Chapter XXVIII: Part 28

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.

You have quite persuaded me of the mistake in Mindas; till you mentioned it, I had forgot that they wrote Windsor "Windesore," and then by abbreviation the mistake was easy.

The account of Lord Clarendon is printed off; I do mention as printed his account of Ireland, though I knew nothing of Borlase. Apropos, Sir, are you not glad to see that the second part of his history is actually advertised to come out soon after Christmas?(962)

Lord Nottingham's letter I shall certainly mention.

I yesterday sent to Mr. Whiston a little piece that I have just mentioned here, and desired him to convey it to you; you must not expect a great deal from it: yet it belongs so much to my Catalogue, that I thought it a duty to publish it. A better return to some of your civilities is to inform you of Dr. Jortin's Life of Erasmus, with which I am much entertained. There are numberless anecdotes of men thought great in their day, now as much forgotten, that it grows valuable again to hear about them. The book is written with great moderation and goodness of heart: the style is not very striking, and has some vulgarisms, and In a work of that bulk I should rather have taken more pains to digest and connect it into a flowing narrative, than drily give it as a diary: yet I dare promise it will amuse you much.

With your curiosity, Sir, and love of information, I am sure you will be glad to hear of a most valuable treasure that I have discovered; it is the collection of state papers,(963) amassed by the two Lords Conway, that were secretaries of state, and their family: vast numbers have been destroyed; yet I came time enough to retrieve vast numbers, many, indeed, in a deplorable condition. They were buried under lumber' upon the pavement of an unfinished chapel, at Lord Hertford's in Warwickshire, and during his minority, and the absence of his father, an ignorant steward delivered them over to the oven and kitchen, and yet had not been able to destroy them all. It is a vast work to dry, range, and read them, and to burn the useless, as bills, bonds, and every other kind of piece of paper that ever came into a house, and were all jumbled and matted together. I propose, by degrees, to print the most curious; of which, I think, I have already selected enough to form two little volumes of the size of my Catalogue. Yet I will not give too great expectations about them, because I know how often the public has been disappointed when they came to see in print what in manuscript has appeared to the editor wonderfully choice.

(960) We can hardly account for this expression, unless Mr. Walpole alludes to Lord Cromerty's political reputation. Macky states, that " his arbitrary proceedings had rendered him so obnoxious to the people, he could not be employed;" and, certainly, his character for consistency and integrity was not very exalted: but almost all contemporary writers describe him as a man of great weight and of singular endowments; and Walpole himself, in his subsequent editions, calls him "a person eminent for his learning, and for his abilities as a statesman and general."-C.

(961) That Duke Humphrey had at least a relish for learning, may be inferred from the following passage. At the close of a fine manuscript in the Cotton collection (Nero E. v.) is "Origo et processus gentis Scotorum, ae de superioritate Regum Angliae super regnum illud." It once belonged to Humphrey Duke of Gloucester, and has this Sentence in his own handwriting at the end, "Cest livre est `a moy Homfrey Duc de Gloucestre, lequel j'achetay des executeurs de maistre Thomas Polton, feu evesque de Wurcestre." Bishop Polton died in 1436.-C.

(962) The second part of Lord Clarendon's history was printed in folio, in 1760, and also in three volumes octavo.-C.

(963) The increased and increasing taste of the public for the materials of history, such as these valuable papers supply, will, we have reason to hope, be gratified by the approaching appearance of this collection, publication of which was, we see, contemplated even as long since as 1758.-C.

456 Letter 288 To The Right Hon. Lady Hervey. Arlington Street, Oct. 17, 1758.

Your ladyship, I hope, will not think that such a strange thing as my own picture seems of consequence enough to me to write a letter about it: but obeying your commands does seem so; lest you should return and think I had neglected it, I must say that I have come to town three several times on purpose, but Mr. Ramsay (I will forgive him) has been constantly Out of town. So much for that.

I would have sent you word that the King of Portugal coming along the road at midnight, which was in his own room at noon, his foot slipped, and three balls went through his body; which, however, had no other consequence than giving him a stroke of a palsy, of which he is quite recovered, except being dead.(964) Some, indeed, are so malicious as to say, that the Jesuits, who are the most conscientious men in the world, murdered him, because he had an intrigue with another man's wife: but all these histories I supposed your ladyship knew better than me, as, till I came to town yesterday, I imagined you was returned. For my own part, about whom you are sometimes so good as to interest yourself, I am as well as can be expected after the murder of a king and the death of a person of the next consequence to a king, the master of the ceremonies, poor Sir Clement,(965) who is supposed to have been suffocated by my Lady Macclesfield's(966) kissing hands.

This will be a melancholy letter, for I have nothing to tell your ladyship but tragical stories. Poor Dr. Shawe(967) being sent for in great haste to Claremont--(It seems the Duchess had caught a violent cold by a hair of her own whisker getting up her nose and making her sneeze)--the poor Doctor, I say, having eaten a few mushrooms before he set out, was taken so ill, that he was forced to stop at Kingston; and, being carried to the first apothecary's, prescribed a medicine for himself which immediately cured him. This catastrophe so alarmed the Duke of Newcastle, that he immediately ordered all the mushroom beds to be destroyed, and even the toadstools in the park did not escape scalping in this general massacre. What I tell you is literally true. Mr. Stanley, who dined there last Sunday, and is not partial against that court, heard the edict repeated, and confirmed it to me last night. And a voice of lamentation was heard at Ramah in Claremont, Chlo`e(968) weeping for her mushrooms, and they are not!

After all these important histories, I would try to make you smile, If I was not afraid you would resent a little freedom taken with a great name. May I venture?

"Why Taylor the quack calls himself Chevalier, 'Tis not easy a reason to render; Unless blinding eyes, that he thinks to make clear, Demonstrates he's but a Pretender.

A book has been left at your ladyship's house; it is Lord Whitworth's Account of Russia.(969) Monsieur Kniphausen has promised me some curious anecdotes of the Czarina Catherine-so my shop is likely to flourish. I am your ladyship's most obedient servant.

(964) Alluding to the incoherent stories told at the time of the assassination of the King of Portugal. [The following is the correct account:--As the King was taking The air in his coach on the 3d September, attended by only one domestic, he was attacked in a solitary lane near Belem by three men, one of whom discharged his carbine at the coachman, and wounded him dangerously; the other two fired their blunderbusses at the King, loaded with pieces of iron, and wounded him in the face and several parts of his body, but chiefly in the right arm, which disabled him for a long time.

(965) Sir Clement Cotterel.

(966) She had been a common woman.

(967) Physician to the Duke and Duchess of Newcastle.

(968) The Duke of Newcastle's cook.

(969) A small octavo printed at the Strawberry Hill press, to which Walpole prefixed a preface. Charles Whitworth, in 1720, created Baron Whitworth of Galway, was ambassador to the court of petersburgh in the reign of Peter the Great. On his death, in 1725, the title became extinct.-E.

457 Letter 289 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.(970) Arlington Street, Oct. 17, 1758.

I have read your letter, as you may believe, with the strictest attention, and will tell you my thoughts as sincerely as you do and have a right to expect them.

In the first place, I think you far from being under any obligation for this notice. If Mr. Pitt is sensible that he has used you very ill, is it the part of an honest man to require new submissions, new supplications from the person he has injured? If he thinks you proper to command, as one must suppose by this information, is it patriotism that forbids him to employ an able officer, unless that officer sues to be employed? Does patriotism bid him send out a man that has had a stroke of a palsy, preferable to a young man of vigour and capacity, only because the latter has made' no Application within these two months!--But as easily as I am inclined to believe that your merit makes its way even through the cloud of Mr. Pitt's proud prejudices, yet I own in the present case I question it. I can see two reasons why he should wish to entice you to this application: the first is, the clamour against his giving all commands to young or improper officers is extreme; Holmes, appointed admiral of the blue but six weeks ago, has writ a warm letter on the chapter of subaltern commanders: the second, and possibly connected in his mind with the former, may be this; he would like to refuse you, and then say, you had asked when it was too late; and at the same time would have to say that he would have employed you if you had asked sooner. This leads me to the point of time: Hobson is not Only appointed,(971) but Haldane, though going governor to Jamaica, is made a brigadier and joined to him,--Colonel Barrington set out to Portsmouth last night. All these reasons, I think, make it very improper for you to ask this command now. You have done more than enough to satisfy your honour, and will certainly have opportunities again of repeating offers of your service. But though it may be right to ask in general to serve, I question much if it is advisable to petition for particulars, any failure in which would be charged entirely on you. I should wish to have you vindicated by the rashness of Mr. Pitt and the miscarriages of others, as I think they hurry to -make you be; but while he bestows only impracticable commands, knowing that, if there is blood enough shed, the city of London will be content even with disappointments, I hope you will not be sacrificed either to the mob or the minister. And this leads me to the article of the expedition itself. Martinico is the general notion; a place the strongest in the world, with a garrison of ten thousand men. Others now talk of Guadaloupe, almost as strong and of much less consequence. Of both, every body that knows, despairs. It is almost impossible for me to find out the real destination.' I avoid every one of the three factions--and though I might possibly learn the secret from the chief of one of them, if he knows it, yet I own I do not care to try; I don't think it fair to thrust myself into secrets with a man (972) of whose ambition and views I do not think well, and whose purposes (in those lights) I have declined and will decline to serve. Besides, I have reason just now to think that he and his court are meditating some attempt which may throw us again into confusion; and I had rather not be told what I am sure I shall not approve: besides, I cannot ask secrets of this nature without hearing more with which I would not be trusted, and which, if divulged, would be imputed to me. I know you will excuse me for these reasons, especially as you know how much I would do to serve you, and would even in this case, if I was not convinced that it is too late for you to apply; and being too late, they would be glad to say you had asked too late. Besides if any information could be got from the channel at which I have hinted, the Duke of Richmond could get it better than I; and the Duke of Devonshire could give it you without.

I can have no opinion of the expedition itself, which certainly started from the disappointment at St. Cas, if it can be called a disappointment where there was no object. I have still more doubts on Lord Milton's authority; Clarke(973) was talked to by the Princess yesterday much more than any body in the room. Cunningham is made quartermaster-general to this equipment; these things don't look as if your interest was increased. As Lord George has sent over his commands for Cunningham, might not his art at the same time have suggested some application to you--tell me, do you think he would ask this command for himself I, who am not of so honest and sincere a nature as you are, suspect that this hint is sent to you with some bad view-I don't mean on Lord Milton's part, who I dare say is deceived by his readiness to serve you; and since you do me the honour of letting me at all judge for you, which in one light I think I am fit to do, I mean, as your spirit naturally makes you overlook every thing to get employed, I would wish you to answer to Lord Milton,,"that you should desire of all things to have had this command, but that having been discouraged from asking what you could not flatter yourself would be granted, it would look, you think, a vain offer, to sue for what is now given away, and would not be consistent with your honour to ask when it is too late." I hint this, as such an answer would turn their arts on themselves, if, as I believe, they mean to refuse you, and to reproach you with asking too late.

If the time is come for Mr. Pitt to want you, you will not long be unemployed; if it is not, then you would get nothing by asking. Consider, too, how much more graceful a reparation of your honour it will be, to have them forced to recall you, than to force yourself on desperate service, as if you yourself, not they, had injured your reputation.

I can say nothing now on any other chapter, this has so much engrossed all my thoughts. I see no one reason upon earth for your asking now. If you ever should ask again, you will not want opportunities; and the next time you ask, will have just the same merit that this could have, and by asking in time, would be liable to none of the objections of that sort which I have mentioned! Adieu! Timeo Lord George et dona.

(970) Now first printed.

(971) To the command of an expedition against Martinique.-E.

(972) Mr. Fox.

(973) Lord Bute says, in a letter to Mr. Pitt, of the 8th of September, "With regard to Clarke, I know him well: he must be joined to a general in whom he has confidence, or not thought of. Never was man so cut out for bold and hardy enterprises; but the person who commands him must think in the same way of him, or the affair of Rochfort will return." Chatham Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 350.-E.

459 Letter 290 To The Rev. Henry Zouch. Strawberry Hill, Oct. 21st, 1758.

Sir, Every letter I receive from you is a new obligation, bringing me new information; but, sure, my Catalogue was not worthy of giving you so much trouble. Lord Fortescue is quite new to me: I have sent him to the press. Lord Dorset's poem it will be unnecessary to mention separately, as I have already said that his works are to be found among those of the minor poets.

I don't wonder, Sir, that you prefer Lord Clarendon to Polybius; nor can two authors well be more unlike: the former(974) wrote a general history in a most obscure and almost unintelligible style; the latter-, a portion of private history, in the noblest style in the world. Whoever made the comparison, I will do them the justice to believe that they understood bad Greek better than their own language in its elevation.

For Dr. Jortin's Erasmus, which I have very nearly finished, it has given me a good opinion of the author, and he has given me a very bad one of his subject. By the Doctor's labour and impartiality, Erasmus appears a begging parasite, who had parts enough to discover truth, and not courage enough to profess it: whose vanity made him always writing; yet Ills writings ought to have cured his vanity, as they were the most abject things in the world. Good Erasmus's honest mean was alternate time-serving. I never had thought much about him, and now heartily despise him.

When I speak my opinion to you, Sir, about what I dare say you care as little for as I do, (for what is the merit of a mere man of letters?) it is but fit I should answer you as sincerely on a question about which you are so good as to interest yourself. that my father's life is likely to be written, I have no grounds for believing. I mean I know nobody that thinks of it. For myself, I certainly shall not, for many reasons, which you must have the patience to hear. A reason to me myself is, that I think too highly of him, and too meanly of myself, to presume I am equal to the task. They who do not agree with me in the former part of my position, will undoubtedly allow the latter part. In the next place, the very truths that I should relate would be so much imputed to partiality, that he would lose of his due praise by the suspicion of my prejudice. In the next place, I was born too late in his life to be acquainted with him in the active part of it. Then I was at school, at the university, abroad, and returned not till the last moments of his administration. What I know of him I could only learn from his own mouth in the last three years of his life; when, to my shame, I was so idle, and young, and thoughtless, that I by no means profited of his leisure as I might have done; and, indeed, I have too much impartiality in my nature to care, if I could, to give the world a history, collected solely from the person himself of whom I should write. With the utmost veneration for his truth, I can easily conceive, that a man who had lived a life of party, and who had undergone such persecution from party, should have had greater bias than he himself could be sensible of. The last, and that a reason which must be admitted, if all the others are not--his papers are lost. Between the confusion of his affairs, and the indifference of my elder brother to things of that sort, they were either lost, burnt, or what we rather think, were stolen by a favourite servant of my brother, who proved a great rogue, and was dismissed in my brother's life; and the papers were not discovered to be missing till after my brother's death. Thus, Sir, I should want vouchers for many things I could say of much importance. I have another personal reason that discourages me from attempting this task, or any other, besides the great reluctance that I have to being a voluminous author. Though I am by no means the learned man you are so good as to call me in compliment; though, on the contrary, nothing can be more superficial than my knowledge, or more trifling than my reading,--yet, I have so much strained my eyes, that it is often painful to me to read even a newspaper by daylight. In short, Sir, having led a very dissipated life, in all the hurry of the world of pleasures scarce ever read, but by candlelight, after I have come home late at nights. As my eyes have never had the least inflammation or humour, I am assured I may still recover them by care and repose. I own I prefer my eyes to any thing I could ever read, much more to any thing I could write. However, after all I have said, perhaps I may now and then, by degrees, throw together some short anecdotes of my father's private life and particular story, and leave his public history to more proper and more able hands, if such will undertake it. Before I finish on this chapter, I can assure you he did forgive my Lord Bolingbroke(975)--his nature was forgiving: after all was over, and he had nothing to fear or disguise, I can say with truth, that there were not three men of whom he ever dropped a word with rancour. What I meant of the clergy not forgiving Lord Bolingbroke, alluded not to his doctrines, but to the direct attack and war he made on the whole body. And now, Sir, I will confess my own weakness to you. I do not think so highly of that writer, as I seem to do in my book; but I thought it would be imputed to prejudice in me, if I appeared to undervalue an author of whom so many persons of sense still think highly. My being Sir Robert Walpole's son warped me to praise, instead of censuring, Lord Bolingbroke. With regard to the Duke of Leeds, I think you have misconstrued the decency of my expression. I said, Burnet had treated him severely; that is, I chose that Burnet should say so, rather than myself. I have never praised where my heart condemned. Little attentions, perhaps, to worthy descendants, were excusable in a work of so extensive a nature, and that approached so near to these times. I may, perhaps, have an opportunity at one day or other of showing you some passages suppressed on these motives, which yet I do not intend to destroy.

Crew, Bishop of Durham, was is abject a tool as possible. I would be very certain he is an author before I should think him worth mentioning. If ever you should touch on Lord Willoughby's sermon, I should be obliged for a hint of it. I actually have a printed copy of verses by his son, on the marriage of the Princess Royal; but they are so ridiculously unlike measure, and the man was so mad and so poor,(976) that I determined not to mention them.

If these details, Sir, which I should have thought interesting to no mortal but myself', should happen to amuse you, I shall be glad; if they do not, you will learn not to question a man who thinks it his duty to satisfy the curiosity of men of sense and honour, and who, being of too little consequence to have secrets, is not ambitious of the less consequence of appearing to have any.

P. S. I must ask you one question, but to be answered entirely at your leisure. I have a play in rhyme called Saul, said to be written by a peer. I guess Lord Orrery. If ever you happen to find out, be so good to tell me.

(974) It is evident that Mr. Walpole has here transposed, contrary to his meanings the references to lord Clarendon and Polybius: the latter wrote the general history, the former the portion of history.-C.

(975) This alludes to an epigrammatic passage in the article "Bolingbroke" in the Noble Authors. "He wrote against Sir Robert Walpole, who did forgive him; and against the clergy, who never will forgive him."@.

(976) this seems a singular reason for excluding him from a list of authors@-C.

462 Letter 291 To George Montagu, Esq. Arlington Street, Oct. 24, 1758.

I am a little sorry that my preface, like the show-cloth to a sight, entertained you more than the bears it invited you in to see. I don't mean that I am not glad to have written any thing that meets your approbation, but if Lord Whitworth's work is not better than my preface, I fear he has much less merit than I thought he had.

Your complaint of your eyes makes me feel for you: mine have been very weak again, and I am taking the bark, which did them so much service last year. I don't know how to give up the employment of them, I mean reading; for as to writing, I am absolutely winding up my bottom, for twenty reasons. The first, and perhaps the best, I have writ enough. The next; by what I have writ, the world thinks I am not a fool, which was just what I wished them to think, having always lived in terror of that oracular saying Ermu naidex luchoi, which Mr. Bentley translated with so much more parts than the vain and malicious hero could have done that set him the task, --I mean his father, the sons of heroes are loobies. My last reason is, I find my little stock of reputation very troublesome, both to maintain and to undergo the consequences--it has dipped me in erudite correspondences--I receive letters every week that compliment my learning; now, as there is nothing I hold so cheap as a learned man, except an unlearned one, this title Is insupportable to me; if' I have not a care, I shall be called learned, till somebody abuses me for not being learned, as they, not I, fancied I was. In short, I propose to have nothing more to do with the world, but divert myself in it as an obscure passenger--pleasure, virt`u, politics, and literature, I have tried them all, and have had enough of them. Content and tranquillity, with now and then a little of three of them, that I may not grow morose, shall satisfy the rest of a life that is to have much idleness, and I hope a little goodness; for politics--a long adieu! With some of the Cardinal de Retz's experience, though with none of his genius, I see the folly of taking a violent part without any view, (I don't mean to commend a violent part with a view, that is still worse;) I leave the state to be scrambled for by Mazarine, at once cowardly and enterprising, ostentatious, jealous, and false; by Louvois, rash and dark; by Colbert, the affecter of national interest, with designs not much better; and I leave the Abb`e de la Rigbi`ere to sell the weak Duke of Orleans to whoever has money to buy him, or would buy him to get money; at least these are my present reflections--if I should change them to-morrow, remember I am not only a human creature, but that I am I, that is, one of the weakest of human creatures, and so sensible of my fickleness that I am sometimes inclined to keep a diary of my mind, as people do of the weather. To-day you see it temperate, to-morrow it may again blow politics and be stormy; for while I have so much quicksilver left, I fear my passionometer will be susceptible of sudden changes. What do years give one? Experience; experience, what? Reflections; reflections, what? nothing that I ever could find--nor can I well agree with Waller, that

"The soul's dark cottage, batter'd and decay'd, Lets in new light through chinks that time has made."

Chinks I am afraid there are, but instead of new light, I find nothing but darkness visible, that serves only to discover sights of Wo. I look back through my chinks--I find errors, follies, faults; forward, old age and death, pleasures fleeting from me, no virtues succeeding to their place--il faut avouer, I want all my quicksilver to make such a background receive any other objects!