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

(939) The defeat of the Russians at Zorndorf.

(940) The repulse of General Abercrombie at Ticonderoga.

446 Letter 282
To Sir Horace Mann.
Strawberry Hill, Sept. 9, 1758.

Well! the King of Prussia is found again--where do you think?
only in Poland, up to the chin in Russians! Was ever such a
man! He was riding home from Olmutz; they ran and told him of
an army of Muscovites,(941) as you would of a covey of
partridges; he galloped thither, and shot them. But what news
I am telling you! I forgot that all ours comes by
water-carriage, and that you must know every thing a fortnight
before us. It is incredible how popular he is here; except a
few, who take him for the same person as Mr. Pitt, the lowest
of the people are perfectly acquainted with him: as I was
walking by the river the other night, a bargeman asked me for
something to drink the King of Prussia's health. Yet Mr. Pitt
specifies his own glory as much as he can: the standards taken
at Louisbourg have been carried to St. Paul's with much parade;
and this week, after bringing it by land from Portsmouth, they
have dragged the cannon of Cherbourg into Hyde Park, on
pretence of diverting a man,(942) whom, in former days, I
believe, Mr. Pitt has laughed for loving such rattles as drums
and trumpets. Our expedition, since breaking a basin at
Cherbourg, has done nothing, but are dodging about still.
Prince Edward gave one hundred guineas to the poor of
Cherbourg, and the General and Admiral twenty-five apiece. I
love charity, but sure is this excess of it, to lay out
thousands, and venture so many lives, for the opportunity of
giving a Christmas-box to your enemies! Instead of beacons, I
suppose, the coast of France will be hung with pewter-pots with
a slit in them, as prisons are, to receive our alms.

Don't trouble yourself about the Pope: I am content to find
that he will by no means eclipse my friend. You please me with
telling me of a collection of medals bought for the Prince of
Wales. I hope it Is his own taste; if it is only thought right
that he should have it, I am glad.

I am again got into the hands of builders, though this time to
a very small extent; only the addition of a little cloister and
bedchamber. A day may come that will produce a gallery, a
round tower, a large cloister, and a cabinet, in the manner of
a little chapel: but I am too poor for these ambitious designs
yet, and I have so many ways of dispersing My Money, that I
don't know when I shall be richer. However, I amuse myself
infinitely; besides my printing-house, which is constantly at
work, besides such a treasure of taste and drawing as my friend
Mr. Bentley, I have a painter in the house, who is an engraver
too, a mechanic, an every thing. He was a Swiss engineer in
the French service; but his regiment being broken at the peace,
Mr. Bentley found him in the Isle of Jersey and fixed him with
me. He has an astonishing genius for landscape, and added to
that, all the industry and patience of a German. We are just
now practising, and have succeeded surprisingly in a new method
of painting, discovered at Paris by Count Caylus, and intended
to be the encaustic method of the ancients. My Swiss has
painted, I am writing the account,(943) and my press is to
notify our improvements. As you will know that way, I will not
tell you here at large. In short, to finish all the works I
have in hand, and all the schemes I have in my head, I cannot
afford to live less than fifty years more. What pleasure it
would give me to see you here for a moment! I should think I
saw you and your dear brother at once! Can't you form some
violent secret expedition against Corsica or Port Mahon, which
may make it necessary for you to come and settle here? Are we
to correspond till we meet in some unknown world? Alas! I fear
so; my dear Sir, you are as little likely to save money as I
am--would you could afford to resign your crown and be a
subject at Strawberry Hill! Adieu!

P. S. I have forgot to tell you of a wedding in our family; my
brother's eldest daughter(944) is to be married tomorrow to
lord Albemarle's third brother, a canon of Windsor. We are
very happy with the match. The bride is very agreeable, and
sensible, and good; not so handsome as her sisters, but further
from ugliness than beauty. It is the second, Maria,(945) who
is beauty itself! Her face, bloom, eyes, hair, teeth, and
person are all perfect. You may imagine how charming she is,
when her only fault, if one must find one, is, that her face is
rather too round. She has a great deal of wit and vivacity,
with perfect modesty. I must tell you too of their
brother:(946) he was on the expedition to St. Maloes; a party
of fifty men appearing on a hill, he was despatched to
reconnoitre with only eight men. Being stopped by a brook, he
prepared to leap it; an old sergeant dissuaded him, from the
inequality of the numbers. "Oh!" said the boy, "I will tell you
what; our profession is bred up to so much regularity that any
novelty terrifies them--with our light English horses we will
leap this stream; and I'll be d--d if they don't run." He did
so, and they did so. However, he was not content; but insisted
that each of his party should carry back a prisoner before
them. They got eight, when they overtook an elderly man, to
whom they offered quarter, bidding him lay down his arms. He
replied, "they were English, the enemies of his King and
country; that he hated them, and had rather be killed." My
nephew hesitated a minute, and said, "I see you are a brave
fellow, and don't fear death, but very likely you fear a
beating-if you don't lay down your arms this instant, my men
shall drub you as long as they can stand over you." The fellow
directly flung down his arms in a passion. The Duke of
Marlborough sent my brother word of this, adding, it was the
only clever action in their whole exploit. Indeed I am pleased
with it; for besides his spirit, I don't see, with this thought
and presence of mind, why he should not make a general. I
return to one little word of the King of Prussia-- shall I tell
you? I fear all this time he is only fattening himself with
glory for Marshal Daun, who will demolish him at last, and
then, for such service, be shut up in some fortress or in the
inquisition--for it is impossible but the house of Austria must
indemnify themselves for so many mortifications by some horrid
ingratitude!

(941) This was the battle of Zorndorf, fought on the @5th of
August, 1758, and gained by the King of Prussia over the
Russians, commanded by Count Fermor.-D.

(942) The King.

(943) M`untz left Mr. Walpole, and published another account
himself.

(944) Laura, this eldest daughter of Sir Edward Walpole,
married to Dr. Frederick Keppel, afterwards Dean of Windsor and
Bishop of Exeter.

(945) Maria, second daughter, married first to James second
Earl of Waldegrave, and afterwards to William Henry Duke of
Gloucester, brother to King George the Third.

(946) Edward, only son of Sir Edward Walpole. He died young.

448 Letter 283
To The Rev. Henry Zouch.
Strawberry Hill, September 14, 1758.

Sir,
Though the approaching edition of my Catalogue is so far
advanced that little part is left now for any alteration, yet
as a book of that kind is always likely to be reprinted from
the new persons who grow entitled to a place in it, and as long
as it is in my power I shall wish to correct and improve it, I
must again thank you, Sir, for the additional trouble you have
given yourself. The very first article strikes me much. May I
ask where, and in what page of what book, I can find Sir R.
Cotton's account of Richard II.(947) being an author: does not
he mean Richard I.?

The Basilicon Doron is published in the folio of K. James's
works, and contains instructions to his son, Prince Henry. In
return, I will ask you where you find those verses of Herbert;
and I would also ask you, how you have had time to find and
know so much?

Lord Leicester, and much less the Duke of Monmouth, will
scarce, I fear, come under the description I have laid down to
myself of authors. I doubt the first did not compose his own
Apology.

Did the Earl of Bath publish, or only design to publish,
Dionysius?(948) Shall I find the account in Usher's Letters?
Since you are so very kind, Sir, as to favour me with your
assistance, shall I beg, Sir, to prevent my repeating trouble
to you, just to mark at any time where you find the notices you
impart to Me; for, though the want of a citation is the effect
of my ignorance, it has the same consequence to you.

I have not the Philosophical Transactions, but I will hereafter
examine them on the hints you mention, particularly for Lord
Brounker,(949) who I did not know had written, though I have
often thought it probable he did. As I have considered Lord
Berkeley's Love-letters, I have no doubt but they are a
fiction, though grounded on a real story.

That Lord Falkland was a writer of controversy appears by the
list of his works, and that he is said to have assisted
Chillingworth: that he wrote against Chillingworth, you see,
Sir, depends upon very vague authority; that is, upon the
assertion of an anonymous person, who wrote so above a hundred
years ago.

James, Earl of Marlborough, is entirely a new author to me--at
present, too late. Lord Raymond I had inserted, and he will
appear in the next edition.

I have been as unlucky, for the present, about Lord Totness.
In a collection published in Ireland, called Hibernica, I
found, but too late, that he translated another very curious
piece, relating to Richard II. However, Sir, with these, and
the very valuable helps I have received from you, I shall be
able, at a proper time, to enrich another edition much.

(947) Mr. Walpole takes no notice of Richard II. as an author;
but Mr. park inserts this prince as a writer of ballads. In a
letter to Archbishop Usher, Sir Robert Cotton requested his
grace to procure for him a poem by Richard II. which that
prelate had pointed out.-C.

(948) Spelman's is the only English translation of the
Antiquities of Dionysius Halicarnassensis, known to be
printed.-C.

(949) He wrote several papers in the Philosophical
Transactions, and also translated Descartes' Music Compendium.-
C.

449 Letter 284
To The Hon. H. S. Conway.(950)
Arlington Street, Sept. 19, 1758.

I have all my life laughed at ministers in my letters; but at
least with the decency of obliging them to break open the seal.
You have more noble frankness, and send your satires to the
post with not so much as a wafer, as my Lord Bath did sometimes
in my father's administration. I scarce laughed more at the
inside of your letter than at the cover--not a single button to
the waistband of its beseeches, but all its nakedness fairly
laid open! what was worse, all Lady Mary Coke's nakedness was
laid open at the same time. Is this your way of treating a
dainty widow! What will Mr. Pitt think of all this? will he
begin to believe that you have some spirit, when, with no fear
of Dr. Shebbeare's example(951) before your eyes, you speak
your Mind so freely, without any modification? As Mr. Pitt may
be cooled a little to his senses, perhaps he may now find out,
that a grain of prudence is no bad ingredient in a mass of
courage; in short, he and the mob are at last undeceived, and
have found, by sad experience that all the cannon of France has
not been brought into Hyde Park. An account, which you will
see in the Gazette, (though a little better disguised than your
letters,) is come that after our troops had been set on shore,
and left there, till my Lord Howe went somewhere else, and
cried Hoop! having nothing else to do for four days to amuse
themselves, nor knowing whether there was a town within a
hundred miles, went staring about the country to see whether
there were any Frenchmen left in France; which Mr. Pitt, in
very fine words, had assured them there was not, and which my
Lord Howe, in very fine silence, had confirmed. However,
somehow or other, (Mr. Deputy Hodges says they were not French,
but Papists sent from Vienna to assist the King of France,)
twelve battalions fell upon our rear-guard, and, which General
Blighe says is "very Common," (I suppose he means that rashness
and folly should run itself' into a scrape,)--were all cut to
pieces or taken. The town says, Prince Edward (Duke of York)
ran hard to save himself; I don't mean too fast, but scarcely
fast enough; and the General says, that Lord Frederick
Cavendish, your friend, is safe; the thing he seems to have
thought of most, except a little vain parade of his own
self-denial on his nephew. I shall not be at all surprised if,
to show he was not in the wrong, Mr. Pitt should get ready
another expedition by the depth of winter, and send it in
search of the cannons and colours of these twelve battalions.
Pray Heaven your letter don't put it in his head to give you
the command! It is not true, that he made the King ride upon
one of the cannons to the Tower.

I was really touched with my Lady Howe's advertisement,(952)
though I own at first it made me laugh; for seeing an address
to the voters for Nottingham signed "Charlotte Howe," I
concluded (they are so manly a family) that Mrs. Howe,(953) who
rides a fox-chase, and dines at the table d'h`ote at Grantham,
intended to stand for member of Parliament.

Sir John Armitage died on board a ship before the landing; Lady
Hardwickc's nephew, Mr. Cocks, scarce recovered of his
Cherbourg wound, is killed.' He had seven thousand pounds a
year, and was volunteer. I don't believe his uncle and aunt
advised his venturing so much money.

My Lady Burlington is very ill, and the distemper shows itself
oddly; she breaks out all over in-curses and blasphemies. Her
maids are afraid of catching them, and will hardly venture into
her room.

On reading over your letter again, I begin to think that the
connexion between Mr. Pitt and my dainty widow is stronger than
I imagined. One of them must have caught of the other that
noble contempt which makes a thing's being impossible not
signify. It sounds very well in sensible mouths; but how
terrible to be the chambermaid or the army of such people! I
really am in a panic, and having some mortal impossibilities
about me which a dainty widow might not allow to signify, I
will balance a little between her and my Lady Carlisle, who, I
believe, knows that impossibilities do signify. These were
some of my reflections on reading your letter again; another
was, that I am now convinced you sent your letter open to the
post on purpose; you knew It was so good a letter that every
body ought to see it-and yet you would pass for a modest man!

I am glad I am not in favour enough to be consulted by my Lord
Duchess(954) on the Gothic farm; she would have given me so
many fine and unintelligible reasons why it should not be as it
should be, that I should have lost a little of my patience.
You don't tell me if the goose-board in hornbean is quite
finished; and have you forgot that I actually was in t'other
goose-board, the conjuring room?

I wish you joy on your preferment in the militia, though I do
not think it quite so safe an employment as it used to be. If
George Townshend's disinterested virtue should grow impatient
for a regiment, he will persuade Mr. Pitt that the militia arc
the only troops in the world for taking Rochfort. Such a
scheme would answer all his purposes - would advance his own
interest, contradict the Duke's opinion, who holds militia
cheap, and by the ridiculousness of the attempt would furnish
very good subjects to his talent of buffoonery in black-lead.

The King of Prussia you may believe is in Petersburg, but he
happens to be in Dresden. Good night! Mine and Sir Harry
Hemlock's services to my Lady Ailesbury.

(950) Now first printed.

(951) Dr. Shebbeare had just before been sentenced to fine,
imprisonment, and the pillory for his Sixth Letter to the
People of England. The under-sheriff, however, allowed him to
stand on, instead of in, the pillory; for which lenity he was
prosecuted.-E.

(952 On the news of the death of Lord Howe reaching the dowager
Lady Howe, she addressed the gentry, clergy, and freeholders of
Nottingham, whom the deceased represented in Parliament, in
favour of his next younger brother, Colonel Howe, to supply his
place in the House of Commons. "Permit me," she says, "to
implore the protection of every one of you, as the mother of
him whose life has been lost in the service of his country."
The appeal was responded to, and Colonel, afterwards General
Sir William Howe, was returned.-E.

(953) The Hon. Caroline Howe, daughter of the above-mentioned
lady , who married her namesake, John Howe, Esq. of Hemslop.-E.

(954) The Duchess of Norfolk. She had planted a game of the
goose in hornbean, at Worksop.

451 Letter 285
To Sir Horace Mann.
Strawberry Hill, Sept. 22, 1758.

The confusion of the first accounts and the unwelcomeness of
the subject, made me not impatient to despatch another letter
so quickly after my last. However, as I suppose the French
relations will be magnified, it is proper to let you know the
exact truth. Not being content with doing nothing at St.
Maloes, and with being suffered to do all we could at
Cherbourg, (no great matter,) our land and sea heroes, Mr. Pitt
and Lord Howe, projected a third--I don't know what to call it.
It seems they designed to take St. Maloes, but being
disappointed by the weather, they--what do you think? landed
fifteen miles from it, with no object nor near any--and lest
that should not be absurd enough, the fleet sailed away for
another bay, leaving the army with only two cannons. to
scramble to them across the country as they could. Nine days
they were staring about France; at last they had notice of
twelve battalions approaching, on which they stayed a little
before they hurried to the transports. The French followed
them at a distance, firing from the upper grounds. When the
greatest part were reimbarked, the French descended and fell on
the rear, on which it Was necessary to sacrifice the Guards to
secure the rest. Those brave young men did wonders--that is,
they were cut to pieces with great intrepidity. We lost
General Dury and ten other officers; Lord Frederick Cavendish
with twenty-three others were taken prisoners. In all we have
lost seven hundred men, but more shamefully for the projectors
and conductors than can be imagined, for no shadow of an excuse
can be offered for leaving them so exposed with no purpose or
possible advantage, in the heart of an Enemy's country. What
heightens the distress. the army sailed from Weymouth with a
full persuasion that they were to be sacrificed to the
vainglorious whims of a man of words(955) and a man(956) of
none!

"Three expeditions we have sent,
And if you bid me show where
I know as well as those who went,
To St. Maloes, Cherbourg, nowhere."

Those, whose trade or amusement is politics, may comfort
themselves with their darling Prussian; he has strode back over
20 or 30,000 Russians,(957) and stepped into Dresden. They
even say that Daun is retired. For my part, it is to inform
you, that I dwell at all on these things. I am shocked with
the iniquities I see and have seen. I abhor their dealings.

"And from my soul sincerely hate
Both Kings and Ministers of State!"

I don't know whether I can attain any goodness by shunning
them, I am sure their society is contagious Yet I will never
advertise my detestation, for if I professed virtue, I should
expect to be suspected of designing to be a minister. Adieu!
you are good, and wilt keep yourself so.

sept. 25th.

I had sealed my letter, but as it cannot go away till
to-morrow, I open it again on receiving yours of Sept. 9th. I
don't understand Marshal Botta's being so well satisfied with
our taking Louisbourg. Are the Austrians disgusted with the
French? Do they begin to repent their alliance? or has he so
much sense as to know what improper allies they have got? It is
very right in you who are a minister, to combat hostile
Ministers--had I been at Florence, I should not have so much
contested the authority of the Abb`e de Ville's performance: I
have no more doubt of' the convention of Closter-Severn having
been scandalously broken, than it was shamelessly disavowed by
those who commanded it.

In our loss are included some of our volunteers; a Sir John
Armitage, a young man of fortune, just come much into the
world, and engaged to the sister(958) of the hot-headed and
cool-tongued Lord Howe; a Mr. Cocks, nephew of lady Hardwicke,
who could not content himself with seven thousand pounds
a-year, without the addition of an ensign's commission - he was
not quite recovered of a wound he had got at CHerbourg. The
royal volunteer, Prince Edward, behaved with much spirit.
Adieu!

(955) Mr. Pitt.-D.

(956) two brothers, successively Lords Howe, were remarkably
silent.

(957) The battle of Zorndorf.-D.

(958) Mary, their youngest sister, was afterwards married to
General Pitt, brother of George Lord Rivers.

453 Letter 286
To George Montagu, Esq.
Arlington Street, Oct. 3, 1758.

having no news to send you, but the massacre of St. Cas,(959)
not agreeable enough for a letter, I stayed till I had
something to send you, and behold a book! I have delivered to
portly old Richard, your ancient nurse, the new produce of the
Strawberry press. You know that the wife of Bath is gone to
maunder at St. Peter, and before he could hobble to the gate,
my Lady Burlington, cursing and blaspheming, overtook t'other
Countess, and both together made such an uproar, that the cock
flew up into the tree of life for safety, and St. Peter himself
turned the key and hid himself; and as nobody could get into
t'other world, half the Guards are come back again, and
appeared in the park to-day, but such dismal ghostly figures,
that my Lady Townshend was really frightened, and is again
likely to turn Methodist.

Do you design, or do you not, to look at Strawberry as you come
to town? if you do. I will send a card to my neighbour, Mrs.
Holman, to meet you any day five weeks that you please--or I
can amuse you without cards; such fat bits of your dear dad,
old Jemmy, as I have found among the Conway papers, such
morsels of all sorts! but come and see. Adieu!

(959) The army that took the town of Cherbourg, landed again on
the coast of France near St. Maloes, but was forced to reimbark
in the Bay of St. Cas with the loss of a thousand men.

454 Letter 287
To The Rev. Henry Zouch.
Strawberry Hill, October 5th, 1758.

Sir,
You make so many apologies for conferring great favours on me,
that if you have not a care. I shall find it more convenient
to believe that, instead of being grateful, I shall be very
good if I am forgiving. If I am impertinent enough to take up
this style, at least I promise you I will be very good, and I
will certainly pardon as many obligations as you shall please
to lay on me.

I have that Life of Richard II. It is a poor thing, and not
even called in the title-page Lord Holles's; it is a still
lower trick of booksellers to insert names of authors in a
catalogue, which, with all their confidence, they do not
venture to bestow on the books themselves; I have found several
instances of this.

Lord Preston's Boetius I have. From Scotland, I have received
a large account of Lord Cromerty, which will appear in my next
edition: as my copy is in the press, I do not exactly remember
if there is the Tract on Precedency: he wrote a great number of
things, and was held it) great contempt living and dead.(960)

I have long sought, and wished to find, some piece of Duke
Humphrey:(961) he was a great patron of learning, built the
schools, I think, and gave a library to Oxford. Yet, I fear, I
may not take the authority of Pits, who is a wretched liar; nor
is it at all credible that in so blind an age a Prince, who,
with all his love of learning, I fear, had very little of
either learning or parts, should write on Astronomy;--had it
been on Astrology, it might have staggered me.

My omission of Lord Halifax's maxims was a very careless one,
and has been rectified. I did examine the Musae Anglicaanae,
and I think found a copy or two, and at first fancied I had
found more, till I came to examine narrowly. In the Joys and
Griefs of Oxford and Cambridge, are certainly many noble
copies; but you judge very right, Sir--they are not to be
mentioned, no more than exercises at school, where, somehow or
other, every peer has been a poet. To my shame, you are still
more in the right about the Duke of Buckingham: if you will
give me leave, instead of thinking that he Wrote, hoping to be
mistaken for his predecessor, I will believe that he hoped so
after he had written.

You are again in the right, Sir, about Lord Abercorn, as the
present lord himself informed me. I don't know Lord
Godolphin's verses: at most, by your account, he should be in
the Appendix; but if they are only signed Sidney Godolphin,
they may belong to his uncle, who, if I remember rightly, was
one of the troop of verse-writers of that time.