Books: The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2

H >> Horace Walpole >> The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 59 | 60 | 61

I rejoice at Admiral Osborn's Success. I am not patriot enough
to deny but that there are captains and admirals whose glory
would have little charms for me; but Osborn was a steady friend
of murdered Byng!

The Earl and Countess of Northumberland have diverted the town
with a supper, which they intended should make their court to
my Lady Yarmouth; the dessert was a chasse at Herenhausen, the
rear of which was brought up by a chaise and six containing a
man with a blue riband and a lady sitting by him! Did you ever
hear such a vulgarism! The person complimented is not half so
German, and consequently suffered martyrdom at this clumsy
apotheosis of her concubinage. Adieu!

(885) On hearing, at Padua, of Sir Charles's indisposition,
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, in a letter to her daughter, the
Countess of Bute, on the 17th of July, breaks out into the
following striking reflections:--"I hear that my old
acquaintance is much broken, both in his spirits and
constitution. How happy might that man have been, if there had
been added to his natural and acquired endowments a dash of
morality! If he had known how to distinguish between false and
true felicity; and, instead of seeking to increase an estate
already too large, and hunting after pleasures that have made
him rotten and ridiculous, he had bounded his desires of
wealth, and followed the dictates of his conscience! His
servile ambition has gained him two yards of red riband and an
exile into a miserable country, where there is no society, and
so little taste, that I believe he suffers under a dearth of
flatterers. This is said for the use of your growing sons,
whom I hope no golden temptations will induce to marry women
they cannot love, or comply with measures they do not approve.
All the happiness this world can afford is more within reach
than is generally supposed. A wise and honest man lives to his
own heart, without that silly splendour that makes him a prey
to knaves, and which commonly ends in his becoming one of the
fraternity." Works, vol. iii. p. 160.-E.

419 Letter 259
To The Rev. Dr. Birch.
Arlington Street, May 4, 1758.

Sir,
I thought myself very unlucky in being abroad when you were so
good as to call here t'other day. I not only lost the pleasure
of your company, but the opportunity of obtaining from you
(what however I will not despair of) any remarks you may have
made on the many errors which I fear you found in my book.(886)
The hurry in which it was written, my natural carelessness and
insufficiency, must have produced many faults and mistakes. As
the curiosity of the world, raised I believe only by the
smallness Of the number printed, makes it necessary for me to
provide another edition, I should be much obliged to whoever
would be enough my friend to point out my wrong judgments and
inaccuracies,--I know nobody, Sir, more capable Of both offices
than yourself, and yet I have no pretensions to ask so great a
favour, unless your own zeal for the cause of literature should
prompt you to undertake a little of this task. I shall be
always ready to correct my faults, never to defend them.

(886) " The Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors," of which
Walpole had just printed three hundred copies, at the
Strawberry Hill press.-E.

420 Letter 260
To George Montagu, Esq.
Arlington Street, May 4, 1758.

You are the first person, I believe, that ever thought of a
Swiss transcribing Welsh, unless, like some commentator on the
Scriptures, you have discovered great affinity between those
languages, and that both are dialects of the Phoenician. I
have desired your brother to call here to-day, and to help us
in adjusting the inscriptions. I can find no Lady Cutts in
your pedigree, and till I do, cannot accommodate her with a
coronet.

My book is marvellously in fashion, to my great astonishment.
I did not expect so much truth and such notions of liberty
would have made their fortune in this our day. I am preparing
an edition for publication, and then I must expect to be a
little less civilly treated. My Lord Chesterfield tells every
body that he subscribes to all my opinions; but this mortifies
me about as much as the rest flatter me I cannot, because it is
my own case, forget how many foolish books he has diverted
himself with commending The most extraordinary thing I have
heard about mine is, that it being talked of at lord Arran's
table, Doctor King, the Dr. King of Oxford, said of the passage
on my father; "It is very modest, very genteel, and VEry TRUE."
I asked my Lady Cardigan if she would forgive my making free
with her grandmother;(887) she replied very sensibly, "I am
sure she would not have hindered any body from writing against
me; why should I be angry at any writing against her?"

The history promised you of Dr. Brown is this. Sir Charles
Williams had written an answer to his first silly volume of the
Estimate,(888) chiefly before he came over, but finished while
he was confined at Kensington. Brown had lately lodged in the
same house, not mad now, though he has been so formerly. The
landlady told Sir Charles, and offered to make affidavit that
Dr. Brown was the most profane cursor and swearer that ever
came into her house. Before I proceed in my history, I will
tell you another anecdote of this great performer: one of his
antipathies is the Opera, yet the only time I ever saw him was
in last Passion-week singing the Romish Stabat mater with the
Mingotti, behind a harpsichord at a great concert at my Lady
Carlisle's. Well--in a great apprehension of Sir Charles
divulging the story of his swearing, Brown went to Dodsley in a
most scurrilous and hectoring manner, threatening Dodsley if he
should publish any thing personal against him; abusing Sir
Charles for a coward and most abandoned man, and bidding
Dodsley tell the latter that he had a cousin in the army who
would call Sir Charles to account for any reflections on him,
Brown. Stay; this Christian message from a divine, who by the
way has a chapter in his book against duelling, is not all:
Dodsley refused to carry any such message, unless in writing.
The Doctor, enough in his senses to know the consequences of
this, refused; and at last a short verbal message, more
decently worded, was agreed on. To this Sir Charles made
Dodsley write down this answer: "that he could not but be
surprised at Brown's message, after that he Sir Charles, had,
at Ranby's desire, sent Brown a written assurance that he
intended to say nothing personal of him--nay, nor should yet,
unless Brown's impertinence made it necessary." This proper
reply Dodsley sent: Brown wrote back, that he should send an
answer to Sir Charles himself; but bid Dodsley take notice,
that printing the works of a supposed lunatic might be imputed
to the printer himself, and which he, the said Doctor, should
chastise. Dodsley, after notifying this new and unprovoked
insolence to me, Fox, and Garrick, the one friend of Sir
Charles, the other of Brown, returned a very proper, decent,
yet firm answer, with assurances of repaying chastisement of
any sort. Is it credible? this audacious man sent only a card
back, saying, "Footman's language I never return, J. Brown."
You know how decent, humble, inoffensive a creature Dodsley is;
how little apt to forget or disguise his having been a footman!
but there is no exaggerating this behaviour by reflections. On
the same card he tells Dodsley that he cannot now accept, but
returns his present of the two last volumes of his collection
of poems, and assures him that they are not soiled by the
reading. But the best picture of him is his own second volume,
which beats all the Scaligers and Scioppins's for vanity and
insolent impertinence. What is delightful; in the first volume
he had deified Warburton, but the success of that trumpery has
made Warburton jealous, and occasioned a coolness--but enough
of this jackanapes.

Your brother has been here, and as he is to go to-morrow, and
the pedigree is not quite finished, and as you will be
impatient, and as it is impossible for us to transcribe Welsh
which we cannot read without your assistance, who don't
understand it neither, we have determined that the Colonel
should carry the pedigree to you; you will examine it and bring
it with you to Strawberry, where it can be finished under your
own eye, better than it is possible to do without. Adieu! I
have not writ so long a letter this age.

(887) Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough.

(888) Estimate of the Manners of the Times. See ant`e, p. 232,
letter 119.-E.

422 Letter 261
To Sir Horace Mann.
Arlington Street, May 31, 1758.

This is rather a letter of thanks than of course, though I have
received, I verily believe, three from you since my last.
Well, then, this is to thank you for them too--chiefly for that
of to-day, with the account of the medals you have purchased
for me from Stosch, and those your own munificence bestows on
me. I am ashamed to receive the latter; I must positively know
what you paid for the former; and beg they may all be reserved
till a very safe opportunity. The price for the Ganymede is so
monstrous that I must not regret not having it--yet if ever he
should lower, I should still have a hankering, as it is one of
the finest medals I ever saw. Are any of the others in silver?
old Stosch had them so. When any of the other things I
mentioned descend to more mortal rates, I would be sorry to
lose them.

Should not you, if you had not so much experienced the
contrary, imagine that services begot gratitude? You know they
don't--Shall I tell you what they do beget?--at best,
expectations of more services. This is my very case now--you
have just been delivered of one trouble for me--I am going to
get you with twins--two more troubles. In the first place, I
shall beg you to send me a case of liqueurs; in the next all
the medals in copper of my poor departed friend the Pope, for
whom I am as much concerned as his subjects have reason to be.
I don't know whether I don't want samples of his coins, and the
little pieces struck during the sede vacante. I know what I
shall want, any authentic anecdotes of the conclave. There!
are there commissions enough? I did receive the Pope's letter
on my inscription, and the translation of the epitaph on
Theodore, and liked both much, and thought I had thanked you
for them--but I perceive I am not half so grateful as
troublesome.

Here is the state of our news and politics. We thought our
foreign King(889) on the road to Vienna: he is now said to be
prevented by Daun, and to be reduced to besiege Olmutz, which
has received considerable supplies. Accounts make Louisbourgh
reduced to wait for being taken by us as the easiest way of
avoiding being starved.--In short, we are to be those unnatural
fowl, ravens that carry bread. But our biggest of all
expectations is from our own invasion of France, which took
post last Sunday; fourteen thousand landmen, eighteen ships of
the line, frigates, sloops, bombs, and four volunteers, Lord
Downe, Sir James Lowther, Sir John Armitage, and Mr. Delaval--
the latter so ridiculous a character, that it has put a stop to
the mode that was spreading. All this commanded by Lord Anson,
who has beat the French; by the Duke of Marlborough, whose name
has beaten them; and by Lord George Sackville, who is to beat
them. Every port and town on the coast of Flanders and France
have been guessed for the object. It is a vast armament,
whether it succeeds or is lost.

At home there are seeds of quarrels. Pratt the
attorney-general has fallen on a necessary extension of the
Habeas Corpus to private cases. The interpreting world
ascribes his motive to a want of affection for my Lord
Mansfield, who unexpectedly is supported by the late
Chancellor, the Duke of Newcastle, and that part of the
ministry; and very expectedly by Mr. Fox, as this is likely to
make a breach between the united powers. The bill passed
almost unanimously through our House. It will have a very
different fate in the other, where Lord Temple is almost single
in its defence, and where Mr. Pitt seems to have little
influence. If this should produce a new revolution, you will
not be surprised. I don't know that it will; but it has
already shown how little cordiality subsists since the last.

I had given a letter for you to a young gentleman of Norfolk,
an only son, a friend of Lord Orford, and of much merit, who
was going to Italy with Admiral Broderick. He is lost in that
dreadful catastrophe of the Prince George--it makes one regret
him still more, as the survivors mention his last behaviour
with great encomiums.

Adieu! my dear child! -when I look back on my letter, I don't
know whether there would not be more propriety in calling you
my factor.

P. S. I cannot yet learn who goes to Turin: it was offered upon
his old request, to my Lord Orford but he has declined it.

(889) The King of Prussia.

423 Letter 262
To The Hon. H. S. Conway.
Arlington Street, June 4, 1758.

The Habeas Corpus is finished, but only for this year. Lord
Temple threatened to renew it the next; on which Lord Hardwicke
took the party of proposing to order the judges to prepare a
bill for extending the power of granting the writ in vacation
to all the judges. This prevented a division; though Lord
Temple, who protested alone t'other day, had a flaming protest
ready, which was to have been signed by near thirty. They sat
last night till past nine. Lord Mansfield spoke admirably for
two hours and twenty-five minutes. Except Lord Ravensworth and
the Duke of Newcastle, whose meaning the first never knows
himself, and the latter's nobody else, all who spoke spoke
well: they were Lord Temple, Lord Talbot, Lord Bruce, and Lord
Stanhope, for; Lord Morten, Lord Hardwicke, and Lord Mansfield,
against the bill.(890) T'other day in our House, we had Lady
Ferrars' affair: her sister was heard, and Lord Westmoreland,
who had a seat within the bar. Mr. Fox opposed the settlement;
but it passed.

The Duke of Grafton has resigned. Norborne Berkeley has
converted a party of pleasure into a campaign, and is gone with
the expedition,(891) without a shirt but what he had on, and
what is lent him. The night he sailed he had invited women to
supper. Besides him, and those you know, is a Mr. Sylvester
Smith. Every body was asking, "But who is Sylvester Smith?"
Harry Townshend replied, "Why, he is the son of Delaval, who
was the son of Lowther, who was the son of Armitage, who was
the son of Downe."(892)

The fleet sailed on Thursday morning. I don't know why, but
the persuasion is that they will land on this side Ushant, and
that we shall hear some events by Tuesday or Wednesday. Some
believe that Lord Anson and Howe have different destinations.
Rochfort, where there are twenty thousand men, is said
positively not to be the place. the King says there are eighty
thousand men and three marshals in Normandy and Bretagne.
George Selwyn asked General Campbell, if the ministry had yet
told the King the object?

Mademoiselle de l'Enclos is arrived,(893) to my supreme
felicity. I cannot say very handsome or agreeable: but I had
been prepared on the article of her charms. I don't say, like
Henry VIII. of Anne of Cleves, that she is a Flanders mare,
though to be sure she Is rather large: on the contrary, I bear
it as well as ever prince did who was married by proxy-and she
does not find me fricass`e dans de la neige."(894) Adieu!

P. S. I forgot to tell you of another galanterie I have had, -a
portrait of Queen Elizabeth left here while I was out of town.
The servant said it was a present, but he had orders not to say
from whom.

(890) Lord Bute thus bewails the fate of the bill, in a letter
to Mr. Pitt of the same day: "What a terrible proof was Friday,
in the House of Lords, of the total loss of public spirit, and
the most supreme indifference to those valuable rights, for the
obtaining which our ancestors freely risked both life and
fortune! These are dreadful clouds that hang over the future
accession, and damp the hopes I should otherwise entertain of
that important day." Chatham Correspondence, vol. i. p. 317.-E.

(891) The expedition against St. Maloes.

(892) All these gentlemen had been volunteers on successive
expeditions to the coast of France.

(893) The portrait of ninon de l'Enclos.

(894) Madame de S`evign`e, in her letters to her daughter,
reports that Ninon thus expressed herself relative to her son,
the Marquis de Sevign`e, who was one of her lovers.

424 Letter 263
To Dr. Ducarel.
June, 1758.

I am very much obliged to you for the remarks and hints you
sent me on my Catalogue. They will be of use to me; and any
observations of my friends I shall be very thankful for, and
disposed to employ, to make my book, what it is extremely far
from being, more perfect. I was very glad to hear, Sir, that
the present Lord Archbishop of Canterbury has continued you in
an employment for which nobody is so fit, and in which nobody
would be so useful. I wish all manner of success to, as well
as continuance of, your labours; and am, etc. etc.

425 Letter 264
To Sir Horace Mann.
Arlington Street, Sunday morning, June 11, 1758.

This will not depart till to-morrow, by which time probably
there will be more news, but I am obliged to go into the
country to-day, and would not let so much history set out,
without my saying a word of it, as I know you trust to no
gazette but mine. Last Thursday se'nnight our great expedition
departed from Portsmouth--and soon separated; lord Anson with
the great ships to lie before Brest, and Commodore Howe,(895)
our naval hero, with the transports and a million of small fry
on the secret enterprise. At one o'clock on Thursday night,
alias Friday morning a cutter brought advice that on Sunday
night the transports had made land in Concalle Bay, near St.
Maloes, had disembarked with no opposition or loss, except of a
boatswain and two sailors, killed from a little fort, to which
Howe was near enough to advise them not to resist. However,
some peasants in it fired and then ran away. Some prisoners
have assured our troops that there is no force within twenty
leagues. This may be apocryphal, a word which, as I am left at
liberty, I always interpret false. It is plain, however, that
we were not expected at St. Maloes at least. We are in violent
impatience to hear the consequences--especially whether we have
taken the town, in which there is but one battalion, many old
houses of wood, and the water easily to be cut off.

If you grow wise and ask me with a political face, whether St.
Maloes is an object worth risking fourteen thousand of our best
troops, an expense of fifty thousand pounds, and half of the
purplest blood of England, I shall toss up my head with an air
of heroism and contempt, and only tell you--There! there is the
Duke Of Marlborough in the heart of France; (for in the heroic
dictionary the heart and the coast signify the same thing;)
what would you have? Did Harry V. or Edward III mind whether it
was a rich town or a fishing town, provided they did but take a
town in France? We are as great as ever we were in the most
barbarous ages, and you are asking mercantile Questions with
all the littleness of soul that attends the improvements in
modern politics! Well! my dear child, I smile, but I tremble-.
and though it is pleasanter to tremble when one invades, than
when one is invaded, I don't like to be at the eve even of an
Agincourt. There are so many of my friends upon heroic ground,
that I discern all their danger through all their laurels.
Captain Smith, aide-de-camp to Lord George Sackville, dated his
letter to the Duke of Dorset, "from his Majesty's dominions in
France." Seriously, what a change is here! His Majesty, since
this time twelvemonth, had not only recovered his dominions in
Germany, but is on the acquiring foot in France. What heads,
what no heads must they have in France! Where are their
Cardinals, their Saxes, their Belleisles? Where are their
fleets, their hosts, their arts, their subsidies? Subsidies,
indeed! Where are ours? we pay none, or almost none, and are
ten times greater than when we hired half Europe. In short,
the difference of our situation is miraculous; and if we can
but keep from divisions at home, and the King of Prussia does
not prosper too fast for us, we may put France and ourselves
into situations to prevent them from being formidable to us for
a long season. Should the Prussian reduce too suddenly the
Empress-Queen to beg and give him a secure peace, considering
how deep a stake he still plays for, one could not well blame
his accepting it--and then we should still be to struggle with
France.

But while I am politicising, I forget to tell you half the
purport of my letter--part indeed you will have heard; Prince
Ferdinand's passage of Rhine, the most material circumstance of
which, in my opinion, is the discovery of the amazing weakness
of the French in their army, discipline, councils, and conduct.
Yesterday, as If to amuse us agreeably till we hear again from
St. Maloes, an express arrived of great conquests and captures
which three of our ships have made on the river Gambia, to the
destruction of the French trade and settlements there. I don't
tell you the particulars, because I don't know them, and
because you see them in the gazette. In one week we strike a
medal with Georgius, Germanicus, Gallicus, Africanus.

Mr. M'Kinsy, brother of Lord Bute, has kissed hands for Turin;
you remember him at Florence. He is very well-bred, and you
will find him an agreeable neighbour enough.

I have seen the vases at Holland-house, and am perfectly
content with them: the forms are charming. I assure you Mr.
Fox and Lady Caroline do not like them less than I do. Good
night! am not I a very humane conqueror to condescend to write
so long a letter?

(895) Richard, after the death of his elder brother, Viscount
Howe.

426 Letter 265
To The Hon. H. S. Conway.
June 16, 1758, 2 o'clock noon.

Well, my dear Harry! you are not the only man in England who
have not conquered France!(896) Even Dukes of Marlborough have
been there without doing the business. I don't doubt but your
good heart has even been hoping, in spite of your
understanding, that our heroes have not only taken St. Maloes,
but taken a trip cross the country to burn Rochefort, only to
show how easy it was. We have waited with astonishment at not
hearing that the French court was removed in a panic to Lyons,
and that the Mesdames had gone off in their shifts with only a
provision of rouge for a week. Nay, for my part, I expected to
be deafened with encomiums on my Lord Anson's continence, who,
after being allotted Madame Pompadour as his share of the
spoils, had again imitated Scipio, and, in spite of the
violence of his temperament, had restored her unsullied to the
King of France. Alack! we have restored nothing but a quarter
of a mile of coast to the right owners. A messenger arrived in
the middle of the night with an account that we have burned two
frigates and an hundred and twenty small fry; that it was found
impossible to bring up the cannon against the town; and that,
the French army approaching the coast, Commodore Howe, with the
expedition of Harlequin as well as the taciturnity, re-embarked
our whole force in seven hours, volunteers and all, with the
loss only of one man, and they are all gone to seek their
fortune somewhere else. Well! in half a dozen more wars we
shall know something of the coast of France. Last war we
discovered a fine bay near Port l'Orient: we have now found out
that we know nothing of St. Maloes. As they are popular
persons, I hope the city of London will send some more gold
boxes to these discoverers. If they send a patch-box to Lord
George Sackville, it will hold all his laurels. As our young
nobility cannot at present travel through France, I suppose
that is a method for finishing their studies. George Selwyn
says he supposes the French ladies will have scaffolds erected
on the shore to see the English go by. But I won't detain the
messenger any longer; I am impatient to make the Duchess(897)
happy, who I hope will soon see the Duke returned from his
coasting voyage.

The Churchills will be with you next Wednesday, and I believe I
too; but I can take my own word so little, that I will not give
it you. I know I must be back at Strawberry on Friday night;
for Lady Hervey and Lady Stafford are to be there with me for a
few days from to-morrow se'nnight. Adieu!

(896) Alluding to the expedition against Rochefort, the year
before, in which Mr. Conway was second in command.

(897) Lady Mary Bruce, Duchess of Richmond, only child of the
Countess of Ailesbury by her first marriage.
She was at Park-place with her mother during the Duke of
Richmond's absence, who was a volunteer upon this expedition

427 Letter 266
To The Earl Of Strafford.
Arlington Street, June 16, 1758.

My dear lord,
Dear lord, I stayed to write to you, in obedience to your
commands, till I had something worth telling you. St. Maloes
is taken by storm. The Governor leaped into the sea at the
very name of the Duke of Marlborough. Sir James Lowther put
his hand into his pocket, and gave the soldiers two hundred and
fifty thousand pounds to drink the King's health on the top of
the great church. Norborne Berkeley begged the favour of the
Bishop to go back with him and see his house in
Gloucestershire. Delaval is turned capuchin, with remorse, for
having killed four thousand French with his own hand. Commodore
Howe does nothing but talk of what he has done. Lord Downe, who
has killed the intendant, has sent for Dupr`e(898) to put in
his place; and my Lord Anson has ravished three abbesses, the
youngest of whom was eighty-five. Sure, my lord, this account
is glorious enough! Don't you think one might 'bate a little of
it? How much will you give up? Will you compound for the town
capitulating, and for threescore men of war and two hundred
privateers burned in the harbour? I would fain beat you down as
low as I could. What,
if we should not have taken the town? Shall you be very much
shocked, if, after burning two ships of fifty-four and
thirty-six guns, and a bushel of privateers and smallware, we
had thought it prudent to leave the town where we found it, and
had re-embarked last Monday in seven hours, (the despatch of
which implies at least as much precipitation as conduct,) and
that of all the large bill of fare above, nothing should be
true but Downe's killing the intendant; who coming out to
reconnoitre, and not surrendering, Downe, at the head of some
grenadiers, shot him dead. In truth, this is all the truth, as
it came in the middle Of the night; and if your lordship is
obstinately bent on the conquest of France, you must wait till
we have found another loophole into it, which it seems our
fleet is gone to look for. I fear it is not even true that we
have beat them in the Mediterranean! nor have I any hopes but
in Admiral Forbes, who must sail up the Rhone, burn Lyons, and
force them to a peace at once.