Books: The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2

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"With secretaries, secretaries jar,
And rival bureaus threat approaching war."

Those that deal in elections look still higher, and snuff a new
Parliament; but I don't believe the King ill, for the Prince is
building baby-houses at Kew; and the Bishop of Oxford has laid
aside his views on Canterbury, and is come roundly back to St.
James's for the deanery of St. Paul's.(186) I could not help
being diverted the other day with the life of another Bishop of
Oxford, one Parker, who, like Secker, set out a Presbyterian,
and died King James the Second's arbitrary master of Maudlin
College.(187)

M'Lean is condemned, and will hang. I am honourably mentioned
in a Grub-street ballad for not having contributed to his
sentence. There are as many prints and pamphlets about him as
about the earthquake. His profession grows no joke: I was
sitting in my own dining-room on Sunday night, the clock had
not struck eleven, when I heard a loud cry of "Stop thief!" a
highwayman had attacked a postchaise in Picadilly, within fifty
yards of this house: the fellow was pursued, rode over the
watchman, almost killed him, and escaped. I expect to be
robbed some night in my own garden at Strawberry; I have a pond
of gold fish, that to be sure they will steal to burn like old
lace; and they may very easily, for the springs are so much
sunk with this hot summer that I am forced to water my pond
once a week! The season is still so fine, that I yesterday, in
Kensington town, saw a horse-chestnut tree in second bloom.

As I am in town, and not within the circle of Pope's walks, I
may tell you a story without fearing he should haunt me with
the ghost of a satire. I went the other day to see little
Spence,(188) who fondles an old mother in imitation of Pope.
The good old woman was mighty civil to me, and, among other
chat, said she supposed I had a good neighbour in Mr. Pope.
"Lord! Madam, he has been dead these seven years!"--"Ah! ay,
Sir, I had forgot." When the poor old soul dies, how Pope will
set his mother's spectre upon her for daring to be ignorant "if
Dennis be alive or dead!"(189)

(184) His collection was not sold till after his death, in the
years 1754 and 1755.

(185) William Cooke.

(186) Dr. Secker. In November he was appointed to the said
deanery.-E.

(187) There is the following entry in Evelyn's Diary for March
23, 1687-8: "Dr. Parker, Bishop of Oxford, who so lately
published his extraordinary treatise about transubstantiation,
and for abrogating the test and penal laws, died. He was
esteemed a violent, passionate, haughty man; but yet being
pressed to declare for the church of Rome, he utterly refused
it. A remarkable end."-E.

(188) The Rev. Joseph Spence, author of an Essay on Pope's
Odyssey, Polymetus, etc. See vol. i. pp. 27, 65. (He was
always strongly attached to his mother. When on his travels,
in 1739, he thus wrote to her:--"I am for happiness in my own
way, and according to my notions of it, I might as well, and
better, have it in living with you, at our cottage in
Birchanger, than in any palace. As my affairs stand at
present, 'tis likely that we shall have enough to live quite at
our ease: when I desire more than that, may I lose what I
have!"-E.)

(189) "I was not born for courts or great affairs;
I pay my debts, believe, and say my prayers;
Can sleep without a poem in my head,
Nor know if Dennis be alive or dead."
Pope, Prologue to Satires.-E.

83 Letter 31
To Sir Horace Mann.
Arlington Street, Oct. 18, 1750.

I had determined so seriously to write to Dr. Cocchi a letter
myself to thank him for his Baths of Pisa, that it was
impossible not to break my resolution. It was to be in
Italian, because I thought their superlative issimos would most
easily express how much I like it, and I had already gathered a
tolerable quantity together, of entertaining, charming, useful,
agreeable, and had cut and turned them into the best sounding!
Tuscan adjectives I could find in my memory or my Crusca: but,
alack! when I came to range them, they did not fadge at all;
they neither expressed what I would say, nor half what I would
say, and so I gave it all up, and am reduced to beg you would
say it all for me; and make as many excuses and as many thanks
for me as you can, between your receiving this, and your next
going to bully Richcourt, or whisper Count Lorenzi. I laughed
vastly at your idea of the latter's hopping into matrimony; and
I like as much Stainville's jumping into Richcourt's place. If
your pedigree, which is on its journey, arrives before his
fall, he will not dare to exclude YOU from the libro d'oro--
-why, child, you will find yourself as sumptuously descended as

--"All the blood of all the Howards."

or as the best-bred Arabian mare, that ever neighed beneath
Abou-al-eb-saba-bedin-lolo-ab-alnin! But pray now, how does cet
homme l`a, as the Princess used to call him, dare to tap the
chapter of birth! I thought he had not had a grandfather since
the creation, that was not born within these twenty years!-But
come, I must tell you news, big news! the treaty of commerce
with Spain is arrived signed. Nobody expected it would ever
come, which I believe is the reason it is reckoned so good; for
autrement one should not make the most favourable conjectures,
as they don't tell us how good it is. In general, they say,
the South Sea Company is to have one hundred thousand pounds in
lieu of their annual ship; which, if it is not over and above
the ninety-five thousand pounds that was allowed to be due to
them, it appears to me only as if there were some halfpence
remaining when the bill was paid, and the King of Spain had
given them to the company to drink his health. What does look
well for the treaty is, that stocks rise to highwater mark; and
what is to me as clear, is, that the exploded Don Benjamin(190)
has repaired what the patriot Lord Sandwich had forgot, or not
known to do at Aix-la-Chapelle. I conclude Keene will now come
over and enjoy the Sabbath of his toils. He and Sir Charles are
the plenipotentiaries in fashion. Pray, brush up your Minyhood
and figure too: blow the coals between the Pope and the
Venetians, till the Inquisition burns the latter, and they the
Inquisition. If you should happen to receive instructions on
this head, don't wait for St. George's day before you present
your memorial to the Senate, as they say Sir Harry Wotton was
forced to do for St. James's, when those aquatic republicans
had quarrelled with Paul the Fifth, and James the First thought
the best way in the world to broach a schism was by beginning
it with a quibble. I have had some Protestant hopes too of a
civil war in France, between the King and his clergy: but it is
a dull age, and people don't set about cutting one another's
throats with any spirit! Robbing is the only thing that goes
on with any vivacity, though my friend Mr. M'Lean is hanged.
The first Sunday after his condemnation, three thousand people
went to see him; he fainted away twice with the heat of his
cell. You can't conceive the ridiculous rage there is of going
to Newgate; and the prints that are published of the
malefactors, and the memoirs of their lives and deaths set
forth with as much parade as--as--Marshal Turenne's--we have no
General's worth making a parallel.

The pasquinade was a very great one.(191) When I was desiring
YOU to make speeches for me to Dr. Cocchi, I might as well have
drawn a bill upon you too in Mr. Chute's name: for I am sure he
will never write himself. Indeed, at present he is in his
brother's purgatory, and then you will not wonder if he does
nothing but pray to get Out of it. I am glad you are getting
into a villa: my castle will, I believe, begin to rear its
battlements next spring. I have got an immense cargo of
painted glass from Flanders: indeed, several of the pieces are
Flemish arms; but I call them the achievements of the old
Counts of Strawberry. Adieu!

(190) Benjamin Keene, afterwards knight of the bath, ambassador
at Madrid, was exceedingly abused by the Opposition in Sir
Robert Walpole's time, under the name of Don Benjamin, for
having made the convention in 1739. [Mr. Pelham, in a letter
to Mr. Pitt of the 12th of October 1750, announcing the signing
of the treaty with Spain, says, "I hope and believe, when you
see it and consider the whole, you will be of opinion, that my
friend Keene has acted ably, honestly, and bravely; but, poor
man! he is so sore with old bruises, that he still feels the
smart, and fears another thrashing." See Chatham
Correspondence, vol. i. P. 50.)

(191) It alluded to the quarrel between the Pope and the
Venetians. Marforio asked Pasquin, "Perche si triste?"-
-"Perche mon avremo pi`u Comedia, Pantalone `e partito."-D.

84 letter 32
To Sir Horace Mann.
Arlington Street, Nov. 19, 1750.

I stayed to write to you, till I could tell you that I had seen
Mr. Pelham and Mr. Milbank, and could give you some history of
a new administration--but I found it was too long to wait for
either. I pleaded with your brother as I did with you against
visiting your friends, especially when, to encourage me, he
told me that you had given them a very advantageous opinion of
me. That is the very reason, says I, why I don't choose to see
them: they will be extremely civil to me at first; and then they
will be told I have horns and hoofs., and they will shun me,
which I should not like. I know how unpopular I am with the
people with whom they must necessarily live; and, not desiring to
be otherwise, I must either seek your friends where I would most
avoid them, or have them very soon grow to avoid me. However, I
went and left my name for Mr. Pelham, where your brother told me
he lodged, eight days ago; he was to come but that night to his
lodgings, and by his telling your brother he believed I had not
been, I concluded he would not accept that for a visit; so last
Thursday, I left my name for both--to-day is Monday, and I have
heard nothing of them--very likely I shall before you receive
this--I only mention it to show you that you was in the wrong
and I in the right, to think that there would be no
empressement for an acquaintance. Indeed, I would not mention
it, as you will dislike being disappointed by any odd behaviour
of your friends, if it were not to justify myself, and convince
you of my attention in complying with whatever you desire of
me. The King, I hear, commands Mr. Pelham's dancing; and he
must like Mr. Milbank, as he distinguished himself much in a
tournament of bears at Hanover.

For the Ministry, it is all in shatters: the Duke of Newcastle
is returned more averse to the Bedfords than ever: he smothered
that Duke with embraces at their first meeting, and has never
borne to be in the room with him since. I saw the meeting of
Octavia and Cleopatra;(192) the Newcastle was all haughtiness
and coldness. Mr. Pelham, who foresaw the storm, had prudently
prepared himself for the breach by all kind of invectives
against the house of Leveson. The ground of all, besides
Newcastle's natural fickleness and jealousy, is, that the
Bedford and Sandwich have got the Duke. A crash @as been
expected, but people now seem to think that they will rub on a
little longer, though all the world seems indifferent whether
they will or not. Mankind is so sick of all the late follies
and changes, that nobody inquires or cares whether the Duke of
Newcastle is prime minister, or whom he will associate with
him. The Bedfords have few attachments, and Lord Sandwich is
universally hated. The only difficulty is, who shall succeed
them; and it is even a question whether some of the old
discarded must not cross over and figure in again. I mean, it
has even been said, that Lord Granville(193) will once more be
brought upon the stage:-if he should, and should push too
forward, could they again persuade people to resign with them?
The other nominees for the secretaryship are, Pitt, the Vienna
Sir Thomas Robinson, and even that formal piece of dulness -,it
the Hague, Lord Holderness. The talk of the Chancellor's being
president, in order to make room, by the promotion of the
Attorney to the seals, for his second son(194) to be solicitor,
as I believe I once mentioned to you, is revived;
though he told Mr. Pelham, that if ever he retired, it should
be to Wimple.(195) In the mean time, the Master of the Horse,
the Groom of the Stole, the Presidentship, (vacant by the
nomination of Dorset to Ireland in the room of Lord Harrington,
who is certainly to be given up to his master's dislike,) and
the Blues, are still vacant. Indeed, yesterday I heard that
Honeywood(196) was to have the latter. Such is the Interregnum
of our politics! The Prince's faction lie still, to wait the
event, and the disclosing of the new treaty. Your friend Lord
Fane,(197) some time ago had a mind to go to Spain: the Duke of
Bedford, who I really believe is an honest man, said very
bluntly, "Oh! my lord, nobody can do there but Keene." Lord
North is made governor to Prince George with a thousand a-year,
and an earl's patent in his pocket; but as the passing of the
patent is in the pocket of time, it would not sell for much.
There is a new preceptor, one Scott,(198) recommended by Lord
Bolingbroke. You may add that recommendation to the chapter of
our wonderful politics. I have received your letter from
Fiesoli Hill; poor Strawberry blushes to have you compare it
with such a prospect as yours. I say nothing to the abrupt
sentences about Mr. B. I have long seen his humour--and a
little of your partiality to his wife.

We are alarmed with the distemper being got among the horses:
few have died yet, but a farrier who attended General
Ligonier's dropped down dead in the stable. Adieu!

(192) The DUCHESSES of Newcastle and Bedford.

(193) "So anxious was the Duke of Newcastle to remove his
colleague, that he actually proposed either to open a
negotiation with Earl Granville for settling a new
administration, or to conciliate the Duke of Cumberland,
without the interposition of Mr. Pelham, by agreeing to
substitute Lord Sandwich in the room of the Duke of Bedford."
Coxe's Pelham, vol. ii. p. 137.-E.

(194) Charles Yorke.-D.

(195) Wimpole the Chancellor's seat in Cambridgeshire.

(196) Sir Philip Honeywood, knight of the bath.

(197) Lord Viscount Fane, formerly minister at Florence.

(198) Coxe states, that Mr. Scott was recommended to the Prince
of Wales by Lord Bathurst, at the suggestion of Lord
Bolingbroke, and that he was favoured by the Princess.-E.

86 Letter 33
To Sir Horace Mann.
Arlington Street, Dec. 19, 1750.

Well! you may be easy; your friends have been to see me at
last, but it has so happened that we have never once met, nor
have I even seen their persons. They live at Newcastle-house;
and though I give you my word my politics are exceedingly
neutral, I happen to be often at the court of Bedford. The
Interministerium still subsists; no place is filled up but the
Lieutenancy of Ireland; the Duke of Dorset was too impatient to
wait. Lord Harrington remains a melancholy sacrifice to the
famous general Resignation,(199) which he led up, and of which
he is the only victim. Overtures have been made to Lord
Chesterfield to be president; but he has declined it; for he
says he cannot hear causes, as he is grown deaf. I don't think
the proposal was imprudent, for if they should happen, as they
have now and then happened, to want to get rid of him again, they
might without consequence; that is, I suppose nobody would
follow him out, any more than they did when he resigned
voluntarily. For these two days every body has expected to see
Lord Granville president, and his friend the Duke of Bolton,
colonel of the Blues; two nominations that would not be very
agreeable, nor probably calculated to be so to the Duke, who
favours the Bedford faction. His old governor Mr. Poyntz(200)
is just dead, ruined in his circumstances by a devout brother,
whom he trusted, and by a simple wife, who had a devotion of
marrying, dozens of her poor cousins at his expense: you know
she was the Fair Circassian.(201) Mr. Poyntz was called a very
great man, but few knew any thing of his talents, for he was
timorous to childishness. The Duke has done greatly for his
family, and secured his places for his children, and sends his
two sons abroad, allowing them eight hundred pounds a year.
The little Marquis of Rockingham has drowned himself in claret;
and old Lord Dartmouth is dead of ague.(202) When Lord
Bolingbroke's last work was published, on the State of Parties
at the late King's accession, Lord Dartmouth said, he supposed
Lord Bolingbroke believed every body was dead who had lived at
that period.

There has been a droll cause in Westminster Hall: a man laid
another a wager that he produced a person who should weigh as
much again as the Duke. When they had betted, they recollected
not knowing how to desire the Duke to step into a scale. They
agreed to establish his weight at twenty stone, which, however,
is supposed to be two more than he weighs. One Bright was then
produced, who is since dead, and who actually weighed forty-two
stone and a half.)203) As soon as he was dead, the person who
had lost objected that he had been weighed in his clothes, and
thought it was impossible to suppose that his clothes could
weigh above two stone, they went to law. There were the Duke's
twenty stone bawled over a thousand times,-but the righteous
law decided against the man who had won!

Poor Lord Lempster(204) is more Cerberus(205) than ever; (you
remember his bon-mot that proved such a blunder;) he has lost
twelve thousand pounds at hazard to an ensign of the Guards-but
what will you think of the folly of a young Sir Ralph Gore,(206)
who took it into his head that he would not be waited on by
drawers in brown frocks and blue aprons, and has literally given
all the waiters at the King's Arms rich embroideries and laced
clothes! The town is still empty: the parties for the two
playhouses are the only parties that retain any spirit. I will
tell you one or two bon-mots of Quin the actor. Barry would have
had him play the ghost in Hamlet, a part much beneath the dignity
of Quin, who would give no other answer but, "I won't catch cold
behind." I don't know whether you remember that the ghost is
always ridiculously dressed, with a morsel of armour before,
and only a black waistcoat and breech behind. The other is an
old one, but admirable. When Lord Tweedale was nominal
secretary of State for Scotland, Mitchell,(207) his secretary,
was supping With Quin, who wanted him to stay another bottle;
but he pleaded my lord's business. "Then," said Quin, "only
stay till I have told you a story. A vessel was becalmed: the
master called to one of the cabin-boys at the top of the mast,
'Jack, what are you doing?' 'Nothing, Sir.' He called to
another boy, a little below the first, 'Will, what are you
doing?' 'Helping Jack, sir.'" Adieu!

(199) In the year 1746.

)200) Stephen Poyntz, formerly British minister in Sweden,
after being tutor to Lord Townshend's sons.

(201) Anna maria Mordaunt, maid of honour to Queen Caroline. A
young gentleman at Oxford wrote the "Fair Circassian" on her,
and died for love of her. [The "Fair Circassian," a dramatic
performance which appeared in 1720, Has been generally
attributed to the Rev. Dr. Samuel Croxall, author of "Fables of
Esop and others, translated into English, with instructive
applications," who died in 1752, at an advanced age.]

(202) William, first Earl of Dartmouth, secretary of state to
Queen Anne. He died on the 15th of December, in his
seventy-ninth year.-E.

(203) Edward bright died at Malden in Essex, on the 10th of
November, at the age of thirty. He was an active man till a
year or two before that event; when his corpulency so
overpowered his strength, that his life was a burthen to
him.-E.

(204) Eldest son of Thomas Fermor, Earl of Pomfret, whom, in
1753, he succeeded in the title.

(205) When he was on his travels, and run much in debt, his
parents paid his debts: Some more came out afterwards; he wrote
to his mother, that he could only compare himself to Cerberus,
who, when one head was cut off, had another spring up in its
room.

(206) In 1747, when only a captain, Sir Ralph distinguished
himself at the battle Of Laffeldt. In 1764, he was created
Baron Gore, and in 1771, Earl of Ross: in 1788, he was
appointed commander-in-chief in Ireland, and died in 1802.-E.

(207) Andrew Mitchell, afterwards commissary at Antwerp. [And,
for many years, envoy from England to the court of Prussia. In
1765 he was created a knight of the bath, and died at Berlin in
1771. His valuable collection of letters, forming sixty-eight
volumes, was purchased in 1810, by the trustees of the British
Museum.-E.

88 Letter 34
To Sir Horace Mann.
Strawberry Hill, Dec. 22, 1750.

As I am idling away some Christmas days here, I begin a letter
to you, that perhaps will not set out till next year. Any
changes in the ministry will certainly be postponed till that
date: it is even believed that no alteration will be made till
after the session; they will get the money raised -,And the new
treaty ratified in Parliament before they break and part. The
German ministers arc more alarmed, and seem to apprehend
themselves in as tottering a situation as some of the English:
not that any secretary of state is jealous of them--their
Countess(208) is on the wane. The housekeeper(209) at Windsor,
an old monster that Verrio painted for one of the Furies, is
dead. The revenue is large, and has been largely solicited.
Two days ago, at the drawing-room, the gallant Orondates strode
up to Miss Chudleigh, and told her he was glad to have an
opportunity of obeying her commands, that he appointed her
mother housekeeper at Windsor, and hoped she would not think a
kiss too great a reward--against all precedent he kissed her in
the circle. He has had a hankering these two years. Her life,
which is now of thirty years' standing, has been a little
historic.(210) Why should not experience and a charming face on
her side, and near seventy years on his, produce a title?

Madame de Mirepoix is returned: she gives a lamentable account
of another old mistress,(211) her mother. She has not seen her
since the Princess went to Florence, which she it seems has
left with great regret; with greater than her beauty, whose
ruins she has not discovered: but with few teeth, few hairs,
sore eyes, and wrinkles, goes bare-necked and crowned with
jewels! Madame Mirepoix told me a reply of Lord Cornbury, that
pleased me extremely. They have revived at Paris old
Fontenelle's opera of Peleus and Thetis: he complained of being
dragged upon the stage again for one of his juvenile
performances, and said he could not bear to be hissed now: Lord
Cornbury immediately replied to him out of the very opera,

"Jupiter en courroux
'
Ne peut rien contre vous,
Vous `etes immortel."

Our old laureat has been dying: when he thought himself at the
extremity, he wrote this lively, good-natured letter to the
Duke of Grafton:-

""May it please your Grace:
"I know no nearer way of repaying your favours for these last
twenty years than by recommending the bearer, Mr. Henry Jones,
for the vacant laurel: Lord Chesterfield will tell you more of
him. I don't know the day of my death, but while I live, I
shall not cease to be, your Grace's, etc.

"Colley Cibber." '

I asked my Lord Chesterfield who this Jones(212) is; he told me
a better poet would not take the post, and a worse ought not to
have it. There are two new bon-mots of his lordship much
repeated, better than his ordinary. He says, he would not be
president, because he would not be between two fires;(213) and
that"the two brothers are like Arbuthnot's Lindamira and
Indamora;(214) the latter was an able, tractable gentlewoman, but
her sister was always quarrelling and kicking and as they grew
together, there was no parting them.

You will think my letters are absolute jest-and-story books,
unless you will be so good as to dignify them with the title of
Walpoliana. Under that hope, I will tell you a very odd new
story. A citizen had advertised a reward for the discovery of
a person who had stolen sixty guineas out of his scrutoire. He
received a message from a condemned criminal in Newgate, with
the offer of revealing the thief. Being a cautious grave
personage, he took two friends along with him. The convict
told him that he was the robber; and when he doubted, the
fellow began with these circumstances; You came home such a
night, and put the money into your bureau: I was Under your
bed: you undressed, and then went to the foot of the garret
stairs, and cried, 'Mary, come to bed to me-'" "Hold, hold,"
said the citizen, "I am convinced." "Nay," said the fellow,
"you shell hear all, for our intrigue saved your life. Mary
replied, 'If any body wants me, they may come up to me:' you
went: I robbed your bureau in the mean time, but should have
cut your throat, if you had gone into your bed instead of Mary
S."