Books: The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2

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Colonel Campbell and the Duchess of Hamilton are married. My
sister(1013) who was at the Opera last Tuesday, and went from
thence to a great ball at the Duke of Bridgewater's, where she
stayed till three in the morning, was brought to bed in less
than four hours afterwards of a fifth boy: she has had two
girls, too, and I believe left it entirely to this child to
choose what it would be. Adieu! my dear Sir.

(1012) Count Firmian, who understood English, and was fond of
English authors. Sir Horace Mann had given him the Royal and
Noble Authors.

(1013) Lady Mary Churchill, only daughter of Sir Robert Walpole
by his second wife.

481 Letter 308
To John Chute, Esq.(1014)
Arlington Street, March 13, 1759.

I am puzzled to know how to deal with you: I hate to be
Officious, it has a horrid look; and to let you alone till you
die at the Vine of mildew, goes against my conscience, Don't it
go against yours to keep all your family there till they are
mouldy? Instead of sending you a physician, I will send you a
dozen brasiers; I am persuaded that you want to be dried and
aired more than physicked. For God's sake don't stay there any
longer:--

"Mater Cyrene, mater quae gurgitis hujus
Ima tenes--"

send him away!--Nymphs and Jew doctors! I don't know what I
shall pray to next against your obstinacy.

No more news yet from Guadaloupe! A persecution seems to be
raising against General Hobson--I don't wonder! Wherever
Commodore Moore is, one may expect treachery and blood. Good
night!

(1014) Now first printed.

482 Letter 309
To The Rev. Henry Zouch.
Arlington Street, March 15, 1759.

Sir,
You judge very rightly, Sir, that I do not intend to meddle
with accounts of religious houses; I should not think of them
at all unless I could learn the names of any of the architects,
not of the founders. It is the history of our architecture
that I should search after, especially the beautiful Gothic. I
have by no means digested the plan of my intended work. The
materials I have ready in great quantities in Vertue's MSS.;
but he has collected little with regard to our architects,
except Inigo Jones. As our painters have been very
indifferent, I must, to make the work interesting, make it
historical; I would mix it with anecdotes of patrons of the
arts, and with dresses and customs from old pictures. something
in the manner of Moulfaucon's Antiquities of France. I think
it capable of being made a very amusing work, but I don't know
whether I shall ever bestow the necessary time on it. At
present, even my press is at a stop, my printer, who was a
foolish Irishman, and who took himself for a genius, and who
grew angry when I thought him extremely the former, and not the
least of the latter, has left me, and I have Not yet fixed upon
another.

In what edition, Sir, of Beaumont and Fletcher, is the copy of
verses you mention, signed "Grandison?"(1015) They are not in
mine. In my Catalogue I mention the Countess of Montgomery's
Eusebia; I shall be glad to know what her Urania is. I fear you
will find little satisfaction in a library of noble works. I
have got several, some duplicates, that shall be at your
service if you continue Your collection; but in general they
are mere curiosities.

Mr. Hume has published his History of the House of Tudor. I
have not advanced far in it, but it appears an inaccurate and
careless, as it certainly has been a very hasty, performance.
Adieu! Sir.

(1015) There has been some mistake here. Amidst the vast
number of verses to Beaumont and Fletcher, none are found with
this signature. There is one copy signed Gardiner.-C.

482 Letter 310
To Sir David Dalrymple.(1016)
Strawberry Hill, March 25, 1759.

I should not trouble you, Sir, so soon again with a letter, but
some questions and some passages in yours seem to make it
necessary. I know nothing of the Life of Gustavus, nor heard of
it, before it was advertised. Mr. Harte(1017) was a favoured
disciple of Mr. Pope, whose obscurity he imitated more than his
lustre. Of the History of the Revival of Learning I have not
heard a word. Mr. Gray a few years ago began a poem on that
subject; but dropped it, thinking it would cross too much upon
some parts of the Dunciad. It would make a signal part of a
History of Learning which I lately proposed to Mr. Robertson.
Since I wrote to him, another subject has started to me, which
would make as agreeable a work, both to the writer and to the
reader, as any I could think of; and would be a very tractable
one, because capable of being extended or contracted as the
author should please. It is the History of the House of
Medici.(1018) There is an almost unknown republic, factions,
banishment, murders, commerce, conquests, heroes, cardinals,
all of a new stamp, and very different from what appear in any
other country. There is a scene of little polite Italian
courts, where gallantry and literature were uncommonly blended,
particularly in that of Urbino, which without any violence
might make an episode. The Popes on the greater plan enter of
course. What a morsel Leo the Tenth! the revival of
letters!(1019) the torrent of Greeks that imported them! Extend
still farther, there are Catherine and Mary, Queens of France.
In short, I know nothing one could wish in a subject that would
not fall into this--and then it is a Complete Subject, the
family is extinct: even the state is so, as a separate
dominion.

I could not help smiling, Sir, at being taxed with insincerity
for my encomiums on Scotland. They were given in a manner a
little too serious to admit of irony, and (as partialities
cannot be supposed entirely ceased) with too much risk of
disapprobation in this part of the world, not to flow from my
heart. My friends have long known my opinion on this point,
and it is too much formed on fact for me to retract it, if I
were so disposed. With regard to the magazines and reviews, I
can say with equal and great truth, that I have been much more
hurt at a gross defence of me than by all that railing.

Mallet still defers his life of the Duke of Marlborough;(1020)
I don't know why: sometimes he says he will stay till the
peace; sometimes that he is translating it, or having it
translated into French, that he may not lose that advantage.

(1016) Now first collected.

(1017) Walter Harte was tutor to Mr. Stanhope, Lord
Chesterfield's natural son, and through bis lordship's interest
made canon of Windsor. Dr. Johnson describes him as a scholar,
and a man of the most companionable talents he had ever known."
"Poor man!" he adds, "he left London the day of the publication
of his book, that he might be out of the way of the great
praise he was to receive; and he was ashamed to return, when he
found how ill his book had succeeded. It was unlucky in coming
out on the same day with Robertson's History of Scotland." See
Boswell, vol. viii. p. 53. Lord Chesterfield writes to his
son, on the 30th of March, "Harte's work will, upon the whole,
be a very curious and valuable history. You will find it
dedicated to one of your acquaintance, who was forced to prune
the luxuriant praises bestowed upon him, and yet has left
enough of all conscience to satisfy a reasonable man."-E.

(1018) It was afterwards written in five volumes in quarto,
from authentic documents furnished by the Great-Duke himself.
It was published in Florence in 1781, and was entitled "Istoria
del Gran Ducato di Toscana sotto il Governo delta Casa Medici,
per Riguccio Galuzzi."-E.

(1019) Mr. Roscoe's Life of Lorenzo do' Medici appeared in
1796, and his Life and Pontificate of Leo the Tenth in 1805.-E.

(1020) See vol. i. p. 393, letter 151.

484 Letter 311
To Sir Horace Mann.
Arlington Street, April 11, 1759.

I have waited and waited, in hopes of sending you the rest of
Martinico or Guadaloupe; nothing else, as you guessed, has
happened, or I should -have told you. But at present I can
stay no longer, for I, who am a little more expeditious than a
squadron, have made a conquest myself, and in less than a month
since the first thought started. I hurry to tell you, lest you
should go and consult the map of Middlesex, to see -whether I
have any dispute about boundaries with the neighbouring Prince
of Isleworth, or am likely to have fitted out a secret
expedition upon Hounslow Heath--in short, I have married, that
is, am marrying, my niece Maria,(1021) my brother's second
daughter, to Lord Waldegrave.(1022) What say you? A month ago
I was told he liked her.--does he? I jumbled them together, and
he has Already proposed. For character and credit, he is the
first match in England-for beauty, I think she is. She has not
a fault in her face and person, and the detail is charming. A
warm complexion tending to brown, fine eyes, brown hair, fine
teeth, and infinite wit and vivacity. Two things are odd in
this match; he seems to have been doomed to a Maria Walpole--if
his father had lived, he had married my sister;(1023) and this
is the second of my brother's daughters that has married into
the house of Stuart. Mr. Keppel(1024) comes from Charles, Lord
Waldegrave from James II. My brother has luckily been
tractable, and left the whole management to me. My family
don't lose any rank or advantage, when they let me dispose of
them--a knight of the garter for my niece; 150,000 pounds for
my Lord Orford if he would have taken her;(1025) these are not
trifling establishments.

It were miserable after this to tell you that Prince Ferdinand
has cut to pieces two or three squadrons of Austrians. I frame
to myself that if I was commander-in-chief. I should on a
sudden appear in the middle of Vienna, and oblige the Empress
to give an Archduchess with half a dozen provinces to some
infant prince or other, and make a peace before the bread
wagons were come up. Difficulties are nothing; all depends on
the sphere in which one is placed.

You must excuse my altitudes I feel myself very impertinent
just now, but as I know it, I trust I shall not be more so than
is becoming.

The Dutch cloud is a little dispersed; the privy council have
squeezed out some rays of sunshine by restoring One Of' their
ships, and by adjudging that we captors should prove the
affirmative of contraband goods, instead of the goods proving
themselves so: just as if one was ordered to believe that if a
blackamoor is christened Thomas, he is a white. These
distinctions are not quite adapted to the meridian of a
flippant English privateer's comprehensions: however, the
murmur is not great yet. I don't know what may betide if the
minister should order the mob to be angry with the Ministry,
nor whether Mr. Pitt or the mob will speak first. He is laid
up with the gout, and it is as much as the rest of the
administration can do to prevent his flying out. I am sorry,
after you have been laying in such bales of Grotius and
Puffendorf, that you must be forced to correct the text by a
Dutch comment. You shall have the pamphlet you desire, and
Lord Mansfield's famous answer to the Prussian manifesto, (I
don't know whether it is in French,) but you must now read
Hardwickius usum Batavorum.(1026)

We think we have lost Fort St. David, but have some scanty
hopes of a victorious codicil, as our fleet there seems to have
had the superiority. The King of Spain is certainly not dead,
and the Italian war in appearance is blown over. This summer,
I think, must finish all war, for who will have men, who will
have money to furnish another campaign? Adieu!

P. S. Mr. Conway has got the first regiment of dragoons on
Hawley's death.

(1021) Maria, second daughter of Sir Edward Walpole, afterwards
married to William Henry, Duke of Gloucester, brother of King
George III.

(1022) James, second Earl of Waldegrave, knight of the garter,
and governor of George Prince of Wales, afterwards George III.

(1023) Lady Maria Churchill, daughter of Sir Robert Walpole.

(1024) Frederick Keppel, fourth son of William Anne, Earl of
Albemarle, by Lady Anne Lennox, daughter of the first Duke of
Richmond.

(1025) Miss Nichols, afterwards Marchioness of Carnarvon.

(1026) Philip Yorke, Earl of Hardwicke.

485 Letter 312
To George Montagu, Esq.
Arlington Street, April 26, 1759.

Your brother, your Wetenhalls, and the ancient Baron and
Baroness Dacre of the South, are to dine with me at Strawberry
Hill next Sunday. Divers have been the negotiations about it:
your sister, you know, is often impeded by a prescription or a
prayer; and I, on the other hand, who never rise in the
morning, have two balls on my hands this week to keep me in bed
the next day till dinner-time. Well, it is charming to be so
young! the follies of the town are so much more agreeable than
the wisdom of my brethren the authors, that I think for the
future I shall never write beyond a card, nor print beyond Mrs.
Clive's benefit tickets. Our great match approaches; I dine at
Lord Waldegrave's presently, and suppose I shall then hear the
day. I have quite reconciled my Lady Townshend to the match
(saving her abusing us all), by desiring her to choose my
wedding clothes; but I am to pay the additional price of being
ridiculous. to which I submit; she has chosen me a white ground
with green flowers. I represented that, however young my
spirits may be, my bloom is rather past; but the moment I
declared against juvenile colours, I found it was determined I
should have nothing else: so be it. T'other night I had an
uncomfortable situation with the duchess of Bedford: we had
played late at loo at Lady Joan Scot's; I came down stairs with
their two graces of Bedford and Grafton: there was no chair for
me: I said I will walk till I meet one. "Oh!" said the Duchess
of Grafton, "the Duchess of Bedford will set you down:" there
were we charmingly awkward and complimenting: however, she was
forced to press it, and I to accept it; in a minute she spied a
hackney chair--"Oh! there is a chair,-but I beg your pardon, it
looks as if I wanted to get rid of you, but indeed I don't;
only I am afraid the Duke will want his supper." You may
imagine how much I was afraid of making him wait. The ball at
Bedford-house, on Monday, was very numerous and magnificent.
The two Princes were there, deep hazard, and the Dutch
deputies, who are a proverb for their dulness: they have
brought with them a young Dutchman, who is the richest man of
Amsterdam. I am amazed Mr. Yorke has not married him! But the
delightful part of the night was the appearance of the Duke of
Newcastle, who is veering round again, as it is time to betray
Mr. Pitt. The Duchess(1027) was at the very upper end of the
gallery, and though some of the Pelham court were there too,
yet they showed so little cordiality to this revival of
connexion, that Newcastle had nobody to attend him but Sir
Edward Montagu, who kept pushing him all up the gallery. From
thence he went into the hazard-room, and wriggle(], and
shuffled, and lisped, and winked, and spied, till he got behind
the Duke of Cumberland, the Duke of Bedford, and Rigby; the
first of whom did not deign to notice him; but he must come to
it. You would have died to see Newcastle's pitiful and
distressed figure,--nobody went near him: he tried to flatter
people, that were too busy to mind him; in short, he was quite
disconcerted; his treachery used to be so sheathed in folly,
that he was never out of countenance; but it is plain he grows
old. To finish his confusion and anxiety, George Selwyn,
Brand, and I, went and stood near him, and in half whispers,
that he might hear, said, "Lord, how he is broke! how old he
looks!" then I said, "This room feels very cold: I believe
there never is a fire in it." Presently afterwards I said,
"Well, I'll not stay here; this room has been washed to-day."
In short, I believe we made him take a double dose of
Gascoign's powder when he went home. Next night Brand and I
communicated this interview to Lord Temple, who was in agonies;
and yesterday his chariot was seen in forty different parts of
the town. I take it for granted that Fox will not resist these
overtures, and then we shall have the paymastership, the
secretaryship of Ireland, and all Calcraft's regiments once
more afloat.

May 1.

I did not finish this letter last week, for the picture could
not set out till next Thursday. Your kin brought Lord
Mandeville with them to Strawberry; he was very civil and
good-humoured, and I trust I was so too. My nuptialities dined
here yesterday. The wedding is fixed for the 15th. The town,
who saw Maria set out in the Earl's coach, concluded it was
yesterday. He notified his marriage to the Monarch last
Saturday, and it was received civilly. Mrs. Thornhill is dead,
and I am inpatient to hear the fate of Miss Mildmay. the
Princes Ferdinand and Henry have been skirmishing, have been
beaten, and have beat, but with no decision.

The ball at Mr. Conolly's(1028) was by no means delightful.
the house is small, it was hot, and was composed Of young
Irish. I was retiring when they went to supper, but was fetched
back to sup with Prince Edward and the Duchess of Richmond, who
is his present passion. He had chattered as much love to her
as would serve ten balls. The conversation turned on the
Guardian--most unfortunately the Prince asked her if she should
like Mr. Clackit--"No, indeed, Sir," said the Duchess. Lord
Tavistock(1029) burst out into a loud laugh, and I am afraid
none of the company quite kept their countenances. Adieu! This
letter is gossiping enough for any Mrs. Clackit, but I know you
love these details.

(1027) Gertrude Duchess of Bedford, daughter of Earl Gower.

(1028) Thomas Conolly, Esq., son of Lady Anne Conolly, sister
of Thomas Earl of Strafford, and who inherited great part of
her brother's property. Mr. Conolly was married to Lady Louisa
Lenox, sister of the Duke of Richmond, and of Lady Holland.
They died without issue.-E.

(1029) Francis Marquis of Tavistock, only son of John Duke of
Bedford. He died before his father, in 1767, in consequence of
a fall from his horse when hunting.-E.

487 Letter 313
To Sir Horace Mann.
Strawberry Hill, May 10, 1759.

The laurels we began to plant in Guadaloupe do not thrive--we
have taken half the island, and despair of the other half which
we are gone to take. General Hobson is dead, and many of our
men-it seems all climates are not equally good for
conquest-Alexander and Caesar would have looked wretchedly
after a yellow fever! A hero that would have leaped a rampart,
would perhaps have shuddered at the thought of being scalped.
Glory will be taken in its own way, and cannot reconcile itself
to the untoward barbarism of America. In short, if we don't
renounce expeditions, our history will be a journal of
miscarriages. What luck must a general have that escapes a
flux, or being shot abroad--or at home! How fatal a war has
this been! From Pondicherry to Canada, from Russia to Senegal,
the world has been a great bill of mortality? The King of
Prussia does not appear to have tapped his campaign yet--he was
slow last year; it is well if he concludes this as thunderingly
as he did the last. Our winter-politics are drawn to the
dregs. The King is gone to Kensington, and the Parliament is
going out of town. The ministers who don't agree, will, I
believe, let the war decide their squabbles too. Mr. Pitt will
take Canada and the cabinet-council together, or miscarry in
both. There are Dutch deputies here, who are likely to be here
some time: their negotiations are not of an epigrammatic
nature. and we are in no hurry to decide on points which we
cannot well give up, nor maintain without inconvenience. But
it is idle to describe what describes itself by not being
concluded.

I have received yours of the 7th of last month, and fear you
are quite in the right about a history of the house of Medici--
yet it is pity it should not be written!(1030) You don't, I
know, want any spur to incite you to remember me and any
commission with which I trouble you; and therefore you must not
take it in that light, but as the consequence of my having just
seen the Neapolitan book of Herculaneum, that I mention it to
you again. Though it is far from being finely engraved, yet
there are bits in It that make me wish much to have it, and if
you could procure it for me, I own I should be pleased. Adieu!
my dear Sir.

(1030) See ant`e, p. 483, letter 310.

488 Letter 314
To The Rev. Henry Zouch.
Strawberry Hill, May 14, 1759.

Sir,
You accuse me with so much delicacy and with so much seeming
justice, that I must tell you the truth, cost me what it will.
It is in fact, I own, that I have been silent, not knowing what
to say to you, or how not to say something about your desire
that I would attend the affair of the navigation of Calder in
Parliament. In truth, I scarce ever do attend private business
on solicitation. If I attend, I cannot help forming an
opinion, and when formed I do not care not to be guided by it,
and at the same time it is very unpleasant to vote against a
person whom one went to serve. I know nothing of the merits of
the navigation in question, and it would have given me great
pain to have opposed, as it might have happened, a side
espoused by one for whom I had conceived such an esteem as I
have for you, Sir. I did not tell you my scruples, because you
might have thought them affected, and because, to say the
truth, I choose to disguise them. I have seen too much of the
parade of conscience to expect that an ostentation of it in me
should be treated with uncommon lenity. I cannot help having
scruples; I can help displaying them; and now, sir, that I have
made you my confessor, I trust you will keep my secret for my
sake, and give me absolution for what I have committed against
you.

I certainly do propose to digest the materials that Vertue had
collected(1031) relating to English arts; but doubting of the
merit of the subject, as you do, Sir, and not proposing to give
myself much trouble about it, I think, at present, that I shall
still call the work his. However, at your leisure, I shall be
much obliged to you for any hints. For nobler or any other
game, I don't think of it; I am sick of the character of
author; I am sick of the consequences of it; I am weary Of
Seeing my name in the newspapers; I am tired with reading
foolish criticisms on me, and as foolish defences of me; and I
trust my friends will be so good as to let the last abuse of me
pass unanswered. It is called "Remarks" on my Catalogue,
asperses the Revolution more than it does my book, and, in one
word, is written by a non-juring preacher, who was a
dog-doctor. Of me he knows so little, that he thinks to punish
me by abusing King William! Had that Prince been an author,
perhaps I might have been a little ungentle to him too. I am
not dupe enough to think that any body wins a crown for the
sake of the people. Indeed, I am Whig enough to be glad to be
abused; that is, that any body may write what they please; and
though the Jacobites are the only men who abuse outrageously
that liberty of the press which all their labours tend to
demolish, I would not have the nation lose such a blessing for
their impertinences. That their spirit and projects revive is
certain. All the histories of England, Hume's, as you observe,
and Smollett's more avowedly, are calculated to whiten the
house of Stuart. All the magazines are elected to depress
writers of the other side, and as it has been learnt within
these few days, France is preparing an army of
commentators1032) to illustrate the works of those professors.
But to come to what ought to be a particular part of this
letter. I am very sensible, Sir, to the confidence you place
in me, and shall assuredly do nothing to forfeit it; at the
same time, I must take the liberty you allow me, of making some
objections to your plan. As your friend, I must object to the
subject. It is heroic to sacrifice one's own interest to do
good, but I would be sure of doing some before I offered myself
up. You will make enemies; are you sure you shall make
proselytes? I am ready to believe you have no ambition now--
but may you not have hereafter? Are bishops corrigible or
placable? Few men are capable of forgiving being told their
faults in private; who can bear being told of them publicly?-
-Then, you propose to write in Latin: that is, you propose to
be read by those only whom you intend to censure, and whose
interest it will be to find faults in your work. If I proposed
to attack the clergy, I would at least call in the laity to
hear my arguments, and I fear the laity do not much listen to
Latin. In Short, Sir, I wish much to see something of your
writing, and consequently I wish to see it in a shape in which
it would give me most pleasure.

You will say, that your concealing your name is an answer to
all I have said. A bad author may be concealed, but then what
good does he do? I am persuaded you would write well-ask your
heart, Sir, if you then would like to conceal yourself.
Forgive my frankness; I am not old, but I have lived long
enough to be sure that I give you good advice. There -is
lately published a voluminous history of Gustavus Adolphus,
sadly written, yet very amusing from the matter.