1780, a short time before her death. To give any adequate account of this prolonged and exceptional sequence of epistles would be difficult, and at this date they are much in want of annotation. According to the editor, its political details are unusually trustworthy. But the political history of the time belongs to the Greens and Gairdners, and is written in many places; what is not written by them is the picturesque story of its social and domestic life. This Mrs. Harris, in so far as it comes within her sphere of observation, relates effectively.

a

Her note, as will be seen, is struck from the outset. One of the earliest letters is dated from Pall Mall, and describes most agreeable expedition on the Thames." The party go in a common wherry from Whitehall Stairs to London Bridge, where they re-embark in the Admiralty barge, a commodious and highly finished thing," for Greenwich. Here they visit the College, and all to be seen there. Thence they go on to Woolwich, where they inspect the " gun-warren," the laboratory, and the models of ships. After this they dine at Greenwich on the smallest fish they ever saw, called whitebait. They dine in a charming place in the open air which commanded a fine view of the Thames." But there are drawbacks to these delights. The Admiralty barge cannot shoot the bridge at low water, and they eventually have to land and trudge home through the Borough.

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A later letter is divided between the great storm of 1763 (when, according to the Annual Register, there were hailstones ten inches in circumference (?)) and a visit to the Palace to inquire after the newly arrived Duke of York and Bishop of Osnaburg,* where there is cake and caudle for the callers, and Lady Weymouth (the Duchess of Portland's daughter) and the Duchess of Ancaster sit "knotting" with "a knotting-bag hanging on their left arm. Then Mrs. Harris takes Gertrude and Louisa to see Arthur Murphy's farce of The Upholsterer which is being played at Covent Garden, where also Garrick's young rival, Powell (in Garrick's absence on the Continent), is making hay by mimicking the great man's manner and mannerisms. Powell is playing Beaumont and Fletcher's Philaster with Mrs. Yates, always a favourite with the Salisbury coterie. In another letter they are watching the Lord Mayor's Show, as well as they are able, from their Whitehall windows, and they also see the baby Princes held up to public view when King George goes in his new coach to open Parliament. Then comes the revival in November of the North Briton scandal and the duel of Wilkes and Martin in Hyde Park. This is suc

*This episcopal dignity came to Frederick Augustus in his helpless cradle, and prompted the following anecdote in a subsequent letter. At the oratorio of Nabal, the Princess Dowager asked Lord Tyrawly for the story. His Lordship, not being strong in Biblical study, suggested that she should consult the Bishop of Osnaburg!

ceeded by what must have been a further apparition in the House of Commons of Pitt, "on his crutches with his legs swathed in flannel, but whether 'tis gout or only to move compassion I will not pretend to say." These are but the random pickings of the half-year ended December 1763, and it may be guessed how rich are the seventeen years that follow. But in addition to being beside the matter, they are beyond the scope of an article.

In 1765 the Grenville Government went out, and at the end of the summer term Mrs. Harris's son leaves Merton and in September goes to Leyden, where Wilkes and Charles Townshendto say nothing of Fielding and Goldsmith--had been before him. He attends the lectiones of Pestel and Runkenius respectivelyhe tells his father-the latter on universal history, the former on Grotius's De Jure Belli et Pacis. The language of Runkenius is "rather low, and filled with German idioms" (the young man reports), but he is far more interesting than Pestel. At Leyden he makes considerable progress in Dutch, and is daily improving in French. He stays a year at Leyden and subsequently travels on the Continent until, in 1768, he is appointed by Lord Shelburne Secretary of Embassy at Madrid, thus beginning his brilliant diplomatic career. While he is at Madrid his mother's letters are resumed. The "Wilkes and Liberty" Riots, and the free fight (of both sexes) over the election of a Master of the Ceremonies at Bath vice Derrick deceased, are salient topics; but the only occurrence which concerns the elder Harris in particular is the private production in the chapel-room at Salisbury of "a Pastorale and a Play." The pastorale is clearly The Spring of 1762, and the play, which Mrs. Harris omits to name, must have been that marmoreal Creusa, Queen of Athens, which Laureate Whitehead had based on the Ion of Euripides, and brought out at Drury Lane in 1754. The Queen (Mrs. Pritchard's original part) was a local notability, Miss Wyndham, as fine as silver trimmings and diamonds could make her. Miss Gertrude Harris was the priestess, in a costume taken from the antique under the superintendence of Pope's editor, Dr. Joseph Warton, then Head Master of Winchester. It was "not designed by either milliners or mantua-makers," but quite simple and elegant, only fastened by a row of large pearls round the waist." On her head she wore a kind of white veil, and round it a wreath of Alexandrian laurel." This, in an anachronistic age which decorated its theatrical Catos with Ramillies wigs and clothed its Lears in flowered dressing-gowns, was certainly a move in that right direction to be later inaugurated at Drury Lane by Philip de Loutherbourg. Miss Louisa Harris took the part of Thyrsus (Ilyssus); but we are expressly told that all the "lady gentlemen (for there were apparently no male performers) acted in " Eastern

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dresses with long robes.' The scenes, a Temple of Delphi " and "a laurel Grove," were painted in part by Gertrude Harris, which discloses a fresh accomplishment in this gifted family. How the whole eventually went off is, however, not related, for they were only rehearsing when Mrs. Harris wrote; but we learn incidentally that the stage was nearly three feet high, and that there was room for between forty and fifty spectators, as well as space for the orchestra (led by Dr. Stevens) required for the pastorale, in which Gertrude sang a song "very sweetly and in tune," her mother thought, though Louisa (who was a pupil of Sacchini !) held that her sister sang "like a piping bullfinch."

This was all in 1770; and for the next ten years the chronicle continues to be what, for our purpose, can only be regarded as irrelevant chit-chat. There is plenty of gossip about Ranelagh and the Pantheon, about Bach's concerts and Handel's oratorios, about further theatricals at Salisbury, at Winterslow (Lord Holland's),* at Wilton (Lord Pembroke's), about the Perreau and Kingston trials, and--it must be admitted-a good deal more that Mr. Charles Yellowplush might justly denominate "fash❜nable nollidge." But the record is barren in direct biographical details. The chief of those given are the election of the younger Harris as Member for Christchurch, where he became his father's colleague, and his transfer from Madrid in February 1772 as Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of Berlin. In 1774 Mr. Harris, senior, was appointed Comptroller and Secretary to Queen Charlotte. It was a place, says his wife, more of honour than of profit; but suited him better than a place of business. Nevertheless it was an appointment he greatly valued. It was conferred on him with much flourish of compliment, and he retained it until the end of his life. Walpole refers to the appointment as follows: "Old Hermes of Salisbury, father of Harris at Berlin, is made Her Majesty's Secretary à la Guildford "t-words which imply some obscure reservation. The other occurrence belonging to this period is the publication of Harris's third work, Philosophical Arrangements, to his preparations for which reference has already been made. As this performance comes distinctly within the category of those achievements which its author himself describes as abstruse," and which Byron would assuredly have classified as "craggy," it will be sufficient copy here Lord Malmesbury's brief account of it: "It contains

to

a part only of a larger work that he [the author] had meditated, but did not finish, upon the Peripatetic Logic. So far as relates to the Arrangement of Ideas, it is complete; but it has * Winterslow House was burned down in 1774 after one of these performances. †Toynbee's Walpole's Letters, 1904, viii, pp. 406, 409.

Oddly enough Harris himself uses this very word.

other objects also in view. It combats with great force and ability the atheistical doctrines of Chance and Materialism— doctrines which have been lately [1801] revived in France, under the specious garb of modern philosophy, and issuing from thence have overspread a great part of Europe; destroying the happiness of mankind by subverting, in every part of their progress, the foundations of morality and religion.'

This extremely Aristotelian work appeared in 1775, when Harris had passed his grand climacteric. During the last few years of his life he was engaged on a fourth book which, although printed under his superintendence, was not published until after his death. It is, however, the most attractive of his productions both in style and subject, and it is possible to study it without being endowed with that insatiable appetite which enabled the historian of Civilization to "enjoy a Dictionary." It is in fact a retrospective notebook of his previous philological studies, aiming at conclusions rather than arguments, and illustrations rather than demonstrations. It was also, like Tom Jones, in some sort designed as a monument of the author's affection towards many of his intimate friends. Lowth's "admirable tract" on the grammar of the English language is naturally commended; there is a carefully phrased eulogium of Garrick's acting; Lillo's Fatal Curiosity is admiringly analysed; Fielding's parti-coloured experiences of life are turned to the advantage of his masterpieces; while Lyttelton's history and Mrs. Montagu's criticism have each their word of recognition. Both the Wartons are duly honoured, as are Tyrwhitt and Upton, nor are Reynolds and “Athenian" Stuart forgotten, and there are quotations from the Scribleriad of Richard Owen Cambridge. But in addition to all this, the book is a useful browsing-ground for the philologist at grass. Even Johnson (who was not kind to the author) must have been gratified to find his Dictionary adequately extolled by a competent judge, and we know from Tom Tyers that, while he owned he "had hardly ever read a book through," 'the posthumous volumes of Mr. Harris of Salisbury (which treated of subjects which were connected with his own professional studies) had attractions which engaged him to the end." The "posthumous volumes were the Philological Enquiries of 1781.†

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* Harris does not mention Richardson, though, from letters printed by Mrs. Barbauld, they must have been known to each other.

It should be noted that Johnson, although, in some contrary moment which "raised his corruption," he called Harris “ a prig to Boswell and a coxcomb" to Mrs. Thrale, was quite capable of taking his part when needful; and when Cradock said that Hermes was too abstruse" and "heavy," he replied "it was; but a work of that kind must be heavy." And then Cradock told him the ridiculous story of the dull man who mistook Hermes for an imitation of Tristram Shandy. At which Johnson might well be justified in laughing a " rhinoceros laugh."

The recorded particulars of Harris's intercourse with the above notabilities are neither very definite nor very plentiful. Present in many places, he is always a little in the background, a courteous, deferential figure, never pressing itself into prominence. We get glimpses of him in the pages of Boswell. In April 1775 he was, as he often was, at Cambridge's pleasant house in the Twickenham meadows when Johnson and Reynolds came to dine there; but little is related of him on this occasion, save that he paid Johnson many compliments on his recently published Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland-compliments in which Mrs. Harris, who was with him, cannot have participated. The great man failed to impress that punctilious county lady, and she said so emphatically. His conversation she admits was the same as his writing; but his voice and manner were "dreadful." He was amusing, but not benevolent; "awkward beyond all expression "; unpleasant (she uses cruder terms) in his dress and person, and a ferocious and "unthankful" feeder. Boswell she regarded as a "lowbred kind of being." Three years later we meet Harris at an after-dinner reception at Sir Joshua's chatting amicably, in a corner with Garrick and Johnson (the latter in the best of postprandial humours), about Potter's Eschylus and translations and versification generally; but Boswell again allows him to say nothing memorable beyond remarking that "the chief excellence of our language is its numerous prose "--a sentiment which should commend itself to Mr. SAINTSBURY. Hannah More was at this gathering of greatness, which contained, she says, scarce an expletive man or woman among them." Harris must have been also well known to Mrs. Thrale, for she includes him in the queer tabular character-sketch of her masculine Streatham habitués which she compiled for her own satisfaction. In this she gives Harris maximum marks for scholarship, awarding him one mark more than Johnson. On the other hand, he gets but "duck's-eggs for wit and humour.* But Harris's most whole-hearted admirer is Fanny Burney. "He is a most charming old man," she says, " and I like him amazingly.' "He is at the same time learned and polite, intelligent and humble." On his womenkind she is not equally expansive. Mrs. Harris is "nothing extraordinary "- a so-so sort of woman"; and Miss Louisa Harris, though admittedly "modest, reserved, and sensible," is credited with a "bad figure," and is "not handsome. It is only polite to suppose that in these last respects Miss Burney was more than usually short-sighted.

men.

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Not much remains to be said regarding Mr. Harris of Salisbury

*The reader may smile at Mrs. Thrale in judgment on the scholarship of two such But she had studied Latin, logic, and rhetoric under Arthur Collier.