Books: The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3

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The Bedfords came last night. Lord Chatham was with me yesterday
two hours; looks and walks well, and is in excellent political
spirits. Yours ever.

(970) The idea of adapting the psalms of the church to secular
tunes had been put in practice long before Wesley's day. The
celebrated Clement Marot wrote a number of psalms to sing to the
popular airs of his time, for the accommodation of the ladies of
the French court who were devoutly inclined; but he left it to
Wesley to assign as a reason for doing so, that there were no
just grounds for letting the devil have all the best tunes
himself.-E.

(971) Agnes, second daughter of Sir James Stewart of Goodtrees;
married, in January 1739, to Henry David, fifth Earl of Buchan.
She was the mother of the celebrated Lord Erskine.-E.

Letter 317 To George Montagu, Esq.
Bath, Oct. 18, 1766. (page 490)

Well, I went last night to see Lady Lucy and Mrs. Trevor, was let
in, and received with great kindness. I found them little
altered; Lady Lucy was much undressed, but looks better than when
I saw her last, and as well as one could expect; no shyness nor
singularity, but very easy and conversable. They have a very
pretty house, with two excellent rooms on a floor, and extremely
well furnished. You may be sure your name was much in request.
If I had not been engaged, I could have staved much longer with
satisfaction; and if I am doomed, as probably I shall be, to come
hither again, they would be a great resource to me; for I find
much more pleasure now in renewing old acquaintances than in
forming new.

The waters do not benefit me so much as at firs,; the pains in my
stomach return almost every morning, but do not seem the least
allied to the gout. This decrease of their virtue is not near so
great a disappointment to me as you might imagine; for I am so
childish as not to think health itself a compensation for passing
my time very disagreeably. I can bear the loss of youth
heroically, provided I am comfortable, and can amuse myself as I
like. But health does not give one the sort of spirits that make
one like diversions, public places, and mixed company. Living
here is being a shopkeeper, who is glad of all kinds of
customers; but does not suit me, who am leaving Off trade. I
shall depart on Wednesday, even on the penalty of coming again.
To have lived three weeks in a fair appears to me a century! I
am not at all in love with their country, which so charms every
body. Mountains are very good frames to a prospect, but here
they run against one's nose, nor can one stir out of the town
without clambering. It is true one may live as retired as one
pleases, and may always have a small society. The place is
healthy, every thing is cheap, and the provisions better than
ever I tasted. Still I have taken an insupportable aversion to
it, which I feel rather than can account for; I do not think you
would dislike it: so you see I am just in general, though very
partial as to my own particular.

You have raised my curiosity about Lord Scarsdale's, yet I
question whether I shall ever take the trouble of visiting it. I
grow every year more averse to stirring from home, and putting
myself out of my way. If I can but be tolerably well at
Strawberry, my wishes bounded. If I am to live at
watering-places, and keep what is called good hours, life itself
will be very indifferent to me. I do not talk very sensibly, but
I have a contempt for that fictitious character styled
philosophy; I feel what I feel, and say I feel what I do feel.
Adieu! Yours ever.

Letter 318 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.
Bath, Oct. 18, 1766. (page 491)

You have made me laugh, and somebody else makes me stare. How
can one wonder at any thing he does, when he knows so little of
the world? I suppose the next step will be to propose me for
groom of the bedchamber to the new Duke of Cumberland. But why
me? Here is that hopeful young fellow, Sir John Rushout, the
oldest member of the House, and, as extremes meet, very proper to
begin again; why overlook him? However, as the secret is kept
from me myself, I am perfectly easy about it. I shall call
to-day or to-morrow to ask his commands, but certainly shall not
obey those you mention.(972)

The waters certainly are not so beneficial to me as at first: I
have almost every morning my pain in my stomach. I do not
pretend this to be the cause of my leaving Bath. The truth is, I
cannot bear it any longer. You laugh at my regularity; but the
contrary habit is so strong in me, that I cannot continue such
sobriety. The public rooms, and the loo, where we play in a
circle, like the hazard on Twelfth-night, are insupportable.
This coming into the world again, when I am so weary of it, is as
bad and ridiculous as moving an address would be. I have no
affectation; for affectation is a monster at nine-and-forty; but
if I cannot live quietly, privately,
and comfortably, I am perfectly indifferent about living at all.
I would not kill myself, for that is a philosopher's affectation,
and I will come hither again, if I must; but I shall always drive
very near, before I submit to do any thing I do not like. In
short, I must be as foolish as I please, as long as I can keep
without the limits of absurdity. What has an old man to do but
to preserve himself from parade on one hand, and ridicule on the
other?(973) Charming youth may indulge itself in either, may be
censured, will be envied, and has time to correct. Adieu

Monday evening.

You are a delightful manager of the House of Commons, to reckon
540, instead of 565! Sandwich was more accurate In lists, and
would not have miscounted 25, which are something in a division.

(972) Mr. Conway had intimated to Walpole, that it was the wish
of Lord Chatham, that he should move the address on the King's
speech at the opening of the session.-E.

(973) On the topic of ridicule, Walpole had, a few days before,
thus expressed himself in a letter to Madame du Deffand:--"Il y
avoit longtemps avant la date de notre connaissance, que cette
crainte de ridicule s'`etoit plant`ee dans mon esprit, et vous
devez assur`ement vous ressouvenir a quel point elle me
poss`edoit, et combien de fois je vous en ai entretenu. N'allez
pas lui chercher une naissance r`ecente. D`es le moment que je
cessais d'`etre jeune, j'ai eu une peur horrible de devenir un
veillard ridicule." To this the lady replied--"Vos craintes sur
le ridicule sont des terreurs paniques, mais on ne gu`erit point
de la peur; je n'ai point une semblable foiblesse; je sais qu'`a
mon age on est `a l'abri de donner du scandale: si l'on aime, on
n'a point `a s'en cacher; l'amiti`e ne sera jamais un sentiment
ridicule, quand elle ne fait pas faire des folies; mais
gardons-nous d'en prof`erer le nom, puisque vous avez de si
bonnes raisons de la vouloir proscrire."-E.

Letter 319 To George Montagu, Esq.
Strawberry Hill, Oct. 22, 1766. (page 492)

They may say what they will, but it does one ten times more good
to leave Bath than to go to it. I may sometimes drink the
waters, as Mr. Bentley used to say I invited company hither that
I did not care for, that I might enjoy the pleasure of their
going away. My health is certainly amended, but I did not feel
the satisfaction of it till I got home. I have still a little
rheumatism in one shoulder, which was not dipped in Styx, and is
still mortal; but, while I went to the rooms, or stayed in my
chambers in a dull court, I thought I had twenty complaints. I
don't perceive one of them.

Having no companion but such as the place afforded, and which I
did not accept, my excursions were very few; besides that the
city is so guarded with mountains, that I had not patience to be
jolted like a pea in a drum, in my chaise alone. I did go to
Bristol, the dirtiest great shop I ever saw, with so foul a
river, that, had I seen the least appearance of cleanliness, I
should have concluded they washed all their linen in it, as they
do at Paris. Going into the town, I was struck with a large
Gothic building, coal-black, and striped with white; I took it
for the devil's cathedral. When I came nearer, I found it was a
uniform castle, lately built, and serving for stables and offices
to a smart false Gothic house on the other side of the road.

The real cathedral is very neat and has pretty tombs, besides the
two windows of painted glass, given by Mrs. Ellen Gwyn. There is
a new church besides of' St. Nicholas, neat and truly Gothic,
besides a charming old church at the other end of the town. The
cathedral, or abbey, at Bath, is glaring and crowded with modern
tablet-monuments; among others, I found two, of my cousin Sir
Erasmus Phillips, and of Colonel Madan. Your cousin Bishop
Montagu, decked it much. I dined one day with an agreeable
family, two miles from Bath, a Captain Miller(974) and his wife,
and her mother, Mrs. Riggs. They have a small new-built house,
with a bow-window, directly opposite to which the Avon falls in a
wide cascade, a church behind it in a vale, into which two
mountains descend, leaving an opening into the distant country.
A large village, with houses of gentry, is on one of the hills to
the left. Their garden is little, but pretty, and watered with
several small rivulets among the bushes. Meadows fall down to
the road; and above, the garden is terminated by another view of
the river, the city, and the mountains. 'Tis a very diminutive
principality, with large Pretensions.

I must tell you a quotation I lighted upon t'other day from
Persius, the application of which has much diverted Mr. Chute.
You know my Lord Milton,(975) from nephew of the old usurer
Damer, of Dublin, has endeavoured to erect himself into the
representative of the ancient Barons Damory--

"----Momento turbinis exit
Marcus Dama."

Apropos, or rather not `apropos, I wish you joy of the
restoration of the dukedom in your house, though I believe we
both think it very hard upon my Lady Beaulieu.

I made a second visit to Lady Lucy and Mrs. Trevor, and saw the
latter One night at the rooms. She did not appear to me so
little altered as in the dusk of her own chamber. Adieu! Yours
ever.

(974) Captain John Miller, of Ballicasy, in the county of Clare.
In the preceding year he had married Anne, the only daughter of
Edward Riggs, Esq. In 1778, he was created an Irish baronet, and
in 1784, chosen representative for Newport in parliament. See
post, Walpole's letter to General Conway, of the 15th of January
1775.-E.

(975) Joseph Damer Lord Milton, of Shrone Hill, in the kingdom of
Ireland, was created a baron of Great Britain in May 1762, by the
title of Baron Milton of Milton Abbey, Dorsetshire.-E.

Letter 320 To Sir David Dalrymple.(976)
Strawberry Hill, Nov. 5, 1766. (page 494)

Sir,
On my return from Bath, I found your very kind and agreeable
present of the papers in King Charles's time;(977) for which and
all your other obliging favours I give you a thousand thanks.

I was particularly pleased with your just and sensible preface
against the squeamish or bigoted persons who would bury in
oblivion the faults and follies of princes, and who thence
contribute to their guilt; for if princes, who living are above
control, should think that no censure is to attend them when
dead, it would be new encouragement to them to play the fool and
act the tyrant. When they are so kind as to specify their crimes
under their own hands, it would be foppish delicacy indeed to
suppress them. I hope you will proceed, Sir, and with the same
impartiality. It was justice due to Charles to publish the
extravagancies of his enemies too. The comparison can never be
fairly made, but when we see the evidence on both sides. I have
done so in the trifles I have published, and have as much
offended some by what I have said of the Presbyterians at the
beginning of my third volume of the Painters, as I had others by
condemnation of King Charles in my Noble Authors. In the second
volume of my Anecdotes I praised him where he deserved praise;
for truth is my sole object, and it is some proof, when one
offends both. I am, Sir, your most obliged and obedient servant.

(976) Now first collected. In the March of this year, Sir David
Dalrymple was made a judge of the Court of session, when he
assumed the name of lord Hailes, by which he is best known.-E.

(977) "The Memorials and Letters relating to the History of
Britain in the Reigns of James the First and Charles the First,
published from the originals in the Advocates' Library at
Edinburgh," had just appeared, in two volumes, octavo.-E.

Letter 321 To David Hume, Esq.
Nov. 6, 1766. (page 494)

Dear sir,
You have, I own, surprised me by suffering your quarrel with
Rousseau to be printed, contrary to your determination when you
left London, and against the advice of all your best friends
here; I may add, contrary to your own nature, which has always
inclined you to despise literary squabbles, the jest and scorn of
all men of sense. Indeed, I am sorry you have let yourself be
over-persuaded, and so are all that I have seen who wish you
well: I ought rather to use your own word extorted. You say your
Parisian friends extorted your consent to this publication. I
believe so. Your good sense would not approve what your good
heart could not refuse. You add, that they told you Rousseau had
sent letters of defiance against you all over Europe? Good God!
my dear Sir, could you pay any regard to such fustian? All
Europe laughs at being dragged every day into these idle
quarrels, with which Europe only ***. Your friends talk as
loftily as of a challenge between Charles the Fifth and Francis
the First. What are become of all the controversies since the
days of Scaliger and Scioppius, of Billingsgate memory? Why,
they sleep in oblivion, till some Bayle drags them out of their
dust, and takes mighty pains to ascertain the date of each
author's death, which is of no more consequence to the world than
the day of his birth. Many a country squire quarrels with his
neighbour about game and manors; yet they never print their
wrangles, though as much abuse passes between them as if they
could quote all the philippics of the learned. You have acted,
as i should have expected if you would print, with sense, temper,
and decency, and, what is still more uncommon, with your usual
modesty. I cannot say so much for your editors. But editors and
commentators are seldom modest. Even to this day that race ape
the dictatorial tone Of the commentators at the restoration of
learning, when the mob thought that Greek and Latin could give
men the sense which they wanted in their native languages. But
Europe is now grown a little wiser, and holds these magnificent
pretensions in proper contempt.

What I have said is to explain why I am sorry my letter makes a
part of this controversy. When I sent it to you, it was for your
justification; and, had it been necessary, I could have added as
much more, having been witness to your anxious and boundless
friendship for Rousseau. I told you, you might make what use of
it you pleased. Indeed, at that time I did not-could not think
of its being printed, you seeming so averse to any publication on
that head. However, I by no means take it ill, nor regret my
part, if it tends to vindicate your honour.

I must confess that I am more concerned that you have suffered my
letter to be curtailed; nor should I have consented to that if
you had asked me. I guessed that your friends consulted your
interest less than their own inclination to expose Rousseau; and
I think their omission of what I said on that subject proves I
was not mistaken in my guess. My letters hinted, too, my
contempt of learned men and their miserable conduct. Since I was
to appear in print, I should not have been sorry that that
opinion should have appeared at the same \time. In truth, there
is nothing I hold so cheap as the generality of learned men; and
I have often thought that young men ought to be made scholars,
lest they should grow to reverence learned blockheads, and think
there is any merit in having read more foolish books than other
folks; which, as there are a thousand nonsensical books for one
good one, must be the case of any man who has read much more than
other people.

Your friend D'Alembert, who, I suppose, has read a vast deal, is,
it seems, offended with my letter to Rousseau.(978) He is
certainly as much at liberty to blame it, as I was to write it.
Unfortunately he does not convince me; nor can I think but that
if Rousseau may attack all governments and all religions, I might
attack him: especially on his affectation and affected
misfortunes; which you and your editors have proved are affected.
D'Alembert might be offended at Rousseau's ascribing my letter to
him; and he is in the right. I am a very indifferent author; and
there is nothing so vexatious to an indifferent author as to be
confounded with another of the same class. I should be sorry to
have his eloges and translations of scraps of Tacitus laid to me.
However, I can forgive him any thing, provided he never
translates me. Adieu! my dear Sir. I am apt to laugh, you know,
and therefore you will excuse me, though I do not treat your
friends up to the pomp of their claims. They may treat me as
freely: I shall not laugh the less, and I promise you I will
never enter into a controversy with them. Yours ever.

(978) For writing the pretended letter from the King of Prussia
to Rousseau, Walpole was severely censured by Warburton, in a
letter to Hurd:--"As to Rousseau," says the Bishop, "I entirely
agree with you, that his long letter to his brother philosopher,
Hume, shows him to be a frank lunatic. His passion of tears, his
suspicion of his friends in the midst of their services, and his
incapacity of being set right, all consign him to Monro.
Walpole's pleasantry upon him had baseness in its very
conception. It was written when the poor man had determined to
seek an asylum in England; and is, therefore, justly and
generously condemned by D'Alembert. This considered, Hume failed
both in honour and friendship not to show his dislike; which
neglect seems to have kindled the first spark of combustion in
this madman's brain. However, the contestation is very amusing,
and I shall be very sorry if it stops, now it is in so good a
train. I should be well pleased, particularly, to see so
seraphic a madman attack so insufferable a coxcomb as Walpole;
and I think they are only fit for one another."-E.

Letter 322 To David Hume, Esq.
Arlington Street, Nov. 11, 1766. (page 496)

Indeed, dear Sir, it was not necessary to make me any apology.
D'Alembert is certainly at liberty to say what he pleases of me;
and undoubtedly you cannot think that it signifies a straw to me
what he says. But how can you be surprised at his printing a
thing that he sent you so long ago? All my surprise consists in
your suffering him to Curtail my letter to you, when you might be
sure be would print his own at length. I am glad, however, that
he has mangled mine: it not only shows his equity, but is the
strongest proof that he was conscious I guessed right, when I
supposed he urged you to publish, from his own private pique to
Rousseau.

What you surmise of his censuring my letter because I am a friend
of Madame du Deffand, is astonishing indeed, and not to be
credited, unless you had suggested it. Having never thought him
any thing like a superior genius,(979) as you term him, I
concluded his vanity was hurt by Rousseau's ascribing my letter
to him; but, to carry resentment to a woman, to an old and blind
woman, so far as to hate a friend of hers qui ne lui avoit fait
de mal is strangely weak and lamentable. I thought he was a
philosopher, and that philosophers were virtuous, upright men,
who loved wisdom, and were above the little passions and foibles
of humanity. I thought they assumed that proud title as an
earnest to the world, that they intended to be something more
than mortal; that they engaged themselves to be patterns of
excellence, and would utter no opinion, would pronounce no
decision, but what they believed the quintessence of' truth; that
they always acted without prejudice and respect of persons.
Indeed, we know that the ancient philosophers were a ridiculous
composition of arrogance, disputation, and contradictions; that
some of them acted against all ideas of decency; that others
affected to doubt of their own senses; that some, for venting
unintelligible nonsense, pretended to think themselves superior
to kings; that they gave themselves airs of accounting for all
that we do and do not see-and yet, that no two of them agreed in
a single hypothesis; that one thought fire, another water, the
origin of all things; and that some were even so absurd and
impious, as to displace God, and enthrone matter in his place. I
do not mean to disparage such wise men, for we are really obliged
to them: they anticipated and helped us off with an exceeding
deal of nonsense, through which we might possibly have passed, if
they had not prevented us. But, when in this enlightened age, as
it is called, I saw the term philosophers revived, I concluded
the jargon would be omitted, and that we should be blessed with
only the cream of sapience; and one had more reason still to
expect this from any superior genius. But, alas! my dear Sir,
what a tumble is here! Your D'Alembert is a mere mortal oracle.
Who but would have laughed, if, when the buffoon Aristophanes
ridiculed Socrates, Plato had condemned the former, not for
making sport with a great man in distress, but because Plato
hated some blind old woman with whom Aristophanes was acquainted!

D'Alembert's conduct is the More Unjust, as I never heard Madame
du Deffand talk of him above three times in the seven months that
I passed at Paris; and never, though she does not love him, with
any reflection to his prejudice. I remember the first time I
ever heard her mention his name, I said I have been told he was a
good man but could not think him a good writer. (Craufurd(980)
remembers this, and it is a proof that I always thought of
D'Alembert as I do now.) She took it up with warmth, defended
his parts, and said he was extremely amusing. For her quarrel
with him, I never troubled my head about it one way or other;
which you will not wonder at. You know in England we read their
works, but seldom or never take any notice of authors. We think
them sufficiently paid if their books sell, and of course leave
them to their colleges and obscurity, by which means we are not
troubled with their variety and impertinence. In France, they
spoil us; but that was no business of mine. I, who am an author
must own this conduct very sensible; for in truth we are a most
useless tribe.

That D'Alembert should have omitted passages in which you was so
good as to mention me with approbation, agrees with his
peevishness, not with his philosophy. However, for God's sake,
do not state the passages. I do not love compliments, and will
never give my consent to receive any. I have no doubt of your
kind intentions to me, but beg they may rest there. I am much
more diverted with the philosopher D'Alembert's underhand
dealings, than I should have been pleased with panegyric even
from you.

Allow me to make one more remark, and I have done with this
trifling business for ever. Your moral friend pronounces me
ill-natured for laughing at an unhappy man who had never offended
me. Rousseau certainly never did offend me. I believed, from
many symptoms in his writings, and from what I heard of him, that
his love of singularity made him choose to invite misfortunes,
and that he hung out many more than he felt. I, who affect no
philosophy, nor pretend to more virtue than my neighbours,
thought this ridiculous in a man who is really a superior genius,
and joked upon it in a few lines never certainly intended to
appear in print. The sage D'Alembert reprehends this--and where?
In a book published to expose Rousseau, and which confirms by
serious proofs what I had hinted at in jest. What! does a
philosopher condemn me, and in the very same, breath, only with
ten times more ill-nature, act exactly as I had done? Oh! but
you will say, Rousseau had offended D'Alembert by ascribing the
King of Prussia's letter to him. Worse and worse: if Rousseau is
unhappy, a philosopher should have pardoned. Revenge is so
unbecoming the rex regum, the man who is precipue sanus--nisi cum
pituita molesta est. If Rousseau's misfortunes are affected,
what becomes of my ill-nature? In short, my dear Sir, to
conclude as D'Alembert concludes his book, I do believe in the
virtue of Mr. Hume, but not much in that of philosophers. Adieu!
Yours ever.

P. S. It occurs to me, that you may be apprehensive of my being
indiscreet enough to let D'Alembert learn your suspicions of him
on Madame du Deffand's account! but you may be perfectly easy on
that head. Though I like such an advantage over him, and should
be glad he saw this letter, and knew how little formidable I
think him, I shall certainly not make an ill use of a private
letter, and had much rather wave my triumph, than give a friend a
moment's pain. I love to laugh at an impertinent savant, but
respect learning when Joined to such goodness as yours, and never
confound ostentation and modesty.