1704. TO SIR HORACE MANN.

Feb. 6, 1778.

It is odd, that in the heat of a Parliamentary campaign, enlivened by a civil war, I should have nothing particular to tell you. The troops of the latter are gone into winter quarters. The others are in the field, and skirmish every day. If any of the generals are wounded, they do not own it. Some of the forces of the larger army have deserted to the enemy; and on Monday the numbers of the Opposition mounted to an hundred and sixty odd. On the other hand, it is commonly believed, that the old general of the minority, Lord Chatham, is to command the King's forces. It is certain that there is a great coolness between him and General Rockingham, but I think that disagreement so much more beneficial to the Court; and I see so little advantage to be acquired by gaining an old commander without soldiers, so fractious, so unsettled, and so impracticable, that I shall wonder much if he is invited to take the lead. It might add to the present distractions, and could cure none. As my opinions do not always agree with the majority anywhere, it is not mine that we are on the brink of a French war. needless to repeat my reasons; I have told you them before.

It is

The Duke of Gloucester has again been out of order; but not nearly so ill, I think, as some thought, or as I have seen him. He still coughs a good deal. His constitution is always alarming, and one must not trust too much to the wonderful recoveries he has had; yet perhaps frequent advertisements are not contrary, lest his youth and courage should make him presume too much.

These paragraphs are the quintessence of my letter, and it ought to end here, were it a decent quantity: yet why should one write more than one has to say? A letter tells you I am not negligent, though perhaps I grow lazy. I never was good at detailing. The event of things is all I mind; which I own does not help con

Lincoln's Inn was called upon by a parish officer for his name, &c.; he was treated as a man should be that solicits an illegal unconstitutional subscription. The rebels retreated from Derby. The barrister flew immediately to the parish officer's house to put down his name; the P. O. was from home, had locked up the book; a blacksmith was called for to break open the bureau, and the name was inserted! This parish officer lived either in Long Acre, or Great Queen Street. This I had from good authority two years ago, and was told the fact might yet be authenticated. Adieu.

I wrote a long letter two posts ago.

W. MASON.

versation. I leave you ignorant of nothing decisive. The present inquiries in Parliament into the conduct of the war I look on as a tale of a tub. The Ministers give themselves up to be teazed, more to amuse their antagonists than inform them; and the latter are pleased with making speeches. But can all this make peace, or carry on the war? Neither: but the inability of making either will produce other-guess events, and they will be serious.

These are my politics, which I adopt from no side, and preach to nobody. They are of not much use even to myself; for I am not of an age to trouble myself about what is to happen. When one talks of the times, one must think something; and, isolé as I am, it is more natural to look at the affairs of nations than at the feathers and fashions of the young, though perhaps as grave a subject. I would neither be boyish nor morose. Age, without any study on my part, has given me great indifference, and yet has been so good as to leave me spirits enough to be tranquil and to amuse myself. It is enough, not to wish to live or die.

1705. TO THE REV. WILLIAM MASON.

Arlington Street, Feb. 12, 1778.

I HAVE received two letters from you, one of the 6th, and another of the 8th, but not the long one you mention; for the first was but of twenty-five lines, and the latter of twenty-three, neither of which I should think a long one from anybody from whom I liked to hear at all, much less shall you pretend that one page is to pass for length; yet I conclude you have written none that I have not received. However, I answer you immediately, that you may ascertain the fact, and I wish for the future you would keep the dates of the letters you do write, long or short.

I will not talk now of the story you mention, which I not only know, but remember happening. Basta! there will be a time.

I am dismally afraid I shall not be able to go to Elfrida' on Saturday. My cold, that I thought gone, is worse, with the addition of a sore throat. I have not been out of my doors these two days, and as putrid sore throats are very rife, of which one of Lord Bute's daughters is dead, I am afraid of ripening mine to one. I am a little sorry you bestow your words, not only on folk that

cannot act, but on voices that cannot articulate. If 'Sappho' is to be sung, I wish it were by Italians, for from the pains they take to speak English, they pronounce more distinctly than our natives.

I sent your Act to Giardini, and wish he may make it discourse most eloquent music. His violin to be sure will make a long soliloquy; but though I like Handel, I am not bigoted. I thought Dryden's Ode more harmonious before he set it than after, yet he had expression; and I prefer Charles Fox's native wood notes' to Burke's feigned voice, though it goes to the highest pitch of the gamut of wit.

Apropos, his last Friday's parody' of Burgoyne's talk with the Indians, was the chef d'œuvre of wit, humour, and just satire, and almost suffocated Lord North himself with laughter; as his pathetic description of the barbarities of the Cis-atlantic army

Drew iron tears down Barre's cheek.

I wish I could give you an idea of that superlative oration. He was pressed to print it, but says he has not time during the session. How cold, how inadequate will be my fragment of a sketch from second, third, and thousandth hands; yet I must send you a bit of a daub with probably even the epithets wrong or misplaced, though each was picturesque. Well, though I can neither draw nor colour, invenies etiam disjecta membra. Hurlothrumbo exhorted seventeen Indian nations, who so far from understanding the Hurlothrumbic dialect, are probably almost as ignorant of English; he exhorted them by the dictates of our holy religion, and by their reverence for our constitution, to repair to his Majesty's standard. "Where was that ?" said Burke: "on board Lord Dunmore's ship; "—and he exhorted them (I suppose by the same divine and human laws) not to touch the hair of the head of man, woman, or child, while living, though he was willing to deal with them for scalps of the dead, being a nice and distinguished judge between the scalp taken from a dead person and the head of a person that dies of being scalped. "Let us state this Christian exhortation and Christian injunction," said Burke, "by a more family picture. Suppose there was a riot on Tower Hill, what would the Keeper of his Majesty's Lions do? would he not fling open the dens of the wild beasts, and then address them thus?

1 February 6th. Wonderful speech of Burgoyne's invitation to Indians; his wit made North, Rigby, and Ministers laugh; his pathos drew tears down Barre's cheeks. -Horace Walpole's MS. Note in Russell's Fox, i. 171.-CUNNINGHAM.

My gentle lions, my humane bears, my sentimental wolves, my tender-hearted hyænas, go forth; but I exhort ye, as ye are Christians and members of a civilised society, to take care not to hurt man, woman, or child, &c. &c." Barré's codicil was to threaten to paste on churches this memorable talk under the injunctions of the bishops for a Fast. Governor Johnstone said he rejoiced there were no strangers in the gallery, as Burke's speech would have excited them to tear the Ministers to pieces as they went out of the House; the Ministers are much more afraid of losing their places. Eloquence, like music, is too much improved in our days to have any of their old effects on the passions of a large audience.

Voilà a truly long letter. I leave the application to your conscience.

1706. TO THE REV. WILLIAM MASON.

Feb. 18, 1778.

I HAVE two small morsels of news to tell you, and do not know which you will choose to hear first. As you cannot choose without knowing, it would be vain to wait for your answer, especially as I cannot state them without preferring one to the other. Iricisms, it is true, are not out of fashion. Nos seigneurs the Peers will not vote truisms to be true, lest they should betray the weakness of the nation, though those truisms, and the reason for not asserting them, are given in every newspaper, which newspapers are read in every coffee-house in Paris. Ergo their Lordships suppose that France supposes herself to know nothing but what appears in the votes.

As a loyal subject and freeman of Parnassus, I must believe that you interest yourself more in Heliconian affairs than in the politics of the late empire of Great Britain. I therefore announce to you the arrival of Voltaire at Paris. Yes; there he is. Probably recalled from exile to raise a regiment of infidels for the defence of holy Church.

The other event would not be worth mentioning, but for its novelty. In that light, to be sure, no parallel instance is to be found in ancient or modern history, whether Ammonite, Jewish, Chaldean, Egyptian, Chinese, Greek, Roman, Constantinopolitan, Frank, French, British, Saxon, Pict, Ossianite, Mogul, Indian, or English, (all which I have examined carefully this morning to no purpose,) nay, in the tales of the fairies, in which I am still more deeply

versed, I find nothing similar. You perhaps, who have all ecclesiastical history at your fingers' ends, may recollect something approaching to the transaction of yesterday the 17th of February, a day of confession and humiliation, that will be remembered as long as the name of England exists. Yesterday, Feb. 17, did the whole Administration, by the mouth of their spokesman, Lord North, no, no, not resign; on the contrary, try to keep their places by a full and ample confession of all their faults, and by a still more extraordinary act,-by doing full justice both to America and to the Opposition, by allowing that the former are no cowards nor conquerable, that they are no Rebels, for the new Commissioners are to treat with the Congress or anybody, and, by asking pardon by effects, i. e. the cancelling all offensive acts, and by acknowledging the independence of the thirteen provinces, not verbally yet virtually. These were Lord North's words. To the Opposition full justice is done; for if the Administration has been in the wrong from beginning to end, their opponents must have been a little in the right.

The faults of the Administration, according to their own calculation, are two: one of being misinformed, the other of persisting in a mere point of honour. Some will perhaps think they have been guilty of two more ;-the destruction of twenty-four thousand lives on their own side, and Lord knows how many thousands on t'other, with the burning of towns, desolation of the country, and the expense of above thirty millions of money; the second consists of two parts -rejection of all proposals of accommodation offered by the Opposition, and the delay of offering terms themselves till they knew it was too late; for Lord North was asked' if he did not know that the treaty between the Americans and France is signed? He would not answer till Sir George Saville hallooed out, "An answer, an answer, an answer!" His Lordship then rose, could not deny the fact, but said he did not know it officially; that is, I suppose, it does not stand on the votes of the Parliament at Paris.

What shall I say more? though this is not half of that ignominious seventeenth of February. The measure passed nemine contradicente. The Tories gulped their shame, the rest pocketed. Note. The Opposition approved an attempt at peace, though a hopeless one. Charles Fox congratulated himself on having converted Lord North.

1 By Fox, "My cousin, Thomas Walpole, had acquainted me that the treaty with France was signed.”—See Walpole's important MS. Note in Russell's Fox, i. 173.— CUNNINGHAM.