Books: The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2

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The thought of having the head engraved was entirely Dodsley's
own, and against my opinion, as I concluded it would be against
yours; which made me determine to acquaint you with it before
its appearance.

When you reflect on what I have said now, you will see very
clearly, that I had and could have no other possible meaning in
what I wrote last. You might justly have accused me of
neglect, if I had deferred giving you all the satisfaction in
my powers, as soon as ever I knew your uneasiness.

The head I give up.(367) The title I think will be wrong, and
not answer your purpose; for, as the drawings are evidently
calculated for the poems, how will the improper disposition of
the word designs before poems make the edition less yours? I am
as little convinced that there is any affectation in leaving out
the Mr. before your names: it is a barbarous addition: the other
is simple and classic; a rank I cannot help thinking due to both
the poet and painter. Without ranging myself among classics, I
assure you, were I to print any thing with my name, it should
be plain Horace Walpole: Mr. is one of the Gothicisms I
abominate. The explanation(368) was certainly added for people
who have not eyes:--such are-almost all who have seen Mr.
Bentley's drawings, and think to compliment him by mistaking
them for prints. Alas! the generality want as much to have the
words "a man," "a cock," written under his drawings, as under
the most execrable hieroglyphics of Egypt, or of signpost
painters.

I will say no more now, but that you must not wonder if I am
partial to you and yours, when you can write as you do and yet
feel so little vanity. I have used freedom enough with your
writings to convince you I speak truth: I praise and scold Mr.
Bentley immoderately, as I think he draws well or ill: I never
think it worth my while to do either, especially to blame,
where there are not generally vast excellencies. Good night!
Don't suspect me when I have no fault but impatience to make
you easy.

(366) This was a print of Mr. Gray, after the portrait of him
by Eckardt. It was intended to have been prefixed to Dodsley's
quarto edition of the Odes with Mr. Bentley's designs but Mr.
Gray's extreme repugnance to the proposal obliged his friends
to drop it.

(367) In a letter to Walpole, written from Stoke, in January,
on receiving a proof of the head, Gray had said, "Sure you are
not out of your wits! This I know, if you suffer my head to be
printed, you will put me out of mine. I conjure you
immediately to put a stop to any such design. Who is at the
expense of engraving it, I know not; but if it be Dodsley, I
will make up the loss to him. The thing as it was, I know,
will make me ridiculous enough: but to appear in proper person,
at the head of my works, consisting Of half a dozen ballads in
thirty pages, would be worse than the pillory. I do assure
you, if I had received such a book, with such a frontispiece,
without any warning, I do believe it would have given me the
palsy." Works, vol. iii. p. 106.-E.

(368) Of Mr. Bentley's designs.

158 Letter 72
To Sir Horace Mann.
Strawberry Hill, March 4, 1753.

have you got any wind of our new histories? Is there any
account at Rome that Mr. Stone and the Solicitor-general are
still thought to be more attached to Egypt than Hanover? For
above this fortnight there have been strange mysteries and
reports! the cabinet council sat night after night till two
o'clock in the morning: we began to think that they were
empannelled to sit upon a new rebellion, or invasion at least;
or that the King of Prussia, had sent his mandate, that we must
receive the young Pretender in part payment of the Silesian
loan. At last it is come out that Lord Ravensworth,(369) on
the information of one Fawcett, a lawyer, has accused Stone,
Murray, and Dr. Johnson, the new Bishop of Gloucester, of
having had an odd custom of toasting the Chevalier and my Lord
Dunbar at one Vernon's, a merchant, about twenty years ago.
The Pretender's counterpart ordered the council to examine into
it: Lord Ravensworth stuck to his story: Fawcett was terrified
with the solemnity of the divan, and told his very different
Ways, and at last would not sign his deposition. On the other
hand, Stone and Murray took their Bible on their innocence, and
the latter made a fine speech into the bargain. Bishop Johnson
scrambled out of the scrape at the very beginning; and the
council have reported to the King that the accusation was false
and malicious.(370) This is an exact abridgement of the story;
the commentary would be too voluminous. The heats upon it are
great: the violent Whigs are not at all convinced of the Whiggism
of the culprits, by the defect of evidence: the opposite clan
affect as much conviction as if they wished them Whigs.

Mr. Chute and I are come hither for a day or two to inspect the
progress of a Gothic staircase, which is so pretty and so
small, that I am inclined to wrap it up and send it you in my
letter. As my castle is so diminutive, I give myself a
Burlington air, and say, that as Chiswick is a model of Grecian
architecture, Strawberry Hill is to be so of Gothic. I went
the other morning with Mr. Conway to buy some of the new
furniture-paper for you: if there was any money at Florence, I
should expect this manufacture would make its fortune there.

Liotard, the painter, is arrived, and has brought me Marivaux's
picture, which gives one a very different idea from what one
conceives of the author of Marianne, though it is reckoned
extremely like: the countenance is a mixture of buffoon and
villain. I told you what mishap I had with Cr`ebillon's
portrait: he has had the foolish dirtiness to keep it. Liotard
is a G`en`evois; but from having lived at Constantinopole, he
wears a Turkish habit, and a beard down to his girdle: this,
and his extravagant prices, which he has raised even beyond
what he asked at Paris, will probably get him as much money as
he covets, for he is avaricious beyond imagination. His
crayons and his water-colours are very fine; his enamel, hard:
in general, he is too Dutch, and admires nothing but excess of
finishing.

We have nothing new but two or three new plays, and those not
worth sending to you. The answer to the Prussian memorial,
drawn chiefly by Murray, is short, full, very fine, and has
more spirit than I thought we had by us. The whole is rather
too good, as I believe our best policy would have been, to be
in the wrong, and make satisfaction for having been ill-used:
the author with whom we have to deal, is not a sort of man to
stop at being confuted. Adieu!

(369) Sir Henry Liddel, Baron of Ravensworth.

(370) "Upon the whole matter," says the Hon. Philip Yorke, in
his MS. Parliamentary Journal, "the lords came unanimously to
an opinion of reporting to the King, that there appeared to
them no foundation for any part of the charge; that Mr.
Fawcett, the only evidence, had grossly prevaricated in it:
that it was malicious and scandalous, and ought not to affect
the character of the Bishop, or either of the gentlemen who
were aspersed by it."-E.

159 Letter 73
To Sir Horace Mann.
Arlington Street, March 27, 1753.

Such an event as I mentioned to you in my last, has, you may
well believe, had some consequences; but only enough to show
what it would have had in less quiet times. Last week the Duke
of Bedford moved in the House of Commons to have all the papers
relating to Lord Ravensworth and Fawcett laid before them. As
he had given notice of his intention, the ministry, in a great
fright, had taken all kind of precaution to defeat the motion;
and succeeded--if it can be called success to have quashed the
demand, and thereby confirmed the suspicions. After several
councils, it was determined, that all the cabinet councillors
should severally declare the insufficience and prevarication of
Fawcett's evidence: they did, and the motion Was rejected by
122 to 5.(371) If one was prejudiced by classic notions of the
wisdom and integrity of a senate, that debate would have cured
them. The flattery to Stone was beyond belief: I will give you
but one instance. The Duke of Argyll said, "He had happened to
be at the secretary's office during the rebellion, when two
Scotchmen came to ask for a place, which one obtained, the
other lost, but went away best pleased, from Mr. Stone's
gracious manner of refusal!" It appeared in the most glaring
manner, that the Bishop of Gloucester had dictated to Fawcett a
letter of acquittal to himself; and not content with that, had
endeavoured to persuade him to make additions to it some days
after. It was as plain, that Fawcett had never prevaricated
till these private interviews(372) With the prelate-yet there
were 122 to 5!

I take for granted our politics adjourn here till next winter
unless there should be any Prussian episode. It is difficult
to believe that that King has gone so far, without intending to
go farther: if he is satisfied with the answer to his memorial,
though it is the fullest that ever was made, yet it will be the
first time that ever a monarch was convinced! For a King of the
Romans, it seems as likely that we should see a King of the
Jews.

Your brother has got the paper for your room. He shall send
you with it a fine book which I have had printed of' Gray's
poems, with drawings by another friend of mine, which I am sure
will charm you, though none of them are quite well engraved,
and some sadly. Adieu! I am all brick and mortar: the castle
at Strawberry Hill grows so near a termination, that you must not
be angry if I wish to have you see it. Mr. Bentley is going to
make a drawing of the best view, which I propose to have
engraved, and then you shall at least have some idea of that
sweet little spot--little enough, but very sweet!

(371) "The debate was long and heavy; the Duke of Bedford's
performance moderate enough: he divided the House, but it was
not told, for there went below the bar with him the Earl of
Harcourt, Lord Townshend, the Bishop of Worcester, and Lord
Talbot only. Upon the whole, it was the worst judged, the
worst executed, and the worst supported point, that I ever saw
of so much expectations" Dodington, p. 202.-E.

(372) This insignificant, and indeed ridiculous accusation,
against Murray and Stone, is magnified by Walpole, both here
and in his Memoire,,,, into an important transaction, in
consequence of the hatred he bore to the persons accused,-D.
["The accusation was justly ridiculed by the wits of the day,
as a counterpart to the mountain in labour; and the Pelhams had
the satisfaction of seeing it terminate in the full exculpation
of their friends, the Solicitor-general and Mr. Stone." Coxe's
Pelham, vol. ii, p. 263.]

(373) On receiving a proof of the tail-piece, which Mr. Bentley
had designed for the Elegy in a Country Churchyard, and which
represents a village funeral, Gray wrote to Walpole: "I am
surprised at the print, which far surpasses my idea of London
graving: the drawing itself was so finished, that I suppose it
did not require all the art I imagined to copy it tolerably.
My aunts seeing me open your letter, took it to be a burying-
ticket, and asked whether any body had left me a ring; and so
they still conceive it to be, even with all their spectacles
on. Heaven forbid they should suspect it to belong to any
verses of mine! They would burn me for a poet." Works, vol.
iii. p. 105.-E.

161 Letter 74
To Sir Horace Mann.
Arlington Street, April 16, 1753.

Dear Sir,
I know I never give you more pleasure than in recommending such
an acquaintance as Mr. Stephens, a young gentleman now in
Italy, of whom I have heard from the best hands the greatest
and most amiable character. He is brother-in-law of Mr.
West,(374) Mr. Pelham's secretary, and (to you I may add,) as I
know it will be an additional motive to increase your
attentions to his relation, a particular friend of mine. I beg
you will do for my sake, what you always do from your own
goodness of heart, make Florence as agreeable to him as
possible: I have the strongest reasons to believe that you will
want no incitement the moment you begin to know Mr. Stephens.

(374) James West, member for St. Albans, secretary to Mr.
Pelham as chancellor of the exchequer, secretary to the
treasury, treasurer to the Royal Society, and member of the
Antiquarian Society, married the sister of this Mr. Stephens.

161 Letter 75
To Sir Horace Mann.
Strawberry Hill, April 27, 1753.

I have brought two of your letters hither to answer: in town
there are so many idle people besides oneself, that one has not
a minute's time; here I have whole evenings, after the labours
of the day are ceased. Labours they are, I assure you; I have
carpenters to direct, plasterers to hurry, papermen to scold,
and glaziers to help: this last is my greatest pleasure: I have
amassed such quantities of painted glass, that every window in
my castle will be illuminated with it: the adjusting and
disposing it is vast amusement. I thank you a thousand times
for thinking of procuring me some Gothic remains from Rome; but
I believe there is no such thing there: I scarce remember any
morsel in the true taste of it in Italy. indeed, my dear Sir,
kind as you are about it, I perceive you have no idea what
Gothic is; you have lived too long amidst true taste, to
understand venerable barbarism. You say, "You suppose my
garden is to be Gothic too." That can't be; Gothic is merely
architecture; and as one has a satisfaction in imprinting the
gloom of abbeys and cathedrals on one's house, so one's garden,
on the contrary, is to be nothing but riot, and the gaiety of
nature. I am greatly impatient for my altar, and so far from
mistrusting its goodness, I only fear it will be too good to
expose to the weather, as I intend it must be, in a recess in the
garden. I was going to tell you that my house is so monastic,
that I have a little hall decked with long saints in lean arched
windows, and with taper columns, which we call the Paraclete, in
memory of Eloisa's cloister.(375)

I am glad you have got rid of your duel, bloodguiltless:
Captain Lee had ill luck in lighting upon a Lorrain officer; he
might have boxed the ears of the whole Florentine nobility,
(con rispetto si dice,) and not have occasioned you half the
trouble you have had in accommodating this quarrel.

You need not distrust Mr. Conway and me for showing any
attentions to Prince San Severino,(376) that may convince him
of' our regard for you; I only hope he will not arrive till
towards winter, for Mr. Conway is gone to his regiment in
Ireland, and my chateau is so far from finished, that I am by
no means in a condition to harbour a princely ambassador. By
next spring I hope to have rusty armour, and arms with
quarterings enough to persuade him that I am qualified to be
Grand Master of Malta. If you could send me Viviani,(377 with
his invisible architects out of the Arabian tales, I might get
my house ready at a day's warning; especially as it will not be
quite so lofty as the triumphal arch at Florence.

What you say you have heard of strange conspiracies, fomented
by our nephew(378) is not entirely groundless. A Dr.
Cameron(379) has been seized in Scotland, who certainly came
over with commission to feel the ground. He is brought to
London; but nobody troubles their head about him, or any thing
else, but Newmarket, where the Duke is at present making a
campaign, with half the nobility and half the money of England
attending him: they really say, that not less than a hundred
thousand pounds have been carried thither for the hazard of this
single week. The palace has been furnished for him from the
great wardrobe, though the chief person(380) concerned flatters
himself that his son is at the expense of his own amusement
there.

I must now tell you how I have been treated by an old friend of
yours--don't be frightened, and conclude that this will make
against your friend San Severino: he is only a private prince;
the rogue in Question is a monarch. Your brother has sent you
some weekly papers that are much in fashion, called "The
World;" three or four of them are by a friend of yours; one
particularly I wrote to promote a subscription for King
Theodore, who is in prison for debt. His Majesty's character
is so bad, that it only raised fifty pounds; and though that
was so much above his desert, it was so much below his
expectation, that he sent a solicitor to threaten the printer
with a prosecution for having taken so much liberty with his
name--take notice too, that he had accepted the money! Dodsley,
you may believe, laughed at the lawyer; but that does not
lessen the dirty knavery. It would indeed have made an
excellent suit! a printer prosecuted suppose for having
solicited and obtained charity for a man in prison, and that
man not mentioned by his right name, but by a mock title, and
the man himself not a native of the country!--but I have done
with countenancing kings!

Lord Bath has contributed a paper to the World, but seems to
have entirely lost all his wit and genius: it is a plain heavy
description of Newmarket, with scarce an effort towards
humour.(381) I had conceived the greatest expectations from a
production of his, especially in the way of the Spectator; but
I M now assured by Franklyn, the old printer of the Craftsman,
(who by a comical revolution of things, is a tenant of mine at
Twickenham,) that Lord Bath never wrote a Craftsman himself,
only gave hints for them--yet great part of his reputation was
built on those papers. Next week my Lord chesterfield appears
in the World(382)--I expect much less from him than I did from
Lord Bath, but it is very certain that his name will make it
applauded. Adieu!

P.S. Since I came to town, I hear that my Lord Granville has
cut another colt's tooth-in short, they say he is going to be
married again; it is to Lady Juliana Collier,(383) a very
pretty girl, daughter of Lord Portmore: there are not above two
or three and forty years difference in their ages, and not
above three bottles difference in @ their drinking in a day, so
it is a very suitable match! She will not make so good a Queen
as our friend Sophia, but will like better, I suppose, to make
a widow. If this should not turn out true,(384) I can't help
it.

(375) "Where awful arches make a noonday night,
And the dim windows shade a solemn light."-Pope.-E.

(376) Ambassador from the King of Naples.

(377) Viviani, a Florentine nobleman, showing the triumphal
arch there to Prince San Severino, assured him, and insisted
upon it, that it was begun and finished in twenty-four hours!

(378) The King of Prussia.

(379) This is a strange story, and it is difficult to believe
that the King of Prussia was concerned in it. In his Memoires,
Walpole gives the following account of the taking of Dr.
Cameron:--"About this time was taken in Scotland, Dr. Archibald
Cameron, a man excepted by the act of indemnity. Intelligence
had been received some time before of his intended journey to
Britain, with a commission from Prussia to offer arms to the
disaffected Highlanders, at the same time that ships were
hiring in the north to transport men. The fairness of Dr.
Cameron's character, compared with the severity he met from a
government most laudably mild to its enemies, confirmed this
report. That Prussia, who opened its inhospitable arms to
every British rebel, should have tampered in such a business,
was by no means improbable. That King hated his uncle: but
could a Protestant potentate dip in designs for restoring a
popish government? Of what religion is policy? To what sect is
royal revenge bigoted? The Queen-dowager, though sister of our
King, was avowedly a Jacobite, by principle so-and it was
natural: what Prince, but the single one who profits by the
principle, can ever think it allowable to overturn sacred
hereditary right? It is the curse of sovereigns that their
crimes should be unpunishable."-D.

(380) The King.

(381) No. 17, giving an account of the races and manners at
Newmarket.-E.

(382) It forms the 18th number, and is entitled " A Country
Gentleman's Tour to Paris with his family."-E.

(383) Lady Juliana Collier, youngest daughter of Charles,
second Earl of Portmore, by Juliana hale, Duchess-dowager of
Leeds. She married, in 1759, James Dawkins, Esq. of
Standlinch, in Wiltshire.-D.

(384) It did not happen.

164 Letter 76
To The Hon. H. S. Conway.
Strawberry Hill, May 5, 1753.

Though my letter bears a country date, I am only a passenger
here, just come to overlook my workmen, and repose myself upon
some shavings, after the fatigues of the season. You know
balls and masquerades always abound as the weather be(,Ins to
be too hot for them, and this has been quite a spring-tide of
diversion. Not that I am so abandoned as to have partaken of
all; I neither made the Newmarket campaign under the Duke, nor
danced at any ball, nor looked well at any masquerade: I begin
to submit to my years, and amuse myself-only just as much as I
like. Indeed, when parties and politics are at an end, an
Englishman may be allowed not to b always grave and out of
humour. His Royal Highness has won as many hearts at Newmarket
as he lost in Scotland; he played deep and handsomely; received
every body at his table with the greatest good humour, and
permitted the familiarities of the place with ease and sense.

There have been balls at the Duchess of Norfolk's, at
Holland-house, and Lord Granville's, and a subscription
masquerade: the dresses were not very fine, not much invention,
nor any very absurd. I find I am telling you extreme trifles;
but you desired me to write; and there literally happens
nothing of greater moment. If I can fill out a sheet even in
this way, I will; for at Sligo(385) perhaps I may appear a
journalist of consequence.

There is a Madame de Mezi`eres arrived from Paris, who has said
a thousand impertinent things to my Lady Albemarle, on my
lord's not letting her come to Paris.(386) I should not repeat
this to you, only to introduce George Selwyn's account of this
woman who, he says, is mother to the Princess of Montauban,
grandmother to Madame de Brionne, sister to General Oglethorpe,
and was laundress to the Duchess of Portsmouth.

Sir Charles Williams, never very happy at panegyric, has made a
distich on the Queen of Hungary, which I send you for the
curiosity, not the merit of it:

"O regina orbis prima et pulcherrima, ridens
Es Venus, incedens Juno, Minerva loquens."

It is infinitely admired at Vienna, but Baron Munchausen has
received a translation of it into German in six verses, which
are still more applauded.

There is another volume published of Lord Bolinbroke's: it
contains his famous Letter to Sir William Windham, with an
admirable description of the Pretender and hi Court, and a very
poor justification of his own treachery to that party; a flimsy
unfinished State of the Nation, written at the end of his life,
and the commonplace tautology of an old politician, who lives out
of the world and writes from newspapers; and a superficial letter
to Mr. Pope, as an introduction to his Essays, which are printed,
but not yet published.

What shall I say to you more? You see how I am forced to tack
paragraphs together, without any connexion or consequence!
Shall I tell you one more idle story, and will you just
recollect that you once concerned yourself enough about the
heroine of it, to excuse my repeating such a piece of
tittle-tattle? This heroine is Lady Harrington, the hero is--
not entirely of royal blood; at least I have never heard that
Lodomie, the toothdrawer, was in any manner descended from the
house of Bourbon. Don't be alarmed: this plebeian operator is
not in the catalogue of your successors. How the lady was the
aggressor is not known; 'tis only conjectured that French
politeness and French interestedness could never have gone such
lengths without mighty provocation. The first instance of the
toothdrawer's un-gentle behaviour was on hearing it said that
Lady Harrington was to have her four girls drawn by Liotard;
which was wondered at, as his price is so great--"Oh!" said
Lodomie, "chacune paie pour la sienne." Soon after this
insult, there was some dispute about payments and toothpowder,
and divers messages passed. At last the lady wrote a card, to
say she did not understand such impertinent answers being given
to her chairman by an arracheur de dents. The angry little
gentleman, with as much intrepidity as if he had drawn out all
her teeth, tore the card in five slits, and returned it with
this astonishing sentence, "I return you your impertinent card,
and desire you will pay me what you owe me." All I know more
is, that the toothdrawer still lives; and so do many lords and
gentlemen, formerly thought the slaves of the offended fair
one's will and passions, and among others, to his great shame,
your sincere friend.

(385) Mr. Conway was then with his regiment quartered at Sligo
in Ireland.