taxed, as I seal it to the paper. In short, I retain so much iniquity from the last infamous parliament that you see I would still cheat the public. The comfort I feel in sitting peaceably here, instead of being at Lynn in the high fever of a contested election, which at best would end in my being carried about that large town like the figure of a pope at a bonfire, is very great. I do not think, when that function is over, that I shall repent my resolution. What could I see but sons and grandsons playing over the same knaveries, that I have seen their fathers and grandfathers act? Could I hear oratory beyond my lord Chatham's? Will there ever be parts equal to Charles Townshend's? Will George Grenville cease to be the most tiresome of beings? Will he not be constantly whining, and droning, and interrupting, like a cigala in a sultry day in Italy. Guthrie has published two criticisms on my Richard; one abusive in the Critical Review; t'other very civil and even flattering in a pamphlet; both so stupid and contemptible, that I rather prefer the first, as making some attempt at vivacity; but in point of argument, nay, and of humour, at which he makes an effort too, both things are below scorn. As an instance of the former, he says, the duke of Clarence might die of drinking sack, and so be said to be drowned in a butt of malmsey; of the latter sort, are his calling the lady Bridget lady Biddy, and the duke of York poor little fellow! I will weary you with no more such stuff! The weather is so very March, that I cannot enjoy my new and by which my father commenced and closed his venerable life. The best and only honours I desire, would be to find that my conduct has been satisfactory to my constituents. From your kindness, sir, I must intreat to have the notification made in the most respectful and grateful manner to the corporation and town of Lynn. Nothing can exceed the obligation I owe to them, but my sensibility to their favours. And be assured, sir, that no terms can outgo the esteem I have for so upright and untainted a borough, or the affection I feel for all their goodness to my family and me. My trifling services will be overpaid if they graciously accept my intention of promoting their union and preserving their virtue, and though I may be forgotten, I never shall or can forget the obligations they have conferred on, Sir, their and your most devoted humble servant, 2 William Guthrie, the reputed writer of the well-known Geographical Grammar, which it is said he did not write. [Ed.] holidays at Strawberry yet; I sit reading and writing close to the fire. Sterne has published two little volumes, called Sentimental Travels. They are very pleasing, though too much dilated, and infinitely preferable to his tiresome Tristram Shandy, of which I never could get through three volumes. In these there is great good-nature and strokes of delicacy Gray has added to his poems three ancient odes from Norway and Wales. The subjects of the two first are grand and picturesque, and there is his genuine vein in them; but they are not interesting, and do not, like his other poems, touch any passion. Our human feelings, which he masters at will in his former pieces, are here not affected. Who can care through what horrors a Runic savage arrived at all the joys and glories tney could conceive, the supreme felicity of boozing ale out of the skull of an enemy in Odin's hall? Oh! yes, just now perhaps these odes would be toasted at many a contested election. Adieu! Yours ever. To GEORGE MONTAGU, Esq. Strawberry-hill, April 15, 1769. MR. CHUTE tells me that you have taken a new house in Squireland, and have given yourself up for two years more to port and parsons. I am very angry, and resign you to the works of the devil or the church, I don't care which. You will get the gout, turn methodist, and expect to ride to heaven upon your own great toe. I was happy with your telling me how well you love me, and though I don't love loving, I could have poured out all the fulness of my heart to such an old and true friend; but what am I the better for it, if I am to see you but two or three days in the year? I thought you would at last come and while away the remainder of life on the banks of the Thames in gaiety and old tales. I have quitted the stage, and the Clive is preparing to leave it. We shall neither of us ever be grave: dowagers roost all round us, and you could never want cards or mirth. Will you end like a fat farmer, repeating annually the price of oats, and discussing stale newspapers? There have you got, I hear, into an old gallery, that has not been glazed since queen Elizabeth, and under the nose of an infant duke and duchess, that will understand you no more than if you wore a ruff and a coif, and talked to them of a call of serjeants the year of the Spanish armada! Your wit and humour will be as much lost upon them, as if you talked the dialect of Chaucer; for, with all the divinity of wit, it grows out of fashion like a fardingale. I am convinced that the young men at White's already laugh at George Selwyn's bon-mots only by tradition. I avoid talking before the youth of the age as I would dancing before them; for if one's tongue don't move in the steps of the day, and thinks to please by its old graces, it is only an object of ridicule, like Mrs. Hobart in her cotillon. I tell you we should get together, and comfort ourselves with reflecting on the brave days that we have known-not that I think people were a jot more clever or wise in our youth than they are now; but as my system is always to live in a vision as much as I can, and as visions don't increase with years, there is nothing so natural as to think one remembers what one does not remember. I have finished my tragedy, but as you would not bear the subject, I will say no more of it, but that Mr. Chute, who is not easily pleased, likes it, and Gray, who is still more difficult, approves it. I am not yet intoxicated enough with it to think it would do for the stage, though I wish to see it acted; but, as Mrs. Pritchard leaves the stage next month, I know nobody could play the countess; nor am I disposed to expose myself to the impertinences of that jackanapes Garrick, who lets nothing appear but his own wretched stuff, or that of creatures still duller, who suffer him to alter their pieces as he pleases. I have written an epilogue in character for the Clive, which she would speak admirably; but I am not so sure that she would like to speak it. Mr. Conway, lady Aylesbury, lady Lyttelton, and Miss Rich, are to come hither the day after to-morrow, and Mr. Conway and I are to read my play to them, for I have not strength enough to go through the whole alone. My press is revived, and is printing a French play written by 1 The Mysterious Mother: a Tragedy: Strawberry-hill, 1768. 8vo. [Ed.] 2 This celebrated actress, who excelled alike in tragedy and comedy, died in August 1768. [Ed.] the old president Henault. It was damned many years ago at Paris, and yet I think is better than some that have succeded, and much better than any of our modern tragedies. I print it to please the old man, as he was exceedingly kind to me at Paris; but I doubt whether he will live till it is finished. He is to have a hundred copies, and there are to be but a hundred more, of which you shall have one. Adieu! though I am very angry with you, I deserve all your friendship, by that I have for you, witness my anger and disap. pointment. Yours ever. P.S. Send me your new direction, and tell me when I must begin to use it. TO THE REV. MR. COLE. Strawberry-hill, April 16, 1768. WELL, dear sir, does your new habitation improve as the spring advances? There has been dry weather and east wind enough to parch the fens. We find that the severe beginning of this last winter has made terrible havoc among the evergreens, though of old standing. Half my cypresses have been bewitched, and turned into brooms; and the laurustinus is everywhere perished. I am Goth enough to choose now and then to believe in prognostics; and I hope this destruction imports, that, though foreigners should take root here, they cannot last in this climate. I would fain persuade myself, that we are to be our own empire to eternity. The duke of Manchester has lent me an invaluable curiosity: I mean invaluable to us antiquaries: but perhaps I have already mentioned it to you; I forget whether I have or no. It is the original roll of the earls of Warwick, as long as my gallery, and › Cornelia, a Tragedy, by the President Henault, had been originally performed in the year 1713, and by no means deserved to be rescued from the oblivion in which it had remained for a period of fifty-five years. The same kind feeling which induced Walpole to print it, must have biassed the judgment which he passed upon it. [Ed.] drawn by John Rous1 himself. Aye, and what is more, there are portraits of Richard III., his queen, and son; the two former corresponding almost exactly with my print; and a panegyric on the virtues of Richard, and a satire, upwards and downwards, on the illegal marriage of Edward IV., and on the extortions of Henry VII. I have had these, and seven other portraits copied, and shall, some time or other, give plates of them. But I wait for an excuse; I mean till Mr. Hume shall publish a few remarks he has made on my book: they are very far from substantial; yet still better than any other trash that has been written against it, nothing of which deserves an answer. I have long had thoughts of drawing up something for London like St. Foix's Rues de Paris, and have made some collections. I wish you would be so good, in the course of your reading, to mark down any passage to that end: as where any great houses of the nobility were situated; or in what street any memorable event happened. I fear the subject will not furnish much till later times, as our princes kept their courts up and down the country in such a vagrant manner. I expect Mr. Gray and Mr. Mason to pass the day with me here to-morrow. When I am more settled here I shall put you in mind of your promise to bestow more than one day on me. I hope the methodist, your neighbour, does not, like his patriarch Whitfield, encourage the people to forge, murder, &c. in order to have the benefit of being converted at the gallows. That arch-rogue preached lately a funeral sermon on one Gibson, hanged for forgery, and told his audience, that he could assure them Gibson was now in heaven, and that another fellow, executed at the same time, had the happiness of touching Gibson's coat as he was turned off. As little as you and I agree about a hundred years ago, I don't desire a reign of fanatics. Oxford has begun with these rascals, and I hope Cambridge will 1 John Rous, the historian of Warwickshire," who," according to Walpole, (Anecdotes of Painting, vol. i. p. 52, ed. 1762), “drew his own portrait and other semblances, but in too rude a style to be called painting.” [Ed.] 2 Essais Historiques sur Paris, par Germain-François-Poulain de Saint Foix. Paris, 1777, 5 vols. 12mo. The above is the best edition of the work alluded to by Walpole, and of which an English translation was published in 1767, in 3 vols. 12mo. [Ed.] |