Woman's Logic, with Mr. Masters's Answer to me. If he had not
taken such pains to declare it was written against my Doubts, I
should have thought it a defence of them; for the few facts he
quotes make for my arguments, and confute himself; particularly
in the case of Lady Eleanor Butler; -whom, by the way, he makes
marry her own nephew, and not descend from her own family,
because she was descended from her grandfather.

This Mr. Masters is an excellent Sancho Panza to such a Don
Quixote as Dean Milles! but enough of such goosecaps! Pray
thank Mr. Ashby for his admirable correction of Sir Thomas
Wyat's bon-mot. It is right beyond all doubt, and I will quote
it if ever the piece is reprinted.

Mr. Tyson surprises me by usurping your Dissertation. It seems
all is fish that comes to the net of the Society- Mercy on us!
What a cart-load of brick and rubbish, and Roman ruins, they
have piled together! I have found nothing-, tolerable in the
volume but the Dissertation of Mr Masters; which is followed by
an answer, that, like Masters, contradicts him, without
disproving any thing.

Mr. West's books are selling outrageously. His family will
make a fortune by what he collected from stalls and Moorfields.
But I must not blame the virtuosi, having surpassed them. In
short I have bought his two pictures of Henry V. and Henry
VIII. and their families; the first of which is engraved in my
Anecdotes, or, as the catalogue says, engraved by Mr. H.
Walpole, and the second described there. The first cost me 38
pounds and the last 84, though I knew Mr. West bought it for
six guineas. But, in fact, these two, with my Marriages of
Henry VI. and VII., compose such a suite of the House of
Lancaster, and enrich my Gothic house so completely, that I
would not deny myself. The Henry VII. cost me as much, and is
less curious: the price of antiquities is so exceedingly risen,
too, at present, that I expected to have paid more. I have
bought much cheaper at the same sale, a picture of Henry VIII.
and Charles V. in one piece, both much younger than I ever saw
any portrait of either. I hope your pilgrimage to St.
Gulaston's this month will take place, and that you will come
and see them. Adieu!



Letter 56 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.
Arlington Street, April 27, 1773. (page 81) '

I had not time this morning to answer your letter by Mr. Essex,
but I gave him the card you desired. You know, I hope, how
happy I am to obey any orders of yours.

In the paper I showed you in answer to Masters, you saw I was
apprised of Rastel's Chronicle: but pray do not mention my
knowing of it; because I draw so much from it, that I lie in
wait, hoping that Milles, or Masters, or some of their fools,
will produce it against me; and then I shall have another word
to say to them, which they do not expect, since they think
Rastel makes for them.

Mr. Gough(93) wants to be introduced to me! Indeed! I would
see him, as he has been midwife to Masters; but he is so dull,
that he would only be troublesome--and besides you know I shun
authors, and would never have been One myself, if it obliged me
to keep such bad company. They are always in earnest, and
think their profession serious, and dwell upon trifles, and
reverence learning. I laugh at all those things, and write
only to laugh at them, and divert myself. None of us are
authors of any consequence; and it is the most ridiculous in
all vanities to be vain of being mediocre. A page in a great
author humbles me to the dust; and the conversation of those
that are not superior to myself, reminds me of what will be
thought of myself. I blush to flatter them, or to be flattered
by them, and should dread letters being published some time or
other, in which they should relate our interviews, and we
should appear like those puny conceited Witlings in Shenstone's
and Hughes' Correspondence,(94) who give themselves airs from
being in possession of the soil of Parnassus for the time
being; as peers are proud, because they enjoy the estates of
great men who went before them. Mr. Gough is very welcome to
see Strawberry Hill; or I would help him to any scraps in my
possession, that would assist his publications; though he is
one of those industrious who are only reburying the dead-but I
cannot be acquainted with him. It is contrary to my system,
and my humour; and, besides, I know nothing of barrows, and
Danish entrenchments, and Saxon barbarisms, and Phoenician
characters--in short, I know nothing of those ages that knew
nothing--then how should I be of use to modern literati? All
the Scotch metaphysicians have sent me their works. I did not
read one of them, because I do not understand what is not
understood by those that write about it; and I did not get
acquainted with one of the writers. I should like to be
intimate with Mr. Anstey,(95) even though he wrote Lord
Buckhorse, or with the author of the Heroic Epistle.(96) I
have no thirst to know the rest of my contemporaries, from the
absurd bombast of Dr. Johnson down to the silly Dr. Goldsmith;
though the latter changeling has had bright gleams of parts,
and the former had sense, 'till he charged it for words, and
sold it for a pension. Don't think me scornful. Recollect
that I have seen Pope, and lived with Gray. Adieu! Yours
ever.