Books: The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3

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The weather is so very March, that I cannot enjoy my new holidays
at Strawberry yet; I sit reading and writing close to the fire.

Sterne has published two little volumes, called Sentimental
Travels. They are very pleasing, though too much dilated, and
infinitely preferable to his tiresome Tristram Shandy, of which I
never could get through three volumes. In these there is a great
good-nature and strokes of delicacy. Gray has added to his poems
three ancient Odes from Norway and Wales. The subjects of the
two first are grand and picturesque, and there is his genuine
vein in them; but they are not interesting, and do not, like his
other poems, touch any passion. Our human feelings, which he
masters at will in his former pieces, are here not
affected.(1020) Who can care through what horrors a Runic savage
arrived at all the joys and glories they could conceive, the
supreme felicity of boozing ale out of the skull of an enemy in
Odin's hall? Oh! yes, just now perhaps these odes would be
toasted at many a contested election. Adieu! Yours ever.

(1017) Walpole had retired from Parliament at the general
election in the beginning of this year.-E.

(1018) "The shrill cicalas, people of the pine,
Making their summer lives one ceaseless song,
Were the sole echoes, save my steed's and mine,
And vesper-bells that rose the boughs along."
Don Juan, c. iii. st. 106.-E.

(1019) Walpole's work is thus characterized by Sir Walter Scott:-
-"The Historical Doubts are an acute and curious example how
minute antiquarian research may shake our faith in the facts most
pointedly averred by general history. It is remarkable also to
observe how, in defending a system, which was probably at first
adopted as a mere literary exercise, Mr. Walpole's doubts
acquired, in his own eyes, the respectability of certainties, in
which he could not brook controversy." Prose Works; vol. iii. p.
304.-E.

(1020) "They strike, rather than please; the images are magnified
by affectation; the language is laboured into harshness. The
mind of the writer seems to work with unnatural violence.
Double, double, toil and trouble! There is too little appearance
of ease and nature." Johnson.-E.

Letter 340 To George Montagu, Esq.
Strawberry Hill, April 15, 1768. (page 516)

Mr. Chute tells me that you have taken a new house in Squireland,
and have given yourself up for two years more to port and
parsons. I am very angry, and resign you to the works of the
devil or the church, I don't care which. You will get the gout,
turn Methodist, and expect to ride to heaven upon your own great
foe. I was happy with your telling me how well you love me, and
though I don't love loving, I could have poured out all the
fullness of my heart to such an old and true friend; but what am
I the better for it, if I am to see you but two or three days in
the year? I thought you would at last come and while away the
remainder of life on the banks of the Thames in gaiety and old
tales. I have quitted the stage, and the Clive is preparing to
leave it. We shall neither of us ever be grave: dowagers roost
all round us and you could never want cards or mirth. Will you
end like a fat farmer, repeating annually the price of oats, and
discussing stale newspapers? There have you got, I hear into an
old gallery that has not been glazed since Queen Elizabeth, and
under the nose of an infant Duke and Duchess, that will
understand you no more than if you wore a ruff and a coif, and
talked to them of a call of serjeants the year of the Spanish
armada! Your wit and humour will be as much lost upon them, as
if you talked the dialect of Chaucer; for with all the divinity
of wit, it grows out of fashion like a fardingale. I am
convinced that the young men at White's already laugh at George
Selwyn's bon-mots only by tradition. I avoid talking before the
youth of the age as I would dancing before them; for if one's
tongue don't move in the steps of the day, and thinks to please
by its old graces, it is only an object of ridicule, like Mrs.
Hobart in her cotilion. I tell you we should get together, and
comfort ourselves with reflecting on the brave days that we have
known--not that I think people were a jot more clever or wise in
our youth than now, are now; but as my system is always to live
in a vision as much as I can, and as visions don't increase with
years, there is nothing so natural as to think one remembers what
one does not remember.

I have finished my tragedy,(1021) but as you would not bear the
subject, I will say no more of it, but that Mr. Chute, who is not
easily pleased, likes it, and Gray, who is still more difficult,
approves it.(1022) I am not yet intoxicated enough with it to
think it would do for the stage, though I wish to see it acted;
but, as Mrs. Pritchard(1023) leaves the stage next month, I know
nobody could play the Countess; nor am I disposed to expose
myself to the impertinent eyes of that jackanapes Garrick, who
lets nothing appear but his own wretched stuff, or that of
creatures still duller, who suffer him to alter their pieces as
he pleases. I have written an epilogue in character for the
Clive, which she would speak admirably; but I am not so sure that
she would like to speak it. Mr. Conway, Lady Aylesbury, Lady
Lyttelton, and Miss Rich, are to come hither the day after
to-morrow, and Mr. Conway and I are to read my play to them; for
I have not strength enough to go through the whole alone.(1024)

My press is revived, and is printing a French play written by the
old President Henault.(1025) It was damned many years ago at
Paris, and yet I think it is better than some that have
succeeded, and much better than any of our modern tragedies. I
print it to please the old man, as he was exceedingly kind to me
at Paris; but I doubt whether he will live till it is
finished.(1026) He is to have a hundred copies, and there are to
be but a hundred more, Of Which You shall have one.

Adieu! though I am very angry with you, I deserve all your
friendship, by that I have for you, witness my anger and
disappointment. Yours ever.

P. S. Send me your new direction, and tell me when I must begin
to use it.

(1021) The Mysterious Mother. See vol. i. p. 57.-E.

(1022) Of this tragedy Lord Byron was also an approver: "It is
the fashion," he says, "to underrate Horace Walpole; firstly,
because he was a nobleman; and secondly, because he was a
gentleman; but, to say nothing of the composition of his
incomparable Letters, and of the Castle of Otranto, he is the
ultimus Romanorum, the author of the Mysterious Mother; a tragedy
of the highest order, and not a puling love.play."-E.

(1023) This celebrated actress, who excelled alike in tragedy and
comedy, took leave of the stage in May, in the part of Lady
Macbeth, and died at Bath in the following August.-E.

(1024) Walpole, in a letter to Madame du Deffand, of the 11th of
March, speaking of the "Honn`ete Criminel," a copy of which she
had sent him, gives her the following account of his own
tragedy:--"L'Honn`ete Criminel me paroit assez m`ediocre. Ma
propre trag`edie a de bien plus grands d`efauts, mais au moins
elle ne ressemble pas au toout compass`e tet r`egl`e du si`ecle.
Il ne vous plairoit pas assur`ement; il n'y a pas de beaux
Sentiments: il n'y a que des passions sans envelope, des crimes,
des repentis, et des horreurs. Je crois qu'il y a beaucoup plus
de mauvais que de bon, et je sais s`urement que depuis le premier
acte jusqu'a la derni`ere sc`ene l'int`er`et languit au lieu
d'augmenter: peut-il avoir on plus grand d`efaut?"-E.

(1025) Corn`elie, a manuscript tragedy, written by the Pr`esident
Henault in early life.

(1026) He died in Novembor 1770, at the age of eighty-six.-E.

Letter 341 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.
Strawberry Hill, April 16, 1768. (page 517)

Well, dear Sir, does your new habitation improve as the spring
advances? There has been dry weather and east wind enough to
parch the fens. We find that the severe beginning of this last
winter has made terrible havoc among the evergreens, though of
old standing. Half my cypresses have been bewitched, and turned
into brooms; and the laurustinus is every where perished. I am
Goth enough to choose now and then to believe in prognostics; and
I hope this destruction imports, that, though foreigners should
take root here, they cannot last in this climate. I would fain
persuade myself, that we are to be our own empire to eternity.

The Duke of Manchester has lent me an invaluable curiosity; I
mean invaluable to us antiquaries: but perhaps I have already
mentioned it to you; I forgot whether I have or no. It is the
original roll of the Earls of Warwick, as long as my gallery, and
drawn by John Rous(1027) himself. Ay, and what is more, there
are portraits of Richard III., his Queen, and son; the two former
corresponding almost exactly with my print; and a panegyric on
the virtues of Richard, and a satire, upwards and downwards, on
the illegal marriage of Edward IV., and on the extortions of
Henry VII. I have had these and seven other portraits copied,
and shall, some time or other, give plates of them. But I wait
for an excuse; I mean till Mr. Hume shall publish a few remarks
he has made on my book: they are very far from substantial; yet
still better than any other trash that has been written against
it, nothing of which deserves an answer.

I have long had thoughts of drawing up something for London like
St. Foix's Rues de Paris,(1028) and have made some collections.
I wish You Would be so good, in the course of your reading, to
mark down any passage to that end: as where any great houses of
nobility were situated; or in what street any memorable event
happened. I fear the subject will not furnish much till later
times, as our princes kept their courts up and down the country
in such a vagrant manner.

I expect Mr. Gray and Mr. Mason to pass the day with me here
to-morrow. When I am more settled here I shall put you in mind
of your promise to bestow more than one day on me.

I hope the Methodist, your neighbour, does not, like his
patriarch Whitfield, encourage the people to forge, murder, etc.
in order to have the benefit of being converted at the gallows.
That arch-rogue preached lately a funeral sermon on one Gibson,
hanged for forgery, and told his audience, that he could assure
them Gibson was now in heaven, and that another fellow, executed
at the same time, had the happiness of touching Gibson's coat as
he was turned off. As little as you and I agree about a hundred
years ago, I don't desire a reign of fanatics. Oxford has begun
with these rascals, and I hope Cambridge will wake. I don't mean
that I would have them persecuted, which is what they wish; but I
would have the clergy fight them and ridicule them. Adieu! dear
Sir. Yours ever.

(1027) John Rous, the historian of Warwickshire, "who," according
to Walpole in his Anecdotes of Painting, "drew his own portrait,
and other semblances, but in too rude a style to be called
painting."-E.

(1028) Essais Historiques sur Paris, par
Germain-Fran`cois-Poulain de Saint Foix; of which an English
translation was published in 1767.-E.

Letter 342 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.
Strawberry Hill, June 6, 1768. (page 519)

You have told me what makes me both sorry and glad.(1029) Long
have I expected the appearance of Ely, and thought it at the eve
of coming forth. Now you tell me it is not half written; but
then I am rejoiced you are to write it. Pray do; the author is
very much in the right to make you author for him. I cannot say
you have addressed yourself quite so judiciously as he has. I
never heard of Cardinal Lewis de Luxembourg in my days, nor have
a scrap of the history of Normandy, but Ducarel's tour to the
Conqueror's kitchen. But the best way will be to come and
rummage my library yourself: not to set me to writing the lives
of prelates: I shall strip them stark, and you will have them to
reconsecrate. Cardinal Morton is at your service: pray say for
him, and of me, what you please. I have very slender opinion of
his integrity; but as I am not spiteful, It would be hard to
exact from you a less favourable account of him than I conclude
your piety will bestow on all his predecessors and successors.
Seriously, you know how little I take contradiction to heart, and
beg you will have no scruples about defending Morton. When I
bestow but a momentary smile on the abuse of any answerers, I am
not likely to stint a friend in a fair and obliging remark.

The man that you mention, who calls himself "Impartialis," is, I
suppose some hackney historian, I shall never inquire, whom,
angry at being censured in the jump, and not named. I foretold he
would drop his criticisms before he entered on Perkin Warbeck,
which I knew he could not answer; and so it happened. Good night
to him!

Unfortunately, I am no culinary antiquary - the Bishop of
Carlisle, who is, I have oft heard talk of a sotelle, as an
ancient dish. He is rambling between London, flagley, and
Carlisle, that I do not know where to consult him: but, if the
book is not printed before winter, I am sure he could translate
your bill of fare into modern phrase. As I trust I shall see you
some time this summer, you might bring your papers with you, and
we will try what we can make of them. Tell me, do, when it will
be most convenient for you to come, from now to the end of
October. At the same time, I will beg to see the letters of the
university to King Richard; and shall be still more obliged to
you for the print of Jane Shore.(1030) I have a very bad
mezzotinto of her, either from the picture at Cambridge or Eton.
I wish I could return these favours by contributing to the
decoration of your new old house: but, as you know, I erected an
old house, not demolished one. I had no windows, or frames for
windows, but what I bespoke on purpose for the places where they
are. My painted glass was so exhausted, before I got through my
design, that I was forced to have the windows in the Battery
painted on purpose by Pecket. What scraps I have remaining are
so bad I cannot make you pay for the carriage of them, as I think
there is not one whole piece; but you shall see them when you
come hither, and I will search if I can find any thing for your
purpose. I am sure I owe it you. Adieu! Yours ever.

(1029) This is in reply to one of Mr. Cole's letters, wherein he
had informed Mr. Walpole, that he had undertaken to write the
history of some of' the Bishops of Ely for the History of Ely
Cathedral, and requested some particulars relating to Cardinal
Lewis de Luxembourg; and to be informed the meaning of the French
word sotalle or sotelle. Mr. Cole also proposed to controvert an
opinion of Mr. Walpole's respecting Cardinal Morton.

(1030) This appears, from the copy of Cole's previous letter, to
have been an engraving done by Mr. Tyson of Bennett's College,
from the picture in the Provost's lodge.

Letter 343 To George Montagu, Esq.
Strawberry Hill, June 15, 1768. (page 520)

No, I cannot be so false as to say I am glad you are pleased with
your situation. You are so apt to take root, that it requires
ten years to dig you out again when you once begin to settle. As
you go pitching your tent up and down, I wish you were still more
a Tartar, and shifted your quarters perpetually. Yes, I will
come and see you, but tell me first, when do your Duke and
Duchess travel to the north? I know that he is a very amiable
lad, and I do not know that she is not as amiable a laddess, but
I had rather see their house comfortably when they are not there.

I perceive the deluge fell upon you before it reached us. It
began here but on Monday last, and then rained near
eight-and-forty hours without intermission. My poor hay has not
a dry thread to its back. I have had a fire these three days.
In short, every summer one lives in a state of mutiny and murmur,
and I have found the reason: it is because we will affect to have
a summer, and we have no title to any such thing. Our poets
learnt their trade of the Romans, and so adopted the terms of
their masters. They talk of shady groves, purling streams, and
cooling breezes, and we get sore throats and agues with
attempting to realize these visions. Master Damon writes a song,
and invites Miss Chloe to enjoy the cool of the evening, and the
deuce a bit have we of any such thing as a cool evening. Zephyr
is a northeast wind, that makes Damon button up to the chin, and
pinches Chloe's nose till it is red and blue; and then they cry,
this is a bad summer! as if we ever had any other. The best sun
we have is made of Newcastle coal, and I am determined never to
reckon upon any other. We ruin ourselves with inviting over
foreign trees and make our houses clamber up hills to look at
prospects. How our ancestors would laugh at us, who knew there
was no being comfortable, unless you had a high hill before your
nose, and a thick warm wood at your back! Taste is too freezing
a commodity for us, and, depend upon it, will go out of fashion
again.

There is indeed a natural warmth in this country, which, as you
say, I am very glad not to enjoy any longer; I mean the hothouse
in St. Stephen's chapel. My own sagacity makes me very vain,
though there was very little merit in it. I had seen so much of
all parties, that I had little esteem left for any; it is most
indifferent to me who is in or -who is out, or which is set in
the pillory, Mr. Wilkes or my Lord Mansfield. I see the country
going to ruin, and no man with brains enough to save it. That is
mortifying ; but what signifies who has the undoing it? I seldom
suffer myself to think on this subject: my patriotism could do no
good, and my philosophy can make me be at peace.

I am sorry you are likely to lose your poor cousin Lady
Hinchinbrook;(1031) I heard a very bad account of her when I was
last in town. Your letter to Madame Roland shall be taken care
of; but as you are so scrupulous of making me pay postage, I must
remember not to overcharge you, as I can frank my idle letters no
longer; therefore, good night!

P. S. I was in town last week, and found Mr. Chute still
confined. He had a return in his shoulder, but I think it more
rheumatism than gout.

(1031) Elizabeth, wife of John Viscount Hinchinbroke, afterwards
fifth Earl of Sandwich, was the only surviving daughter of
George, second and last Earl of Halifax. Her ladyship died on
the 1st of July 1768, leaving a son, George Viscount
Hinchinbroke, who died sine prole, in 1790.-E.

Letter 344 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.(1032)
Strawberry Hill, June 16, 1768. (page 521)

I am glad you have writ to me, for I wanted to write to you, and
did not know what to say. I have been but two nights in town,
and then heard of nothing but Wilkes, of whom I am tired to
death, and of T. Townshend, the truth of whose story I did not
know; and indeed the tone of the age has made me so uncharitable,
that I concluded his ill-humour was put on, in order to be
mollified with the reversion of his father's place, which I know
he has long wanted; and the destination of the Pay-office has
been so long notified, that I had no notion of his not liking the
arrangement. For the new Paymaster,(1033) I could not think him
worth writing a letter on purpose. By your letter and the
enclosed I find Townshend has been very ill-treated, and I like
his spirit in not bearing such neglect and contempt, though
wrapped up in 2700 pounds a-year.

What can one say of the Duke of Grafton, but that his whole
conduct is childish, insolent, inconstant, and absurd--nay,
ruinous? Because we are not in confusion enough, he makes every
thing as bad as possible, neglecting on one hand, and taking no
precaution on the other. I neither see how it is possible for
him to remain minister, nor whom to put in his place. No
government, no police, London and Middlesex distracted, the
colonies in rebellion, Ireland ready to be so, and France
arrogant, and on the point of being hostile! Lord Bute accused of
all and dying of a panic; George Grenville wanting to make rage
desperate; Lord Rockingham the Duke of Portland, and the
Cavendishes thinking we have no enemies but Lord Bute and Dyson,
and that four mutes and an epigram can set every thing to rights,
the Duke of Grafton like an apprentice, thinking the world should
be postponed to a whore and a horserace; and the Bedfords not
caring what disgraces we undergo, while each of them has 3000
pounds a-year and three thousand bottles of claret and champagne!
Not but that I believe these last good folks are still not
satisfied with the satisfaction of their wishes. They have the
favour of the Duke of Grafton, but neither his confidence nor his
company; so that they can neither sell the places in his gift nor
his secrets. Indeed, they,' have not the same reasons to be
displeased with him as you have; for they were his enemies and
you his friend--and therefore he embraced them and dropped you,
and I believe would be puzzled to give a tolerable reason for
either.

As this is the light in which I see our present situation, you
will not wonder that I am happy to have nothing to do with it.
Not that, were it more flourishing, I would ever meddle again. I
have no good opinion of any of our factions, nor think highly of
either their heads or their hearts. I can amuse myself much more
to my satisfaction; and, had I not lived to see my country at the
period of its greatest glory, I should bear our present state
much better. I cannot mend it, and therefore will think as
little of it as I can. The Duke of Northumberland asked me to
dine at Sion to-morrow; but, as his vanity of governing Middlesex
makes him absurdly meditate to contest the county, I concluded he
wanted my interest here, and therefore excused myself; for I will
have nothing to do with it.

I shall like much to come to Park-place, if your present company
stays, or if the Fitzroys or the Richmonds are there; but I
desire to be excused from the Cavendishes, who have in a manner
left me off, because I am so unlucky as not to think Lord
Rockingham as great a man as my Lord Chatham, and Lord John more
able than either. If you will let me know when they leave you,
you shall see me: but they would not be glad of my company, nor I
of theirs.

My hay and I are drowned; I comfort myself with a fire, but I
cannot treat the other with any sun, at least not with one that
has more warm than the sun in a harlequin-farce.

I went this morning to see the Duchess of Grafton, who has got an
excellent house and fine prospect, but melancholy enough, and so
I thought was she herself: I did not ask wherefore.

I go to town to-morrow to see the Devil upon Two Sticks,(1034) as
I did last week, but could not get in. I have now secured a
place in my niece Cholmondeley's box, and am to have the
additional entertainment of Mrs. Macauley in the same company;
who goes to see herself represented, and I suppose figures
herself very like Socrates.

I shall send this letter by the coach, as it is rather free
spoken, and Sandwich may be prying.

Mr. Chute has found the subject of my tragedy, which I thought
happened in Tillotson's time, in the Queen of Navarre's Tales;
and what is very remarkable, I had laid my plot at Narbonne and
about the beginning of the Reformation, and it really did happen
in Languedoc and in the time of Francis the First. Is not this
singular?(1035)

I hope your canary hen was really with egg by the blue-bird, and
that he will not plead that they are none of his and sue for a
divorce. Adieu!

(1032) Now first printed. In the preceding January Mr. Conway
had resigned his situation of secretary of state for the northern
department.-E.

(1033) Mr. Rigby.

(1034) Foote's successful comedy of The Devil upon Two Sticks was
first acted at the Haymarket on the 31st of May.-E.

(1035) See vol. i. p. 57.

Letter 345 To Monsieur De Voltaire.
Strawberry Hill, June 21, 1768. (page 523)

Sir,
You read English with so much more facility than I can write
French, that I hope you will excuse my making use of my own
tongue to thank you for the honour of your letter. If I employed
your language, my ignorance in it might betray me into
expressions that would not do justice to the sentiments I feel at
being so distinguished.

It is true, Sir, I have ventured to contest the history of
Richard the Third, as it has been delivered down to us; and I
shall obey your commands, and send it to you, though with fear
and trembling; for though I have given it to the world, as it is
called, yet, as you have justly observed, that world is comprised
within a very small circle of readers--and Undoubtedly I could
not expect that you would do me the Honour of being one of the
number. Nor do I fear you, Sir, only as the first genius in
Europe, who has illustrated every science; I have a more intimate
dependence on you than YOU Suspect. Without knowing it, you have
been my master, and perhaps the sole merit that may be found in
my writings is owing to my having studied yours; so far, Sir, am
I from living in that state of barbarism and ignorance with which
you tax me when you say que vous m'`etes peut-`etre inconnu. I
was not a stranger to your reputation very many years ago, but
remember to have then thought you honoured our house by dining
with my mother--though I was at school, and had not the happiness
of seeing you: and yet my father was in a situation that might
have dazzled eyes older than mine. The plain name of that
father, and the pride of having had so excellent a father, to
whose virtues truth at last does justice , is all I have to
boast. I am a very private man, distinguished by neither
dignities nor titles, which I have never done any thing to
deserve--but as I am certain that titles alone would not have
procured me the honour of your notice, I am content without
them.(1036)