ftftfff'l mMmm-^'\'- 9 a f J L' " H( "5?. * *J f T > ' f ' ; (ft ; *Cv* -. : 1 ' - Kmnw - THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE BOHN'S ENGLISH GENTLEMAN'S LIBRARY. HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. VOL. I. LONDON- I'RINTKD BY WILLIAM i'i.o\VKs AND SONS, STAMFORD .STRKKT. HORACE WAI, POLK, e, e* vl THE LETTERS HORACE WALPOLE EARL OF ORFORD. EDITED BY PETER CUNNINGHAM. NOW FIEST CHKONOLOGICALLY ARRANGED. ENTRANCE OF STKAWBEKRY HILL. IN NINE VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON: HENRY G. BOHN, YORK STREET, CO VENT GARDEN MDCCCLXI. 1 7 ISil CONTENTS. PAGE Mr. Cunningham's Advertisement xxxv Walpole's Advertisement to his Letters addressed to Sir Horace Mann . . xxxvii Mr. Croker's Preface xxxix Lord Dover's Preface . xli Mr. Wright's Preface xlv Miss Mary Berry's Advertisement . . xlvii Mr. Vernon Smith's Preface Ivi Mr. Vernon Smith's Second Preface Iviii Mr. Bentley's Advertisement lix Eev. John Mitford's Preface lx Short Notes of my Life Ixi Memoir respecting his Income Ixrviii Reminiscences ; written in 1788 for the amusement of Miss Mary and Miss Agnes Berry Ixxxvii LETTERS. 17351746. [The Letters now first published or collected are marked N.] LETTER 1. To West, November 9. Picture of a University life Cambridge sophs Juvenile quadruple alliance ......... 1 2. To Montagu, May 2. Marriage of Frederick, Prince of Wales, with the Princess Augusta of Saxe Gotha ........ 2 3. To the same, May 6. Pleasures of youth and youthful recollections . . 4 4. To the same, May 20. Jaunt to Oxford Wrest House Easton Neston Althorp 5 5. To the same, May 30. Petronius Arbiter Coventry's Dialogue between Philemon and Hydaspes on False Religion Artemisia .... 6 6. To West, Aug. 17. Gray, and other school-fellows Eton recollections Course of study at the University ....... 8 VOL. i. * b CONTENTS. [173940. 7. West to Walpole, Aug. Encloses an ode to Mary Magdalene. ... 9 8. West to Walpole, Jan. 12. Poetry and Poets ...... 11 9. West to Walpole, Feb. 27. Sick of Novelty Transmitting a sort of Poetry . 13 10. To Montagu, March 20. French and English manners contrasted . . . 14^ 11. To the same. Feelings on revisiting Eton ....... 15 12. To West, April 21. Paris society Amusements Funeral of the Duke de Tresmes St. Denis Church of the Celestins French love of show Signs Notions of honour . . . . 15 13. To the same. Description of Versailles Convent of the Chartreux History of St. Bruno, painted by Le Soeur Relics ...... 18 14. To the same, June 18. Rheims Brooke's " Gustavus Vasa " . . . 20 15. West to Walpole, June 21. A musical supper Crebfllon's love-letters . 21 16. To West, July 20. Rheims Compiegne Self-introduction .... 24 17. To the same, Sept. 28. Mountains of Savoy Grand Chartreuse Aix English visitors Epigram ........ .26 18. To the same, Nov. 11. Passage of Mount Cenis Cruel accident Chamberri Inscription Pas de Suza Turin Italian comedy "L'Anima Damnata." Conversazione ........... 28 19. West to Walpole, Dec. 13. Death of Mr. Pelham's two children Glover's "Leonidas." ........... 30 20. To West Bologna Letter-writing Curl Whitfield's Journal Jingling epitaph Academical exercises at the Franciscans' church Dominicans' church Old verses in a new light ........ 31 21. West to Walpole, January 23. Transmitting a poetical translation Pope's Letters ............ 33 22. To West, January 24. Florence Grand Duke's gallery Effect of travel English and Italian character contrasted Story of the Prince and the nut. 34 23. To the same, February 27. Florence The Carnival Character of the Florentines Their prejudice about nobility Mr. Martin Affair of honour 36 24. To Conway, March 6. Complaints of his not writing Attachment to Florence 38 25. To West, March 22. Description of Siena Romish superstitions Climate of Italy Italian customs Radicofani Dome of Siena Inscription Entrance to Rome ........... 40 26. West to Walpole, March 29. Transmitting portions of the first act -of Pausanias, a tragedy .... ...... 42 27. To West, April 16. Rome Ruins of the temple of Minerva Medica Ignorance and poverty of the present Romans The Coliseum Relics Superstitions ............ 42 28. To Conway, April 23. Society at Rome The Moscovita Roman Conver- sations The Conclave Lord Deskfoord ....... 45 29. To West, May 7. The Conclave Antiquities of Rome State of the public pictures Probable condition of Rome a century hence ..... 46 30. To the same, June 14. Naples Description of Herculaneum Passage in Statius picturing out this latent city ....... 48 1741-2.J CONTENTS. xxiii LETTER PAGE 31. To Con way, July 5. Reasons for leaving Home Malaria Radicofani described Relics from Jerusalem Society at Florence Mr. Mann Lady Pomfret Princess Craon Hosier's ghost The Conclave Lord Chancellor Hardwicke 50 32. To West, July 31. Medals and Inscriptions Taking of Porto Bello The Conclave Lady Mary Montagu Life at Florence 54 33. To Conway, Sept. 25. Character of the Florentines Lady Mary Wortley Montagu described Sortes Virgilianse 56 34. To West, Oct. 2. Effect of travel A wedding at Florence Addison's Italy Dr. Cocchi Bondelmonti A song Bronzes and medals Tartini Lady Walpole Platonic love 58 35. To West, Nov. Disastrous Flood at Florence 62 36. To the Rev. Joseph Spence, Feb. 21. Hopes to renew in England an acquaint- ance begun in Italy Owns him his master in the antique ... 64 37. To Conway, March 25. Rejoices at George Selwyn's recovery And at the result of Mr. Sandys' motion for the removal of Sir Robert Walpole Middleton's Life of Cicero . . . . . . . . . . 65 38. To West, May 10. His opinion of the first act of West's tragedy of Pausanias Description of Reggio during fair-time ..... 67 39. West to Walpole, June 22. TTig aversion to the law as a profession He has chosen the army instead .......... 69 40. To Mann, Sept. Calais on his return to England Amorevoli The Vis- contina Passage to Dover Comfort and snugness of English country towns The distinction of ' ' meddling people " nowhere but in England Story of Mr. Pope and the Prince of Wales . . . . . . 71 41. To the same, Oct. Corsica Bianca Colonna Baron Stosch, and his Maltese cats 73 42. To Conway. On his return to England Changes produced by travel . . 73 43. To Mann, Oct. 8. Illness of Sir Robert Walpole The Opera Sir Benjamin Keene Domenichino's Madonna and Child Lady Dorothy Boyle State of parties 75 44. To the same, Oct. 13 77 45. To the same, Oct. 19. Unfavourable state of his father's health ... 78 46. To the same, Oct. 22. Duel between Winnington and Augustus Townshend Long Sir Thomas Robinson Mrs. Womngton " Les Cours de rEurope" . 79 47. To the same, Nov. 2. Sir Thomas Robinson's ball The Euston embroil The Neutrality "The Balancing Captain," a new song ... 82 48. To the same, Nov. 5. Opera House management 87 49. To the same, Nov. 12. Admiral Vernon The Opera The Viscontina . 89 50. To the same, Nov. 23. Spanish design on Lombardy Sir Edward Walpole's courtship Lady Pomfret "Going to Court" Lord Lincoln Paul Whitehead "Manners" . 90 51. To the same, Nov. 26. His mother's tomb Intaglio of the Gladiator . . 93 b 2 xxiv CONTENTS. [1742. LETTER PAGE 52. To the same, Dec. 3. Admiral Haddock Meeting of Parliament State of parties Colley Gibber 94 53. To the same, Dec. 10. Debate on the King's speech Westminster petition Triumph of Opposition " Bright Bootle " ...... 96 54. To the same, Dec. 16. Chairman of election committees Ministry in a minority ............ 100 55. To the same, Dec. 17. Warm debates in Westminster Election committee Odd suicide 102 56. To the same, Dec. 24. Anecdote of Sandys Ministerial victory Debates on the Westminster election Story of the Duchess of Buckingham Mr. Nugent Lord Gage Revolution in Russia . . . . . .103 57. To the same, Dec. 29. The Domenichino Passage of the Giogo Bubb Dodington Follies of the Opposition . . . . . 109 58. To the same, Jan. 7. Reasons why he is not in fashion His father's want of partiality for him Character of General Churchill Vote -trafficking during the holidays Music party The three beauty-Fitzroys Lord Hervey Hammond, the poet Death of Lady Sun don Anecdotes . . . Ill 59. To the same, Jan. 22. House of Commons Merchants' petition Leonidas Glover Place Bill Projected changes King's message to the Prince Pulteney's motion for a secret committee on Sir Robert Walpole's conduct New opera . .... . . . . . . . . 117 60. To Mann, Feb. 4. Sir Robert's morning levees His resignation Created Earl of Orford 123 61. To the same, Feb. 9. Political changes Opposition meeting at the Fountain Cry against Sir Robert Instructions to members Lord Wilmington first lord of the treasury New ministry Crebillon's " Sofa " . . . . 125 62. To the same, Feb. 18. Rumoured impeachments Popular feeling "The Unhappy Favourite" "Broad Bottom" ministry The Prince at the King's levee Sir Robert takes his seat in the House of Lords Grand masquerade ........... 129 63 . To the same, Feb. 25. House of Commons Shippen Murray Story of Sir R. Godschall Impeachments Changes "England in 1741," by Sir C. H. Williams 133 64. To the same, March 3. Merchant's petition Leonidas Glover New story of the Lord Mayor Speech of Dodington Heydon election "The Broad Bottom" Duchess of Marlborough's Memoirs< Lord Oxford's sale New opera Sir Robert at Richmond 136 65. To the same, March 10. The Coalition Motion for a committee of inquiry into the conduct of the last twenty years thrown out Duke of Argyle resigns Old Sarah's Memoirs 141 66. To the same, March 22. Queen of Hungary's successes Lord Oxford's sale 144 67. To the same, March 24. Secret Committee to inquire into the conduct of the Earl of Orford appointed Horace Walpole's speech on the occasion 146 68. To the same, April 1. Secret Committee balloted for Court and Opposition lists Bill for repealing the Septennial Act rejected .... 149 1742-3.] CONTENTS. xxv LETTER PAGE 69. To the same, April 8. Lady Walpole's extravagant schemes Subsidy for the Queen of Hungary Lord Orford's crowded levees Kage of the mob against him. Place Bill rejected by the Lords 152 70. To the same, April 15. Progress of the Secret Committee Committal of Paxton . . . . . . . . . . 155 71. To the same, April 22. Secret Committee Examination of Sir John Rawdon Opening of Ranelagh Gardens 157 72. To the same, April 29. Preparations for war in Flanders Examinations before the Secret Committee Scuffle at the Opera 159 73. To West, May 4. Anxiety for the recovery of his health and spirits The age most unpoetical Wit monopolised by politics Royal reconciliation Asheton's sermons Death of Mr. West . . . . . .160 74. To Mann, May 6. Florentine nobility Embarkations for Germany Doings of the Secret Committee The Opera . . . . . 162 75. To the same, May 13. First Report of the Secret Committee Bill to indem- nify evidence against Lord Orford brought in . . . . . .164 76. To the same, May 20. Indemnity Bill carried in the Commons Party dinner at the Fountain Place Bill Mr. Nugent's attack on the bishops . . 165 77. To the same, May 26. Ranelagh Vauxhall The Opera Mrs. Clive "Miss Lucy in Town" Garrick at Goodman's Fields : "a very good mimic ; but nothing wonderful in his acting " Mrs. Bracegirdle Meeting at the Fountain The Indemnity Bill flung out by the Lords Epigram on Pulteney Committee to examine the public accounts Epitaph on the Indemnity Bill Kent and symmetry " The Irish Register " . . . 167 78. To Mann, June 3. Epigram on Lord May's garden 172 79. To the same, June 10. Lady Walpole and her son Royal reviews Death of Hammond Process against the Duchess of Beaufort . . . .173 80. To the same, June 14. Peace between Austria and Prussia Ministerial movements Perplexities of the Secret Committee Conduct of Mr. Scrope Lady Vane's adventures 175 81. To the same, June 25. Successes of the Queen of Hungary Mr. Pulteney created Earl of Bath 178 82. To the same, June 30. Second Report of the Secret Committee The Pre- tender Intercepted letters Lord Barrymore . . . . 179 83. To the same. Lines on the death of Richard West, Esq. "A Receipt to make a Lord" 183 84. To the same, July 7. New Place Bill General Guise Mouticelli . . . 184 85. To the same, July 14. Ned and Will Finch Lord Sidney Beauclerc Pulte- ney takes up his patent as Earl of Bath Ranelagh masquerade Fire in Downing Street 187 86. To the same. Prorogation End of the Secret Committee Paxton released from Newgate Ceretesi Shocking scene of murder Items from his grand- father's account-book Lord Orford at Court 189 87. To the same, July 29. About to set out for Houghton Evening at Ranelagh with his father Lord Orford's increasing popularity " The Wife of Bath" xxvi CONTENTS. [1743. LKTTEB PAGE Gibber's pamphlet against Pope Dodington's "Comparison of the Old and New Ministry" .......... 193 88. To the same. New Ballads Lord Orford at Houghton 194 89. To the same, Aug. 20 195 90. To the same, Aug. 28. Marshal Belleisle Cardinal Tencin "Lessons for the Day" " An honourable man " ....... 197 91. To the same, Sept. 11. Visit to Woolterton "A Catalogue of New French Books" 199 92. To the same, Sept. 25. Admiral Matthews The King's journey to Flanders Siege of Prague History of the Princess Eleonora of Guastalla Moliere's Tartuffe 201 93. To the same, Oct. 8. Siege of Prague raised Great preparations for the King's journey to Flanders Odes on Pulteuey Story of the Pigwiggins Fracas at Kensington Palace ........ 204 94. To the same, Oct. 16. Admiral Matthews " Yarmouth Roads" ; A ballad, by Lord Hervey 206 95. To the same, Oct. 23 211 96. To the same, Nov. 1. The King's levee and drawing-room described State of Parties A piece of absence Due d'Aremberg ..... 212 97. To the same, Nov. 15. Projects of Opposition Lord Orford's reception at the levee Revolution in the French court The Opera Lord Tyrawley Dodington's marriage 214 98. To the same, Dec. 2. House of Commons Motion for a new Secret Committee thrown out Union of the Whigs 216 99. To the same, Dec. 9. Debate on disbanding the army in Flanders "Han- over," the word for the winter 218 100. To the same, Dec. 23. Difficulty of writing upon nothing . . . . 219 101. To the same, Jan. 6. Admiral Vernon Reply of the Duchess of Queens- berry 221 102. To the same, Jan. 13. House of Commons "Case of the Hanover Forces" Difficulty of raising the supplies Lord Orford's popularity . . . 223 103. To Mann, Jan. 27. Accession of the Dutch to the King's measures . . 226 104. To the same, Feb. 2. Debate in the Lords on disbanding the Hanoverian troops 228 105. To the same, Feb. 13 229 106. To the same, Feb. 24. Austrian victory over the Spaniards in Italy. King Theodore's declaration Handel and the Opera 230 107. To the same, March 3. Death of the Electress Story of Lord Hervey The Oratorios 231 108. To the same, March 14. Duel between his uncle Horace and Mr. Chetwynd Death of the Duchess of Buckingham 232 109. To the same, March 25. Epidemic Death of Dr. Blackburne, Archbishop of York 235 110. To the same, April 4. Funeral of the Duchess of Buckingham . . . 237 1743-4.] CONTENTS. 111. To the same, April 14. Army in Flanders King Theodore The Opera ruined by gentlemen-directors Dilettanti Club London versus the country 238 112. To the same, April 25. Departure of the King and Duke of Cumberland for the army in Flanders The Regency Princess Louisa and the Prince of Denmark Lord Stafford and Miss Cantillon Irish fracas Silvia and Philander 240 113. To the same, May 4. King Theodore Admiral Vernon's frantic speech Ceretesi Low state of the Opera Freemasonry 243 114. To the same, May 12. Death of the Duchess of Kendal Story of Old Sarah Maids of honour .......... 245 115. To the same, May 19. Mutiny of a Highland regiment . . . . 246 116. To the same, June 4. Marriages, deaths, and promotions Sale of Corsica . 247 117. To the same, June 10. Expected battle in Flanders Alarms for Mr. Con- way Houghton gallery Life of Theodore ...... 249 118. To the same, June 20. Visit to Euston Kent Anecdote of Lord Euston Lady Dorothy Boyle 252 119. To the same, June 29. Battle of Dettingen Conduct of the King Anecdotes 258 120. To the same, July 4. Further anecdotes of the battle Public rejoicings Lines on the victory Lord Halifax's poem of the battle of the Boyne . 256 121. To the same, July 11. Another battle expected 257 122. To the same, July 19. Conduct of General Ilton " The Confectioner" . 258 123. To the same, July 31. Temporising conduct of the Regency Bon-mot of Wilmington 261 124. To the same, Aug. 14. Arrival of the Dominichini Description Pun of Madame de Sevigne 262 125. To Chute, Aug. 20. Life at Houghton Stupifying qualities of beef, ale, and wine The Dominichini 264 126. To Mann, Aug. 29. Undoubted originality of the Dominichini Mr. Pelham first lord of the treasury 266 127. To the same, Sept. 7. The marrying Princesses French players at Cliefden Our faith in politics Story of the Duke of Buckingham Extraordinary miracle 267 128. To the same, Sept. 17. The King and Lord Stair ... 269 129. To the same, Oct. 3. Journey to town Newmarket described No solitnde in the country Delights of a London life Admiral Matthews and the Pope Story of Sir James of the Peak Mrs. White's brown bob Old Sarazin at two in the morning Lord Perceval's "Faction Detected" Death of the Duke of Argyll and Greenwich 270 130. To the same, Oct. 12. Conduct of Sir Horace's father The army in Flanders in winter quarters Distracted state of parties Patapaniana Imitation of an epigram of Martial .......... 274 131. To Mann, Nov. 17. The King's arrival and reception His cool beha- viour to the Prince of Wales Lord Holderness's Dutch bride The Prince of Denmark The Opera . 277 xxviii CONTENTS. [1744-5. LETTER PAGE 132. To the same, Nov. 30. Meeting of Parliament Strength of Opposition Conduct of Lord Carteret Treasury dish-clouts Debate on the Address . 279 133. To the same, Dec. 15. Debates on the Hanoverian troops Resignation of Lord Gower Ministerial changes Sandys made a peer Verses addressed to the House of Lords, on its receiving a new peer . . . . 281 134. To the same, Dec. 26 283 135. To the same 285 136. To the same, Jan. 24. The Brest fleet at sea Motion for continuing the Hanover troops carried by the exertions of Lord Orford .... 285 137. To the same, Feb. 9. Appearance of the Brest squadron off the Land's End Pretender's son at Paris 288 138. To the same, Feb. 16. French squadron off Torbay King's message con- cerning the young Pretender and designed invasion Activity and zeal of Lord Orford 289 139. To the same, Feb. 23. Welsh election carried against Sir Watkyn Williams Prospect of invasion Preparations ....... 291 140. To the same, March 1. The French expected every moment Escape of the Brest squadron from Sir John Norris Dutch troops sent for Spirit of the nation Addresses Lord Barrymore and Colonel Cecil taken up Suspen- sion of the Habeas Corpus The young Pretender . . . . .291 141. To the same, March 5. Great storm French transports destroyed, and troops disembarked 294 142. To the same, March 15. Fears of invasion dispelled Mediterranean en- gagement Admiral Lestock 294 143. To the same, March 22. French declaration of war Affair in the Medi- terranean Sir John Norris Hymeneals Lord Carteret and Lady Sophia Fermor Dodington and Mrs. Behan . ...... 295 144. To the same, April 2 297 145. To the same, April 15. Nuptials of the great Quixote and the fair Sophia Invasion from Dunkirk laid aside ....... 299 146. To the same, May 8. Debate on the Pretender's Correspondence Bill . 300 147. To the same, May 29. Movements of the army in Flanders Illness of his father Death of Pope Mr. Henry Fox's private marriage with Lady Charlotte Lenox Bishop Berkeley and tar water 302 148. To the same, June 11. Successes of the French army in Flanders State of the combined army And of our sea-force ...... 304 149. To the same, June 18. Return of Admiral Anson Ball at Ranelagh Pur- chase of Dr. Middleton's Collection Lord Orford's pension . . . 306 150. To Conway, June 29. Eton recollections Lines out of a new poem Opinion of the present great men Ranelagh described .... 307 151. To Mann, June 29. Cluster of good news Our army joined by the Dutch Success of the King of Sardinia over the Spaniards The Rhine passed by Prince Charles Lines on the death of Pope Epitaph on him by Rolli . 310 152. To Conway, July 20. Happiness at receiving a letter of confidence 1745.] CONTENTS. xxix LETTER PAGE Advice on the subject of an early attachment Arguments for breaking off the acquaintance Offer of the immediate use of his fortune . . . 313 153. To Mann, July 22. Letter-writing one of the first duties Difficulty of keeping up a correspondence after long absence History writing Carte and the City aldermen Inscription on Lady Euston's picture Lady Carteret Epigram on her . . . . . . . . .315 154. To the same, Aug. 6. Marquis de la Chetardie dismissed by the Empress of Russia The Grifona Lord Surrey's sonnets . . . . 317 155. To the same, Aug. 16. Preparations for a journey to Houghton Rule for conquering the passions Country Life King of Prussia's address to the people of England A dialogue on the battle of Dettingen . . . 319 156. To the same, Sept. 1. Victory at Velletri Illness of the King of France Epigram on Bishop Berkeley's tar-water 322 157. To Conway, Oct. 6 324 158. To Mann, Oct. 6. Self-scolding Neapolitan expedition . . . . 325 159. To the same, Oct. 19. Defeat of the King of Sardinia Loss of the ship Victory, with Sir John Balchen Death of Sarah Duchess of Marlborough, of the Countess Granville, and Lord Beauchamp Marriage of Lord Lincoln French King's dismissal of Madame de Chateauroux Discretion of a Scotch soldier 326 160. To the same, November 9. Lord Middleton's wedding ThePomfrets Lady Granville's At Home Old Marlborough' s will Glover's "Leonidas" . 329 161. To the same, Nov. 26. History of Lord Granville's resignation VoUd, le monde ! Decline of his father's health Outcry against pantomimes Drury Lane uproar Bear-garden bruisers Walpole turned popular orator 330 162. To the same, Dec. 24. Conduct of the King Prostitution of patriots List of ministerial changes Mr. Pitt declines office Opposition selling them- selves for profit The Pretender's son owned in France .... 333 163. To the same, Jan. 4. Dearth of news His ink at low-water mark Lord Sandwich's first-rate tie-wig Lady Granville's assemblies Marshal Belleisle a prisoner at Hanover 335 164. To the same, Jan. 14. M. de Magnan's history Prince Lobkowitz Doings of the Granville faction Anecdote of Lord Baltimore Illness of Lord Orford Mrs. Stephens' s remedy Sir Thomas Hanmer's " Shakspeare " Absurd alteration therein 337 165. To the same, Feb. 1. Vanity of politics Lord Granville characterised Progress of the coalition ......... 340 166. To the same, Feb. 28. Alarming illness of Lord Orford Success of the coalition Situation of the Pelhams Masquerade at the Venetian ambassa- dress's Lady Townshend's ball Marshal Belleisle at Nottingham Matri- monials on the tapis .......... 342 167. To the same, March 29. Death of Lord Orford Inquiry into the miscarriage of the fleet in the action off Toulon Matthews and Lestock Instability of the ministry Thomson's Tancred and Sigismunda Glover's "Leonidas" "The Seasons" Akenside's Odes Quarrel between the Duchesses of Queensberry and Richmond Rage for conundrums .... 345 xxx CONTENTS. [1745-6 LETIEK PAGE 168. To the same, April 15. Reflections on his father's death Compliments paid to his memory Mediterranean miscarriages ...... 349 169. To the same, April 29. Disadvantages of a distant correspondence Death of Mr. Francis Chute, and of poor Patapan Prospect of a battle in Flanders Marshal Saxe ........... 351 170. To the same, May 11. Battle of Fontenoy Bravery of the Duke of Cumber- land Song, written after the news of the battle, by the Prince of Wales . 352 171. Sir Edward Walpole to Walpole, May 17. The election for Castle Rising (a family borough) Indignant letter. N. ...... 355 172. To Sir Edward Walpole. Answer to the letter The answer not sent. N. . 356 173. To the same. This answer sent. N. 360 174. To Montagu, May 18. Condolence on the death of Mr. Montagu's brother at Fontenoy 360 175. To Mann, May 24. Popularity of the Duke of Cumberland Lady Walpole Story of Lord Bath's parsimony ....... 361 176. To Montagu, May 25. Account of the family at Englefield Green Sir Edward Walpole Dr. Styan Thirlby 362 177. To Conway, May 27. Despairs of seeing his friend a perfect hero The Why 363 178. To Mann. Recommendatory of Mr. Hobart, afterwards Lord Buckingham- shire 365 179. To the same, June 24. Expected arrival from Italy of Lady Orford Sur- render of the citadel of Touraai Defeat of Charles of Lorrain Revolution in the Prince of Wales's court Miss Neville Lady Abergavenny . . 365 180. To Montagu, June 25. Mistley, the seat of Mr. Rigby, described Fashion- able At Homes Lady Brown's Sunday parties Lady Archibald Hamilton Miss Granville Jemmy Lumley's assembly ..... 368 181. To Conway, July 1. Tournai and Fontenoy Gaming act . . . . 369 182. To Mann, July 5. Seizure of Ghent and Bruges by the French . . . 371 183. To the same, July 12 373 184. To Montagu, July 13. Success of the French in Flanders Lord Baltimore Mrs. Comyns 375 185. To Mann, July 15 376 186. To the same, July 26. Projected invasion Disgraces in Flanders . . 378 187. To Montagu, Aug. 1. Portrait of M. de Grignan Livy's Patavinity Mar- shal Belleisle in London Duke of Newcastle described Duchess of Bolton's geographical resolution . . . . . . ... . 380 188. To Mann, Aug. 7. Rumours of an invasion Proclamation for apprehending the Pretender's son . . . . k 382 189. To the Rev. Thomas Birch, Aug. 15. Respecting a projected History of George II 384 190. To Mann, Sept. 6. Landing and progress of the young Pretender His manifestoes 384 191. To the same, Sept. 13. Progress of the Rebellion The Duke of Newcastle's speech to the Regency 386 1745-6.] CONTENTS. xxxi LETTER PAQE 192. To the same, Sept. 17. 388 193. To the same, Sept. 20. Edinburgh taken by the rebels Our strength at Sea Plan of raising regiments Lady Orford's reception in England . . 389 194. To the same, Sept. 27. Successes of Prince Charles in Scotland . . . 392 195. To the same, Oct. 4. Operations against the rebels Spirited conduct of the Archbishop of York 394 196. To the same, Oct. 11. Death of Lady Granville 396 197. To the same, Oct. 21. Excesses of the rebels at Edinburgh Proceedings in Parliament 397 198. To the same, Nov. 4. State of the rebellion Debates respecting the new raised regiments Ministerial changes . 399 199. To the same, Nov. 15. Disturbance about the new regiments Advance of the rebels into England Their desperate situation Lord Clancarty . . 401 200. To the same, Nov. 22. The rebels advance to Penrith The Mayor of Carlisle's heroic letter And surrender of the town Proceedings in Parliament 403 201. To Mann, Nov. 29. The sham Pretender Lord Derwentwater taken The rebels at Preston Marshal Wade 405 202. To the same, Dec. 9. Conduct of the rebels at Derby Black Friday Preparations against a French invasion Rising spirit of the people . 409 203. To the same, Dec. 20. Flight of the rebels from Derby Capture of the Martinico fleet Debate on employing the Hessian troops Marriage of the Duchess of Bridgewater and Dick Lyttelton A good Irish letter . . 411 204. To the same, Jan. 3. Recapture of Carlisle General Hawley Preparations at Dunkirk Ministerial movements . . . . . . .414 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE I. HOBACE WALPOLE AT THE AGE OP TEN. From the original oil-picture in the possession of Mrs. Bedford .... Frontispiece. II. HORACE WALPOLE WHEN A BOY. From a ring (in Mrs. Bedford's possession), presented by Horace Walpole to his friend and Deputy in the Exchequer, Mr. Bedford v 18 III. THE HONOURABLE HENRY SEYMOUR CONWAY, GENERAL CONWAY, WALPOLE'S COUSIN AND CORRESPONDENT. From the original by Eckardt, formerly in the Collection at Strawberry Hill . . .88 IV. SIR HORACE MANN, BRITISH ENVOY AT THE COURT OF TUSCANY, WALPOLE'S EELATION AND CORRESPONDENT. From the original by Astley, formerly in the Collection at Strawberry Hill . . . . 71 V. HORACE WALPOLE. From a miniature in enamel, painted by Zincke in 1745, and formerly in the Collection at Strawberry Hill . . 360 ADVERTISEMENT. THE leading features of this edition consist in the publication for the first time of the Entire Correspondence of "Walpole in a chrono- logical and uniform order, and in the publication equally for the first time of many letters either now first collected or first made public. The imprinted letters will be found to reveal much curious matter illustrative of the family quarrels of Horace with his brother Sir Edward, and with his uncle, old Horace, whom he hated so heartily; while the letters first collected in this edition, and addressed to men like Hume, Robertson, and Joseph Warton, will be found to contain the best qualities of his style on other subjects than masquerades and marriages. His correspondence with his deputies in the Exchequer, Mr. Grosvenor Bedford, and Mr. Charles Bedford, kindly placed at my service, in consequence of an arrangement with Mr. Bentley, by Mrs. Bedford of Kensington, runs over many years, and though often on matters of official detail, and therefore of no public moment, is not unfrequently highly characteristic of the writer. It reveals to us (as the reader will find) what Walpole revealed to no other person, his unostentatious charity and his active sympathy with persons incarcerated for debt. The same correspondence xxxvi ADVERTISEMENT. supplies other and frequent glimpses of his working behind the scenes as an anonymous correspondent of newspapers, and fully supports what indeed his own " Short Notes " of his life have sufficiently told us, that he was not " Junius." The notes to this edition are by the editors of previous editions, and bear the names of the writers. Some I have silently corrected, others I have enlarged with information between brackets. With respect to my own notes I have sought to make them appropriate to the text, and above all things accurate. PETER CUNNINGHAM. KENSINGTON, 26 - v. declared favourite, as avowedly as the Duchess of Kendal was his father's, Sir Robert's sagacity discerned that the power would be lodged with the wife, not with the mistress ; and he not only devoted himself to the Princess, but totally abstained from even visiting Mrs. Howard ; while the injudicious multitude concluded, that the com- mon consequences of an inconstant husband's passion for his concu- bine would follow, and accordingly warmer, if not public, vows were made to the supposed favourite than to the Prince's consort. They especially, who in the late reign had been out of favour at Court, had, to pave their future path to favour, and to secure the fall of Sir Robert "Walpole, sedulously, and no doubt zealously, dedicated themselves to the mistress : Bolingbroke secretly, his friend Swift openly, and as ambitiously, cultivated Mrs. Howard ; and the neighbourhood of Pope's villa to Richmond facilitated their inter- course, though his religion forbade his entertaining views beyond those of serving his friends. Lord Bathurst, 1 another of that con- nection, and Lord Chesterfield, too early for his interest, founded their hopes on Mrs. Howard's influence ; but astonished and disap- pointed at finding Walpole not shaken from his seat, they determined on an experiment that should be the touch-stone of Mrs. Howard's credit. They persuaded her to demand of the new King an earl's coronet for Lord Bathurst. 2 She did the Queen put in her veto, and Swift, in despair, returned to Ireland, to lament Queen Anne and curse Queen Caroline, under the mask of patriotism, in a country he abhorred and despised. 3 To Mrs. Howard, Swift's ingratitude was base. She indubitably had not only exerted all her interest to second his and his faction's 1 Allen Bathurst, first Earl Bathurst, one of.Queen Anne's twelve peers, and the correspondent of Swift and Pope. He died in 1775, aged 91, and was the father of Lord Chancellor Bathurst. CUNNINGHAM. 2 Lord Bathurst obtained the Earl's coronet sixty years after he was created a Baron, 17111771. CUNNINGHAM. " On this it is to be observed, that George II. was proclaimed on the 14th of June 1727, that Swift returned to Ireland in the September of the same year, and that the first creation of peers in that reign did not take place till the 28th of May 1728. Is t credible, that Mrs. Howard should have made such a request of the new King, and sufiered so decided a refusal ten or eleven months before any peers were made] But, again, upon this first creation of peers, Mrs. Howard's brother is the second name. Is it probable that, with so great an object for her own family in view she risked a solicitation for Lord Bathurst ? But that which seems most convincing, is Swift's own correspondence. In a letter to Mrs. Howard, of the 9th of July 1727,' in which, rallying her on the solicitation to which the new King would be exposed,' he says, ' for my part, you may be secure, that I will never venture to recommend even a mouse to Mrs. Cole's cat, or a shoe-cleaner to your meanest domestic.' "Croker, Suffolk Correspondence, vol. i. p. xxv. WRIGHT. CHAP. T.] GEORGE THE FIRST AND SECOND. cxix interests, but loved Queen Caroline and the minister as little as they did ; yet, when Swift died, he left hehind hfm a character of Mrs. Howard by no means flattering, which was published in his post- humous works. On its appearance, Mrs. Howard (become Lady Suffolk) said to me, in her calm, dispassionate manner, " All I can say is, that it is very different from one that he drew out of me, and sent to me, many years ago, and which I have, written by his own hand." ' Lord Chesterfield, rather more ingenuous as his character of her, but under a feigned name, was printed in his life, though in a paper of which he was not known to be the author was not more con- sistent. Eudosia, described in the weekly journal called Common Sense, for September 10, 1737, was meant for Lady Suffolk : yet was it no fault of hers that he was proscribed at Court ; nor did she perhaps ever know, as he never did till the year before his death, when I acquainted him with it by his Mend Sir John Irwin, why he had been put into the Queen's Index expurgatorius. 2 The Queen had an obscure window at St. James's that looked into a dark passage, lighted only by a single lamp at night, which looked upon Mrs. Howard's apartment. Lord Chesterfield, one Twelfth-night, at Court, had won so large a sum of money, that he thought it impru- dent to carry it home in the dark, and deposited it with the mistress. Thence the Queen inferred great intimacy, and thenceforwards Lord Chesterfield could obtain no favour from Court ; and finding him- self desperate, went into Opposition. My father himself long after- wards told me the story, and had become the principal object of the 1 " This is a complete mistake, to give it no harsher name. The character which Swift left behind, and which was published in his posthumous works, is the very same which Lady Suffolk had in her possession. If it be not nattering, it is to Swift's honour that he did not condescend to flatter her in the days of her highest favour ; and the accusation of having written another less favourable, is wholly false." Croker, Suffolk Correspondence, vol. i. p. xxxviii. WEIGHT. 2 "It certainly would have been extraordinary, that Lord Chesterfield, in 1737, when he was on terms of the most familiar friendship with Lady Suffolk, should have published a deprecatory character of her, and in revenge, too, for being disgraced at court Lady Suffolk being at the same time in disgrace also. But, unluckily for AValpole's conjecture, the character of Eudosia (a female savante, as the name imports) has not the slightest resemblance to Lady Suffolk, and contains no allusion to courts or courtiers." Croker, Suffolk Correspondence, vol. i. p. xxxiii. WEIGHT. Her figure was above the middle size and well-shaped. Her face was not beautiful, but pleasing. Her hair was extremely fair and remarkably fine. Her arms were square and lean, that is, ugly. Her countenance was an undecided one, and announced neither good nor ill nature, neither sense nor the want of it, neither vivacity nor dulness .... To my knowledge she sincerely tried to serve some, but without effect ; she could not even procure a place of 200Z. a year for John Gay, a very poor and honest man, and no bad poet, only because he was a poet, which the King considered as a mechanic. Lord ChesterMd, Mahon's ed., ii. 440, and there first published. CUKNI.VGHAM. h 2 cxx REMINISCENCES OF THE COURTS OF [CHAP. vr. peer's satiric wit, though he had not been the mover of his disgrace. The weight of that anger fell more disgracefully on the King, as I shall mention in the next chapter. I will here interrupt the detail of what I have heard of the com- mencement of that reign, and farther anecdotes of the Queen and the mistress, till I have related the second very memorable transaction of that sera ; and which would come in awkwardly, if postponed till I have despatched many subsequent particulars. CHAPTER VI. Destruction of George I.'s Will. AT the first council held by the new sovereign, Dr. "Wake, Archbishop of Canterbury, produced the "Will of the late King, and delivered it to the successor, expecting it would be opened and read in Council. On the contrary, his Majesty put it into his pocket, and stalked out of the room without uttering a word on the subject. The poor prelate was thunderstruck, and had not the presence of mind or the courage to demand the testament's being opened, or at least to have it registered. No man present chose to be more hardy than the person to whom the deposit had been trusted perhaps none of them immediately conceived the possible violation of so solemn an act so notoriously existent ; still, as the King never men- tioned the Will more, whispers only by degrees informed the public that the Will was burnt ; at least, that its injunctions were never fulfilled. What the contents were was never ascertained. Report said, that forty thousand pounds had been bequeathed to the Duchess of Kendal; and more vague rumours spoke of a large legacy to the Queen of Prussia, daughter of the late King. Of that bequest demands were afterwards said to have been frequently and roughly made by her son the great King of Prussia, between whom and his uncle subsisted much inveteracy. 1 1 King George II. sunk two wills his father's, and his uncle's the Duke of York. It was with respect to the Duke's will that the King of Prussia threatened to go to law not the King's, as stated in the text. " The Queen told Lord Hcrvey, that the three things of which the Prince accused the King (besides the robbing him of lOO.OOO;. a year) were, his Majesty's having thrice cheated him by his sinking the late King's will and the Duke of York's will, and by seizing the revenues of the Duchy CHAP. vi. J GEORG THE FIRST AND SECOND. cxxi The legacy to the Duchess was some time after on the brink of coming to open and legal discussion. Lord Chesterfield marrying [1733] her niece and heiress, the Countess of Walsingham, and resenting his own proscription at Court, was believed to have insti- tuted, or at least to have threatened, a suit for recovery of the legacy to the Duchess, to which he was then [1743] become entitled ; and it was as confidently believed that he was quieted by the payment of twenty thousand pounds. But if the Archbishop had too timidly betrayed the trust reposed in him from weakness and want of spirit, there were two other men who had no such plea of imbecility, and who, being independent, and above being awed, basely sacrificed their honour and integrity for positive sordid gain. George I. had deposited duplicates of his will with two sovereign German princes : I will not specify them, because at this distance of time I do not perfectly recollect their titles ; but I was actually, some years ago, shown a copy of a letter from one of our ambassadors abroad to a Secretary of State at that period, in which the ambassador said, one of the princes in question would accept the proffered subsidy, and had delivered or would deliver the duplicate of the King's "Will. The other trustee was, no doubt, as little conscientious and as corrupt. It is pity the late King of Prussia did not learn their infamous treachery. Discoursing once with Lady Suffolk on that suppressed testament, she made the only plausible shadow of an excuse that could be made for George II. She told me, that George I. had burnt two wills made in favour of his son. They were, probably, the wills of the Duke and Duchess of Zell ; or one of them might be that of his mother, the Princess Sophia. The crime of the first George could only palliate, not justify, the criminality of the second ; for the second did not punish the guilty, but the innocent. But bad pre- cedents are always dangerous, and too likely to be copied. 1 of Cornwall ; and as to the two first articles, she said the Prince was not named in either of the wills, and that the Duke of York (who died the year after the present King came to the throne) in his will had left everything he had, which came to about 50,0001., to his present Majesty, except his jewels, and his jewels he left to the Queen of Prussia, to whom the King had delivered them, after satisfying the King of Prussia (who, before the King showed him the will, had a mind to litigate it in favour of his wife) that the will would admit of no dispute." Lord Herceys Memoirs, ii. 467. Johnson. " No ; Charles II. was not such a man as George II. He did not destroy his father's will." BoxwelVs Johnson, by Croker, p. 444. CUNNINGHAM. 1 On the subject of the royal will, Wai pole, in his Memoires, vol. ii. p. 458, relates the following anecdote : " The morning after the death of George II., Lord Walde- grave showed the Duke of Cumberland an extraordinary piece : it was endorsed, cxxii REMINISCENCES OF THE COURTS OF [CUAP. vn. CHAPTER VII. History of Mrs. Howard, afterwards Countess of Suffolk Miss Bellenden Her Marriage with Colonel John Campbell, afterwards fourth Duke of Argyle Anec- dotes of Queen Caroline Her last Illness and Death Anecdotes of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough Last Years of George II. Mrs. Clayton, afterwards Lady Sundon Lady Diana Spencer Frederick, Prince of Wales Sudden Removal of the Prince and Princess from Hampton Court to St. James's Birth of a Princess Rupture with the King Anecdotes of Lady Yarmouth. I WILL now resume the story of Lady Suffolk, whose history, though she had none of that influence on the transactions of the Cabinet that was expected, will still probably be more entertaining to two young ladies, than a magisterial detail of political events, the traces of which at least may be found in journals and brief chro- nicles of the times. The interior of courts, and the lesser features of history, are precisely those with which we are least acquainted, I mean of the age preceding our own. Such anecdotes are forgotten in the multiplicity of those that ensue, or reside only in the memory of idle old persons, or have not yet emerged into publicity from the portefeuilles of such garrulous Brantomes as myself. Trifling I Mall not call myself, while I have such charming disciples as you to inform ; and though acute or plodding politicians, for whom they are not meant, may condemn these pages, which is preferable, the labour of an historian who toils for fame and for applause from he knows not whom ; or my careless commission to paper of perhaps insignificant passages that I remember, but penned for the amusement of a pair avery 'private paper,' and was a letter from the Duke of Newcastle to the first Earl of Waldegrave ; in which his grace informed the Earl, then our ambassador in France, that he had received by the messenger the copy of the will and codicil of George I. ; that he had delivered it to his Majesty, who put it into the fire without opening it : ' So,' adds the Duke, ' we do not know whether it confirms the other or not ; ' and he proceeds to say, ' Despatch a messenger to the Duke of Wolfenbuttle with the treaty, in which is granted all he desires ; and we expect, by return of the messenger, the original will from him.' George I. had left two wills ; one in the hands of Dr. Wake, Archbishop of Canterbury, the other with the Duke of Wolfenbuttle. He had been in the right to take these precautions : he himself had burned his wife's testa ment, and her fathers, the Duke of Zell ; both of whom had made George II. their heir a palliative of the latter's obliquity, if justice would allow of any violation. WKIOHT. CHAP. VIL] GEORGE THE FIRST AND SECOND. cxxiii of such, sensible and cultivated minds as I never met at so early an age, and whose fine eyes I do know will read me with candour, and allow me that mite of fame to which I aspire, their approbation of my endeavours to divert their evenings in the country. O Guie- ciardin! is posthumous renown so valuable as the satisfaction of reading these court-tales to the lovely Berrys ? Henrietta Hobart was daughter of Sir Henry, and sister of Sir John Hobart, Knight of the Bath on the revival of the order, and afterwards [1728] by her interest made a Baron ; and since [1746] created Earl of Buckinghamshire. She was first married [1708 ?] to Mr. Howard, the younger brother of more than one Earl of Suffolk ; to which title he at last [1731] succeeded himself, and left a son by her, who was the last Earl of that branch. She had but the slender fortune of an ancient baronet's daughter ; l and Mr. Howard's circumstances were the reverse of opulent. It was the close of Queen Anne's reign : the young couple saw no step more prudent than to resort to Hanover, and endeavour to ingratiate themselves with the future sovereigns of England. Still so narrow was their fortune, that Mr. Howard finding it expedient to give a dinner to the Hanoverian ministers* Mrs. Howard is said to have sacrificed her beautiful head of hair to pay for the expense. It must be recollected, that at that period were in fashion those enormous full-bottomed wigs, which often cost twenty and thirty guineas. Mrs. Howard was extremely acceptable to the intelligent Princess Sophia ; but did not at that time make farther impression on the Electoral Prince, than, on his father's suc- cession to the crown, to be appointed one of the bedchamber women to the new Princess of "Wales. The elder Whig politicians became ministers to the 1 King. The most promising of the young lords and gentlemen of that party, and the prettiest and liveliest of the young ladies, formed the new Court of the Prince and Princess of Wales. The apartment of the bed- chamber-woman in waiting became the fashionable evening rendez- vous of the most distinguished wits and beauties. Lord Chesterfield, (then Lord Stanhope), Lord Scarborough, Carr Lord Hervey, elder brother of the more known John Lord Hervey, and reckoned to have superior parts, General (at that time only Colonel) Charles Churchill, and others not necessary to rehearse, were constant attendants : Miss Lepel, afterwards [1720] Lady Hervey, my mother Lady Walpole, 1 Her fortune was 6,0001. CUNNINGHAM. cxxiv REMINISCENCES OF THE COURTS OF [CHAP. vn. Mrs. Selwyn, mother of the famous George, and herself of much vivacity and pretty, 1 Mrs. Howard, and ahove all for universal admiration, Miss Bellenden, 2 one of the Maids of Honour. Her face and person were charming ; lively she was almost to etourderie ; and so agreeable she was, that I never heard her mentioned after- wards hy one of her contemporaries who did not prefer her as the most perfect creature they ever knew. The Prince frequented the waiting-room, and soon felt a stronger inclination for her than he ever entertained but for his Princess. Miss Bellenden by no means felt a reciprocal passion. The Prince's gallantry was by no means delicate ; and his avarice disgusted her. One evening sitting by her, he took out his purse and counted his money. He repeated tha numeration : the giddy Bellenden lost her patience, and cried out, " Sir, I cannot bear it ! if you count your money any more I will go out of the room." The chink of the gold did not tempt her more than the person of his Royal Highness. In fact, her heart was engaged ; and so the Prince, finding his love fruitless, suspected. He was even so generous as to promise her, that if she would dis- cover the object of her choice, and would engage not to marry with- out his privity, he would consent to the match, and would be kind to her husband. She gave him the promise he exacted, but without acknowledging the person ; and then, lest his Highness should throw any obstacle in the way, married, 3 without his knowledge, Colonel Campbell, one of the grooms of his bedchamber, and who long afterwards [1761] succeeded to the title of Argyle at the death of Duke Archibald. 4 The Prince never forgave the breach of hex word ; and whenever she went to the drawing-room, as from her 1 Mary Farrlngdon, bedchamber woman to Queen Caroline and wife of Colonel John Selwyn, Equerry to the Queen. See vol. i. p. 45. CUNNINGHAM. 2 Mary Bellenden, youngest daughter of John, second Lord Bellenden, afterwards X1720) Mrs. Campbell (see note 4). She is called by Gay " Smiling Mary, soft and fair as down." CUNNINGHAM. She is thus described in a ballad, made' upon the quarrel between George I. and the Prince of Wales, when the Prince and his household were ordered to quit St. James's : But Bellenden we needs must praise, \\ ho, as down the stairs she jumps, Sings over the hills and far away, Despising doleful dumps. WRIGHT. 8 Got. 22, 1720.- OTTNNINGHAM. 4 Co'onel John Campbell succeeded to the dukedom, fourth duke, in 1761 died Tra. Campbell died in Dec. 18, 1786. She was housekeeper at Somerset mso. She was the mother of the fifth Duke of Argyle and three other sons and of Lady Carolme, who married, first, the Earl of Aylesbury, and, secondly, Walpole's bnsom friend Marshal Coiiwav. CHAP, vii.] GEORGE THE FIRST AND SECOND. cxxv husband's situation she was sometimes obliged to do, though trem- bling at what she knew she was to undergo, the Prince always stepped up to her, and whispered some very harsh reproach in her ear. Mrs. Howard was the intimate friend of Miss Bellenden ; had been the confidante of the Prince's passion ; and, on Mrs. Campbell's eclipse, succeeded to her friend's post of favourite but not to her resistance. From the steady decorum of Mrs. Howard, I should conclude that she would have preferred the advantages of her situation to the ostentatious eclat of it ; but many obstacles stood in the way of total concealment ; nor do I suppose that love had any share in the sacri- fice she made of her virtue. She had felt poverty, and was far from disliking power. Mr. Howard was probably as little agreeable to her as he proved worthless. The King, though very amorous, was certainly more attracted by a silly idea he had entertained of gallantry being becoming, than by a love of variety ; and he added the more egregious folly of fancying that inconstancy proved he was not governed ; but so awkwardly did he manage that artifice, that it but demonstrated more clearly the influence of the Queen. With such a disposition, secrecy would by no means have answered his Majesty's views ; yet the publicity of the intrigue was especially owing to Mr. Howard, who, far from ceding his wife quietly, went one night into the quadrangle of St. James's, and vociferously demanded her to be restored to him before the guards and other audience. Being thrust out, he sent a letter to her by the Archbishop of Canterbury, reclaim- ing her, and the Archbishop, by his instructions, consigned the sum- mons to the Queen, who had the malicious pleasure of delivering the letter to her rival. 1 Such intemperate proceedings by no means invited the new mistress to leave the asylum of $t. James's. She was safe while under the royal roof : even after the rupture between the King and Prince (for the affair commenced in the reign of the first George), and though the Prince, on quitting St. James's, resided in a private house, it was too serious an enterprise to take his wife by force out of the palace of the Prince of "Wales. The case was altered, when 1 " The letter which Walpole alludes to is in existence. It is not a letter from Mr. Howard to his lady, but from the Archbishop to the Princess ; and although his grace urges a compliance with Mr. Howard's demand of the restoration of his wife, he treats it not as a matter between tJtem, but as an attack on the Princess herself; wh T D SECOND. cxxxix fan and gloves, and turn away her own head, as if the Queen had offensive smells. Incapable of due respect to superiors, it was no wonder she treated her children and inferiors with supercilious contempt. Her eldest daughter l and she were long at variance, and never reconciled. When the younger Duchess exposed herself by placing a monument and silly epitaph, of her own composition and bad spelling, to Congreve, in Westminster Abbey, her mother, quoting the words, said, " I know not what happiness* she might have in his company, but I am sure it was no honour" With her youngest daughter, the Duchess of Montagu, old Sarah agreed as ill. "I wonder," said the Duke of Marlborough to them, " that you cannot agree, you are so alike ! " Of her grand- daughter, the Duchess of Manchester, daughter of the Duchess of Montagu, she affected to be fond. One day she said to her, " Duchess of Manchester, you are a good creature, and I love you mightily but you have a mother ! " " And she has a mother ! " answered the Duchess of Manchester, who was all spirit, justice, and honour, and could not suppress sudden truth. One of old Marlborough's capital mortifications sprung from a grand-daughter. The most beautiful of her four charming daughters, Lady Sunderland, 3 left two sons, 4 the second Duke of Marl- borough, and John Spencer, 5 who became her heir, and Anne Lady 1 The Lady Henrietta, married to Francis Earl Godolphin, who, by act of par- liament, succeeded as Duchess of Marlborough. She died in 1 733, childless : and the issue of her next sister [Anne], Lady Sunderland, succeeded to the duchy of Marlborough. WRIGHT. 2 Walpole had written pleasure, but happiness is the actual word on Congreve's monument, and I have so corrected the text. CUNNINGHAM. 3 Lady Sunderland was a great politician ; and having, like her mother, a most beautiful head of hair, used, while combing it at her toilet, to receive men whose votes or interest she wished to influence. WALPOLE. 4 She had an elder son, who died young, while only Earl of Sunderland. He had parts, and all the ambition of his parents and of his family (which his younger brothers had not) ; but George II. had conceived such an aversion to his father, that he would not employ him. The young Earl at last asked Sir Robert Walpole for an ensigncy in the Guards. The minister, astonished at so humble a request from a man of such consequence, expressed his surprise. " I ask it," said the young lord, " to ascertain whether it is determined that I shall never have anything." He died soon after at Paris. WALPOLE. 5 I have made a settlement of a very great estate that is in my own power, upon my grandson, John Spencer and his sons ; but they are all to forfeit it if any of them shall ever accept any employment military or civil, or any pension from any King or Queen of this realm, and the estate is to go to others in the entail. This, I think, ought to please everybody ; for it will secure my heirs in being very considerable men. None of them can put on a fool's coat, and take posts from soldiers of experience and service, who never did anything but kill pheasants and partridges. Sarah, Ihtcftess of Marlborough, to Lord Stair, 1738. Compare vol. i. p. 191. CUNNINGHAM. osl REMINISCENCES OF THE COURTS OF [CHAP. ix. Bateman, 1 and Lady Diana Spencer, whom I have mentioned, and who became [1731] Duchess of Bedford. 1 The Duke [of Marlborough] and his brother, to humour their grand-mother, were in Opposition, though the eldest she never loved. He had good sense, infinite generosity, and not more economy than was to be expected from a young man of warm passions and such vast expectations. He was modest and diffident too, but could not digest total dependence on a capricious and avaricious grandmother. His sister (Lady Bateman) had the intriguing spirit of her father and grandfather, Earls of Sunderland. She was connected with Henry Fox, the first Lord Holland, and both had great influence over the [second] Duke of Marlborough. What an object would it be to Fox to convert to the Court so great a subject as the Duke ! Nor was it much less important to his sister to give him a wife, who, with no reasons for expectation of such shining fortune, should owe the obligation to her. Lady Bateman struck the first stroke, and persuaded her brother to marry [23rd May, 1732] a handsome young lady, who, unluckily, was daughter of Lord Trevor, who had been a bitter enemy of his grand- father, the victorious Duke. 3 The grandam's rage exceeded all bounds. Having a portrait of Lady Bateman, she blackened the face, and wrote on it, " Now her outside is as black as her inside." The Duke she turned out of the little Lodge in Windsor Park ; and then pretending that the new Duchess and her female cousins (eight Trevors) had stripped the house and garden, she had a puppet-show made with waxen figures, representing the Trevors tearing up the shrubs, and the Duchess carrying off the chicken-coop under her arm. Her fury did but increase when Mr. Fox prevailed on the Duke to go over to the Court. With her coarse intemperate humour, she said, "that was the Fox that had stolen her goose." Repeated injuries at last drove the Duke to go to law with her. Fearing that Wife of William, Viscount Bateman, of the kingdom of Ireland, and of Shobdon Court in Herefordshire. She died 19th Feb. 1769, and was interred at Great Yeldham, in Essex. CUNNINGHAM. 2 She died 27th of September, 1735, without issue. CUNNINGHAM. 3 That great Captain, the Duke of Marlborough, when he was in the last stage of life, and very infirm, would walk from the public rooms in Bath to his lodgings in a cold dark night to save sixpence in chair-hire. If the Duke, who left at his death more than a million and a half sterling, could have foreseen that all his wealth and honours was to be inherited by a grandson of Lord Trevor's, who had been one of his enemies, would he have been so careful to save sixpence for the sake of his heir ? Not for the sake of his heir, but he would always have saved sixpence. Dr. Kings Anecdotes, p. 102. CUNNINGHAM. CHAP, ix.] GEORGE THE FIRST AND SECOND. cxli even no lawyer would come up to the Billingsgate with which she was animated herself, she appeared in the court of justice, and with some wit and infinite abuse, treated the laughing public with the spectacle of a woman who had held the reins of empire, metamor- phosed into the widow Blackacre. Her grandson, in his suit, demanded a sword set with diamonds, given to his grandsire by the Emperor. " I retained it," said the beldam, " lest he should pick out the diamonds and pawn them." I will repeat but one more instance of her insolent asperity, which produced an admirable reply of the famous Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Lady Sundon had received a pair of diamond ear-rings as a bribe for procuring a considerable post in Queen Caroline's family for a certain peer ; ' and, decked with those jewels, paid a visit to the old Duchess ; who, as soon as she was gone, said, " What an impudent creature, to come hither with her bribe in her ear ! " " Madam," replied Lady Mary Wortley, who was present, " how should people know where wine is sold, unless a bush is hung out ? " The Duchess of Buckingham was as much elated by owing her birth to James II. * as the Marlborough was by the favour of his daughter. Lady Dorchester, 3 the mother of the former, endeavoured to curb that pride, and, one should have thought, took an effectual method, though one few mothers would have practised : " You need not be so vain," said the old profligate, " for you are not the King's daughter, but Colonel Graham's." Graham was a fashionable man of those days and noted for dry humour. His legitimate daughter, the Countess of Berkshire, was extremely like to the Duchess of Buckingham : " Well ! well ! " said Graham, " kings are all- powerful, and one must not complain ; but certainlv the same man 1 Lord Pomfret. CUNNINGHAM. 2 By Catherine Sedley, created by her royal lover Countess of Dorchester for life. WRIGHT. ' 3 Lady Dorchester is well known for her wit, and for saying that she wondered for what James chose his mistresses : " We are none of us handsome," said she ; " and if we have wit, he has not enough to find it out." But I do not know whether it is as public, that her style was gross and shameless. Meeting the Duchess of Portsmouth and Lady Orkney, the favourite of King William, at the drawing-room of George the First, " God ! " said she, " who would have thought that we three whores should have met here?" Having, after the King's abdication, married Sir David Collyer, by whom she had two sons, she said to them, " If anybody should call you sons of a whore, you must bear it ; for you are so : but if they call you bastards, fight till you die ; for you are an honest man's sons." Susan, Lady Bellasis, another of King James's mistresses, had wit too, and no beauty. Mrs. Godfrey had neither. Grammont has recorded why she was chosen. WALPOLE. REMINISCENCES OF THE COURTS OF [CHAP. ix. begot those two women." To discredit the wit of both parents, the Duchess never ceased labouring to restore the House of Stuart, and to mark her filial devotion to it. Frequent were her journeys to the Continent for that purpose. 1 She always stopped at Paris, visited the church where lay the unburied body of James, and wept over it. A poor Benedictine of the convent, observing her filial piety, took notice to her grace that the velvet pall that covered the coffin was become threadbare and so it remained. Finding all her efforts fruitless, and perhaps aware that her plots were not undiscovered by Sir Eobert Walpole, who was remarkable for his intelligence, she made an artful double, and resolved to try what might be done through him himself. I forget how she con- tracted an acquaintance with him : I do remember that more than once he received letters from the Pretender himself, which probably were transmitted through her. Sir Robert always carried them to George II., who endorsed and returned them. That negociation not succeeding, the Duchess made a more home push. Learning his extreme fondness for his daughter, (afterwards Lady Mary Churchill,) she sent for Sir Robert, and asked him if he recollected what had not been thought too great a reward to Lord Clarendon for restoring the Royal Family ? He affected not to understand her. "Was not he allowed," urged the zealous Duchess, " to match his daughter to the Duke of York ? " Sir Robert smiled, and left her. Sir Robert being forced from Court, the Duchess thought the moment 2 favourable, and took a new journey to Rome; but con- scious of the danger she might run of discovery, she made over her estate to the famous Mr. Pulteney (afterwards Earl of Bath) and left the deed in his custody. What was her astonishment, when on her return she re-demanded the instrument ! It was mislaid he could not find it he never could find it ! The Duchess grew clamorous. At last his friend Lord Mansfield told him plainly, he could never show his face unless he satisfied the Duchess. Lord Bath did then sign a release to her of her estate. The transaction was recorded in print by Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, in a pamphlet that had great vogue, called a Congratulatory Letter, with many other anec- 1 See the curious letter from the Duchess to Sir Robert Walpole on her absence from England, printed in Coxe's "Walpole," and Lord Hervey to old Horace Walpole, Mahon's "England," vol. ii. page cxv. CUNNINGHAM. 2 I am not quite certain that, writing by memory at the distance of fifty years, I place that journey exactly at the right period, nor whether it did not take place betore Sir Robert's fall. Nothing material depends on the precise period. WALPOLE. CHAP, ix.] GEOEGE THE FIRST AND SECOND. cxliii dotes of the same personage, and was not less acute than Sir Charles's " Odes" on the same hero. The Duchess dying not long after Sir Robert's entrance into the House of Lords, Lord Oxford, one of her executors, told him there, that the Duchess had struck Lord Bath out of her will, and made him, Sir Robert, one of her trustees in his room. " Then," said Sir Robert, laughing, " I see, my lord, that I have got Lord Bath's place before he has got mine." Sir Robert had artfully prevented the last. Before he quitted the King, he persuaded his Majesty to insist, as a preliminary to the change, that Mr. Pulteney should go into the House of Peers, his great credit lying in the other house ; and I remember my father's action when he returned from Court and told me what he had done " I have turned the key of the closet on him," making that motion with his hand. Pulteney had jumped at the proffered earldom, but saw his error when too late ; and was so enraged at his own oversight, that, when he went to take the oaths in the House of Lords, he dashed his patent on the floor, and vowed he would never take it up but he had kissed the King's hand for it, and it was too late to recede. 1 But though Madam of Buckingham could not effect a coronation to her will, she indulged her pompous mind with such puppet-shows as were appropriate to her rank. She had made [1721] a funeral for her husband 2 as splendid as that of the great Marlborough : she renewed that pageant [1735] for her only son, a weak lad, who died under age ; and for herself : and prepared and decorated waxen dolls of him and of herself to be exhibited in glass-cases in Westminster Abbey. It was for the procession at her son's burial that she wrote to old Sarah of Marlborough to borrow the triumphal car that had transported the corpse of the Duke. " It carried my Lord Marl- borough," replied the other, " and shall never be used for anybody 1 The first time Sir Robert (who was now Earl of Orford) met Lord Bath in the House of Lords, he threw out this reproach : " My Lord Bath, you and I are now two as insignificant men as any in England." In which he spoke the truth of my Lord Bath, but not of himself. For my Lord Orford was consulted by the ministers to the last day of his life." Dr. King's Anecdotes, p. 43. CBKNIKGHAM. " Lord Carteret hates and detests Mr. Pulteney . . and knowing that the moment Mr. Pulteney goes into the House of Lords, he will become an absolute nullity, he is ready to feed the exorbitant appetite of his demands with any morsels it craves for at present, provided in return he can gain that one point of Mr. Pulteney's going into the House of Lords ... If Mr. Pulteney goes into the House of Lords, Lord Carteret dupes him ; if he does not, he dupes my Lord Carteret." Lord Hervey to his Father, July 15, 1742. 2 So Walpole in a note at p. 185 of this volume. CUNNINGHAM. cxliv REMINISCENCES OF THE COURTS OF [CHAP.IX. else." " I have consulted the undertaker," replied the Buckingham, " and he tells me I may have a finer for twenty pounds." One of the last acts of Buckingham's life was marrying a grandson she had to a daughter of Lord Hervey. 1 That intriguing man, sore, as I have said, at his disgrace, cast his eyes everywhere to revenge or exalt himself. Professions or recantations of any principles cost him nothing : at least the consecrated day which was appointed for his first interview with the Duchess made it presumed, that to ohtain her wealth, with her grandson for his daughter, he must have sworn fealty to the House of Stuart. It was on the martyrdom of her grandfather : she received him in the great drawing-room of Buckingham House, seated in a chair of state, in deep mourning, attended hy her women in like weeds, in memory of the royal martyr. It will be a proper close to the history of those curious ladies to mention the anecdote of Pope relative to them. Having drawn his famous character of Atossa, he communicated it to each Duchess, pretending it was levelled at the other. The Buckingham believed him : the Marlborough had more sense, and knew herself, and gave him a thousand pounds to suppress it ; and yet he left the copy behind him ! 2 Bishop Burnet, from absence of mind, had drawn as strong a picture of herself to the Duchess of Marlborough, as Pope did under covert of another lady. Dining with the Duchess after the Duke's disgrace, Burnet was comparing him to Belisarius : " But how," 1 Lepel Hervey. " A fine black girl, as masculine as her father should be." Walpole to Mann, Jan. 7, 1741-2. Married 26th February, 1743, to Constantino Phipps, first Baron Mulgrave. She died in 1780. Lord Hervey, her father, died 8 Aug. 1743. CUNNINGHAM. 2 These lines were shown to her grace, as if they were intended for the portrait of the Duchess of Buckingham ; but she soon stopped the person who was reading them to her, as the Duchess of Portland informed me, and called out aloud, " I cannot be so imposed upon; I see plainly enough for whom they are designed; " and abused Pope most plentifully on the subject : though she was afterwards reconciled to him, and courted him, and gave him a thousand pounds to suppress this portrait, which he accepted, it is said, by the persuasion of Mrs. M. Blount ; and, after the Duchess's death.it was printed in a folio sheet, 1746, and afterwards inserted in his "Moral Essays." This is the greatest blemish in our poet's moral character. Joseph Warton, Pope's works, Ed. 1797, vol. iii. p. 218. WRIGHT. Our friend Pope, it seems, corrected and prepared for the press just before his death an edition of the four Epistles that follow the " Essay on Man." They were then printed off, and are now ready for publication. I am sorry for it, because if he could be excused for writing the character of Atossa formerly, there is no excuse for his design of pub- lishing it, after he had received the favour you and I know ; and the character of Atossa is inserted. I have a copy of the book. Bolinybroke to Marchmont (no date), CUNNINGHAM. CHAP, ix.] GEORGE THE FIRST AND SECOND. cxlv said she, " could so great a general be so abandoned ? " " Oh ! Madam," said the Bishop, " do not you know what a brimstone of a wife he had ? " Perhaps you know this anecdote, and perhaps several others that I have been relating. No matter ; they will go under the article of my dotage and very properly I began with tales of my nursery, and prove that I have been writing in my second childhood. H. W. January 13th, 1789. 1 1 Last night I read to him [Mr. Batt] certain Reminiscences. Walpole to Miss Berry, 12 July, 1791. Walpole's first letter to the Miss Berrys is dated Feb. 2, 1789. CUNNINGHAM. THE following extracts from Letters of Sarah, Duchess of Marl- borough, were copied by me from the original letters addressed to the Earl of Stair, 1 left by him to Sir David Dalrymple, his near relation, and lent to me by Sir David's brother, Mr. Alexander Dal- rymple, long employed as Geographer in the service of the East India Company. They formed part of a large volume of MS. letters, chiefly from the same person. The Duchess of Maryborough's virulence, her prejudices, her style of writing, are already well-known ; and every line of these extracts will only serve to confirm the same opinion of all three. But it will, probably, be thought curious thus to be able to compare the notes of the opposite political parties, and their different account of the same trifling facts, magnified by the prejudices of both into affairs of importance. MARY BERRY. January, 1840. 1 John Dalrymple, second Earl of Stair. See note at p. 144 of this volume. CUNNINGHAM. EXTRACTS FROM THE LETTERS OF SAKAH, DUCHESS OP MAELBOROIJGH, TO THE EAEL OF STAIR, ILLUSTRATIVE OF "THE REMINISCENCE S." [Princess of Wales' behaviour; Queen Caroline's conversation.'] London, Feb. 24th, 1738. . . . . As to Norfolk House, 1 I have heard there is a great deal of company, and that the Princess of Wales, though so very young, behaves so as to please everybody ; and I think her conversa- tion is much more proper and decent for a drawing-room than the wise Queen Caroline's was, who never was half an hour without saying something shocking to somebody or other, even when she intended to oblige, and generally very improper discourse for a public room. [ The King sees Queen Caroline's Servants.] MY LOED : London, December 24th, 1737. I RECEIVED the favour of yours of the 17th December yesterday. I have nothing material to say to you since my last. His Majesty saw the Queen's women servants first, which was a very mournful sight, for they all cried extremely ; and his Majesty was so affected that he began to speak, but went out of the room to recover himself. And yesterday he saw the foreign ministers and his horses, which I 1 Where the Prince and Princess of Wales then resided. BKBBT. cxlviii LETTERS OP THE DUCHESS OP MARYBOROUGH, remember Dean Swift gives a great character of ; and was very sorry to leave them for the conversation of his countrymen in England ; and I think he was much in the right. [Queen Caroline's last illness.~\ Marlborougli House, Nov. 15, 1737. IT is not many days since I wrote to your Lordship by the post, but one can't be sure those letters are sent. However, I have a mind to give you an account of what, perhaps, you may not have so particularly from any other hand. This day se'nnight the Queen was taken extremely ill ; the physicians were sent for, and, from the account that was given, they treated her as if she had the gout in her stomach : but, upon a thorough investigation of the matter, a surgeon [Ranby] 1 desired that she would put her hand where the pain was that she complained of, which she did ; and the surgeon, following her with his hand, found it was a very large rupture, which had been long-concealed. Upon this, immediately they cut it, and some little part of the gut, which was discoloured. Few of the knowing people have had any hopes for many days ; for they still apprehend a mortification, and she can't escape it unless the phy- sicians can make something pass through her, which they have not yet been able to do in so many days. The King and the Eoyal Family have taken leave of her more than once ; and his Majesty has given her leave to make her Will, which she has done ; but I fancy it will be in such a manner that few, if any, will know what her money amounts to. Sir Robert Walpole was in Norfolk, and came to London but last night. I can't but think he must be extremely uneasy at this misfortune ; for I have a notion that many of his troops will slacken very much, if not quite leave him, when they see he has lost his sure support. But there is so much folly and mean corruption, &c. London, December 1st, 1 737. . . . . As to what has passed in the Queen's illness, and since her death, one can't depend on much one hears ; and they are things that it is no great matter whether they are true or false. But one thing was odd : whether out of folly, or anything else, I can't 1 For full details of Queen Caroline's last illness and death, see Lord Hervey's " Memoirs." CUNNINGHAM. ILLUSTRATIVE OF THE REMINISCENCES. cxlix say, but the Duke of Newcastle did not send Sir Robert "Walpole news of her illness, nor of her danger, as soon as he might have done ; and after he came to town, which was but a few days before she died, -and when she could no more live than she can now come out of her coffin, the physicians, and all that attended her, were ordered to say she was better, and that they had some hopes. What the use of that was I cannot conceive. And the occasion of her death is still pretended to be a secret : yet it is known that she had a rupture, and had it for many years ; that she had imposthumes that broke, and that some of the guts were mortified. This is another mystery which I don't comprehend ; for what does it signify what one dies of, except the pain it gives more than common dissolutions ? &c. [Most Princes are alike. ,] I AM of the opinion, from woful experience, that, from flattery and want of understanding, most princes are alike ; and, therefore, it is to no purpose to argue against their passions, but to defend ourselves, at all events, against them [Conduct of Frederick) Prince of Wales, at the birth of his first child.'] Wimbledon, VJth August, 1737. . . . . THERE has been a very extraordinary quarrel at Court, which, I believe, nobody will give you so exact an account of as myself. The 31st of last month the Princess fell in labour. The King and Queen both knew that she was to lie in at St. James's, where everything was prepared. It was her first child, 1 and so little a way to London, that she thought it less hazard to go immediately away from Hampton Court to London, where she had all the assist- ance that could be, and every thing prepared, than to stay at Hampton Court, where she had nothing, and might be forced to make use of a country midwife. There was not a minute's time to be lost in debating this matter, nor in ceremonials ; the Princess begging earnestly of the Prince to carry her to St. James's, in such a hurry that gentlemen went behind the coach like footmen. 2 They 1 Augusta, married 1764 to the Duke of Brunswick, who fell (1806) at Jena. She died in 1813. CUNNINGHAM. 2 The accuracy of the Duchess's information is confirmed throughout, by Lord Hervey's " Memoirs/' vol. ii. p. 365. CUNNINGHAM. VOL. i. k got to St. James's safe, and she was brought to bed in one hour after. Her Majesty followed them as soon as she could, but did not come till it was all over. However, she expressed a great deal of anger to the Prince for having carried her away, though she and the child were very well. I should have thought it had been most natural for a grandmother to have said she had been mightily frightened, but she was glad it was so well over. The Prince said all the respectful and dutiful things imaginable to her and the King ; desiring her Majesty to support the reasons which made him go away as he did without acquainting his Majesty with it : and, I believe, all human creatures will allow that this was natural for a man not to debate a thing of this kind, nor to lose a minute's time in ceremony, which was very useless, considering that it is a great wliile since the King has spoke to him, or taken the least notice of him. The Prince told her Majesty he intended to go that morning to pay his duty to the King, but she advised him not. This was Monday morning, and she said Wednesday was time enough ; and, indeed, in that I think her Majesty was in the right. The Prince submitted to her counsel, and only writ a very submissive and respectful letter to his Majesty, giving his reasons for what he had done. And this con- versation ended, that he hoped his Majesty would do him the honour to be godfather to his daughter, and that he would be pleased to name who the godmothers should be ; and that he left all the directions of the christening entirely to his Majesty's pleasure. The Queen answered that it would be thought the asking the King to be godfather was too great a liberty, and advised him not to do it. When the Prince led the Queen to her coach, which she would not have had him have done, there was a great concourse of people; and, notwithstanding all that had passed before, she expressed so much kindness that she hugged and kissed him with great passion. The King, after this, sent a message in writing, by my Lord Essex, 1 in the following words : That his Majesty looked upon what the Prince had done, in carrying the Princess to London in such a manner, as a deliberate indignity offered to himself and to the Queen, and resented it in the highest degree, and forbid him the Court. I must own I cleared Sir Robert in my own mind of this counsel, thinking he was not in town: but it has proved other- wise, for he was in town ; and the message is drawn up in such a manner that nobody doubts of its being done by Sir Robert. 1 The King's Lord of the Bedchamber in waiting. CUNNINGHAM. ILLUSTRATIVE OF THE REMINISCENCES. cli All the sycophants and agents of the Court spread minions of falsities upon this occasion ; and all the language there was, that this was so great a crime that even those that went with the Prince ought to be prosecuted. How this will end nobody yet knows, at least I am sure I don't ; but I know there was a Council to-day held at Hampton Court. I have not heard yet of any christening being directed, but for that I am in no manner of pain ; for if it be never christened, I think 'tis in a better state than a great many devout people that I know. Some talk as if they designed to take the child away from the Princess, to be under the care of her Majesty, who professes vast kindness to the Princess ; and all the anger is. at the Prince. Among common subjects I think the law is, that nobody that has any interest in an estate is to have anything to do with the person who is heir to it. What prejudice this sucking child can do to the crown I don't see ; but, to be sure, her Majesty will be very careful of it. What I apprehend most is, that the crown will be lost long before this little Princess can possibly enjoy it ; and, if what I have heard to-day be true, I think the scheme of France is going to open ; for I was told there was an ambassador to come from France whose goods had been landed in England, and that they have been sent back. But I won't answer for the truth of that, as I will upon every tiling else in this letter. [Arrival in England of Madame de Walmoden, afterwards Countess of Yarmouth.'] Mr LORD : June 20th, 1738. I WRITE to you this post, to give you an account of what I believe nobody else will so particularly, that Madame Walmond was pre- sented in the Drawing-Room to his Majesty on Thursday. As she arrived some days before, there can be no doubt that it was not the first meeting, though the manner of her reception had the appearance of it ; for his Majesty went up to her and kissed her on both sides, which is an honour, I believe, never any lady had from a king in public. And when his Majesty went away, Lord Harrington 1 pre- sented the great men in the Ministry and the Foreign Ministers in the Drawing-Room ; the former of which performed their part with the utmost respect and submission. This is, likewise, quite new ; for, though all kings have had mistresses, they were attended at 1 As joint Secretary of State. CUNNINGHAM. clii LETTERS OF THE DUCHESS OF MARLBOROUGH, their own lodgings, and not in so public a manner. I conclude they performed that ceremony too ; but they could not lose the first oppor- tunity of paying their respects, though ever so improperly. These great men were, the Duke of Newcastle, Sir Robert Walpole, my Lord Wilmington, my Lord Harrington, and Mr. Pelham. My Lord Hervey had not the honour to be on the foot of a minister .... I have nothing more to say, but that this Madame Walmond is at present in a mighty mean dirty lodging in St. James's Street. Her husband came with her, but he is going away ; and that house that was Mr. Seymour's, in Hyde Park, which opens into the King's garden, is fitting up for her ; and the Duchess of Kendal's lodgings are making ready for her at St. James's. There is nothing more known at present as to the settlement, but that directions are given for one upon the establishment of Ireland. Perhaps that mayn't exceed the Duchess of Kendal's, which was three thousand pounds a-year. But 'tis easy for the First Minister to increase that as she pleases. [Lord Hervey and Molly Lepel.~] London, December 3rd, 1737. , . . .1 SAW one yesterday that dined with my Lord Fanny, 1 who, as soon as he had dined, was sent for to come up to his Majesty, and there is all the appearance that can be of great favour to his Lordship. I mentioned him in my last, and I will now give you an account of some things concerning his character, that I believe you don't know. What I am going to say I am sure is as true as if I had been a transactor in it myself. And I will begin the relation with Mr. Lepelle, my Lord Fanny's wife's father, having made her a cornet in his regiment as soon as she was born, which is no more wrong to the design of an Army than if she had been a son : and she was paid many years after she was a Maid of Honour. She was extreme forward and pert ; and my Lord Sunderland got her a pension of the late King [George I.], it being too ridiculous to continue her any longer an ofiicer in the Army. And into the 1 John, Lord Hervey, so called by Pope. BERRY. Compare Mr. Croker's Preface to Lord Hervey 's Memoirs, p. xx ; Walpole' s Letter to Mann, 22nd Sept. 1768, and Clieslerficld's Letter to his Son, 22nd Oct. 1750. CUNNINGHAM. ILLUSTRATIVE OF THE REMINISCENCES. cliii bargain, she was to be a spy ; but what she could tell to deserve a pension, I cannot comprehend. However, King George the First used to talk to her very much ; and this encouraged my Lord Fanny and her to undertake a very extraordinary project : and she went to the Drawing-Room every night, and publicly attacked his Majesty in a most vehement manner, insomuch that it was the diversion of all the town ; which alarmed the Duchess of Kendal, and the Ministry that governed her, to that degree, lest the King should be put in the opposers' hands, that they determined to buy my Lady H off; and they gave her 4000/. to desist, which she did, and my Lord Fanny bought a good house with it, and furnished it very well. [Moll Skerrett (Lady Walpole) to be presented at Court. ~] Feb. 24th, 1738. MONDAY next is fixed for presenting Mrs. Skerrit at Court : and there has been great solicitation from the court ladies who should do it, in which the Duchess of Newcastle has succeeded, and all the apartment is made ready for Sir Robert's lady, at his house at the Cockpit. 1 I never saw her in my life, but at auctions ; * but I re- member I liked her as to behaviour very well, and I believe she has a great deal of sense : and I am not one of the number that wonder so much at this match : for the King of France married Madame de Maintenon, and many men have done the same thing. But as to the public, I do believe never was any man so great a villain as Sir Robert [Sir Robert Wai/pole and Moll Skerrett Old Horace Walpole's Wife.'] MY LOBD : London, March 19th, 1738. I HAVE received the favour of yours of the llth by the post, but not that which you mention by another hand. And since you can like such sort of accounts as I am able to give you, I will continue to do it. I think it is very plain now that Sir Robert don't think it worth his while to make any proposals where it was once suspected 1 In Whitehall. CUNNINGHAM. 2 Pope has satirised her as Phryne : Ask you why Phryne the whole auction buys, Phryne foresees a general excise. To Bathurst. CUNNINGHAM. cliv LETTERS OF THE DUCHESS OF MARLBOliOUGH, he would. And his wedding was celebrated ' as if he had been Bang of France, and the apartments furnished in the richest manner ; crowds of people of the first quality being presented to the bride, who is the daughter of a clerk that sung Psalms in a church where Dr. Sacheverell was. a After the struggle among the court ladies who should have the honour of presenting her, which the Duchess of Newcastle obtained, it was thought more proper to have her pre- sented by one of her own family ; otherwise it would look as if she had no alliances : and therefore that ceremony was performed by Horace Walpole's wife, who was daughter to my tailor, Lumbar. 3 I read in a print lately, that an old gentleman, very rich, had married a maiden lady with two fatherless children ; but the printer did not then know the gentleman's name. [Sir Robert Walpole's Second Wife and Lady Betty Germaine.'] March 27/t, 1738. . . . . I THINK I did not tell you that the Duke of Dorset 4 waited on my Lady Walpole to congratulate her marriage, with the same ceremony as if it had been one of the Royal Family, with his white staff,* which has not been used these many years, but when they attend the Crown. But such a wretch as he is I hardly know : and his wife, 8 whose passion is only for money, assists him in his odious affair with Lady Betty Jermyn, who has a great deal to dis- pose of ; who, notwithstanding the great pride of the Berkeley family, married an innkeeper's son. 7 But indeed there was some reason for that ; for she was ugly, without a portion, and in her youth had an 1 5 March, 1738. Sir Robert Walpole having declared his marriage with Miss Skerret, that lady received the usual compliments. Qent.'s Mag. for 1738, p. 164. CUNNINGHAM. 2 St. Andrew's, Holborn. CUNNINGHAM. 8 Compare Walpole to Mann, Sept. 20, 1772, and Lord Hervey's " Memoirs," i. 323. " 21 July, 1720. Horatio Walpole, Esq., married to Mary, daughter of Mr. Peter Lombard." Historical Register for 1720. CUNNINGHAM. 4 Lionel Sackville, first Duke of Dorset. CUNNINGHAM. 6 Hyde Lord Rochester used to have his white staff of office as Lord High Treasurer carried in the streets outside his chair. CUNNINGHAM. Elizabeth, daughter of Lieutenant-General Walter Philip Colyear, brother to David, Earl of Portmore. CUNNINGHAM. 7 Lady Elizabeth Berkeley, daughter of Charles, second Earl of Berkeley, married Sir John Germaine of Drayton, Bart. Sir John died in December, 1718, without issue, and left his estate to hia wife, who survived till Dec. 16, 1769. Lady Betty bequeathed the greater part of her estate to the celebrated Lord George Sackville. Crokera Suffvlk Correspondence, i. 72. CUNNINGHAM. ILLUSTRATIVE OF THE REMINISCENCES. civ unlucky accident with one of her father's ' servants ; and by that match she got money to entertain herself all manner of ways. I tell you these things, which did not happen in your time of knowledge, which is a melancholy picture of what the world is come to ; for this strange woman has had a great influence over many. [Ministerial Changes. Lords Chesterfield and Gower.~\ Wednesday, Feb. 16, 1741. . . . . SOME changes are made as to employments ; but very few are brought in but such as will be easily governed, and brought to act so as to keep their places. I have inquired often about your Lordship, who I have not yet heard named in this altera- tion. And I have been told that Lords Chesterfield and Gower are to have nothing in the Government, which I think a very ill sign of what is intended ; because that can be for no reason but because you are all such men as are incapable of ever being prevailed on by any arts to act anything contrary to honour and the true interests of our country. 1 Charles, second Earl of Berkeley, died 1710. CUNNINGHAM. OP HORACE WALPOLE 1. TO RICHAED WEST, ESQ. 1 DEAR WEST : King's College, Nov. 9, 1735. You expect a long letter from me, and have said in verse all that I intended to have said in far inferior prose. I intended filling three or four sides with exclamations against a University life ; but you have showed me how strongly they may be expressed in three or four lines. I can't build without straw ; nor have I the ingenuity of the spider, to spin fine lines out of dirt : a master of a college would make but a miserable figure as a hero of a poem, and Cam- bridge sophs are too low to introduce into a letter that aims not at punning : Haud equidem invideo vati, quern pulpita pascunt. But why mayn't we hold a classical correspondence ? I can never 1 Richard West, only son of Richard West, Lord Chancellor of Ireland (died 1726), by Elizabeth, daughter of the celebrated Bishop Burnet. He was educated at Eton and Christchurch, Oxford, and dying 1st January, 1742, in his twenty-sixth year, was buried in the church of Hatfield, in Hertfordshire. Gray lamented his early end in an exquisite sonnet, and when he wrote his Elegy in a Country Churchyard, had a quatrain of his friend's still ringing in his ears : Ah me, what boots us all our boasted power, Our golden treasure and our purple state ! . They cannot ward the inevitable hour, Nor stay the fearful violence of fate. The Reply of Time to Tom Hearne is by West ; the most promising of all our young poets Chatterton, perhaps, excepted. Walpole's letters to West, twenty in number, were first printed in 1798, in the quarto edition of Walpole's Works, edited by Miss Berry and her father. CUNNINGHAM. 2 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1736. forget the many agreeable hours we have passed in reading Horace and Virgil ; and I think they are topics will never grow stale. Let us extend the Roman empire, and cultivate two barbarous towns o'er-run with rusticity and mathematics. The creatures are so used to a circle, that they plod on in the same eternal round, with their whole view confined to a punctum, cujus nulla est pars : Their time a moment, and a point their space. Orabunt causas melius, ccelique meatus DescrSbent radio, et surgentia sidera dicent : Tu coluisse novem Musas, Romane, memento ; Has tibi erunt artes We have not the least poetry stirring here ; for I can't call verses on the 5th of November and 30th of January by that name, more than four lines on a chapter in the New Testament is an epigram. Tydeus 1 [Walpole himself] rose and set at Eton : he is only known here to be a scholar of King's. Orosmades [Gray] and Almanzor [West] are just the same ; that is, I am almost the only person they are acquainted with, and consequently the only person acquainted with their excellencies. Plato [Ashton] 2 improves every day ; so does my friendship with him. These three divide my whole time, though I believe you will guess there is no quadruple alliance ; 3 that was a happiness which I only enjoyed when you was at Eton. A short account of the Eton people at Oxford would much oblige, My dear West, your faithful friend, H. WALPOLE. 2. TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ. 4 DEAR SIR: King's College, May 2, 1736. UNLESS I were to be married myself, I should despair ever being able to describe a wedding so well as you have done : had I known 1 Tydeus [Walpole], Orosmades [Gray], Almanzor [West], and Plato [Ashton] were names which had been given to them by some of their Eton schoolfellows. BERRY. 2 Thomas Ashton, Fellow of Eton College, Rector of St. Botolph, Bishopsgate, London, and Preacher to the Society of Lincoln's Inn. Walpole, in 1740, addressed a Poetical Epistle from Florence to him : he was then tutor to the Earl of Plymouth. His poem on West's death breathes the manliness of friendship. He died at Bath in 1775, but his friendship with Walpole had ceased long before. There is a good mezzotinto of Ashton by M'Ardell, after Gainsborough. CUNNINGHAM. 3 Thus as boys they had called the intimacy formed at Eton between Walpole, Gray, West, and Ashton. BERRY. 4 George Montagu, -Esq., of Roel, in the county of Gloucester, son of Brigadier- General Edward Montagu, and long M.P. for Northampton. He was the grandnephew of the first Earl of Halifax of the Montagu family, the statesman and poet, and was 1736.] TO MR. MONTAGU. 3 your talent before, I would have desired an epithalamium. I believe the Princess ' will have more beauties bestowed on her by the occa- sional poets, than even a painter would afford her. They will cook up a new Pandora, and in the bottom of the box enclose Hope, that all they have said is true. A great many, out of excess of good breeding, having heard it was rude to talk Latin before women, pro- pose complimenting her in English ; which she will be much the better for. I doubt most of them, instead of fearing their composi- tions should not be understood, should fear they should : they write they don't know what, to be read by they don't know who. You have made me a very unreasonable request, which I will answer with another as extraordinary : you desire I would burn your letters : I desire you would keep mine. I know but of one way of making what I send you useful, which is, by sending you a blank sheet : sure you would -not grudge three-pence for a half-penny sheet, when you give as much for one not worth a farthing. You drew this last paragraph on you by your exordium, as you call it, and conclusion. I hope, for the future, our correspondence will run a little more glibly, with dear George, and dear Harry * [Conway] ; not as formally as if we were playing a game at chess in Spain and Portugal ; and Don Horatio was to have the honour of specifying to Don Georgio, by an epistle, whither he would move. In one point I would have our correspondence like a game at chess ; it should last all our lives but I hear you cry check ; adieu ! Dear George, yours ever. the contemporary at Eton of Walpole and Gray. When his cousin, the Earl of Halifax, was Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, he was his secretary; and when Frederick Lord North was Chancellor of the Exchequer, he was his Secretary. He died 10 May, 1780, leaving the bulk of his fortune to Lord North. Walpole's letters to him, 272 in number, and dating between 1736 and 1770, were first published in 1818, " from the Originals in the possession of the Editor." There was a coolness between Walpole and Montagu several years before the latter's death, the correspondence dropping very abruptly. The cause is explained by Walpole in a letter to Cole, dated 11 May, 1780. Mr. Montagu's brother, Edward, was killed at Fontenoy. His sister, Arabella, was married to a Mr. Wetenhall a relation of the Wetenhall mentioned in De Grammont. " Of Mr. Montagu, it is only remembered that he was a gentleman-like body of the vieitte cour, and that he was usually attended by bis brother John (the Little John of Walpole's correspondence), who was a midshipman at the age of sixty, and found his chief occupation in carrying about his brother's snuff-box." (Quarterly Rev. for April, 1818, p. 131.) CUNNINGHAM. 1 Augusta, younger daughter of Frederic II., Duke of Saxe-Gotha, married (27th April, 1736) to Frederick, Prince of Wales, father of George III. CUNNINGHAM. In 1736, I wrote a copy of Latin verses, published in the " Gratulatio Acad. Cantab." on the marriage of Frederick, Prince of Wales. Walpole (Short Notes). CUNNINGHAM. 8 See note, p. 14. CUNNINGHAM. B 2 4 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1736. 3. TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ. DEAR GEOKQB : King's College, May Q, 1736. I AGREE with you entirely in the pleasure you take in talking over old stories, hut can't say hut I meet every day with new circum- stances, which will he still more pleasure to. me to recollect. I think at our age 'tis excess of joy, to think, while we are running over past happinesses, that it is still in our power to enjoy as great. Narra- tions of the greatest actions of other people are tedious in comparison of the serious trifles that every man can call to mind of himself while he was learning those histories. Youthful passages of life are the chippings of Pitt's diamond, 1 set into little heart-rings with mottos ; the stone itself more worth, the filings more gentle and agreeable. Alexander, at the head of the world, never tasted the true pleasure that hoys of his own age have enjoyed at the head of a school. Little intrigues, little schemes, and policies engage their thoughts ; and, at the same time that they are laying the foundation for their middle age of life, the mimic republic they live in furnishes mate- rials of conversation for their latter age ; and old men cannot be said to be children a second time with greater truth from any one cause, than their living over again their childhood in imagination. To reflect on the season when first they felt the titillation of love, the budding passions, and the first dear object of their wishes ! how un- experienced they gave credit to all the tales of romantic loves ! Dear George, were not the playing fields at Eton food for all manner of flights ? No old maid's gown, though it had been tormented into all the fashions from King James to King George, ever underwent so many transformations as those poor plains have in my idea. At first I was contented with tending a visionary flock, and sighing some pastoral name to the echo of the cascade under the bridge. How happy should I have been to have had a kingdom only for the pleasure of being driven from it, and living disguised in an humble vale ! As I got further into Virgil and Clelia, I found myself trans- ported from Arcadia to the garden of Italy ; and saw Windsor Castle in no other view than the Capitoli immobile saxum. I wish a 1 The diamond bought by Thomas Pitt (grandfather of the Earl of Chatham), when Governor of Fort St. George, in the East Indies, and sold by him to the Regent Duke of Orleans for at least 135.000/., some say 2uO,000/. The chippings were valued at 10,000/. Pitt died in 1726. He is the "honest factor" of Pope's Moral Essays. There is a good account of Pitt's diamond in The Gentleman's Magazine for August, 1825, p. 105. CUNNINGHAM. 1736.] TO MR, MONTAGU. 5 committee of the House of Commons may ever seem to be the senate ; or a bill appear half so agreeable as a billet-doux. You see how deep you have carried me into old stories ; I write of them with pleasure, but shall talk of them with more to you. I can't say I am sorry I was never quite a schoolboy : an expedition against bargemen, or a match at cricket, may be very pretty things to recol- lect ; but, thank my stars, I can remember things that are very near as pretty. The beginning of my Roman history was spent in the asylum, or conversing in Egeria's hallowed grove ; not in thumping and pummelling king Amulius's herdsmen. I was sometimes troubled with a rough creature or two from the plough ; one, that one should have thought, had worked with his head, as well as his hands, they were both so callous. One of the most agreeable circumstances I can recollect is the Triumvirate, composed of your- self, Charles, 1 and Your sincere friend, 4. TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ. DEAR GEORGE : King's College, May 20, 1736. You will excuse my not having written to you, when you hear I have been a jaunt to Oxford. As you have seen it, I shall only say I think it one of the most agreeable places I ever set my eyes on. In our way thither we stopped at the Duke of Kent's a at Wrest [in Bedfordshire]. On the great staircase is a picture of the Duchess ; 3 I said it was very like ; oh, dear sir ! said Mrs. House-keeper, it's too handsome for my lady-duchess ; her grace's chin is much longer than that. In the garden are monuments in memory of Lord Harold, ' Lady Glenorchy, 5 the late Duchess, 6 and the present Duke. At 1 Colonel Charles Montagu, afterwards Lieutenant-General, and Knight of the Bath, and brother of George Montagu. He married Elizabeth Villiers, Viscountess Gran- dison, daughter of the Earl of Grandison. (Note by the Anonymous Editor of the Letters to Montagu, 1818, 4to). CUNNINGHAM. z Henry de Grey, Duke of Kent, died 1740. CUNNINGHAM. 3 Lady Sophia Bentinck, daughter to William Earl of Portland, and second wife of the Duke of Kent. CUNNINGHAM. 4 Anthony, Earl of Harold, eldest son of the Duke of Kent [d. 1723]. ED. 1818. 5 Amabella, eldest daughter of the Duke of Kent, married to John Campbell, Lord Viscount Glenorchy, son of Lord Breadalbane. ED. 1818. 6 Jemima, eldest daughter of Lord Crewe, and first wife of the Duke of Kent. ED. 1818. 6 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1736. Lord Clarendon's, at Cornbury 1 [in Oxfordshire], is a prodigious quantity of Vandykes ; but I had not time to take down any of their dresses. By the way, you gave me no account of the last Masque- rade. Coming back, we saw Easton Neston [in Northamptonshire], a seat of Lord Pomfret, where in an old green-house is a wonderful fine statue of Tully, haranguing a numerous assembly of decayed emperors, vestal virgins with new noses, Colossus's, Venus's, head- less carcases, and carcaseless heads, pieces of tombs, and hiero- glyphics. 2 I saw Althorp [Earl Spencer's] the same day, where are a vast many pictures some mighty good ; a gallery with the Windsor beauties, and Lady Bridgewater, 3 who is full as handsome as any of them ; a bouncing head of, I believe, Cleopatra, called there the Duchess of Mazarine. The park is enchanting. I forgot to tell you I was at Blenheim, where I saw nothing but a cross house- keeper, and an impertinent porter, except a few pictures ; a quarry of stone 4 that looked at a distance like a great house, and about this quarry, quantities of inscriptions in honour of the Duke of Marlborough, and I think of her grace too. Adieu ! dear George, Yours ever. The verses 5 are not yet published. 5. TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ. DEAR GEORGE : King's College, May 30, 1736. You show me in the prettiest manner how much you like Petro- nius Arbiter ; I have heard you commend him, but I am more 1 The Cornbury Collection formed by the great Lord Chancellor Clarendon is now (1856) partly at The Grove, in Hertfordshire, the seat of the present Lord Clarendon, and partly at Bothwell Castle, in Lanarkshire, the seat of Lord Douglas. The fine-art importance of the collection has been greatly exaggerated ; of the so-called Vandykes, some half-dozen only are originals. As a series of portraits, the collection is highly curious. CUNNINGHAM. * Part of the collection of the Earl of Arundel, purchased by John Lord Jefferies ; and in 1755 presented by his daughter, the Countess-Dowager of Pomfret [one of Walpole's heroines] to the University of Oxford. WRIGHT. 3 Elizabeth, third daughter of the great Duke of Marlborough, and wife of Scroop, Earl and, after his wife's death, first Duke of Bridgewater. Her beauty is almost proverbial : An angel's sweetness or Bridgewater's eyes, ******* With Zeuxis' Helen thy Bridgewater vie. Pope to Jervas. Jervas fancied himself in love with her. CUNNINGHAM. 4 He is repeating what had been said before of Blenheim (somewhat unfairly) by Swift and Pope. CUNNINGHAM. 5 On the marriage of Frederick, Prince of Wales : see p. 3. CUNNINGHAM. 1736.] TO MR MONTAGU. 7 pleased with your tacit approbation of writing like him, prose inter- spersed with verse ; I shall send you soon in return some poetry interspersed with prose ; I mean the Cambridge congratulation with the notes, as you desired. I have transcribed the greatest part of what was tolerable at the coffee-houses ; but by most of what you will find, you will hardly think I have left anything worse behind. There is lately come out a new piece, called A Dialogue between Philemon and Hydaspes on false Religion, by one Mr. Coventry, 1 A.M. and fellow, formerly fellow commoner, of Magdalen. He is a young man, but 'tis really a pretty thing. If you cannot get it in town, I will send it with the verses. He accounts for superstition in a new manner, and I think a just one ; attributing it to disappoint- ments in love. He don't resolve it all into that bottom ; ascribes it almost wholly as the source of female enthusiasm ; and I dare say there's ne'er a girl from the age of fourteen to four- and- twenty, but will subscribe to his principles, and own, if the dear man were dead that she loves, she would settle all her affection on heaven, whither he was gone. Who would not be an Artemisia, and raise the stately mausoleum to her lord ; then weep and watch incessant over it like the Ephesian matron ! I have heard of one lady, 2 who had not quite so great a veneration for her husband's tomb, but preferred lying alone in one, to lying on his left hand ; perhaps she had an aversion to the German custom of left-handed wives. I met yesterday with a pretty little dialogue on the subject of constancy ; 'tis between a traveller and a dove. LB PASSAHT. Que fais tu dans ce bois, plaintive Tourterelle ? Li TOUKTEKELLE. Je genus, j'ai perdu ma compagne fidelle. LE PASSANT. Ne crains tu pas que 1'oiseleur Ne te fasse mourir comme elle ] 1 Mr. Henry Coventry, son of Henry Coventry, Esq., born 1710, died 1752. He wrote four additional Dialogues. WEIGHT. When Henry Coventry first came to the University, he was of a religious turn of mind, as was Mr. Horace Walpole ; even so much as to go with Ashton, his then great friend, to pray with the prisoners in the Castle. Afterwards both Mr. Coventry and Mr. Walpole took to the infidel side of the question. COLE THE ANTIQUAEY. Walpole's uninterrupted sympathy with poor prisoners for debt is sirikingly illustrated by his correspondence with his Deputy in the Exchequer, now (1856) first published. CUNNINGHAM. 2 The second wife of the first Earl of Exeter. The vacant space on the Earl's tomb in Westminster Abbey was left for the second Countess, who refused the situation.- - CUNNINGHAM. 8 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1786. LA TOURTERELLE. Si ce n'est lui, ce sera ma douleur. 'Twould have been a little more apposite, if she had grieved for her lover. I have ventured to turn it to that view, lengthened it, and spoiled it, as you shall see. P. Plaintive turtle, cease your moan ; Hence away ; In this dreary wood alone Why d'ye stay ? T. These tears, alas ! you see flow For my mate ! P. Dread you not from net or bow His sad fate 1 ? T. If, ah ! if they neither kill, Sorrow will. You will excuse this gentle nothing, I mean mine, when I tell you, I translated it out of pure good-nature for the use of a discon- solate wood-pigeon in our grove, that was made a widow by the barbarity of a gun. She coos and calls me so movingly, 'twould touch your heart to hear her. I protest to you it grieves me to pity her. She is so allicholly as any thing. I'll warrant you now she's as sorry as one of us would be. Well, good man, he's gone, and he died like a lamb. She's an unfortunate woman, but she must have patience; 'tis what we must all come to, and so as I was saying, Dear George, good bye t'ye, P.S. I don't know yet when I shall leave Cambridge. 6. TO RICHARD WEST, ESQ. DBAE WEST : King's College, Aug. 17, 1736. GRAY is at Burnham, 1 and, what is surprising, has not been at Eton. Could you live so near it without seeing it? That dear scene of our quadruple- alliance would furnish me with the most agreeable recollections. 'Tis the head of our genealogical table, that is since sprouted out into the two branches of Oxford and Cambridge. You seem to be the eldest son, by having got a whole inheritance to yourself; while the manor of Granta is to be divided between your three younger brothers, Thomas of Lancashire 1 In Buckinghamshire, where his uncle resided. WRIGHT. 1736.] WEST TO WALPOLE. 9 [Ashton], Thomas of London [Gray the poet], and Horace. We don't wish you dead to enjoy your seat, but your seat dead to enjoy you. I hope you are a mere elder brother, and live upon what your father left you, and in the way you were brought up in, poetry : but we are supposed to betake ourselves to some trade, as logic, philoso- phy, or mathematics. If I should prove a mere younger brother, and not turn to any profession, would you receive me, and supply me out of your stock, where you have such plenty ? I have been so used to the delicate food of Parnassus, that I can never condescend to apply to the grosser studies of Alma Mater. Sober cloth of syllogism colour suits me ill ; or, what's worse, I hate clothes that one must prove to be of no colour at all. If the Muses ccelique mas et sidera monstrent, and qua vi maria alta tumescant ; why accipiant : but 'tis thrashing, to study philosophy in the abstruse authors. I am not against cultivating these studies, as they are certainly use- ful ; but then they quite neglect all polite literature, all knowledge of this world. Indeed, such people have not much occasion for this latter ; for they shut themselves up from it, and study till they know less than any one. Great mathematicians have been of great use ; but the generality of them are quite unconversible : they frequent the stars, sub pedibmque indent nubes, but they can't see through them. I tell you what I see ; that by living amongst them, I write of nothing else : my letters are all parallelograms, two sides equal to two sides ; and every paragraph an axiom, that tells you nothing but what every mortal almost knows. By the way, your letters come under this description ; for they contain nothing but what almost every mortal knows too, that knows you that is, they are extremely agreeable, which they know you are capable of making them : no one is better acquainted with it than Your sincere friend. 7. WEST TO HORACE WALPOLE. Mr DEAREST WALPOLB : Aug. 1736. YESTERDAY I received your lively agreeable gilt epistolary parallelogram, and to-day I am preparing to send you in return as exact a one as my little compass can afford you. And so far, sir, I am sure we and our letters bear some resemblance to parallel lines, that, like them, one of our chief properties is, seldom or never to meet. Indeed, lately my good fortune made some imlination fi'om your 10 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1730. university to mine ; but whether I can reciprocate or no, I leave you to judge, from hence I sent Ashton word that I should more than probably make an expedition to Cambridge this August ; but Prinsep, who was to have been my fellow-traveller, and would have gone with me to Cambridge, though not to King's, is unhappily disappointed ; and therefore my measures are broke, and I am very much in the spleen else by this time I had flown to you with all the wings of impatience, Ocyor cervis, et agente nimbos Ocyor Euro. But now, alas ! as Horace said on purpose for me to apply it, Sextilem totum mendax desideror This melancholy reflection would certainly infect all the rest of my letter, if I were not revived by the sal volatile of your most entertaining letter. I am afraid the younger brother will make much the better gentleman, and so far verify the proverb : and indeed all my brothers ' are so very forward, that, like the first and heaviest element, I shall have nothing but mere dirt for my share : and really such is the case of most of your landed elder brothers, while the younger run away with the more fine and delicate elements. As for my patrimony of poetry, my dearest Horace, ut semper eris derisor ! what little I have I borrowed from my friends, and, like the poor ambitious jay in the trite fable, I live merely on the charity of my abounding acquaintance. Many a feather in my stock was stolen from your treasures ; but at present I find all my poetical plumes moulting apace, and in a small time I shall be nothing further than, what nobody can be more, or more sincerely, Your humble servant and obliged friend, R. WEST. Gray at Burnham, and not see Eton ? I am Ashton's ever, and intend him an answer soon. I beg pardon for what's over leaf ; but as I am moulting my poetry, it is very natural to send it you, from whom and my other friends it originally came. I translated, and now I have ventured to imitate the divine lyric poet. 1 Of the quadruple alliance. CUNNINGHAM. 1736.] WEST TO WALPOLE. 11 ODE.-TO MAKY MAGDALENE. Saint of this learned awful grove, While slow along thy walks I rove, The pleasing scene, which all that see Admire, is lost to me. The thought, which still my breast invades, Nigh yonder springs, nigh yonder shades, Still, as I pass, the memory brings Of sweeter shades and springs. Lost and inwrapt in thought profound, Absent I tread Etonian ground ; Then starting from the dear mistake, As disenchanted, wake. What though from sorrow free, at best I'm thus but negatively blest : Yet still, I find, true joy I miss ; True joy's a social bliss. Oh ! how I long again with those, Whom first my boyish heart had chose. Together through the friendly shade To stray, as once I stray'd ! Their presence would the scene endear, Like paradise would all appear, More sweet around the flowers would blow, More soft the waters flow. Adieu! 8. WEST TO HORACE WALPOLE. 1 DBAE SIK : Christchurch [Oxford], Jan. 12, 1736-7. POETRY, I take it, is as universally contagious as the small-pox ; every one catches it once in their life at least, and the sooner the better ; for methinks an old rhymester makes as ridiculous a figure as Socrates dancing at fourscore. But I can never agree with you that most of us succeed alike ; at least I'm sure few do like you : I mean not to flatter, for I despise it heartily ; and I think I know you to he as much ahove flattery, as the use of it is heneath every honest, every sincere man. Flattery to men of power is analogous with hypocrisy to God, and both are alike mean and contemptible ; nor is the one more an instance of respect, than the other is a proof of devotion. I perceive I am growing serious, and that is 1 West's letters to Walpole, eight in number, are here reprinted from Walpole's Works, 5 vols. 4to, 1798. They were omitted by Mr. Wright in his edition; but they are both necessary for explanation, and excellent in themselves. CUNNINGHAM. 12 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1736. the first step to dulness : but I believe you won't think that in the least extraordinary, to find me dull in a letter, since you have known me so often dull out of a letter. As for poetry, I own, my sentiments of it are very different from the vulgar taste. There is hardly any where to be found (says Shaftesbury) a more insipid race of mortals, than those whom the moderns are contented to call poets but methinks the true legiti- mate poet is as rare to be found as Tully's orator, quails adhuc nemo fortasse fuerit. Truly, I am extremely to blame to talk to you at this rate of what you know much better than myself: but your letter gave me the hint, and I hope you will excuse my impertinence in pursuing it. It is a difficult matter to account why, but certain it is that all people, from the duke's coronet to the thresher's flail, 1 are desirous to be poets : Penelope herself had not more suitors, though every man is not Ulysses enough to bend the bow. The poetical world, like the terraqueous, has its several degrees of heat from the line to the pole only differing in this, that whereas the temperate zone is most esteemed in the terraqueous, in the poetical it is the most despised. Parnassus is divisible in the same manner as the mountain Chimaera. mediis in partibus hircum, Pectus et ora leae, caudam serpentis habebat. The medium between the rampant lion and the creeping serpent is the filthy goat the justest picture of a middling poet, who is generally very bawdy and lascivious, and, like the goat, is mighty ambitious of climbing up the mountains, where he does nothing but browse upon weeds. Such creatures as these are beneath our notice. But whenever some wondrous sublime genius arises, such as Homer or Milton, then it is that different ages and countries all join in an universal admiration. Poetry (I think I have read some- where or other) is an imitation of Nature : the poet considers all her works in a superior light to other mortals ; he discerns every secret trait of the great mother, and paints it in its due beauty and proportion. The moral and the physical world all open fairer to his enthusiastic imagination : like some clear-flowing stream, he reflects the beauteous prospect all around, and, like the prism-glass, he separates and disposes nature's colours in their justest and most delightful appearances. This sure is not the talent of every dauber: art, genius, learning, taste, must all conspire to answer the full idea 1 A hit at Stephen Duck the Thresher-poet, then an object of Queen Caroline's bounty and of Pope's satire. CUNNINGHAM. 1736-7.] WEST TO WALPOLE. 13 I have of a poet ; a character which seldom agrees with any of our modern miscellany-mongers But Quid loquor ? aut ubi sum ] quae mentem insania mutat 1 I am got into enchanted ground, and can hardly get out again time enough to finish my letter in a decent and laudable manner. Dear sir, excuse and pardon all this rambling criticism I writ it out of pure idleness ; and I can assure you, I wish you idle enough to read it through. I am, my dear Walpole, Yours most sincerely, E. WEST. I wish you a happy new year. 9. WEST TO HORACE WALPOLE. Mr DKAR WALPOLE : Christchurch, February 27, 1736-7. IT seems so long to me since I heard from Cambridge, that I have been reflecting with myself what I could have done to lose any of my friends there. The uncertainty of my silly health might have made me the duller companion, as you know very well ; for which reason Fate took care to remove me out of your way : but my letters, I am sure, at least carry sincerity enough in them to recommend me to any one that has a curiosity to know something concerning me and my amusements. As for Ashton, he has thought fit to forget me entirely ; and for Gray, if you correspond with him as little as I do (wherever he be, for I know not), your correspondence is not very great. Full in the midst of these reflections came your agreeable letter. I read it, and wished myself among you. You can promise me no diversion, but the novelty of the place, you say, and a renewal of intimacies. Novelty, you must know, I am sick of ; I am surrounded with it, I see nothing else. I could tell you strange things, my dear Walpole, of anthropophagi, and men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders. I have seen Learning drest in old frippery, such as was in fashion in Duns Scotus* days : I have seen Taste in changeable, feeding like the chamelion on air : I have seen Stupidity in the habit of Sense, like a footman in the master's clothes : I have seen the phantom mentioned in The Dunciad, with a brain of feathers and a heart of lead : it walks here, and is called Wit. Your other inducement you suggested had all its influence with me ; and I had before indulged the thought of visiting you all at Cambridge this next spring But Fata obstant I am unwillingly 14 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1737. obliged to follow much less agreeable engagements. In the mean time I shall pester you with quires of correspondence, such as it is : but remember, you were two letters in my debt though indeed your last letter may fully cancel the obligation. You may recollect my last was a sort of a criticism upon poetry ; and this will present you with a sort of poetry ' which nobody ever dreamt of but myself. I am, dear sir, Yours very sincerely, E. WEST. 10. TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ. DEAR GEORGE : King's College, March 20, 1737. THE first paragraph in my letter must be in answer to the last in yours ; though I should be glad to make you the return you ask, by waiting on you myself. 'Tis not in my power, from more circum- stances than one, which are needless to tell you, to accompany you and Lord Conway 2 to Italy : you add to the pleasure it would give me, by asking it so kindly. You I am infinitely obliged to, as I was capable, my dear George, of making you forget for a minute that you don't propose stirring from the dear place you are now in. Poppies indeed are the chief flowers in love nosegays, but they seldom bend towards the lady ; at least not till the other flowers have been gathered. Prince Yolscius's boots were made of love- leather, and honour-leather ; instead of honour, some people's are made of friendship : but since you have been so good to me as to draw on this, I can almost believe you are equipped for travelling farther than Rheims. 'Tis no little inducement to make me wish myself in France, that I hear gallantry is not left off there ; that you may be polite, and not be thought awkward for it. You know the pretty men of the age in England use the women with no more deference than they do their coach-horses, and have not half the regard for them that they have for themselves. The little freedoms you tell me you use take off from formality, by avoiding which ridiculous extreme we are dwindled into the other barbarous one, 1 This poetry does not appear. BERRY. 2 Walpole's cousin, Francis Seymour Conway (second Lord Conway), grandson of Sir Edward Seymour, Speaker of the House of Commons, and son of Francis Seymour Conway, Lord Conway (d. 1731-2), by his third wife, Charlotte (d. 1733-4), daughter of John Shorter, Esq., the father of Sir Robert Walpole's first wife. The Lord Con- way of this letter is the Earl of Hertford, of AValpole's correspondence, He was created in 1793 Marquis of Hertford, and died 14th June, 1794. CUNNINGHAM. 1739.] TO MR. MONTAGU. 15 rusticity. If you had been at Paris, I should have inquired about the new Spanish ambassadress, who, by the accounts we have thence, at her first audience of the queen, sat down with her at a distance that suited respect and conversation. Adieu, dear George, Yours most heartily. 11. TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ. Christopher Inn, Eton. THE Christopher. 1 Lord ! how great I used to think anybody just landed at the Christopher ! But here are no boys for me to send for here I am, like Noah, just returned into his old world again, with all sorts of queer feels about me. .By the way, the clock strikes the old cracked sound I recollect so much, and remember so little and want to play about and am so afraid of my playfellows and am ready to shirk Ashton and can't help making fun of myself and envy a dame over the way, that has just locked in her boarders, and is going to sit down in a little hot parlour to a very bad supper, so comfortably ! and I could be so jolly a dog if I did not fat, which, by the way, is the first time the word was ever applicable to me. In short, I should be out of all bounds if I was to tell you half I feel, how young again I am one minute, and how old the next. But do come and feel with me, when you will to-morrow adieu ! If I don't compose myself a little more before Sunday morning, when Ashton is to preach,* I shall certainly be in a bill for laughing at church ; but how to help it, to see him in the pulpit, when the last time I saw him here, was standing up funking over against a conduit to be catechised. Good night ; yours. 12. TO RICHARD WEST, ESQ. DEAR WEST : Paris, April 21, N. S. 1739. 3 You figure us in a set of pleasures, which, believe me, we do not 1 The principal inn at Eton. " At Eton, he [the ever memorable John Hales] lodged (after his sequestration) at the next house, the Christopher, where I saw him." Aubrey (Lives). CUNNINGHAM. 2 Ashton had recently taken orders. See note, p. 2. CUNNINGHAM. 3 I had continued at Cambridge, though with long intervals, till towards the end of 1738, and did not leave it in form until 1739, in which year, March 10th, I set out on my travels with my friend Mr. Thomas Gray, and went to Paris. Walpole (Sliort Notes). CUNNINGHAM. 16 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1739. find ; cards and eating are so universal, that they absorb all vari- ation of pleasures. The operas, indeed, are much frequented three times a week; but to me they would be a greater penance than eating maigre : their music resembles a gooseberry tart as much as it does harmony. "We have not yet been at the Italian playhouse ; scarce any one goes there. Their best amusement, and which, in some parts, beats ours, is the comedy ; three or four of the actors excel any we have : but then to this nobody goes, if it is not one of the fashionable nights ; and then they go, be the play good or bad except on Moliere's nights, whose pieces they are quite- weary of. Gray and I have been at the Avare to-night : I cannot at all com- mend their performance of it. Last night I was in the Place de Louis le Grand (a regular octagon, uniform, and the houses hand- some, though not so large as Golden Square), to see what they reckoned one of the finest burials that ever was in France. It was the Duke de Tresmes, governor of Paris and marshal of France. It began on foot from his palace to his parish-church, and from thence in coaches to the opposite end of Paris, to be interred in the church of the Celestins, where is his family- vault. About a week ago we happened to see the grave digging, as we went to see the church, which is old and small, but fuller of fine ancient monuments than any, except St. Denis, which we saw on the road, and excels Westminster ; for the windows are all painted in mosaic, and the tombs as fresh and well preserved as if they were of yesterday. In the Celestins' church is a votive column to Francis II., which says, that it is one assurance of his being immortalised, to have had the martyr Mary Stuart for his wife. After this long digression, I return to the burial, which was a most vile thing. A long proces- sion of flambeaux and 'friars ; no plumes, trophies, banners, led horses, scutcheons, or open chariots ; nothing but friars, White, black, and grey, with all their trumpery. This godly ceremony began at nine at night, and did not finish till three this morning; for, each church they passed, they stopped for a hymn and holy water. By the bye, some of these choice monks, who watched the body while it lay in state, fell asleep one night, and let the tapers catch fire of the rich velvet mantle lined with ermine and powdered with gold flower-de-luces, which melted the lead coffin, and burnt off the feet of the deceased before it wakened them. The French love show ; but there is a meanness reigns 1739.] TO MR. WEST. 1? through it all. At the house where I stood to see this procession, the room was hung with crimson damask and gold, and the windows were mended in ten or a dozen places with paper. At dinner they give you three courses ; but a third of the dishes is patched up with sallads, butter, puff-paste, or some such miscarriage of a dish. None, but Germans, wear fine clothes ; but their coaches are tawdry enough for the wedding of Cupid and Psyche. You would laugh extremely at their signs : some live at the Y grec, some at Yenus's toilette, and some at the sucking cat. You would not easily guess their notions of. honour: I'll tell you one: it is very dishonourable for any gentleman not to be in the army, or in the king's service as they call it, and it is no dishonour to keep public gaming-houses : there are at least an hundred and fifty people of the first quality in Paris who live by it. You may go into their houses at all hours of the night, and find hazard, pharaoh, &c. The men who keep the hazard-table at the duke de Gesvres' pay him twelve guineas each night for the privilege. Even the princesses of the blood are dirty enough to have shares in the banks kept at their houses. We have seen two or three of them ; but they are not young, nor remarkable but for wearing their red of a deeper dye than other women, though all use it extravagantly. The weather is still so bad, that we have not made any excursions to see Versailles and the environs, not even walked in the Tuile- ries ; but we have seen almost every thing else that is worth seeing in Paris, though that is very considerable. They beat us vastly in buildings, both in number and magnificence. The tombs of Riche- lieu and Mazarin at the Sorbonne and the College de Quatre Nations are wonderfully fine, especially the former. We have seen very little of the people themselves, who are not inclined to be pro- pitious to strangers, especially if they do not play and speak the language readily. There are many English here : Lord Holderness, 1 Conway 2 and Clinton, 3 and Lord George Bentinck; 4 Mr. Brand, 5 Offley, Frederic, Frampton, Bonfoy, &c. Sir John Cotton's son and a Mr. Yernon of Cambridge passed through Paris last week 1 Robert D'Arcy, the last Earl (d. 1778), the patron of the poet Mason. We shall hear more about him as we read on. CUNNINGHAM. 8 See note, p. 14. CUNNINGHAM. 3 Hugh Fortescue, thirteenth Baron Clinton, created in 1746 Lord Fortescue and Earl of Clinton. He died unmarried in 1751. WEIGHT. 4 Son of Henry, second Earl and first Duke of Portland : he died in 1759. WRIGHT. 5 Thomas Brand, of the Hoo, in Hertfordshire, Esq., married to Lady Caroline Pierrepoint, daughter (by his second wife) of the Duke of Kingston, and half-sister of Lady Mary Wortley. WEIGHT. jg HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1739. We shall stay here about a fortnight longer, and then go to Rheims with Mr. Conway for two or three months. "When you have nothing else to do, we shall be glad to hear from you; and any news. If we did not remember there was such a place as England, we should know nothing of it : the French never mention it, unless it happens to be in one of their proverbs. Adieu ! Yours ever. To-morrow we go to the Cid. They have no farces, but petites pieces like our ' Devil to Pay.' ' 13. TO RICHARD WEST, ESQ. DEAR WEST : From Paris, 1739. I SHOULD think myself to blame not to. 'try to divert you, when you tell me I can. From the air of your letter you seem to want amusement, that is, you want spirits. I would recommend to you certain little employments that I know of, and that belong to you, but that I imagine bodily exercise is more suitable to your complaint. If you would promise me to read them in the Temple garden, I would send you a little packet of plays and pamphlets that we have made up, and intend to dispatch to ' Dick's ' 2 the first opportunity. Stand by, clear the way, make room for the pompoms appearance of Versailles le Grand ! But no : it fell so short of my idea of it, mine, that I have resigned to Gray the office of writing its pane- gyric. 3 He likes it. They say I am to like it better next Sunday ; when the sun is to shine, the king is to be fine, the water- works are to play, and the new knights of the Holy Ghost are to be installed ! Ever since Wednesday, the day we were there, we have done nothing but dispute about it. They say, we did not see it to advantage, that we ran through the apartments, saw the garden en passant, and slubbered over Trianon. I say, we saw nothing. However, we had time to see that the great front is a lumber of littleness, composed of black brick, stuck full of bad old busts, and fringed with gold rails. 1 A Ballad Opera, by Coffey, produced at Drury Lane, 6th Aug. 1730. Mrs. Clive (then Miss Raftor), of whom we read so much in Walpole's Letters, made her first reputation as ' Nell ' in this piece. CUNNINGHAM. * A celebrated coffee-house, near the Temple-gate, in Fleet Street, where (1 720 1770) quarto poems and pamphlets were taken in, much in the same way that news- papers are now (1856). CUNNINGHAM. 3 For Gray's description of Versailles, which he styles " a huge heap of littleness," see his letter to West of the 22nd of May, 1739. (Works, by Mitford, vol. ii. p. 46.) WRIGHT. HORACE WALP01E, A M1NIATCTE.E IW B HAM E _L TOAMEHiY AT STRAWBK.R 1 r HI1.L . 1739.] TO MB. WEST. 19 The rooms are all small, except the great gallery, which is noble, but totally wainscoted with looking-glass. The garden is littered with statues and fountains, each of which has its tutelary deity. In particular, the elementary god of fire solaces himself in one. In another, Enceladus, in lieu of a mountain, is overwhelmed with many waters. There are avenues of water-pots, who disport themselves much in squirting up cascadelins. In short, 'tis a garden for a great child. Such was Louis Quatorze, who is here seen in his proper colours, where he commanded in person, unassisted by his armies and generals, and left to the pursuit of his own puerile ideas of glory. We saw last week a place of another kind, and which has more the air of what it would be, than anything I have yet met with : it was the convent of the Chartreux. All the conveniences, or rather (if there was such a word) all the adaptments are assem- bled here, that melancholy, meditation, selfish devotion, and despair would require. But yet 'tis pleasing. Soften the terms, and mellow the uncouth horror that reigns here, but a little, and 'tis a charming solitude. It stands on a large space of ground, is old and irregular. The chapel is gloomy : behind it, through some dark passages, you pass into a large obscure hall, which looks like a combination-chamber for some hellish council. The large cloister surrounds their burying-ground. The cloisters are very narrow and very long, and let into the cells, which are built like little huts detached from each other. "We were carried into one, where lived a middle-aged man not long initiated into the order. He was extremely civil, and called himself Dom Victor. "We have promised to visit him often. Their habit is all white : but besides this he was infinitely clean in his person ; and his apartment and garden, which he keeps and cultivates without any assistance, was neat to a degree. He has four little rooms, furnished in the prettiest manner, and hung with good prints. One of them is a library, and another a gallery. He has several canary-birds disposed in a pretty manner in breeding-cages. In his garden was a bed of good tulips in bloom, flowers and fruit-trees, and all neatly kept. They are permitted at certain hours to talk to strangers, but never to one another, or to go out of their convent. But what we chiefly went to see was the small cloister, with the history of St. Bruno, their founder, painted by Le Soeur. It consists of twenty-two pictures, the figures a good deal less than life. But sure they are amazing ! I don't know what Raphael may be in Home, but these pictures excel all I have seen in Paris and England. The figure of the o 2 20 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1739. dead man who spoke at his burial, contains all the strongest and horridest ideas, of ghastliness, hypocrisy discovered, and the height of damnation, pain and cursing. A Benedictine monk, who was there at the same time, said to me of this picture : C'est tine fable, mais on la croyoit autrefois. Another, who showed me relics in one of their churches, expressed as much ridicule for them. The pic- tures I have been speaking of are ill preserved, and some of the finest heads defaced, which was done at first by a rival of Le SOBUT'S. Adieu ! dear West, take care of your health ; and some time or other we will talk over all these things with more pleasure than I have had in seeing them. Yours ever. 14. TO RICHARD WEST, ESQ. DEAR WEST : Rheims, 1 June 18, 1739, N. S. How I am to fill up this letter is not easy to divine. I have consented that Gray shall give you an account of our situation and proceedings ; 2 and have left myself at the mercy of my own inven- tion a most terrible resource, and which I shall avoid applying to if I can possibly help it. I had prepared the ingredients for a description of a ball, and was just ready to serve it up to you, but he has plucked it from me. However, I was resolved to give you an account of a particular song and dance in it, and was determined to write the words and sing the tune just as I folded up my letter : but as it would, ten to one, be opened before it gets to you, I am forced to lay aside this thought, though an admirable one. Well, but now I have put it into your head, I suppose you won't rest without it. For that individual one, believe me, 'tis nothing with- out the tune and the dance ; but to stay your stomach, I will send you one of their vaudevilles or ballads, 3 which they sing at the comedy after their petites pieces. You must not wonder if all my letters resemble dictionaries, with French on one side and English on t'other ; I deal in nothing else 1 From Paris, after a stay of about two months, we went with my cousin, Henry Conway, to Rheims, in Champagne, stayed there three months ; and passing by Geneva, where we left Mr. Conway, Mr. Gray and I went by Lyons to Turin over the Alps, and from thence to Genoa, Parma, Placentia, Modena, Bologna, and Florence. Walpole (Short Notes of his Life). CUNNINGHAM. 2 Gray's letter to West has not been preserved ; but one to his mother, on the 21st of June, containing an account of Rheims, is printed in his Works [by Mitford], vol. ii. p. 50. WEIGHT. 3 This ballad does not appear. BERKY. 1739.] WEST TO WALPOLE. 21 at present, and talk a couple of words of each language alternately from, morning till night. This has put my mouth a little out of tune at present ; but I am trying to recover the use of it by reading the newspapers aloud at breakfast, and by chewing the title-pages of all my English books. Besides this, I have paraphrased half the first act of your new ' Gustavus,' l which was sent us to Paris : a most dainty performance, and just what you say of it. Good night, I am sure you must be tired : if you are not, I am. Yours ever. 15. WEST TO HORACE WALPOLE. DEAR WALPOLE : Temple, June 21, 1739. YOUR last letter puts me in mind of some good people, who, though they give you the best dinner in the world, are never satis- fied with themselves, but wish they had known sooner quite ashamed a little unprepared hope you'll excuse, and so forth : for you tell me, you only send me this to stay my stomach against you are better furnished, and at the same time you treat me, ut nunquam in vita melius. Nor is it now alone I have room to say so, but 'tis always : and I know I had rather gather the crumbs that fall from under your table, than be a prime guest with most other people. Sincerely, sir, nobody in Great Britain, nor, I believe, in France, keeps a more elegant table than yourself: mistake me not, I mean a metaphorical one, for else I should He confoundedly ; for you know you did not use to keep a very extraordinary one, at least when I had the honour to dine with you : boiled chickens and roast legs of mutton were your highest effort. But with the metaphor, the case is quite altered : 'tis no longer chapon toujours bouilli : 'tis varium et mutabik semper enough, I am sure : 'tis Italo perfusus aceto : 'tis iota merum sal : you see too, it has a particu- larity, which perhaps you did not know before, that it is of all genders, and is masculine, feminine, or neuter, which you please. Your feasts are like Plato's : one feeds upon them for two or three days together, et & conviwo sapientiores resurgimus qudm accubuimus. So it is with me ; and I never receive any of your tables, or tabulae, for you know 'tis the same thing, but I exclaim to myself, D! magni ! salicippium disertum ! 1 Gustavus Vasa, a tragedy, by Henry Brooke, author of The Fool of Quality : the first play prohibited by Sir Robert Walpole's Act for Licensing Plays. Brooke was recompensed by a very liberal public subscription. CUNNINGHAM. 22 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1739. If you don't understand this line, you must consult with Doctor Bentley's nephew, who thinks nobody can understand it without him ; when after all it does not signify a brass farthing whether you understand it or no. But, sir, this is not all : you not only treat me with a whole bushel of attic salt, and a gallon of Italian vinegar, but you give me some English-French music a vaudeville in both languages ! Docte sermones utriusque linguae But now I talk of music at a feast ; I'll tell you of a feast and music too. About a fortnight ago, walking through Leicester-fields, I ran full-butt against somebody. Upon examination, who should it be but Mr. A ? I mean the nephew of the lord of So we saluted very amicably, and I engaged to sup with him Thursday next. To his lodgings I went on Thursday, and there I found Plato, Puffendorf, and Prato (can't you guess who they be ?). A very good supper we had, and Plato gave your health. I believe he is in love. Did you ever hear of Nanny Blundel ? But I forget our music. We had, sir, for an hour or two, an Ethiopian, belonging to the Duchess of Athol, who played to us upon the French-horn. A made me laugh about him very much. I said, I suppose you give this Ethiopian something to drink ? Upon which he ordered him half-a-crown. I said, So much ? Oh ! he's only a Black, answered he. Puffendorf (who you know says good things sometimes) said, not amiss, Oh, sir, if he had been a White, he'd have given him a crown. I don't pretend to compare our supper with your partie de cabaret at Ptheims ; but at least, sir, our materials were more sterling than yours. You had a goute forsooth, composed of des fraises, de la creme, du vin, des gateaux, &c. We, sir, we supped a 1'Angloise. Imprimis, we had buttock of beef, and Yorkshire ham; we had chickens too, and a gallon bowl of sallad, and a gooseberry pye as big as anything. , Now, sir, not- withstanding (do you know what this notwithstanding relates to ? I'll mark the cue for you 'tis ) notwithstanding, I say, I am neither solcrs cithara-, twque musce deditus ulli, as you are ; yet, as I am very vain, and apt to have a high opinion of my own poetry, I have a mind to treat you as elegantly as you have treated me as you remember a certain doctor at King's College did the Duke of Devonshire and so have prepared you a little sort of musical accompagnamento for your entertainment. Tis true, I said to myself very often 1739.] WEST TO WALPOLE. 28 An quodcunque facit Maecenas, Tc quoque veruin est, Tanto dissimilem, et tanto certare minorem ? Then I reflected Ut gratas inter mensas symphonia discors, Et crassum unguentum, et Sardo cum melle papaver, Offendunt ; poterat duel quia coena sine illis ; Sicanimis natum inventumque poema juvandis, Si paulum summo discessit, vergit ad imum. Yet in spite of these two long quotations (which I made no other use of than what you see) I still determined to scrape a little, and accord- ingly have sent you, in lieu of your vaudeville, a miserable elegy. 1 I dare say you wish you could shake the pen out of my hand. But I don't know how it is ; I am at present in a vein to make up for the dryness of most of my former letters since you have been abroad ; and I can't tell but I may fill up this sheet, if not another, with more such trumpery. I forgot all this while to thank for the packet which I have received, and which was more welcome to me than an Amiens-pye ; for I can't help running on upon the metaphor I set out with ; and you know I always was a heluo librorum. The first thing I pitched upon was Crebillon's love-letters, allured by the garnishing, I fancy ; that is, the red leaves and the blue silk kalendar. 'Tis an ingenious account of the progress of love in a very virtuous lady's heart, and how a fine gentleman may first gain her approbation, then her esteem, then her heart, and then her you know what. But don't you think it ends a little too tragically ? For my part, I protest, I was very sorry the last letter made me cry. But the passions are charmingly described all through, and the language is fine. After this I would have read the Amusement Philosophique ; but Asheton has run away with it Callidus, quicquid placuit jocoso Condere furto. Very jocose indeed to rob a body ! So I ha'n't seen it since. Gustave is no bad thing, as far as I can judge. One may see the author was young when he wrote it, and it looks to me like a first play of an author. But the language is natural, and in many places poetical. The plot is very entertaining, only I don't like the con- clusion. It ends abrupt, and Leonor comes in at last too much like an apparition. The rest of the pieces I have not read ; but from 1 This elegy does not appear. BBKBY. 24 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1739. what I can discover by a transient view, I fancy they are hotter seen than read. I am now at the eighth page : 'tis time to have done, and wish you adieu. I hear Sir Robert is very well. My Lord Conway is reckoned one of the prettiest persons about town. Yours ever, R. WEST. 16. TO RICHARD WEST, ESQ. Rheims, July 20, 1739. GRAY says, Indeed you ought to write to West. Lord, child, so I would, if I knew what to write about. If I were in London and he at Rheims, I would send him volumes about peace and war, Spaniards, camps, and conventions ; but d'ye think he cares sixpence to know who is gone to Compiegne, and when they come back, or who won and lost four livres at quadrille last night at Mr. Cockbert's ? No, but you may tell him what you have heard of Compiegne ; that they have balls twice a week after the play, and that the Count d'Eu gave the king a most flaring entertainment in the camp, where the Polygone was represented in flowering shrubs. Dear West, these are the things I must tell you ; I don't know how to make 'em look significant, unless you will be a Rhemois for a little moment. 1 I wonder you can stay out of the city so long, when we are going to have all manner of diversions. The comedians return hither from Compiegne in eight days, for example ; and in a very little of time one attends the regiment of the king, three battalions and an hundred of officers ; all men of a certain fashion, very amiable, and who know their world. Our women grow more gay, more lively, from day to day, in expecting them ; Mademoiselle la Reine is brewing a wash of a finer dye, and brushing up her eyes for their arrival. La Baronne already counts upon fifteen of them : and Madame Lelu, finding her linen robe conceals too many beauties, has bespoke one of gauze. I won't plague you any longer with people you don't know, I mean French ones ; for you must absolutely hear of an Englishman that lately appeared at Rheims. About two days ago, about four o'clock in the afternoon, and about an hour after dinner, from all which you may conclude we dine at two o'clock, as we were 1 The three following paragraphs are a literal translation of French expressions to the same import. BERRY. 1739.] TO MR. WEST. 25 picking our teeth round a littered table and in a crumby room, Gray in an undress, Mr. Conway in a morning grey coat, and I in a trim white night-gown and slippers, very much out of order, with a very little cold, a message discomposed us all of a sudden, with a service to Mr. "Walpole from Mr. More, and that, if he pleased, he would wait on him. We scuttle upstairs in great confusion, but with no other damage than the flinging down two or three glasses and the dropping a slipper by the way. Having ordered the room to be cleaned out, and sent a very civil response to Mr. More, we began to consider who Mr. More should be. Is it Mr. More of Paris? No. Oh, 'tis Mr. More, my Lady Teynham's husband? No, it can't be he. A Mr. More, then, that lives in the Halifax family ? No. In short, after thinking of ten thousand more Mr. Mores, we concluded it could never be a one of 'em. By this time Mr. More arrives ; but such a Mr. More ! a young gentleman out of the wilds of Ireland, who has never been in England, but has got all the ordinary language of that kingdom ; has been two years at Paris, where he dined at an ordinary with the refugee Irish, and learnt fortifications, which he does not understand at all, and which yet is the only thing he knows. In short, he is a young swain of very uncouth phrase, inarticulate speech, and no ideas. This hopeful child is riding post into Lorrain, or any where else, he is not certain ; for if there is a war he shall go home again : for we must give the Spaniards another drubbing, you know ; and if the Dutch do but join us, we shall blow up all the ports in Europe ; for our ships are our bastions, and our ravelines, and our hornworks ; and there's a devilish wide ditch for 'em to pass, which they can't fill up with things Here Mr. Conway helped him to fascines. By this time I imagine you have laughed at him as much, and were as tired of him as we were : but he's gone. This is the day that Gray and I intended for the first of a southern circuit ; but as Mr. Selwyn ' and George Montagu design us a visit here, we have put off our journey for some weeks. When we get a little farther, I hope our niemoires will brighten : at present they are but dull, dull as Your humble servant ever. P.S. I thank you ten thousand times for your last letter : when I have as much wit and as much poetry in me, I'll send you as good an one. Good night, child ! 1 George Augustus Selwyn, the wit (born 1719, died 1791), whose name and good sayings are of constant occurrence in Walpole's Correspondence. He was at Eton with Walpole, who was about two years his senior. CUNNINGHAM. 26 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1739. 17. TO RICHARD WEST, ESQ. From a Hamlet among the Mountains of Savoy, Sept. 28, 1739, N. S. PRECIPICES, mountains, torrents, wolves, rumblings, Salvator Rosa the pomp of our park and the meekness of our palace ! Here we are, the lonely lords of glorious, desolate prospects. I have kept a sort of resolution which I made, of not writing to you as long as I staid in France : I am now a quarter of an hour out of it, and write to you. Mind, 'tis three months since we heard from you. I begin this letter among the clouds ; where I shall finish, my neighbour Heaven probably knows : 'tis an odd wish in a mortal letter, to hope not to finish it on this side the atmosphere. You will have a billet tumble to you from the stars when you least think of it ; and that I should write it too ! Lord, how potent that sounds ! But I am to undergo many transmigrations before I come to " yours ever." Yesterday I was a shepherd of Dauphine ; to-day an Alpine savage ; to-morrow a Carthusian monk ; and Friday a Swiss Calvinist. I have one quality which I find remains with me in all worlds and in all others ; I brought it with me from your world, and am admired for it in this 'tis my esteem for you : this is a common thought among you, and you will laugh at it, but it is new here : as new to remember one's friends in the world one has left, as for you to remember those you have lost. Aix in Savoy, Sept. SOth. WE are this minute come in here, and here's an awkward abbe this minute come in to us. I asked him if he would sit down. Out, old, out. He has ordered us a radish soup for supper, and has brought a chess-board to play with Mr. Conway. I have left 'em in the act, and am set down to write to you. Did you ever see any thing like the prospect we saw yesterday ? I never did. We rode three leagues to see the Grande Chartreuse ; ' expected bad roads and the finest convent in the kingdom. We were disappointed pro and con. The building is large and plain, and has nothing remark- able but its primitive simplicity ; they entertained us in the neatest manner, with eggs, pickled salmon, dried fish, conserves, cheese, butter, grapes, and figs, and pressed us mightily to lie there. We tumbled into the hands of a lay-brother, who, unluckily having the charge of the meal and bran, snowed us little besides. They desired 1 Where Gray wrote the Alcaic Ode, printed in his Works. CUNNINGHAM. 1739.] TO MR. WEST. 27 us to set down our names in the list of strangers, where, among others, we found two mottos of our countrymen, for whose stupidity and brutality we blushed. The first was of Sir J***D*** ? who had wrote down the first stanza of Justum et tenacem, altering the last line to Mente quatit Carthusiana. The second was of one D * *, Coelum ipsum petimus stultitid ; et hie ventri indico bellum. The Goth ! But the road, "West, the road ! winding round a prodigious mountain, and surrounded with others, all shagged with hanging woods, obscured with pines, or lost in clouds ! Below, a torrent breaking through cliffs, and tumbling through fragments of rocks ! Sheets of cascades forcing their silver speed down channelled precipices, and hasting into the roughened river at the bottom ! Now and then an old foot-bridge, with a broken rail, a leaning cross, a cottage, or the ruin of an hermitage ! This sounds too bombast and too romantic to one that has not seen it, too cold for one that has. If I could send you my letter post between two lovely tempests that echoed each other's wrath, you might have some idea of this noble roaring scene, as you were reading it. Almost on the summit, upon a fine verdure, but without any prospect, stands the Chartreuse. We staid there two hours, rode back through this charming picture, wished for a painter, wished to be poets ! Need I tell you we wished for you ? Good night ! Geneva, Oct. 2. BY beginning a new date, I should begin a new letter ; but I have seen nothing yet, and the post is going out : 'tis a strange tumbled dab, and dirty too, I am sending you ; but what can I do ? There is no possibility of writing such a long history over again. I find there are many English in the town ; Lord Brook, 1 Lord Mansel, 2 Lord Hervey's eldest son, 3 and a son of of Mars and Yenus, or of Antony and Cleopatra, or, in short, of . This is the boy, in the bow of whose hat Mr. Hedges 4 pinned a pretty epigram. I don't know if you ever heard it : I'll suppose you never did, because it will fill up my letter : Give but Cupid's dart to me, Another Cupid I shall be ; No more distinguish'd from the other, Than Venus would be from my mother. 1 Francis Greville, eighth Lord Brooke, afterwards Earl of Warwick. CUNNINGHAM. 2 Thomas Lord Mansell, who died in 1744, without issue. WEIGHT. 3 George William Hervey, who succeeded his grandfather as Earl of Bristol in 1751, and died unmarried in 1775. WRIGHT. 4 Charles Hedges (son of Sir Charles Hedges, Secretary of State in the reign of Queen Anne), Minister in Turin and Secretary to Frederick Prince of Wales. "He was," says 28 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1739. Scandal says, Hedges thought the two last very like ; and it says too, that she was not his enemy for thinking so. Adieu! Gray and I return to Lyons in three days. Harry [Mr. Conway] stays here. Perhaps at our return we may find a letter from you : it ought to be very full of excuses, for you have heen a lazy creature ; I hope you have, for I would not owe your silence to any other reason. Yours ever. 18. TO RICHARD WEST, ESQ. Turin, Nov. 11, 1739, N. S. So, as the song says, we are in fair Italy ! I wonder we are ; for on the very highest precipice of Mount Cenis, the devil of discord, in the similitude of sour wine, had got amongst our Alpine savages, and set them a-fighting with Gray and me in the chairs : they rushed him by me on a crag, where there was scarce room for a cloven foot. The least slip had tumbled us into such a fog, and such an eternity, as we should never have found our way out of again. We were eight days in coming hither from Lyons ; the four last in crossing the Alps. Such uncouth rocks, and such uncomely inhabitants ! My dear West, I hope I shall never see them again ! At the foot of Mount Cenis we were obliged to quit our chaise, which was taken all to pieces and loaded on mules ; and we were carried in low arm-chairs on poles, swathed in beaver bonnets, beaver gloves, beaver stockings, muffs, and bear-skins. When we came to the top, behold the snows fallen ! and such quantities, and conducted by such heavy clouds that hung glouting, that I thought we could never have waded through them. The descent is two leagues, but steep and rough as * * * * father's face, over which, you know, the devil walked with hobnails in his shoes. But the dexterity and nimble- ness of the mountaineers are inconceivable : they run with you down steeps and frozen precipices, where no man, as men are now, could possibly walk. We had twelve men and nine mules to carry us, our servants, and baggage, and were above five hours in this agreeable jaunt ! The day before, I had a cruel accident, and so extraordinary an one, that it seems to touch upon the traveller. I had brought with me a little black spaniel of King Charles's breed ; but the prettiest, fattest, dearest creature ! I had let it out of the chaise for Walpole in his Memoires, "a man much in fashion, and a pretty Latin poet." His brother John was Treasurer to the Prince of Wales, and shared the favours of Mrs. Oldficld. CUNNINGHAM. 1739.] TO MR. WEST. 29 the air, and it was waddling along close to the head of the horses, on the top of the highest Alps, by the side of a wood of firs. There darted out a young wolf, seized poor dear Tory ' by the throat, and, before we could possibly prevent it, sprung up the side of the rock and carried him off. The postilion jumped off and struck at him with his whip, but in vain. I saw it and screamed, but in vain ; for the road was so narrow, that the servants that were behind could not get by the chaise to shoot him. What is the extraordinary part is, that it was but two o'clock, and broad sunshine. It was shocking to see anything one loved run away with to so horrid a death. Just coming out of Chamberri, which is a little nasty old hole, I copied an inscription set up at the end of a great road, which was practised through an immense solid rock by bursting it asunder with gunpowder. The Latin is pretty enough, and so I send it you ;^ " Carolus Emanuel II. Sab. dux, Pedem. princeps, Cypri rex, publica felicitate parta, singulorum commodis intentus, breviorem securioremque viam regiam, natura occlusam, Romania intentatam, caeteris desperatam, dejectis scopulorum repagulis, eequata montium iniquitate, quae cervicibus imminebant precipitia pedibus subster- nens, aeternis populorum commerciis patefecit. A.D. 1670." We passed the Pas de Suze, where is a strong fortress on a rock, between two very neighbouring mountains ; and then, through a fine avenue of three leagues, we at last discovered Turin : E 1'un a 1'altro mostra, ed in tanto obblia La noia, e'l mal della passata via. 'Tis really by far one of the prettiest cities I have seen ; not one of your large straggling ones that can afford to have twenty dirty suburbs, but clean and compact, very new and very regular. The king's palace is not of the proudest without, but of the richest within ; painted, gilt, looking-glassed, very costly, but very tawdry ; in short, a very popular palace. We were last night at the Italian comedy the devil of a house and the devil of actors ! Besides this, there is a sort of an heroic tragedy, called La rappresentazione deW Anima Damnata? A woman, a sinner, comes in and makes a solemn 1 This incident is described also by Gray in one of his letters to his mother. WRIGHT. 2 In spite of the excellence of the actors, the greatest part of the entertainment to me was the countenances of the people in the pit and boxes. When the devils were like to carry off the Damned Soul, everybody was in the utmost consternation ; and when St. John spoke so obligingly to her, they were ready to cry out for joy. When the Virgin appeared on the stage, everybody looked respectful ; and, on several words spoke by the actors, they pulled off their hats, and crossed themselves. What can you think of a people, where their very farces are religious, and where they are so religiously received 1 Spence to his Mother, Turin, 2nd Dec., 1739. WRIGHT. 30 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1739. prayer to the Trinity : enter Jesus Christ and the Virgin : he scolds, and exit : she tells the woman her son is very angry, but she don't know, she will see what she can do. After the play we were intro- duced to the assembly, which they call the conversazione ; there were many people playing at ombre, pharaoh, and a game called taroc, with cards so high, 1 to the number of seventy-eight. There are three or four English here ; Lord Lincoln, 2 with Spence, 3 your Professor of Poetry ; a Mr. B * * *, and a Mr. C * * *, a man that never utters a syllable. We have tried all stratagems to make him speak. Yesterday he did at last open his mouth, and said Bee. We all laughed so at the novelty of the thing that he shut it again, and will never speak more. I think you can't complain now of my not writing to you. What a volume of trifles ! I wrote just the fellow to it from Geneva ; had it you ? Farewell ! Thine. 19. WEST TO HORACE WALPOLE. DEAR WALPOLE : Temple, Dec. 13, 1739. Bee ! for I have not spoke to-day, and therefore I am resolved to speak to you first. Asheton is of opinion you have read Herodotus ; but I imagine no such thing, and verily believe the gentleman to be a Phcanician. I can't forgive Mont Cenis poor Tory's death ! I can assure her I'll never sing her panegyric, unless she serves all her wolves as Edgar the Peaceable did. It did touch a little upon the traveller. What do you think it put me in mind of ? Not a bit like, but it put me in mind of poor Mrs. Rider in Cleveland, where she's tore to pieces by the savages. I can't say I much like your Alps by the description you give ; but still I have a strange ambition to be where Hannibal was : it must be a pretty thing to fetch a walk in the clouds, and to have the snow up to one's ears. But I am really surprised at your going two leagues in five hours : a'n't it prodigious quick, to go down such a terrible descent ? The inscrip- 1 In the manuscript the writing of this word is extraordinarily tall. BERRY. 2 Henry Fiennes (Pelham) Clinton, ninth Earl of Lincoln, succeeded, in 1768, as Duke of Newcastle-under-Lyme, on the death of the minister Duke of Newcastle. Sir Charles Hanbury Williams celebrated his prowess with the fair in an indecent Ode. Lady Mary Wortley was particularly fond of him. He married, in 1744, his cousin Catherine, daughter and heiress of the minister Mr. Pelham. Lady Lincoln died 27th July, 1760. Lord Lincoln was born in 1720, and died 22nd February, 1794. CUNNINGHAM. 3 The Rev. Joseph Spence, Professor of Poetry at Oxford, died 1768 (see p. 64), b st known by his volume of Anecdotes. " He was," says Walpole (to Cole, May 19, 1780) "more like a silver penny than a genius." CUNNINGHAM. 1739.] TO MR. WEST. 31 tion you mention is very pretty Latin. I see already you like Italy better than France and all its works. When shall you he at Rome ? Middleton, I think, says, you find there everything you find every- where else. I expect volume upon volume there. Do you never write folios as well as quartos ? You know I am a heluo of every- thing of that kind, and I am never so happy as when verbosa et grandis epistola venit We have strange news here in town, if it he hut true : we hear of a sea-fight between six of our men of war and ten Spanish ; and that we sunk one and took five. I should not forget that Mr. Pelham ' has lost two only children at a stroke : 'tis a terrible loss : they died of a sort of sore-throat. To muster up all sort of news : Glover * has put out on this occasion a new poem, called London, or The Progress of Commerce ; wherein he very much extols a certain Dutch poet, called Janus Douza, and compares him to Sophocles : I suppose he does it to make interest upon 'Change. Plays we have none, or damned ones. Handel has had a concerto this winter. No opera, no nothing. All for war and Admiral Haddock. Farewell and adieu ! Yours, R. WEST. 20; TO RICHARD WEST, ESQ. From Bologna, 1739. I DON'T know why I told Ashton I would send you an account of what I saw : don't believe it, I don't intend it. Only think what a vile employment 'tis, making catalogues !' And then one should have that odious Curl 3 get at one's letters, and publish them like Whitfield's Journal, or for a supplement to the Traveller's Pocket- companion. Dear West, I protest against having seen anything but what all the world has seen ; nay, I have not seen half that, not some of the most common things ; not so much as a miracle. Well, but you don't expect it, do you ? Except pictures and statues, we are not very fond of sights ; don't go a staring after crooked towers and conundrum staircases. Don't you hate, too, a jingling epitaph 4 1 The Right Honourable Henry Pelham, brother of the minister Duke of New- castle, and Prime Minister himself at the time of his death in 1754. CUNNINGHAM. * Richard Glover, author of Leonidas, died 1785. West's father was the maternal uncle of Glover, and in the Inner Temple Hall is a portrait of Lord Chan- cellor West, presented by Glover. CUNNINGHAM. 3 Edmund Curll, the notorious bookseller. He died in 1747, aged seventy-two. CUNNINGHAM. Si procul a Proculo Proculi campana fuisset, Jam procul a Proculo Proculus ipse foret. A.D. 1392. Epitaph on the outside of the wall of the church of St. Proculo. BEERY. 82 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1739 of one Procul and one Proculus that is here ? Now and then we drop in at a procession, or a high-mass, hear the music, enjoy a strange attire, and hate the foul monkhood. Last week was the feast of the Immaculate Conception. On the eve we went to the Franciscans' church to hear the academical exercises. There were moult and moult clergy, ahout two dozen dames, that treated one another with illustrissima and brown kisses, the vice-legate, the gonfalonier, and some senate. The vice-legate, whose conception was not quite so immaculate, is a young personable person, of about twenty, and had on a mighty pretty cardinal-kind of habit ; 'twou'd make a delightful masquerade dress. "We asked his name : Spinola. What, a nephew of the cardinal-legate ? Signor, no : ma credo die gli sia qualche cosa. He sat on the right-hand with the gonfalonier in two purple fauteuils. Opposite was a throne of crimson damask, with the device of the Academy, the Gelati ; and trimmings of gold. Here sat at a table, in black, the head of the academy, between the orator and the first poet. At two semicircular tables on either hand sat three poets and three ; silent among many candles. The chief made a little introduction, the orator a long Italian vile harangue. Then the chief, the poet, the poets, who were a Franciscan, an Olivetan, an old abbe, and three lay, read their compositions ; and to-day they are pasted up in all parts of the town. As we came out of the church, we found all the convent and neighbouring houses lighted all over with lanthorns of red and yellow paper, and two bon- fires. But you are sick of this foolish ceremony ; I'll carry you to no more : I will only mention, that we found the Dominicans' church here in mourning for the inquisitor ; 'twas all hung with black cloth, furbelowed and festooned with yellow gauze. We have seen a furniture here in a much prettier taste ; a gallery of Count Caprara's : in the panels between the windows are pendent trophies of various arms taken by one of his ancestors from the Turks. They are whimsical, romantic, and have a pretty effect. I looked about, but could not perceive the portrait of the lady at whose feet they were indisputably offered. In coming out of Genoa we were more lucky ; found the very spot where Horatio and Lothario were to have fought, " west of the toum, a mile among the rocks." My dear West, in return for your epigrams of Prior, I will tran- scribe some old verses too, but which I fancy I can show you in a sort of a new light. They are no newer than Virgil, and, what is more odd, are in the second Georgic. 'Tis, that I have observed that he not only excels when he is like himself, but even when he is 1740.] WEST TO WALPOLE. 33 very like inferior poets : you will say that they rather excel by being like him : but mind, they are all near one another : Si non ingentem foribus domus alta superbis Mane salutantum totis vomit aedibus undam : And the four next lines ; are they not just like Martial ? In the following he is as much Claudian ; Ilium non populi fasces, non purpura regum Flexit, efc infidos agitans discordia fratres ; Aut conjurato descendens Dacus ab Istro. Then who are these like ? nee ferrea jura, Insanumque forum, aut populi tabularia vidit. Sollicitant alii remis freta cases,, ruuntque In ferrum, penetrant aulas et limina regum. Hie petit ezcidiis urbem miserosque Penates, Ut gemma bibat, et Sarrano indormiat ostro. r~ Don't they seem to be Juvenal's ? There are some more, which to me resemble Horace ; but perhaps I think so from his having some on a parallel subject. Tell me if I am mistaken ; these are they : Interea dulces pendent circum oscula nati : Casta pudicitiam servat domus inclusively to the end of these : Hanc olim veteres vitam cohere Sabini ; Hanc Remus et frater : sic fortis Etruria crevit, Scilicet et rerum facta est pulcherrima Roma. If the imagination is whimsical ; why, at least 'tis like me to have imagined it. Adieu, child ! We leave Bologna to-morrow. You know 'tis the third city in Italy for pictures : knowing that, you know all. We shall be three days crossing the Apennine to Florence : would it were over ! My dear West, I am yours from St. Peter's to St. Paul's ! 21. WEST TO HORACE WALPOLE. Jan. 23, 1740. IT thaws, it thaws, it thaws ! A'n't you glad of it ? I can assure you we are : we have been this four weeks a-freezing : our Thames has been in chains, our streets almost unpassable with snow, and dirt, and ice, and all our vegetables and animals in distress. Eeally, 84 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1740. such a frost as ours has been is a melancholy thing. I don't wonder now that whole nations have worshipped the sun ; I am almost inclined myself to he a Guebre : tell Orosmades [Gray] . I believe you think I'm mad ; but you would not if you knew what it was to want the sun as we do : 'tis a general frost delivery. Heaven grant the thaw may last ! for 'tis a question. Your last letter, my dear Walpole, is welcome. I thank you for its longitude, and all its parallel lines. You have rather transcribed too many lines out of Virgil : but your criticism I agree with, with- out any hesitation. Whimsical, quotha : 'tis just and new. You might have added Ovid Quos rami fructus, quos ipsa and Statius : At secura quies and what follows down to * Non absunt But what do you think ? Your observations have set me a-translating, and Ashton has told me it was worth sending. 1 Excuse it, 'tis a tramontane. I shall certainly publish your letters. But now I think on't, I won't : I should make Pope quite angry. Addio, mio caro, addio ! Dove sei ? Ritorna, ritorna, amato bene ! Yours from St. Paul's to St. Peter's ! R. WEST. I believe you must send my translation to the academy of the Gelati. My love to Gray, aud pray tell him from me "^uos 8e 22. TO RICHARD WEST, ESQ. DEAR WEST : Florence, Jan. 24, 1740, N.S. I DON'T know what volumes I may send you from Rome ; from Florence I have little inclination to send you any. I see several things that please me calmly, but d force d'en avoir vu I have left off 1 This translation does not appear. BERRT. 2 " Cold is extremely inimical to thin habits of body." A fragment of Euripides quoted by Cicero. Vide let. 8, lib. 16, Epist. ad Fam. BERRY. 1740.] TO MR. WEST. 35 screaming Lord ! this ! and Lord ! that ! To speak sincerely, Calais surprised me more than any thing I have seen since. I recollect the joy I used to propose if I could but once see the Great Duke's gallery ; I walk into it now with as little emotion as I should into St. Paul's. The statues are a congregation of good sort of people, that I have a great deal of unruffled regard for. The farther I travel the less I wonder at any thing : a few days reconcile one to a new spot, or an unseen custom ; and men are so much the same every where, that one scarce perceives any change of situation. The same weaknesses, the same passions, that in England plunge men into elections, drinking, whoring, exist here, and show themselves in the shapes of Jesuits, Cicisbeos, and Corydon ardebat Alexins. The most remarkable thing I have observed since I came abroad, is, that there are no people so obviously mad as the English. The French, the Italians, have great follies, great faults ; but then they are so national, that they cease to be striking. In England, tempers vary so excessively, that almost every one's faults are peculiar to himself. I take this diversity to proceed partly from our climate, partly from our government : the first is changeable, and makes us queer ; the latter permits our queernesses to operate as they please. If one could avoid contracting this queerness, it must certainly be the most entertaining to live in England, where such a variety of incidents continually amuse. The incidents of a week in London would furnish all Italy with news for a twelvemonth. The only two circumstances of moment in the life of an Italian, that ever give occasion to their being mentioned, are, being married, and in a year after taking a cicisbeo. Ask the name, the husband, the wife, or the cicisbeo of any person, et- voild qui est fini. Thus, child, 'tis dull dealing here ! Methinks your Spanish war is little more lively. By the gravity of the proceedings, one would think both nations were Spaniard. Adieu ! Do you remember my maxim, that you used to laugh at ? Every body does every thing, and nothing comes ou't. I am more convinced of it now than ever. I don't know whether S * * * *'s was not still better, Well, 'gad, there is nothing in nothing. You see how I distil all my speculations and improve- ments, that they may lie in a small compass. Do you remember the story of the prince, that, after travelling three years, brought home nothing but a nut ? They cracked it : in it was wrapped up a piece of silk, painted with all the kings, queens, kingdoms, and every thing in the world : after many unfoldings, out stepped a little dog, shook his ears, and fell to dancing a saraband. There is a fairy D 2 36 ' HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1740. tale for you. If I had any thing as good as your old song, I would send it too ; but I can only thank you for it, and bid you good night. Yours ever. P. S. Upon reading niy letter, I perceive still plainer the sameness that reigns here ; for I find I have said the same things ten times over. I don't care ; I have made out a letter, and that was all my affair. 23. TO RICHARD WEST, ESQ. Florence, February 27, 1740, N.S. WELL, West, I have found a little unmasqued moment to write to you ; but for this week past I have been so muffled up in my domino, that I have not had the command of my elbows. But what have you been doing all the mornings ? Could you not write then ? No, then I was masqued too ; I have done nothing but slip out of my domino into bed, and out of bed into my domino. The end of the Carnival is frantic, bacchanalian ; all the morn one makes parties in masque to the shops and coffee-houses, and all the evening to the operas and balls. Then I have danced, good gods ! how have I danced! 1 The Italians are fond to a degree of our country dances : Cold and raw they only know by the tune ; Blou-zt/- bella is almost Italian, and Buttered peas is Pizetti al buro. There are but three days more ; but the two last are to have balls all the morning at the fine unfinished palace of the Strozzi ; and the Tuesday night a masquerade after supper: they sup first, to eat gras, and not encroach upon Ash- Wednesday. What makes masquerading more agreeable here than in England, is the great deference that is showed to the disguised. Here they do not catch at those little dirty opportunities of saying any ill-natured thing they know of you, do not abuse you because they may, or talk gross bawdy to a woman of quality. I found the other day, by a play of Etheridgc's, that we have had a sort of Carnival even since the Reformation ; 'tis in ' She icould if She could,' * they talk of going a-mumming in Shrove-tide. After talking so much of diversions, I fear you will attribute to them the fondness I own I contract for Florence ; but it has so 1 Parody on Nat Lee's description of Alexander the Great : " Then he will talk ! Good Gods ! how he will talk." CUNNINGHAM. 8 A comedy by Sir George Ethcrege. CUNNIKOHAM. 1740.] TO MR. WEST. 37 many other charms, that I shall not want excuses for my taste. The freedom of the Carnival has given me opportunities to make several acquaintances ; and if I have not found them refined, learned, polished, like some other cities, yet they are civil, good- natured, and fond of the English. Their little partiality for them- selves, opposed to the violent vanity of the French, makes them very amiahle in my eyes. I can give you a comical instance of their great prejudice about nobility ; it happened yesterday. While we were at dinner at Mr. Mann's, 1 word was brought by his secretary, that a cavalier demanded audience of him upon an affair of honour. Gray and I flew behind the curtain of the door. An elderly gentle- man, whose attire was not certainly correspondent to the greatness of his birth, entered, and informed the British minister, that one Martin, an English painter, 2 had left a challenge for him at his house, for having said Martin was no gentleman. He would by no means have spoke of the duel before the transaction of it, but that his honour, his blood, his &c. would never permit him to fight with one who was no cavalier ; which was what he came to inquire of his excellency. We laughed loud laughs, but unheard : his fright or his nobility had closed his ears. But mark the sequel: the instant he was gone, my very English curiosity hurried me out of the gate St. Gallo ; 'twas the place and hour appointed. We had not been driving about above ten minutes, but out popped a little figure, pale but cross, with beard unshaved and hair uncombed, a slouched hat, and a considerable red cloak, in which was wrapped, under his arm, the fatal sword that was to revenge the highly injured Mr. Martin, painter and defendant. I darted my head out of the coach, just ready to say, " Your servant, Mr. Martin," and talk about the architecture of the triumphal arch that was building there ; but he would not know me, and walked off. We left bim to 1 Horace Mann, Esq., better known as Sir Horace Mann, Walpole's relation and correspondent from 1741 to 1786, a period of forty-five years, during which period they never met. He was the son of Robert Mann, Deputy Treasurer of Chelsea Hospital, his brothers, Galfridus, James, and Edward were army clothiers. Mann was British Minister at Florence when Walpole visited Florence in 1741, and at his death he was still residing there as British Envoy at the Court of Tuscany. He was created a baronet in 1755. He died unmarried at Florence 16th November, 1786, and his remains were brought to "England by his nephew and heir, Sir Horace Mann, and buried at Linton, in Kent, where Walpole erected a monument to Sir Horace's twin brother Galfridus, who died in 1756. His letters to Walpole have been preserved, but they are mighty dull. CUNNINGHAM. 2 I presume David Martin, a Scottish portrait-painter of some note, now best known by his portraits of Pulteney Lord Bath, the great Lord Mansfield, Roubiliac, and Benjamin Franklin. CUNKINGII AM. 38 HOKACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1740. wait for an hour, to grow very cold and very valiant the more it grew past the hour of appointment. We were figuring all the poor creature's huddle of thoughts, and confused hopes of victory or fame, of his unfinished pictures, or his situation upon houncing into the next world. You will think us strange creatures ; but 'twas a pleasant sight, as we knew the poor painter was safe. I have thought of it since, and am inclined to believe that nothing but two English could have been capable of such a jaunt. I remember, 'twas reported in London, that the plague was at a house in the city, and all the town went to see it. I have this instant received your letter. Lord ! I am glad I thought of those parallel passages, since it made you translate them. 'Tis excessively near the original ; and yet, I don't know, 'tis very easy too. It snows here a little to-night, but it never lies but on the mountains. Adieu ! Yours ever. P. S. What is the history of the theatres this winter ? 24. TO THE HON. HENRY SEYMOUR CONWAY. 1 Florence, March 6, 1740, N.8. HARRY, my dear, one would tell you what a monster you are, if one were not sure your conscience tells you so every time you think of mei At Genoa, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and thirty-nine, I received the last letter from you ; by your not writing to me since, I imagine you propose to make this leap year. I should have sent many a scold after you in this long interval, had I known where to have scolded ; but you told me you should leave Geneva immediately. I have dispatched sundry inquiries into England after you, all fruitless. At last drops in a chance letter to Lady Sophy Farmor, 2 from a girl at Paris, that tells 1 Walpole's maternal cousin, the Mr. Conway and General Conway of this cor- respondence, second son of Francis Seymour Conway, first Lord Conway, by Charlotte Shorter, his third wife, sister of Lady Walpole. He was secretary in Ireland during the vice-royalty of William, fourth Duke of Devonshire ; groom of the Bed Chamber to George II. and to George III. ; Secretary of State in 1765 ; Lieutenant-Gcncral of the Ordnance in 1770; Commander-in-Chief in 1782; and a Field Marshal in 1793. He married Catherine Campbell, Dowager Countess of Aylcsbury, daughter of John, Duke of Argyll, by his wife Mary Bellenden the beauty, and was the father by Lady Aylesbury of an only child, Mrs. Darner the sculptor, to whom Walpole left Strawberry Hill. Walpole was more attached to Conwaythan to any other of his friends. Some of Conway's letters to Walpole are printed in the Appendix to the first volume of the Hockingham Memoirs. CUNNINGHAM. 2 Lady Sophia Fermor, daughter of the first Earl of Pomfret, married in 1744, THE HON B1E HENRY SEYMOUR CCHSTWAY. GENERAL .'H.MEK-LT IN THE COLLE CTIOTT ^T STK-AWBEKRT HI1L . 1740.] TO THE HON. MR. CONWAY. 39 her for news, Mr. Henry Conway is here. Is he, indeed ? and why was I to know it only by this scrambling way ? "Well, I hate you for this neglect, but I find I love you well enough to tell you so. But, dear now, don't let one fall into a train of excuses and re- proaches ; if the god of indolence is a mightier deity with you than the god of caring for one, tell me, and I won't dun you ; but will drop your correspondence as silently as if I owed you money. If my private consistency was of no weight with you, yet, is a man nothing who is within three days' journey of a Conclave ? Nay, for what you knew, I might have been in Rome. Harry, art thou so indifferent, as to have a cousin at the election of a Pope 1 without courting him for news ? I'll tell you, were I anywhere else, and even Dick Hammond a were at Rome, I think verily I should have wrote to Tn'm. Popes, cardinals, adorations, coronations, St. Peter's ! oh, what costly sounds ! and don't you write to one yet ? I shall set ouin about a fortnight, and pray then think me of consequence. I have crept on upon time from day to day here ; fond of Florence to a degree : 'tis infinitely the most agreeable of all the places I have seen since London : that you know one loves, right or wrong, as one does one's nurse. Our little Arno is not boated and swelling like the Thames, but 'tis vastly pretty, and, I don't know how, being Italian, has something visionary and poetical in its stream. Then one's unwilling to leave the gallery, and but in short, one's unwilling to get into a post-chaise. I am as surfeited with moun- tains and inns, as if I had eat them. I have many to pass before I see England again, and no Tory to entertain me on the road ! "Well, this thought makes me dull, and that makes me finish. Adieu ! Yours ever. P. S. Direct to me, (for to be sure you will not be so outrageous as to leave me quite off,) recommande a Mons. Mann, Ministre de sa Majeste Britannique a Florence. to the celebrated Lord Carteret and first Earl of Granville. WRIGHT. She died in 1745. Her mother was the Countess of Fomfret, the correspondent of the Countess Duchess of Hertford and Somerset. CUNNINGHAM. 1 As successor of Clement XII., who died in the eighty-eighth year of his age, and the tenth of his pontificate, on the 6th Feb. 1740. WRIGHT. 2 A relative of Anthony Hammond, of Wotton, in the county of Norfolk, Esq., who married Susan, the youngest sister of Sir Robert Walpole. Anthony Hammond died in January, 1763. (See p. 247.) CUNNINGHAM. 40 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1740. 25. TO RICHARD WEST, ESQ. DEAR WEST : Siena, March 22, 1740, N.S. PROBABLY now you will hear something of the Conclave : we have left Florence, and are got hither on the way to a Pope. In three hours' time we have seen all the good contents of this city : 'tis old, and very smug, with very few inhahitants. You must not believe Mr. Addison about the wonderful Gothic nicety of the dome : the materials are richer, but the workmanship and taste not near so good as in several I have seen. We saw a college of the Jesuits, where there are taught to draw above fifty boys : they are disposed in long chambers in the manner of Eton, but cleaner. N. B. "We were not bolstered ; ' so we wished you with us. Our Cicerone, who has less classic knowledge, and more superstition than a colleger, upon showing us the she-wolf, the arms of Siena, told us that Romulus and Remus were nursed by a wolf, per la volontd di Dio, si pud dire ; and that one might see by the arms, that the same founders built Rome and Siena. Another dab of Romish supersti- tion, not unworthy of presbyterian divinity, we met with in a book of drawings : 'twas the Virgin standing on a tripod composed of Adam, Eve, and the Devil, to express her immaculate conception. You can't imagine how pretty the country is between this and Florence ; millions of little hills planted with trees, and tipped with villas or convents. We left unseen the Great Duke's villas and several palaces in Florence, till our return from Rome : the weather has been so cold, how could one go to them ? In Italy they seem to have found out how hot their climate is, but not how cold ; for there are scarce any chimneys, and most of the apartments painted in fresco ; so that one has the additional horror of freezing with imaginary marble. The men hang little earthen pans of coals upon their wrists, and the women have portable stoves under their petti- coats to warm their nakedness, and carry silver shovels in their pockets, with which their Cicisbeos stir them Hush ! by them, I mean their stoves. I have nothing more to tell you ; I'll carry my letter to Rome and finish it there. IK di Co/ano, March 23, where lived one of the three kings. THE King of Coffano carried presents of myrrh, gold, and frank- incense : I don't know where the devil he found them ; for in all 1 An Eton phrase. BERRY. 1740.] TO MR, WEST. 41 his dominions we have not seen the value of a shrub. We have the honour of lodging under his roof to-night. Lord ! such a place, such an extent of ugliness ! A lone inn upon a black mountain, by the side of an old fortress ! no curtains or windows, only shutters ! no testers to the beds ! no earthly thing to eat but some eggs and a few little fishes ! This lovely spot is now known by the name of Eadicofani. Coming down a steep hill with two miserable hackneys, one fell under the chaise ; and while we were disengaging him, a chaise came by with a person in a red cloak, a white handkerchief on its head, and a black hat : we thought it a fat old woman ; but it spoke in a shrill little pipe, and proved itself to be Senesino. 1 I forgot to tell you an inscription I copied from the portal of the dome of Siena : Annus centenus Romae semper est jubilenus ; Crimina laxantur si pcenitet ista donantur ; Sic ordinavit Bonifacius et roboravit. Rome, March 26. WE are this instant arrived, tired and hungry ! ! the charming city I believe it is or I have not seen a syllable yet, only the Pons Milvius and an obelisk. The Cassian and Flaminian ways were terrible disappointments ; not one Rome tomb left ; their very ruins ruined. The English are numberless. My dear West, I know at Rome you will not have a grain of pity for one ; but indeed 'tis dreadful, dealing with school-boys just broke loose, or old fools that are come abroad at forty to see the world, like Sir Wilful Witwou'd.* I don't know whether you will receive this, or any other I write : but though I shall write often, you and Ashton must not wonder if none come to you ; for, though I am harmless in my nature, my name has some mystery in it. 2 Good night ! I have no more time or paper. Ashton, child, I'll write to you next post. Write us no treasons, be sure ! 1 Francesco Bernard!, better known by the name of Senesino, a celebrated singer, who, having been engaged for the opera company formed by Handel in 1720, remained here as principal singer until 1726, when the state of his health compelled him to return to Italy. In 1730 he revisited England, where he remained until about 1734. He was the contemporary, if not the rival of Farinelli. WRIGHT. 2 A character in Congreve's comedy, ' The Way of the World.' CUNNINGHAM. 3 He means the name of Walpole at Rome, where the Pretender and many of his adherents then resided. BERRY. 42 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1740. 26. WEST TO HORACE WALPOLE. MY DEAK WALPOLE : March 29 1740. SINCE I have finished the first act, I send you now the rest of it. Whether I shall go on with it is to me a doubt. I find you all make the same objections to my style : but change my manner now I can't, for it would not be all of a piece, and to begin afresh goes against my stomach ; so I believe I must even break it off and bequeath it to my grandchildren to be finished with other old pieces of family work. I have another objection to it, and that is, the unlucky affair of an impeachment in the play. For, supposing the thing public, which it was never intended to be, every blockhead of the faction would swear Pausanias was Greek for Sir Robert, though it may as well stand for Bolingbroke. But the truth is, the Greek word signifies neither one nor t'other, as you may find in Scapula, Suidas, and other lexicographers. R. W. 27. TO RICHARD WEST, ESQ. Rome, April 16, 1740, N.S. I'LL tell you, West, because one is amongst new things, you think one can always write new things. When I first came abroad, every thing struck me, and I wrote its history ; but now I am grown so used to be surprised, that I don't perceive any flutter in myself when I meet with any novelties ; curiosity and astonishment wear off, and the next thing is, to fancy that other people know as much of places as one's self ; or, at least, one does not remember that they do not. It appears to me as odd to write to you of St. Peter's, as it would do to you to write of Westminster- abbey. Besides, as one looks at churches, &c. with a book of travels in one's hand, and sees every thing particularised there, it would appear transcribing, to write upon the same subjects. I know you will hate me for this declaration ; I remember how ill I used to take it when anybody served me so that was travelling. Well, I will tell you something, if you will love me : You have seen prints of the ruins of the temple of Minerva Medica ; you shall only hear its situation, and then figure what a villa might be laid out there. 'Tis in the middle of a garden : at a little distance are two subterraneous grottos, which were the burial-places of the liberti of Augustus. There are all the niches and covers of the urns with the inscriptions remaining ; and in one, very considerable remains of an ancient stucco ceiling with paintings in grotesque. Some of the walks would terminate 1740.] WEST TO WALPOLE. 48 upon the Castellum Aquae Martise, St. John Lateran, and St. Maria Maggiore, besides other churches ; the walls of the garden would be two aqueducts, and the entrance through one of the old gates of Rome. This glorious spot is neglected, and only serves for a small vineyard and kitchen-garden. I am very glad that I see Rome while it yet exists ; before a great number of years are elapsed, I question whether it will be worth seeing. Between the ignorance and poverty of the present Romans, every thing is neglected and falling to decay ; the villas are entirely out of repair, and the palaces so ill kept, that half the pictures are spoiled by damp. At the villa Ludovisi is a large oracular head of red marble, colossal, and with vast foramina for the eyes and mouth : the man that showed the palace said it was un ritratto della famiglia ? The Cardinal Corsini has so thoroughly pushed on the misery of Rome by impoverishing it, that there is no money but paper to be seen. He is reckoned to have amassed three millions of crowns. You may judge of the affluence the nobility live in, when I assure you, that what the chief princes allow for their own eating is a testoon a day ; eighteenpence : there are some extend their expense to five pauls, or half a crown : Cardinal Alban is called extravagant for laying out ten pauls for his dinner and supper. You may imagine they never have any entertainments : so far from it, they never have any company. The princesses and duchesses particularly lead the dismallest of lives. Being the posterity of popes, though of worse families than the ancient nobility, they expect greater respect than my ladies the countesses and marquises will pay them ; consequently they consort not, but mope in a vast palace with two miserable tapers, and two or three monsignori, whom they are forced to court and humour, that they may not be entirely deserted. Sundays they do issue forth in a vast unwieldy coach to the Corso. * In short, child, after sunset one passes one's time here very ill ; and if I did not wish for you in the mornings, it would be no compliment to tell you that I do in the evening. Lord ! how many 'English I could change for you, and yet buy you wondrous cheap ! And then French and Germans I could fling into the bargain by dozens. Nations swarm here. You will have a great fat French cardinal garnished with thirty abbes roll into the area of St. Peter's, gape, turn short, and talk of the chapel of Versailles. I heard one of them say t'other day, he had been at the Capitak. One asked of course how he liked it Ah ! il y a assez de beJks choses. 44 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1740. Tell Ashton I have received his letter, and will write next post ; but I am in a violent hurry and have no more time; so Gray finishes this delicately Nor so delicate ; nor indeed would his conscience suffer him to write to you, till he received de vos nouvelles, if he had not the tail of another person's letter to use by way of evasion. I sha'n't describe, as being in the only place in the world that deserves it ; which may seem an odd reason but they say as how it's fulsome, and every body does it (and I suppose every body says the same thing) ; else I should tell you a vast deal about the Coliseum, and the Conclave, and the Capitol, and these matters. A-propos du Coliste, if you don't know what it is, the Prince Borghese will be very capable of giving you some account of it, who told an English- man that asked what it was built for : " They say 'twas for Christians to fight with tigers in." We are just come from adoring a great piece of the true cross, St. Longinus's spear, and St. Veronica's handkerchief ; all which have been this evening exposed to view in St. Peter's. In the same place, and on the same occasion last night, Walpole saw a poor creature naked to the waist discipline himself with a scourge filled with iron prickles, till he had made himself a raw doublet, that he took for red satin torn, and showing the skin through. I should tell you, that he fainted away three times at the sight, and I twice and a half at the repetition of it. All this is performed by the light of a vast fiery cross, composed of hundreds of little crystal lamps, which appears through the great altar under the grand tribuna, as if hanging by itself in the air. All the confraternities of the city resort thither in solemn procession, habited in linen frocks, girt with a cord, and their heads covered with a cowl all over, that has only two holes before to see through. Some of these are all black, others parti-coloured and white : and with these masqueraders that vast church is filled, who are seen thumping their breasts, and kissing the pavement with extreme devotion. But methinks I am describing: 'tis an ill habit; but this, like every thing else, will wear off. We have sent you our compliments by a friend of yours, and correspondent in a corner, who seems a very agreeable man ; one Mr. Williams : I am sorry he staid so little a while in Rome. I forget Porto-Bello ' all this 1 Porto-Bello, taken from the Spaniards by Admiral Vcrnon, with six ships only, on the 21st Nov. 1740. WRIGHT. 1740.] TO THE HON. MR. CON WAY. 45 while ; pray let us know where it is, and whether you or Ashton had any hand in the taking of it. Duty to the Admiral. Adieu ! Ever yours, T. GRAY. 28. TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY. Jtome, April 23, 1740, N.S. As I have wrote you two such long letters lately, my dear Hal, I did not hurry myself to answer your last ; but choose to write to poor Selwyn ' upon his illness. I pity you excessively upon finding him in such a situation : what a shock it must have been to you ! He deserves so much love from all that know him, and you owe him so much friendship, that I can scarce conceive a greater shock. I am very glad you did not write to me till he was out of danger ; for this great distance would have added to my pain, as I must have waited so long for another letter. I charge you, don't let him relapse into balls : he does not love them, and, if you please, your example may keep him out of them. You are extremely pretty people to be dancing and trading with French poulterers and pastry- cooks, when a hard frost is starving half the nation, and the Spanish war ought to be employing the other half. "We are much more public-spirited here ; we live upon the public news, and triumph abundantly upon the taking Porto-Bello. If you are not entirely debauched with your balls, you must be pleased with an answer of Lord Hartington's a to the governor of Rome. He asked him what they had determined about the vessel that the Spaniards took under the cannon of Civita Yecchia, whether they had restored it to the English? The governor said, they had done justice. My lord replied, "If you had not, we should have done it ourselves." Pray reverence our spirit, Lieutenant Hal. Sir, Muscovita is not a pretty woman, and she does sing ill; that's all. 3 My dear Harry, I must now tell you a little about myself, and answer your questions. How I like the inanimate part of Rome you will soon perceive at my arrival in England ; I am far gone in 1 John Selwyn, elder brother of George Augustus Selwyn the wit (p. 25). He was M.P. for Whitchurch, and died at Danson, in Kent, of a polypus in the heart, 27th June, 1751. Their father, Col. John Selwyn, long M.P. for Gloucester, and treasurer of Queen Caroline's Pensions, died 6th Nov. 1751. CUNNINGHAM. 2 William Cavendish, afterwards (1755) fourth Duke of Devonshire. He died 2nd Oct. 1764. He was in his twentieth year in 1740. CUNNINGHAM. 3 See p. 88 of this volume. CUNNINGHAM. 46 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1740. medals, lamps, idols, prints, &c. and all the small commodities to the purchase of which I can attain ; I would buy the Coliseum if I could : judge. My mornings are spent in the most agreeable manner ; my evenings ill enough. Roman conversations are dread- ful things ! such untoward mawkins as the princesses ! and the princes are worse. Then the whole city is littered with French and German abbes, who make up a dismal contrast with the in- habitants. The conclave is far from enlivening us ; its secrets don't transpire. I could give you names of this cardinal and that, that are talked of, but each is contradicted the next hour. I was there t'other day to visit one of them, and one of the most agreeable, Alexander Albani. I had the opportunity of two cardinals making their entry : upon that occasion the gate is unlocked, and their eminences come to talk to their acquaintance over the threshold. I have received great civilities from him I named to you, and I wish he were out, that I might receive greater : a friend of his does the honours of Rome for him ; but you know that it is unpleasant to visit by proxy. Cardinal Delci, the object of the Corsini faction, is dying ; the hot weather will probably dispatch half a dozen more. Not that it is hot yet ; I am now writing to you by my fireside. Harry, you saw Lord Deskfoord 1 at Geneva ; don't you like him ? He is a mighty sensible man. There are few young people have so good understandings. He is mighty grave, and so are you ; but you can both be pleasant when you have a mind. Indeed, one can make you pleasant, but his solemn Scotchcry is a little formidable : before you I can play the fool from morning to night courageously. Good night. I have other letters to write, and must finish this. Yours ever. 29. TO RICHARD WEST, ESQ. DEAR WEST : Rome, May, 7, 1740, N.S. 'Twou'D be quite rude and unpardonable in one not to wish you joy upon the great conquests that you are all committing all over the world. We heard the news last night from Naples, that Admiral Haddock 2 had met the Spanish convoy going to Majorca, 1 James Ogilvie, afterwards (1764) sixth Earl of Findlater and third Earl of Seafield. He died in 1770. CUNNINGHAM. 2 This report, which proved unfounded, was grounded on the fact, that on the 1 8th April his .Majesty's ships Lennox, Kent, and Orford, commanded by Captains Mayne, Durell, and Lord Augustus Fitzroy, part of Admiral Balchen's squadron, being on a cruise about forty leagues to the westward of Cape Finisterre, fell in with 1740.] TO MR. WEST. 47 and taken it all, all ; three thousand men, three colonels, and a Spanish grandee. We conclude it is true, for the Neapolitan Majesty mentioned it at dinner. We are going thither in about a week, to wish him joy of it too. 'Tis with some apprehensions we go too, of having a pope chosen in the interim : that would be cruel, you know. But, thank our stars, there is no great probability of it. Feuds and contentions run high among the eminences. A notable one happened this week. Cardinal Zinzendorff and two more had given their votes for the general of the Capucins : he is of the Barberini family, not a cardinal, but a worthy man. Not effecting any thing, Zinzendorff voted for Coscia, and declared it publicly. Cardinal Petra reproved him ; but the German replied, he thought Coscia as fit to be pope as any of them. It seems, his pique to the whole body is, their having denied a daily admission of a pig into the Conclave for his eminence's use ; who, being much troubled with the gout, was ordered by his mother to bathe his leg in pig's blood every morning. Who should have a vote t'other day but the Cardinalino of Toledo ? Were he older, the Queen of Spain might possibly procure more than one for him, though scarcely enough. Well, but we won't talk politics : shall we talk antiquities ? Gray and I discovered a considerable curiosity lately. In an un- frequented quarter of the Colonna garden lie two immense fragments of marble, formerly part of a frieze to some building ; 'tis not known of what. They are of Parian marble : which may give one some idea of the magnificence of the rest of the building ; for these pieces were at the very top. Upon inquiry, we were told they had been measured by an architect, who declared they were larger than any member of St. Peter's. The length of one of the pieces is above sixteen feet. They were formerly sold to a stone-cutter for five thousand crowns, but Clement XI. would not permit them to be sawed, annulled the bargain, and laid a penalty of twelve thousand crowns upon the family if they parted with them. I think it was a right judged thing. Is it not amazing that so vast a structure should not be known of, or that it should be so entirely destroyed ? But indeed at Rome this is a common surprise ; for, by the remains one sees of the Roman grandeur in their structures, 'tis evident that there must have been more pains taken to destroy those piles than to raise them. They are more demolished than any time or chance the Princessa, esteemed the finest ship of war in tho Spanish navy, and captured her after an engagement of five hours. WRIGHT. 48 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1740. could have effected. I am persuaded that in an hundred years Rome will not be worth seeing ; 'tis less so now than one would believe. All the public pictures are decayed or decaying ; the few ruins cannot last long ; and the statues and private collections must be sold, from the great poverty of the families. There are now selling no less than three of the principal collections, the Barberini, the Sacchetti, and Ottoboni : the latter belonged to the cardinal who died in the Conclave. I must give you an instance of his generosity, or rather ostentation. When Lord Carlisle ' was here last year, who is a great virtuoso, he asked leave to see the cardinal's collection of cameos and intaglios. Ottoboni 2 gave leave, and ordered the person who showed them to observe which my Lord admired most. My Lord admired many : they were all sent him the next morning. He sent the cardinal back a fine gold repeater ; who returned him an agate snuff-box, and more cameos of ten times the value. Voila qui e&tfini! Had my Lord produced more gold repeaters, it would have been begging more cameos. Adieu, my dear West ! You see I write often and much, as you desired it. Do answer one now and then, with any little job that is done in England. Good night. Yours ever. 30. TO RICHARD WEST, ESQ. DEAK WEST : Naples, June 14, 1740, N.S. ONE hates writing descriptions that are to be found in every book of travels ; but we have seen something to-day that I am sure you never read of, and perhaps never heard of. Have you ever heard of a subterraneous town ? a whole Roman town, with all its edifices, re- maining under ground ? Don't fancy the inhabitants buried it there to save it from the Goths : they were buried with it themselves ; which is a caution we are not told that they ever took. You remember in Titus's time there were several cities destroyed by an eruption of Vesuvius, attended with an earthquake. Well, this was one of them, not very considerable, and then called Herculaneum. Above it has since been built Portici, about three miles from Naples, where the King has a villa. This under-ground city is perhaps one of the noblest curiosities that ever has been discovered. It was found out by 1 Henry, fourth Earl of Carlisle, died 1758. His son and successor was the poet- Earl and correspondent of Selwyn. CUNNINGHAM. 2 Cardinal Ottoboni, Dean of the Sacred College, who died in 1740 : he had been made a cardinal in 1689. WIUGHT. 1740.] TO MB. WEST. 49 chance, about a year and half ago. They began digging, they found statues ; they dug further, they found more. Since that they have made a very considerable progress, and find continually. You may walk the compass of a mile; but by the misfortune of the modern town being overhead, they are obliged to proceed with great caution, lest they destroy both one and t'other. By this occasion the path is very narrow, just wide enough and high enough for one man to walk upright. They have hollowed, as they found it easiest to work, and have carried their streets not exactly where were the ancient ones, but sometimes before houses, sometimes through them. You would imagine that all the fabrics were crushed together ; on the contrary, except some columns, they have found all the edifices standing upright in their proper situation. There is one inside of a temple quite perfect, with the middle arch, two columns, and two pilasters. It is built of brick plastered over, and Painted with architecture : almost all the insides of the houses are in the same manner; and, what is very particular, the general ground of all the painting is red. Besides this temple, they make out very plainly an amphitheatre : the stairs, of white marble, and the seats are very perfect ; the inside was painted in the same colour with the private houses, and great part cased with white marble. They have found among other things some fine statues, some human bones, some rice, medals, and a few paintings extremely fine. These latter are preferred to all the ancient paintings that have ever been discovered. We have not seen them yet, as they are kept in the King's apartment, whither all these curiosities are transplanted ; and 'tis difficult to see them but we shall. I forgot to tell you, that in several places the beams of the houses remain, but burnt to charcoal ; so little damaged that they retain visibly the grain of the wood, but upon touching crumble to ashes. "What is remarkable, there are no other marks or appearance of fire, but what are visible on these beams. There might certainly be collected great light from this reservoir of antiquities, if a man of learning had the inspection of it ; if he directed the working, and would make a journal of the discoveries. But I believe there is no judicious choice made of directors. There is nothing of the kind known in the world ; I mean a Roman city entire of that age, and that has not been corrupted with modern repairs. 1 Besides scrutinising this very carefully, I should be inclined to search for the remains of the other towns that were 1 Pompeia was not then discovered. BERRY. 50 HOKACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1740. partners with this in the general ruin. 'Tis certainly an advantage to the learned world, that this has been laid up so long. Most of the discoveries in Rome were made in a barbarous age, where they only ransacked the ruins in quest of treasure, and had no regard to the form and being of the building ; or to any circumstances that might give light into its use and history. I shall finish this long account with a passage which Gray has observed in Statius, and which directly pictures out this latent city : Haec ego Chalcidicis ad te, Marcelle, sonabam Littoribus, fractas ubi Vestius egerit iras, jEmula Trinacriis volvens incendia flammis. Mira fides ! credetne virum ventura propago, Cum segetes iterum, cum jam haec deserta virebunt, Infra urbes populosque premi ? STLV. lib. iv. epist. 4. Adieu, my dear "West ! and believe me yours ever. 31. TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY. Re di Cofano, vulg. Radicofani, July 5, 1740, N.S. You will wonder, my dear Hal, to find me on the road from Rome : why, intend I did to stay for a new popedom, but the old eminences are cross and obstinate, and will not choose one, the Holy Ghost does not know when. There is a horrid thing called the mal' aria, that comes to Rome every summer, and kills one, and I did not care for being killed so far from Christian burial. We have been jolted to death ; my servants let us come without springs to the chaise, and we are wore threadbare : to add to our disasters, I have sprained my ancle, and have brought it along, laid upon a little box of baubles that I have bought for presents in England. Perhaps I may pick you out some little trifle there, but don't depend upon it ; you are a disagreeable creature, and may be I shall not care for you. Though I am so tired in this devil of a place, yet I have taken it into my head, that it is like Hamilton's Bawn, 1 and I must write to you. 'Tis the top of a black barren mountain, a vile little town at the foot of an old citadel : yet this, know you, was the residence of one of the three kings that went to Christ's birth-day ; his name was Alabaster, Abarasser, or some such thing ; 1 A large old house, two miles from the seat in Ireland of Sir Arthur Acheson, and the subject of Swift's poem, 'The Grand Question debated, whether Hamilton's Bawn should be turned into a barrack or a malt-house.' WRIGHT. 1740.] TO HON. ME. CONWAY. 51 the other two were kings, one of the East, the other of Cologn. 'Tis this of Cofano, who was represented in an ancient painting, found in the Palatine Mount, now in the possession of Dr. Mead ; he was crowned by Augustus. Well, but about writing what do you think I write with ? Nay, with a pen ; there was never a one to be found in the whole circumference but one, and that was in the possession of the governor, and had been used time out of mind to write the parole with : I was forced to send to borrow it. It was sent me under the conduct of a serjeant and two Swiss, with desire to return it when I should have done with it. 'Tis a curiosity, and worthy to be laid up with the relics which we have just been seeing in a small hovel of Capucins on the side of the bill, and which were all brought by his Majesty from Jerusalem. Among other things of great sanctity there is a set of gnashing of teeth, the grinders very entire ; a bit of the worm that never dies, preserved in spirits ; a crow of St. Peter's cock, very useful against Easter ; the crisping and curling, frizzling and frowncing of Mary Magdalen, which she cut off on growing devout. The good man that showed us all these commodities was got into such a train of calling them the blessed this, and the blessed that, that at last he showed us a bit of the blessed fig-tree that Christ cursed. MY DEAR HARRY : Florence, July 9. WE are come hither, and I have received another letter from you with ' Hosier's Ghost.' * Your last put me in pain for you, when you talked of going to Ireland ; but now I find your brother and sister go with you, I am not much concerned. Should I be ? You have but to say, for my feelings are extremely at your service to dispose as you please. Let us see : you are to come back to stand for some place ; that will be about April. 'Tis a sort of thing I should do, too ; and then we should see one another, and that would be charming : but it is a sort of thing I have no mind to do ; and then we shall not see one another, unless you would come hither but that you cannot do : nay, I would not have you, for then I shall be gone. So, there are many ifs that just signify nothing at all. Return I must sooner than I shall like. I am happy here to a degree. I'll tell you my situation. I am lodged with Mr. Mann, s the best of creatures. I have a terreno all to myself, with an open 1 Glover's celebrated ballad, first published in 1740 in folio, by Webb. CUN- NINGHAM. * Afterwards Sir Horace Mann. See note, p. 37. CUKSIHGHAM. E 2 52 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1740. gallery on the Arno, where I am now writing to you. Over against me is the famous Gallery ; and, on either hand, two fair bridges. Is not this charming and cool ? The air is so serene, and so secure, that one sleeps with all the windows and doors thrown open to the river, and only covered with a slight gauze to keep away the gnats. Lady Pomfret ' has a charming conversation once a week. She has taken a vast palace and a vast garden, which is vastly commode, especially to the cicisbeo-part of mankind, who have free indulgence to wander in pairs about the arbours. You know her daughters : Lady Sophia is still, nay she must be, the beauty she was : Lady Charlotte a is much improved, and is the cleverest girl in the world ; speaks the purest Tuscan, like any Florentine. The Princess Craon 3 has a constant pharaoh and supper every night, where one is quite at one's ease. I am going into the country with her and the prince for a little while, to a villa of the Great Duke's. The people are good-humoured here and easy ; and what makes me pleased with them, they are pleased with me. One loves to find people care for one, when they can have no view in it. You see how glad I am to have reasons for not returning ; I wish I had no better. As to ' Hosier's Ghost,' I think it very easy, and consequently pretty ; but, from the ease, should never have guessed it Glover's. I delight in your, " the patriots cry it up, and the courtiers cry it down, and the hawkers cry it up and down," and your laconic history of the King and Sir Robert, on going to Hanover, and turning out the Duke of Argyle. The epigram, too, you sent me on the same occasion is charming. 1 Henrietta Louisa Jefferies, grand-daughter of Lord Chancellor Jefferies, wife of Thomas Fermor, first Earl of Pomfret ; and the correspondent of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. She survived her husband, and died in Dec. 1761. Her Correspondence with the Countess Duchess of Hertford and Somerset between the years 1738 and 1741 was printed in 1806. (See p. 6.) CUNNINGHAM. 2 Lady Charlotte Fermor married, in August 1746, William Finch, brother of Daniel, seventh Earl of Winchelsea, by whom she had issue a son, George, who, on the death of his uncle, in 1769, succeeded to the earldom. Her ladyship was governess to the children of George III., and highly esteemed by him and his royal consort. WEIGHT. She died llth July, 1813, at St. James's Palace, in her eighty- eighth year, and was buried at Rasenston, Bucks. (See vol. i. pp. 179, 187, 370.) The readers of the ' Rejected Addresses,' will remember her name : Who thought in flames St. James's Court to pinch, Who burnt the wardrobe of poor Lady Finch. CUNNINGHAM. 3 The Princess Craon was the favourite mistress of Leopold, the last Duke of Lorrain, who married her to M. de Beauveau, and prevailed on the Emperor to make him a prince of the empire. They at this time resided at Florence, where Prince Craon was at the head of the council of regency. WALPOLE. 1740.] TO HON. MR. CONWAY. 58 Unless I sent you back news that you and others send me, I can send you none. I have left the Conclave, which is the only stirring thing in this part of the world, except the child that the Queen of Naples is to be delivered of in August. There is no likelihood the Conclave will end, unless the messages take effect which 'tis said the Imperial and French ministers have sent to their respective courts for leave to quit the Corsini for the Albani faction : otherwise there will never be a pope. Corsini has lost the only one he could have ventured to make pope, and him he designed ; 'twas Cenci, a relation of the Corsini's mistress. The last morning Corsini made him rise, stuffed a dish of chocolate down his throat, and would carry him to the scrutiny. The poor old creature went, came back, and died. I am sorry to have lost the sight of the Pope's coronation, 1 but I might have staid for seeing it till I had been old enough to be pope myself. Harry, what luck the Chancellor 2 has ! first, indeed, to be in himself so great a man ; but then in accidents : he is made Chief Justice and peer, when Talbot 3 is made Chancellor and peer. Talbot dies in a twelvemonth, and leaves bvm the seals at an age when others are scarce made Solicitors : then marries his son into one of the first families of Britain/ obtains a patent for a Marquisate and eight thousand pounds a year after the Duke of Kent's death : the Duke dies in a fortnight, and leaves them all ! People talk of Fortune's wheel, that is always rolling : troth, my Lord Hardwicke has overtaken her wheel, and rolled along with it. 1 perceive Miss Jenny 5 would not venture to Ireland, nor stray so far from London ; I am glad I shall always know where to find her within three-score miles. I must say a word to my Lord, [Conway], which, Harry, be sure you don't read. [" My dear Lord, I don't love troubling you with letters, because I know you don't love the trouble of answering them ; not that I should insist on that ceremony, but I hate to burthen any one's conscience. Your brother tells me he is to stand member of parliament : without telling me so, I am sure he owes it to you. I am sure you will not 1 The coronation of Pope Benedict XIV. WALPOLE. 2 Philip Yorke, first Earl of Hardwicke and Lord Chancellor of England, son of an attorney at Dover, died 1764. CUNNINGHAM. 3 Lord Chancellor Talbot, the patron of the poet Thomson : Charles Talbot, first Baron Talbot and Lord Chancellor of England, died 1737. CUNNINGHAM. 4 Henry de Grey, Duke of Kent, died 5 June, 1740. CUNNINGHAM. s Jane, only daughter of Francis, the first Lord Conway, by his second wife. She died unmarried in 1749, aged twenty-seven. CUNNINGHAM. 54 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1740. repent setting him up ; nor will he be ungrateful to a brother who deserves so much, and whose least merit is not the knowing how to employ so great a fortune."] There, Harry, I have done. Don't suspect me : I have said no ill of you behind your back. Make my best compliments to Miss Conway. 1 I thought I had done, and lo, I had forgot to tell you, that who d'ye think is here ? Even Mr. More ! our Rheims Mr. More ! the fortification, hornwork, ravelin, bastion Mr. More ! which is very pleasant sure. At the end of the eighth side, I think I need make no excuse for leaving off ; but I am going to write to Selwyn, and to the lady of the mountain ; from whom I have had a very kind letter. She has at last received the Chantilly brass. Good night : write to me from one end of the world to t'other. Yours ever. 32. TO RICHARD WEST, ESQ. DEAR WEST : Florence, July 31, 1740, N.S. I HAVE advised with the most notable antiquarians of this city on the meaning of Thur gut Luetis. I can get no satisfactory interpre- tation. In my own opinion 'tis Welsh. I don't love offering con- jectures on a language in which I have hitherto made little proficiency, but I will trust you with my explication. You know the famous Aglaughlan, mother of Cadwalladhor, was renowned for her conjugal virtues, and grief on the death of her royal spouse. I conclude this medal was struck in her regency, by her express order, to the memory of her lord, and that the inscription Thur gut Luetis means no more than her dear Llewis or Lleicettin. In return for your coins I send you two or three of different kinds. The first is a money of one of the kings of Naples ; the device, a horse ; the motto, Equitas regni. This curious pun is on a coin in the Great Duke's collection, and by great chance I have met with a second. Another is, a satirical medal struck on Lewis XIV. ; 'tis a bomb, covered with flower-de-luces, bursting ; the motto, Se ipsissimo. The last, and almost the only one I ever saw with a text well applied, is a German medal with a rebellious town besieged and blocked up ; the inscription, This kind is not expelled but I;/ fasting. 1 Walpole's maternal cousin, Anne Conway, married March 10, 1755, to John Harris, of Hayne, in Devonshire, Esq., Master of the Household to King George II. After her husband's death she was appointed housekeeper of Somerset House, and died 25th March, 1774. CUNNINGHAM. 1740.] TO MR. WEST. 55 Now I mention medals, have they yet struck the intended one on the taking of Porto-Bello? Admiral Yernon will shine in our medallic history. We have just received the news of the bombard- ing Carthagena, and the taking Chagre. 1 We are in great expecta- tion of some important victory obtained by the squadron under Sir John Norris : we are told the Duke [of Cumberland 2 ] is to be of the expedition : is it true ? All the letters, too, talk of France's sud- denly declaring war ; I hope they will defer it for a season, or one shall be obliged to return through Germany. The conclave still subsists, and the divisions still increase ; it was very near separating last week, but by breaking into two popes ; they were on the dawn of a schism. Aldovrandi had thirty-three voices for three days, but could not procure the requisite two more ; the Camerlingo having engaged his faction to sign a protestation against him, and each party were inclined to elect. I don't know whether one should wish for a schism or not ; it might probably rekindle the zeal for the church in the powers of Europe, which has been so far decaying. On Wednesday we expect a third she-meteor. Those learned luminaries the Ladies Pomfret and Walpole 3 are to be joined by the Lady Mary Wortley Montague.* You have not been witness to the rhapsody of mystic nonsense which these two fair ones debate inces- santly, and consequently cannot figure what must be the issue of this triple alliance : we have some idea of it. Only figure the coalition of prudery, debauchery, sentiment, history, Greek, Latin, French, Italian, and metaphysics; all, except the second, understood by halves, by quarters, or not at all. You shall have the journals of this notable academy. Adieu, my dear West ! Yours ever, HOR. WALPOLE. Though far unworthy to enter into so learned and political a cor-^ respondence, I am employed pour barbouiller une page de 7 pounces et 1 On the 24th March, 1740, the Spaniards hung out a white flag, and the place was surrendered by capitulation to Admiral Vernon. WEIGHT. 4 William Duke of Cumberland, younger son of King George II., and the hero of Culloden. He died unmarried in 1765. CUNNINGHAM. 3 Margaret Eolle, Lady Walpole, wife (1724) of the second Earl of Orford, and mother of the third. She was separated from her husband ; remarried at his death the Hon. Sewallis Shirley, and separated from him. She lived many years in Italy with little credit to her character, and gave her brother-in-law Horace an infinity of trouble and annoyance. Walpole's letters abound in allusions to her. In 1751 she became a baroness in her own right (Clinton), and died, 1781, at Pisa. (See p. 152.) CUNNINGHAM. 4 Lady Mary left England in July 1739, and did not return until after an absence of twenty-two years. CUNNINGHAM. 56 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1740. demie en hauteur, et 5 en largeur ; and to inform you that we are at Florence, a city of Italy, and the capital of Tuscany : the latitude I cannot justly tell, but it is governed hy a prince called Great Duke ; an excellent place to employ all one's animal sensations in, but utterly contrary to one's rational powers. I have struck a medal upon myself : the device is thus 0, and the motto Nihilissimo, which I take in the most concise manner to contain a full account of my person, sentiments, occupations, and late glorious successes. If you choose to be annihilated too, you cannot do better than undertake this journey. Here you shall get up at twelve o'clock, breakfast till three, dine till five, sleep till six, drink cooling liquors till eight, go to the bridge till ten, sup till two, and so sleep till twelve again. Lahore fessi venimus ad larem nostrum, Desideratoque acquiescimus lecto : Hoc est, quod unum est, pro laboribus tantis. quid solutis est beatius curis ? We shall never come home again ; a universal war is just upon the point of breaking out ; all outlets will be shut up. I shall be secure in my nothingness, while you, that will be so absurd as to exist, will envy me. You don't tell me what proficiency you make in the noble science of defence. Don't you start still at the sound of a gun ? Have you learned to say Ha ! ha ! and is your neck clothed with thunder ? Are your whiskers of a tolerable length ? And have you got drunk yet with brandy and gunpowder? Adieu, noble captain ! T. GRAY. 33. TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY. Mi DKAR HAL : Florence, September 25, 1740, N.8. I BEGIN to answer your letter the moment I have read it, because you bid me ; but I grow so unfit for a correspondence with any body in England, that I have almost left it off. 'Tis so long since I was there, and I am so utterly a stranger to every thing that passes there, that I must talk vastly in the dark to those I write ; and having in a manner settled myself here, where there can be no news, I am void of all matter for filling up a letter. As, by the absence of the Great Duke, Florence is become in a manner a country town, you may imagine that we are not without dcmeles ; but for a country town I believe there never were a set of people so peaceable, and such strangers to scandal. 'Tis the family of love, where every body is paired, and go as constantly together as 1740.] TO HON. MR CONWAY. 51 paroquets. Here nobody hangs or drowns themselves ; they are not ready to cut one another's throats about elections or parties ; don't think that wit consists in saying bold truths, or humour in getting drunk. But I shall give you no more of their characters, because I am so unfortunate as to think that their encomium consists in being the reverse of the English, who in general are either mad, or enough to make other people so. After telling you so fairly my sentiments, you may believe, my dear Harry, that I had rather see you here than in England. 'Tis an evil wish for you, who should not be lost in so obscure a place as this. I will not make you compliments, or else here is a charming opportunity for saying what I think of you. As I am convinced you love me, and as I am conscious you have one strong reason for it, I will own to you, that for my own peace you should wish me to remain here. I am so well within and without, that you would scarce know me: I am younger than ever, think of nothing but diverting myself, and live in a round of pleasures. We have operas, concerts, and balls, mornings and evenings. I dare not tell you all one's idlenesses : you would look so grave and senatorial, at hearing that one rises at eleven in the morning, goes to the opera at nine at night, to supper at one, and to bed at three ! But literally here the evenings and nights are so charming and so warm, one can't avoid 'em. Did I tell you Lady Mary Wortley is here ? She laughs at my Lady Walpole, scolds my Lady Pomfret, and is laughed at by the whole town. 1 Her dress, her avarice, and her impudence must amaze any one that never heard her name. She wears a foul mob, that does not cover her greasy black locks, that hang loose, never combed or curled ; an old mazarine blue wrapper, that gapes open and discovers a canvass petticoat. Her face swelled violently on one side with the remains of a , partly covered with a plaister, and partly with white paint, which for cheapness she has bought so coarse, that you would not use it to wash a chimney. In three words I will give you her picture as we drew it in the Sortes Virgiliance Insanam vatem aspicies. I give you my honour we did not choose it ; but Gray, Mr. Coke/ 1 In a letter from Florence, written by Lady Mary to Mr. Wortley on the llth of August, she says, " Lord and Lady Pomfret take pains to make the place agreeable to me, and I have been visited by the greatest part of the people of quality." See the edition of her works, edited by Lord Wharncliffe, vol. ii. p. 325. WEIGHT. 2 Edward Coke, of Holkham, only son of Lord Lovel, afterwards Earl of Leicester. " This young man [Mr. Coke] is one of the few that I have met with, who ought to 58 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1740. Sir Francis Dashwood,' and I, and several others, drew it fairly amongst a thousand for different people, most of which did not hit as you may imagine : those that did I will tell you. For our most religious and gracious Dii, talem terris avertite pestem. For one that would be our most religious and gracious Purpureus veluti cum flos succisus aratro Languescit moriens, lassove papavera collo Dernisere caput, pluvia cuvn fort gravantur. For his Son. Regis Roman! ; primus qui legibus urbem Fundabit, Curibus parvis et paupere terra, Missus in imperium magnum. For Sir Robert. Res dura et regni novitas me talia cogunt Moliri, et late fines custode tueri. I will show you the rest when I see you. 34. TO RICHARD WEST, ESQ. DEAR WEST : Florence, Oct. 2, 1740, N.S. T'OTHER night as we (you know who ice are) were walking on the charming bridge, just before going to a wedding assembly, we said, " Lord, I wish, just as we are got into the room, they would call us out, and say, West is arrived ! We would make him dress instantly, and carry him back to the entertainment. How he would stare and have been sent abroad. For most of our travelling youth neither improve themselves nor credit their country. This, I believe, is often owing to the strange creatures that are made their governors, but as often to the strange creatures that are to be governed. Travelling is certainly carried a great deal too far amongst the English ; for although nothing can be more proper for a man of quality, capacity, and fortune, yet surely nothing can be more improper where those things are wanting ; and the fortune which should be increasing in business, is often decreasing in dress, equipage, and sometimes in worse things." Lady Pomfret to Lady Hertford, Florence, June 29, 1740, N.S. Compare the noble description in ' The Dunciad' of the Duke of Kingston, his mistress, and laced-govcrnor on the tour of Europe (book iv., v. 271). CUNNINGHAM. 1 Sir Francis Dashwood, Bart., who, on the death [1762] of John, Earl of West- moreland, succeeded to the barony of Le Despencer, as the only son of Mary, eldest sister of the Earl. WRIGHT. Lord Le Despencer was Chancellor of the Exchequer during Lord Bute's administration, but is now chiefly remembered for his share, with Wilkes and Paul Whitehead, in founding a dissolute and blasphemous association called The Hell-Fire Club, or The Monks of Medmenham Abbey. He died in 1781. CUNNINGHAM. 1740.] TO MR. WEST. 59 wonder at a thousand things, that no longer strike us as odd ! " Would not you ? One agreed that you should have come directly by sea from Dover, and be set down at Leghorn, without setting foot in any other foreign town, and so land at Us, in all your first full amaze ; for you are to know, that astonishment rubs off violently ; we did not cry out Lord ! half so much at Rome as at Calais, which to this hour I look upon as one of the most surprising cities in the universe. My dear child, what if you were to take this little sea- jaunt ? One would recommend Sir John Norris's convoy to you, but one should be laughed at now for supposing that he is ever to sail beyond Torbay. 1 The Italians take Torbay for an English town in the hands of the Spaniards, after the fashion of Gibraltar, and imagine 'tis a wonderful strong place, by our fleet's having retired from before it so often, and so often returned. We went to this wedding that I told you of ; 'twas a oh arming feast : a large palace finely illuminated ; there were all the beauties, all the jewels, and all the sugar-plums of Florence. Servants loaded with great chargers full of comfits heap the tables with them, the women fall on with both hands, and stuff their pockets and every creek and corner about them. You would be as much amazed at us as at any thing you saw : instead of being deep in the liberal arts, and being in the Gallery every morning, as I thought of course to be sure I would be, we are in all the idleness and amusements of the town. For me, I am grown so lazy, and so tired of seeing sights, that, though I have been at Florence six months, I have not seen Leghorn, Pisa, Lucca, or Pistoia ; nay, not so much as one of the Great Duke's villas. I have contracted so great an aversion to inns and postchaises, and have so absolutely lost all curiosity, that, except the towns in the straight road to Great Britain, I shall scarce see a jot more of a foreign land ; and trust me, when I return, I will not visit Welsh mountains, like Mr. Williams. After Mount Cenis, the Boccheto, the Giogo, Eadicofani, and the Appian Way, one has mighty little hunger after travelling. I shall be mighty apt to set up my staff at Hyde-park-corner : the alehouseman 1 Though brave, skilful, and enterprising, Sir John Norris failed to acquire renown, in consequence of mere accidents. On the breaking out of the Spanish war, he was ordered to cruize in the Bay of Biscay ; but, owing to tempestuous weather, was compelled to put into port for the winter. The following lines were addressed to him upon this occasion : Homeward, oh ! bend thy course ; the seas are rough ; To the Land's End who sails, has sailed enough. WEIGHT. 60 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1740. there at Hercules's Pillars ' was certainly returned from his travels into foreign parts. Now I'll answer your questions. I have made no discoveries in ancient or modern arts. Mr. Addison travelled through the poets, and not through Italy ; for all his ideas are borrowed from the descriptions, and not from the reality. He saw places as they were, not as they are." I am very well acquainted with Doctor Cocchi ; 3 he is a good sort of man, rather than a great man ; he is a plain honest creature, with quiet knowledge, but I dare say all the English have told you, he has a very particular understanding : I really don't believe they meant to impose on you, for they thought so. As to Bondelmonti, he is much less ; he is a low mimic ; the brightest cast of his parts attains to the composition of a sonnet : he talks irreligion with English boys, sentiment with my sister [Lady Walpole], and bad French with any one that will hear him. I will transcribe you a little song that he made t'other day ; 'tis pretty enough ; Gray turned it into Latin, and I into English ; you will honour him highly by putting it into French, and Ashton into Greek. Here 'tis. Spesso Amor sotto la forma D'amista ride, e s'asconde ; Poi si mischia, e si confonde Con lo sdegno e col rancor. In pietade ei si trasforma, Par trastullo e par dispetto ; Ma nel suo diverso aspetto, Sempre egli e 1'istesso Amor. Risit amicitiae interdum velatus amictu, Et bene composite veste fefellit Amor : Mox irae assumpsit cultus faciemque minantcm, Inque odium versus, versus et in lacrymas : Sudentem fuge, nee lacrymanti aut crede furenti ; Idem est dissimili semper in ore Deus. 1 The sign of the Hercules' Pillars remained in Piccadilly till very lately. It was situated on part of the ground now [1798] occupied by the houses of Mr. Drummond Smith and his brother. BEKRT. That is, on the pavement between Hamilton Place and Apsley House. Here Squire Western put his horses up when in pursuit of Tom Jones, and here Field Marshal the Marquis of Granby (the hero of publicans) was often to be seen. CUNNINGHAM. 2 Compare Letter to Zouch, March 20th, 1762. Fielding says (Voyage to Lisbon) that Addison, in his " Travels," is to be looked upon rather as a commentator on the classics, than as a writer of travels. CUNNINGHAM. 3 Antonio Cocchi, a learned physician and author at Florence, a particular friend of Mr. Mann. WALPOLE. He died in 1758. Some of his observations may be found in Spence's 'Anecdotes.' (See p. 104.) CUNNINGHAM. 1740.] TO MR. WEST. 61 Love often in the comely mien Of friendship fancies to be seen ; Soon again he shifts his dress, And wears disdain and rancour's face. To gentle pity then he changes ; Thro' wantonness, thro' piques he ranges ; But in whatever shape he move, He's still himself, and still is Love. See how we trifle ! but one can't pass one's youth, too amusingly ; for one must grow old, and that in England; two most serious circumstances, either of which makes people grey in the twinkling of a bedstaff ; for know you, there is not a country upon earth where there are so many old fools and so few young ones. Now I proceed in my answers. I made but small collections, and have only bought some bronzes and medals, a few busts, and two or three pictures ; one of my busts is to be mentioned ; 'tis the famous Vespasian in touchstone, 1 reckoned the best in Rome, except the Caracalla of the Farnese : I gave but twenty-two pounds for it at Cardinal Ottoboni's sale. One of my medals is as great a curiosity : 'tis of Alexander Severus, with the amphitheatre in brass ; this reverse is extant on medals of his, but mine is a medagliuncino, or small medallion, and the only one with this reverse known in the world : 'twas found by a peasant while I was in Rome, and sold by him for sixpence to an antiquarian, to whom I paid for it seven guineas and an half : but to virtuosi 'tis worth any sum. 2 As to Tartini's 3 musical compositions, ask Gray; I know but little in music. But for the Academy, I am not of it, but frequently in company with it : 'tis all disjointed. Madame * * *, who, though a learned lady, has not lost her modesty and character, is extremely scandalised with the other two dames, especially with Moll Worthless [Lady Mary Wortley], who knows no bounds. She is at rivalry with Lady W[alpole] for a certain Mr. * * *, whom perhaps you knew at Oxford. If you did not, I'll tell you : he is a grave young man by temper, and a rich one by constitution ; a shallow creature by nature, but a wit by the grace of our women here, whom he deals 1 This fine bust stood in the gallery at Strawberry Hill, on the right hand of the chimney-piece, and at the Strawberry Hill sale sold for 220. 10s. CUNNINGHAM. 2 Parted with by Walpole to the Marquis of Rockingham, with other Roman coins, in exchange for the Silver Bell said to be the work of Benvenuto Cellini. CUNNINGHAM. 3 Giuseppe Tartini, of Padua, whom Viotti pronounced the last great improver of the practice of the violin. WRIGHT. 62 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1740. with as of old with the Oxford toasts. He fell into sentiments with my Lady W[alpole] and was happy to catch her at Platonic love : but as she seldom stops there, the poor man will be frightened out of his senses when she shall break the matter to him ; for he never dreamt that her purposes were so naught. Lady Mary is so far gone, that to get him from the mouth of her antagonist she literally took bim out to dance country dances last night at a formal ball, where there was no measure kept in laughing at her old, foul, tawdry, painted, plastered personage. She played at pharaoh two or three times at Princess Craon's, where she cheats horse and foot. She is really entertaining : I have been reading her works, which she lends out in manuscript, but they are too womanish : I like few of her performances. I forgot to tell you a good answer of Lady Pomfret to Mr. * * *, who asked her if she did not approve Platonic love ? ' Lord, sir,' says she, ' I am sure any one that knows me never heard that I had any love but one, and there sit two proofs of it,' pointing to her two daughters. So I have given you a sketch of our employments, and answered your questions, and will with pleasure as many more as you have about you. Adieu ! Was ever such a long letter ? But 'tis nothing to what I shall have to say to you. I shall scold you for never telling us any news, public or private, no deaths, marriages, or mishaps ; no account of new books : Oh, you are abominable ! I could find it in my heart to hate you, if I did not love you so well ; but we will quarrel now, that we may be the better friends when we meet: there is no danger of that, is there ? Good night, whether friend or foe ! I am most sincerely Yours. 35. TO RICHARD WEST, ESQ. From Florence, Nov. 1740. CHILD, I am going to let you see your shocking proceedings with us. On my conscience, I believe 'tis three months since you wrote to either Gray or me. If you had been ill, Ashton would have said so ; and if you had been dead, the gazettes would have said it. If you had been angry, but that's impossible ; how can one quarrel with folks three thousand miles off ? We are neither divines nor commentators, and consequently have not hated you on paper. 'Tis" to show that my charity for you cannot be interrupted at this distance that I write to you, though I have nothing to say, for 'tis 1740.] TO MR. WEST. 63 a bad time for small news ; and when Emperors and Czarinas are dying all up and down Europe, one can't pretend to tell you of any thing that happens within our sphere. Not but that we have our accidents too. If you have had a great wind in England, we have had a great water at Florence. We have been trying to set out every day, and pop upon you. 1 ***** It is fortunate that we staid, for I don't know what had become of us ! Yesterday, with violent rains, there came flouncing down from the mountains such a flood that it floated the whole city. The jewellers on the Old Bridge removed their commodities, and in two hours after the bridge was cracked. The torrent broke down the quays and drowned several coach-horses, which are kept here in stables under ground. We were moated into our house all day, which is near the Arno, and had the miserable spectacles of the ruins that were washed along with the hurricane. There was a cart with two oxen not quite dead, and four men in it drowned : but what was ridiculous, there came tiding along a fat hay-cock, with a hen and her eggs, and a cat. The torrent is considerably abated ; but we expect terrible news from the country, especially from Pisa, which stands so much lower, and nearer the sea. There is a stone here, which, when the water overflows, Pisa is entirely flooded. The water rose two ells yesterday above that stone. Judge ! For this last month we have passed our time but dully; all diversions silenced on the Emperor's death, 2 and every body out of town. I have seen nothing but cards and dull pairs of cicisbeos. I have literally seen so much love and pharaoh since being here, that I believe I shall never love either again as long as I live. Then I am got into a horrid lazy way of a morning. I don't believe I should know seven o'clock in the morning again if I was to see it. But I am returning to England, and shall grow very solemn and wise ! Are you wise ? Dear West, have pity on one who has done nothing of gravity for these two years, and do laugh sometimes. We do nothing else, and have contracted such formidable ideas of the good people of England that we are already nourishing great black eyebrows and great black beards, and teasing our countenances into wrinkles. Then for the common talk of the times we are quite at a loss, and for the dress. You would oblige us extremely by forwarding to us the votes of the houses, the King's Speech, and the Magazines ; or if you had any such thing as a little book called the 1 A line of the manuscript is here torn away. BERRY. 2 Charles the Sixth, Emperor of Germany. WRIGHT. 64 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1741. Foreigner's Guide through the city of London and the liherties of "Westminster ; or a Letter to a Freeholder ; or the Political Com- panion : then 'twould he an infinite obligation if you would neatly band-box up a baby dressed after the newest Temple fashion now in use at both play-houses. Alack-a-day ! "We shall just arrive in the tempest of elections ! As our departure depends entirely upon the weather, we cannot tell you to a day when we shall say Dear "West, how glad I am to see you ! and all the many questions and answers that we shall give and take. Would the day were come ! Do but figure to yourself the journey we are to pass through first ! But you can't conceive Alps, Apennines, Italian inns and postchaises. I tremble at the thoughts. They were just sufferable while new and unknown, and as we met them by the way in coming to Florence, Rome, and Naples ; but they are passed, and the mountains remain ! Well, write to one in the interim; direct to me addressed to Monsieur Selwyn, chez Monsieur Akxandre, rue St. Apottine, d Paris. If Mr. Alexandre is not there, the street is, and I believe that will be sufficient. Adieu, my dear child ! Yours ever. 36. TO THE REV. JOSEPH SPENCE. 1 SIR : Florence, Feb. 21, 1741, N.S. NOT having time last post, I begged Mr. Mann to thank you for the obliging paragraph for me in your letter to him. But as I desire a nearer correspondence with you than by third hands, I assure you in my own proper person that I shall have great pleasure, on our meeting in England, to renew an acquaintance that I began with so much pleasure in Italy.* I will not reckon you among my 1 The friend of Pope, and author of the ' Anecdotes.' (See p. 30.) He was at this time travelling tutor or governor to the Earl of Lincoln, whose great-grandson, the present (1856) Duke of Newcastle, has the two sketches of Lincoln and Spence done at Florence in 1741 for Walpole, and sold at the Strawberry Hill sale. CUNNINGHAM. 2 This acquaintance proved of infinite service to Walpole, shortly after the date of this letter, when he was laid up with a quinsy at Reggio. Spence thus describes the circumstance : " About three or four in the morning I was surprised with a mes- sage, saying, that Mr. Walpole was very much worse, and desired to see me : I went, and found him scarce able to speak. I soon learned from his servants that he had been all the while without a physician, and had doctored himself ; so I immediately sent for the best aid the place would afford, and despatched a messenger to the minister at Florence, desiring him to send my friend Dr. Cocchi. In about twenty- four hours I had the satisfaction to find Mr. Walpole better : we left him in a fair way of recovery, and we hope to see him next week at Venice. I had obtained leave of Lord Lincoln to stay behind some days if he had been worse. You see what 1741.] TO HON. ME. CONWAY. 65 modern friends, but in the first article of virtu : you have given me so many new lights into a science that I love so much, that I shall always he proud to own you as my master in the antique, and will never let any thing hreak in upon my reverence for you, hut a warmth and freedom that will flow from my friendship, and which will not he contained within the circle of a severe awe. As I shall always he attentive to give you any satisfaction that lies in my power, I take the first opportunity of sending you two little poems, hoth hy a hand that I know you esteem the most : if you have not seen them, you will thank me for lines of Mr. Pope : if you have, why I did not know it. I don't know whether Lord Lincoln has received any orders to return home : I had a letter from one of my brothers last post to tell me from Sir Robert that he would have me leave Italy as soon as possible, lest I should be shut up unawares by the arrival of the Spanish troops ; and that I might pass some time in France if I had a mind. I own I don't conceive how it is possible these troops should arrive without its being known some time before. And as to the Great Duke's dominions, one can always be out of them in ten hours or less. If Lord Lincoln has not received the same orders, I shall believe what I now think, that I am wanted for some other reason. I beg my kind love to Lord Lincoln, and that Mr. Spence will believe me, his sincere humble servant, HOR. WALPOLE. 37. TO THE HOK H. S. CONWAY. DKAB HAL : Florence, March 25, 1741, N.8. You must judge by what you feel yourself of what I feel for Selwyn's recovery, with the addition of what I have suffered from post to post. But as I find the whole town have had the same sentiments about him, (though I am sure few so strong as myself,) I will not repeat what you have heard so much. I shall write to him to-night, though he knows without my telling him how very much I love him. To you, my dear Harry, I am infinitely obliged for the three successive letters you wrote me about him, which gave luck one has sometimes in going out of one's way. If Lord Lincoln had not wan- dered to Reggio, Mr. Walpole (who is one of the best natured and most sensible young gentlemen England affords) would have, in all probability, fallen a sacrifice to bis disorder." WRIGHT. 66 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1741 me double pleasure, as they showed your attention for me at a time that you knew I must be so unhappy; and your friendship for him. Your account of Sir Eobert's victory ' was so extremely well told, that I made Gray translate it into French, and have showed it to all that could taste it, or were inquisitive on the occasion. I have received a print by this post that diverts me extremely ; the Motion? Tell me, dear, now, who made the design, and who took the like- nesses ; they are admirable : the lines are as good as one sees on such occasions. I wrote last post to Sir Robert, to wish him joy ; I hope he received my letter. I was to have set out last Tuesday, but on Sunday came the news of the Queen of Hungary being brought to bed of a son ; 3 on which occasion here will be great triumphs, operas and masquerades, which detain me for a short time. I won't make you any excuse for sending you the following lines ; you have prejudice enough for me to read with patience any of my idlenesses." 1 On the event of Mr. Sandys' motion in the House of Commons to remove Sir Robert Walpole from the king's presence and councils for ever. BERRY. The motion was negatived by 290 against 106 ; an unusual majority, which proceeded from the schism between the Tories and the Whigs, and the secession of Shippen and his friends. The same motion was made by Lord Carteret in the House of Lords, and negatived by 108 against 59. WRIGHT. 2 The print alluded to exhibits an interesting view of Whitehall, the Treasury, and adjoining buildings, as they stood at the time. The Earl of Chesterfield, as postilion of a coach which is going full speed towards the Treasury, drives over all in his way. The Duke of Argyle is coachman, flourishing a sword instead of a whip; while Dodington is represented as a spaniel, sitting between his legs. Lord Carteret, perceiving the coach about to be overturned, is calling to the coachman, " Let me get out ! " Lord Cobham, as the footman, is holding fast on by the straps ; while Lord Lyttelton is ambling by the side on a Rosinante as thin as himself. Smallbrook, Bishop of Lichfield, is bowing obsequiously as they pass ; while Sandys, letting fall the place-bill, exclaims, " I thought what would come of putting him on the box." In the foreground is Pulteney leading several figures by strings from their noses, and wheeling a barrow filled with the Craftsman's Letters, Champion, State of the Nation, and Common Sense, and exclaiming, " Zounds, they are over ! " This caricature, and another, entitled " The Political Libertines, or Motion upon Motion," had been provoked by one put forth by Sir Robert Walpole's opponents, entitled " The Grounds for the Motion ; " and were followed up by another from the sup- porters of Sandys' motion, entitled " The Motive or Reason for his Triumph," which the caricaturist attributes entirely to bribery. WRIQHT. The lines on Lyttelton beneath this highly curious print (the earliest good political caricature that we possess) are quoted by Boswell, (ed. Croker, p. 362, ed. 1847.) CUNNINGHAM. 3 Afterwards Joseph the Second, Emperor of Germany. WRIGHT. 4 Here follows the Inscription for the neglected Column in the Place of St. Mark, at Florence, afterwards printed in the Fugitive Pieces. WRIGHT. 1741.] TO MR. WEST. 67 My dear Harry, you enrage me with talking of another journey to Ireland ; it will shock me if I don't find you at my return : pray take care and be in England. I wait with some patience to see Dr. Middleton's Tully, as I read the greatest part of it in manuscript ; though indeed that is rather a reason for my being impatient to read the rest. If Tully can receive any additional honour, Dr. Middleton is most capable of conferring it. 1 I receive with great pleasure any remembrances of my lord and your sisters ; I long to see all of you. Patapan 2 is so handsome that he has been named the silver fleece ; and there is a new order of knighthood to be erected to his honour, in opposition to the golden. Precedents are searching, and plans drawing up for that purpose. I hear that the natives pretend to be companions, upon the authority of their dog-skin waistcoats ; but a council that has been held on purpose has declared' their pretensions impertinent. Patapan has lately taken wife unto him, as ugly as he is genteel, but of a very great family, being the direct heiress of Canis Scaliger, Lord of Yerona : which principality we design to seize a la Prussienne ; that is, as soon as ever we shall have persuaded the republic of Venice that we are the best friends they have in the world. Adieu, dear child ! Yours ever. P. S. I left my subscriptions for Middleton's Tully with Mr. Selwyn ; I won't trouble him, but I wish you would take care and get the books, if Mr. S. has kept the list. 38. TO RICHARD WEST, ESQ. DEAR WEST : Iteggio, 3 May 10, 1741, N.8. I HAVE received the end of your first act, 4 and now will tell you 1 Dr. Middleton's History of the Life of Cicero was published by subscription in the early part of this year, and dedicated to Pope's enemy, Lord Hervey. This laboured encomium on his lordship obtained for the doctor a niche in the Dunciad: " Narcissus, prais'd with all a Parson's pow'r, Look'd a white lily sunk beneath a show'r." WRIGHT. R The same summer [1743] I wrote Patapan, or the Little White Dog, a Tale, imitated from Fontaine ; it was never printed. Walpole, Short Notes. CUNNINGHAM. 3 It was at Reggio that Walpole and Gray quarrelled and parted. The alleged cause of this difference is explained in Walpole's letters to Mason. Walpole took the blame upon himself. He is said to have opened a letter addressed to Gray. CUNNINGHAM. 4 The first act of a tragedy called ' Pausanias,' begun by Mr. West. BERRY. In F 2 68 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1741. sincerely what I think of it. If I was not so pleased with the beginning as I usually am with your compositions, "believe me the part of Pausanias has charmed me. There is all imaginable art joined with all requisite simplicity; and a simplicity, I think, much preferable to that in the scenes of Cleodora and Argilius. Forgive me, if I say they do not talk laconic but low English ; in her, who is Persian too, there would admit more heroic. But for the whole part of Pausanias, 'tis great and well worked up, and the art that is seen seems to proceed from his head, not from the author's. As I am very desirous you should continue, so I own I wish you would improve or change the beginning : those who know you not so well as I do, would not wait with so much patience for the entrance of Pausanias. You see I am frank; and if I tell you I do not approve of the first part, you may believe me as sincere when I tell you I admire the latter extremely. My letter has an odd date. You would not expect I should be writing in such a dirty little place as Reggio ; but the fair is charm- ing ; and here come all the nobility of Lombardy, and all the broken dialects of Genoa, Milan, Venice, Bologna, &c. You never heard such a ridiculous confusion of tongues. All the morning one goes to the fair undressed, as to the walks of Tunbridge ; 'tis just in that manner, with lotteries, raffles, &c. After dinner all the company return in their coaches, and make a kind of corso, with the Ducal family, who go to shops, where you talk to 'em, from thence to the Opera, in mask if you will, and afterwards to the Ridotto. This five nights in the week. Fridays there are masquerades, and Tuesdays balls at the Rivalta, a villa of the Duke's. In short, one diverts oneself. I pass most part of the Opera in the Duchess's box, who is extremely civil to me and extremely agreeable. A daughter of the Regent's, 1 that could please him, must be so. She is not young, though still handsome, but fat ; but has given up her gallantries cheerfully, and in time, and lives easily with a dull husband, two dull sisters of his, and a dull court. These two princesses are wofully ugly, old maids and rich. They might have been married often ; but the old Duke was whimsical and proud, and never would consent to any match for them, but left them much money, and pensions of three thousand pounds a-year a-piece. the preceding month West had forwarded to Gray the sketch of this tragedy, which he appears to have criticised with much freedom ; but Mr. Mason did not find among Gray's papers either the sketch itself, or the free critique upon it. WKIGHT. 1 Philip Duke of Orleans. 1741.] WEST TO WALPOLE. 69 There was a design -to have given the eldest to this King of Spain, and the Duke was to have had the Parmesan princess ; so that now he would have had Parma and Placentia, joined to Modena, Reggio, Mirandola, and Massa. But there being a Prince of Asturias, the old Duke Einaldo hroke off the match, and said his daughter's children should not he younger brothers : and so they mope old virgins. I am going from hence to Venice, in a fright lest there be a war with France, and then I must drag myself through Germany. We have had an imperfect account of a sea-fight in America ; but we are so out of the way, that one can't be sure of it. Which way soever I return, I shall be soon in England, and there you will find me again. As much as ever yours. 39. WEST TO HORACE WALPOLE. DEAK WALPOLE : London, June 22, 1741. I HAVE received your letter from Reggio, of the 10th of May, and have heard since that you fell ill there, and are now recovered and returning to England through France. I heard the bad and good news both together ; and so was amicted and comforted both in a breath. My joy now has got the better, and I live in hopes of seeing you here again. The author of the first act of Pausanias desires his love to you ; and, in return for your criticism, which seems so severe to him in some parts, and so prodigious favourable in others, that if he were not acquainted with your unprejudiced way of thinking, he should not know what to say to it, has ordered me to acquaint you with an accident that happened to him lately, on a little journey he made. It seems he had put all his writings, whether in prose or rhyme, into a little box, and carried them with him. Now, somebody imagining there was more in the box than there really was, has run away with them; and, though strict inquiry has been made, the said author has learnt nothing yet, either concerning the person suspected, or the box. Since I am engaged in talking of this author, and as I know you have some little value for him, I beg leave to acquaint you with some particulars relating to him, which perhaps you will not be so averse to hear. You must know then, that from his cradle upwards he was designed for the law, for two reasons : first, as it was the profession 70 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1741. which his father followed, and succeeded in, and consequently there was a likelihood of his gaining many friends in it : and, secondly, upon account of his fortune, which was so inconsiderable, that it was impossible for him to support himself without following some pro- fession or other. Nevertheless, like a rattle as he is, he has hitherto fixed on no profession : and for the law in particular, upon trial he has found in himself a natural aversion to it : in the mean- while, he has lost a great deal of time, to the great diminution of his narrow fortune, and to the no little scandal of his friends and relations. At length, upon serious consideration, he has resolved that something was to be done, for that poetry and Pausanias would never be sufficient to maintain him. And what do you think he has resolved upon ? Why, apprehending that a general war in Europe was approaching, and, therefore, that there might be some opportunity given, either of distinguishing himself, or being knocked of the head ; being convinced, besides, that there was little in life to make one over fond of it he has chosen the army ; and being told that it was a much cheaper way to procure a commission by the means of a friend, than to buy one, to do which he must strip himself of what fortune he has left, he desired me to use what little interest I had with my friends to procure him what he wanted. At first I objected to him the weakness of his constitution, which might render him incapable of military service, and several other things ; but all to no purpose. He told me, he was neither knave nor fool enough to run in debt, and that he must either abscond from mankind, or do something to enable him to live as he would upon a decent rank, and with dignity; and that what he chose was this. I perceived there was nothing to reply ; so I submitted ; and as I have some sort of regard for the man, I promised him I would use what interest I had, and frankly told him, I would venture to ask for him what I should hardly ask for myself. Excuse my freedom, dear Walpole; and whether I succeed or not, assure yourself that I shall always be, Yours most affectionately, R. WEST.' 1 The answer to this letter does not appear ; but Mr. West's increasing bad health must probably have obliged him to drop all thoughts of going into the army. BERRY. SIR HORACE MANN. . / / * FROM THfc OPKV1NA1, FORMKPI.Y IK THE COLLECTION At STP tl 1741.] TO SIR H011ACE MANN. 71 40. TO SIR HORACE MANN. 1 Calais, and Friday, and here I have been these two days, 1741. Is the wind laid ? Shall I never get aboard ? I came here on Wednesday night, but found a tempest that has never ceased since. At Boulogne I left Lord Shrewsbury 2 and his mother, and brothers and sisters, waiting too : Bulstrode 3 passes his winter at the court of Boulogne, and .then is to travel with two young Shrewsburys. I was overtaken by Amprevoli and Monticelli, 4 who are here with me and the Viscontina, and Barberina, and Abbate Vanneschi 5 what a coxcomb ! I would have talked to him about the opera, but he preferred politics. I have wearied Amorevoli with questions about you. If he was not just come from you, and could talk to me about you, I should hate him ; for, to flatter me, he told me that I talked Italian better than you. He did not know how little I think it a compliment to have anything preferred to you besides, you know the consistence of my Italian ! They are all frightened out of their senses about going on the sea, and are not a little afraid of the English. They went aboard the William and Mary yacht yester- day, which waits here for Lady Cardigan from Spa. The captain clapped the door, and swore in broad English that the Viscontina should not stir till she gave him a song, he did not care whether it was a catch or a moving ballad ; but she would not submit. I wonder he did-! When she came home and told me, I begged her not to judge of all the English from this specimen ; but, by the way, she will find many sea-captains that grow on dry land. Sittinburn, Sept. 13, O.S. [1741]. Saturday morning, or yesterday, we did set out, and after a 1 This is the first letter to Sir Horace then, 1741, only Mr. Mann [see p. 37]. Walpole borrowed his letters from Mann (his nephew Sir Horace conveyed them to England), had them fairly transcribed, annotated them with his own hand, and wrote a brief Preface to them, reprinted in this volume. CUNNINGHAM. 2 Charles Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, died 1787. WALPOLE. 3 Tutor to the young Earl of Shrewsbury. WALPOLE. 4 Italian singers. WALPOLE. Angelo Maria Monticelli, a celebrated singer of the same class as Veluti, was born at Milan in 1715, and first attained the celebrity which he enjoyed by singing with Mingotti at the Royal Opera at Naples in 1746. He died in 1764. WEIGHT. 5 An Italian abbe", who directed and wrote the operas under the protection of Lord Middlesex. WALPOLE. Charles Sackville, Earl of Middlesex and second Duke of Dorset. He was a poet, aud dissolute like others of his family. He died 1769. CUNNINGHAM. 72 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1741. good passage of four hours and a half, landed at Dover. I begin to count my comforts, for I find their contraries thicken on my appre- hension. I have, at least, done for awhile with post-chaises. My trunks were a little opened at Calais, and they would have stopped my medals, but with much ado and much three louis's they let them pass. At Dover I found the benefit of the motions 1 having mis- carried last year, for they respected Sir Robert's son even in the person of his trunks. I came over in a yacht with East India captains' widows, a Catholic girl, coming from a convent to be mar- ried, with an Irish priest to guard her, who says he studied medicine* for two years, and after that he studied learning for two years more. I have not brought over a word of French or Italian for common use ; I have so taken pains to avoid affectation in this point, that I have failed only now and then in a chi e Id to the servants, who I can scarce persuade myself yet are English. The country-town (and you will believe me, who, you know, am not prejudiced ) delights me : the populousness, the ease, the gaiety, and well-dressed every- body amaze me. Canterbury, which on my setting out I thought deplorable, is a paradise to Modena, Reggio, Parma, &c. I had before discovered that there was nowhere but in England the dis- tinction of middling people ; I perceive now, that there is peculiar to us middling houses : how snug they are ! I write to-night because I have time ; to-morrow I get to London just as the post goes. Sir Robert is at Houghton. Good night till another post. You are quite well, I trust, but tell me so always. My loves to the Chutes 2 and all the &ca.'s. Oh ! a story of Mr. Pope and the Prince [of Wales] : " Mr. Pope, you don't love princes." " Sir, I beg your pardon." " Well, you don't love kings then ! " " Sir, I own I love the lion best before his claws are grown." 3 Was it possible to make a better answer to such simple questions ? Adieu ! my dearest child ! Yours, ten thousand times over. P. S. Patapan does not seem to regret his own country. 1 The motion [p. 66] in both houses of parliament, 1740, for removing Sir Robert Walpole from the king's councils. WALPOLE. 2 John Chute [of the Vine, in Hampshire] and Francis Whithed, Esqrs., two great friends of Mr. W.'s, whom he had left at Florence, where he had been himself thirteen months, in the house of Mr. Mann, his relation and particular friend. WALPOLE. This note is the only proof we possess of the relationship between Horace Walpole and Sir Horace Mann. Lord Dover, who was the first to print the note, entirely overlooked it when he wrote his preface to the first series of Walpole's letters to Mann. CUNNINGHAM. s This story was first told in print in Ruffhead's Life of Pope, 8vo, 1769, p. 305. 1741.] TO HON. MR. CONYVAY. 73 41. TO SIR HORACE MANN. [The beginning of this letter is lost.] * I HAD written and sealed my letter, but have since received another from you, dated Sept. 2-1. I read Sir Robert your account of Corsica ; he seems to like hearing any account sent this way indeed, they seem to have more superficial relations in general than I could have believed ! You will oblige me, too, with any farther account of Bianca Colonna : l it is romantic, her history ! I am infinitely obliged to Mr. Chute for his kindness to me, and still more for his friendship to you. You cannot think how happy I am to hear that you are to keep him longer. You do not mention his having received my letter from Paris : I directed it to him, recommended to you. I would not have him think me capable of neglecting to answer his letter, which obliged me so much. I will deliver Amorevoli his letter the first time I see him. Lord Islay 2 dined here ; I mentioned Stosch's 3 Maltese cats. Lord Islay begged I would write to Florence to have the largest male and female that can be got. If you will speak to Stosch, you will oblige me : they may come by sea. You cannot imagine my amazement at your not being invited to Bicardi's ball ; do tell me, when you know what can be the meaning of it ; it could not be inadvertence nay, that were as bad ! Adieu ! my dear child, once more ! 42. TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAT. MY DEAREST HAKKT : London, 1741. BEFORE I thank you for myself, I must thank you for that exces- sive good nature you showed in writing to poor Gray. I am less impatient to see you, as I find you are not the least altered, but have the same tender friendly temper you always had. I wanted much to see if you were still the same but you are. 1 A kind of Joan of Arc, who headed the Corsican rebels against the Genoese. WALPOLE. 2 Archibald Campbell, Earl of Islay, and, on his brother's death, in 1743, Duke of Argyle. WALPOLE. 3 Baron Stosch, a Prussian virtuoso, and spy for the court of England on the Pretender [died 1757]. He had been driven from Rome, though it was suspected that he was a spy on both sides : he was a man of a most infamous character in every respect. WALPOLE. 74 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1741. Don't think of coming before your brother ; he is too good to be left for any one living : besides, if it is possible, I will see you in the country. Don't reproach me, and think nothing could draw me into the country : impatience to see a few friends has drawn me out of Italy ; and Italy, Harry, is pleasanter than London. As I do not love living enfamitte so much as you (but then indeed my family is not like yours), I am hurried about getting myself a house ; for I have so long lived single, that I do not much take to being confined with my own family. You won't find me much altered, I believe ; at least, outwardly. I am not grown a bit shorter, or a bit fatter, but am just the same long lean creature as usual. Then I talk no French, but to my footman ; nor Italian, but to myself. What inward alterations may have happened to me, you will discover best ; for you know 'tis said, one never knows that one's self. I will answer, that that part of it that belongs to you, has not suffered the least change I took care of that. For virtu, I have a little to entertain you : it is my sole pleasure. I am neither young enough nor old enough to be in love. My dear Harry, will you take care and make my compliments to that charming Lady Conway, 1 who I hear is so charming, and to Miss Jenny [Conway], who I know is so ? As for Miss Anne/ and her love as far as it is decent : tell her, decency is out of the question between us, that I love her without any restriction. I settled it yesterday with Miss Conway, that you three are brothers and sister to me, and that if you had been so, I could not love you better. I have so many cousins, and uncles and aunts, and bloods that grow in Norfolk, that if I had portioned out my affections to them, as they say I should, what a modicum would have fallen to each ! So, to avoid fractions, I love my family in you three, their representa- tives. Adieu, my dear Harry ! Direct to me at Downing Street. Good-b'ye ! Yours ever. 43. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Downing Street, Oct. 8, 1741, O.S. . I HAVE been very near sealing this letter with black wax ; Sir 1 Isabella Fitzroy, daughter of Charles second Duke of Grafton. She had been married in May, to [Walpole's maternal cousin] Francis Seymour Conway, afterwards Earl of Hertford. BERRY. 2 Walpole's maternal cousin, Miss Anne Conway, youngest sister of the Earl of Hertford and General Conway. CUNNINGHAM. 1741.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 75 Eobert came from Richmond on Sunday night extremely ill, and on Monday was in great danger. It was an ague and looseness ; but they have stopped the latter, and converted the other into a fever, which they are curing with the bark. He came out of his chamber to-day for the first time, and is quite out of danger. One of the newspapers says, Sir R. "W. is so bad that there are no hopes of him. The Pomfrets ' are arrived ; I went this morning to visit my lord, but did not find him. Lady Sophia [Fermor] is ill, and my Earl 2 still at Paris, not coming. There is no news, nor a soul in town. One talks of nothing but distempers, like Sir Robert's. My Lady Townsend 3 was reckoning up the other day the several things that cured them ; such a doctor so many, such a medicine so many ; but of all, the greatest number have found relief from the sudden deaths of their husbands. The Opera begins the day after the Thing's birthday : the singers are not permitted to sing till on the stage, so no one has heard them, nor have I seen Amorevoli to give him the letter. The Opera is to be on the French system of dancers, scenes, and dresses. The directors have already laid out great sums. They talk of a mob to silence the operas, as they did the French players ; * but it will be more difficult, for here half the young noblemen in town are engaged, and they will not be so easily persuaded to humour the taste of the mobility : in short, they have already retained several eminent lawyers [boxers] from the Bear Garden to plead their defence. I have had a long visit this morning from Don Benjamin : 5 he is one of the best kind of agreeable men I ever saw quite fat and easy, with universal knowledge : he is in the greatest esteem at my court. I am going to trouble you with some commissions. Miss Rich, 6 1 Thomas Earl of Pomfret, and Henrietta Louisa, his consort, and their two eldest daughters, Sophia and Charlotte, had been in Italy at the same time with Mr. Walpole [p. 52]. The earl had been master of the horse to Queen Caroline, and the countess lady of the bedchamber. WALPOLE. 8 Henry Earl of Lincoln [p. 30] was at that time in love with Lady Sophia Fermor. WALPOLE. 3 Ethelreda Harrison, wife of [Walpole's cousin] Charles Lord Viscount Townsend, but parted from him. WALPOLE. She was a wit, and said many happy things recorded by Walpole in his Letters. Lady Townshend died 5 March, 1788. CUNNINGHAM. 4 At the Haymarket Theatre in October 1738, soon after the passing of the Act for licensing the stage. CUNNINGHAM. 6 Sir Benjamin Keene, ambassador at Madrid. WALPOLE. 6 Elizabeth, eldest daughter of Sir Robert Rich, since married [1749] to Sir George Lyttelton [afterwards Lord Lyttelton]. WALPOLE. Miss Rich was his second wife : they separated, and she survived till 1795. CUNNINGHAM. 76 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1741. who is the finest singer, except your sister, 1 in the world, has begged me to get her some music, particularly " the office of the Virgin of the Seven Sorrows," hy Pergolesi, 2 the " Serva Padrona, il Pastor se toma Aprile," and " Semplicetta Pastorella." If you can send these easily, you will much oblige me. Do, too, let me know by your brother, what you have already laid out for me, that I may pay him. I was mentioning to Sir Robert some pictures in Italy, which I wished him to buy ; two particularly, if they can be got, would make him delight in you beyond measure. They are, a Madonna and Child, by Domenichino, 3 in the palace Zambeccari, at Bologna, or Caliambec,* as they call it ; Mr. Chute knows the picture. The other is by Correggio, in a convent at Parma, and reckoned the second best of that hand in the world. There are the Madonna and Child, St. Catherine, St. Matthew, and other figures : it is a most known picture, and has been engraved by Augustin Carracci. If you can employ anybody privately to inquire about these pictures, be so good to let me know : Sir R. would not scruple almost any price, for he has of neither hand : the convent is poor : the Zambeccari collection is to be sold, though, when I inquired after this picture, they would not set a price. Lord Euston is to be married to Lady Dorothy Boyle 5 to-morrow, after so many delays. I have received your long letter, and Mr. Chute's too, which I will answer next post. I wish I had the least politics to tell you ; but all is silent. The Opposition say not a syllable, because they don't know what the Court will think of public affairs ; and they will not take their part till they are sure of contradicting. The Court will not be very ready to declare themselves, as their present situation is every way disagreeable. All they say, is to throw the blame entirely on the obstinacy of the Austrian Court, who would never stir or 1 Mary, daughter of R[obert] Mann, Esq. since married to Mr. Foote [p. 140]. WALPOLB. 2 Better known to all lovers of the works of this great composer as his " Stabat mater." WRIGHT. 3 We shall read more, and somewhat wearisomely, about this Domenichino. Mann at length, see letter to Chute, 20th August, 1743, succeeded in obtaining it for Sir Robert Walpole. CUNNINGHAM. 4 A corrupted pronunciation of the Bolognese. WALPOLE. 8 George Earl of Euston, eldest son of Charles second Duke of Grafton, married 1741, Lady Dorothy Boyle, eldest daughter and co-heir of (the architect Earl) Richard, third and last Earl of Burlington. She died without issue the year after her marriage. Lord Euston, who died in 1747, treated her infamously. See (p. 252) her mother's affecting inscription on her portrait, and Hanbury Williams's verses ' To Lady Dorothy Boyle, enamoured of Lord Euston.' CUNNINGHAM. 1741.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 77 soften for themselves, while they thought any one obliged to defend them. All I know of news is, that Poland is leaning towards the acquisition side, like her neighbours, and proposes to get a lock of the Golden Fleece too. Is this any part of Gregory's l negociation ? I delight in his Scappata " Scappata, no ; eligi solamente ha preso la posta." My service to Seriston ; he is charming. How excessively obliging to go to Madame Grifoni's 2 festino ! but believe me, I shall be angry, if, for my sake, you do things that are out of your character : don't you know that I am infinitely fonder of that than of her ? I read your story of the Sposa Panciatici at table, to the great entertainment of the company, and Prince Craon's epitaph, which Lord Cholmley 3 says he has heard before, and does not think it is the Prince's own ; no more do I, it is too good : but make my com- pliments of thanks to him ; he shall have his buckles the first opportunity I find of sending them. Say a thousand things for me to dear Mr. Chute, till I can say them next post for myself ; till then, adieu. Yours ever. 44. TO SIR HORACE MANN. London, Oct. 13, 1741. [The greatest part of this letter is wanting.] * * * THE Town will come to town, and then one shall know something. Sir Robert is quite recovered. Lady Pomfret I saw last night : Lady Sophia [her daughter] has been ill with a cold ; her head is to be dressed French, and her body English, for which I am sorry ; her figure is so fine in a robe : she is full as sorry as I am. Their trunks are not arrived yet, so they have not made their appearance. My Lady told me, a little out of humour, that TJguccioni wrote her word, that you said her things could not be sent away yet : I understood from you, that very wisely, you would have nothing to do about them, so made no answer. The parliament meets the fifteenth of November. * * 1 Gregorio Agdollo, an Asiatic, from being a prisoner at Leghorn, raised himself to be employed to the Great Duke by the King of Poland. WALPOLE. 8 Elizabetta Capponi, wife of Signor Grifoni, a great beauty. WALPOLE. 3 George, third Earl of Cholmondeley, married [1723] Mary, only legitimate daughter of Sir Robert Walpole. DOTER. Through this marriage Houghton descended to its present possessor, the Marquis of Cholmondeley. CUNNINGHAM. 78 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. Amorevoli has been with me two hours this evening ; he is in panics about the first night, which is the next after the birthday. I have taken a master, not to forget my Italian don't it look like returning to Florence? some time or other. Good night. Yours ever and ever, my dear child. 45. TO SIR HORACE MANN. London, Oct. 19, 1741, O.S. [Great part wanting.] I WRITE to you up to the head and ears in dirt, straw, and unpacking. I have been opening all my cases from the Custom- house the whole morning ; and are not you glad ? every indivi- dual safe and undamaged. I am fitting up an apartment in Downing Street * * * * [Sir Hobert Walpole] 1 was called in the morning, and was asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow, for I have frequently known him snore ere they had drawn his curtains, now never sleeps above an hour with- out waking ; and he, who at dinner always forgot he was Minister, and was more gay and thoughtless than all his company, 2 now sits without speaking, and with his eyes fixed for an hour together. Judge if this is the Sir Robert you knew. The politics of the age are entirely suspended ; nothing is men- tioned ; but this bottling them up, will make them fly out with the greater violence the moment the parliament meets ; till a word to you about this affair. I am sorry to hear the Venetian journey of the Suares family ; it does not look as if the Teresina was to marry Pandolfini ; do you know, I have set my heart upon that match. You are very good to the Pucci, to give her that advice, though I don't suppose she will follow it. The Bolognese scheme * * In return for Amorevoli's letter, he has given me two. I fancy it will be troublesome to you ; so put his wife into some other method of correspondence with him. Do you love puns ? A pretty man of the age came into the play- house the other night, booted and spurred : says he, " I am come to see Orpheus." "And Euridice You rid I see," replied another gentleman. ******* 1 The omissions in these letters marked with stars occur in the original MS. DOVER. 8 " Seen him I have, but in his happier hour Of social pleasure, ill exchanged for power." Pope. CUNNINGHAM. 1741.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 79 46. TO SIR HORACE MANN. London, October 22, 1741, 0.8. YOUR brother has been with me this morning, and we have talked over your whole affair. He thinks it will be impossible to find any servant of the capacities you require, that will live with you under twenty, if not thirty pounds a-year, especially as he is not to have your clothes : then the expense of the journey to Florence, and of back again, in case you should not like him, will be considerable. He is for your taking one from Leghorn ; but I, who know a little more of Leghorn than he does, should be apprehensive of any person from thence being in the interest of Goldsworthy, 1 or too attached to the merchants : in short, I mean, he would be liable to prove a spy upon you. We have agreed that I shall endeavour to find out a proper man, if such a one will go to you for twenty pounds a-year, and then you shall hear from me. I am very sensible that Palombo 2 is not fit for you, and shall be extremely diligent in equipping you with such a one as you want. You know how much I wish to be of any service to you, even in trifles. I have been much diverted privately, for it is a secret that not a hundred persons know yet, and is not to be spoken of. Do but think on a duel between "Winnington 3 and Augustus Townshend:* the 1 Mr. Goldsworthy, Consul at Leghorn, had married Sir Charles Wager's niece, and was endeavouring to supplant Mr. Mann at Florence. WALPOLE. I suppose you know that Mrs. Goldsworthy, being detected en flagrant delit, is sent back to Eng- land with her children ; some of which, I hear, he disowns. I think her case not unlike Lady Abergavenny's [see p. 367], her loving spouse being very well content with her gallantries while he found his account in them, but raging against those that brought him no profit. Lady Mary W. Montagu to Lady Pom/ret. CUNNINGHAM. 8 An Italian, secretary to Mr. Mann. WALPOLE. 3 Winnington had been bred a Tory, but had left them in the height of Sir Robert Walpole's power : when that minister sunk, he had injudiciously, and, to please my Lady Townshend, who had then the greatest influence over him, declined visiting him, in a manner to offend the steady old Whigs ; and his jolly way of laughing at his own want of principles had revolted all the graver sort, who thought deficiency of honesty too sacred and profitable a commodity to be prophaned and turned into ridicule. He had infinitely more wit than any man I ever knew, and it was as ready and quick as it was constant and unmeditated. His style was a little brutal, his courage not at all so ; his good-humour inexhaustible ; it was impossible to hate or to trust him. Walpole, Memoirs of George II. i. 151. Winnington was first made lord of the Admiralty, then of the treasury, then cofferer, and lastly paymaster of the forces; to which office, on his death in 1746, Mr. Pitt succeeded. WRIGHT. 4 The Hon. Augustus Townshend, was second son of the minister, Lord Townshend, by his second wife [Dorothy], the sister of Sir Robert Walpole. He was consequently half-brother to Charles, the third viscount, husband to Ethelreda [Harrison], Lady Townshend. DOVER. 80 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1741. latter a pert boy, captain of an Indiaman ; the former declared cicisbeo to [his sister-in-law] my Lady Townshend. The quarrel was something that Augustus had said of them ; for since she was parted from her husband, she has broke with all his family. Winnington challenged ; they walked into Hyde Park last Sunday morning, scratched one another's fingers, tumbled into two ditches that is, Augustus did, kissed, and walked home together. The other night, at Mrs. Boothby's ' "Well, I did believe I should never find time to write to you again ; I was interrupted in my letter last post, and could not finish it ; to- day I came home from the king's levee, where I kissed his hand, without going to the drawing-room, on purpose to finish my letter, and the moment I sat down they let somebody in. That some- body is gone, and I go on. At Mrs. Boothby's, Lady Townshend was coquetting with Lord Baltimore : 2 he told her, if she meant anything with him, he was not for her purpose ; if only to make any one jealous, he would throw away an hour with her with all his heart. The whole town is to be to-morrow night at Sir Thomas Robinson's* ball, which he gives to a little girl of the Duke of Richmond's. There are already two hundred invited, from miss in bib and apron, to my Lord Chancellor [Hardwicke] in bib and mace. You shall hear about it next post. I wrote you word that Lord Euston is married : in a week more I believe I shall write you word that he is divorced. He is brutal enough; and has forbid Lady Burlington 4 his house, and that in very ungentle terms. The whole family is in confusion ; the Duke of Grafton half dead, and Lord Burlington half mad. The latter has challenged Lord Euston, who accepted the challenge, but they were prevented. There are different stories : some say that the duel would have been no breach of consanguinity ; others, that 1 The lady celebrated in Hanbury Williams's poem of ' Isabella, or the Morning ' " To ancient Boothby's ancient Churchill's flown." CUNNINGHAM. 2 Charles Calvert, sixth Lord Baltimore, in Ireland, born 1699, died 1751. He was much in the confidence of Frederick Prince of Wales. CUNNINGHAM. 3 Sir Thomas Robinson, of Rokeby Park, in Yorkshire, Bart., commonly called "Long Sir Thomas," on account of his stature, and in order to distinguish him from the diplomatist, Sir Thomas Robinson, afterwards created Lord Grantham. DOVER. Chesterfield's extempore epigram upon him is well known. CUNKINGHAM. 4 Lady Dorothy Savile, eldest daughter and co-heiress of William second Marquis of Halifax, mother of Lady Euston. DOVER. The Countess of Burlington [p. 76], to whom Pope addressed a copy of verses, and the countess who protected Mrs. Garrick prior to her marriage. CUNNINGHAM. 1741.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 81 there is a contract of marriage come out in another place, which has bad more consanguinity than ceremony in it : in short, one cannot go into a room but you hear something of it. Do you not pity the poor girl ? of the softest temper, vast beauty, birth, and fortune, to be so sacrificed ! The letters from the West Indies are not the most agreeable. You have heard of the fine river and little town which Yernon took, and named, the former Augusta, the latter Cumberland. Since that, they have found out that it is impracticable to take St. Jago by sea : on which Admiral Yernon and Ogle insisted that TYentworth, with the land forces should march to it by land, which he, by advice of all the land officers, has refused ; for their march would have been of eighty miles, through a mountainous, unknown country, full of defiles, where not two men could march abreast ; and they have but four thousand five hundred men, and twenty-four horses. Quires of paper from both sides are come over to the council, who are to determine from hence what is to be done. They have taken a Spanish man-of-war and a register ship, going to Spain, immensely valuable. The parliament does not meet till the first of December, which relieves me into a little happiness, and gives me a little time to settle myself. I have unpacked all my things, and have not had the least thing suffer. I am now only in a fright about my birthday clothes, which I bespoke at Paris : Friday is the day, and this is Monday, without any news of them ! I have been two or three times at the play, very unwillingly ; for nothing was ever so bad as the actors, except the company. There is much in vogue a Mrs. Woffington, 1 a bad actress ; but she has life. Lord Hartington 2 dines here : it is said (and from his father's [Duke of Devonshire's] partiality to another person's father [Walpole's own], I don't think it impossible) that he is to marry 1 Margaret Woffington, born 1720, died 1760. She was a great beauty, and famous for playing Lady Townly, Sir Harry Wildair, &c. There is an admirable portrait of her by Hogarth at Bowood. She is buried at Teddington, in Twickenhamshire, as Walpole loved to call his classic neighbourhood. " So you cannot bear Mrs. Woffington; yet all the town is in love with her. To say the truth, I am glad to find somebody to keep me in countenance, for I think she is an impudent Irish-faced girl." Mr.Conway to Walpole, Oct. 26, 1740. CUNNINGHAM. 2 William, Marquis of Hartington, afterwards fourth Duke of Devonshire. He married Lady Charlotte Boyle, second daughter of Richard, third Earl of Burlington. DOVER. VOl. i. 82 HORACE WALPOLB'S LETTERS. [1741. a certain miss : ' Lord Fitzwilliam 2 is supposed another candi- date. Here is a new thing, which has been much about town, and liked ; your brother Gal. 3 gave me the copy of it : LES COURS DE L'EUROPE. L'Allemagne craint tout ; L'Autriche risque tout ; La Bavitire espere tout ; La Prusse entreprend tout ; La Mayence vend tout ; Le Portugal regarde tout ; L'Angleterre veut faire tout ; L'Espagne embrouille tout ; La Savoye se d6fie dc tout ; Le Mercure se m61e de tout ; La France achete tout ; Les Jesuites se trouvent par tout ; Rome b6nit tout ; Si Dieu ne pourvoye a tout, Le Diable emportera tout. Good night, my dear child : you never say a word of your own health ; are not you quite recovered ? a thousand services to Mr. Chute and Mr. Whittled, and to all my friends : do they begin to forget me ? I don't them. Yours, ever. 47. TO SIR HORACE MANN. London, Nov. 2, 1741. You shall not hear a word but of balls and public places : this one week has seen Sir T. Robinson's ball, my Lord Mayor's, the birth- day, and the opera. There were an hundred and ninety-seven persons at Sir Thomas's, and yet was it so well conducted that nobody felt a crowd. He had taken off all his doors, and so separated the old and the young, that neither were inconvenienced with the other. The ball began at eight ; each man danced one minuet with his partner, and then began country dances. There were four-and-twenty couple, .'Miss Mary Walpole [Lady Mary Churchill], daughter of Sir Robert Walpole by his second wife, Maria Skerrett, but born before their marriage. When her father was made an earl, she had the rank of an earl's daughter given to her. DOVER. 2 See Lord Dover's note on page 84. CUNNINGHAM. 3 Galfridus Mann. WALPOLE. About autumn [1758], I erected at Linton, in Kent, a tomb for my friend Galfridus Mann ; the design was by Mr. Bentley. Walpole, Short Notes. CUNNINGHAM. 1741.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 83 divided into twelve and twelve : each set danced two dances, and then retired into another room, while the other set took their two ; and so alternately. Except Lady Ancram, 1 no married woman danced ; so, you see, in England, we do not foot it till five-and-fifty. The beauties were the Duke of Richmond's two daughters 2 and their mother, still handsomer than they : the Duke sat by his wife 3 all night, kissing her hand : how this must sound in the ears of Floren- tine cicisbe's, cock or hen ! Then there was Lady Euston, Lady Caroline Fitzroy, 4 Lady Lucy Manners, 5 Lady Camilla Bennet, 6 and Lady Sophia [Fermor], handsomer than all, but a little out of humour at the scarcity of minuets ; however, as usual, she danced more than anybody, and, as usual too, took out what men she liked or thought the best dancers. Mem. Lord Holderness 7 is a little what Lord Lincoln 8 will be to-morrow ; for he is expected. There was [General] Churchill's 9 daughter, 1 who is prettyish, and dances well ; and the Parsons 2 family from Paris, who are admired too ; but indeed it is a force des muscles. Two other pretty women were Mrs. Colebroke (did you know the he-Colebroke in Italy ?) and a Lady Schaub, a foreigner, who, as Sir Luke says, 3 would have him. Sir 1 Lady Caroline D'Arcy, daughter of Robert third Earl of Holdernesse, and wife of William Henry fourth Marquis of Lothian, at this time, during his father's lifetime, called Earl of Ancram. DOVEK. 2 Lady Caroline and Lady Emily Lenox. WALPOLE. The former was married, in 1744, to Henry Fox, the first Lord Holland ; the latter, in 1746-7, to James, twentieth Earl of Kildare, in 1766 created Duke of Leinster. WEIGHT. 3 Charles, second Duke of Richmond, and Lady Sarah Cadogan, his Duchess, eldest daughter of William Earl Cadogan. DOVER. Eldest daughter of Charles Duke of Grafton. WALPOLE. The Lady Caroline Petersham, and Countess of Harrington of Walpole's Letters. We shall hear more about her, and pleasantly enough. CUNNINGHAM. 5 Sister to John Duke of Rutland; married, in 1742, to the Duke of Montrose. WALPOLE. 6 Only daughter of Charles second Earl of Tankerville. She married first, Gilbert Fane Fleming, Esq., and secondly, Mr. Wake, of Bath. DOVER. 7 Robert D'Arcy, fourth and last Earl of Holdernesse. [See p. 17.] CUNNINGHAM. 8 That is, in love with Lady Sophia Fermor. [See note 2 , p. 75.] CUNNINGHAM. 9 Old General Churchill, a great favourite with Sir Robert Walpole, and immortal- ised by Hanbury Williams. His son, by Mrs. Oldfield the actress, married Sir Robert Walpole's natural daughter, by Moll Skerrett. We shall hear much of both, as we read on. See p. 112. CUNNINGHAM. 1 Harriet, natural daughter of General Churchill; afterwards married to Sir Everard Fawkener [Secretary to the Oulloden Duke of Cumberland]. WALPOLE. 2 The son and daughters of Alderman Parsons, a Jacobite brewer, who lived much in France, and had, somehow or other, been taken notice of by the King. WALPOLE. ' Calvert's butt and Parsons' black champagne ' are immortalised by Goldsmith. CUNNINGHAM. 3 Sir Luke Schaub, a kind of Will Chiftinch to George I., and much in the favoui of George II. He had several pensions from both Kings for confidential services G 2 84 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1741. R. [obert] was afraid of the heat, and did not go. The supper was served at twelve ; a large table of hot for the lady- dancers ; their partners and other tables stood round. We danced (for I country- danced) till four, then had tea and coffee, and came home. Finis Balli. * * * Friday was the birthday ; it was vastly full, the ball immoderately so, for there came all the second edition of my lord mayor's, but not much finery : Lord Fitzwilliam 1 and myself were far the most superb. I did not get mine till nine that morning. The opera will not tell so well as the two other shows, for they were obliged to omit the part of Amorevoli, who has a fever. The audience was excessive, without the least disturbance, and almost as little applause ; I cannot conceive why, for Monticelli be able to sing to-morrow. At court I met the Shadwells ; 2 Mademoiselle Misse Molli, &c. I love them, for they asked vastly after you, and kindly. Do you know, I have had a mind to visit Pucci, the Florentine minister, but he is so black, and looks so like a murderer in a play, that I have never brought it about yet ? I know none of the foreign ministers., but Ossorio 3 a little ; he is still vastly in fashion, though extremely altered. Scandal, who, I believe, is not mistaken, lays a Miss Macartney to his charge ; she is a companion to the Duchess of Richmond [Lady Sarah Cadogan], as Madame Goldsworthy was ; but Ossorio will rather be Wachtendonck " than Goldsworthy : what a lamentable story is that of the hundred sequins per month ! I have mentioned Mr. Jackson, as you desired, to Sir R. [obert], who says, he has a very good opinion of him. In case of any change at Leghorn, you will let me know. He will not lose his patron, Lord Hervey, 8 so soon as I imagined ; he begins to recover. abroad and at home. He possessed a fair collection of pictures, which, at his death in 1758, brought good prices. The ' Sigismunda/ by Correggio, now at the Duke of Newcastle's, at Clumber, (really by Furini), which provoked Hogarth, and occasioned his ' Sigismunda,' was Sir Luke Schaub's. Lady Schaub is immortalised in ' The Long Story ' of Gray. She died very old in 1793. CUNNINGHAM. 1 William third Earl FitzwiUiam, in Ireland; created an English peer in 1742 ; and in 1746 an English earl. DOVER. 8 Sir John Shadwell, a physician, his wife and daughters, the youngest of whom was pretty, and by the foreigners generally called Mademoiselle Misse Molli, had been in Italy, when Mr. W. was there. WALPOLE. Sir John was the son of Thomas Shadwell the dramatist, and antagonist of Dryden. CUNNINGHAM. 3 The Chevalier Ossorio, minister from the King of Sardinia. WALPOLE. 4 General Wachtendonck, commander of the great Duke's troops at Leghorn, was cicisbeo to the consul's wife there. WALPOLE. 5 John Lord Hervey, lord privy seal [husband of Molly Lepel], and eldest son of 1741.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 85 I believe the Euston embroil is adjusted; I was with Lady Caroline Fitzroy [afterwards Lady Caroline Petersham] on Friday evening; there were her brother and the bride, and quite bridal together, quite honey-moonish. I forgot to tell you that the Prince [of Wales] was not at the Opera ; I believe it has been settled that he should go thither on Tuesdays, and Majesty on Saturdays, that they may not meet. The Neutrality ' begins to break out, and threatens to be an excise or convention. The Newspapers are full of it, and the press teems. It has already produced three pieces : " The Groans of Germany," which I will send you by the first opportunity : " Bedlam, a poem on His Majesty's happy escape from his German dominions, and all the wisdom of his conduct there." The title of this is all that is remarkable in it. The third piece is a Ballad, which, not for the goodness, but for the excessive abuse of it, I shall transcribe . THE LATE GALLANT EXPLOITS OP A FAMOUS BALANCING CAPTAIN. 2 A NEW SONG. TO THE TUNE OP THE KING AND THE MILLEE. Mene tekel. The handwriting on the wall. I'll tell you a story as strange as 'tis new, Which all, who're concern'd, will allow to be true, Of a Balancing Captain, well-known hereabouts, Return'd home, God save him ! a mere King of Clouts. This Captain he takes, in a gold-ballast' d ship, Each summer to Terra damnosa a trip, For which he begs, borrows, scrapes all he can get, And runs his poor Owners most vilely in debt. The last time he set out for this blessed place, y He met them, and told them a most piteous case, Of a sister of bis, who, though bred up at court, Was ready to perish for want of support. John first Earl of Bristol. He was a man of considerable celebrity in his day ; but is now principally known from his unfortunate rivalry with Pope, for the good graces of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. He died August 5, 1743, at the age of forty-seven. DOVER. Since Lord Dover died, the publication of Lord Hervey's delightful Memoirs has materially added to his celebrity, and to the accuracy of Walpole's Reminiscences CUNNINGHAM. 1 The Neutrality for the electorate of Hanover. WALPOLE. 2 This song is a satire upon George II. " the balancing Captain," and upon that 85 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS [1741 This Hun-gry Sister, he then did pretend, Would be to his Owners a notable friend, If they would at that critical juncture supply her They did but alas ! all the fat's in the fire ! This our Captain no sooner had finger'd the cole, But he hies him abroad with his good Madam Vole Where, like a true tinker, he managed this metal, And while he stopp'd one hole, made ten in the kettle. His Sister, whom he to his Owners had sworn, To see duly settled before his return, He gulls with bad messages sent to and fro, Whilst he underhand claps up a peace with her foe. He then turns this Sister adrift, and declares Her most mortal foes were her Father's right heirs " G d z ds ! " cries the world, " such a step was ne'er taken ! " " 0, ho ! " says Nol Bluff", " I have saved my own bacon. " Let France damn the Germans, and undamn the Dutch, And Spain on Old England pish ever so much, Let Russia bang Sweden, or Sweden bang that, I care not, by Robert ! one kick of my hat. " So I by myself can noun substantive stand, Impose on my Owners, and save my own land ; You call me masculine, feminine, neuter, or block, Be what will the genders, sirs, hie, haec, or hoc. " Or should my chous'd Owners begin to look sour, I '11 trust to Mate Bob to exert his old power, Regit animos dictis, or nummis, with ease, So, spite of your growling, I '11 act as I please." Yet worse in this treacherous contract, 'tis said, Such terms are agreed to, such promises made, That his Owners must soon feeble beggars become " Hold ! " cries the Crown office, " 'twere scandal so, mum ! ' This secret, however, must out on the day When he meets his poor Owners to ask for more pay ; And I fear when they come to adjust the account, A zero for balance, will prove their amount. vacillating and doubtful conduct, which his fears for the electorate of Hanover made him pursue, whenever Germany was the seat of war. His Sister, whom he is accused of deserting, was Maria Theresa, Queen of Hungary. DOVER. 1741.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 87 One or two of the stanzas are tolerable ; some, especially the ninth, most nonsensically bad. However, this is a specimen of what we shall have amply commented upon in parliament. I have already found out a person, who, I believe, will please you in Palombo's place : I am to see your brother about it to morrow-morning, and next post you shall hear more particularly. I am quite in concern for the poor princess, 1 and her conjugal and amorous distresses : I really pity them ; were they in England, we should have all the old prudes dealing out judgments on her, and mumbling toothless ditties, to the tune of Pride mil have a fall. I am buying some fans and trifles for her, si mignom ! Good night. Yours, ever. 48. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Downing Street, Nov. 5, 1741, O.S. I JUST mentioned to you in my letter on Monday, that I had found such a person as you wanted ; I have since seen your brother, who is so satisfied with him, that he was for sending him directly away to you, without staying six weeks for an answer from you ; but I chose to have your consent. He is the son of a tradesman in the City, so not yet a fine gentleman. He is between fifteen and sixteen, but very tall of his age : he was disappointed in not going to a merchant at Grenoa, as was intended ; but was so far provided for it, as to have learned Italian three months : he speaks French very well, writes a good hand, and casts accounts ; so, you see, there will not be much trouble in forming him to your purpose. He will go to you for twenty pounds a- year and his lodging. If you like this, write me word by the first post, and he shall set out directly. We hear to-day that the Toulon squadron is arrived at Barcelona ; I don't like it of all things, for it has a look towards Tuscany. If it is suffered to go thither quietly, it will be no small addition to the present discontents. Here is another letter, which I am entreated to send you, from poor Amorevoli ; he has a continued fever, though not a high one. 1 The Prince de Craon, and the princess his wife, who had been favourite mistress to Leopold, the last Duke of Lorrain, resided at this time at Florence, where the prince was head of the council of regency ; but they were extremely ill-treated and mortified by the Count de Richcourt, a Low Lorrainer [p. 159], who, being a creature of the great duke's favourite minister, had the chief ascendant and power there. WALPOUJ. 88 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1741 Yesterday, Monticelli was taken ill, so there will be no opera on Saturday ; nor was on Tuesday. Monticelli is infinitely admired ; next to Farinelli. The Viscontina is admired more than liked. The music displeases everybody, and the dances. I am quite uneasy about the Opera, for Mr. Conway is one of the directors, and I fear they will lose considerably, which he cannot afford. There are eight, Lord Middlesex, 1 Lord Holderness, Mr. Frederick, 2 Lord Conway, Mr. Conway, Mr. Darner, 3 Lord Brook, 4 and Mr. Brand. 5 The five last are directed by the three first ; they by the first, and he by the Abbe" Vanneschi,' who will make a pretty sum. I will give you some instances ; not to mention the improbability of eight young thoughtless men of fashion understanding economy : it is usual to give the poet fifty guineas for composing the books Vanneschi and Rolli are allowed three hundred. Three hundred more Vanneschi had for his journey to Italy to pick up dancers and performers, which was always as well transacted by bankers there He has additionally brought over an Italian tailor because there are none here ! They have already given this Taylorini four nundred pounds, and he has already taken a house of thirty pounds a-year. Monticelli and the Visconti are to have a thousand guineas a-piece ; Amorevoli eight hundred and fifty : this at the rate of the great singers, is not so extravagant ; but to the Muscovita (though the second woman never had above four hundred) they give six ; that is for secret services/ By this you may judge of their frugality ! 1 Charles Sackville, Earl of Middlesex, and subsequently second Duke of Dorset, eldest son of Lionel first Duke of Dorset. He was made a lord of the Treasury in 1743, and Master of the Horse to Frederick, Prince of Wales, in 1747. DOVER. See note, ante, p. 71. CUNNINGHAM. 2 John Frederick, Esq., afterwards Sir John Frederick, Bart., by the death of his cousin, Sir Thomas. He was a commissioner of customs, and member of parliament for West Looe. DOVER. 3 Joseph Darner, Esq., created in 1753 Baron Milton, in Ireland, and by George III. an English peer, by the same title, and eventually Earl of Dorchester. DOVER. 4 Francis Greville, eighth Lord Brooke; created in 1746 Earl Brooke, and in 1759 Earl of Warwick. DOVER. 5 Thomas Brand, Esq., of the Hoo, in Hertfordshire [p. 17], one of the original members of the society of Dilettanti. DOVER. 6 If this anticipation of Walpole's was ever realised, "the pretty sum" Mas eventually lost on the spot where it had been gained. Vanneschi, having in 1753 undertaken the management of the Opera-House on his own account, continued it until 1756, when his differences with Mingotti, which excited almost as much of the public attention as the rivalries of Handel and Bononcini or of Faustina and Cuzzoni, completely prejudiced the public against him. and eventually ended in making him a bankrupt, a prisoner in the Fleet, and at last a fugitive. WRIGHT. 7 She was kept by Lord Middlesex. WALPOLE. She was not pretty, see p. 45. C0NNINGHAM. 1741.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 89 J am quite uneasy for poor Harry [Mr. Con way], who will thus be to pay for Lord Middlesex's pleasures ! Good night ! I have not time now to write more. Yours, ever. 49. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Downing Street, Nov. 12, 1741. NOTHING is equal to my uneasiness about you. I hear or think of nothing but Spanish embarkations for Tuscany : before you receive this, perhaps, they will be at Leghorn. Then, your brother tells me you have received none of my letters. He knows I have never failed writing once a week, if not twice. We have had no letters from you this post. I shall not have the least respite from my anxiety, till I hear about you, and what you design to do. It is impossible but the Great Duke must lose Tuscany ; and I suppose it is as certain, (I speak on probabilities, for, upon honour, I know nothing of the matter,) that as soon as there is a peace, we shall acknowledge Don Philip, and then you may return to Florence again. In the meanwhile I will ask Sir B. [obert] if it is possible to get your appointments continued, while you stay in readiness at Bologna, Rome, Lucca, or where you choose. I talk at random ; but as I think so much of you, I am trying to find out something that may be of service to you. I write in infinite hurry, and am called away, so scarce know what I say. Lord Conway and his family are this instant come to town, and have sent for me. It is Admiral Yemen's birthday, 1 and the city-shops are full of favours, the streets of marrowbones and cleavers, and the night will be full of mobbing, bonfires, and lights. The opera does not succeed ; Amorevoli has not sung yet ; here is a letter to his wife : mind, while he is ill, he sends none to the Chiaretta ! The dances are infamous and ordinary. Lord Chester- field [the witty Earl] was told that the Yiscontina said she was but four-and-twenty : he answered, " I suppose she means four- and-twenty stone ! " There is a mad person goes about ; he called to a sentinel the 1 Admiral Vernon was now in the height of his popularity, in consequence of his successful attack upon Porto-Bello, in November, 1739, and the great gallantry he had shown upon that occasion. His determined and violent opposition, as a member of parliament, to the measures of the government, assisted in rendering him the idol of the mob, which he continued for many years. DOVER. 90 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1741. other day in the Park ; " Did you ever see the Leviathan ? " $"o." " "Well, he is as like Sir R. W. as ever two devils were like one another." Never was such unwholesome weather ! I have a great cold, and have not been well this fortnight : even immortal majesty has had a looseness. The Duke of Ancaster ' and Lord James Cavendish 2 are dead. This is all the news I know : I would I had time to write more ; but I know you will excuse me now. If I wrote more, it would bo still about the Italian expedition, I am so disturbed about it. Yours, ever. 50. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Downing Street, Nov. 23, 1741. YOUR letter has comforted me much, if it can be called comfort to have one's uncertainty fluctuate to the better side. You make me hope that the Spaniards design on Lombardy ; my passion for Tuscany, and anxiety for you, make me eager to believe it ; but alas ! while I am in the belief of this, they may be in the act of conquest in Florence, and poor you retiring politically ! How delightful is Mr. Chute for cleaving unto you like E,uth ! " Whither thou goest, I will go ; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge ! " As to the merchants at Leghorn and their concerns, Sir R. [obert] thinks you are mistaken, and that if the Spaniards come thither, they will by no means be safe. I own I write to you under a great dilemma ; I flatter myself, all is well with you ; but if not, how disagreeable to have one's letters fall into strange hands. I write, however. A brother of mine, 3 Edward by name, has lately had a call to matrimony : the virgin's name was Howe. 4 He had agreed to take 1 Peregrine Bertie, second Duke of Ancaster and Kesteven. The report of his death was premature. WRIGHT. 2 The second son of William, second Duke of Devonshire. He was colonel of a regiment of foot-guards, and member for Malton. WEIGHT. 3 Second son of Sir Robert Walpole. He was Clerk of the Pells, and afterwards Knight of the Bath. WALPOLE. Sir Edward died unmarried, in 178-1, leaving three natural daughters ; Laura, married to the Hon. and Rev. Frederick Keppel, afterwards Bishop of Exeter ; Maria, married, first to the Earl of Waldegrave, and, secondly, to the Duke of Gloucester ; and Charlotte, married to the Earl of Dysart. WEIGHT. 4 [Caroline] eldest sister of the Lord Viscount Howe. She was soon after this married to a relation of her own name. WALPOLK. Mrs. Howe (Widow of John Howe, Esq., of Hanslop, Bucks) died 1814. Walpole in his old age speaks indiffer- ently of her friendship, but Miss Berry defends her. CUNNINGHAM. 1741.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 91 her with 110 fortune, she him with his four children. The father of him, to get rid of his importunities, at last acquiesced. The very moment he had obtained this consent, he repented ; and, instead of flying on the wings of love to notify it, he went to his fair one, owned his father had mollified, but hoped she would be so good as to excuse him. You cannot imagine what an entertaining fourth act of the opera we had the other night. Lord Yane, 1 in the middle of the pit, making love to my lady. The Duke of Newcastle 2 has lately given him threescore thousand pounds, to consent to cut off the entail of the Newcastle estate. The fool immediately wrote to his wife, to beg she would return to him from Lord Berkeley ; 3 that he had got so much money, and now they might live comfortably ; but she will not live comfortably : she is at Lord Berkeley's house, whither go divers after her. Lady Townshend told me an admirable history ; it is of our friend Lady Pomfret. Somebody that belonged to the Prince of Wales said, they were going to Court ; it was objected that they ought to say, going to Carlton House ; that the only Court is where the King resides. Lady P. with her paltry air of signi- ficant learning and absurdity, said, " Oh Lord ! is there no Court in England, but the king's ? sure, there are many more ! There is the Court of Chancery, the Court of Exchequer, the Court of "King's Bench, &c." Don't you love her ? Lord Lincoln does her daughter [Lady Sophia Fermor] : he is come over, and met her the other night : he turned pale, spoke to her several times in the evening, but not long, and sighed to me at going away. He came over all alive ; and not only his Uncle-Duke [the Duke of New- 1 William, second Viscount Vane, in Ireland. His " lady " was the too-celebrated Lady Vane, first married to Lord William Hamilton, and secondly to Lord Vane ; who has given her own extraordinary and disreputable adventures to the world, in Smollett's novel of " Peregrine Pickle," under the title of " Memoirs of a Lady of Quality." DOVEB. She was the daughter of Mr. Hawes, a South Sea director, and died in 1788. Lord Vane died in 1789. WEIGHT. Lady Vane is returned hither [London] in company with Lord Berkeley, and went with him in public to Cranford [near Hounslow], where they remain as happy as love and youth can make them. I am told that though she does not pique herself upon fidelity to any one man (which is but a narrow way of thinking), she boasts that she has always been true to her nation, and, notwithstanding foreign attacks, has always reserved her charms for the use of her own countrymen. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu to Lady Pomfret, 1738. CUNNINGHAM. 2 Uncle of Lord Vane, whose father, Lord Barnard, had married Elizabeth, eldest daughter of Gilbert Holies, Earl of Clare, and sister and co-heir of John Duke of Newcastle [the minister]. WALPOLB. 3 Augustus, fourth Earl of Berkeley, born 1716, died 1755. See p. 301. CUNNINGHAM. 9-2 HOKACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1741. castle], but even Majesty is fallen in love with him. He talked to the King at his levee, without being spoken to. That was always thought high treason ; but I don't know how the gruff gentleman liked it ; and then he had been told that Lord Lincoln designed to have made the campaign, if we had gone to war ; in short, he says, Lord Lincoln is the handsomest man in England. I believe I told you that Vernon's birthday passed quietly, but it was not designed to be pacific ; for at twelve at night, eight gentle- men, dressed like sailors, and masked, went round Covent Garden with a drum, beating up for a volunteer mob ; but it did not take ; and they retired to a great supper that was prepared for them at the Bedford Head, 1 and ordered by [Paul] Whitehead, 2 the author of " Manners." It has been written into the country that Sir R.[obert] has had two fits of an apoplexy, and cannot live till Christmas ; but I think he is recovered to be as well as ever. To-morrow se'nnight is the Day! 3 It is critical. You shall hear faithfully. The Opera takes : Monticelli pleases almost equal to Farinelli : Amorevoli is much liked ; but the poor, fine Viscontina scarce at all. I carry the trvro former to-night to my Lady Townshend's. Lord Coventry 4 has had his son thrown out by the party : he went to Carlton House ; the Prince asked him about the election : " Sir," said he, " the Tories have betrayed me, as they will you, the first time you have occasion for them." The merchants have petitioned the King for more guard-ships. My Lord President 5 [Wilmington] referred them to the Admiralty ; but they bluntly refused to go, and said they would have redress from the King himself. 1 A celebrated tavern in Covent Garden so called. " Let me extol a cat on oysters fed : I'll have a party at the Bedford Head." Pope. " When sharp with hunger,- scorn you to be fed Except on pea-chicks at the Bedford Head." Pope. CUNNINGHAM. 2 Paul Whitehead [died 1774], an infamous, but not despicable poet. WALPOLE. In politics, Whitehead was a follower of Bubb Dodington ; in private life he was the friend and companion of the profligate Sir Francis Dashwood, Wilkes, Churchill, &c., and, like them, was a member of the Hell-fire Club, which held its orgies at Medmenham Abbey, in Bucks. The estimation in which he was held, even by his friends, may be iudged of by the lines in which Churchill has " damned him to everlasting fame :" " May I (can worse disgrace on manhood fall 1) Be born a Whitehead, and baptised a Paul." DOVER. 3 The day the parliament was to meet. WALPOLK. 4 William, fifth Ear' if Coventry. He died in 1751. DOVEK. Spencer Compton, Earl of Wilmington, a man of moderate abilities, but who had filled many great offices. He died in 1743, when his titles extinguished. DOVER. 1741.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 93 I am called down to dinner, and cannot write more now. I will thank dear Mr. Chute and the Grifona next post. I hope she and you Eked your things. Good night, my dearest child ! Your brother and I sit upon your affairs every morning. Yours, ever. 51. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Nov. 26, 1741. I DON'T write you a very long letter, because you will see the inclosed to Mr. Chute. I forgot to thank you last post for the songs, and your design on the Maltese cats. It is terrible to be in this uncertainty about you ! We have not had the least news about the Spaniards, more than what you told us, of a few vessels being seen off Leghorn. I send about the post, and ask Sir R.[obert] a thousand times a-day. I beg to know if you have never heard anything from Parker about my statue : ' it was to have been finished last June. What is the meaning he does not mention it ? If it is done, I beg it may not stir from Home till there is no more danger of Spaniards. If you get out of your hurry, I will trouble you with a new commission : I find I cannot live without Stosch's 2 intaglio of the Gladiator, with the vase, upon a granite. You know I offered him fifty pounds : I think, rather than not have it, I would give a hun- dred. What will he do if the Spaniards should come to Florence ? Should he be driven to straits, perhaps he would part with his Meleager too. You see I am as eager about baubles as if I were going to Louis at the Palazzo Yecchio ! You can't think what a closet I have fitted up ; such a mixture of French gaiety and Roman virtu ! you would be in love with it : I have not rested till it was finished : I long to have you see it. Now I am angry that I did not buy the Hermaphrodite ; the man would have sold it for twenty- five sequins : do buy it for me ; it was a friend of Bianchi. Can you forgive me ? I write all this upon the hope and presumption that the Spaniards go to Lombardy. Good night. Yours, ever. 1 A copy of the Livia Mattel, which Mr. W. designed for a tomb of his mother : it was erected in Henry VII.'s chapel, in Westminster Abbey, in 1754. WALPOLB. 2 He gave it afterwards to Lord Duncannon, for procuring him the arrears of his pension. WALPOLB. 94 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1741. 52. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Doioning Street, Dec. 3, 1741, O.S. HERE I have two letters from you to answer. You cannot con- ceive my joy on the prospect of the Spaniards going to Lombardy : all advices seem to confirm it. There is no telling you what I have felt, and shall feel, till I am certain you are secure. You ask me about Admiral Haddock ; you must not wonder that I have told you nothing of him; they know nothing of him here. He had discretionary, powers to act as he should judge proper from his notices. He has been keeping in the Spanish fleet at Gales [Cadiz]. Sir R.[obert] says, if he had let that go out, to prevent the em- barkation, the Tories would have complained, and said he had favoured the Spanish trade, under pretence of hindering an expedi- tion which was never designed. It was strongly reported last week that Haddock had shot himself ; a satire on his having been neutral, as they call it. The Parliament met the day before yesterday, and there were four hundred and eighty-seven members present. They did no business, only proceeded to choose a Speaker, which was, unani- mously, Mr. Onslow, moved for by Mr. Pelham, 1 and seconded by Mr. Clutterbuck. But the Opposition, to natter his pretence to popularity and impartiality, call him their own speaker. They intend to oppose Mr. Earle's 2 being chairman of the Committee, and to set up a Dr. Lee, 3 a civilian. To-morrow the King makes his Speech. Well, I won't keep you any longer in suspense. The 1 The Right Hon. Henry Pelham, so long, in conjunction with his brother, the Duke of Newcastle, one of the principal rulers of this country. He was a man of some ability, and a tolerable speaker. The vacillations, the absurdity, the foolish jealousy of the Duke, greatly injured the stability and respectability of Mr. Pelham's administration. Mr. Pelham was born in 1696, and died in 1754. DOVER. 1 Giles Earle, Esq., one of the lords of the Treasury, and who had been chairman of the committees of the House of Commons from 1 727 to the date of this letter. He had been successively groom of the bed-chamber to the Prince of Wales in 1718, clerk comptroller of the king's household in 1720, commissioner of the Irish revenue in 1728, and a lord of the Treasury in 1738. Mr. Earle was a man of broad coarse wit, and a lively image of his style and sentiments has been preserved by Sir C. H. Williams, in his " Dialogue between Giles Earle and Bubb Dodington." WRIOHT. 3 George Lee, brother to the lord chief-justice ; he was appointed one of the lords of the Admiralty on the following change, which post he resigned on the disgrace of his patron, Lord Granville. He was afterwards designed by the Prince of Wales for his first minister, and, immediately on the Prince's death, was appointed treasurer to the Princess Dowager, and soon after made Dean of the Arches, a knight, and privy counsellor. He died in 1758. WALPOLE. 1741.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 95 Court will have a majority of forty a vast number for the outset : a good majority, like a good sum of money, soon makes itself bigger. The first great point will be the Westminster election ; another, Mr. Pulteney's ' election at Heydon ; Mr. Chute's brother is one of the petitioners. It will be an ugly affair for the Court, for Pulteney has asked votes of the courtiers, and said Sir R.[obert] was indifferent about it ; but he is wanner than I almost ever saw him, and declared to Churchill, 2 of whom Pulteney claims a promise, that he must take Walpole or Pulteney. The Sackville family were engaged too, by means of George Berkeley, brother to Lady Betty Germain, 3 whose influence with the Dorset I suppose you know ; but the King was so hot with his grace about his sons, that I believe they will not venture to follow their inclinations * * * to vote 4 for Pulteney, though he has expressed great concern about it to Sir R.[obert], So much for Politics ! for I suppose you know that Prague is taken by storm, in a night's time. I forgot to tell you that Com- modore Lestock, with twelve ships, has been waiting for a wind this fortnight, to join Haddock. 5 I write to you in defiance of a violent headache, which I got last night at another of Sir T. Robinson's balls. There were six hundred invited, and I believe above two hundred there. Lord Lincoln, out of prudence, danced with Lady Caroline Fitzroy [Petersham], and Mr. Conway with Lady Sophia [Fermor] ; the two couple were just mismatched, as every body soon perceived, by the attentions of each man to the woman he did not dance with, and the emulation of either lady: it was an admirable scene. The ball broke up at 1 William Pulteney, afterwards Earl of Bath, whose character and history are too well known to require to be here enlarged upon. DOVER. 2 General Charles Churchill, groom of the bedchamber to the King. WALPOLE. 3 Lady Betty Berkeley, married to the notorious adventurer and gambler, Sir John Germain, who had previously married the divorced Duchess of Norfolk (Lady Mary Mordaunt), by whose bequest he became possessed of the estate of Drayton, in Northamptonshire, which he left on his own death to Lady Betty, his second wife. Lady Betty left it to Lord George Sackville, third son of Lionel first Duke of Dorset. DOVER. Lady Betty was the friend and correspondent of Swift. In early life she made a mishap. (See Duchess of Marlborough to Lord Stair, at the end of Walpole s " Reminiscences," in this volume.) She survived her husband fifty-one years, 1718- 176 9. CTTNHINGH AM. 4 Sic, in the manuscript. DOVER. 5 But for this circumstance, and the junction of the French squadron, Haddock would certainly have destroyed the Spanish fleet, and thereby escaped the imputation which was circulated with much industry, that his hands had been tied up by a neutrality entered into for Hanover ; than which nothing could be more false. These reports, though ostensibly directed against Haddock, were, in reality, aimed at Sir Robert Walpole, a general election being at hand, and his opponents wishing to render him as unpopular with the people as possible. WRIGHT. 96 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS, [1741 three ; but Lincoln, Lord Holderness, Lord Robert Button, 1 young Churchill, 2 and a dozen more, grew jolly, stayed till seven in the morning, and drank thirty-two bottles. I will take great care to send the knee-buckles and pocket-book ; I have got them, and Madame Pucci's silks, and only wait to hear that Tuscany is quiet, and then I will convey them by the first ship. I would write to them to-night, but have not time now ; old Gibber 3 plays to-night, and all the world will be there. Here is another letter from Amorevoli, who is out of his wits at not hearing from his wife. Adieu ! my dearest child. How happy shall I be when I know you are in peace. Yours, ever. 53. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Somerset House, (for I write to you wherever I find myself,) Dec. 10, 1741. I HAVE got no letter from you yet, the post should have brought it yesterday. The Gazette says, that the Cardinal " has declared that they will suffer no expedition against Tuscany. I wish he had told me so ! if they preserve this guarantee, personally, I can forgive their breaking the rest. But I long for your letter ; every letter now from each of us is material. You will be almost as impatient to hear of the parliament, as I of Florence. The lords on Friday went upon the King's speech ; Lord Chesterfield made a very fine speech against the address, all levelled at the house of Hanover. Lord Cholmley, they say, answered him well. Lord Halifax 5 spoke very ill, and was answered by little Lord Raymond, 4 who always 1 Second son of John, third Duke of Rutland. He took the name of Sutton, on inheriting the estate of his maternal grandfather, Robert Sutton, Lord Lexington. DOVER. 2 Natural son of General Charles Churchill, afterwards married to Mary, [natural] daughter of Sir Robert Walpole. [See pp. 82 and 83]. DOVER. 3 Colley Cibber, the celebrated dramatic author and actor. He had left the stage in 1731 ; but still occasionally acted, in spite of his age, for he was now seventy. DOVER. For these occasional performances he is said to have had fifty guineas per night. So late as 1745, he appeared in the character of Pandulph, the Pope's legate, in his own tragedy, called " Papal Tyranny." He died in 1757. WRIGHT. 4 Cardinal Fleury, first minister of France. WALPOLE. Q "* 6 George Montague Dunk, second Earl of Halifax [born 1739, died 1771]. Under the reign of George III. he became secretary of state, and was so unfortunate in that capacity as to be the opponent of Wilkes, on the subject of General Warrants, by which he is now principally remembered. DOVER. 6 Robert, second Lord Raymond, only son of the chief-justice of that name and title. DOVER. 1741.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 97 will answer him. Your friend Lord Sandwich ' affronted his grace of Grafton* extremely, who was ill, and sat out of his place, by calling him to order ; it was indecent in such a boy to a man of his age and rank : the blood of Fitzroy will not easily pardon it. The Court had a majority of forty-one, with some converts. On Tuesday we had the Speech ; there were great differences among the party ; the Jacobites, with Shippen 3 and Lord Noel Somerset 4 at their head, were for a division, Pulteney and the Patriots against one ; s the ill-success in the House of Lords had frightened them : we had no division, but a very warm battle between Sir R. and Pulteney. The latter made a fine speech, very personal, on the state of affairs. Sir H. with as much health, as much spirits, as much force and command as ever, answered him for an hour ; said, " He had long been taxed with all our misfortunes ; but did he raise the war in Germany ? or advise the war with Spain ? did he kill the late Emperor or King of Prussia ? did he counsel this King ? or was he first minister to the King of Poland ? did he kindle the war betwixt Muscovy and Sweden ? " For our troubles at home, he said, " all the grievances of this nation were owing to the Patriots." They laughed much at this ; but does he want proofs of it? He said, "They talked much of an equilibrium in this parliament, and of what they designed against him ; if it was so, the sooner he knew it the better ; and therefore if any man would move for a day to examine the state of the nation, he would second it." Mr. Pulteney did move for it ; Sir B. did second it, and it is fixed for the twenty-first of January. Sir R. repeated some words 1 John Montagu, fourth Earl of Sandwich [died 1792], passed through a long life of office, and left behind him an indifferent character, both in public and private life. DOVER. 2 Charles Fitzroy, second Duke of Grafton [died 1757], and grandson of Charles II., was a person of considerable weight and influence at the court of George II., where he long held the post of chamberlain of the household. WALPOLE. 3 His [Shippen's] manner [as Walpole told Coxe] was highly energetic and spirited as to sentiment and expression ; but he generally spoke in a low tone of voice, with too great rapidity, and held his glove before his mouth. His speeches usually con- tained some pointed period, which peculiarly applied to the subject in debate, and which he uttered with great animation. Coxe Memoirs of Sir R. Walpole, i. 672. 3 vols. 4to, 1798. William Shippen, a celebrated Jacobite, born 1672, died 1743. See p. 134. " I love to pour out all myself, as plain As downright Shippen, or as old Montaigne." POPE. 4 Lord Charles Noel Somerset [died 1756], second son of Henry, second Duke of Beaufort. He succeeded to the family honours in 1746. DOVER. 5 Mr. Pulteney declared against dividing ; observing, with a witticism, that " dividing was not the way to multiply." WALPOLE. VOL. I. -H 98 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1741. of Lord Chesterfield's, in the House of Lords, that this was a time for truth, for plain truth, for English truth, and hinted at the recep- tion ' his lordship had met in France. After these speeches of such consequence, and from such men, Mr. Lyttelton got up to justify, or rather to natter Lord Chesterfield, though everybody then had forgot that he had been mentioned. Danvers, 2 who is a rough, rude beast, but now and then mouths out some humour, said, " that Mr. P. and Sir E. were like two old bawds, debauching young members." That day was a day of triumph, but yesterday (Wednesday) the streamers of victory did not fly so gallantly. It was the day of receiving petitions ; Mr. Pulteney presented an immense piece of parchment, which he said he could but just lift ; it was the West- minster petition, and is to be heard next Tuesday, when we shall all have our brains knocked out by the mob ; so if you don't hear from me next post, you will conclude my head was a little out of order. After this we went upon a Cornish petition, presented by Sir William Yonge, 3 which drew on a debate and a division, when lo ! we were 1 Lord Chesterfield hadbeen sent by the party, in the preceding September, to France, to request the Duke of Ormond (at Avignon) to obtain the Pretender's order to the Jacobites, to vote against Sir R. W. upon any question whatever ; many of them having either voted for him, or retired, on the famous motion the last year for removing him from the King's councils. WALPOLE. Dr. Maty states, that the object of MB lordship's visit to France was the restoration of his health. The reception he met with during his short stay at Paris, is thus noticed in a letter from Sir. Pitt, of the 10th of September : " I hope you liked the court of France as well as it liked you. The uncommon distinctions I hear the Cardinal (Fleury) showed you, are the best proof that, old as he is, his judgment is as good as ever. As this great minister has taken so much of his idea of the men in power here, from the person of a great negotiator who has left the stage (Lord Waldegrave), I am very glad he has had an opportunity, once before he dies, of forming an idea of those out of power from my Lord Chesterfield." See Chatham Correspondence, vol. i. p. 3. WRIGHT. See Walpole to Mann, 5 July, 1745. CUNNINGHAM. 2 Joseph Danvers, Esq., of Swithland, in the county of Leicester, at this time member for Totness. In 1746 he was created a baronet. He married Frances, the daughter of .Thomas Babington, Esq., of Rothley Temple, Leicestershire. WRIGHT. 3 The Right Hon. Sir William Yonge, Bart., secretary at war, to which office he had succeeded in May 1735. Walpole tells us (Memoires, i. p. 20,) that "he was vain, extravagant, and trifling; simple out of the House, and too ready at assertions in it," and adds ; " that his vivacity and parts, whatever the cause was, made him shine, and he was always content with the lustre that accompanied fame, without thinking of what was reflected from rewarded fame a convenient ambition to ministers, who had few such disinterested combatants. Sir Robert Walpole always said of him ' that nothing but Yonge's character could keep down his parts, and nothing but his parts support his character.'" WRIGHT. He is mentioned by Pope And then for mine obligingly mistakes, The first lampoon Sir Will or Bubo makes. * * * The flowers of Bubo and the flow of Yonge. 1741.1 TO SIR HORACE MANN. 99 but 222 to 215 how do you like a majority of seven ? The Opposition triumphs highly, and with reason ; one or two such victories, as Pyrrhus, the member for Macedon, said, will be the ruin of us. I look upon it now, that the question is, Downing Street or the Tower ; will you come and see a body, if one should happen to lodge at the latter ? There are a thousand pretty things to amuse you ; the lions, the armoury, the crown, and the axe that beheaded Anna Bullen. I design to make interest for the room where the two princes were smothered; in long winter evenings, when one wants company, (for I don't suppose that many people will frequent me then,) one may sit and scribble verses against Crouch- back'd Richard, and dirges on the sweet babes. If I die there, and have my body thrown into a wood, I am too old to be buried by robin redbreasts, am not I ? Bootle, 1 the Prince's chancellor, made a most long and stupid speech ; afterwards Sir Robert called to him, " Brother Bootle, take care you don't get my old name." " What's that ? " " Blunderer." You can't conceive how I was pleased with the vast and deserved applause that Mr. Chute's * brother, the lawyer, got : I never heard a clearer or a finer speech. When I went home, " Dear Sir," said I to Sir R., " I hope Mr. Chute will carry his election for Heydon ; he would be a great loss to you." He replied, " We will not lose him." I, who meddle with nothing, especially elections, and go to no committees, interest myself extremely for Mr. Chute. Old Marlborough [Sarah, Dowager Duchess] is dying but who can tell ! last year she had lain a great while ill, without speaking ; her physicians said, " She must be blistered, or she will die." She called out, " I won't be blistered, and I won't die." If she takes the same resolution now, I don't believe she will. 3 Adieu ! my dear child : I have but room to say, Yours, ever. " Sir William Yonge has, by a fitness of tongue, singly raised himself successively to the best employments of the kingdom." Chesterfield to his Son (Mahon, ii. 359). He died 10th Aug. 1755. CUNNINGHAM. 1 Sir Thomas Bootle, chancellor to the Prince of Wales ; a dull, heavy man, and who is, therefore, ironically called, by Sir C. H. Williams, " Bright Bootle." DOVER. Francis Chute, an eminent lawyer, second brother of Anthony Chute, of the Vine, in Hampshire, had, in concert with Luke Robinson, another lawyer, disputed Mr. Pulteney's borough of Heydon with him at the general election, and been returned ; but on a petition, and the removal of Sir R. W., they were voted out of their seats, and Mr. Chute died soon after. WRIGHT. 3 Nor did she. " Old Marlborough" survived thedate of this letter nearly three years. She died on the 18th of October, 1744, being then eighty-four years of age. WRIGHT. H 2 100 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1741. 54. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Wednesday night, eleven o'clock, Dec. 16, 1741. Remember this day. Nous voila de la Minorite ! entens-tu cela ? he ! My dear child, since you will have these ugly words explained, they just mean that we are metamorphosed into the minority. This was the night of choosing a chairman of the committee of elections. Gyles Earle (as in the two last parliaments) was named by the Court ; Dr. Lee, a civilian, by the Opposition, a man of fair character. Earle was formerly a dependent on the [great] Duke of Argyle [and Green- wich], is of remarkable covetousness and wit, which he has dealt out largely against the Scotch and the Patriots. It was a day of much expectation, and both sides had raked together all probabilities : I expect near twenty, who are in town, but stay to vote on a second question, when the majority may be decided to either party. Have you not read of such in story ? Men, who would not care to find themselves on the weaker side, contrary to their intent. In short, the determined sick were dragged out of their beds : zeal came in a great coat. There were two vast dinners at two taverns, for either party ; at six we met in the House. Sir William Yonge, seconded by my uncle Horace, 1 moved for Mr. Earle : Sir Paul Methuen 2 and Sir Watkyn Williams Wynne 3 proposed Dr. Lee and carried him, by a majority of four : 242 against 238 the greatest number, I believe, that ever lost a question. You have no idea of their huzza ! unless you can conceive how people must triumph after defeats for twenty years together. We had one vote shut out, by coming a moment too late ; one that quitted us, for having been ill used by the Duke of Newcastle but yesterday for which, in all probability, he will use him well to-morrow I mean, for quitting us. Sir Thomas Lowther/ Lord Hartington's uncle, was fetched down by 1 Horace Walpole, younger brother of Sir Robert, created in his old age [and after Sir Robert's death] Lord Walpole of Wolterton. He was commonly called " Old Horace," to distinguish him from his nephew, the writer of these letters. DOVER. Young Horace hated his uncle and godfather, Old Horace, and with sufficient reason. CUNNINGHAM. 2 The son of John Methuen, Esq., the diplomatist, and author of the celebrated Methuen treaty with Portugal. Sir Paul was a Knight of the Bath, and died in 1757. DOVER. 3 Sir Watkin Williams Wynn, Bart., the third baronet of the family, was long one of the leaders of the Jacobite party in the House of Commons. -DOVER. 4 Sir Thomas Lowther, Bart., of Holker, in Lancashire. He had married Lady Elizabeth Cavendish, second daughter of the second Duke of Devonshire. DOVER. 1741.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 101 him, and voted against us. Young Ross, 1 son to a Commissioner of the Customs, and saved from the dishonour of not liking to go to the West Indies when it was his turn, by Sir R[obert] giving him a lieutenancy, voted against us ; and Tom Hervey,* who is always with us, but is quite mad ; and being asked why he left us, replied, " Jesus knows my thoughts ; one day I blaspheme, and pray the next." So, you see what accidents were against us, or we had carried our point. They cry, Sir R[obert] miscalculated: how should he calculate, when there are men like Ross, and fifty others he could name ! It was not very pleasant to be stared in the face, to see how one bore it you can guess at my bearing it, who interest myself so little about anything. I have had a taste of what I am to meet from all sorts of people. The moment we had lost the question, I went from the heat of the house into the Speaker's chamber, and there were some fifteen others of us an under door-keeper thought a question was new put, when it was not, and, without giving us notice, clapped the door to. I asked him how he dared lock us out without calling us ; he replied insolently, " It was his duty, and he would do it again : " one of the party went to him, commended him, and told him he should be punished if he acted otherwise. Sir R[obert] is in great spirits, and still sanguine. I have so little experience, that I shall not be amazed at whatever scenes follow. My dear child, we have triumphed twenty years ; is it strange that fortune should at last forsake us ; or ought we not always to expect it, especially in this kingdom ? They talk loudly of the year forty- ane, and promise themselves all the confusions that began a hundred years ago from the same date. I hope they prognosticate wrong ; but should it be so, I can be happy in other places. One reflection I shall have very sweet, though very melancholy ; that if our family is to be the sacrifice that shall first pamper discord, at least the one* [his mother,] the part of it that interested all my concerns, and must have suffered from our ruin, is safe, secure, and above the rage of confusion : nothing in this world can touch her peace now ! 1 Charles Ross, killed in Flanders, at the battle of Fontenoy, 1745. WALPOLE. Collins has a beautiful Ode on his death. CUNNINGHAM. 2 Honourable Thomas Hervey (died 1775), second son of John, first Earl of Bristol [and brother of Pope's Lord Hervey]. He was at this time writing his famous Letter to Sir Thomas Hanmer. WALPOLE. Tom Hervey eloped with Hanmer's second wife, Elizabeth, only child of Thomas Folkes, Esq., of Great Barton, in Suffolk Dr. Johnson (to whom he had left a legacy of fifty pounds, but afterwards gave it him in his lifetime) characterises him as " very vicious." CUNNINGHAM. 3 His mother, Catherine Lady Walpole, who died August 20, 1737. WALPOLE. 1Yales] ; but had not the honour of a word from either : he did vouchsafe to talk to Lord Walpole the day before. Yesterday the Lord Mayor [Sir Robert Grodschall] brought in their favourite bill for repealing the Septennial Act, but we rejected it by 284 to 204. 2 You shall have particular accounts of the Secret Committee and their proceedings ; but it will be at least a month before they can 1 March 26, 27. The House of Commons ballotted for their committee, being called over, and each opening his list at the table, and putting it into a vessel which stood there. This was ended by five. Then a committee began to examine the lists, and sat from that time till four the ntxt afternoon : for, though two lists were given out, many delivered in consisted partly of one, and partly of the other ; and many were put in different order. Sir Thomas Drury, a friend of Lord Orford's, put down four of the opposite side in his list. Lord Orford's friends hoped it would bring moderate persons over to them, if they put some on their list who were not partial to him. March 29. The decision between Sir H. Lyddel, Mr. J. Talbot, and Mr. W. Finch, was left to the Speaker, who chose the two former. Seeker MS. WRIGHT. 2 This is not correct. It appears, by the Journals, that the motion passed in the negative by 204 against 184. " March 31. Sir Robert Godschall, Lord Mayor, moved for the repeal of the Septennial Bill. Mr. Pulteney said, he thought annual parliaments would be best, but preferred septennial to triennial, and voted against the motion. In all, 204 against it, and 184 for it." Seeker MS. WKIOHT. 152 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1742. make any progress. You did not say anything about yourself in your last ; never omit it, my dear child. 69. TO SIR HORACE MANN. London, April 8, 1742. You have no notion how astonished I was, at reading your account of Sir Francis Dashwood ! that it should be possible for private and personal pique so to sour any man's temper and honour, and so utterly to change their principles ; I own I am for your naming him in your next despatch : they may at least intercept his letters, and prevent his dirty intelligence. As to Lady Walpole, 1 her schemes are so wild and so ill-founded, that I don't think it worth while to take notice of them. I possibly may mention this new one of changing her name, to her husband, and of her coming-over design, but I am sure he will only laugh at it. The ill-situation of the King, which you say is so much talked of at the Petraia, 2 is not true ; indeed he and the Prince are not at all more reconciled for being reconciled ; but I think his resolution has borne bim out. All the public questions are easily carried, even with the concurrence of the Tories. Mr. Pulteney proposed to grant a large sum for assisting the Queen of Hungary, and got Sir John Barnard to move it. They have given the King five hundred thousand pounds for that purpose. 3 The land-tax of four shillings in the pound is continued. Lord Stair is gone to Holland, and orders are given to the regiments and guards to have their camp 1 Margaret Rolle, a great Devonshire heiress, the wife [1724] of Robert, Lord Wai- pole, afterwards second Earl of Orford, the eldest son of the minister. She was a woman of bad character, as well as half mad ; which last quality she communicated to her unfortunate son George, third Earl of Orford. She succeeded, in her own right, to the baronies of Clinton and Say, upon the death, in 1751, of Hugh, Earl and Baron Clinton [and died at Pisa in 1781]. DOVER. I have so good an opinion of your taste, to believe harlequin in person will never make you laugh so much as the Earl of Stair's furious passion for Lady Walpole, a.ged fourteen and some months. Mrs. Murray undertook to bring the business to bear, and provided the opportunity, a great ingredient, you'll say ; but the young lady proved skittish. She did not only turn this heroic flame into present ridicule, but exposed all his generous sentiments, to divert her husband and father-in-law. Lady Mary Worttey Montagu, Works, vol. ii. p. 188. AVHIGHT. See p. 55. CUNNINGHAM. 2 A villa belonging to the Great Duke, where Prince Craon resided in summer. WALPOLE. 3 April 2. In the Commons, 500,000?. voted for the Queen of Hungary ; I believe nem. con. Sir John Barnard moved it ; which, Mr. Sandys told me, was that day making himself the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He told me also, the King was unwilling to grant the Prince 50,000?. a-year ; and I am told from other hands, that he saith he never promised it. The Bishop of Sarum (Sherlock) says, Sir Robert 1742.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 153 equipages ready. As to the Spanish war and Vernon, there is no more talk of them ; one would think they had both been taken by a privateer. We talk of adjourning soon for a month or six weeks, to give the Secret Committee time to proceed, which yet they have not done. Their object is returned from Houghton in great health and greater spirits. They are extremely angry with him for laughing at their power. The concourse to him is as great as ever ; so is the rage against him. All this week the mob has been carrying about his effigies in procession, and to the Tower. The chiefs of the Opposition have been so mean as to give these mobs money for bonfires, particularly the Earls of Liohfield, Westmorland, Denbigh,' and Stanhope : * the servants of these last got one of these figures, chalked out a place for the heart, and shot at it. You will laugh at me, who, the other day, meeting one of these mobs, drove up to it to see what was the matter : the first thing I beheld was a mawkin, in a chair, with three footmen, and a label on the breast, inscribed " Lady Mary." ! The Speaker, who has been much abused for naming two of our friends to the Secret Committee, to show his disinterestedness, has resigned his place of Treasurer to the Navy. Mr. Clutterbuck, 4 one of the late Treasury, is to have it ; so there seems a stop put to any new persons from the Opposition. His Royal Highness is gone to Kew ; his drawing-rooms will not Walpole told him, that the King would give 30,OOOZ. but no more. Mr. Sandys appeared determined against admitting Tories, and said it was wonderful their union had held so long, and it could not be expected to hold longer ; that he could not imagine why everybody spoke against Lord Carteret, but that he had better abilities than anybody ; that as soon as foreign affairs could be settled, they would endeavour to reduce the expenses of the crown and interest of the debts. Seeker MS. WEIGHT. 1 William Fielding, fifth Earl of Denbigh, died 1755. DOVER. 2 Philip, second Earl Stanhope, eldest son of the general and statesman, who founded this branch of the Stanhope family. Earl Philip was a man of retired habits, and much devoted to scientific pursuits. He died in 1786. DOVER. 3 Lady Mary Walpole, daughter of Sir R. W. WALPOLE. 4 This Mr. Clutterbuck had been raised by Lord Carteret, when Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, whom he betrayed to Sir R. Walpole ; the latter employed him, but never would trust him. He then ingratiated himself with Mr. Pelham, under a pretence of candour and integrity, and was continually infusing scruples into him on political questions, to distress Sir R. On the latter's quitting the ministry, he appointed a board of Treasury at his own house, in order to sign some grants ; Mr. Clutterbuck made a pretence to slip away, and never returned. He was a friend, too, of the Speaker's : when Sir R. W. was told that Mr. Unslow had resigned his place, and that Mr. Clutterbuck was to succeed him, he said, " I remember that the Duke of Roxburgh, who was a great pretender to conscience, persuaded the Duke of Montrose to resign the seals of Secretary of State, on some scruple, and begged them himself the next day." WALPOLE. See note 3, vol. i. p. 128. CUNNINGHAM. 154 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1742. be so crowded at his return, as he has disobliged so many considerable people, particularly the Dukes of Montagu 1 and Richmond, Lord Albemarle,* &c. The Richmond went twice, and yet was not spoken to ; nor the others ; nay, he has vented his princely resent- ment even upon the women, for to Lady Hervey not a word. This is all the news, except that little Brook 3 is on the point of matrimony with Miss Hamilton, Lady Archibald's daughter. She is excessively pretty and sensible, but as diminutive as he. I forgot to tell you, that the Place Bill has met with the same fate from the Lords as the Pension Bill 4 and the Triennial Act ; so that, after all their clamour and changing of measures, they have not been able to get one of their popular bills passed, though the news- papers, for these three months, have swarmed with instructions for these purposes, from the constituents of all parts of Great Britain to their representatives. We go into mourning on Sunday for the old Empress Amelia.* Lord Chedworth, 6 one of three new peers, is dead. We hear the King of Sardinia is at Piacenza, to open the campaign. I shall be in continual fears lest they disturb you at Florence. My love to the Chutes, and my compliments to all my old acquaintance. I don't think I have forgot one of them. Patapan is entirely yours, and entirely handsome. Good night ! 1 John, second and last Duke of Montagu, of the first creation [died 1749]. He was a man of some talent, and great eccentricity. Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, his mother-in-law, used to say of him, " My son-in-law Montagu is fifty, and he is still as mere a boy as if he was only fifteen." [See p. 389.] DOVER. 2 William-Anne Keppel, second Earl of Albemarle [died 1754]. An amiable pro- digal, who filled various great offices, through the favour of Lady Yarmouth, and died insolvent. DOVER. 3 Francis Greville, Lord Brooke, created Earl Brooke in 1746, and Earl of Warwick in 1749. He died in 1773. His little wife, to whom he was married 16 May, 1742, married, secondly, General Clarke, and died in 1800. See p. 108. CUNNINGHAM. 4 March 26. The Pension Bill read a second time in the Lords. Duke of Devon- shire said a few words against it. Lord Sandwich pleaded for it, that some persons now in the ministry had patronised it, and for their sakes it should be committed : Lord Romney, that some objections against it had been obviated by alterations. These three speeches lasted scarce half a quarter of an hour. The question being put for committing, not-content, 76 ; content, 46. I was one of five bishops for it ; Lord Carteret and Lord Berkeley against it. Seeker MS. WRIGHT. 6 Widow of the Emperor Joseph. She was of the house of Wolfenbuttle. WALPOLE. 6 John Howe, Esq., created Baron of Chedworth, co. Gloucester, 12 May, 1741 ; died 1742. CUNNINGHAM. 1742.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 155 70. TO SIR HORACE MANN. April 15, 1742. THE great pleasure I receive from your letters is a little abated by my continually finding that they have been opened. It is a mortifi- cation, as it must restrain the freedom of our correspondence, and at a time when more than ever I must want to talk to you. Your brother showed me a letter, which I approve extremely, yet do not think this a proper time for it ; for there is not only no present prospect of any further alterations, but, if there were, none that will give that person any interest. He really has lost himself so much, that it will be long before he can recover credit enough to do anybody any service. His childish and troublesome behaviour, particularly lately (but I will not mention instances, because I would not have it known whom I mean), has set him in the lowest light imaginable. I have desired your brother to keep your letter, and when we see a necessary or convenient opportunity, which I hope will not arrive, it shall be delivered. However, if you are still of that opinion, say so, and your brother shall carry it. At present, my dear child, I am much more at repose about you, as I trust no more will happen to endanger your situation. I shall not only give you the first notice, but employ all the means in my power to pre- vent your removal. The Secret Committee, it seems, are almost aground, and, it is thought, will soon finish. They are now reduced, as I hear, to inquire into the last month, not having met with any foundation for proceeding in the rest of the time. However, they have this week given a strong instance of their arbitrariness and private resent- ments. They sent for Paxton, 1 the Solicitor of the Treasury, and examined him about five hundred pounds which he had given seven years ago at Lord Limerick's election. The man, as it directly tended to accuse himself, refused to answer. They complained to the House, and after a long debate he was committed to the serjeant- at-arms ; and to-day, I hear, for still refusing, will be sent to Newgate. 1 We adjourn to-day for ten days, but the committee has 1 Nicholas Paxton, Solicitor to the Treasury, commemorated by Pope 'Tis all a libel, Paxton, Sir, will say. He died 13 April, 1744. CUNNINGHAM. 2 On a division of 180 against 128, Paxton was this day committed to Newgate ; where he remained till the end of the session, July 15. WEIGHT. 156 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1742. leave to continue sitting. But, my dear child, you may be quite at ease, for they themselves seem to despair of being able to effect anything. The Duke ' [of Cumberland] is of age to-day, and, I hear by the guns, is just gone with the King to take his seat in the Lords. I have this morning received the jar of cedrati safe, for which I give you a million of thanks. I am impatient to hear of the arrival of your secretary and the things at Florence ; it is time for you to have received them. Here ! Amorevoli has sent me another letter. Would you believe that our wise directors for next year will not keep the Visconti, and have sent for the Fumagalli ? She will not be heard to the first row of the pit. I am growing miserable, for it is growing fine weather that is, everybody is going out of town. I have but just begun to like London, and to be settled in an agreeable set of people, and now they are going to wander all over the kingdom. Because they have some chance of having a month of good weather, they will bury themselves three more in bad. The Duchess of Cleveland 2 died last night of what they call a miliary fever, which is much about : she had not been ill two days. So the poor creature, her Duke, is again to be let : she paid dear for the hopes of being Duchess dowager. Lady Catherine Pelham 3 has miscarried of twins ; but they are so miserable with the loss of their former two boys, that they seem glad now of not having any more to tremble for. There is a man who has by degrees bred himself up to walk upon stilts so high, that he now stalks about and peeps into the one pair of stairs windows. If this practice should spread, dining-rooms will be as innocent as chapels. Good night ! I never forget my best loves to the Chutes. P. S. I this moment hear that Edgcumbe 4 and Lord Fitzwilliam 1 William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, third son of George II., born 1721, died 1765, unmarried. CUNNINGHAM. 2 Lady Henrietta Finch, sister of the Earl of Winchilsea, and wife of William, Duke of Cleveland. WALPOLE. 3 Catherine, sister of John Manners, Duke of Rutland, and wife of Henry Pelham [the minister]. They lost their two sons by an epidemic sore-throat, after which she would never go to Esher, or any house where she had seen them. WALPOLE. 4 Richard Edgcumbe, a great friend of Sir R. Walpole, was created a baron to pre- vent his being examined by the Secret Committee concerning the management of the Cornish boroughs. WALPOLE. He was created Baron Edgecunibe, of Mount 1742.] TO SIR HOKACE MANN. 157 are created English peers : I am sure the first is, and I believe the second. 1 71. TO SIR HORACE MANN. London, April 22, 1742. You perceive, by the size of my paper, how little I have to say. The whole town is out of town for Easter, and nothing left but dust, old women, and the Secret Committee. They go on warmly, and have turned their whole thoughts to the secret-service money, after which they are inquiring by all methods. Sir John Rawdon 2 (you remember that genius in Italy) voluntarily swore before them that, at the late election at Wallingford, he spent two thousand pounds, and that one Morley promised him fifteen hundred more, if he would lay it out. "Whence was Morley to have it?" "J don't know; I believe from the First Minister." This makes an evidence. It is thought that they will ask leave to examine members, which was the reason of Edgcumbe's going into the peerage, as they supposed he had been the principal agent for the Cornish boroughs. Sir John Cotton said upon the occasion, " Between Newgate 3 and the House of Lords, the committee will not get any information." The troops for Flanders go on board Saturday se'nnight, the first embarcation of five thousand men : the whole number is to be sixteen thousand. It is not yet known what success Earl Stair has had at the Hague. We are in great joy upon the news of the King of Prussia's running away from the Austrians : 4 though his cowardice is well established, it is yet believed that the flight in question was determined by his head, not his heart ; in short, that it was treachery to his allies. Edgecumbe, co. Devon, 20th of April, 1742, and in December appointed Chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster. He died 22nd Nov. 1758. His son, the second baron, died 1761, was one of Horace Walpole's constant Christmas guests at Strawberry Hill. CUNNINGHAM. 1 Lord Fitzwilliam was created, 19 April, 1742, four days after the date of this letter, Lord Fitzwilliam, Baron of Milton, co. Northampton. See p. 124. CUNNINGHAM. 2 He was afterwards made an Irish lord. WALPOLE. Lord Rawdon in 1750, and Earl of Moira in 1761. DOVER. 3 Alluding to Paxton [p. 155], who was sent thither for refusing to give evidence. WALPOLE. 4 This must allude to the King of Prussia's abandonment of his design to penetrate through Austria to Vienna, which he gave up in consequence of the lukewarmness of his Saxon and the absence of his French allies. It is curious now, when the mist of contemporary prejudices has passed away, to hear Frederick the Great accused of cowardice. DOVKK. 158 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1742. I forgot to tell you, that of the Secret Committee Sir John Rush- out and Cholmley Tumor never go to it, nor, which is more extra- ordinary, Sir John Barnard. He says he thought their views were more general, but finding them so particular against one man, he will not engage with them. I have been breakfasting this morning at Eanelagh-Garden : ' they have built an immense amphitheatre, with balconies full of little alehouses ; it is in rivalry to Yauxhall, and costs above twelve thou- sand pounds. The building is not finished, but they get great sums by people going to see it and breakfasting in the house : there were yesterday no less than three hundred and eighty persons, at eighteen pence a-piece. You see how poor we are, when, with a tax of four shillings in the pound, we are laying out such sums for cakes and ale. We have a new opera, with your favourite song, Se cerca, se dice : * Monticelli sings it beyond what you can conceive. Your last was of April 8th. I like the medal of the Caesars and Nihils 3 extremely ; but don't at all like the cracking of your house, 4 except that it drives away your Pettegola." "What I like much worse, is your recovering your strength so slowly ; but I trust to the warm weather. Miss Granville, daughter of the late Lord Lansdown, 6 is named maid of honour, in the room of Miss Hamilton, who I told you is to be Lady Brook : they are both so small ! what little eggs they will lay! How does my Princess ! 7 does not she deign to visit you too ? Is Sade 8 there still ? Is Madame Suares quite gone into devotion yet ? Tell me anything I love anything that you write to me. Good night! 1 This once celebrated place of amusement was so called from its site being that of a villa of Viscount Ranelagh, near Chelsea. The last entertainment given in it was the installation ball of the Knights of the Bath, in 1802. It has since been razed to the ground. WRIGHT. The principal room, the Rotunda, was first opened 5th April, 1742. CUNNINGHAM. 2 In the Olimpiade. WALPOLE. 3 A satirical medal : on one side was the head of Francis, Duke of Lorrain (after- wards Emperor), with this motto, aut Caesar aut nihil : on the reverse, that of the Emperor Charles VII., Elector of Bavaria, who had been driven out of his dominions, et Caesar et nihil. WALPOLE. * Sir H. Mann had mentioned, in one of his letters, the appearance of several cracks m the walls of his house at Florence. Mrs. Goldsworthy, the wife of the English consul, had taken refuge in it when driven from Leghorn by an earthquake. DOVEK. 5 Mrs. Goldsworthy. WALPOLE. 6 George Granville, Lord Lansdown, Pope's " Granville the polite," one of Queen Anne's twelve peers, and one of the minor poets of that time. He died in 1734. DOVEE. 7 Princess Craon. WALPOLE. 8 The Chevalier de Sade. WALPOLE. 1742.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 159 72. TO SIR HORACE MANN. London, April 29, 1742. BY yours of April 17, N.S., and some of your last letters, I find my Lady Walpole is more mad than ever why, there never was so wild a scheme as this of setting up an interest through Lord Chester- field ! one who has no power ; and, if he had, would think of, or serve her, one of the last persons upon earth. What connexion has he with, what interest could he have in obliging her ? and, but from views, what has he ever done, or will he ever do ? But is Bichcourt 1 so shallow, and so ambitious, as to put any trust in these projects ? My dear child, believe me, if I was to mention them here, they would sound so chimerical, so womanish, that I should be laughed at for repeating them. For yourself, be quite at rest, and laugh, as I do, at feeble, visionary malice, and assure yourself, whoever mentions such politics to you, that my Lady Walpole must have very frippery intelligence from hence, if she can raise no better views and on no better foundations. For the poem you mention, I never read it : upon inquiry, I find there was such a thing, though now quite obsolete: undoubtedly not Pope's, and only proves what I said before, how low, how paltry, how uninformed her ladyship's cor- respondents must be. We are now all military ! all preparations for Flanders ! no parties but reviews ; no officers but " hope " they are to go abroad at least, it is the fashion to say so. I am studying lists of regiments and names of colonels not that " I hope I am to go abroad," but to talk of those who do. Three thousand men embarked yesterday and the day before, and the thirteen thousand others sail as soon as the transports can return. Messieurs d'Allemagne 2 roll their red eyes, stroke up their great beavers, and look fierce you know one loves a review and a tattoo. We had a debate yesterday in the House on a proposal for replacing four thousand men of some that are to be sent abroad, that, in short, we might have fifteen thousand men to guard the kingdom. This was strongly opposed by the Tories, but we carried it in the committee, 214 against 123, and to-day, in the House, 280 against 169. Sir John Barnard, Pulteney, the new ministry, all the 1 Count Richcourt was a Lorrainer, and chief minister of Florence; there was great connexion between him and Lady Walpole. [See p. 87.] WALPOLE. 2 The royal family. WALPOLE. 160 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1742. Prince's people, except the Cobham cousins, 1 the Lord Mayor, several of the Opposition, voted with us ; so you must interpret Tories in the strongest sense of the word. The Secret Committee has desired leave to-day to examine three members, Burrel, Bristow, and Hanbury "Williams : 2 the two first are directors of the Bank ; and it is upon an agreement made with them, and at which "Williams was present, about remitting some money to Jamaica, and in which they pretend Sir Robert made a bad bargain, to oblige them as members of Parliament. They all three stood up, and voluntarily offered to be examined ; so no vote passed upon it. These are all the political news : there is little of any other sort ; so little gallantry is stirring, that I do not hear of so much as one Maid of Honour who has declared herself with child by any officer, to engage him not to go abroad. I told you once or twice that Miss Hamilton is going to be married to Lord Brook : somebody wished Lord Archibald joy. He replied, " Providence has been very good to my family." "We had a great scuffle the other night at the Opera, which interrupted it. Lord Lincoln was abused in the most shocking manner by a drunken officer, upon which he kicked him, and was drawing his sword, but was prevented. They were put under arrest, and the next morning the man begged his pardon before the Duke of Marlborough, Lord Albemarle, and other officers, in the most submissive terms. I saw the quarrel from the other side of the house, and rushing to get to Lord Lincoln, could not for the crowd. I climbed into the front-boxes, and stepping over the shoulders of three ladies, before I knew where I was, found I had lighted into Lord Rockingham's 3 lap. It was ridiculous ! Good night ! 73. TO RICHARD WEST, ESQ. DEAR WEST : London, May 4, 1742. YOUR letter made me quite melancholy, till I came to the post- 1 Pitts, Grenvilles, Lytteltons, all related by marriage, or female descent, to Lord Cobham. DOVER. The boy patriots, or Cobham cousins, as Sir Robert Walpole used to call them. CUNNINGHAM. 2 Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, the poet and wit, born 1709, died 2 Nov. 1759, it is said, by his own hand. His political squibs are some of the most lively and vigorous in our language. CUNNINGHAM. 3 Lewis Watson, second Earl of Rockingham. He married Catharine, second 1742.J TO RICHARD WEST, ESQ. 161 script of fine weather. Your so suddenly finding the benefit of it, makes me trust you will entirely recover your health and spirits with the warm season : nobody wishes it more than I : nobody has more reason, as few have known you so long. Don't be afraid of your letters being dull. I don't deserve to be called your friend, if I were impatient at hearing your complaints. I do not desire you to suppress them till their causes cease ; nor should I expect you to write cheerfully while you are ill. I never design to write any man's life as a stoic, and consequently should not desire him to furnish me with opportunities of assuring posterity what pains he took not to show any pain. If you did amuse yourself with writing anything in poetry, you know how pleased I should be to see it ; but for encouraging you to it, d'ye see, 'tis an age most unpoetical ! 'Tis even a test of wit to dislike poetry ; and though Pope has half a dozen old friends that he has preserved from the taste of last century, yet, I assure you, the generality of readers are more diverted with any paltry prose answer to old Marlborough's secret history of Queen Mary's robes. I do not think an author would be universally commended for any production in verse, unless it were an Ode to the Secret Committee, with rhymes of liberty and property, nation and administration. Wit itself is monopolised by politics ; no laugh but would be ridiculous if it were not on one side or t'other. Thus Sandys thinks he has spoken an epigram, when he crincles up his nose and lays a smart accent on ways and means, "We may, indeed, hope a little better now to the declining arts. The reconciliation between the royalties is finished, and fifty thou- sand pounds a-year more added to the heir apparent's revenue. He will have money now to tune up Glover, and Thomson, and Dodsley again : Et spes et ratio studiorum in Csesare tantum. Asheton is much yours. He has preached twice at Somerset Chapel with the greatest applause. I do not mind his pleasing the generality, for you know they ran as much after Whitfield as they could after Tillotson ; and I do not doubt but St. Jude converted as many honourable women as St. Paul. But I am sure you would approve his compositions, and admire them still more when you daughter and co-heir of Sir George Sondes, Earl of Feversham, and died in 1745. WEIGHT. 162 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1742. heard him deliver them. He will write to you himself next post, but is not mad enough with his fame to write you a sermon. Adieu, dear child ! Write me the progress of your recovery, 1 and believe it will give me a sincere pleasure ; for I am, yours ever. 74. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Downing Street, May 6, 1742. I HAVE received a long letter from you of the 22nd of April. It amazes me ! that our friends of Florence should not prove our friends ! 2 Is it possible ? I have always talked of their cordiality, because I was convinced they could have no shadow of interest in their professions : of that, indeed, I am convinced still but how could they fancy they had ? There is the wonder ! If they wanted common honesty, they seem to have wanted common sense more. What hope of connection could there ever be between the English ministry and the Florentine nobility ? The latter have no views of being, or knowledge for being envoys, &c. They are too poor and proud to think of trading with us ; too abject to hope for the restora- tion of their liberty from us and, indeed, however we may affection our own, we have showed no regard for their liberty they have had no reason ever to expect that from us ! In short, to me it is mystery ! But how could you not tell me some particulars ? Have I so little interested myself with Florence, that you should think I can be satisfied without knowing the least particulars ? I must know names. Who are these wretches that I am to scratch out of my list ? I shall give them a black blot the moment I know who have behaved ill to you. Is Casa Ferroni of the number ? I suspect it : that was of your first attachments. Are the prince and princess dirty ? -the Suares ? tell me, tell me ! Indeed, my dear Mr. Chute, I am not of your opinion, that he should shut himself up and despise them ; let him go abroad and despise them. Must he mope because the Florentines are like the rest of the world ? But that is not true, for the world in England have not declared themselves so suddenly. It has not been the fashion to desert the 1 Mr. West died in less than a month from the date of this letter, in the twenty- sixth year of his age. BERRY. See Ashton's beautiful verses on West's death, post, p. 183. CUNNINGHAM. 2 This alludes to an account given by Sir Horace Mann, in one of his letters, of the change he had observed in the manner of many of the Florentines towards him- self since Sir Robert Walpole's retirement from office, upon the supposition enter- tained by them that he was intimately connected with the fallen minister. DOVER. 1742.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 163 earl and his friends : he has had more concourse, more professions, and has still, than in the height of his power. So your neighbours have been too hasty ; they are new style, at least, eleven days before us. Tell them, tell Eichcourt, tell his Cleopatra, 1 that all their hopes are vanished, all their faith in Secret Committees the reconciliation is made, and whatever reports their secretships may produce, there will be at least above a hundred votes added to our party. Their triumph has been but in hope, and their hope has failed in two months. As to your embroil with Eichcourt, I condemn you excessively : not that you was originally in fault, but by seeming to own yourself so. He is an impertinent fellow, and will be so, if you'll let him. My dear child, act with the spirit of your friends here ; show we have lost no credit by losing power, and that a little Italian minister must not dare to insult you. Publish the accounts I send you; which I give you my honour are authentic. If they are not, let Cytheris, your Antony's travelling concubine, contradict them. You tell me the St. Quintin is arrived at Genoa ; I see by the prints of to-day that it is got to Leghorn : I am extremely glad, for I feared for it, for the poor boy, and for the things. Tell me how you like your secretary. I shall be quite happy, if I have placed one with you that you like. I laughed much at the family of cats I am to receive. I believe they will be extremely welcome to Lord Islay * now ; for he appears little, lives more darkly and more like a wizard than ever. These huge cats will figure prodigiously in his cell : he is of the mysterious, dingy nature of Stosch. As words is what I have not rhetoric to find out to thank you for sending me this paragraph of Madame Goldsworthy, I can only tell you that I laughed for an hour at it. This was one of my Lady Pomfret's correspondents. There seems to be a little stop in our embarkations ; since the first, they have discovered that the horse must not go till all the hay is provided. Three thousand men will make a fine figure towards supporting the balance of power ! Our whole number was to be 1 Lady Walpole. WALPOLK. 2 Archibald Campbell, Earl of Islay, third Duke of Argyll. He was created Earl of Islay for his services in forwarding the Scottish union. In 1743, he succeeded his brother as Duke of Argyll, and died 15th April, 1761. He was Sir Robert Walpole's manager for Scotland, and enjoyed the entire confidence of that minister. See notes, p. 73 and p. 135. CUNNINGHAM. M 2 164 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1742. but sixteen ; and if all these cannot be assembled before the end of July, what will be said of it ? The Secret Committee go on very pitifully : they are now in- quiring about some custom-house officers that were turned out at Weymouth for voting wrong at elections. Don't you think these articles will prove to the world what they have been saying of Sir Robert for these twenty years ? The House still sits in observance to them ; which is pleasant to me, for it keeps people in town. We have operas too ; but they are almost over, and if it were not for a daily east wind, they would give way to Vauxhall and Chelsea. The new directors have agreed with the Fumagalli for next year, but she is to be second woman : they keep the Visconti. Did I never mention the Bettina, the first dancer. It seems she was kept by a Neapolitan prince, who is extremely jealous of her coming hither. About a fortnight ago she fell ill, upon which her Neapolitan footman made off immediately. She dances again, but is very weak, and thinks herself poisoned. Adieu ! my dear child ; tell me you are well, easy, and in spirits : kiss the Chutes for me, and believe me, &c. 75. TO SIR HORACE MANN. London, May 13, 1742. As I am obliged to put my letter into the secretary's office by nine o'clock, and it now don't want a quarter of it, I can say but three words, and must defer till next post answering your long letter by the courier. I am this moment come from the House, where we have had the first part of the Report from the Secret Committee. It is pretty long ; but, unfortunately for them, there is not once to be found in it the name of the Earl of Orford : there is a good deal about Mr. Paxton and the borough of Wendover ; and it appears that in eleven years Mr. Paxton has received ninety-four thousand pounds unac- counted for : now, if Lady Richcourt can make anything of all this, you have freely my leave to communicate it to her. Pursuant to this Report, and Mr. Paxton's contumacy, they moved for leave to bring in a bill to indemnify all persons who should accuse themselves of any crime, provided they do but accuse Lord Orford, and they have carried it by 251 to 228 ! but it is so absurd a bill, that there is not the least likelihood of its passing the Lords. By this bill, whoever are guilty of murder, treason, forgery, &c. have nothing to do but to add perjury, and swear Lord Orford knew of it, and they 1742.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 165 may plead their pardon. Tell Lady Richcourt this. Lord Orford knew of her gallantries : she may plead her pardon. Good night ! I have not a moment to lose. 76. TO SIR HORACE MANN. May 20, 1742. I SENT you a sketch last post of the division on the Indemnity Bill. As they carried the question for its being brought in, they brought it in on Saturday ; but were prevailed on to defer the second reading till Tuesday. Then we had a long debate till eight at night, when they carried it, 228 against 217, only eleven majority ; before, they had had twenty-three. They immediately went into the com- mittee on it, and reported it that night. Yesterday it came to the last reading ; but the House, having sat so late the night before, was not so full, and they carried it, 216 to 184. But to-day it comes into the Lords, where they do not in the least expect to succeed ; yet, to show their spirit, they have appointed a great dinner at the Fountain to-morrow, to consider on methods for supporting the honour of the Commons, as they call it, against the Lords. So now all prospect of quiet seems to vanish ! The noise this bill makes is incredible ; it is so unprecedented, so violent a step ! Everything is inflamed by Pulteney, who governs both parties, only, I think, to exasperate both more. Three of our own people of the committee, the Solicitor, 1 [Strange] Talbot, and Bowles, vote against us in the Indemnity Bill, and the two latter have even spoke against us. Sir Robert said, at the beginning, when he was congratulated on having some of his own friends in the Committee, " The moment they are appointed, they will grow so jealous of the honour of the Committee, that they will prefer that to every other consideration." 2 Our foreign news are as bad as our domestic : there seem little hopes of the Dutch coming into our measures ; there are even letters, that mention strongly their resolution of not stirring so we have Quixoted away sixteen thousand men ! On Saturday we had accounts of the Austrians having cut off two thousand Prussians, in a retreat ; but on Sunday came news of the great victory 3 which the 1 John Strange, Esq., made Solicitor-General in 1736, and Master of the Rolls in 1750. He died in 1754. WEIGHT. 8 Voltaire has since made the same kind of observation in his " Life of Louis XIV." Art. of Calvinism : " Les hommes se piquent toujours de remplir tin devoir qui lea distingue." WALPOLE. 3 The battle of Chotusitz, or Czaslau, gained by the King of Prussia over the very 166 :- HOEACE WALPOLE'S LETTEES. [1742. latter have gained, killing six, and taking two thousand Austrians prisoners, and that Prince Charles is retired to Vienna wounded. This will but too much confirm the Dutch in their apprehensions of Prussia. As to the long letter you wrote me, in answer to a very particular one of mine, I cannot explain myself, till I find a safer conveyance than the post, by which, I perceive, all our letters are opened. I can only tell you, that in most things you guessed right ; and that as to myself 1 all is quiet. I am in great concern, for you seem not satisfied with the boy we sent you. Your brother entirely agreed with me, that he was what you seemed to describe ; and as to his being on the foot of a servant, I give you my honour I repeated it over and over to his mother. I suppose her folly was afraid of shocking him. As to Italian, she assured me he had been learning it some time. If he does not answer your purpose, let me know if you can dispose of him any other way, and I will try to accommodate you better. Your brother has this moment been here, but there was no letter for me ; at least, none that they will deliver yet. I know not in the least how to advise Mr. Jackson. 2 I do not think Mr. Pelham the proper person to apply to ; for the Duke of Newcastle is as jealous of him as of anybody. Don't say this to him. For Lord Hervey, though Mr. Jackson has interest there, I would not advise him to try it, for both hate him. The applica- tion to the Duke of Newcastle, by the most direct means, I should think the best, or by any one that can be serviceable to the govern- ment. You will laugh at an odd accident that happened the other day to my uncle : 8 they put him into the papers for Earl of Sheffield. There have been little disputes between the two Houses about coming into each other's house ; when a lord comes into the Commons, they call superior forces of the Austrians. This victory occasioned peace between the contend- ing powers, and the cession of Silesia to the Prussian monarch. DOVER. 1 This relates to some differences between Mr. Walpole and his father, to which the former had alluded in one of his letters. They never suited one another either in habits, tastes, or opinions ; in addition to which, Sir Eobert appears to have been rather a harsh father to his youngest son. If such was the case, the latter nobly revenged himself, by his earnest solicitude through life for the honour of his parent's memory. DOVER. Compare the Preface to this volume by the writer of this note. CUNNINGHAM. He had been consul at Genoa. WALPOIE. 3 Old Horace Walpole, afterwards, 1756, Baron Walpole of Woolterton. CUNNINGHAM. 1742.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 167 out inthdraw : that day, the moment my uncle came in, they all roared out, withdraw ! withdraw ! The great Mr. Nugent 1 has been unfortunate, too, in parliament ; besides being very ill heard, from being a very indifferent speaker ; the other day on the Place Bill, (which, by the way, we have new modelled and softened, and to which the Lords have submitted to agree to humour Pulteney,) he rose, and said, " He would not vote, as he was not determined in his opinion ; but he would offer his sentiments ; which were, particularly, that the bishops had been the cause of this bill being thrown out before." Winnington called him to order, desiring he would be tender of the Church of England. You know he was a papist. In answer to the beginning of his speech, Yelters Cornwall, who is of the same side, said, " He wondered that when that gentleman could not convince himself by his eloquence, he should expect to convince the majority." Did I tell you that Lord Rochford 2 has at last married Miss Young ? 3 I say, at last, for they don't pretend to have been married this twelvemonth ; but were publicly married last week. Adieu ! 77. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Downing Street, May 26, 1742. TO-DAY calls itself May the 26th, as you perceive by the date ; but I am writing to you by the fire-side, instead of going to Yauxhall. If we have one warm day in seven, " we bless our stars, and think it luxury." And yet we have as much waterworks and fresco diver- sions, as if we lay ten degrees nearer warmth. Two nights ago Ranelagh-gardens were opened at Chelsea; the Prince, Princess, Duke, much nobility, and much mob besides, were there. There is a vast amphitheatre, finely gilt, painted, and illuminated, into which everybody that loves eating, drinking, staring, or crowding, is admitted for twelvepence. The building and disposition of the gardens cost sixteen thousand pounds. Twice a- week there are to 1 Robert Nugent, afterwards Baron Nugent, Viscount Clare, and Earl Nugent, in the peerage of Ireland. He was an occasional poet, and the solitary benefactor of Goldsmith, who has made him immortal by his letter of thanks for a Haunch of Venison. He died 13th Oct., 1788. [See p. 108]. CUNNINGHAM. 2 William Henry Zulestein Nassau, fourth Earl of Rochford. He filled many diplomatic situations, and was at different times groom of the stole and secretary of state. He died in 1781. DOVER. 3 Lucy, daughter of Edward Young, Esq. [of Durnford, Wilts]. She had been maid of honour to the Princess of Wales. WALPOLE. 168 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1742. be Kidottos, at guinea-tickets, for which you are to have a supper and music. I was there last night, but did not find the joy of it. Vauxhall is a little better ; for the garden is pleasanter, and one goes by water. Our operas are almost over ; there were but three-and- forty people last night in the pit and boxes. There is a little simple farce at Drury Lane, called " Miss Lucy in Town," ' in which Mrs. Clive* mimics the Muscovita admirably, and Beard, 3 Amorevoli tolerably. But all the run is now after Garrick, a wine-merchant, who is turned player, at Goodman's-fields. He 'plays all parts, and is a very good mimic. His acting I have seen, and may say to you, who will not tell it again here, I see nothing wonderful in it ; * but it is heresy to say so : the Duke of Argyll says, he is superior to Betterton. Now I talk of players, tell Mr. Chute, that his friend Bracegirdle 5 breakfasted with me this morning. As she went out, and wanted her clogs, she turned to me, and said, " I remember at the playhouse, they used to call Mrs. Oldfield's 6 chair! Mrs. Barry's 7 clogs ! and Mrs. Bracegirdle's pattens ! " I did, indeed, design the letter of this post for Mr. Chute ; but I have received two such charming long ones from you of the 15th and 20th of May (N.S.), that I must answer them, and beg him to excuse me till another post; so must the Prince [Craon], Princess, the Grifona, and Countess Galli. For the Princess's letter,. I am not sure I shall answer it so soon, for hitherto I have not been able to read above every third word ; however, you may thank her as 1 Miss Lucy in Town, a Ballad Farce, by Henry Fielding, produced at Drury Lane, 5th May, 1742. It was prohibited after the eighth night by order of the Lord Cham- berlain, the Duke of Grafton ; but afterwards allowed to be acted. Beard played Signor Cantileno. CUNNINGHAM. 2 Catherine Raftor, better known as Catherine Clive, and better still as Kitty Clive, born 1711, died Dec. 7, 1785. Walpole was fond of her society, and gave her a house on his Strawberry estate, called Little Strawberry Hill. In some of his letters he calls it Cliveden. Mr. Raftor, a brother of Mrs. dive's, lived with Kitty at Little Strawberry Hill. Mrs. Clive is buried in Twickenham churchyard, where a monu- ment to her memory is still to be seen. [See p. 18]. CUNNINGHAM. 8 John Beard, singer, actor, and manager, died Feb. 4, 1791. We shall hear, as we read on, of his runawaj' marriage with Lady Henrietta Herbert. CUNNINGHAM. 4 Garrick made his first appearance in London at Goodman's Fields Theatre, Oct. 19, 1741, in the character of Richard III. Walpole does not appear to have been singular in the opinion here given. Gray, in a letter to Chute, says, " Did I tell you about Mr. Garrick, that the town are horn-mad after : there are a dozen dukes of a night at Goodman-fields sometimes; and yet I am stiff in the opposition." WRIGHT. 6 Anne Bracegirdle, died Sept. 12, 1748, aged eighty -five, and was buried in the east walk of Westminster Abbey Cloisters. CUNNINGHAM. 6 Anne Oldfield, died Oct. 23, 1730, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. Her son, by General Churchill, married the daughter of Sir Robert Walpole by his second wife. CUNNINGHAM. 7 Elizabeth Barry, died Nov. 7, 1713, and was buried at Acton, in Middlesex. CUNNINGHAM. 1742.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 169 much as if I understood it all. I am very happy that mcs bagatelles (for I still insist they were so) pleased. You, my dear child, are very good to he pleased with the snuff-box. I am much obliged to the superior lumieres of old Sarasin ' about the Indian ink : if she meant the black, I am sorry to say I had it into the bargain with the rest of the Japan : for the coloured, it is only a curiosity, because it has seldom been brought over. I remember Sir Hans Sloane 2 was the first who ever had any of it, and would on no account give my mother the least morsel of it. She afterwards got a good deal of it from China ; and since that, more has come over ; but it is even less valuable than the other, for we never could tell how to use it ; however, let it make its figure. I am sure you hate me all this time, for chatting about so many trifles, and telling you no politics. I own to you, I am so wearied, so worn with them, that I scarce know how to turn my hand to them ; but you shall know all I know. I told you of the meeting at the Fountain tavern : Pulteney had promised to be there, but was not; nor Carteret. As the Lords had put off the debate on the Indemnity Bill, nothing material passed ; but the meeting was very Jacobite. Yesterday the bill came on, and Lord Carteret took the lead against it, and about seven in the evening it was flung out by almost two to one, 92 to 47, and 17 proxies to 10. To-day we had a motion by the new Lord Hillsborough 3 (for the father is just dead), and seconded by Lord Barrington, 4 to examine the Lords' votes, to see what was become of the bill : this is the form. The chancellor of the Exchequer, and all the new ministry, were with us against it ; but they carried it, 164 to 159. It is to be reported to-morrow, and as we have notice, we may possibly throw it out ; else they will hurry on to a breach with the Lords. Pulteney was not in the House : he was riding the other day, and met the King's coach ; endeavouring to turn out of the way, his horse started, flung him, and fell upon him : he is much bruised ; but not at all dangerously. 1 Madame Sarasin, a Lorrain lady, companion to Princess Craon. WALPOLE. 2 Sir Hans Sloane, Bart , whose collections of every description founded the British Museum. Sir Hans nominated Horace Walpole a trustee of his collection. CUNNIHGHAM. 3 Wills Hill, the second Lord Hillsborongh, afterwards created an Irish earl and made cofferer of the household. WALPOLE. In the reign of George III. he was created Earl of Hillsborough, in England, and finally Marquis of Downshire, in Ireland ; and held the office of secretary of state for the colonies. DOVER. * William Wildman, Viscount Barrington, made a lord of the Admiralty on the coalition, and master of the great wardrobe, in 1754. WALPOLE. He afterwards held the offices of chancellor of the exchequer, secretary at war, and treasurer of the navy, and died February 1st, 1793. DOVER. 170 HOKACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1742. On this occasion, there was an epigram fixed to a list, which I will explain to you afterwards : it is not known who wrote it, but it was addressed to him : Thy horse does things by halves, like thee : Thou, with irresolution, Hurt'st friend and foe, thyself and me, The King and Constitution. The list I meant: you must know, some time ago, before the change, they had moved for a committee to examine, and state the public accounts : it was passed. Finding how little success they had with their Secret Committee, they have set this on foot, and we were to ballot for seven commissioners, who are to have a thousand a-year. "We ballotted yesterday : on our list were Sir Richard Corbet, 1 Charles Hamilton, 2 (Lady Archibald's brother,) Sir William Middleton, 3 Mr. West, Mr. Fonnereau, Mr. Thompson, and Mr. Ellis/ On theirs, Mr. Bance, George Grenville, Mr. Hooper, Sir Charles Mordaunt, 5 Mr. Phillips, Mr. Pitt, and Mr. Stuart. On casting up the numbers, the four first on ours, and the three first on their list, appeared to have the majority : so no great harm will come from this, should it pass the Lords ; which it is not likely to do. I have now told you, I think, all the political news, except that the troops continue going to Flanders, though we hear no good news yet from Holland. If we can prevent any dispute between the two Houses, it is believed and much hoped by the Court, that the Secret Committee will desire to be dissolved : if it does, there is an end of all this tempest ! 1 Sir Richard Corbet, of Leighton, in Montgomeryshire, the fourth baronet of the family. He was member for Shrewsbury, and died in 1774. DOVKR. 2 The Hon. Charles Hamilton, sixth son of James, sixth Earl of Abercorn, member for Truro, comptroller of the green cloth to the Prince of Wales, and subsequently receiver-general of the Island of Minorca. He died in 1787. DOVER. Better still, Mr. Hamilton was one of the restorers of landscape gardening. Pain's Hill, in Surrey, was one of the gardening glories of the eighteenth century. CUNNINGHAM. 3 Sir William Middleton, Bart., of Belsay Castle, Northumberland, the third baronet of the family. He was member for Northumberland, and died in 1767. DOVER. 4 Welbore Ellis, member of parliament for above half a century ; during which period he held the different offices of a lord of the Admiralty, secretary at war, trea- surer of the navy, vice-treasurer of Ireland, and secretary of state. He was created Lord Mendip in 1794, with remainder to his nephew, Viscount Clifden, and died February 2, 1802, at the age of eighty-eight. DOVER. Lord Dover was the son of Welbore Ellis, Viscount Clifden. CUNNINGHAM. 5 Sir Charles Mordaunt, of Massingham in Norfolk, the sixth baronet of the family. He was member for the county of Warwick, and died in 1778. DOVER. 1742.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 171 I must tell you an ingenuity of Lord Raymond, 1 an epitaph on the Indemnifying Bill I believe you would guess the author : Interr'd beneath this marble stone doth lie The Bill of Indemnity ; To show the good for which it was design'd, It died itself to save mankind. My Lady Townshend [Harrison] made me laugh the other night about your old acquaintance, Miss Edwin; who, by the way, is grown almost a Methodist. My lady says she was forced to have an issue made on one side of her head, for her eyes, and that Kent 2 advised her to have another on the other side for symmetry. There has lately been published one of the most impudent things that ever was printed ; it is called " The Irish Register," 3 and is a list of all the unmarried women of any fashion in England, ranked in order, duchesses-dowager, ladies, widows, misses, &c. with their names at length, for the benefit of Irish fortune-hunters, or as it is said, for the incorporating and manufacturing of British commodi- ties. Miss Edwards 4 is the only one printed with a dash, because they have placed her among the widows. I will send you this, " Miss Lucy in Town," and the magazines, by the first opportunity, as I should the other things, but your brother tells me you have had them by another hand. I received the cedrati, for which I have already thanked you : but I have been so much thanked by several people to whom I gave some, that I can very well afford to thank you again. As to Stosch expecting any present from me, he was so extremely well paid for all I had of him, that I do not think myself at all in his debt : however, you was very good to offer to pay him. As to my Lady Walpole, I shall say nothing now, as I have not seen either of the two persons since I received your letter to whom I design to mention her ; only that I am extremely sorry to find you still disturbed at any of the little nonsense of that cabal. I hoped that the accounts which I have sent you, and which, except in my last letter, must have been very satisfactory, would have served 1 Robert, the second Lord Raymond [died 1753], son of the lord chief justice. WALPOLE. 2 William Kent, the architect ; he lived with Mrs. Butler, the actress, and died 1748. CUNNINGHAM. 3 " The Irish Register," was published in June, 1742, by Webb, price 1*., and was followed the same month, also price Is., by " The English Register, or the Irish Register Match'd." CUNNINGHAM. 4 Miss Edwards, an unmarried lady of great fortune, who openly kept Lord Anne Hamilton. WALPOLE. 172 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1742. you as an antidote to their legends ; and I think the great victory in the House of Lords, and which, I assure you, is here reckoned prodigious, will raise your spirits against them. I am happy you have taken that step about Sir Francis Dashwood; the credit it must have given you with the King will more than counterbalance any little hurt you might apprehend from the cabal. I am in no hurry for any of my things ; as we shall be moving from hence [Downing Street] as soon as Sir Robert has taken another house, I shall not want them till I am more settled. Adieu ! I hope to tell you soon that we are all at peace, and then I trust you will be so. A thousand loves to the Chutes. How I long to see you all ! P.S. I unseal my letter to tell you what a vast and, probably, final victory we have gained to-day. They moved, that the Lords flinging out the Bill of Indemnity was an obstruction of justice, and might prove fatal to the liberties of this country. We have sat till this moment, seven o'clock, and have rejected this motion by 245 to 193. The call of the House, which they have kept off from fortnight to fortnight, to keep people in town, was appointed for to-day. The moment the division was over, Sir John Cotton rose and said, " As I think the inquiry is at an end, you may do what you will with the call." "We have put it off for two months. There's a noble postscript ! 78. TO SIR HORACE MANN. London, June 3, 1742. I HAVE sent Mr. Chute all the news ; I shall only say to you that I have read your last letter about Lady W. to Sir R. He was not at all surprised at her thoughts of England, but told me that last week my Lord Carteret had sent him a letter which she had written to him, to demand his protection. This you may tell publicly ; it will show her ladyship's credit. Here is an epigram, which I believe will divert you : it is on Lord Islay's garden 1 upon Hounslow Heath. Old Islay, to show his fine delicate taste 2 In improving his gardens purloin'd from the waste, 1 The gardens of Lord Islay (afterwards Duke of Argyll) at Whitton near Hounslow were very celebrated . The graver of Woollett has perpetuated some of their beauties. CUNNINGHAM. s These lines were written by Bramston, author of " The Art of Politics," and 1742.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 173 Bade his gard'ner one day to open his views, By cutting a couple of grand avenues : No particular prospect his lordship intended, But left it to chance how his walks should be ended. With transport and joy he beheld his first view end In a favourite prospect a church that was ruin'd But alas ! what a sight did the next cut exhibit ! At the end of the walk hung a rogue on a gibbet ! He beheld it and wept, for it caused him to muse on Full many a Campbell that died with his shoes on. All amazed and aghast at the ominous scene, He order'd it quick to be closed up again With a clump of Scotch firs, that served for a Screen. Sir Robert asked me yesterday about the Dominichin, but I did not know what to answer : I said I would write to you about it. Have you bought it? or did you quite put it off? I had forgot to mention it again to you. If you have it not, I am still of opinion that you should buy it for him. Adieu ! 79. TO SIR HORACE MANN. June 10, the Pretenders birthday, which, by the way, I believe he did not expect to keep at Rome this year, 1742. SINCE I wrote you my last letter, I have received two from you of the 27th of May and 3rd of June, N.S. I hope you will get my two packets ; that is, one of them was addressed to Mr. Chute, and in them was all my faggot of compliments. Is not poor Scully 1 vastly disappointed that we are not arrived? But really, will that mad woman [Lady Walpole] never have done ? does she still find credit for her extravagant histories ? I carried her son* with me to Yauxhall last night : he is a most charming boy, but grows excessively like her in the face. I don't at all foresee how I shall make out this letter : everybody " The Man of Taste." WALPOLE. The Reverend James Bramston, vicar of South Harting, Sussex. Pope took the line in the Dunciad, " Shine in the dignity of P.R.S.' from his Man of Taste ; " a satire," says Warton, " in which the author has been guilty of the absurdity of making his hero laugh at himself and his own follies." He died in 1744. WRIGHT. 1 An Irish tailor at Florence, who let out ready-furnished apartments to travelling English. Lady W[alpole] had reported that [Lord Orford], her father-in-law, was flying from England and would come thither. WALPOLE. 2 George Walpole, afterwards, 1751, the third Earl of Orford. Mr. Pitt, in a letter, written in 1759, says, " Nothing could make a better appearance than the two Norfolk battalions ; Lord Orford, with the port of Mars himself, and really the genteelest figure under arms I ever saw, was the theme of every tongue." Chatham Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 4. WRIGHT. 174 HOE ACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1742. is gone out of town during the Whitsuntide, and many will not return, at least not these six weeks ; for so long they say it will be before the Secret Committee make their Report, with which they intend to finish. "We are, however, entertained with pageants every day reviews to gladden the heart of David, 1 and triumphs of Absolom ! He* and his wife went in great parade yesterday through the city and the dust to dine at Greenwich ; they took water at the Tower, and trumpeting away to Grace Tosier's, Like Cimon, triumph'd both on land and wave. 3 I don't know whether it was my Lord of Bristol * or some one of the Saddlers" Company who had told him that this was the way " to steal the hearts of the people." He is in a quarrel with Lord Falmouth. 6 There is just dead one Hammond/ a disciple of Lord Chesterfield, and equerry to his royal highness : he had parts, and was just come into parliament, strong of the Cobham faction, or nepotism, as Sir Robert calls it. The White Prince desired Lord Falmouth to choose Dr. Lee, who, you know, has disobliged the party by accepting a lordship of the admiralty. Lord Falmouth has absolutely refused, and insists upon choosing one of his own brothers : his highness talks loudly of opposing him. The borough is a Cornish one. There is arrived a courier from Lord Stair, with news of Prince Lobkowitz having cut cut off five thousand French. We are hurry- ing away the rest of our troops to Flanders, and say that we are in great spirits, and intend to be in greater when we have defeated the French too. 1 George the Second. WALPOLE. 2 Frederic, Prince of Wales. WALPOLE. 3 Pope's Dunciad. CUNNINGHAM. 4 Dr. Seeker, afterwards Bishop of Oxford. WALPOLE. And eventually Archbishop of Canterbury. According to Walpole, he was bred a man-midwife. DOVER. Seeker had committed in Walpole's eyes the unpardonable offence of having " procured a marriage between the heiress of the Duke of Kent and the chancellor's (Hardwicke's) son ; " he, therefore, readily propagated the charges of his being " a presbyterian, a man-midwife, and president of a very free-thinking club," (Memoirs, i. p. 56) when the fact is, the parents of Seeker were dissenters, and he for a time pursued the study, though not the practice, of medicine and surgery. The third charge is a mere false- hood. See also Quarterly Review, xxvii. p. 187. WRIGHT. 5 The Prince was a member of the Saddlers' company. WALPOLE. 6 Hugh Boscawen, second Viscount Falmouth, a great dealer in boroughs. It is of him that Dodington tells the story, that he went to the minister to ask a favour, which the latter seemed unwilling to grant ; upon which Lord Falmouth said, " Remember, Sir, we are seven ! " DOVER. 7 Author of Love Elegies. WALPOLE. See vol. i. p. 114. CUNNINGHAM. 1742.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 175 For my own particular I cannot say I am well ; I am afraid I have a little fever upon my spirits, or at least have nerves, which, you know, everybody has in England. I begin the cold bath to-morrow, and talk of going to Tunbridge, if the parliament rises soon. Sir Robert, who begins to talk seriously of Houghton, has desired me to go with him thither ; but that is not at all settled. Now I mention Houghton, you was in the right to miss a gallery there ; but there is one actually fitting up, where the green-house was, and to be furnished with the spoils of Downing-street. I am quite sorry you have had so much trouble with those odious cats of Malta : dear child, fling them into the Arno, if there is water enough at this season to drown them ; or, I'll tell you, give them to Stosch, to pay the postage he talked of. I have no ambition to make my court with them to the old wizard. I think I have not said anything lately to you from Patapan ; he is handsomer than ever, and grows fat : his eyes are charming ; they have that agreeable lustre which the vulgar moderns call sore eyes, but the judicious ancients golden eyes, ocellos Patapanicos. The process is begun against her Grace of Beaufort, 1 and articles exhibited in Doctors' Commons. Lady Townshend [Harrison] has had them copied, and lent them to me. There is everything proved to your heart's content, to the birth of the child, and much delectable reading. Adieu ! my dear child ; you see I have eked out a letter : I hate missing a post, and yet at this dead time I have almost been tempted to invent a murder or a robbery. But you are good, and will be persuaded that I have used my eyes and ears for your service ; when, if it were not for you, I should let them lie by in a drawer from week's end to week's end. Good night ! 80. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Dovming Street, June 14, 1742. WE were surprised last Tuesday with the great good news of the peace between the Queen and the King of Prussia. It was so unexpected and so welcome, that I believe he might get an act of parliament to forbid any one thinking that he ever made a slip in integrity. Then, the repeated accounts of the successes of Prince 1 Frances, daughter and heiress of the last Lord Scudamore, wife of Henry Somerset, Duke of Beaufort ; from whom she was divorced, March, 1743-4, for adultery with Lord Talbot. She was afterwards married to Colonel Fitzroy, natural son of the Duke of Grafton. WALPOLB. 176 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1742. Charles and Lobkowitz over the French have put us into the greatest spirits. Prince Charles is extremely commended for courage and conduct, and makes up a little for other flaws in the family. It is at last settled that Lords Gower, 1 Cobham, and Bathurst 2 are to come in. The first is to be Privy-Seal, and was to have kissed hands last Friday, but Lord Hervey had carried the seal with him to Ickworth ; but he must bring it back. Lord Cobham is to be Field- Marshal, and to command all the forces in England. Bathurst was to have the Gentlemen-pensioners, but Lord Essex, 3 who is now the Captain, and was to have had the Beef-eaters, will not change. Bathurst is to have the Beef-eaters ; the Duke of Bolton, 4 who has them, is to have the Isle of Wight, and Lord Lymington, 5 who has that, is to have nothing ! The Secret Committee are in great perplexities about Scrope : ' he would not take the oath, but threatened the Middlesex justices who tendered it to him : " Gentlemen," said he, " have you any complaint against me ? if you have not, don't you fear that I will prosecute you for enforcing oaths ? " However, one of them began to read the oath" I, John Scrope ! " " I, John Scrope ! " said he ; "I did not say any such thing : but come, however, let's hear the oath; " " do promise that I will faithfully and truly answer all such questions as shall be asked me by the Committee of Secrecy, and " they were going on, but Scrope cried out, " Hold, hold! there is more than I can digest already." He then went before the committee, and desired time to consider. Pitt asked him abruptly, if he wanted a 1 John, second Lord Gower, after a long opposition to the Whig Ministry (which was looked upon as equivalent to Jacobitism), accepted in 1742 the office of Privy Seal, and was consequently abused both by Whigs and Tories. He died in 1754. He is the Earl Gower whose name Johnson had introduced so offensively into his Dictionary under the word " Renegado." CUNNINGHAM. 2 Allen, first Lord Bathurst, one of the twelve Tory peers created by Queen Anne, in 1711. He was the friend of Pope, Congreve, Swift, Prior, and other men of letters. He lived to see his eldest son chancellor of England, and died at the age of ninety- one, in 1775 ; having been created an earl in 1772. DOVER. He lived to be the friend of David Hume and Laurence Sterne. CUNNINGHAM. 3 William Capel, third Earl of Essex ; ambassador at the court of Turin. He died in January 1743. The Beef-eaters are otherwise called the Yeomen of the Guard. DOVER. 4 Charles Powlett, third Duke of Bolton. His second wife was Miss Laviuia Fenton, otherwise Mrs. Beswick, the actress ; who became celebrated in the character of Polly Peachem, in the Beggar's Opera. By her the Duke had three sons, born before marriage. With his first wife, the daughter and sole heiress of John Vaughan, Earl of Carberry in Ireland, he never cohabited. He died in 1754. DOVER. 5 John Wallop, first Viscount Lymington ; in the following April created Earl of Portsmouth. He died in 1762. WRIGHT. 6 John Scrope, secretary of the Treasury. He had been in Monmouth's rebellion, when very young, and carried intelligence to Holland in woman's clothes. WALPOLE. 1742.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 177 quarter of an hour ; he replied, " he did not want to inform either his head or his heart, for both were satisfied what to do ; but that he would ask the King's leave." He wants to fight Pitt. He is a most testy little old gentleman, and about eight years ago would have fought Alderman Perry. It was in the House, at the time of the excise : he said we should carry it ; Perry said he hoped to see him hanged first. " You see me hanged, you dog, you ! " said Scrope, and pulled him by the nose. The Committee have tried all ways to soften him, and have offered to let him swear to only what part he pleased, or only with regard to money given to members of parlia- ment. Pulteney himself has tried to work on him ; but the old gentleman is inflexible, and answered, " that he was fourscore years old, and did not care whether he spent the few months he had to live l in the Tower or not ; that the last thing he would do should be to betray the King, and next to KITH the Earl of Orford." It remains in suspense. The troops continue going to Flanders, but slowly enough. Lady Vane has taken a trip thither after a cousin 2 of Lord Berkeley, who is as simple about her as her own husband is, and has written to Mr. Knight at Paris to furnish her with what money she wants. He says she is vastly to blame ; for he was trying to get her a divorce from Lord Vane, and then would have married her himself. Her adventures 3 are worthy to be bound up with those of my good sister- in-law, [Lady "Walpole] the German Princess, 4 and Moll Flanders. Whom should I meet in the Park last night but Ceretesi ! He told me he was at a Bagne. I will find out his bagnio ; for though I was not much acquainted with him, yet the obligations I had to Florence make me eager to show any Florentine all the civilities in my power ; though I do not love them near so well, since what you have told me of their late behaviour ; notwithstanding your letter of June 20th, which I have just received. I perceive that simple- hearted, good, unmeaning Rucellai is of the number of the false, though you do not directly say so. 1 Scrope survived this answer eleven years, dying in 1753. We shall see that the affair of Scrope was ' sunk ' very soon. CUNNINGHAM. 2 Henry Berkeley ; killed the next year at the battle of Dettingen. [See p. 91]. WALPOLE. 3 Lady Vane's Memoirs, dictated by herself, were actually published afterwards in a book, called The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle ; and she makes mention of Lady Orford. WALPOLE. [See ante, p. 91]. Sir Walter Scott says, that " she not only furnished Smollett with the materials for recording her own infamy, but rewarded him handsomely for the insertion of her story." WRIGHT. 4 The impostor who appeared in the reign of Charles II., and found full employ- ment for the curiosity of Pepys. She was hanged at Tyburn. CDSSIKGHAM. 178 HOKACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1742. I was excessively diverted with your pompous account of the siege of Lucca by a single Englishman. I do helieve that you and the Chutes might put a certain city into as great a panic. Adieu ! 81. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Midsummer Day, 1742. ONE begins every letter now with an lo Pcean ! indeed our hymns are not so tumultuous as they were some time ago, to the tune of Admiral Vernon. They say there came an express last night, of the taking of Prague and the destruction of some thousand French. It is really amazing, the fortune of the Queen ! We expect every day the news of the King of Poland having made his peace ; for it is affirmed that the Prussian left him but sixteen days to think of it. There is nothing could stop the King of Prussia, if he should march to Dresden : how long his being at peace with that king will stop him I look upon as very uncertain. They say we expect the Report from the Secret Committee next Tuesday, and then finish. I preface all my news with they say ; for I am not at all in the secret, and I had rather that they say should tell you a lie than myself. They have sunk the affair of Scrope : the Chancellor of the Exchequer [Sandys] and Sir John Rushout spoke in the Committee against persecuting him, for he is Secretary to the Treasury. I don't think there is so easy a language as the ministerial in the world one learns it in a week ! There are few members in town, and most of them no friends to the Committee ; so that there is not the least apprehension of any violence following the Report. I dare say there is not ; for my uncle, who is my political weather-glass, and whose quicksilver rises and falls with the least variation of parliamentary weather, is in great spirits, and has spoken three times in the House within this week ; he had not opened his lips before since the change. Mr. Pulteney has got his warrant in his pocket for Earl of Bath, and kisses hands as soon as the Parliament rises. The promotions I mentioned to you are not yet come to pass ; but a fortnight will settle things wonderfully. The Italian [Ceretesi], who I told you is here, has let me into a piece of secret history, which you never mentioned : perhaps it is not true ; but he says the mighty mystery of the Count's [Richcourt's] elope- ment from Florence, was occasioned by a letter from Wachtendonck, 1 1 General Wachtendonck, commander of the Queen of Hungary's troops at Leghorn. WALPOLK. 1742.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 179 which was so impertinent as to talk of satisfaction for some affront. The great Count very wisely never answered it his life, to be sure, is of too great consequence to be trusted at the end of a rash German's sword ! however, the General wrote again, and hinted at coming himself for an answer. So it happened, that when he arrived, the Count was gone to the baths of Lucca those waters were reckoned better for his health, than steel in the abstract How oddly it happened ! He just returned to Florence as the General was dead ! Now was not this heroic lover worth running after ? I wonder, as the Count must have known my lady's courage and genius for adventures, that he never thought of putting her into men's clothes, and sending her to answer the challenge. How pretty it would have been to have fought for one's lover ! and how great the obligation, when he durst not fight for himself ! I heard the other day, that the Primate of Lorrain was dead of the small-pox. "Will you make my compliments of condolence? though I dare say, they are little afflicted : he was a most worthless creature, and all his wit and parts, I believe, little comforted them for his brutality and other vices. The fine Mr. Pitt 1 is arrived : I dine with him to-day at Lord Lincoln's, with the Pomfrets. So now the old partie quarree is complete again. The Earl [Lincoln] is not quite cured, 8 and a partner in sentiments may help to open the wound again. My Lady Townshend dines with us too. She flung the broadest "Wortley-eye 3 on Mr. Pitt, the other night, in the park ! Adieu ! my dear child ; are you quite well ? I trust the summer will perfectly re-establish you. 82. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Downing Street, June 30, 1742. IT is about six o'clock, and am I come from the House, where, at 1 George Pitt, of Strathfieldsea : he had been in love with Lady Charlotte Fermor [p. 52], second daughter of Lord Pomfret, who was afterwards married to William Finch, vice-chamberlain. WALPOLE. Mr. Pitt was created Lord Rivers in 1776. In 1761 he was British envoy at Turin ; in 1770, ambassador extraordinary to Spain. He died in 1803. DOVKE. 2 Of his love for Lady Sophia Fermor. DOVKE. 3 Mr. Pitt [Lord Rivers] was very handsome, and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu had liked him extremely, when he was in Italy. WALPOLE. And other beauties envy Wortley's eyes. Pope. And only dwells where Wortley casts her eyes. Pope. CUNNINGHAM. N 2 180 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. |U42. last, we have had another Report from the Secret Committee. They have been disputing this week among themselves, whether this should he final or not. The new ministry, thank hem ! were for finishing; hut their arguments were not so persuasive as dutiful, and we are to have yet another. This lasted two hours and a half in reading, though confined to the affair of Burrel and Bristow, the "Weymouth election, and Secret-service money. They moved to print it ; but though they had fetched most of their members from Ale and the country, they were not strong enough to divide. Velters Cornwall, whom I have mentioned to you, I believe, for odd humour, said, " he believed the somethingness of this Report would make amends for the nothingness of the last, and that he was for printing it, if it was only from believing that the King would not see it, unless it is printed." Perhaps it may be printed at the conclusion ; at least it will without authority so you will see it. I received yours of June 24, N.S. with one from Mr. Chute, this morning, and I will now go answer it and your last. You seem still to be uneasy about my letters, and their being retarded. I have not observed, lately, the same signs of yours being opened; and for my own, I think it may very often depend upon the packet- boat and winds. You ask me if Pulteney has lately received any new disgusts. How can one answer for a temper so hasty, so unsettled ? not that I know, unless that he finds, what he has been twenty years undoing, is not yet undone. I must interrupt the thread of my answer, to tell you that I hear news came last night that the States of Holland have voted forty- seven thousand men for the assistance of the Queen, 1 and that it was not doubted but the States-General would imitate this resolution. This seems to be the consequence of the King of Prussia's proceedings but how can they trust him so easily ? I am amazed that your Leghorn ministry are so wavering ; they are very old style, above eleven days out of fashion, if they any longer fear the French : my only apprehension is, lest their successes should make Richcourt more impertinent. You have no notion how I laughed at the man that " talks nothing but Madeira." 2 I told it to my Lady Pomfret, concluding 1 The Queen of Hungary, Maria Theresa. DOVER. 8 The only daughter and heiress of the Marquis Accianoli at Florence, was married to one of the same name, who was born at Madeira. WALPOLB. 1742.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 181 it would divert her too ; and forgetting that she repines when she should laugh, and reasons when she should he diverted. She asked gravely what language that was ! " That Madeira heing subject to an European prince, to be sure they talk some European dialect ! " The grave personage ! It was of a piece with her saying, " that Swift would have written better, if he had never written ludicrously." I met a friend of yours the other day at an auction, and though I knew him not the least, yet being your friend, and so like you (for do you know, he is excessively), I had a great need to speak to him and did. He says, " he has left off writing to you, for he never could get an answer." I said, you had never received but one from him in all the time I was with you, and that I was witness to your having answered it. He was with his mother, Lady Abercorn, 1 a most frightful gentlewoman : Mr. Wilmington says, he one day overheard her and the Duchess of Devonshire 2 talking of " hideous ugly women !" By the way, I find I have never told you that it was Lord Paisley ; 3 but that you will have perceived. Amorevoli is gone to Dresden for the summer ; our directors are in great fear that he will serve them like Farinelli, and not return for the winter. I am writing to you in one of the charming rooms towards the park : it is a delightful evening, and I am willing to enjoy this sweet corner while I may, for we are soon to quit it. Mrs. Sandys came yesterday to give us warning ; Lord Wilmington has lent it to them. Sir Eobert might have had it for his own at first, but would only take it as first lord of the Treasury. 4 He goes into a small house of his own in Arlington Street, opposite to where we formerly lived. Whither I shall travel is yet uncertain : he is for my living with him ; but then I shall be cooped and besides, I never found that people loved one another the less for living asunder. The drowsy Lord Mayor [Sir Robert Godschall] is dead so the 1 Anne Plumer, Countess of Abercorn, wife of James, the seventh earl. She died in 1756. WEIGHT. 2 Catherine, daughter of John Hoskins, Esq. She was married to the third Duke of Devonshire in 1718, and died in 1777. WRIGHT. 3 James Hamilton succeeded as eighth earl of Abercorn, on the death of his father in 1743. He was created Viscount Hamilton in England in 1786, and died unmarried in 1789. DOVER. 4 This is the house in Downing Street, which is still [1833] the residence of the first lord of the treasury, George the First gave it to Baron Bothmar, the Hanoverian minister, for life. On his death, George the Second offered to give it to Sir Robert Walpole ; who, however, refused it, and begged of the King that it might be attached to the office of first lord of the treasury. DOVER. 182 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1742. newspapers say. I think he is not dead, but sleepeth. Lord Gower is laid up with the gout : this, they say, is the reason of his not having the Privy Seal yet. The town has talked of nothing lately but a plot : I will tell you the circumstances. Last week the Scotch hero ' sent his brother 2 two papers, which he said had been left at his house by an unknown hand; that he believed it was by Colonel Cecil, agent for the Pretender though how could that be, for he had had no conversa- tion with Colonel Cecil for these two years ? He desired Lord Islay to lay them before the Ministry. One of the papers seemed a letter, though with no address or subscription, written in true genuine Stuart characters. It was to thank Mr. Burnus (D. of A.) for his services, and that he hoped he would answer the assurances given of him. The other was to command the Jacobites, and to exhort the patriots to continue what they had mutually so well begun, and to say how pleased he was with their having removed Mr. Tench. Lord Islay showed these letters to Lord Orford, and then to the King, and told him he had showed them to my father. "You did well." Lord Islay, "Lord Orford says one is of the Pretender's hand." King, "He 3 knows it: whenever anything of this sort comes to your hand, carry it to Walpole." This private conversa- tion you must not repeat. A few days afterwards, the Duke wrote to his brother, " That upon recollection he thought it right to say, that he had received those letters from Lord Barrimore " 4 who is as well known for General to the Chevalier, as Montemar is to the Queen of Spain or as the Duke of A. [rgyll] would be to either of them. Lord Islay asked Sir R. [obert] if he was against publishing this story, which he thought was a justification both of his brother and Sir R. [obert]. The latter replied, he could certainly have no objection to its being public but pray, will his grace's sending these letters to the secretaries of state justify him from the assurances 5 that 1 The [great] Duke of Argyll. WALPOLE. 2 Earl of Islay. WALPOLE. 3 Besides intercepted letters, Sir R. Walpole had more than once received letters from the Pretender, making him the greatest offers, which Sir R. always carried to the King, and got him to endorse, when he returned them to Sir R. Walpole. WALPOLE. 4 James Barry, fourth Earl of Barrymore, succeeded his half-brother Lawrence in the family titles in 1699, and died in 1747, at the age of eighty. James, Lord Barry- more, was an adherent of the Pretender, whereas Lawrence had been so great a supporter of the revolution, that he was attainted, and his estates sequestered by James the Second's Irish parliament, in 1689. DOVER. 5 The [great] Duke of Argyll, in the latter part of his life, was often melancholy and disordered in his understanding. After this transaction, and it is supposed he had 1742.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 183 had been given of him ? However, the Pretender's being of opinion that the dismission of Mr. Tench was for his service, will scarce be an argument to the new ministry for making more noise about these papers. I am sorry the boy is so uneasy at being on the foot of a servant. I will send for his mother, and ask her why she did not tell him the conditions to which we had agreed ; at the same time, I will tell her that she may send any letters for him to me. Adieu ! my dear child : I am going to write to Mr. Chute, that is, to-morrow. I never was more diverted than with his letter. 83. TO SIR HORACE MANN. ON THE DEATH OF RICHARD WEST, ESQ. While surfeited with life, each hoary knave Grows, here, immortal, and eludes the grave, Thy virtues immaturely met their fate, Cramp'd in the limit of too short a date ! Thy mind, not exercised so oft in vain, In health was gentle, and composed in pain : Successive trials still refined thy soul, And plastic patience perfected the whole. A friendly aspect, not suborn'd by art ; An eye, which looked the meaning of thy heart ; A tongue, with simple truth and freedom fraught, The faithful index of thy honest thought. Thy pen disdain'd to seek the servile ways Of partial censure, and more partial praise : Through every tongue it flow'd in nervous ease, With sense to polish, and with wit to please. No lurking venom from thy pencil fell ; Thine was the kindest satire, living well : The vain, the loose, the base, might blush to see In what thou wert, what they themselves should be. Let me not charge on Providence a crime, Who snatch'd thee, blooming, to a better clime, To raise those virtues to a higher sphere : Virtues ! which only could have starved thee here. gone still farther, he could with difficulty be brought even to write his name. The marriage of his eldest daughter with the Earl of Dalkeith was deferred for some time, because the Duke could not be prevailed upon to sign the writings. WALPOLE. 184 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1742. A RECEIPT TO MAKE A LORD. OCCASIONED BY A LATE REPORT OP A PROMOTION. 1 Take a man, who by nature's a true son of earth, By rapine enrich'd, though a beggar by birth In genius the lowest, ill-bred and obscene; 2 In morals most wicked, most nasty in mien ; By none ever trusted, yet ever employ'd ; In blunders quite fertile, of merit quite void ; A scold in the Senate, abroad a buffoon, The scorn and the jest of all courts but his own : A slave to that wealth that ne'er made him a friend, And proud of that cunning that ne'er gain'd an end ; A dupe in each treaty, a Swiss in each vote ; In manners and form a complete Hottentot. Such an one could you find, of all men you'd commend him But be sure let the curse of each Briton attend him. Thus fully prepared, add the grace of the throne, The folly of monarchs, and screen of a crown Take a prince for his purpose, without ears or eyes, And a long parchment roll stuff'd brim-full of lies : These mingled together, a fiat shall pass, And the thing be a Peer, that before was an ass. The former copy I think you will like : it was written by one Mr. Ashton 3 on Mr. West, two friends of mine, whom yon have heard me often mention. The other copy was printed in the " Common Sense," I don't know by whom composed : the end of it is very bad, and there are great falsities in it, but some strokes are terribly like ! I have not a moment to thank the Grifona, nor to answer yours of June 17, N.S. which I have this instant read. Yours, in great haste. 84. TO SIR HORACE MANN. London, July 7, 1742. WELL! you may bid the Secret Committee good night. The House adjourns to-day till Tuesday, and on Thursday is to be pro- rogued. Yesterday we had a bill of Pulteney's, about returning officers and regulating elections : the House was thin, and he carried it by 93 to 92. Mr. Pelham was not there, and Winnington did not 1 The report, mentioned in a preceding letter, that Horace Walpole, brother to Sir Robert, was created a peer. WALPOLE. These verses are, I suspect, by young Horace. CUNNINGHAM. 2 Compare Swift's character of Sir Robert Walpole as printed in the Suffolk Corre- spondence, vol. ii. p. 32. This remarkable character is not in Sir Walter Scott's edition of Swift. CUNNINGHAM. 3 Thomas Ashton, afterwards fellow of Eton College. WALPOLE. See note p. 2. CUNNINGHAM. 1742.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 185 vote, for the gentleman is testy still ; when he saw how near he had been to losing it, he said loud enough to be heard, " I will make the gentlemen of that side feel me ! " and, rising up, he said, " He was astonished, that a bill so calculated for the freedom of elections was so near being thrown out ; that there was a report on the table, which showed how necessary such a bill was, and that though we had not time this year to consider what was proper to be done in consequence of it, he hoped we should next," with much to the same purpose ; but all the effect this notable speech had, was to frighten my uncle, and make him give two or three shrugs extra- ordinary to his breeches. They now say, 1 that Pulteney will not take out the patent for his earldom, but remain in the House of Commons in terrorem; however, all his friends are to have places immediately, or, as the fashion of expressing it is, " they are to go to Court in the Bath coach ! " * Your relation Guise 3 is arrived from Carthagena, madder than ever. As he was marching up to one of the forts, all his men deserted him ; his lieutenant advised bim to retire ; he replied, " He never had turned his back yet, and would not now," and stood all the fire. When the pelicans were flying over his head, he cried out, " What would Chloe * give for some of these to make a pelican pie ! " When he is brave enough to perform such actions as are really almost incredible, what pity it is that he should for ever persist in saying things that are totally so ! Lord Annandale 8 is at last mad in all the forms : he has long been an out-pensioner of Bedlam College. Lord and Lady Talbot 6 are parted ; he gives her three thousand pounds a- year. Is it not 1 Sir R. W. to defeat Pulteney's ambition, persuaded the King to insist on his going into the House of Lords : the day he carried his patent thither, he flung it upon the floor in a passion, and could scarce be prevailed on to have it passed. WALPOLE. Compare Walpole's ' Reminiscences,' Chapter IX., with the note there from Lord Hervey's Memoirs. CUNNINGHAM. 2 His title was to be Earl of Bath. WALPOLE. 3 General Guise, a very brave officer, but apt to romance ; and a great connoisseur in pictures. WALPOLE. He bequeathed his collection of pictures, which is a very indifferent one, to Christ Church College, Oxford. DOVER. 4 The Duke of Newcastle's French cook. WALPOLE. " Chloe," the Duke of New- castle's cook figures in the printed letter to the Duke of Grafton about Fielding's farce of " Miss Lucy in Town," and is mentioned by Walpole in " The World." CUNNINGHAM. 6 George Johnstone, third Marquis of Annandale, in Scotland. He was not declared a lunatic till the year 1748. Upon his death, in 1792, his titles either became extinct or dormant. DOVER. 6 Mary, daughter of Adam de Cardonel, secretary to John the great Duke of Marlborough, married to William, second Lord Talbot, eldest son of Lord Chancellor Talbot. DOVER. 186 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1742. amazing, that in England people will not find out that they can live separate without parting ? The Duke of Beaufort says, " He pities Lord Talbot to have met with two such tempers as their two wives ! " Sir Robert Rich ' is going to Flanders, to try to make up an affair for his son ; who, having quarrelled with a Captain Vane, as the commanding officer was trying to make it up at the head of the regiment, Rich came behind Vane, " And to show you," said he, " that I will not make it up, take that," and gave him a box on the ear. They were immediately put in arrest ; but the learned in the laws of honour say, they must fight, for no German officer will serve with Vane, till he has had satisfaction. Mr. Harris, 2 who married Lady "Walpole's mother, is to be one of the peace-offerings on the new altar. Bootle is to be chief-justice ; but the Lord Chancellor [Hardwicke] would not consent to it, unless Lord Glenorchy, 8 whose daughter is married to Mr. Yorke, had a place in lieu of the Admiralty, which he has lost he is to have Harris's. Lord Edgcumbe's, in Ireland, they say, is destined to Harry Vane, 4 Pulteney's toad-eater. 5 Monticelli lives in a manner at our house. I tell my sister that she is in love with bvm, and that I am glad it was not Amorevoli. Monticelli dines frequently with Sir Robert, which diverts me extremely: you know how low his ideas are of music and the virtuosi ; he calls them all fiddlers. I have not time now to write more, for I am going to a masquerade at the Ranelagh amphitheatre : the King is fond of it, and has pressed people to go ; but I don't find that it will be full. Good night ! My love to the Pope for his good thing. 1 Sir Robert Rich, Bart., of Rose Hall, Suffolk. At his death, in 1768, he was colonel of the fourth regiment of dragoons, governor of Chelsea Hospital, and field- marshal of the forces. WEIGHT. 2 This article did not prove true. Mr. Harris was not removed, nor Bootle made chief-justice. WALPOLE. 8 John Campbell, Lord Glenorchy, and, on his father's death, in 1752, third Earl of Breadalbane. His first wife was Lady Amabel Grey, eldest daughter and co-heir of the Duke of Kent. By her he had an only daughter, Jemima, who, upon the death of her grandfather, became Baroness Lucas of Crudwell, and Marchioness de Grey. She married Philip Yorke, eldest son of the Chancellor Hardwicke, and eventually himself the second earl of that title. DOVER. 4 Henry Vane, eldest son of Gilbert, second Lord Barnard, and one of the tribe who came into office upon the breaking up of Sir Robert Walpole's administration. He was created Earl of Darlington in 1753, and died in 1758. DOVER. * This is an early use of what is now a common expression. It is explained as a novelty by Sarah Fielding in her story of " David Simple " published in 1744. CUNNINGHAM. 1742.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 187 85. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Downing Street, July 14, 1742. SIR EGBERT BROWN l is displaced from being paymaster of some- thing, I forget what, for Sir Charles Gilmour, a friend of Lord Tweedale.* Ned Finch 3 is made groom of the bedchamber, which was vacant ; and Will Finch 4 vice chamberlain, which was not vacant ; but they have emptied it of Lord Sidney Beauclerc. 5 Boone is made commissary-general, in Huxley's room, and Jeffries e in Will Stuart's. All these have been kissing hands to day, headed by the Earl of Bath. He went in to the King the other, day with this long list, but was told shortly, that unless he would take up his patent and quit the House of Commons, nothing should be done he has consented. I made some of them very angry ; for when they told me who had kissed hands, I asked, if the Pretender had kissed hands too, for being King ? I forgot to tell you, that Murray 7 is to 1 Sir Robert Brown had been a merchant at Venice , and British resident there, for which he was created a baronet in 1732. He held the place at this time of "paymaster of his Majesty's works, concerning the repairs, new buildings, and well-keeping of any of his Majesty's houses of access, and others in time of progress." DOVER. 2 John Hay, fourth Marquis of Tweeddale. In 1748, he married Frances, daughter of John [Carteret], Earl Granville, and died in 1762. WRIGHT. 3 The Hon. Edward Finch, fifth son of Daniel, sixth earl of Winchelsea and second Earl of Nottingham, and the direct ancestor of the present Lord Winchelsea. He assumed the name of Hatton, in 1764, in consequence of inheriting the fortune of William Yiscount Hatton, his mother's brother. He was employed in diplomacy, and was made master of the robes in 1757. He died in 1771. DOVER. 4 The Hon. William Finch, second son of Daniel, sixth Earl of Winchelsea, had been envoy in Sweden and in Holland. He continued to hold the office of vice- chamberlain of the household till his death in 1766. These two brothers, and their elder brother Daniel, seventh Earl of Winchelsea, are the persons whom Sir Charles Hanbury Williams calls, on account of the blackness of their complexions, " the dark, funereal Finches." WALPOLE. He married Lady Charlotte Fermor. See p. 179. CUNNINGHAM. 5 Lord Sidney Beauclerk, fifth son of the first Duke of St. Albans ; a man of bad character. Sir Charles Hanbury Williams calls him " Worthless Sidney." He was notorious for hunting after the fortunes of the old and childless. Being very hand- some, he had almost persuaded Lady Betty Germaine, in her old age, to marry him ; but she was dissuaded from it by the Duke of Dorset and her relations. He failed also in obtaining the fortune of Sir Thomas Reeve, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, whom he used to attend on the circuit, with a view of ingratiating himself with him. At length he induced Mr. Topham, of Windsor, to leave his estate to him. He died in 1744, leaving one son, Topham Beauclerk, Esq., known to every reader of Boswell. DOVER. Lord Sidney was the grandson of 'Nell Gwyn, and is the hero of a poem by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. See note, p. 117. CUNNINGHAM. 6 John Jeffries, Secretary of the Treasury. DOVER. 7 Afterwards the great Lord Mansfield. CUNNINGHAM. 188 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1742. be Solicitor-General, in Sir John Strange's place, who is made chief justice, or some such thing. 1 I don't know who it was that said it, but it was a very good answer to one who asked why Lord Gower had not kissed hands sooner " the Dispensation was not come from Rome." * I am writing to you up to the ears in packing : Lord Wilmington has lent this house to Sandys, and he has given us instant warning ; we are moving as fast as possible to Siberia, Sir Hobert has a house there, within a few miles of the Duke of Courland ; in short, child, we are all going to Norfolk, till we can get a house ready in town : all the furniture is taken down, and lying about in confusion. I look like St. John, in the Isle of Patmos, writing revelations, and prophesying " Woe ! woe ! woe I the kingdom of desolation is at hand ! " indeed, I have prettier animals about me, than he ever dreamt of : here is the dear Patapan, and a little Vandyke cat, with black whiskers and boots ; you would swear it was of a very ancient family, in the West of England, famous for their loyalty. I told you I was going to the masquerade at Ranelagh gardens, last week : it was miserable ; there were but an hundred men, six women, and two shepherdesses. The King liked it, and that he might not be known, they had dressed him a box with red damask ! Lady Pomfret and her daughters were there, all dressed alike, that they might not be known. My Lady said to Lady Bel Finch, 3 who was dressed like a nun, and for coolness had cut off the nose of her mask, " Madam, you are the first nun that ever I saw without a nose ! " As I came home last night, they told me there was a fire in Downing Street ; when I came to Whitehall, I could not get to the end of the street in my chariot, for the crowd : when I got out, the first thing I heard was a man enjoying himself : " Well ! if it lasts two hours longer, Sir Robert Walpole's house will be burned to the ground ! " it was a very comfortable hearing ! but I found the fire 1 Sir John Strange was made Master of the Rolls, but not till some years after- wards : he died in 1754. WALPOLE. - From the Pretender. Lord Gower had been, until he was made Privy-Seal, one of the leading Jacobites ; and was even supposed to lean to that party after he had accepted the appointment. WALPOLE. Seep. 176, and compare Dr. King's Anecdotes, p. 45. CUNNINGHAM. 8 Lady Isabella Finch, died 1771, third daughter of the sixth Earl of Winchelsea, first lady of the bedchamber to the Princess Amelia. It was for her that Kent built the pretty and singular house on the western side of Berkeley Square, with a fine room in it, of which the ceiling is painted in arabesque compartments, by Zucchi ; now [1833] the residence of C. Baring Wall, Esq. DOVER. 1742.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 189 was on the opposite side of the way, and at a good distance. I stood in the crowd an hour to hear their discourse : one man was relating at how many fires he had happened to be present, and did not think himself at all unlucky in passing hy, just at this. What diverted me most, was a servant-maid, who was working, and carrying pails of water, with the strength of half-a-dozen troopers, and swearing the mob out of her way the soft creature's name was Phillis ! When I arrived at our door, I found the house full of goods, beds, women, and children, and three Scotch members of parliament, who lodge in the row, and who had sent in a saddle, a flitch of bacon, and a bottle of ink. There was no wind, and the house was saved, with the loss of only its garret, and the furniture. I forgot to mention the Domini chin last post, as I suppose I had before, for I always was for your buying it ; it is one of the most engaging pictures I ever saw. I have no qualms about its origin- ality ; and even if Sir Robert should not like it when it comes, which is impossible, I think I would live upon a flitch of bacon and a bottle of ink, rather than not spare the money to buy it myself : so, my dear Sir, buy it. Your brother has this moment brought me a letter : I find by it, that you are very old style with relation to the Prussian peace. Why, we have sent Robinson ' and Lord Hyndford * a green ribbon for it, above a fortnight ago. Muley, (as Lord Lovel calls him,) Duke of Bedford, 3 is, they say, to have a blue one, for making his own peace : you know we always mind home-peaces more than foreign ones. I am quite sorry for all the trouble you have had about the Maltese cats; but you know they were for Lord Islay, not for myself. Adieu ! I have no more time. 86. TO SIR HORACE MANN. You scolded me so much about my little paper, that I dare not venture upon it even now, when I have very little to say to you. The long session is over, and the Secret Committee already forgotten. 1 Sir Thomas Robinson, minister at Vienna ; he was made secretary of state in 1754. WALPOLE. And a peer, by the title of Lord Grantham, in 1761. [See p. 80.] DOVER. 2 John Cannichael, third Earl of Hyndford. He had been sent as envoy to the King of Prussia, during the first war of Silesia. He was afterwards sent ambassador to Petersburgh and Vienna, and died in 1767. DOVKK. 3 The Duke of Bedford [died 1771] had not the Garter till some years after this. WALPOLE. 190 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1742. Nobody remembers it but poor Paxton, who has lost his place ' by it. I saw him the day after he came out of Newgate ; he came to Chelsea : 2 Lord Fitzwilliam was there, and in the height of zeal, took him about the neck and kissed him. Lord Orford had been at Court that morning, and with his usual spirits, said to the new ministers, " So ! the Parliament is up, and Paxton, Bell, and I have got our liberty ! " The King spoke in the kindest manner to him at his levee, but did not call bim into the closet, as the new Ministry feared he would, and as, perhaps, the old Ministry expected he would. The day before, when the King went to put an end to the session, Lord Quarendon asked Winnington " whether Bell would be let out time enough to hire a mob to huzza him as he went to the House of Lords." The few people that are left in town have been much diverted with an adventure that has befallen the new Ministers. Last Sunday the Duke of Newcastle gave them a dinner at Claremont, where their servants got so drunk, that when they came to the inn over against the gate of Newpark, 3 the coachman, who was the only remaining fragment of their suite, tumbled off the box, and there they were planted. There were Lord Bath, Lord Carteret, Lord Limerick, and Harry Furnese * in the coach : they asked the inn- keeper if he could contrive no way to convey them to town. " No," he said, " not he, unless it was to get Lord Orford's coachman to drive them." They demurred ; but Lord Carteret said, " Oh, I dare say, Lord Orford will willingly let us have him." So they sent, and he drove them home.* Ceretesi had a mind to see this wonderful Lord Orford, of whom he has heard so much ; I carried him to dine at Chelsea. You know the Earl don't speak a word of any language but English and 1 Solicitor to the treasury. See ante, p. 155. CUNNINGHAM. 2 Where, near to Chelsea Hospital, Sir Robert Walpole had a house. I have a printed catalogue of the pictures, &c., sold there after Sir Robert's death. CUNNINGHAM. 3 Lord Walpole was ranger of Newpark. WALPOLE. Now called Richmond Park. DOVER. 4 One of the band of incapables who obtained power and place on the fall of Walpole. Horace Walpole, in his Memoires, calls him " that old rag of Lord Bath's quota to an administration, the mute Harry Furnese." DOVER. 6 This occurrence was celebrated in a ballad, which is inserted in Sir C. Hanbury Williams's works, and begins thus : " As Caleb and Carteret, two birds of a feather, Went down to a feast at Newcastle's together." Lord Bath is called " Caleb," in consequence of the name of Caleb d' A nvers having been used in The Craftsman, of which he was the principal author. DOVER. 1742.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 191 Latin, 1 and Ceretesi not a word of either ; yet he assured me that he was very happy to have made cost bella conoscenza ! He whips out his pocket-book every moment, and writes descriptions in issimo of everything he sees : the grotto alone took up three pages. What volumes he will publish at his return, in usum Serenissimi Pan- noni ! 3 There has lately been the most shocking scene of murder imag- inable ; a parcel of drunken constables took it into their heads to put the laws in execution against disorderly persons, and so took up every woman they met, till they had collected five or six-and-twenty, all of whom they thrust into St. Martin's round-house, where they kept them all night, with doors and windows closed. The poor creatures, who could not stir or breathe, screamed as long as they had any breath left, begging at least for water : one poor wretch said she was worth eighteen-pence, and would gladly give it for a draught of water, but in vain ! So well did they keep them there, that in the morning four were found stifled to death, two died soon after, and a dozen more are in a shocking way. In short, it is horrid to think what the poor creatures suffered : several of them were beggars, who, from having no lodging, were necessarily found in the street, and others honest labouring women. One of the dead was a poor washerwoman, big with child, who was returning home late from washing. One of the constables is taken, and others absconded ; but I question 3 if any of them will suffer death, though the greatest criminals in this town are the officers of justice ; there is no tyranny they do not exercise, no villany of which they do not partake. These same men, the same night, broke into a bagnio in Covent- Garden, and took up Jack Spencer, 4 Mr. Stewart, and Lord George Graham, 5 and would have thrust them into the round-house with 1 It was very remarkable, that Lord Orford could get and keep such an ascendant with King George I., when they had no way of conversing but very imperfectly in Latin. WALPOLE. 2 The coffee-house at Florence where the nobility meet. WALPOLE. 3 The keeper of the round-house [William Bird] was tried, but acquitted of wilful murder. WALPOLB. 4 The Honourable John Spencer, second son of Charles, third Earl of Sunderland, by Anne his wife, second daughter of the great Duke of Marlborough. He was the favourite grandson of old Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, who left him a vast fortune, having disinherited, to the utmost of her power, his eldest brother, Charles, Duke of Marlborough. The condition upon which she made this bequest was, that neither he nor his heirs should take any place or pension from any government, except the rangership of Windsor Park. He was the ancestor of the present []833]Earl Spencer, and died in 1746. DOVER. 5 Lord George Graham, youngest son of the Duke of Montrose, and a c/iptain in the navy. He died in 1747. DOVER. 192 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1742. the poor women, if they had not heen worth more than eighteen- pence ! I have just now received yours of the 15th of July, with a married letter from both Prince and Princess [Craon] : but sure nothing ever equalled the setting out of it ! She says, " The generosity of your friendship for me, Sir, leaves me nothing to desire of all that is precious in England, China, and the Indies ! " Do you know, after such a testimony under the hand of a princess, that I am determined, after the laudable example of the house of Medici, to take the title of Horace the magnificent ! I am only afraid it should be a dangerous example for my posterity, who may ruin themselves in emulating the magnificence of their ancestor. It happens comically, for the other day, in removing from Downing-street, Sir Robert found an old account-book of his father, wherein he set down all his expenses. In three months and ten days that he was in London one winter as member of parliament, he spent what do you think ? sixty-four pounds seven shillings and five-pence ! There are many articles for Nottingham ale, eighteen-pences for dinners, five shillings to Bob (now Earl of Orford), and one memorandum of six shillings given in exchange to Mr. "Wilkins for his wig and yet this old man, my grandfather, had two thousand pounds a-year, Norfolk sterling ! He little thought that what maintained him for a whole session would scarce serve one of his younger grandsons to buy japan and fans for princesses at Florence ! Lord Orford has been at court again to-day : Lord Carteret came up to thank him for his coachman ; the Duke of Newcastle standing by. My father said, " My lord, whenever the duke is near over- turning you, you have nothing to do but to send to me, and I will save you." The Duke said to Lord Carteret, " Do you know, my lord, that the venison you eat that day came out of Newpark [Richmond] ? " Lord Orford laughed, and said, " So, you see I am made to kill the fatted calf for the return of the prodigals ! " The King passed by all the new Ministry to speak to him, and after- wards only spoke to my Lord Carteret. Sfhould I answer the letters from the court of Petraia again ? there will Jbe no end of our magnificent correspondence ! but would it not be toft haughty to let a princess write last ? Otu the cats ! I can never keep them, and yet it is barbarous to send them all to Lord Islay : he will shut them up and starve them, and then bury them under the stairs with his wife. 1 Adieu! 1 Daughter of Mr. Whitfield, Paymaster of Marines, died 1723. CUNNINGHAM. 1742.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 193 87. TO SIR HORACE MANN. CJielsea, July 29, 1742. I AM quite out of humour ; the whole town is melted away ; you never saw such a desert. You know what Florence is in the vintage- season, at least I remember what it was : London is just as empty, nothing but half-a-dozen private gentlewomen left, who live upon the scandal that they laid up in the winter. I am going too ! this day se'nnight we set out for Houghton, for three months ; but I scarce think that I shall allow thirty days a-piece to them. Next post I shall not be able to write to you ; and when I am there, shall scarce find materials to furnish a letter above every other post. I beg, how- ever, that you will write constantly to me ; it will be my only enter- tainment, for I neither hunt, brew, drink, nor reap. When I return in the winter, I will make amends for this barren season of our correspondence. I carried Sir Robert the other night to Ranelagh for the first time : my uncle's prudence, or fear, would never let him go before. It was pretty full, and all its fullness flocked round us : we walked with a train at our heels, like two chairmen going to fight ; but they were extremely civil, and did not crowd him, or say the least impertinence I think he grows popular already ! The other day he got it asked, whether he should be received if he went to Carleton House ? no, truly ! but yesterday morning Lord Baltimore ' came to soften it a little ; that his Royal Highness did not refuse to see him, but that now the Court was out of town, and he had no drawing-room, he did not see anybody. They have given Mrs. Pulteney an admirable name, and one that is likely to stick by her instead of Lady Bath, they call her the wife of Bath. 2 Don't you figure her squabbling at the gate with St. Peter for a halfpenny. Gibber has published a little pamphlet against Pope, which has a great deal of spirit, and, from some circumstances, will notably vex him. 3 I will send it to you by the first opportunity, with a new 1 Lord of the bedchamber to the Prince. WALPOLE. 2 In allusion to the old ballad. WALPOLE. Eather to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. CUNNINGHAM. 3 This pamphlet, which was entitled " A Letter from Mr. Gibber to Mr. Pope ; inquiring into the motives that might induce him, in his satirical works, to be so frequently fond of Mr. Gibber's name," so " notably vexed " the great poet, that, in a new edition of the Dunciad, he dethroned Theobald from his eminence as King of the Dunces, and enthroned Gibber in his stead. WRIGHT. 194 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1742. pamphlet, said to be Dodington's, called "A Comparison of the Old and New Ministry : " it is much liked. I have not forgot your magazines, but will send them and these pamphlets together. Adieu ! I am at the end of my tell. P.S. Lord Edgcumbe is just made Lord-lieutenant of Cornwall, at which the Lord of Bath looks sour. He said, yesterday, that the King would give orders for several other considerable alterations ; but he gave no orders, except for this, which was not asked by that Earl. 88. TO SIR HORACE MANN. [ffougkton.] HERE are three new ballads, 1 and you must take them as a plump part of a long letter. Consider, I am in the barren land of Norfolk, where news grow as slow as anything green ; and besides, I am iii the house of a fallen minister ! The first song [" Labour in Vain "] I fancy is Lord Edgcumbe's ; at least he had reason to write it. The second ["The Old Coachman"] I do not think so good as the real story that occasioned it. The last ["The Country Girl"] is reckoned vastly the best, and is much admired : I cannot say I see all those beauties in it, nor am charmed with the poetry, which is cried up. I don't find that any body knows whose it is. 2 Pulteney is very angry, especially, as he pretends, about his wife, and says, " it is too much to abuse ladies ! " You see, their twenty years' satires come home thick ! He is gone to the Bath in great dudgeon : the day before he went, he went in to the King to ask him to turn out Mr. Hill of the Customs, for having opposed him at Heydon. " Sir," said the King, " was it not when you was opposing me ? I won't turn him out : I will part with no more of my friends." Lord Wilmington was waiting to receive orders accordingly, but the King gave him none. "We came hither last Saturday ; as we passed through Grosvenor- square, we met Sir Roger Newdigate 3 with a vast body of Tories, 1 As these ballads are to be found in the edition of Sir Charles Hanbury Williams's works, published in 1822, it has been deemed better to omit them here. They are called, " Labour in Vain," " The Old Coachman," and " The Country Girl." DOVER. 2 It was written by Hanbury Williams. WALPOLE. 3 Sir Roger Newdigate, the fifth baronet of the family. He was elected member for Middlesex, upon the vacancy occasioned by Pulteney's being created Earl of Bath. He belonged to the Tory or Jacobite party. DOVER. Sir Roger afterwards repre- 1742.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 195 proceeding to his election at Brentford : we might have expected some insult, but only one single fellow hissed, and was not followed. Lord Edgcumbe, Mr. Ellis, and Mr. Hervey, in their way to Coke's, 1 and Lord Chief Justice Willes (on the circuit) are the only com- pany here yet. My Lord invited nobody, but left it to their charity. The other night, as soon as he had gone through showing Mr. Ellis the house, " "Well," said he, " here I am to enjoy it, and my Lord of Bath may ." I forgot to tell you, in confirmation of what you see in the song of the wife of Bath having shares of places, Sir Robert told me, that when formerly he got a place for her own father, 9 she took the salary and left him only the perquisites ! It is much thought that the Xing will go abroad, if he can avoid leaving the Prince in his place . Imagine all this ! I received to-day yours of July 29, and two from Mr. Chute and Madame Pucci, 3 which I will answer very soon : where is she now ? I delight in Mr. Yilliers's 4 modesty in one place you had written it Villettes' ; I fancy on purpose, for it would do for him. Good night, my dear child ! I have written myself threadbare. I know you will hate my campaign, but what can one do ! 89. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Houghton, Aug. 20, 1742. Bv the tediousness of the post, and distance of place, I am still receiving letters from you about the Secret Committee, which seems strange, for it is as much forgotten now, as if it had happened in the last reign. Thus much I must answer you about it, that it is sented the University of Oxford in five parliaments, and died in 1806, in his eighty- seventh year. Among other benefactions to his Alma Mater, he gave the noble candelabra in the Radcliffe library, and founded an annual prize for English verses on ancient painting, sculpture, and architecture. WRIGHT. 1 Holkham. Coke was the son of Lord Lovel, afterwards Viscount Coke, when his father was created Earl of Leicester. DOVEK. 2 Gumley of Isleworth. CUNNINGHAM. 3 She was daughter of the Conte di Valvasone, of Friuli, sister of Madame Suares, and of the bedchamber to the Duchess of Modena. WALPOLE. 4 Thomas Villiers, a younger son of William, second Earl of Jersey, at this time British minister at the court of Dresden, and eventually created Lord Hyde, and Earl of Clarendon. Sir H. Mann had alluded in one of his letters to a speech attributed to Mr. Villiers, in which he took great credit to himself for having induced the King of Poland to become a party to the peace of Breslau, recently concluded between the Queen of Hungary and the King of Prussia ; a course of proceeding, which, in fact, his Polish Majesty had no alternative but to adopt. Villettes was an inft;rior diplomatic agent from England to some of the Italian courts, and was at this moment resident at the court of Turin. DOVER. o 2 196 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1742. possible to resume the inquiry upoii the Report next session ; but you may judge whether they will, after all the late promotions. "We are willing to believe that there are no news in town, for we hear none at all : Lord Lovel sent us word to-day, that hr heard, by a messenger from the Post-Office, that Moutcmar ' is put under arrest. I don't tell you this for news, for you must know it long ago ; but I expect the confirmation of it from you next post. Since we came hither I have heard no more of the King's journey to Flanders : our troops arc as peaceable there as on ll<>uiisl<>\v Heath, except some bickerings and blows about beef with butchers, and about sacraments with friars. You know the English can eat no meat, nor be civil to any God but their own. As much as I am obliged to you for the description of your Cocchiata,* I don't like to hear of it. It is very unpleasant, instead of being at it, to be prisoner in a melancholy, barren province, which would put one in mind of the deluge, only that we have no water. Do remember exactly how your last was ; for I intend that you shall give me just such another Cocchiata next summer, if it pleases the kings and queens of this world to let us be at peace ! " For it rots that without fig-leaves," as my Lord Bacon says in one of his letters, " I do ingenuously confess and acknowledge " that I like nothing so well as Italy. I agree with you extremely about Tuscany for Prince Charles, 3 but I can only agree with you on paper ; for as to knowing anything of it, I am sure Sir Robert himself knows nothing of it : the Duke of Newcastle and my Lord Carteret keep him in as great ignorance as possible, especially the latter ; and even in other times, you know how little ho ever thought on those things. Believe me, he will every day know less. Your last, which I have been answering, was of (he f)th of August ; I this minute receive another of the 12th. How I am charmed with your spirit and usage of Richcourt ! Hnix , , /,',*/ /^.s (Cdnjniu-illnii u have quitted your calm, to treat them as they deserve. You don't tell me if his opposition in the council hindered your intercession 1 Montemar was the General of the King of Spain, who commanded the troops of that sovereign against the Imperialists in Italy. DOVER. \ Kort of serenade. Sir 11. Mann had mentioned, that, he was about to give an entertainment of this kind in his garden to the society of Florence. DOVER. :i Prince Charles of Lorraine, younger brother of Francis, who was now Grind Duke of Tuscany. He was a general of some abilities ; but it, was his misfortune to be so often opposed to the superior talents of the Kins; of I'niu. I >.>\ I.K. 1742.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 197 from taking place for the valet dc chambre. I hope not ! I could not bear his thwarting you ! I am now going to write to your 'brother, to get you the overtures ; and to desire he will send them with some pamphlets and the magazines, which I left him in commission for you, at my leaving London. I am going to send him, too, dcs plcim pouvoirs, for nominating a person to represent me at his new babe's christening. I am sorry Mrs. Goldsworthy is coming to England, though I think it can be of no effect. Sir Charles [Wager] has no sort of interest with the new powers, and I don't think the Richmonds have enough to remove foreign ministers. However, I will consult with Sir Robert about it, and see if he thinks there is any danger for you, which I do not in the least ; and whatever can be done by me, I think you know, will. Adieu ! P.S. I inclose an answer to Madame Pucci's letter. Where is she in all this Modenese desolation ? 90. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Houyhton, August 28, 1742. I DID receive your letter of the 12th, as I think I mentioned in my last ; and to-day another of the 19th. Had I been you, instead of saying that I would have taken my lady's 1 woman for my spy, I should have said, that I would hire Richcourt himself : I dare to say that one might buy the Count's own secrets of himself. I am sorry to hear that the Impresarii have sent for the Chiaretta , I am not one of the managers ; I should have remonstrated against her, for she will not do on the same stage with the Barbarina. I don't know who will be glad of her coming, but Mr. Blighe and Amorevoli. 'Tis amazing, but we hear not a syllable of Prague taken,* it must be ! Indeed, Carthagena, too, was certain of being taken ; but it seems, Maillebois is to stop at Bavaria. I hope Belleisle 3 will be 1 Lady Walpolc. Richcourt, the Florentine minister [see 179], was her lover, and both, as has been seen in the former part of these letters, were enemies of Sir II. Mann. DOVER. - This means retaken by the Imperialists from the French, who had obtained pos- session of it on the 25th of November, 1741. The Austrian troops drove the French out of Prague in December, 1742. DOVBE. 3 This wish was gratified, though not in this year. Marshal Belleisle was taken 198 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1742. made prisoner ? I am indifferent about the fate of the great Broglio but Belleisle is able, and is our most determined enemy : we need not have more, for to-day it -is confirmed that Cardinal Tencin 1 and M. d'Argenson are declared of the prime ministry. The first moment they can, Tencin will be for transporting the Pretenders into England. Your advice about Naples was quite judicious : the appearance of a bomb will have great weight in the councils of the little king. We don't talk now of any of the Royals passing into Flanders ; though "The Champion" 2 this morning had an admirable quotation, on the supposition that the King would go himself : it was this line from the Rehearsal : " Give us our fiddle ; we ourselves will play." The " Lesson for the Day " 3 that I sent you, I gave to Mr. Coke, who came in as I was writing it, and by his dispersing it, it has got into print, with an additional one, which I cannot say I am proud should go under my name. Since that, nothing but lessons are the fashion : first and second lessons, morning and evening lessons, epistles, &c. One of the Tory papers published so abusive an one last week on the new ministry, that three gentlemen called on the printer, to know how he dared to publish it. Don't you like these men, who for twenty years together led the way, and published everything that was scandalous, that they should wonder at any body's daring to publish against them ! Oh ! it will come home to them ! Indeed, everybody's name now is published at length : last week " The Champion " mentioned the Earl of Orford and his natural daughter, Lady Mary, at length (for which he had a great mind to prosecute the printer). To-day, the "London Evening Post" prisoner in 1745 by the Hanoverian dragoons, was confined for some months in Windsor Castle, and exchanged after the battle of Fontenoy. DOVER. 1 A profligate ecclesiastic, who was deeply engaged in the corrupt political in- trigues of the day. In these he was assisted by his sister, Madame Tencin, an unprin- cipled woman of much ability, who had been the mistress of the still more infamous Cardinal Dubois. Voltaire boasts in his Memoirs, of having killed the Cardinal Tencin from vexation, at a sort of political hoax, which he played off upon him. DOVER. The cardinal was afterwards made Archbishop of Lyons. In 1752, he entirely quitted the court, and retired to his diocese, where he died in 1758. WRIGHT. 2 The Champion was an opposition journal, written by Fielding. WALPOLE. Assisted by Ralph, the historian. WRIOHT. 3 Entitled " The Lessons for the Day, 1742." Published in Sir Charles Hanbury Williams's works, but written by Walpole. DOVER. See Walpole's "Short Notes" of his Life prefixed to this volume. CUNMNOHAM. 1742.] TO SIB HORACE MANN. 199 says, Mr. Fane, nephew of Mr. Scrope, is made first clerk of the Treasury, as a reward for his uncle's taciturnity before the Secret Committee. He is in the room of old Tilson, 1 who was so tormented by that Committee, that it turned his brain, and he is dead. I am excessively shocked at Mr. Fane's* behaviour to you ; but Mr. Fane is an honourable man f he lets poor you pay him his salary for eighteen months, without thinking of returning it ! But if he had lost that sum to Jansen, 3 or to any of the honourable men at White's, he would think his honour engaged to pay it. There is nothing, sure, so whimsical as modern honour ! You may debauch a woman upon a promise of marriage, and not marry her ; you may ruin your tailor's or your baker's family by not paying them ; you may make Mr. Mann maintain you for eighteen months, as a public minister, out of his own pocket, and still be a man of honour ! But not to pay a common sharper, or not to murder a man that has trod upon your toe, is such a blot in your scutcheon, that you could never recover your honour, though you had in your veins " all the blood of all the Howards!" 4 My love to Mr. Chute : tell him, as he looks on the east front of Houghton, to tap under the two windows in the left-hand wing, up stairs, close to the colonnade there are Patapan and I, at this instant, writing to you ; there we are almost every morning, or in the library ; the evenings, we walk till dark ; then Lady Mary, Miss Leneve, and I play at comet ; the Earl, Mrs. Leneve, 5 and whoever is here, discourse ; car telle est notre vie f Adieu ! 91. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Houghton, Sept. 11, 1742. I COULD not write to you last week, for I was at Woolterton, 6 and 1 1742, 25 Aug. Christopher Tilson, Esq., one of the four chief clerks of the Treasury worth above 1000J. per ann., which place he had enjoyed fifty-eight years. Obituary of the Gentleman's Magazine-for 1742. CUNNINGHAM. 2 Charles Fane, afterwards Lord Fane, had been minister at Florence before Mr. Mann. WALPOLB. 3 A notorious gambler. He is mentioned by Pope, in the character of the young man of fashion, in the fourth canto of the Dunciad : As much estate, and principle, and wit, As Jansen, Fleetwood, Cibber, shall think fit. DOVEE. See note, post, p. 219. CUNNINGHAM. 4 A line from Pope. CUNNINGHAM. 6 After Sir Robert Walpole's death, Mrs. Leneve became an inmate of Horace Walpole's house. Portraits of the Leneves of Norwich decorated Strawberry Hill. CUNNINGHAM. 6 The seat of Horatio Walpole, brother of Sir R. Walpole, near Norwich. WALPOLE. 200 HOKACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1742. in a course of visits, that took up my every moment. I received one from you there, of August 26th, but have had none at all this week. You know I am not prejudiced in favour of the country, nor like a place because it bears turnips' well, or because you may gallop over it without meeting a tree : but I really was charmed with Woolterton ; it is all wood and water ! My uncle and aunt may, without any expense, do what they have all their lives avoided, wash themselves and make fires." Their house is more than a good one ; if they had not saved eighteen-pence in every room, it would have been a fine one. I saw several of my acquaintance, 3 Volterra vases, Grrisoni landscapes, the four little bronzes, the raffle-picture, &c. We have printed about the expedition to Naples : the affair at Elba, too, is in the papers, but we affect not to believe it. We are in great apprehensions of not taking Prague the only thing that has been taken on our side lately, I think, is my Lord Stair's journey hither and back again we don't know for what, he is such an Orlando ! The papers are full of the most defending King's journey to Flanders ; our private letters say not a word of it I say our, for at present I think the Earl's intelligences and mine are pretty equal as to authority. Here is a little thing, which I think has humour in it. A CATALOGUE OF NEW FRENCH BOOKS. 1. Jean-sans-terre, ou 1'Empereur en pet-en-1'air ; imprimS it Frankfort. 2. La France mourante d'une suppression d'hommes et d'argent : dedi6 au public. 3. L'art de faire les Neutralite"s, invents en Allegmagne, et Scrit en cette langue, par Tin des Electeurs, et nouvellement traduit en Napolitain ; par le Chef d'Escadre Martin. 4. Voyage d'Allemagne, par Monsieur de Maupertuis : avec un telescope, invents pendant son voyage ; a 1'usage des Heros, pour regarder leur victoires de loin. 5. MSthode court et facile pour faire entrer les troupes Frangoises en Allemagne : mais comment faire, pour les en faire sortir 1 1 For which Norfolk is famous, as Pope informs us : All Townshend's turnips. CUNNINGHAM. 8 This thought was afterwards put into verse, thus : What woods, what streams around the seat ! Was ever mansion so complete ] Here happy Pug* and Horace may, (And yet not have a groat to pay,) Two things they most have shunn'd, perform ; I mean, they may be clean and warm. WALPOLE. 8 Presents from Mr. Mann to Mr. Walpole. WALPOLE. The art-treasures of Woolterton were sold by auction in London in the year 1856. CUNNINGHAM. * Mr. Walpole's [Lord Walpole's] name of fondness for his wife. WALPOLE. 1742.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 201 6. TraitS tres salutaire et tres utile sur la Reconnoissance envers les bienfaicteurs, par le Roy de Pologne. Folio, imprime il Dresde. 7. Obligation sacree des Trace's, Promesses, et Renonciations, par le Grand Turc ; avec des Remarques retractoires, par un Jesuite. 8. Probleme ; combien il faut d'argent Frangois pour payer le sang Sugdois ; calcule" par le Comte de Gyllembourg. 9. Nouvelle m6thode de friser les cheveux a la Frangoise ; par le Colonel Mentz et sa Confrairie. 10. Recueil de Dissertations sur la meilleure maniere de faire la partition des suc- cessions, par le Cardinal de Fleury ; avec des notes, historiques et politiques, par la Reine d'Espagne. 11. Nouveau Voyage de Madrid a Antibes, par 1'Infant Dom Philippe. 12. L'Art de chercher les ennemis sans les trouver; par le Mar<3chal de Maillebois. 13. La fidelit6 couronnge, par le General Munich et le Comte d'Osterman. 14. Le bal de Lintz et les amusements de Donawert ; piece pastorale et galante, en un acte, par le Grand Due. 15. L'Art de maitriser les Femmes, par sa Majeste Catholique. 16. Avantures Bohe"miennes, tragi-comiques, tres curieuses, tres int,6rressantes, et chargees d'incidents. Tom. i. ii. iii. N.B. Le dernier tome, qui fera le denouement, est sous presse. Adieu ! my dear child ; if it was not for this secret of transcribing, what should one do in the country to make out a letter ? 92. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Houghton, Sept. 25th, 1742. AT last, my dear child, I have got two letters from you ! I have been in strange pain, between fear of your being ill, and apprehen- sions of your letters being stopped ; but I have received that by Crew, and another since. But you have been ill ! I am angry with Mr. Chute for not writing to let me know it. I fancied you worse than you say, or at least than you own. But I don't wonder you have fevers ! such a busy politician as Villettes, 1 and such a blustering negociator as il Furibondo? are enough to put all your little economy of health and spirits in confusion. I agree with you, that " they don't pique themselves upon understanding sense, any more than neutra- lities ! " The grand journey to Flanders 3 is a little at a stand : the expense has been computed at two thousand pounds a day ! Many dozen of embroidered portmanteaus full of laurels and bays have been 1 Mr. Villettes was minister at Turin. WALPOLE. 2 Admiral Matthews ; his ships having committed some outrages on the coast of Italy, the Italians called him il Furibondo. WALPOC-E. 3 Of George the Second. DOVER. 202 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. ;1742. prepared this fortnight. The Regency has been settled and unsettled twenty times : it is now said, that the weight of it is not to be laid on the Prince. The King is to return by his birthday ; but whether he is to bring back part of French Flanders with him, or will only have time to fetch Dunkirk, is uncertain. In the mean time, Lord Carteret is gone to the Hague ; by which jaunt it seems that Lord Stair's last journey was not conclusive. The converting of the siege of Prague into a blockade, makes no great figure in the journals on this side the water and question but it is the fashion not to take towns that one was sure of taking ! I cannot pardon the Princess for having thought of putting off her epiiisements and lassitudes, to take a trip to Leghorn, "pendant qu'on ne donnoit a manger a Monsieur le Prince son fils, que de la chair de chevaux ! " Poor Prince Beauvau ! ' I shall be glad to hear he is safe from this siege. Some of the French princes of the blood have been stealing away a volunteering, but took care to be missed in time. Our Duke goes with his lord and father they say, to marry a princess of Prussia, whereof great preparations have been making in his equipage and in his breeches. Poor Prince Craon ! where did De Sade get fifty sequins ? When I was at Florence, you know all his clothes were in pawn to his landlord ; but he redeemed them, by pawning his Modenese bill of credit to his landlady ! I delight in the style of the neutrality- makcr [Admiral Matthews] his neutralities and his English are perfectly of a piece. You have diverted me excessively with the history of the Princess Eleonora's* posthumous issue but how could the woman have spirit enough to have five children by her footman, and yet not have enough to own them. Really, a woman so much in the great world should have known better! Why, no yeoman's dowager could have acted more prudishly ! It always amazes me, when I reflect on the women, who are the first to propagate scandal of one another. If they would but agree not to censure what they all agree to do, there would be no more loss of characters among them than amongst men. A woman cuimot have an affair, but instantly all her sex travel about to publish 1 Afterwards a marshal of France. He was a man of some ability, and the friend and patron of St. Lambert, and of other men of letters of the time of Louis XV. DOVER. He was made a marshal in 1783 by the unfortunate Louis XVI. and in 1789 a minister of state. He died in 1793, a few weeks after the murder of his royal master. WRIGHT. 2 Eleonora of Guastalla, widow of the last Cardinal of Medici, died at Venice. WALPOLE. The father of the children was a French running footman. DOVKK. 1742.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 203 it and leave her off : now, if a man cheats another of his estate at play, forges a will, or marries his ward to his own son, nobody thinks of leaving him off for such trifles ! The English parson at Stosch's, the archbishop on the chapter of music, the Fanciulla's persisting in her mistake, and old Count Gralli's distress, are all admirable stories. 1 But what is the meaning of Montemar's writing to the Antinora ? I thought he had left the Galla for my Illustrissima, [Madame Grifoiri,] her sister. Lord ! I am horridly tired of that romantic love and correspondence ! Must I answer her last letter ? there were but six lines what can I say ? I perceive, by what you mention of the cause of his disorder, that Rucellai does not turn out that simple, honest man you thought him come, own it ? I just recollect a story, which perhaps will serve your Archbishop on his Don Pilogio 2 the Tartuffe was meant for the then Arch- bishop of Paris, who, after the first night, forbad its being acted. Moliere came forth and told the audience, " Messieurs, on devoit vous donner le Tartuffe, mais Monseigneur 1'Archeveque ne veut pas qu'on lejoue" My Lord is very impatient for his Dominichin ; so you will send it by the first safe conveyance. He is making a gallery, for the ceiling of which I have given the design of that in the little library of St. Mark at Venice : Mr. Chute will remember how charming it was ; and for the frieze, I have prevailed to have that of the temple at Tivoli. Naylor 3 came here the other day with two coaches full of relations : as his mother-in-law, who was one of the company, is widow of Dr. Hare, Sir Robert's old tutor at Cambridge, he made them stay to dine : when they were gone, he said, " Ha, child ! what is that Mr. Naylor, Horace ? he is the absurdest man I ever saw ! " I subscribed to his opinion ; won't you ? I must tell you a story of him. When his father married this second wife, Naylor said, " Father, they say you are to be married to-day, are you ?" "Well," replied the bishop, " and what is that to you ? " " Nay, nothing ; only if you had told me I would have powdered my hair." 1 These are stories in a letter of Sir H. Mann's, which are neither very decent nor very amusing. DOVER. 2 The Archbishop of Florence had forbid the acting of a burletta called Don Pilogio, a sort of imitation of Tartuffe. When the Impresario of the Theatre remonstrated upon the expense he had been put to in preparing the music for it, the archbishop told him he might use it for some other opera. DOVER. 3 He was son of Dr. Hare, Bishop of Chichester, and changed his name for an estate. WALPOLE. 204 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1742. 93. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Houyhton, Oct. 8th, 1742. I HAVE not heard from you this fortnight ; if I don't receive a letter to-morrow, I shall be quite out of humour. It is true, of late I have written to you but every other post ; but then I have been in the country, in Norfolk, in Siberia ! You were still at Florence, in the midst of Things of Sardinia, Montemars, and Neapolitan neutrali- ties ; your letters are my only diversion. As to German news, it is all so simple that I am peevish : the raising of the siege of Prague, 1 and Prince Charles and Marechal Maillebois playing at hunt the squirrel, have disgusted me from inquiring about the war. The Earl laughs in his great chair, and sings a bit of an old ballad, " They both did fight, they both did beat, they both did run away, They both strive again to meet the quite contrary way." Apropos ! I see in the papers that a Marquis de Beauvau escaped out of Prague with the Prince de Deuxpons and the Due de Brissac ; was it our Prince Beauvau ? At last the mighty monarch does not go to Flanders, after making the greatest preparations that ever were made but by Harry the Eighth, and the authors of the Grand Cyrus and the illustrious Bassa : you may judge by the quantity of napkins, which were to the amount of nine hundred dozen indeed, I don't recollect that ancient heroes were ever so provident of necessaries, or thought how they were to wash their hands and face after a victory. Six hundred horses, under the care of the Duke of Richmond, were even shipped ; and the clothes and furniture of his court magnificent enough for a bull-fight at the conquest of Granada. Felton Hervey's 2 war-horse, besides having richer caparisons than any of the expedition, had a gold net to keep off the flies in winter ! Judge of the clamours this expense to no purpose will produce ! My Lord Carteret is set out from the Hague, but was not landed when the last letters came 1 The Marshal de Maillebois and the Count de Saxe had been sent with reinforce- ments from France, to deliver the Marshal de Broglio and the Marshal de Belle-Isle, who, with their army, were shut up in Prague, and surrounded by the superior forces of the Queen of Hungary, commanded by Prince Charles of Lorraine. They succeeded in facilitating the escape of the Marshal de Broglio, and of a portion of the French troops ; but the Marshal de Belle-Isle continued to be blockaded in Prague with twenty-two thousand men, till December 1742, when he made his escape to Egra. DOVER. 2 Felton Hervey (tenth son of John, first Earl of Bristol) died 1775. WEIGHT. 1742.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 205 from London : there are no great expectations from this trip ; no more than followed from my Lord Stair's. I send you two more Odes on Pulteney, 1 I believe by the same hand as the former, though none are equal to the Nova Progenies, which has been more liked than almost ever anything was. It is not at all known whose they are ; I believe Hanbury Williams's. The note to the first was printed with it : the advice to him to be Privy Seal has its foundation ; for when the consultation was held who were to have places, and my Lord Gower was named to succeed Lord Hervey, Pulteney said with some warmth, " I designed to be Privy Seal myself ! " We expect some company next week from Newmarket : here is at present only Mr. Keene and Piguriggin* you never saw so agreeable a creature ! oh yes ! you have seen his parents ! I must tell you a new story of them : Sir Robert had given them a little horse for Pigwiggin, and somebody had given them another : both which, to save the charge of keeping, they sent to grass in Newpark [Rich- mond]. After three years that they had not used them, my Lord Walpole let his own son ride them, while he was at the Park, in the holidays. Do you know, that the woman Horace sent to Sir Robert, and made him give her five guineas for the two horses, because George had ridden them ? I give you my word this is fact. There has been a great fracas at Kensington : one of the Mesdames [George II.'s daughters] pulled the chair from under Countess Deloraine 3 at cards, who, being provoked that her Monarch was diverted with her disgrace, with the malice of a hobby-horse, gave him just such another fall. But alas ! the Monarch, like Louis XIV., is mortal in the part that touched the ground, and was so hurt and so angry, that the Countess is disgraced, and her German rival [Lady Yarmouth] remains in the sole and quiet possession of her royal master's favour. 1 These are " The Capuchin," and the ode beginning " Great Earl of Bath, your reign is o'er : " as they have been frequently published, they are omitted. The " Nova Progenies " is the well-known ode beginning, " See, a new progeny descends." DOVER. 2 Eldest son of old Horace Walpole. WALPOLF. Afterwards the second Lord Walpole of Woolterton, and in 1806. at the age of eighty-three, created Earl of Orford. He died in 1809. WRIGHT. 3 Mary Howard, of the Berkshire family, Maid of Honour to the Princess of Wales, afterwards Queen Caroline, married Henry Scott, first Earl of Deloraine, son of the Duke of Monmouth, and, after his death (1730), William Wyndham, Esq., of Carsham. Lord Hervey describes her as very handsome, and the only woman who played with the King in his daughter's apartments. She was at this time governess 206 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [17411. Oct. 9th. Well ! I have waited till this morning, but have no letter from you ; what can be the meaning of it ? Sure, if you was ill, Mr. Chute would write to me ! Your brother protests he never lets your letters lie at the office. Sa Majeste Patapanique [Walpole's dog] has had a dreadful mis- fortune ! not lost his first minister, nor his purse nor had part of his camp equipage burned in the river, nor waited for his secretary of state, who is perhaps blown to Flanders nay, nor had his chair pulled from under him worse ! worse ! quarrelling with a great pointer last night about their Countesses, he received a terrible shake by the back and a bruise on the left eye poor dear Pat ! you never saw such universal consternation ! it was at supper. Sir Robert, who makes as much rout with him as I do, says, he never saw ten people show so much real concern ! Adieu ! Yours, ever and ever but write to me. 94. TO SIR HORACE MANN. H&ughton, Oct. 16, 1742. I HAVE received two letters from you since last post ; I suppose the wind stopped the packet-boat. Well ! was not I in the right to persist in buying the Dominichin? don't you laugh at those wise connoisseurs, who pronounced it a copy ? If it is one, where is the original ? or who was that so great master that could equal Dominichin ? Your brother has received the money for it, and Lord Orford is in great impatience for it ; yet he begs, if you can find any opportunity, that it may be sent in a man- of-war. I must desire that the statue may be sent to Leghorn, to be shipped with it, and that you will get Campagni and Libri to transact the payment as they did for the picture, and I will pay your brother. Villettes' important dispatches to you are as ridiculous as good Mr. Matthews's devotion. I fancy Mr. Matthews's own god ' would make as foolish a figure about a monkey's neck, as a Roman Catholic one. You know, Sir Francis Dashwood used to say that Lord Shrewsbury's Providence was an old angry man in a blue cloak : another person that I knew, believed Providence was like a mouse, to the younger Princesses. ffervey's Memoirs, ii. 36 and 350. She died 12th November, 1744. CUNNINGHAM. 1 Admiral Matthews's crew having disturbed some Roman Catholic ceremonies in a little island on the coast of Italy, hung a crucifix about a monkey's neck. WALPOLE. 1742.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 2C7 because he is invisible. I dare to say Matthews believes, that Providence lives upon beef and pudding, loves prize-fighting and bull-baiting, and drinks fog to the health of Old England. I go to London in a week, and then will send you des cartloads of news : I know none now, but that we hear to-day of the arrival of Due d'Aremberg I suppose to return my Lord Carteret's visit. The latter was near being lost ; he told the King, that being in a storm, he had thought it safest to put into Yarmouth Roads, 1 at which we laughed, hoh ! hoh ! hoh ! For want of news, I live upon ballads to you ; here is one that has made a vast noise, and by Lord Hervey's taking great pains to disperse it, has been thought his own, if it is, 2 he has taken true care to disguise the niceness of his style. England, attend, while thy fate I deplore, Rehearsing the schemes and the conduct of power ; And since only of those who have power I sing, 1 am sure none can think that I hint at the King. From the time his son made him old Robin depose, All the power of a King he was well-known to lose; But of all but the name and the badges bereft, Like old women, his paraphernalia are left. To tell how he shook in St. James's for fear, When first these new ministers bullied him there, Makes my blood boil with rage, to think what a thing They have made of a man we obey as a King. Whom they pleased they put in, whom they pleased they put out, And just like a top they all lash'd him about, Whilst he like a top with a murmuring noise, Seem'd to grumble, but turn'd to these rude lashing boys. At last Carteret arriving, spoke thus to his grief, " If you'll make me your Doctor, I'll bring you relief; You see to your closet familiar I come, And seem like my wife in the circle at home." 1 Harwich was the King's embarking and disembarking port to and from his Hanoverian dominions. Yarmouth Roads were always dangerous. The Countess of Yarmouth was the King's German mistress. CUNNINGHAM. * It was certainly written by Lord Hervey. WALPOLE. Compare Walpole in his ' Reminiscences,' chapter viii. CUNNINGHAM. 208 HOKACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1742. Quoth the King, " My good Lord, perhaps, you Ve been told, That I used to abuse you a little of old ; But now bring whom you will, and eke turn away, Let but me and my money, and Walmoden * stay." " For you and Walmoden, I freely consent. But as for your money , I must have it spent ; I have promised your son (nay, no frowns,) shall have some, Nor think 'tis for nothing we patriots are come. " But, however, little King, since I find you so good, Thus stooping below your high courage and blood, Put yourself in my hands, and I'll do what I can To make you look yet like a King and a man. " At your Admiralty and your Treasury -board, To save one single man you shan't say a word, For, by God ! all your rubbish from both you shall shoot, Walpole's ciphers and Gasherry's 2 vassals to boot. " And to guard Prince's ears, as all Statesmen take care, So, long as yours are not one man shall come near ; For of all your Court-crew we'll leave only those Who we know never dare to say boh ! to a goose. " So your friend booby Grafton I '11 e'en let you keep, Awake he can't hurt, and is still half-asleep ; Nor ever was dangerous, but to womankind, And his body's as impotent now as his mind. " There 's another Court-booby, at once hot and dull, Your pious pimp, Schutz, a mean, Hanover tool ; For your card-play at night he too shall remain, With virtuous and sober, and wise Deloraine. 3 " And for all your Court-nobles who can't write or read, As of such titled ciphers all courts stand in need, Who, like parliament-Swiss, vote and fight for their pay, They're as good as a new set to cry yea and nay. 1 Lady Yarmouth. WAT.POLE. 2 Sir Charles Wager's nephew, and Secretary to the Admiralty. WALPOLE. 3 Countess Dowager of Deloraine, governess to the young Princesses [see p. 184J. -WALPOLE. 1742.] TO 8IR HORACE MANN. 203 " Though Newcastle's as false, as he's silly, I know, By betraying old Robin to me long ago, As well as all those who employ'd him before, Yet I leave him in place, but I leave him no power. " For granting his heart is as black as his hat, With no more truth in this, than there's sense beneath that; Yet as he's a coward, he'll shake when I frown : You call'd him a rascal, I'll use him like one. " And since his estate at elections he'll spend, And beggar himself, without making a friend ; So whilst the extravagant fool has a sous, As his brains I can't fear, so his fortune I'll use. " And as miser Hardwicke, with all courts will draw, He too may remain, but shall stick to his law ; For of foreign aflairs, when he talks like a fool, I'll laugh in his face, and will cry, ' Go to school !' " The Countess of Wilmington, excellent nurse, I'll trust with the Treasury, not with its purse ; For nothing by her I've resolv'd shall be done, She shall sit at that board, as you sit on the throne. " Perhaps now, you expect that I should begin To tell you the men I design to bring in ; But we're not yet determined on all their demands ; And you'll know soon enough, when they come to kiss handa. " All that weathercock Pulteney shall ask, we must grant, For to make him a great noble nothing, I want ; And to cheat such a man, demands all my arts, For though he's a fool, he 's a fool with great parts. 1 " And as popular lodius, the Pulteney of Rome, From a noble, foi power did plebeian become, So this Clodius to be a Patrician shall choose, Till what one got by changing, the other shall lose. " Thus flatter'd, and courted, and gaz'd at by all, Like Phaeton, rais'd for a day, he shall fall, 1 This is the best line in the Ballad. CUKNIHGHAM. VOL. I. 210 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1742. Put the world in a flame, and show he did strive To get reins in his hand, though 'tis plain he can't iinve. " For your foreign affairs, howe'er they turn out, At least I '11 take care you shall make a great rout : Then cock your great hat, strut, bounce, and look bluff, For though kick'd and cuff'd here, you shall there kick and cuff. " That Walpole did nothing they all us'd to say, So I'll do enough, but I'll make the dogs pay ; Great fleets I'll provide, and great armies engage, Whate'er debts we make, or whate'er wars we wage." With cordials like these the Monarch's new guest Reviv'd his sunk spirits and gladden'd his breast ; Till in raptures he cried, " My dear Lord, you shall do Whatever you will, give me troops to review. " But oh ! my dear England, since this is thy state, Who is there that loves thee but weeps at thy fate ? Since in changing thy masters, thou art just like old Rome, Whilst Faction, Oppression, and Slavery's thy doom ! " For though you have made that rogue Walpole retire, You are out of the frying-pan into the fire ! But since to the Protestant line I'm a friend, I tremble to think where these changes may end ! " This lias not been printed. 1 You see the burthen of all the songs is the rogue Walpole, which he has observed himself, but I believe is content, as long as they pay off his arrears to those that began the tune. Adieu ! 95. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Houghton, October 23, 1742. AT last I see an end of my pilgrimage : the day after to-morrow I do go to London. I am affirming it to you as earnestly as if you had been doubting of it like myself ; but both my brothers are here, and Sir Robert will let me go. He must follow himself soon : the Parliament meets the 16th of November, that the King may go abroad the first of March ; but if all threats prove true prophecies, 1 I have a printed folio copy (very corrupt) dated 1743. CUNNINGHAM. 1742.] TO SIR HOKACE MANN. 211 he will scarce enter upon heroism so soon, for we are promised a winter just like the last : new Secret Committees to be tried for, and impeachments actually put into execution. It is horrid to have a prospect of a session like the last ! In the meantime, my Lord of Bath and Lord Hervey, who seem deserted by everybody else, are grown the greatest friends in the world at Bath ; and to make a complete triumvirate, my Lord Gower is always of their party : how they must love one another, the late, the present, and the would-be Privy Seal ! Lord Hyndford has had great honours in Prussia : that King bespoke for him a service of plate to the value of three thousand pounds. He asked leave for his Majesty's arms to be put upon it : the King replied, " they should, with the arms of Silesia added to his paternal coat for ever." I will tell you Sir Robert's remark on this : " He is rewarded thus for having obtained Silesia for the King of Prussia, which he was sent to preserve to the Queen of Hungary! " Her affairs begin to take a little better turn again ; Broglio is prevented from joining Maillebois, who, they affirm, can never bring his army off, as the King of Poland is guarding all the avenues of Saxony, to prevent his passing through that country. I wrote to you in my last to desire that the Dominichin and my statue might come by a man-of-war. Now, Sir Robert, who is impatient for his picture, would have it sent in a Dutch ship, as he says he can easily get it from Holland. If you think this convey- ance quite safe, I beg my statue may bear it company. Tell me if you are tired of ballads on my Lord Bath ; if you are not, here is another admirable one, 1 I believe by the same hand as the others ; but by the conclusion certainly ought not to be Williams's. I only send you the good odes, for the newspapers are every day full of bad ones on this famous Earl. My compliments to the Princess [Craon] ; I dreamed last night that she was come to Houghton, and not at all epuisee with her journey. Adieu ! P.S. I must add a postscript, to mention a thing I have often designed to ask you to do for me. Since I came to England, I have been buying drawings, (the time is well chosen, when I had neglected it in Italy !) I saw at Florence two books that I should now be 1 Sir Charles Hanbury Williams's ode, beginning " What Statesman, what Hero, what King ." It is to be found in all editions of his poems. DOVER. p 2 212 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1742. very glad to have, if you could get them tolerably reasonable ; one was at an English painter's ; I think his name was Huckford, over against your house in via Bardi ; they were of Holbein : the other was of Ghiercino, and brought to ' me to see by the Abbe Bonducci ; my dear child, you will oblige me much if you can get them. 6. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Arlington Street, Nov. 1, 1742. I HAVE not felt so pleasantly these three months as I do at present, though I have a great cold with coming into an unaired house, and have been forced to carry that cold to .the King's levee and the draw- ing-room. There were so many new faces that I scarce knew where I was; I should have taken it for Carlton House, 1 or my Lady Mayoress's visiting-day, only the people did not seem enough at home, but rather as admitted to see the King dine in public. 'Tis quite ridiculous to see the numbers of old ladies, who, from having been wives of patriots, have not been dressed these twenty years ; out they come in all the accoutrements that were in use in Queen Anne's days. Then the joy and awkward jollity of them is inex- pressible ! They titter, and wherever you meet them, are always going to court, and looking at their watches an hour before the time. I met several on the birth- day, (for I did not arrive time enough to make clothes,) and they were dressed in all the colours of the rain- bow : they seem to have said to themselves twenty-years ago, "Well, if ever I do go to court again, I will have a pink and silver, or a blue and silver," and they keep their resolutions. But here's a letter from you, sent to me back from Houghton ; I must stop to read it. Well, I have read it, and am diverted with Madame Grifoni's being with child ; I hope she was too. I hope she was too. I don't wonder that she hates the country ; I dare to say her child does not owe its existence to the Villeggiatura. When you wrote, it seems you had not heard what a speedy determination was put to Don Philip's reign in Savoy. I suppose he will retain the title : you know great princes are fond of titles, which prove that they are not half so great as they once were. I find a very different face of things from what we had conceived in the country. There are, indeed, thoughts of renewing attacks on Lord Orford, and of stopping the Supplies ; but the new ministry 1 Then (1742) the residence of Frederick Prince of Wales. CUNNINGHAM. 1742.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 213 laugh at these threats, having secured a vast majority in the House : the Opposition themselves own that the Court will have upwards of a hundred majority : I don't, indeed, conceive how ; but they are con- fident of carrying every thing. They talk of Lord Gower's not keeping the Privy Seal ; that he will either resign it, or have it taken away: Lord Bath, who is entering into all the court measures, is most likely to succeed him. The late Lord Privy Seal [Lord Herveyl has had a most ridiculous accident at Bath : he used to play in a little inner room ; hut one night some ladies had got it, and he was reduced to the public room ; but being extremely absent and deep in politics, he walked through the little room to a convenience behind the curtain, from whence (still absent) he produced himself in a situation extremely diverting to the women : imagine his delicacy, and the passion he was in at their laughing ! I laughed at myself prodigiously the other day for a piece of absence ; I was writing on the King's birth-day, and being disturbed with the mob in the street, I rang for the porter, and, with an air of grandeur, as if I was still at Downing Street, cried, " Pray send away those marrowbones and cleavers ! " The poor fellow, with the most mortified air in the world, replied, " Sir, they are not at our door, but over the way at my Lord Carteret's." " Oh," said I, " then let them alone ; may be, he does not dislike the noise ! " I pity the poor porter, who sees all his old customers going over the way too. Our operas begin to-morrow with a pasticcio, full of most of my favourite songs : the Fumagalli has disappointed us ; she had received an hundred ducats, and then wrote word that she had spent them, and was afraid of coming through the Spanish quarters ; but if they would send her a hundred more, she would come next year. Villettes has been written to in the strongest manner to have her forced hither, (for she is at Turin). I tell you this by way of key, in case you should receive a mysterious letter in cipher from him about this important business. I have not seen Due d'Aremberg ; but I hear that all the enter- tainments for him are suppers, for he will dine at his own hour, eleven in the morning. He proposed it to the Duchess of Richmond when she invited brm, but she said she did not know where to find company to dine with him at that hour. I must advise you to be cautious how you refuse humouring our captains 1 in any of their foolish schemes, for they are popular, and I 1 The captains of ships in the English fleet at Leghorn. WALPOLK. 214 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1742. should be very sorry to have them out of humour with you when they come home, lest it should give any handle to your enemies. Think of it, my dear child ! The officers in Flanders, that are members of parliament, have had intimations, that if they ask leave to come on their private affairs, and drop in, not all together, they will be very well received ; this is decorum. Little Brook's little wife is a little with child. Adieu ! 97. TO SIR HORACE MANN. London, Nov. 15, 1742. I HAVE not written to you lately, expecting letters from you ; at last I have received two. I still send mine through France, as I am afraid they would get to you with still more difficulty through Holland. Our army is just now ordered to march to Mayence, at the repeated instances of the Queen of Hungary ; Lord Stair goes with them, but almost all the officers that are in Parliament are come over, for the troops are only to be in garrison till March, when, it is said, the king will take the field with them. This step makes a great noise, for the old remains of the Opposition are determined to persist, and have termed this a Hanoverian measure. They begin to-morrow, with opposing the address on the King's Speech : Pitt is to be the leading man ; there are none but he and Lyttelton of the Prince's Court, who do not join with the Ministry : the Prince has told them, that he will follow the advice they long ago gave him, " of turning out all his people who do not vote as he would have them." Lord Orford is come to town, and was at the King's levee to-day; the joy the latter showed to see him was very visible : all the new Ministry came and spoke to him ; and he had a long, laughing conversation with my Lord Chesterfield, who is still in Oppo- sition. You have heard, I suppose, of the revolution in the French Court ; Madame de Mailly is disgraced, and her handsome sister De la Tournelle l succeeds : the latter insisted on three conditions ; first, 1 Afterwards created Duchess of Chateauroux. WALPOLE. Mary Anne de Mailly, widow of the Marquis de la Tournelle. She succeeded her sister Madauie de Mailly, as mistress of Louis XV., as the latter had succeeded the other sister, Madame de Vintiinille, in the same situation. Madame do Chateauroux was sent away from the court during the illness of Louis at Metz ; but on his recovery he recalled her. Shortly after which she died, December 10, 1744, and ou her death-bed accused M. de 1742.] TO SIR HOEACE MANN. 215 that the Mailly should quit the palace before she entered it ; next, that she should be declared mistress, to which post, they pretend, there is a large salary annexed, (but that is not probable,) and lastly, that she may always have her own parties at supper : the last article would very well explain what she proposes to do with her salary. There are admirable instructions come up from Worcester to Sandys and Wilmington ; l they tell the latter how little hopes they always had of him. " But for you, Mr. Sandys, who have always, &c. you to snatch at the first place you could get, &c." In short, they charge him, who is in the Treasury and Exchequer, not to vote for any supplies.* I write to you in a vast hurry, for I am going to the meeting at the Cockpit, to hear the King's Speech read to the members : Mr. Pelham presides there. They talk of a majority of fourscore : we shall see to-morrow. The Pomfrets stay in the country most part of the winter : Lord Lincoln and Mr. [George] Pitt have declared off in form. 3 So much for the schemes of my lady ! The Duke of Grafton used to say that they put him in mind of a troop of Italian comedians ; Lord Lincoln was Valere, Lady Sophia, Columbine, and my lady the old mother behind the scenes. Our operas go on au plus miserable : all our hopes lie in a new dancer, Sodi, who has performed but once, but seems to please as much as the Fausan. Did I tell you how well they had chosen the plot of the first opera ? " There was a prince who rebels against his father, who had before rebelled against his." 4 The Duke of Montagu says, there is to be an opera of dancing, with singing between the acts. My Lord Tyrawley 5 is come from Portugal, and has brought three Maurepas, the minister, of having poisoned her. The intrigue, by means of which she supplanted her sister, was conducted principally by the Marshal de Richelieu. DOVER. 1 Members for Worcester. CUNNINGHAM. 2 " We earnestly entreat, insist, and require, that you will postpone the supplies until you have renewed the secret committee of enquiry." WRIGHT. 3 Lord Lincoln and Mr. George Pitt were admirers of Lady Sophia Fermor and Lady Charlotte Fermor, the beautiful daughters of Lady Pomfret. Ante pp. 38 and 179. CUNNINGHAM. 4 This was a^pasticcio, called " Maudane," another name for Metastasio's drama of " Artaserse." WRIGHT. 5 Lord Tyrawley was many years ambassador at Lisbon. Pope has mentioned his and another ambassador's seraglios in one of his imitations of Horace, " Kinnoul's lewd cargo, or Tyrawley's crew." WALPOLE. James O'Hara, second and last Lord 216 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1742. wives and fourteen children ; one of the former is a Portuguese, with long black hair plaited down to the bottom of her back. He was asked the other night at supper what he thought of England ; whether he found much alteration from fifteen years ago ? " No," he said, " not at all : why, there is my Lord Bath, I don't see the least alteration in him ; he is just what lie was : and then I found my Lord Grrantham 1 walking on tiptoe, as if he was still afraid of waking the Queen." Hanbury Williams is very ill at Bath, and his wife * in the same way in private lodgings in the city. Mr. Dodington has at last owned his match with his old mistress. 3 I suppose he wants a new one. I commend your prudence about Leghorn ; but, my dear child, what pain I am in about you ! Is it possible to be easy while the Spaniards are at your gates ! write me word every minute as your apprehensions vanish or increase. I ask every moment what people think ; but how can they tell here ? You say nothing of Mr. Chute : sure he is with you still ! When I am in such uneasiness about you, I want you every post to mention your friends being with you : I am sure you have none so good or sensible as he is. I am vastly obliged to you for the thought of the book of shells, and shall like it much ; and thank you too about my Scagliola table ; but I am distressed about your expenses. Is there any way one could get your allowance increased ? You know how low my interest is now ; but you know too what a push I would make to be of any service to you tell me, and adieu ! 98. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Arlington Street, Dec. 2, 1742. You will wonder that it is above a fortnight since I wrote to you ; but I have had an inflammation in one of my eyes, and durst not meddle with a pen. I have had two letters from you of November Tyrawley of that family. He died in 1773, and was buried at his own request among the soldiers of Chelsea Hospital. CUNNINGHAM. 1 Henry Nassau d' Auverquerque, second Earl of Grantham. He had been cham- berlain to Queen Caroline. He died in 1754, when his titles became extinct. WALPOLK. 2 Frances, youngest daughter and coheir of Thomas, Earl Coningsby. CUNNINGHAM. 3 Mrs. Beghan. WALPOLE. Dodington was married to Mrs. Behan whom he was supposed to keep. Though secretly married he could not own her, as he then did, till the death of Mrs. Strawbridge, to whom he had given a promise of marriage under the penalty of ten thousand pounds. Walpole's MS. Note in Dodinglon's Diary. CUNNINGHAM. 1742.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 217 6th and 13th, but I am in the utmost impatience for another, to hear you are quite recovered of your Trinculos and Furibondos. You tell me you was in a fever ; I cannot be easy till I hear from you again. I hope this will come much too late for a medicine, but it will always serve for sal volatile to give you spirits. Yesterday was appointed for considering the Army ; but Mr. Lyttelton stood up and moved for another Secret Committee, in the very words of last year ; but the whole debate ran, not upon Robert Earl of Orford, but Robert Earl of Sandys : ' he is the constant butt of the party ; indeed he bears it notably. After five hours' haranguing, we came to a division, and threw out the motion by a majority of sixty-seven, 253 against 186. The Prince had declared so openly for union and agreement in all measures, that, except the Nepotism, 8 all his servants but one were with us. I don't know whether they will attempt anything else, but with these majorities we must have an easy winter. The union of the Whigs has saved this parliament. It is expected that Pitt and Lyttelton will be dismissed by the Prince. That faction and Waller are the only Whigs of any note that do not join with the Court. I do not count Dodington, who must now be always with the minority, for no majority will accept him. It is believed that Lord Gower will retire, or be desired to do so. I suppose you have heard from Rome, 3 that Murray [Lord Mansfield] is made Solicitor-general, in the room of Sir John Strange, who has resigned for his health. This is the sum of politics ; we can't expect any winter (I hope no winter will be) like the last. By the crowds that come hither, one should not know that Sir Robert is out of place, only that now he is scarce abused. De reste, the town is wondrous dull ; operas unfrequented, plays not in fashion, amours as old as marriages in short, nothing but whist ! I have not yet learned to play, but I find that I wait in vain for its being left off. I agree with you about not sending home the Dominichin in an English vessel ; but what I mentioned to you of its coming in a Dutch vessel, if you find an opportunity, I think will be very safe, if you approve it ; but manage that as you like. I shall hope for my statue at the same time ; but till the conveyance is absolutely 1 Samuel Sandys, chancellor of the exchequer, in the room of Sir R. Walpole. WALPOLE. 2 The Cobham Cousins. CUNNINGHAM. 3 This alludes to the supposed Jacobite principles of Murray, afterwards Lord Mansfield. DOVER. 218 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1742. safe, I know you will not venture them. Now I mention my statue, I must beg you will send me a full bill of all my debts to you, which I am sure by this time must be infinite ; I beg to know the particulars, that I may pay your brother. Adieu, my dear Sir ; take care of yourself, and submit to popery and slavery rather than get colds with sea-heroes. 1 99. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Arlington Street, Dec. 9, 1742. I SHALL have quite a partiality for the post of Holland ; it brought me two letters last week, and two more yesterday, of November 20th and 27th ; but I find you have your perpetual head- aches how can you say that you shall tire me with talking of them ? you may make me suffer by your pains, but I will hear and insist upon your always telling me of your health. Do you think I only correspond with you to know the posture of the Spaniards or the epuisements of the Princess ! I am anxious, too, to know how poor Mr. Whithed does, and Mr. Chute's gout. I shall look upon our sea-captains with as much horror as the King of Naples can, if they bring gouts, fits, and headaches. You will have had a letter from me by this time, to give up send- ing the Dominichin by a man-of-war, and to propose its coming in a Dutch ship. I believe that will be safe. We have had another great day in the House on the army in Flanders, which the Opposition were for disbanding ; but we carried it by an hundred and twenty.' 2 Murray spoke for the first time, with the greatest applause ; Pitt answered him with all his force and art of language, but on an ill-founded argument. In all appearances, they will be great rivals. Shippen was in great rage at Murray's apostacy ; 8 if anything can really change his principles, possibly this competition may. To-morrow we shall have a tougher battle on the sixteen thousand Hanoverians. Hanover is the word given out for this winter : there is a most bold pamphlet come out, said to 1 Sir H. Mann had complained, in one of his letters, of the labours he had gone through in doing the honours of Florence to some of Admiral Matthews's (II Furibondo) officers. The English fleet was now at Leghorn, upon the plea of defend- ing the Tuscan territories, in case of their being attacked by the Spaniards. DOVER. 2 Upon a motion, made by Sir William Yonge, that 534,763. be granted for defraying the charge of 16,359 men, to be employed in Flanders. The numbers on the division were 280 against 160. WALPOLE. 3 From Toryism. DOVER. 1742.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 219 be Lord Marchmont's, 1 which affirms that in every treaty made since the accession of this family, England has been sacrificed to the interests of Hanover, and consequently insinuates the incompatibility of the two. Lord Chesterfield says, "that if we have a mind effectually to prevent the Pretender from ever obtaining this crown, we should make him Elector of Hanover, for the people of England will never fetch another king from thence." Adieu ! my dear child. I am sensible that I write you short letters, but I write you all I know. I don't know how it is, but the wonderful seems worn out. In this our day, we have no rabbit- women no elopements no epic poems,* finer than Milton's no contest about Harlequins and Polly Peachems. Jansen a has won no more estates, and the Duchess of Queensberry 4 is grown as tame as her neighbours. Whist has spread an universal opium over the whole nation ; it makes courtiers and patriots sit down to the same pack of cards. The only thing extraordinary, and which yet did not seem to surprise anybody, was the Barberina's * being attacked by four men masqued, the other night, as she came out of the Opera House, who would have forced her away ; but she screamed, and the guard came. Nobody knows who set them on, and I believe nobody inquired. The Austrians in Flanders have separated from our troops a little out of humour, because it was impracticable for them to march with- out any preparatory provision for their reception. They will probably march in two months, if no peace prevents it. Adieu ! 100. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Arlington Street, Dec. 23, 1742. I HAVE had no letter from you this fortnight, and I have heard nothing this month : judge how fit I am to write. I hope it 1 Hugh Hume, third Earl of Marchmont the friend (and one of the executors) of Pope. CUNNINGHAM. 2 This alludes to the extravagant encomiums bestowed on Glover's Leonidas by the young patriots. WALPOLE. 3 H. Janseu, a celebrated gamester, who cheated the late Duke of Bedford [died 1732] of an immense sum : Pope hints at that affair in this line, "Or when a duke to Jansen punts at White's." WALPOLK. See note p. 199. CUNNINGHAM. 4 Catherine Hyde, great granddaughter of Lord Chancellor Clarendon : Prior's Kitty, and the friend of Gay. She was eccentric both in speech and dress. CUHNIKGHAM. 4 A famous dancer. WALPOLK. 220 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1742. is not another mark of growing old ; but, I do assure you, my writing begins to leave me. Don't be frightened ! I don't mean this as an introduction towards having done with you I will write to you to the very stump of my pen, and, as Pope says, " Squeeze out the last dull droppings of my sense." But I declare, it is hard to sit spinning out one's brains by the fire- side without having heard the least thing to set one's hand a-going. I am so put to it for something to say, that I would make a memorandum of the most improbable lie that could be invented by a viscountess-dowager ; as the old Duchess of Rutland ' does when she is told of some strange casualty, " Lucy, child, step into the next room and set that down." " Lord, Madam ! " says Lady Lucy," " it can't be true ! " " Oh, no matter, child ; it will do for news into the country next post." But do you conceive that the kingdom of the Dull is come upon earth not with the forerunners and prognostics of other to-come kingdoms ? No, no ; the sun and the moon go on just as they used to do, without giving us any hints : we see no knights come prancing upon pale horses, or red horses ; no stars, called wormwood, fall into the Thames, and turn a third part into wormwood ; no locusts, like horses, with their hair as the hair of women in short, no thousand things, each of which destroys a third part of mankind : the only token of this new kingdom is a woman riding on a beast, which is the mother of abominations, and the name in the forehead is whist : and the four- and- twenty elders, and the women, and the whole town, do nothing but play with this beast. Scandal itself is dead, or confined to a pack of cards ; for the only malicious whisper I have heard this fortnight, is of an intrigue between the Queen of hearts and the Knave of clubs. Your friend Lady Sandwich 3 has got a son ; if one may believe the belly she wore, it is a brave one. Lord Holderness has lately given a magnificent repas to fifteen persons ; there were three courses of ten, fifteen, and fifteen, and a sumptuous dessert : a great saloon illuminated, odours, and violins and who do you think were the invited? the Visconti, Guiletta, the Galli, Amorevoli, Monticelli, Vanneschi and his wife, "Weedemans the hautboy, the prompter, &c. The bouquet was given to the Guiletta, who is 1 Lady Lucinda Sherard. widow of John Manners, second Duke of Rutland. She died in 1751. WRIGHT. 2 Lady Lucy Manners, married, in 1742, to William, second Duke of Montrose. She died in 1788. WRIGHT. 3 Judith, sister of Viscount Fane, wife of Montagu, fifth Earl of Sandwich. WRIGHT. 1743.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 221 barely handsome. How can one love magnificence and low company at the same instant ! We are making great parties for the Barberina and the Auretti, a charming French girl ; and our schemes succeed so well that the Opera begins to fill surprisingly ; for all those who don't love music, love noise and party, and will any night give half-a-guinea for the liberty of hissing such is English harmony ! I have been in a round of dinners with Lord Stafford, and Bussy the French minister, who tells one stories of Capuchins, confessions, Henri Quatre, Louis XIV., Gascons, and the string which all Frenchmen go through, without any connection or relation to the discourse. These very stories, which I have already heard four times, are only interrupted by English puns, which old Churchill translates out of jest books into the mouth of my Lord Chesterfield, and into most execrable French. Adieu! I have scribbled, and blotted, and made nothing out, and, in short, have nothing to say, so good night ! 101. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Arlington Street, Jan. 6, 1743. You will wonder that you have not heard from me, but I have been too ill to write. I have been confined these ten days with a most violent cough, and they suspected an inflammation on my lungs ; but I am come off with the loss of my eyes and my voice, both of which I am recovering, and would write to you to-day. I have received your long letter of December llth, and return you a thousand thanks for giving me up so much of your time ; I wish I could make as long a letter for you, but we are in a neutrality of news. The Elector Palatine ' is dead ; but I have not heard what alterations that will make. Lord Wilmington's death, which is reckoned hard upon, is likely to make more conversation here. He is going to the Bath, but that is only to pass away the time till he dies.* 1 Charles Philip of Neubourg, Elector Palatine : died December 31, 1742. He was succeeded by Charles Theodore, Prince of Sulzbach, descended from a younger branch of the house of Neubourg, and who, in his old age, became Elector of Bavaria. DOVER. - I neither rejoice at my Lord Wilmington's death, nor lament it ; for he was neither my friend, nor, I believe, my enemy. I am as indifferent about the succession to his immense wealth. But the succession to his post is of more importance, and admits of less indifference. Bolingbroke to Marchmont, July 26, 1743. CUNNINGHAM. 222 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1743. The great Vernon is landed, but we have not been alarmed with any bonfires or illuminations ; he has outlived all his popularity. There is nothing new but the separation of a Mr. and Mrs. French, whom it is impossible you should know. She has been fashionable these two winters ; her husband has commenced a suit in Doctors' Commons against her cat, and will, they say, recover considerable damages : but the lawyers are of opinion that the ' kittens must inherit Mr. French's estate, as they were born in lawful wedlock. The Parliament meets again on Monday, but I don't hear of any fatigue that we are likely to have ; in a little time, I suppose, we shall hear what campaigning we are to make. I must tell you of an admirable reply of your acquaintance the Duchess of Queensberry: old Lady Granville, 1 Lord Carteret's mother, whom they call the Queen-Mother, from taking upon her to do the honours of her son's power, was pressing the Duchess to ask her for some place for herself or friends, and assured her that she would procure it, be it what it would. Could she have picked out a fitter person to be gracious to ? The Duchess made her a most grave curtsey, and said, " Indeed, there was one thing she had set her heart on." " Dear child, how you oblige me by asking anything ! What is it ? tell me." " Only that you would speak to my Lord Carteret to get me made Lady of the Bedchamber to the Queen of Hungary." I come now to your letter, and am not at all pleased to find that the Princess absolutely intends to murder you with her cold rooms. I wish you could come on those cold nights and sit by my fireside ; I have the prettiest warm little apartment, with all my baubles, and Patapans and cats ! Patapan and I go to-morrow to New Park, [Richmond] to my Lord, for the air, and come back with him on Monday. What an infamous story that affair of Nomis is ! and how different the ideas of honour among officers in your world and ours ! Your history of cicisbeism is more entertaining : I figure the distress of a parcel of lovers who have so many things to dread the govern- ment in this world ! purgatory in the next ! inquisitions, viUeggia- turas, convents, &c. Lord Essex * is extremely bad, and has not strength enough to go 1 Of this old lady and her daughter-in-law (see p. 110), there is an admirable description by the lady herself in a letter by Mrs. Montagu, of Shakespeareshire (I use Walpole's own designation). Mrs. Montagu's Letters, Vol. ii. p. 254. See note at p. 299 of this volume. CUNNINGHAM. 2 William Capel, third Earl of Essex, died 1743. CUNNINGHAM. 1743.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 223 through the remedies that are necessary to his recovery. He now fancies that he does not exist, and will not be persuaded to walk or talk, because, as he sometimes says, "How should he do anything? he is not." You say, " How came I not to see Due d'Aremberg ? " I did once at the Opera ; but he went away soon after ; and here it is not the way to visit foreigners, unless you are of the Court, or are par- ticularly in a way of having them at your house : consequently Sir Robert never saw him neither we are not of the Court ! Next, as to Arlington- street : Sir Robert is in a middling kind of house, which has long been his, and was let ; he has taken a small one next to it for me, and they are laid together. I come now to speak to you of the affair of the Duke of New- castle ; but absolutely, on considering it much myself, and on talking of it with your brother, we both are against your attempting any such thing. In the first place, I never heard a suspicion of the Duke's taking presents, and should think he would rather be affronted : in the next place, my dear child, though you are fond of that coffee-pot, it would be thought nothing among such wardrobes as he has, of the finest- wrought plate : why, he has a set of gold plates that would make a figure on any sideboard in the Arabian Tales ; and as to Benvenuto Cellini, if the Duke could take it for his, people in England understand all work too well to be deceived. Lastly, as there has been no talk of alterations in the foreign ministers, and as all changes seem at an end, why should you be apprehensive ? As to Stone, 1 if anything was done, to be sure it should be to him ; though I really can't advise even that. These are my sentiments sincerely : by no means think of the Duke. Adieu! 102. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Arlington Street, Jan. 13, 1743. TOUR brother brought me two letters together this morning, and at the same time showed me yours to your father. How should I be ashamed, were I he, to receive such a letter ! so dutiful, so humble, and yet so expressive of the straits to which he has let you be 1 Andrew Stone, Esq. secretary to the Duke of Newcastle. WALPOLE. He subse- quently filled the offices of under-secretary of state, sub-governor to Prince George, keeper of the State-paper Office, and, on the marriage of George the Third, treasurer to the Queen. He died in 1773. WRIGHT. 224 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1743. reduced ! My dear child, it looks too much like the son of a minister, when I am no longer so ; but I can't help repeating to you offers of any kind of service that you think I can do for you in any way. I am quite happy at your thinking Tuscany so secure from Spain, unless the wise head of Bichcourt works against the season ; but how can I ever be easy while a provincial Frenchman, something half French, half German, instigated by a mad Englishwoman, is to govern an Italian dominion ! I laughed much at the magnificent presents made by one of the first families in Florence to the young accouchee. Do but think if a Duke or Duchess of Somerset were to give a Lady Hertford fifty pounds and twenty yards of velvet for bringing an heir to the blood of Seymour ! It grieves me that my letters drop in so slowly to you : I have never missed writing, but when I have been absolutely too much out of order, or once or twice when I had no earthly thing to tell you. This winter is so quiet, that one must inquire much to know any- thing. The parliament is met again, but we do not hear of any intended opposition to anything. The Tories have dropped the affair of the Hanoverians in the House of Lords, in compliment to my Lord Gower. There is a second pamphlet published on that subject, which makes a great noise. 1 The ministry are much distressed on the ways and means for raising the money for this year : there is to be a lottery, but that will not supply a quarter of what they want. They have talked of a new duty on tea, to be paid by every house- keeper for all the persons in their families ; but it will scarce be pro- posed. Tea is so universal, that it would make a greater clamour than a duty on wine. Nothing is determined ; the new folks do not shine at expedients. Sir Robert's health is now drunk at all the clubs in the city ; they are for having him made a duke, and placed again at the head of the Treasury ; but I believe nothing could prevail on him to return thither. He says he will keep the 12th of February, the day he resigned, with his family as long as he lives. They talk of Sandys being raised to the peerage, by way of getting rid of him ; he is so dull they can scarce drag him on. 2 1 Entitled "The Case of the Hanover Forces in the Pay of Great Britain examined." It was written by Lord Chesterfield, and excited much attention. WRIGHT. 2 In December he was created a peer, by the title of Lord Sandys, Baron of Ombersley, and made cofferer of the household. WRIGHT. 1743.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 225 The English troops in Flanders march to-day, whither we don't know, but probably to Liege : from whence they imagine the Hanoverians are going into Juliers and Bergue. 1 The ministry have been greatly alarmed with the King of Sardinia's retreat, and sus- pected that it was a total one from the Queen's interest ; but it seems he sent for Villettes and the Hungarian minister, and had their previous approbations of his deserting Chamberry, &c. Yernon is not yet got to town ; we are impatient for what will follow the arrival of this mad hero. Wentworth will certainly chal- lenge him, but Yernon does not profess personal valour : he was once knocked down by a merchant, who then offered him satisfaction but he was satisfied. Lord Essex is dead : Lord Lincoln will have the bedchamber ; Lord Berkeley of Stratton 2 (a disciple of Carteret's) the Pensioners ; and Lord Carteret himself probably the riband [of the Garter]. As to my Lady Walpole's dormant title, 3 it was in her family ; but being in the King's power to give to which sister in equal claim he pleased, it was bestowed on Lord Clinton, who descended from the younger sister of Lady "W.'s grandmother or great grand-some- thing. My Lady Clifford 4 (Coke's mother), got her barony so, in preference to Lady Salisbury and Lady Sondes, her elder sisters, who had already titles for their children. It is called a title in abeyance. Sir Robert has just bid me tell you to send the Dominichin by the first safe conveyance to Matthews, who has had orders from Lord "VYinchelsea * to send it by the first man-of-war to England ; or, if 1 The British troops began their march from Flanders at the end of February, under the command of the Earl of Stair, but were so tardy in their movements, that it was the middle of May before they crossed the Rhine, and fixed their station at Hochst, between Mayenceand Frankfort. WRIGHT. 2 John, fifth and last Lord Berkeley of Stratton. He died in 1773. DOVER. 3 The barony of Clinton in fee descended to the daughters of Theophilus, Earl of Huntingdon, who died without male issue. One of those ladies died without children, by which means the title lay between the families of Rolle and Fortescue. King George I. gave it to Hugh Fortescue, afterwards created an Earl ; on whose death [1751] it descended to his only sister, a maiden lady, after whom, without issue, it devolved on Lady Orford [See pp. 55 and 152]. WALPOLE. 4 Lady Margaret Tufton, third daughter of Thomas, sixth Earl of Thanet. The barony of De Clifford had descended to Lord Thanet from his mother, Lady Margaret Sackville, daughter of Anne Clifford, Countess of Pembroke, Dorset, and Montgomery. Upon Lord-Thanet's death, the barony of De Clifford fell into abeyance between his five daughters. These were Lady Catherine, married to Edward Watson, Viscount Sondes ; Lady Anne, married to James Cecil, Earl of Salisbury ; Lady Margaret, before mentioned ; Lady Mary, married first to Anthony Gray, Earl of Harold, and secondly to John Earl Govrer; and Lady Isabella, married to Lord Nassau Powlett. DOVER. 5 First lord of the Admiralty. DOVER. 226 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1743. you meet with a ship going to Portmahon, then you must send it thither to Austruther, and write to him that Lord Orford desires he will take care of it, and send it by the first ship that comes directly home. He is so impatient for it that he will have it thus ; hut I own I should not like having my things jumbled out of one ship into another, and rather beg mine may stay till they can come at once. Adieu ! 103. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Arlington Street, Jan. 27, 17*3. I COULD not write to you last Thursday, I was so much out of order with a cold; your brother came and found me in bed. To-night, that I can write, I have nothing to tell you ; except that yesterday the welcome news (to the Ministry) came of the accession of the Dutch to the King's measures. They are in great triumph ; but till it is clear what part his Prussian Uprightness is acting, other people take the liberty to be still in suspense. So they are about all our domestic matters too. It is a general stare ! the alteration that must soon happen in the Treasury will put some end to the uncer- tainties of this winter. Mr. Pelham is universally named to the head of it ; but Messrs. Prince [of Wales], Carteret, Pulteney, and Companies must be a little considered how they will like it : the latter the least. You will wonder, perhaps be peevish, when I protest I have not another paragraph by me in the world. I want even common con- versation ; for I cannot persist, like the Royal Family, in asking people the same questions, "Do you love walking?" "Do you love music ? " " "Was you at the opera ? " " When do you go into the country ? " I have nothing else to say : nothing happens ; scarce the common episodes of a newspaper, of a man falling off a ladder and breaking his leg ; or of a countryman cheated out of his leather pouch, with fifty shillings in it. We are in such a state of sameness, that I shall begin to wonder at the change of seasons, and talk of the spring as a strange incident. Lord Tyrawley, who has been fifteen years in Portugal, is of my opinion ; he says he finds nothing but a fog, whist, and the House of Commons. In this lamentable state, when I know not what to write even to you, what can I do about my serene Princess Grifoni ? Alas ! I owe her two letters, and where to find a beau sentiment, I cannot 1743.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 227 tell ! I believe I may have some by me in an old chest of drawers, with some exploded red-heel shoes and full-bottom wigs ; but they would come out so yellow and moth-eaten! Do vow to her, in every superlative degree in the language, that my eyes have been so bad, that as I wrote you word, over and over, I have not been able to write a line. That will move her, when she hears what melancholy descriptions I write, of my not being able to write nay, indeed it will not be so ridiculous as you think ; for it is ten times worse for the eyes to write in a language one don't much practise ! I remember a tutor at Cambridge, who had been examining some lads in Latin, but in a little while excused himself, and said he must speak English, for his mouth was very sore. I had a letter from you yesterday of January 7th, N.S. which has wonderfully excited my compassion for the necessities of the princely family [Prince and Princess Craon], and the shifts of the old Lady [Madame Sarasin] is put to for quadrille. I triumph much on my penetration about the honest Rucellai 1 we little people, who have no honesty, virtue, nor shame, do so exult when a good neighbour, who was a pattern, turns out as bad as oneself ! We are like the good woman in the Gospel, who chuckled so much on finding her lost bit ; we have more joy on a saint's fall, than in ninety-nine devils, who were always de nous autres ! I am a little pleased too, that Marquis Bagnesi, 2 whom you know I always liked much, has behaved so well ; and am more pleased to hear what a Beffana 3 the Electress 4 is Pho ! here am I, sending you back your own paragraphs, cut and turned ! it is so silly to think that you won't know them again ! I will not spin myself any longer; it is better to make a short letter. I am going to the masquerade, and will fancy myself in via della Pergola? Adieu ! " Do you know me ?" " That man there with you, in the black domino, is Mr. Chute." Good night ! 1 Sir H. Mann says, in his letter of January 7, 1743, "I must be so just as to tell you, my friend, the Senator Rueellai is, as you always thought, a sad fellow. He has quite abandoned me for fear of offending." DOVER. 2 " Apropos of duels, two of our young nobles, Marquis Bagnesi and Strozzi, have fought about a debt of fifteen shillings ; the latter, the creditor and occasion of the fight, behaved ill." Letter from Sir H. Mann, dated Jan. 1, 1743. DOVER. 3 A Beffana was a puppet, which was carried about the town on the evening of the Epiphany. The word is derived from Epifania. It also means an ugly woman. The Electress happened to go out for the first time after an illness on the Epiphany, and said in joke to Prince Craon, that " the Beffane all went abroad on that day." DOVER. 4 The Electress Palatine Dowager, the hist of the House of Medici. WALPOLE. 5 A street at Florence, in which the Opera-house stands. WALPOLE. Q 2 228 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1748. 104. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Arlington Street, Feb. 2, 1743. LAST night at the Duchess of Richmond's, I saw Madame Golds- worthy : what a pert, little, unbred thing it is ! The duchess presented us to one another ; but I cannot say that either of us stepped a foot beyond the first civilities. The good duchess was for harbouring her and all her brood : how it happened to her I don't conceive, but the thing had decency enough to refuse it. She is going to live with her father at Plymouth tant mieux I The day before yesterday the Lords had a great day : Earl Stanhope ' moved for an address to his Britannic Majesty, in con- sideration of the heavy wars, taxes, &c. far exceeding all that ever were known, to exonerate his people of foreign troops, (Hanoverians,) which are so expensive, and can in no light answer the ends for which they were hired. Lord Sandwich seconded ; extremely well, I hear, for I was not there. Lord Carteret answered, but was under great concern. Lord Bath spoke too, and would fain have persuaded that this measure was not solely of one minister, but that himself and all the council were equally concerned in it. The late Privy Seal [Hervey] spoke for an hour and a half, with the greatest applause, against the Hanoverians; and my Lord Chancellor [Hardwicke] extremely well for them. The division was, 90 for the Court, 35 against it. The present Privy Seal [Gower] voted with the Opposition : so there will soon be another. Lord Halifax, the Prince's new Lord, was with the minority too ; the other, Lord Darnley, 2 with the Court. After the division, Lord Scarborough, his Royal Highness's Treasurer, moved an address of approbation of the measure, which was carried by 78 to the former 35. Lord Orford was ill, and could not be there, but sent his proxy : he has got a great cold and slow fever, but does not keep his room. If Lord Gower loses the Privy Seal, (as it is taken for granted he does 1 Philip, second Earl Stanhope. He succeeded his father when he was only seven years old, and died in 1786. Bishop Seeker says, that Lord Stanhope " spoke a precomposed speech, which he held in his hand, with great tremblings and agitations, and hesitated frequently in the midst of great vehemence." [See p. 153.]-- WRIGHT. 2 Edward Bligh, second Earl of Darnley, in Ireland, and lord of the bedchamber to Frederick Prince of Wales [died 1747]. DOVER. 1743.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 229 not design to keep it,) and Lord Bath refuses it, Lord Cholmondeley stands the fairest for it. I will conclude abruptly, for you will be tired of my telling you that I have nothing to tell you but so it is literally oh ! yes, you will want to know what the Duke of Argyle did he was not there ; he is every thing but superannuated. Adieu ! 105. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Feb. 13, 1743. CERETESI tells me that Madame Galli is dead : I have had two letters from you this week ; but the last mentions only the death of old Strozzi. I am quite sorry for Madame Galli, because I proposed seeing her again, on my return to Florence, which I have firmly in my intention : I hope it will be a little before Ceretesi's, for he seems to be planted here. I don't conceive who waters him ! Here are two noble Venetians that have carried him about lately to Oxford and Blenheim : I am literally waiting for him now, to intro- duce him to Lady Brown's ' Sunday night ; it is the great mart for all travelling and travelled calves pho ! here he is. Monday morning. Here is your brother : he tells me you never hear from me ; how can that be ? I receive yours, and you gene- rally mention having got one of mine, though long after the time you should. I never miss above one post, and that but very seldom. I am longer receiving yours, though you have never missed ; but then I frequently receive two at once. I am delighted with Golds- worthy's mystery about "King Theodore ! 2 If you will promise me not to tell him, I will tell you a secret, which is, that if that person is not Tiring Theodore, I assure you it is not Sir Robert Walpole. I have nothing to tell you but that Lord Efiingham Howard 3 is dead, and Lord Litchfield " at the point of death ; he was struck with a palsy last Thursday. Adieu ! 1 Margaret Cecil, grand-daughter of the third Earl of Salisbury, and wife of Sir Robert Brown, Bart., a merchant at Venice. CUNNINGHAM. 2 Theodore, King of Corsica, to whom Walpole erected a monument in St. Ann's, Soho, in London. " The Baron de Neuhoff, a German gentleman and adventurer, was elected King of Corsica, was driven out by the Genoese, became a prisoner for debt in England, and recovered his liberty by giving up his effects tD his creditors according to the Act of Insolvency ; and all the effects he had to give up were his right to the kingdom of Corsica, which was registered accordingly for the benefit of his creditors." Walpole. Strange Occurrences. Works, iv. 365. CUNNINGHAM. 3 Francis, first Earl of Effingham, and seventh Lord Howard of Efiingham. He died February 12, 1743. DOVER. 4 George Henry Lee, second Earl of Lichfield. Died Feb. 15, 1743. DOVKK. 280 HORACE WALFOLE'S LETTERS. [1743. 106. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Arlington Street, Feb. 24, 1743. I WRITE to you in the greatest hurry in the world, but write I will. Besides, I must wish you joy : you are warriors ; nay, conquerors ; ' two things quite novel in this war, for hitherto it has been armies without fighting, and deaths without killing. We talk of this battle as of a comet ; " Have you heard of the battle ? " it is so strange a thing, that numbers imagine you may go and see it at Charing Cross. Indeed, our officers, who are going to Flanders, don't quite like it ; they are afraid it should grow the fashion to fight, and that a pair of colours should no longer be a sinecure. I am quite unhappy about poor Mr. Chute : besides, it is cruel to find that abstinence is not a drug. If mortification ever ceases to be a medicine, or virtue to be a passport to carnivals in the other world, who will be a self-tormentor any longer not, my child, that I am one ; but, tell me, is he quite recovered ? I thank you for King Theodore's declaration, 2 and wish him success with all my soul. I hate the Genoese ; they make a com- monwealth the most devilish of all tyrannies ! We have every now and then motions for disbanding Hessians and Hanoverians, alias mercenaries ; but they come to nothing. To- day the party have declared that they have done for this session ; so you will hear little more but of fine equipages for Flanders : our troops are actually marched, and the officers begin to follow them I hope they know whither ! You know in the last war in Spain, Lord Peterborough 3 rode galloping about to inquire for his army. But to come to more real contests ; Handel has set up an Oratorio against the Operas, and succeeds. He has hired all the goddesses from farces and the singers of Roast Beef* from between the acts at both theatres, with a man with one note in his voice, and a girl without ever an one ; and so they sing, and make brave hallelujahs ; 1 This alludes to an engagement, which took place on the 8th of February, near Bologna, between the Spaniards under M. de Gages, and the Austrians under General Traun, in which the latter were successful. DOVER. * With regard to Corsica, of which he had declared himself king. By this declara- tion, which was dated January 30, Theodore recalled, under pain of confiscation of their estates, all the Corsicans in foreign service, except that of the Queen of Hungary, and the Grand Duke of Tuscany. WEIGHT. 3 The great Lord Peterborough. Died 1735. CUNMIKOHAM. 4 It was customary at this time for the galleries to call for a ballad called " The Roast Beef of Old England " between tlic acts, or before or after the play. WAI,POI.E. 1743.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 231 and the good company encore the recitative, if it happens to have any cadence like what they call a tune. I was much diverted the other night at the opera ; two gentlewomen sat before my sister, and not knowing her, discoursed at their ease. Says one, " Lord ! how fine Mr. "W. is ! " " Yes," replied the other, with a tone of saying sentences, u some men love to be particularly so, your petit-mattres but they are not always the brightest of their sex." Do thank me for this period ! I am sure you will enjoy it as much as we did. I shall be very glad of my things, and approve entirely of your precautions ; Sir R. will be quite happy, for there is no telling you how impatient he is for his Dominichin. Adieu ! 107. TO SIR HORACE MANN. March 3, 1743. So, she is dead at last, the old Electress ! ' well, I have nothing- more to say about her and the Medici ; they had outlived all their acquaintance : indeed, her death makes the battle very considerable makes us call a victory what before we did not look upon as very decided laurels. Lord Hervey has entertained the town with another piece of wisdom : on Sunday it was declared that he had married his eldest daughter the night before to a Mr. Phipps, 2 grandson of the Duchess of Buckingham. They sent for the boy but the day before from Oxford, and bedded them at a day's notice. But after all this mystery, it does not turn out that there is any thing great in this match, but the greatness of the secret. Poor Hervey, 3 the brother, is in fear and trembling, for he apprehends being ravished to bed to some fortune or other with as little ceremony. The Oratorios thrive abundantly for my part, they give me an idea of heaven, where everybody is to sing whether they have voices or not. The Board (the Jacobite Club) have chosen his Majesty's Lord Privy Seal [Gower] for their President, in the room of Lord 1 Anna Maria of Medicis, daughter of Cosmo III., widow of John William, Elector Palatine. After her husband's death she returned to Florence, where she died Feb. 7, 1743, aged seventy-five, being the last of that family. WALPOLE. 2 Constantino Phipps, in 1767, created Lord Mulgrave, in Ireland. He married, on the 26th of February, Lepel, eldest daughter of Lord Hervey, and died in 1775. Her ladyship was found dead in her bed, 9th March, 1780, at her son's house in the Admiralty. WRIGHT. 3 George William Hervey, afterwards second Earl of Bristol. He died unmarried, in 1775= WEIGHT. 232 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1743. Litchfield. Don't you like the harmony of parties ? We expect the parliament will rise this month : I shall be sorry, for if I am not hurried out of town, at least everybody else will and who can look forward from April to November ? Adieu ! though I write in defiance of having nothing to say, yet you see I can't go a great way in this obstinacy ; but you will bear a short letter rather than none. 108. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Arlington Street, March 14, 1743. I DON'T at all know how to advise you about mourning ; I always think that the custom of the country, and what other foreign ministers do, should be your rule. But I had a private scruple rose with me : that was, whether you should show so much respect to the late woman 1 as other ministers do, since she left that legacy to Qttelto a Homa. 3 I mentioned this to my lord, but he thinks that the tender manner of her wording it, takes off that exception; however, he thinks it better that you should write for advice to your commanding officer. That will be very late, and you will probably have determined before. You see what a casuist I am in ceremony ; I leave the question more perplexed than I found it. Pray, Sir, congratulate me upon the new acquisition of glory to my family ! We have long been eminent statesmen ; now that we are out of employment we have betaken ourselves to war and we have made great proficiency in a short season. We don't run, like my Lord Stair, into Berg and Juliers, to seek battles where we are sure of not finding them we make shorter marches ; a step across the Court of Requests brings us to engagement. But not to detain you any longer with flourishes, which will probably be inserted in my uncle Horace's patent when he is made a field-marshal ; you must know that he has fought a duel, and has scratched a scratch three inches long on the side of his enemy lo Pcean ! The circumstances of this memorable engagement were, in short, that on some witness being to be examined the other day in the House upon remittances to the army, my uncle said, " He hoped they would indemnify him, if he told anything that affected himself." Soon after he was 1 The Electrcas Palatine Dowager. WALPOLK. 2 She left a legacy to the Pretender, describing him only by these words, To him at Some. WALPOLE. 1743.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 233 standing behind the Speaker's chair, and Will. Chetwynd, 1 an intimate of Bolingbroke, came up to him, and said, " What, Mr. Walpole, are you for rubbing up old sores ? " He replied, " I think I said very little, considering that you and your friends would last year have hanged up me and my brother at the lobby door without a trial." Chetwynd answered, " I would still have you both have your deserts." The other said, "If you and I had, probably I should be here and you would be somewhere else." This drew more words, and Chetwynd took him by the arm and led him out. In the lobby, Horace said, " We shall be observed, we had better put it off till to-morrow." " No, no, now ! now ! " When they came to the bottom of the stairs, Horace said, " I am out of breath, let us draw here." They drew ; Chetwynd hit him on the breast, but was not near enough to pierce his coat. Horace made a pass, which the other put by with his hand, but it glanced along his side a clerk, who had observed them go out together so arm-in- armly, could not believe it amicable, but followed them, and came up just time enough to beat down their swords, as Horace had driven him against a post, and would probably have run him through at the next thrust. Chetwynd went away to a surgeon's, and kept his bed the next day ; he has not reappeared yet, but is in no danger. My uncle returned to the House, and was so little moved as to speak immediately upon the Canibrick Bill, which made Swinny 2 say, " That it was a sign he was not ruffled" 3 Don't you delight in this duel ? I expect to see it daubed up by some circuit-painter on the ceiling of the saloon at Woolterton. I have no news to tell you, but that we hear King Theodore has sent over proposals of his person and crown to Lady Lucy Stanhope, 4 with whom he fell in love the last time he was in England. 1 William Chetwynd, brother of the Lord Viscount Chetwynd. On the coalition he was made Master of the Mint. WALPOLE. He was one of Bolingbroke's executors see p. 170. CUNNINGHAM. 2 Owen M'Swinny, the manager of Drury Lane Theatre. See p. 118. C NNINGHAM. 3 Coxe, in his Memoirs of Lord Walpole, vol. ii., p. 68, gives the following account of this duel : " A motion being made in the House of Commons, which Mr. Walpole supported, he said to Mr. Chetwynd, ' I hope we shall carry this question.' Mr. Chetwynd replied, ' I hope to see you hanged first ! ' ' You see me hanged first ! ' rejoined Mr. Walpole, and instantly seized him by the nose. They went out and fought. The account being conveyed t-o Lord Orford, he sent his son to make inquiries ; who, on coming into the Honse of Commons, found his uncle speaking with the same composure as if nothing had happened to ruffle his temper or endanger his life. Mr. Chetwynd was wounded." WRIGHT. 4 Sister of Philip, second Earl of Stanhope. WALPOLE. 234 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1743. Princess Buckingham 1 is dead or dying: she has sent for Mr. Anstis, 2 and settled the ceremonial of her burial. On Saturday she was so ill that she feared dying before all the pomp was come home : she said, " Why won't they send the canopy for me to see ? let them send it, though all the tassels are not finished." But yesterday was the greatest stroke of all ! She made her ladies vow to her, that if she should lie senseless, they would not sit down in the room before she was dead. She has a great mind to be buried by her father [King James II.] at Paris. Mrs. Selwyn says, " She need not be carried out of England, and yet be buried by her father." You know that Lady Dorchester always told her, that old Graham 3 was her father. I am much obliged to you for the trouble you have taken about the statue ; do draw upon me for it immediately, and for all my other debts to you : I am sure they must be numerous ; pray don't fail. A thousand loves to the Chutes : a thousand compliments to the Princess ; and a thousand what ? to the Grifona. Alas ! what can one do ? I have forgot all my Italian. Adieu ! 1 Catherine, Duchess of Buckingham, natural daughter of King James II. by the Countess of Dorchester [Catherine Sedley]. She was so proud of her birth, that she would never go to Versailles, because they would not give her the rank of Princess of the Blood. At Rome, whither she went two or three times to see her brother, and to carry on negotiations with him for his interest, she had a box at the Opera distin- guished like those of crowned heads. She not only regulated the ceremony of her own burial, and dressed up the waxen figure of herself for Westminster Abbey, but had shown the same insensible pride on the death of her only son, dressing his figure, and sending messages to her friends, that if they had a mind to see him lie in state, she would carry them in conveniently by a back-door. She sent to the old Duchess of Maryborough to borrow the triumphal car that had carried the duke's body. Old Sarah, as mad and proud as herself, sent her word, " that it had carried my Lord Marlborough, and should never be profaned by any other corpse." The Buckingham returned, that " she had spoken to the undertaker, and he had engaged to make a finer for twenty pounds." WALPOLE. Compare chapter ix. of ' Walpole's Reminis- cences,' prefixed to this volume. CUNNINGHAM. 2 John Anstis, Garter King at Arms, died 1754. CUNNINGHAM. 3 Colonel Graham. When the Duchess was young, and as insolent as afterwards, her mother used to say, ' You need not be so proud, for you are not the King's but only Graham's daughter." It is certain that his legitimate daughter, the Countess of Berkshire and Suffolk, was extremely like the Duchess, and that he often said with a sneer, " Well, well, kings are great men, they make free with whom they please ! All I can say is, that I am sure the same man begot those two women." The Duchess often went to weep over her father's body at Paris : one of the monks seeing her tenderness, thought it a proper opportunity to make her observe how ragged the pall is that lies over the body, (which is kept unburied, to be some time or other interred in England,) but she would not buy a new one ! WALPOLE. 1743.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 235 109. TO SIR HORACE MANK Arlington Street, March 25, 1743. WELL ! my dear Sir, the Genii, or whoever are to look after the seasons, seem to me to change turns, and to wait instead of one another, like lords of the hedchamher. We have had loads of sun- shine all the winter ; and within these ten days nothing but snows, north-east winds, and hlue plagues. The last ships have brought over all your epidemic distempers : not a family in London has escaped under five or six ill : many people have been forced to hire new labourers. Guernier, the apothecary, took two new apothecaries, and yet could not drug all his patients. It is a cold and fever. I had one of the worst, and was blooded on Saturday and Sunday, but it is quite gone : nay father was blooded last night : his is but slight. The physicians say that there has been nothing like it since the year Thirty-three, and then not so bad : in short, our army abroad would shudder to see what streams of blood have been let out ! Nobody has died of it, but old Mr. Eyres, of Chelsea, through obstinacy of not bleeding ; and his ancient Grace of York: ! Wilcox of Rochester 2 succeeds him, who is fit for nothing in the world, but to die of this cold too. They now talk of the King's not going abroad : I like to talk on that side ; because though it may not be true, one may at least be able to give some sort of reason why he should not. We go into mourning for your Electress on Sunday ; I suppose they will tack the Elector of Mentz to her, for he is just dead. I delight in Rich- court's calculation : I don't doubt but it is the method he often uses in accounting with the Great Duke. I have had two letters from you of the 5th and 12th, with a note of things coming by sea ; but my dear child, you are either run Roman Catholicly devout, or take me to be so ; for nothing but a religious fit 'of zeal could make you think of sending me so many presents. Why, there are Madonnas enough in one case to furnish a more than common cathedral I absolutely will drive to Demetrius, the silversmith's, and bespeak myself a pompous shrine! But, 1 Dr. Lancelot Blackburne. WALPOLE. Walpole, in his Memoires, vol. L, p. 74, calls him " the jolly old Archbishop of York, who had all the manners of a man of quality, though he had been a buccaneer, and was a clergyman." WEIGHT. 2 He was not succeeded by Dr. Wilcox, but by Dr. Herring, since [1747] promoted to the Archbishopric of Canterbury. WALPOLK. 236 HOEACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1743. indeed, seriously, how can I, who have a conscience, and am no saint, take all these things ? You must either let me pay for them, or I will demand my unfortunate coffee-pot again, which has put you upon ruining yourself. By the way, do let me have it again, for I cannot trust it any longer in your hands at this rate ; and since I have found out its virtue, I will present it to somebody, whom I shall have no scruple of letting send me hales and cargoes, and ship-loads of Madonnas, perfumes, prints, frankincense, &c. You have not even drawn upon me for my statue, my hermaphrodite, my gallery, and twenty other things, for which I am lawfully your dehtor. I must tell you one thing, that I will not say a word to my lord of this Argosie, as Shakspeare calls his costly ships, till it is arrived, for he will tremble for his Dominichin, and think it will not come safe in all this company by the way, will a captain of a man-of-war care to take all ? We were talking over Italy last night : my lord protests, that if he thought he had strength, he would see Florence, Bologna, and Rome, by way of Marseilles, to Leghorn. You may imagine how I gave in to such a jaunt. I don't set my heart upon it, because I think he cannot do it ; but if he does, I promise you. you shall be his Cicerone. I delight in the gallantry of my Princess's brother. 1 I will tell you what, if the Italians don't take care, they will grow as brave and as wrong-headed as their neighbours. Oh ! how shall I do about writing to her ? Well, if I can, I will be bold, and write to her to-night. I have no idea what the two minerals are that you mention, but I will inquire, and if there are such, you shall have them ; and gold and silver, if they grow in this land ; for I am sure I am deep enough in your debt. Adieu ! P. S. It won't do ! I have tried to write, but you would bless your- self to see what stuff I have been forging for half an hour, and have not waded through three lines of paper. I have totally forgot my Italian, and if she will but have prudence enough to support the loss of a correspondence, which was long since worn threadbare, we will come to as decent a silence as may be. 1 Signer Capponi, brother of Madame Grifoni. WALPOLE. 1743 J TO SIR HORACE MANN. 237 110. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Monday, April 4, 1743. I HAD my pen in my hand all last Thursday morning, to write to you, but my pen had nothing to say. I would make it do something to-day, though what will come of it, I don't conceive. They say, the King does not go abroad : we know nothing about our army. I suppose it is gone to blockade Egra, and to not take Prague, as it has been the fashion for everybody to send their army to do these three years. The officers in parliament are not gone yet. We have nothing to do, but I believe the ministry have something for us to do, for we are continually adjourned, but not prorogued. They talk of marrying Princess Caroline and Louisa to the future Kings of Sweden and Denmark ; but if the latter 1 is King of both, I don't apprehend that he is to marry both the Princesses in his double capacity. Herring, of Bangor, the youngest bishop, is named to the see of York. It looks as if the bench thought the church going out of fashion ; for two or three 8 of them have refused this mitre. Next Thursday we are to be entertained with a pompous parade for the burial of old Princess Buckingham. They have invited ten peeresses to walk ; all somehow or other dashed with blood-royal, and rather than not have King James's daughter attended by princesses, they have fished out two or three countesses descended from his competitor Monmouth. There, I am at the end of my tell ! If I write on, it must be to ask questions. I would ask why Mr. Chute has left me off ? but when he sees what a frippery correspondent I am, he will scarce be in haste to renew with me again. I really don't know why I am so dry ; mine used to be the pen of a ready writer, but whist seems to have stretched its leaden wand over me, too, who have nothing to do with it. I am trying to set up the noble game of bilboquet against it, and composing a grammar in opposition to Mr. Hoyle's. You will some day or other see an advertisement in the papers, to tell you where it may be bought, and that ladies may be waited upon by the author at their houses, to receive any further directions. I am 1 There was a party at this time in Sweden, who tried to choose the Prince Eoyal of Denmark for successor to King Frederick of Sweden. WALPOLE. 2 Dr. Wilcox, Bishop of Rochester, and Dr. Sherlock, Bishop of Salisbury : the latter afterwards accepted the See of London. WALPOLE. 238 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1743. really ashamed to send this scantling of paper by the post, over so many seas and mountains : it seems as impertinent as the commission which Prior gave to the winds, Lybs must fly south, and Eurus east, For jewels for her neck and breast. Indeed, one would take you for my Chloe, when one looks on this modicum of gilt paper, which resembles a billet-doux more than a letter to a minister. But you must take it as the widow's mite, and since the death of my spouse, poor Mr. News, I cannot afford such large doles as formerly. Adieu ! my dear child, I am yours ever, from a quire of the largest foolscap to a vessel of the smallest gilt. 111. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Arlington Street, April 14, 1743. THIS has been a noble week ; I have received three letters at once from you. I am ashamed when I reflect on the poverty of my own ! but what can one do? I don't sell you my news, and therefore should not be excusable to invent. I wish we don't grow to have more news ! Our politics, which have not always been the most in earnest, now begin to take a very serious turn. Our army is wading over the Rhine, up to their middles in snow. I hope they will be thawed before their return : but they have gone through excessive hardships. The King sends six thousand more of his Hanoverians at his own expense : this will be popular and the six thousand Hessians march too. All this will compose an army considerable enough to be a great loss if they miscarry. The King certainly goes abroad in less than a fortnight. He takes the Duke [of Cumberland] with him to Hanover, who from thence goes directly to the army. The Court will not be great : the King takes only Lord Carteret, the Duke of Richmond, Master of the Horse, and Lord Holderness and Lord Harcourt, 1 for the bedchamber. The Duchesses of Richmond and Marlborough, 2 and plump Carteret, 3 go to the Hague. His Royal Highness is not Regent: there are to be fourteen. The 1 Simon, second Viscount Harcourt, created an earl in 1749 ; in 1768 appointed ambassador at Paris, and in 1769 Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. He was accidentally drowned in a well in his park at Nuneham in 1777. WRIGHT. 2 Elizabeth Trevor, daughter of Thomas Lord Trevor, wife of Charles Spencer, Duke of Marlborough. She died in 1761. WRIGHT. 3 Frances, only daughter of Sir Robert Worseley, first wife of Lord Carteret [see p. 110]. WALPOLK. 1743.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 239 Earl of Bath and Mr. Pelham, neither of them in regency-posts, are to be of the number. I have read your letters about Mystery to Sir Robert. He denies absolutely having ever had transactions with King Theodore, and is amazed Lord Carteret can ; which he can't help thinking but he must, by the intelligence about Lady Walpole. Now I can conceive all that affected friendship for Richcourt ! She must have meant to return to England by Richcourt's interest with Touissant 1 and then where was her friendship ? You are quite in the right not to have engaged with King Theodore : your character is not Furibondo. Sir R. entirely disapproves all Mysterious dealings ; he thinks Furibondo most bad and most improper, and always did. You mistook me about Lady "Walpole's Lord I meant Quarendon, who is now Earl of Litchfield, by his father's death, which I mentioned. I think her lucky in Sturge's death, and him lucky in dying. He had outlived resentment ; I think had almost lived to be pitied. I forgot to thank you about the model, which I should have been sorry to have missed. I long for all the things, and my Lord more. Am I not to have a bill of lading, or how ? I never say anything of the Pomfrets, because in the great city of London the Countess's follies do not make the same figure as they did in little Florence. Besides, there are such numbers here who have such equal pretensions to be absurd, that one is scarce aware of particular ridicules. I really don't know whether Vanneschi be dead ; he married some low English woman, who is kept by Amorevoli; so the Abbate turned the opera every way to his profit. As to Bonducci, 2 1 don't think I could serve him ; for I have no interest with the Lords Middlesex and Holderness, the two sole managers. Nor if I had, would I employ it, to bring over more ruin to the Operas. Gentlemen directors, with favourite abbe's and favourite mi stresses, have almost overturned the thing in England. You will plead my want of interest to Mr. Smith 3 too : besides, we had Bufos here once, and from not understanding the language, people thought it a dull kind of dumb show. We are next Tuesday to have the Miserere of Rome. 1 First minister of the Great Duke. WALPOLE. 2 Bonducci was a Florentine Abbe, who translated some of Pope's works into Italian. WALPOI.E. 3 The English Consul at Venice. WALPOLE. Joseph Smith, Esq., when Consul at Venice, collected and imported many specimens of Canaletti's pencil into England. The Library of Consul Smith was the foundation of King George Ill's Library now in the British Museum. See p. 307. CUNNINGHAM 240 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1743. It must be curious ! the finest piece of vocal music in the world, to be performed by three good voices, and forty bad ones, from Oxford, Canterbury, and the farces ! There is a new subscription formed for an Opera next year, to be carried on by the Dilettanti, a club, 1 for which the nominal qualification is having been in Italy, and the real one, being drunk : the two chiefs are Lord Middlesex and Sir Francis Dashwood, who were seldom sober the whole time they were in Italy. The Parliament rises next week : everybody is going out of town. My Lord goes the first week in May ; but I shall reprieve myself till towards August. Dull as London is in summer, there is always more company in it than in any one place in the country. I hate the country : I am past the shepherdly age of groves and streams, and am not arrived at that of hating everything but what I do myself, as building and planting. Adieu ! 112. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Arlington Street, April 25, 1743. NAY, but it is serious ! the King is gone, and the Duke with him. The latter actually to the army. They must sow laurels, if they design to reap any ; for there are no conquests forward enough for them to come just in time and finish. The French have relieved Egra and cut to pieces two of the best Austrian regiments, the cuirassiers. This is ugly ! We are sure, you know, of beating the French always in France and Flanders ; but I don't hear that the neralds have produced any precedents for our conquering them on the other side the Rhine. 2 We at home may be excused for trembling at the arrival of every post : I am sure I shall. If I were a woman, I should support my fears with more dignity ; for if one did lose a husband or a lover, there are those becoming comforts, weeds and cypresses, jointures and weeping cupids ; but I have only a friend or two to lose, and there are no ornamental substitutes settled, to be one's proxy for that sort of grief. One has not the satisfaction of fixing a day for receiving visits of consolation from a thousand people 1 The Dilettanti Club still exists under the name of the Dilettanti Society : but the qualifications for election are no longer what Walpole describes them to have been. The great room of the society at the Thatched House Tavern, in St. James's Street, contains two fine conversation portrait pieces by Sir Joshua Reynolds, painted in the manner of Paul Veronese. CUNNINGHAM. 2 Walpole seems to have forgotten the battle of Blenheim. DOVER. 1743.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 241 whom one don't love, because one has lost the only person one did love. This is a new situation, and I don't like it. You will see the Regency in the newspapers. I think the Prince might have been of it when my Lord Gower is. I don't think the latter more Jacobite than his Royal Highness. The Prince is to come to town every Sunday fortnight to hold drawing-rooms ; the Princesses stay all the summer at St. James's would I did ! but I go in three weeks to Norfolk ; the only place that could make me wish to live at St. James's. My Lord has pressed me so much, that I could not with decency refuse : he is going to furnish and hang his picture-gallery, and wants me. I can't help wishing that I had never known a Guido from a Teniers : but who could ever suspect any connexion between painting and the wilds of Norfolk? Princess Louisa's contract with the Prince of Denmark was signed the morning before the King went ; but I don't hear when she goes. Poor Caroline misses her man of Lubeck, 1 by his missing the crown of Sweden. I must tell you an odd thing that happened yesterday at Leicester- House. The Prince's children were in the circle : Lady Augusta 2 heard somebody call Sir Robert Rich by his name. She concluded there was but one Sir Robert in the world, and taking him for Lord Orford, the child went staring up to him, and said, " Pray, where is your blue string ? and pray what has become of your fat belly ? " 3 Did one ever hear of a more royal education, than to have rung this mob cant in the child's ears till it had made this impression on her ! Lord Stafford 4 is come over to marry Miss Cantillon, a vast fortune, of his own religion. She is daughter of the Cantillon who was robbed and murdered, and had his house burned by his cook ' a few 1 Adolphus Frederick of Holstein, Bishop of Lubeck, was elected successor, and did succeed to the crown of Sweden. He married the Princess Louisa Ulrica of Prussia. WALPULE. 2 Afterwards Duchess of Brunswick. DOVER. 3 The palace allusions to the corpulency of Sir Robert were numerous enough and here Lord Hervey's Memoirs (i. 476, and elsewhere) curiously confirm the accuracy of Walpole. Sir Robert was a Knight of the Garter, and in the Ballads and Pasquin- ades of the time is commonly called Sir Blue String. CUNNINGHAM. 4 William Matthias Stafford Eoward, third Earl of Stafford, died 1751. CUNNINGHAM. 5 Cantillon was a Paris wine-merchant and banker, who had been engaged with Law in the Mississippi scheme. He afterwards brought his riches to England and settled in this country. In May, 1734, some of his servants, headed by his cook, con- spired to murder him, knowing that he kept large sums of money in his house.. They VOL. I. II 242 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1743. years ago [1734]. She is as ugly as he ; but when she comes to Paris, and wears a good deal of rouge, and a separate apartment, who knows but she may be a beauty ! There is no telling what a woman is, while she is as she is. There is a great fracas in Ireland in a noble family or two, height- ened by a pretty strong circumstance of Iricism. A Lord Belfield' married a very handsome daughter of a Lord Molesworth." A certain Arthur Rochfort, who happened to be acquainted in the family, by being Lord Belfield's own brother, looked on this woman, and saw she was fair. These ingenious people, that their history might not be discovered, corresponded under feigned names And what names do you think they chose ? Silvia and Philander ! Only the very same that Lord Grey 3 and his sister-in-law took upon a parallel occasion, and which are printed in their letters ! Patapan sits to "Wootton 4 to-morrow for his picture. He is to have a triumphal arch at a distance, to signify his Roman birth, and his having barked at thousands of Frenchmen in the very heart of Paris. / If you can think of a good Italian motto applicable to any part of his history send it me. If not, he shall have this antique one for I reckon him a senator of Rome, while Rome survived, " O, et Presidium et dulce decus meum ! " He is writing an Ode on the future campaign of this summer ; it is dated from his villa, where he never was, and begins truly in the classic style, " While you, great Sir," 5 &c. Adieu ! killed him, and then set fire to the house ; but the fire was extinguished, and the body, with the wounds upon it, found. The cook fled beyond sea ; but, in December, three of his associates were tried at the Old Bailey for the murder, and acquitted. WRIGHT. 1 Robert Rochfort, created Lord Belfield, in Ireland, 1737, Viscount Belfield in 1751, and Earl of Belvedere in 1756. His second wife, whom he married in 1736, was the Hon. Mary Molesworth. DOVER. 2 Richard, third Viscount Molesworth, in Ireland. He had been aide-de-camp to the Great Duke of Marlborough, and in that capacity distinguished himself greatly at the battle of Ramilies. He became afterwards master-general of the ordnance in Ireland, and commander of the forces in that kingdom, and a field-marshal. He died in 1758. DOVER. 3 Forde, the infamous Lord Grey of Werke, and his sister-in-law, Lady Henrietta Berkeley, whose " Love Letters," under these romantic names, were published in three small volumes. They are supposed to have been compiled by Mrs. Behn. DOVER. 4 John Wootton, the Sir Edward Landseer of England between 1740 and 1760. He died in 1765. Wootton's picture of Patapan sold at the Strawberry Hill sale for 41. CUNNINGHAM. 5 " While you great patron of mankind, sustain." Pope to Augustus. CUNNINGHAM. 1743.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 243 113. TO SIR HORACE MANN. May 4, 1743. THE King was detained four or five days at Sheerness ; but yesterday we heard that he was got to Helvoetsluys. They talk of an interview between him and his nephew of Prussia I never knew any advantage result from such conferences. We expect to hear of the French attacking our army, though there are accounts of their retiring, which would necessarily produce a peace I hope so ! I don't like to be at the eve, even of an Agincourt ; that, you know, every Englishman is bound in faith to expect ; besides, they say my Lord Stair has in his pocket, from the records of the Tower, the original patent, empowering us always to conquer. I am told that Marshal Noailles is as mad as Marshal Stair. Heavens ! twice fifty thousand men trusted to two mad captains, without one Dr. Monro 1 over them ! I am sorry I could give you so little information about King Theodore ; but my lord knew nothing of him, and as little of any connexion between Lord Carteret and him. I am sorry you have him on your hands. He quite mistakes his province : an adventurer should come hither ; 2 this is the soil for mobs and patriots ; it is the country of the world to make one's fortune : with parts never so scanty, one's dulness is not discovered, nor one's dishonesty, till one obtains the post one wanted and then, if they do come to light why, one slinks into one's green velvet bag, 3 and lies so snug ! I don't approve of your hinting at the falsehoods 4 of Stosch's intelligence ; nobody regards it but the King ; it pleases him e basta. 1 Dr. James Monro, Senior Physician to Bridewell and Bethlehem Hospitals. He died Nov. 3, 1752 " Those walls where Folly holds her throne, And laughs to think Monroe would take her down." Pope. CUNNINGHAM. 2 He afterwards came to England, where he suffered much from poverty and desti- tution, and was finally arrested by his creditors and confined in the King's Bench prison. He was released from thence under the Insolvent Act, having registered the kingdom of Corsica for the use of his creditors. Shortly after this event he died, December 11, 1756, and was buried in the churchyard of St. Anne's, Soho, where Horace Walpole erected a marble slab to his memory. He was an adventurer, whose name was Theodore Anthony, Baron Newhoff, and was born at Metz in 1690. Walpole, who had seen him, describes him as " a comely, middle-sized man, very reserved, and affecting much dignity." DOVKR. 3 The Secretaries of State and Lord Treasurer carry their papers in a green velvet bag. WALPOLE. 4 Stosch [see p. 73] used to pretend to send over an exact journal of the life of the R 2 244 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1743. I was not in the House at Vernon's frantic speech. ; ' but I know he made it, and have heard him pronounce several such : but he has worn out even laughter, and did not make impression enough on me to remember till the next post that he had spoken. I gave your brother the translated paper ; he will take care of it. Ceretesi is gone to Flanders with Lord Holderness. Poor creature ! he was reduced, before he went, to borrow five guineas of Sir Francis Dash wood. How will he ever scramble back to Florence? We are likely at last to have no Opera next year : Handel has had a palsy, and can't compose ; and the Duke of Dorset has set himself strenuously to oppose it, as Lord Middlesex is the impresario, and must ruin the house of Sackville by a course of these follies. Besides what he will lose this year, he has not paid his share to the losses of the last ; and yet is singly undertaking another for next season, with the almost certainty of losing between four or five thousand pounds, to which the deficiencies of the Opera generally amount now. The Duke of Dorset has desired the King not to subscribe ; but Lord Middlesex is so obstinate, that this will probably only make him lose a thousand pounds more. The Freemasons are in so low repute now in England, that one has scarce heard the proceedings at Vienna against them mentioned. I believe nothing but a persecution could bring them into vogue again here. You know, as great as our follies are, we even grow tired of them, and are always changing. 114. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Arlington Street, May 12, 1743. IT is a fortnight since I got any of your letters, but I will expect two at once. I don't tell you by way of news, because you will have had expresses, but I must talk of the great Austrian victory ! " We have not heard the exact particulars yet, nor whether it was Keven- huller or Lobkowitz who beat the Bavarians; but their general, Pretender and his sons, though he had been sent out of Rome at the Pretender's request, and must have had very bad, or no intelligence, of what passed in that family. WALPOLE. 1 Admiral Vernon had recently said, in the House of Commons, that " there was not., on this side hell, a nation so burthened with taxes as England." WRIGHT. 2 There was no great victory this year till the battle of Dettingen, tfhich took place in June ; but the Austrians obtained many advantages during the spring over the Bavarians and the French, and obliged the latter to re-cross the Rhine. DOVER. 1743.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 245 Minucci, is prisoner. At first, they said SeckendorfFe was too ; I am glad he is not : poor man, he has suffered enough by the house of Austria ! But my joy is beyond the common, for I flatter myself this victory will save us one : we talk of nothing but its producing a peace, and then one's friends will return. The Duchess of Kendal ' is dead eighty-five years old ; she was a year older than her late King. Her riches were immense ; but I believe my Lord Chesterfield will get nothing by her death but his wife : 2 she lived in the house with the duchess, where he had played away all his credit. Hough, 3 the good old Bishop of Worcester, is dead too. I have been looking at the "Fathers in God" that have been flocking over the way this morning to Mr. Pelham, who is just come to his new house. This is absolutely the ministerial street: Carteret has a house here too ; and Lord Bath seems to have lost his chance by quitting this street. Old Marlborough has made a good story of the latter ; she says, that when he found he could not get the Privy Seal, he begged that at least they would offer it to him, and upon his honour he would not accept it, but would plead his vow of never taking a place ; in which she says they humoured him. The truth is, Lord Carteret did hint an offer to him, upon which he went with a nolo episcopari to the King he bounced, and said, " Why I never offered it to you : " upon which he recommended my Lord Carlisle, with equal success. Just before the King went, he asked my Lord Carteret, " Well, when am I to get rid of those fellows in the Treasury ? " They are on so low a foot, that somebody said Sandys had hired a stand of hackney-coaches, to look like a levee. Lord Conway has begged me to send you a commission, which you will oblige me much by executing. It is to send him three Pistoia barrels for guns : two of them, of two feet and a half in the barrel in length ; the smallest of the inclosed buttons to be the size of the bore, hole, or calibre, of the two guns. The third barrel to be threu 1 Erengard de Schulemberg, the German mistress of George I. CUNNINGHAM. 2 Melusina de Schulemberg, Countess of Walsingham [died 1778], niece of the Duchess of Kendal, and her heiress. WALPOLE. She was the daughter, it is sus- pected, of George I. CUNNINGHAM. 3 Hough distinguished himself early in his life by his resistance to the arbitrary proceedings of James II. against Magdalen College, Oxford, of which he was the pre- sident. Pope, with imich justice, speaks of " Hough's unsullied mitre." DOVER. There is a fine monument to his memory, by Roubiliac, in Worcester Cathedral. CUNNINGHAM. 246 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1743. feet and an inch in length ; the largest of these buttons to be the bore of it : these feet are English measure. You will be so good to let me know the price of them. There has happened a comical circumstance at Leicester House : one of the Prince's coachmen, who used to drive the Maids of Honour, was so sick of them, that he has left his son three hundred pounds, upon condition that he never marries a Maid of Honour ! Our journey to Houghton is fixed to Saturday se'nnight; 'tis unpleasant, but I natter myself that I shall get away in the begin- ning of August Adieu ! 115. TO SIR HORACE MANN. May 19, 1743. I AM just come tired from a family dinner at the Master of the Bolls ; ' but I have received two letters from you since my last, and will write to you, though my head aches with maiden sisters' healths, forms, and Devonshire and Norfolk. With yours I received one from Mr. Chute, for which I thank him a thousand times, and will answer as soon as I get to Houghton. Monday is fixed peremp- torily, though we have had no rain this month ; but we travel by the day of the week, not by the day of the sky. We are in more confusion than we care to own. There lately came up a Highland regiment from Scotland, to be sent abroad. One heard of nothing but their good discipline and quiet disposition. When the day came for their going to the water-side, an hundred and nine of them mutinied, and marched away in a body. They did not care to go where it would not be equivocal for what King they fought. Three companies of dragoons are sent after them. If you happen to hear of any rising, don't be surprised I shall not, I assure you. Sir Robert Monroe, their lieutenant-colonel, before their leaving Scotland, asked some of the Ministry, " But suppose there should be any rebellion in Scotland, what should we do for these eight hundred men ? " It was answered, " Why, there would be eight hundred fewer rebels there." " Utor permisso, caudseque pilos ut equinae Paulatim vello ; demo unum, demo etiam unum, Dum " 1 William Fortescue, a relation of Margaret Lady Walpole. WALPOLE. Better known aw the friend of Pope, the " counsel learned in the law," of Pope's " Imitations of Horace." He died in 1749. CUNNINGHAM. 1743.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 247 My dear child, I am surprised to find you enter so seriously into earnest ideas of my Lord's passing into Italy ! Could you think (however he, you, or I might wish it) that there could be any pro- bability of it ? Can you think his age could endure it, or him so indifferent, so totally disministered, as to leave all thoughts of what he has been, and ramble, like a boy, after pictures and statues ? Don't expect it. We had heard of the Duke of Modena's command before I had your letter. I am glad, for the sake of the Duchess, as she is to return to France. I never saw anybody wish anything more ! and indeed, how can one figure any particle of pleasure happening to a daughter of the Regent, 1 and a favourite daughter too, full of wit and joy, buried in a dirty, dull Italian duchy, with an ugly, formal object for a husband, and two uncouth sister-princesses for eternal companions ? I am so near the eve of going into Norfolk, that I imagine myself something in her situation, and married to some Hammond or Hoste, 2 who is Duke of Wootton or Darsingham. I remember in the fairy tales where a yellow dwarf steals a princess, and shows her his duchy, of which he is very proud : among the blessings of grandeur, of which he makes her mistress, there is a most beautiful ass for her palfrey, a blooming meadow of nettles and thistles to walk in, and a fine troubled ditch to slake her thirst, after either of the above-mentioned exercises. Adieu ! My next will be dated from some of the doleful castles in the principality of your forlorn friend, the duchy of Reepham. 116. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Howjldon, June 4, 1743. I WROTE this week to Mr. Chute, addressed to you ; I could not afford two letters in one post from the country, and in the dead of summer. I have received one from you of May 21st, since I came down. I must tell you a smart dialogue between your father and me the morning we left London : he came to wish my Lord a good 1 Mademoiselle de Valois, who had made herself notorious during the regency of her father, by her intrigue with the Duke of Richelieu. She consented to marry the Duke of Modena, in order to obtain the liberty of her lover, who was confined in the Bastille for conspiring against the Regent. The Duke of Richelieu, in return, fol- lowed her afterwards secretly to Modena. DOVER. 2 The Hammonds and Hostes are two Norfolk families, nearly allied to the Walpoles. WALPOLE. 248 HOKACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1743. journey : I found him in the parlour. " Sir," said ho, " I may ask you how my son does ; I think you hear from him frequently : I never do." I replied, " Sir, I write him kind answers ; pray do you do so ? " He coloured, and said with a half mutter, " Perhaps I haye lived too long for him ! " I answered shortly, " Perhaps you have." My dear child, I beg your pardon, but I could not help this. When one loves anybody, one can't help being warm for them at a fair opportunity. Dr. Bland and Mr. Legge were present your father could have stabbed me. I told your brother Gal, who was glad. We are as private here as if we were in devotion : there is nobody with us now but Lord Edgecumbe and his son. The Duke of Grafton and Mr. Pelham come next week, and I hope Lord Lincoln with them. Poor Lady Sophia [Fermor] is at the gasp of her hopes ; all is concluded for his match with Miss Pelham. It is not to be till the winter. He is to have all Mr. Pelham and the Duke of Newcastle can give or settle ; unless Lady Catherine [Pelham] should produce a son, or the Duchess should die, and the Duke marry again. Earl Poulett ' is dead, and makes vacant another riband. I imagine Lord Carteret will have one : Lord Bath will ask it. I think they should give Prince Charles 2 one of the two, for all the trouble he saves us. The papers talk of nothing but a suspension of arms : it seems toward, for at least we hear of no battle, though there are so many armies looking at one another. Old Sir Charles Wager 3 is dead at last, and has left the fairest character. I can't help having a little private comfort, to think that Goldsworthy but there is no danger. Madox of St. Asaph has wriggled himself into the see of Worcester. He makes haste ; I remember him only domestic chaplain to the late Bishop of Chichester [Waddington]. Durham is not dead, as I believe I told you from a false report. You tell me of dining with Madame de Modene," but you don't tell me of being charmed with her. I like her excessively I don't mean her person, for she is as plump as the late Queen [Caroline] ; 1 John, first Earl Poulelt, knight of the garter. He died, aged upwards of eighty, on the 28th May, 1743. DOVER. 2 Prince Charles of Lorraine, the Queen of Hungary's general against the French. DOVER. 3 Admiral Sir Charles Wager, died 24th May, 1743. There is a monument to him in Westminster Abbey by Scheemakers. CUNNINGHAM. 4 It was not the Duchess of Modcna, but the Duke's second sister, who went to Florence. WALPOLE. 1743.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 249 but sure her face is fine ; her eyes vastly fine ! and then she is as agreeable as one should expect the Regent's daughter to be. The Princess and she must have been an admirable contrast : one has all the good breeding of a French court, and the latter all the ease of it. I have almost a mind to go to Paris to see her. She was so excessively civil to me. You don't tell me if the Pucci goes into France with her. I like the Genoese selling Corsica ! I think we should follow their example and sell France ; we have about as good a title, and very near as much possession. At how much may they value Corsica ? at the rate of islands, it can't go for much. Charles the Second sold Great Britain and Ireland to Louis XIV. for 300,000/. a-year, and that was reckoned extravagantly dear. Lord Bolingbroke took a single hundred thousand for them, when they were in much better repair. We hear to-day that the King goes to the army on the 15th, N.S. that is, to-day ; but I don't tell it you for certain. There has been much said against his commanding it, as it is only an army of succour, and not acting as principal in the cause. In my opinion, his com- manding will depend upon the more or less probability of its acting at all. Adieu ! 117. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Houyliton, June 10, 1743. You must not expect me to write you a very composed, careless letter ; my spirits are all in agitation ! I am at the eve of a post that may bring me the most dreadful news ! we expect to-morrow the news of a decisive battle. Oh ; if you have any friend there, think what apprehensions I ' must have of such a post ! By yester- day's letters our army was within eight miles of the French, who have had repeated orders to attack them. Lord Stair and Marshal Noailles both think themselves superior, and have pressed for leave to fight. The latter call themselves fourscore thousand ; ours sixty. Mr. Pelham and Lord Lincoln come to Houghton to-day, so we are sure of hearing as soon as possible, if anything has happened. By this time the King must be with them. My fears for one or two 1 Mr. Conway, the most intimate friend of Horace Walpole, was now serving in Lord Stair's army. DOVER. 250 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1743. friends have spoiled me for any English hopes I cannot dwindle away the French army every man in it appears to my imagination as big as the sons of Anak ! I am conjuring up the ghosts of all who have perished by French ambition, and am dealing out com- missions to these spectres, To sit heavy on their souls to-morrow ! " Alas ! perhaps that glorious to-morrow was a dismal yesterday ! at least, perhaps it was to me ! The genius of England might be a mere mercenary man of this world, and employed all his attention to turn aside cannon-balls from my Lord Stair, to give new edge to his new Marlborough's sword : was plotting glory for my Lord Carteret, or was thinking of furnishing his own apartment in Westminster Hall with a new set of trophies who would then take care of Mr. Conway ? You, who are a minister, will see all this in still another light, will fear our defeat, and will foresee the train of consequences. Why, they may be wondrous ugly ; but till I know what I have to think about my own friends, I cannot be wise in my generation. I shall now only answer your letter ; for till I have read to-morrow's post, I have no thoughts but of a battle. I am angry at your thinking that I can dislike to receive two or three of your letters at once. Do you take me for a child, and imagine, that though I like one plum-tart, two may make me sick ? I now get them regularly ; so I do but receive them, I am easy. You are mistaken about the gallery; so far from unfurnishing any part of the house, there are several pictures undisposed of, besides numbers at Lord Walpole's, at the Exchequer, at Chelsea, and at New Park [Richmond]. Lord Walpole has taken a dozen to Stanno, a small house, about four miles from hence, where he lives with my Lady Walpole's vicegerent. 1 You may imagine that her deputies are no fitter than she is to come where there is a modest, unmarried girl. 2 I will write to London for the Life of Theodore, though you may depend upon its being a Grub Street piece, without one true fact. Don't let it prevent your undertaking his Memoirs. Yet I should 1 Miss Norsa ; she was a Jewess, and had been a singer. WALPOLE. There is a print of her "from a scarce etching in the collection of Sir William Musgrave." Lord Walpole took her off the stage, with the concurrence of her parents, to whom he gave a bond, by which he engaged to marry her on the demise of his wife. His wife outlived him. CUNNINGHAM. 2 Lady Maria Walpole. WALPOLE. Afterwards Lady Mary Churchill. CUNNINGHAM. 1743.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 251 imagine Mrs. Heywood l or Mrs. Behn * were fitter to write his history. How slightly you talk of Prince Charles's victory at Brunau ! We thought it of vast consequence ; so it was. He took three posts afterwards, and has since beaten the Prince of Conti, and killed two thousand men. Prince Charles civilly returned him his baggage. The French in Bavaria are quite dispirited poor wretches ; how one hates to wish so ill as one does to fourscore thousand men ! There is yet no news of the Pembroke. The Dominichin has a post of honour reserved in the gallery. My Lord says, as to that Dalton's Raphael, he can say nothing without some particular description of the picture and the size, and some hint at the price, which you have promised to get. I leave the residue of my paper for to-morrow : I tremble, lest I be forced to finish it abruptly ! I forgot to tell you that I left a particular commission with my brother Ned, who is at Chelsea, to get some tea-seed from the Physic Garden ; and he promised me too to go to Lord Islay, to know what cobolt and zingho* are, and where they are to be got. Saturday morning. The post is come : no battle ! Just as they were marching against the French, they received orders from Hanover not to engage, for the Queen's generals thought they were inferior, and were positive against fighting. Lord Stair, with only the English, proceeded, and drew out in order; but though the French were then so vastly superior, they did not attack him. The "King is now at the army, and, they say, will endeavour to make the Austrians fight. It will make great confusion here if they do not. The French are evacuating Bavaria as fast as possible, and seem to intend to join all their force together. I shall still dread all the events of this campaign. Adieu ! 1 Eliza Hay wood, a voluminous writer of indifferent novels; of which the best known is one called " Betsy Thoughtless." She was also authoress of a work entitled "The Female Spectator." Mrs. Heywood was born in 1693, and died in 1756. DOVER. She figures indecently enough in the "Dunciad," B. ii. CUNNINGHAM. z Mrs. Afra Behn [died 1689], a woman whose character and writings were equally incorrect. Of her plays, which were seventeen in number, Pope says, " The stage how loosely does Astrea tread, Who fairly puts all characters to bed." Her novels and other productions were also marked with similar characteristics. DOVER. 3 Cobalt and zinc, two metallic substances ; the former composed of silver, copper, and arsenic, the latter of tin and iron. DOVER. 252 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1743. 118. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Houyliton, June 20, 1743. I HAVE painted the Raphael to my lord almost as fine as Raphael himself could ; hut he will not think of it : he will not give a thousand guineas for what he never saw. 1 I wish I could persuade him. For the other hands, he has already fine ones of every one of them. There are yet no news of the " Pemhroke : " we grow impatient. I have made a short tour to Euston [in Suffolk] this week with the Duke of Grafton, who came over from thence with Lord Lincoln and Mr. Pelham. Lord Lovel and Mr. Coke carried me and brought me hack. It is one of the most admired seats in England in my opinion, because Kent has a most absolute disposition of it. Kent is now so fashionable, that, like Addison's Liberty, he " Can make bleak rocks and barren mountains smile." I believe the Duke wishes he could make them green too. The house is large and bad ; it was built by Lord Arlington, 2 and stands, as all old houses do for convenience of water and shelter, in a hole ; so it neither sees, nor is seen : he has no money to build another. The park is fine, the old woods excessively so : they are much grander than Mr. Kent's passion, clumps that is, sticking a dozen trees here and -there, till a lawn looks like the ten of spades. Clumps have their beauty ; but in a great extent of country, how trifling to scatter arbours, where you should spread forests ! He is so unhappy in his heir apparent, 3 that he checks his hand in almost every thing 1 The highest price Sir Robert Walpole gave for one picture was 630Z. for the Guido the Doctors of the Church. CtrNNiHGBAM. 2 Henry Bennet, Earl of Arlington, a famous minister in the reign of Charles II. CUNNINGHAM. 8 George, Earl of Euston, who died in the lifetime of his father. He has been already mentioned [p. 76] in the course of these letters, upon the occasion of his marriage with Lady Dorothy Boyle, who died from his ill-treatment of her. Upon a picture of Lady Dorothy at the Duke of Devonshire's at Chiswick, is the following touching- inscription, written by her mother : " Lady Dorothy Boyle, "Born May the 14th, 1724. She was the comfort and joy of her parents, the delight of all who knew her angelick temper, and the admiration of all who saw her beauty. "She was marry'd October the 10th, 1741, and delivered (by death) from misery, " May the 2nd, 1742. 1743.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 253 ho undertakes. Last week he heard a new exploit of his barbarity. A tenant of Lord Euston, in Northamptonshire, brought him his rent ; the Lord said it wanted three and sixpence : the tenant begged he would examine the account, that it would prove exact however, to content him, he would willingly pay him the three and sixpence. Lord E. flew into a rage, and vowed he would write to the Duke to have him turned out of a little place he has in the post-office of thirty pounds a-year. The poor man, who has six children, and knew nothing of my Lord's being upon no terms of power with his father, went home and shot himself ! I know no syllable of news, but that my Lady Carteret is dead at Hanover, and Lord Wilmington dying. So there will be to let a first minister's ladyship and a first lordship of the Treasury. We have nothing from the army, though the King has now been there some time. As new a thing as it is, we don't talk much of it. Adieu ! the family are gone a-fishing : I thought I stayed at home to write to you, but I have so little to say that I don't believe vou will think so. 119. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Friday noon, June 29, 1743. I DON'T know what I write I am all a hurry of thoughts a battle a victory ! [Battle of Dettingen] I dare not yet be glad I know no particulars of my friends. This instant my Lord has had a messenger from the Duke of Newcastle, who has sent him a copy of Lord Carteret's letter from the field of battle. The King was in all the heat of the fire, and safe the Duke [of Cumberland] is wounded in the calf of the leg, but slightly ; Due d'Aremberg in the breast ; General Clayton and Colonel Piers are the only officers of note said to be killed here is all my trust ! The French passed the Mayne that morning with twenty-five thousand men, and are driven back. We have lost two thousand, and they four several of their general officers, and of the Maison du Roi, are taken prisoners : the battle lasted from ten in the morning till four. The Hanoverians behaved admirably. The Imperialists 1 were the aggressors ; in " This picture was drawn seven weeks after her death (from memory) by her most affectionate mother, " Dorothy Burlington." DOVEB. Compare Walpole to Mann, July 22, 1744, p. 316. CUNNIHOHAM. 1 The Bavarians. WALPOLE. 254 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1743. short, in all public views, it is all that could be wished the King in the action, and his son wounded the Hanoverians behaving well the French beaten : what obloquy will not all this wipe off? Triumph, and write it to Rome ! I don't know what our numbers were ; I believe about thirty thousand, for there were twelve thousand Hes- sians and Hanoverians who had not joined them. ! in my hurry, I had forgot the place you must talk of the battle of Dettingen ! After dinner. My child, I am calling together all my thoughts, and rejoice in this victory as much as I dare ; for in the raptures of conquest, how dare I think that my Lord Carteret, or the rest of those who have written, thought just of whom I thought ? The post comes in to-morrow morning, but it is not sure that we shall learn any particular certainties so soon as that. Well ! how happy it is that the King has had such an opportunity of distinguishing himself ! ' what a figure he will make ! They talked of its being below his dignity to command an auxiliary army : my Lord says it will not be thought below his dignity to have sought danger. These were the flower of the French troops : I natter myself they will tempt no more battles. Another such, and we might march from one end of France to the other. So we are in a French war, at least well begun ! My Lord has been drinking the healths of Lord Stair and Lord Carteret : he says, " since it is well done, he does not care by whom it was done." He thinks differently from the rest of the world : he thought from the first, that France never missed such an opportunity as when they undertook the German war, instead of joining with Spain against us. If I hear any more to-morrow before the post goes out, I will let you know. Tell me if this is the first you hear of the victory : I would fain be the first to give you so much pleasure. Saturday morning. Well, my dear child, all is safe ! I have not so much as an acquaintance hurt. The more we hear, the greater it turns out. Lord Cholmondeley writes my Lord from London, that we gained 1 Frederick the Great, in his " Histoire de mon Temps," gives the following account of George II. at the battle of Dettingen. " The King was on horseback, and rode forward-to reconnoitre the enemy : his horse, frightened at the cannonading, ran away with his Majesty, and nearly carried him into the midst of the French lines : fortunately, one of his attendants succeeded in stopping him. George then aban- doned his horse, and fought on foot, at the head of his Hanoverian battalions. With his sword drawn, and his body placed in the attitude of a fencing-master who is about to make a lounge in carte, he continued to expose himself, without flinching, to the enemy's fire." DOVER. 1743.] TO MR. CHUTE. 255 the victory with only fifteen regiments, not eleven thousand men, and so not half in number to the French. I fancy their soldiery behaved ill, by the gallantry of their officers ; for Ranby, 1 the King's private surgeon, writes, that he alone has 150 officers of distinction desperately wounded under his care. Marquis Fenelon's son is among the prisoners, and says Marshal Noailles is dangerously wounded : so is Due d'Aremberg. Honeywood's regiment sustained the attack, and are almost all killed : his natural son has five wounds, and cannot live. The horse were pursuing when the letters came away, so there is no certain account of the slaughter. Lord Albemarle had his horse shot under him. In short, the victory is complete. There is no describing what one hears of the spirits and bravery of our men. One of them dressed himself up in the belts of three officers, and swore he would wear them as long as he lived. Another ran up to Lord Carteret, who was in a coach near the action the whole time, and said, " Here, my Lord, do hold this watch for me ; I have just killed a French officer and taken it, and I will go take another." Adieu ! my dear Sir : may the rest of the war be as glorious as the beginning ! TO MR. CHUTE. My dear Sir, I wish you joy, and you wish me joy, and Mr. Whithed, and Mr. Mann, and Mrs. Bosville, &c. Don't get drunk and get the gout. I expect to be drunk with hogsheads of the Mayne- water, and with odes to his Majesty and the Duke, and Te Deums. Patapan begs you will get him a dispensation from Rome to go and hear the thanksgiving at St. Paul's. "We are all mad drums, trumpets, bumpers, bonfires ! The mob are wild, and cry, " Long live King George and the Duke of Cumberland, and Lord Stair and Lord Carteret, and General Clayton that's dead ! " My Lord Lovel says, " Thanks to the Gods that John* has done Ms duty ! " Adieu ! my dear Dukes of Marlborough ! I am ever your JOHN DUKE or MARLBOROUGH. ' John Ranby, principal serjeant surgeon to the King. He attended Sir Robert Walpole in his last illness, and published an account of his case. He died in 1773, and was buried in Chelsea Hospital. CUNNINGHAM. 2 John Bull. DOVER. 256 HORACE WALrOLE'S LETTERS. [1743. 120. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Hougliton, July 4, 1743. I HEAR no particular news here, and I don't pretend to send you the common news ; for as I must have it first from London, you will have it from thence sooner in the papers than in my letters. There have been great rejoicings for the victory ; which I am- con- vinced is very considerable by the pains the Jacobites take to persuade it is not. My Lord Carteret's Hanoverian articles have much offended ; his express has been burlesqued a thousand ways. By all the letters that arrive, the loss of the French turns out more considerable than by the first accounts : they have dressed up the battle into a victory for themselves I hope they will always have such ! By their not having declared war with us, one should think they intended a peace. It is allowed that our fine horse did us no honour : the victory was gained by the foot. Two of their princes of the blood, the Prince de Dombes, and the Count d'Eu ' his brother, were wounded, and several of their first nobility. Our prisoners turn out but seventy-two officers, besides the private men ; and by the printed catalogue, I don't think many of great family. Marshal Noailles' mortal wound is quite vanished, and Due d'Aremberg's shrunk to a very slight one. The King's glory remains in its first bloom. Lord Wilmington is dead. I believe the civil battle for his post 2 will be tough. Now we shall see what service Lord Carteret's Hanoverians will do him. You don't think the crisis unlucky for him, do you ? If you wanted a Treasury, should you choose to have been in Arlington Street, 3 or driving by the battle of Dettingeii ? You may imagine our Court wishes for Mr. Pelham. I don't know any one who wishes for Lord Bath but himself I believe that is a pretty substantial wish. I have got the Life of King Theodore, but I don't know how to convey it I will inquire for some way. We are quite alone. You never saw anything so unlike as being here five months out of place, to the congresses of a fortnight in 1 The two sons of the Duke du Maine, a natural son, but legitimated, of Louis XIV. by Madame de Montespan. WRIGHT. 2 Wilmington was First Lord of the Treasury. Pelham succeeded to the post. CUHNINGHAM. 3 Where Mr. Pelham lived. WALPOLE. 1743.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 257 place ; but you know the " Justum et tenacem propositi virum " can amuse himself without the " Civium ardor ! " As I have not so much dignity of character to fill up my time, I could like a little more company. "With all this leisure, you may imagine that I might as well he writing an ode or so upon the victory ; but as I cannot build upon the Laureat's place till I know whether Lord Carteret or Mr. Pelham will carry the Treasury, I have bounded my compliments to a slender collection of quotations against I should have any occasion for them. Here are some fine lines from Lord Halifax's ' poem on the battle of the Boyne " The King leads on, the King does all inflame, The King ; and carries millions in the name." Then follows a simile about a deluge, which you may imagine ; but the next lines are very good : " So on the foe the firm battalions prest, And he, like the tenth wave, drove on the rest. Fierce, gallant, young, he shot through ev'ry place, Urging their flight, and hurrying on the chase, He hung upon their rear, or lighten'd in their face." The next are a magnificent compliment, and, as far as verse goes, to be sure very applicable. " Stop, stop ! brave Prince, allay that generous flame ; Enough is given to England and to Fame. Remember, Sir, you in the centre stand ; Europe's divided interests you command, All their designs uniting in your hand. Down from your throne descends the golden chain Which does the fabric of our world sustain, That once dissolved by any fatal stroke, The scheme of all our happiness is broke." Adieu ! my dear Sir : pray for peace ! 121. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Houghton, July 11, 1743. THE Pembroke is arrived ! Your brother slipped a slice of paper into a letter which he sent me from you the other day, with those pleasant words, " The Pembroke is arrived." I am going to receive it. I shall be in town the end of this week, only stay there about ten days, and wait on the Dominichin hither. Now I tremble ! If it 1 Charles Montagu, Earl of Halifax, the " Bufo" of Pope. WRIGHT. VOL. I. 8 258 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1743, should not stand the trial among the number of capital pictures here ! But it must : it will. 0, sweet lady ! ' What shall I do about her letter ? I must answer it and where to find a penful of Italian in the world, I know not. Well, she must take what she can get : gold and silver I have not, but what I have I give unto her. Do you say a vast deal of my concern for her illness, and that I could not find decom- pounds and superlatives enough to express myself. You never tell me a syllable from my sovereign lady the Princess : has she forgot me ? What is become of Prince Beauvau ? 2 is he warring against us ? Shall I write to Mr. Conway to be very civil to him for my sake, if he is taken prisoner ? We expect another battle every day. Broglio has joined Noailles, and Prince Charles is on the Neckar. Noailles says, "Qu'il a fait une folie, mais qu'il est pret a la r^parer." There is great blame thrown on Baron Ilton, the Hanoverian General, for having hindered the Guards from engaging. If they had, and the horse, who behaved wretchedly, had done their duty, it is agreed that there would be no second engagement. The poor Duke of Cumberland is in a much worse way than was at first apprehended : his wound proves a bad one ; he is gross, and has had a shivering fit, which is often the forerunner of a mortification. There has been much thought of making knights-banneret, but I believe the scheme is laid aside ; for, in the first place, they are never made but on the field of battle, and now it was not thought on till some days after ; and, besides, the King intended to make some who were not actually in the battle. Adieu ! Possibly I may hear something in town worth telling you. 122. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Arlington Street, July 19, [1743.] HERE am I come a-Dominichining ! and the first thing I hear is, that the Pembroke must perform quarantine fourteen days for coming from the Mediterranean, and a week airing. It is forty days, if they bring the plague from Sicily. I will bear this misfortune as heroically as I can ; and considering I have London to bear it in, may possibly support it well enough. The private letters from the army all talk of the King's going to 1 Madame Grifoni. WALPOLE. s Son of Prince Craon. WALPOLE. 1743.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 259 Hanover, 2nd of August, N. S. If he should not, one shall he no longer in pain for him ; for the French have repassed the Rhine, and think only of preparing against Prince Charles, who is marching sixty-two thousand men, full of conquest and revenge, to regain his own country. I most cordially wish him success, and that his hravery may recover what his ahject hrother gave up so tamely, and which he takes as little personal pains to regain. It is not at all determined whether we are to carry the war into France. It is ridiculous enough ! we have the name of war with Spain, without the thing ; and war with France without the name ! The maiden heroes of the Guards are in great wrath with General Ilton, who kept them out of harm's way. They call him " the Confectioner," hecause he says he preserved them. The week hefore I left Houghton my father had a most dreadful accident : it had near heen fatal ; but he escaped miraculously. He dined abroad, and went up to sleep. As he was coming down again, not quite awakened, he was surprised at seeing the company through a glass-door which he had not observed : his foot slipped, and he, who is now entirely unwieldy and helpless, fell at once down the stairs against the door, which, had it not been there, he had dashed himself to pieces, into a stone hall. He cut his forehead two inches long to the pericranium, and another gash upon his temple ; but, most luckily, did himself no other hurt, and was quite well again before I came away. I find Lord Stafford married to Miss Cantillon ; they are to live half the year in London, half in Paris. Lord Lincoln is soon to marry his cousin Miss Pelham : it will be great joy to the whole house of Newcastle. There is no determination yet come about the Treasury. Most people wish for Mr. Pelham ; few for Lord Carteret ; none for Lord Bath. My Lady Townshend [Harrison] said an admirable thing the other day to this last : he was complaining much of a pain in his side " Oh !" said she, " that can't be ; you have no side." I have a new Cabinet ' for my enamels and miniatures just come home, which I am sure you would like : it is of rose- wood ; the doors inlaid with carvings in ivory. I wish you could see it ! Are you to be for ever ministerial sans relache ? Are you never to have 1 A cabinet of rosewood, designed by Walpole himself. It is seen in the view of " The Cabinet " in " The Tribune," and sold at the Strawberry Hill sale for 127J. CUNNINGHAM. s 2 260 HOEACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS [1743. leave to come and " settle your private affairs," as the newspapers call it ? A thousand loves to the Chutes. Does my sovereign lady yet remember me, or has she lost with her eyes all thought of me ? Adieu ! P.S. Princess Louisa goes soon to her young Denmark ; and Princess Emily, it is now said, will have the man of Lubeck. If he had missed the crown of Sweden, he was to have taken Princess Caroline ; because, in his private capacity, he was not a competent match for the now-first daughter of England. He is extremely handsome ; it is fifteen years since Princess Emily was so. 123. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Arlington Street, July 31, 1743. IF I went by my last week's reason for not writing to you, I should miss this post too, for I have no more to tell you than I had then ; but at that rate, there would be great vacuums in our cor- respondence. I am still here, waiting for the Donainichin and the rest of the things. I have incredible trouble about them, for they arrived just as the quarantime was established. Then they found out that " the Pembroke " had left the fleet so long before the infec- tion in Sicily began, and had not touched at any port there, that the Admiralty absolved it. Then the things were brought up ; then they were sent back to be aired ; and still I am not to have them in a week. I tremble for the pictures ; for they are to be aired at the rough discretion of a master of a hoy, for nobody I could send would be suffered to go aboard. The city is outrageous ; for you know, to merchants there is no plague so dreadful as a stoppage of their trade. The Regency are so temporising and timid, especially in this inter-ministerium, that I am in great apprehensions of our having the plague : an island, so many ports, no power absolute or active enough to establish the necessary precautions, and all are necessary ! it is terrible ! And now it is on the continent too ! While confined to Sicily, there were hopes : but I scarce conceive that it will stop in two or three villages in Calabria. My dear child, Heaven preserve you from it ! I am in the utmost pain on its being so near you. What will you do ! whither will you go, if it reaches Tuscany ? Never think of staying in Florence : shall I s;ot 1743.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 261 you permission to retire out of that State, in case of danger ? but sure you would not hesitate on such a crisis ! We have no news from the army : the minister there communi- cates nothing to those here. No answer comes about the Treasury. All is suspense : and clouds of breaches ready to burst. How strange is all this jumble ! France with an unsettled Ministry ; England with an unsettled one ; a victory just gained over them, yet no war ensuing, or declared from either side ; our minister still at Paris, as if to settle an amicable intelligence of the losses on both sides ! I think there was only wanting for Mr. Thompson to notify to them in form our victory over them, and for Bussy ' to have civil letters of congratulation 'tis so well-bred an age ! I must tell you a bon-mot of Wilmington. I was at dinner with him and Lord Lincoln and Lord Stafford last week, and it happened to be a maigre-day, of which Stafford was talking, though, you may believe, without any scruples : " Why," said Winnington, " what a religion is yours ! they let you eat nothing, and yet make you swallow everything ! " My dear child, you will think, when I am going to give you a new commission, that I ought to remember those you give me. Indeed I have not forgot one, though I know not how to execute them. The Life of King Theodore is too big to send but by a messenger ; by the first that goes you shall have it. For cobolt and zingho, your brother and I have made all inquiries, but almost in vain, except that one person has told him that there is some such thing in Lancashire : I have written thither to inquire. For the tea-trees, it is my brother's [Edward's] fault, whom I desired, as he is at Chelsea, to get some from the Physic-Garden : he forgot it ; but now I am in town myself, if possible, you shall have some seed. After this, I still know not how to give you a commission, for you over-execute ; but upon conditions uninfringeable, I will give you one. I have begun to collect drawings : now, if you will at any time buy me any that you meet with at reasonable rates, for I will not give great prices, I shall be much obliged to you. I would not have above one, to be sure, of any of the Florentine school, nor above one of any master after the immediate scholars of Carlo Maratti. For the Bolognese school, I care not how many ; though I fear they will be too dear. But Mr. Chute understands them. One condition is, that 1 Mr. Thompson and the Abbe de Bussy were the English and French residents. WALPOLK. 262 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1743. if he collects drawings as well as prints, there is an end of the com- mission ; for you shall not buy me any, when he perhaps Avould like to purchase them. The other condition is, that you regularly set down the prices you pay ; otherwise, if you send me any without the price, I instantly return them unopened to your brother : this, upon my honour, I will most strictly perform. Adieu! write me minutely the history of the plague. If it makes any progress towards you, I shall be a most unhappy man : I am far from easy on our own account here. 124. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Arlington Street, Aug. 14, 1743. I SHOULD write to Mr. Chute to-day, but I won't till next post : I will tell you why presently. Last week I did not write at all ; because I was every day waiting for the Dominichin, 8fc. which I at last got last night But oh ! that 8fc. ! It makes me write to you, but I must leave it Sfc. for I can't undertake to develope it. I can find no words to thank you from my own fund ; but must apply an expression of the Princess Craon's to myself, which the number of charming things you have sent me absolutely melts down from the bombast, of which it consisted when she sent it me. " Monsieur, votre generosit^," (I am not sure it was not " votre magnificence,") " ne me laisse rien a desirer de tout ce qui se trouve de precieux en Angleterre, dans la Chine, et aux Indes." But still this don't express fyc. The charming Madame Sevigne", who was still handsomer than Madame de Craon, and had infinite wit, conde- scended to pun on sending her daughter an excessively fine pearl necklace : " Voila, ma fille, un present passant tous les presents passes et presents ! " Do you know that these words reduced to serious meaning, are not sufficient for what you have sent me ? If I were not afraid of giving you all the trouble of airing and quaran- tine which I have had with them, I would send them to you back again ! It is well our virtue is out of the Ministry ! What reproach it would undergo ! Why, my dear child, here would be bribery in folio ! How would mortals stare at such a present as this to the son of a fallen minister ! I believe half of it would reinstate us again ; though the vast box of essences would not half sweeten the Treasury after the dirty wretches that have fouled it since. The Dominichin is safe ; so is everything. I cannot think it of 1743.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 263 the same hand with the Sasso Ferrati you sent me. This last is not so maniere as the Dominichin ; for the more I look at it, the more I am convinced it is of him. It goes down with me to-morrow to Houghton. The Andrea del Sarto is particularly fine ! the Sasso Ferrati particularly graceful oh ! I should have kept that word for the Magdalen's head, which is beautiful beyond measure. 1 Indeed, my dear Sir, I am glad, after my confusion is a little abated, that your part of the things is so delightful ; for I am very little satisfied with my own purchases. Donato Creti's s copy is a wretched, raw daub ; the beautiful Virgin of the original he has made horrible. Then for the statue, the face is not so broad as my nail, and has not the turn of the antique. Indeed, La Yallee has done the drapery well, but I can't pardon him the head. My table I like ; though he has stuck in among the ornaments two vile china jars, that look like the modern japanning by ladies. The Hermaphrodite, on my seeing it again, is too sharp and hard in short, your present has put me out of humour with everything of my own. You shall hear next week how my Lord is satisfied with his Dominichin. I have received the letter and drawings by Crewe. By the way, my drawings of the gallery are as bad as anything of my own ordering. They gave Crewe the letter for you at the office, I believe ; for I knew nothing of his going, or had sent you the Life of King Theodore. I was interrupted in my letter this morning by the Duke of Devonshire, who called to see the Dominichin. Nobody knows pictures better : he was charmed with it, and did not doubt its Dominichin ality. I find another letter from you to-night of August 6th, and thank you a thousand times for your goodness about Mr. Conway ; but I believe I told you, that as he is in the Guards, he was not engaged. We hear nothing but that we are going to cross the Rhine. All we know is from private letters : the Ministry hear nothing. When the Hussars went to Kevenhuller for orders, he said, " Messieurs, 1' Alsace est a vous; je n'ai point d'autres ordres a vous donner." They have accordingly taken up their residence in a fine chateau belonging to the Cardinal de Hohan, as Bishop of Strasbourg. We expect nothing but war ; and that war expects nothing but conquest. 1 These pictures are now at St. Petersburg. CUNNINGHAM. 2 A copy of a celebrated picture by Guido at Bologna, of the Patron Saints of that city. WALPOLB. 264 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1743. Your account of our officers was very false ; for, instead of the soldiers going on without commanders, some of them were ready to go without their soldiers.: I am sorry you have such plague with your Neptune ' and the Sardinian we know not of them scarce. I really forget anything of an Italian greyhound for the Tesi. I promised her, I remember, a hlack spaniel but how to send it ! I did promise one of the former to Marquis Mari at Genoa, which I absolutely have not been able to get yet, though I have often tried ; but since the last Lord Halifax died, there is no meeting with any of the breed. If I can, I will get her one. I am sorry you are engaged in the Opera. I have found it a most dear undertaking ! I was not in the management: Lord Middlesex was chief. We were thirty subscribers, at two hundred pounds each, which was to last four years, and no other demands ever to be made. Instead of that, we have been made to pay fifty-six pounds over and above the subscription in one winter. I told the secretary in a passion, that it was the last money I would ever pay for the follies of directors. I tremble at hearing that the plague is not over, as we thought, but still spreading. You will see in the papers that Lord Hervey is dead luckily, I think, for himself ; for he had outlived his last inch of character. Adieu ! 125. TO JOHN CHUTE, ESQ. 8 Houghton, August 20, 1743. INDEED, my dear Sir, you certainly did not use to be stupid, and till you give me more substantial proof that you are so, I shall not believe it. As for your temperate diet and milk bringing about such a metamorphosis, I hold it impossible. I have such lamentable proofs every day before my eyes of the stupifying qualities of beef, ale, and wine, that I have contracted a most religious veneration for your spiritual nouriture. Only imagine that I here every day see men, who are mountains of roast beef, and only seem just roughly hewn out into the outlines of human form, like the giant-rock at 1 Admiral Matthews. DOVER. 2 This very lively letter is the first of the series, hitherto unpublished, addressed by Mr. Walpole to John Chute, Esq., of the Vine, in the county of Hants [see p. 72]. Mr. Chute was the grandson of Chaloner Chute, Esq., Speaker of the House of Commons to Itichard Cromwell's parliament. On the death of his brother Anthony, in 1754, he succeeded to the family estates, and died in 1776. WRIGHT. Walpole's letters to Chute were returned to him by Chute's executors. CUNNINGHAM. 1743.] TO MR. CHUTE. 265 Pratolino ! I shudder when I see them brandish their knives in act to carve, and look on them as savages that devour one another. I should not stare at all more than I do, if yonder Alderman at the lower end of the table was to stick his fork into his neighbour's jolly cheek, and cut a brave slice of brown and fat. Why, I'll SAvear I see no difference between a country gentleman and a sirloin ; whenever the first laughs, or the latter is cut, there run out just the same streams of gravy ! Indeed, the sirloin does not ask quite so many questions. I have an Aunt here, 1 a family piece of goods, an old remnant of inquisitive hospitality and economy, who, to all intents and purposes, is as beefy as her neighbours. She wore me so down yesterday with interrogatories, that I dreamt all night she was at my ear with ' who's ' and ' why's/ and ' when's ' and ' where's,' till at last in my very sleep I cried out, " For Grod in heaven's sake, Madam, ask me no more questions ! " Oh ! my dear Sir, don't you find that nine parts in ten of the world are of no use but to make you wish yourself with that tenth part ? I am so far from growing used to mankind by living amongst them, that my natural ferocity and wildness does but every day grow worse. They tire me, they fatigue me ; I don't know what to do with them ; I don't know what to say to them ; I fling open the windows, and fancy I want air ; and when I get by myself, I undress myself, and seem to have had people in my pockets, in my plaits, and on my shoulders ! I indeed find this fatigue worse in the country than in town, because one can avoid it there and has more resources ; but it is there too. I fear 'tis growing old ; but I literally seem to have murdered a man whose name was Ennui, for his ghost is ever before me. They say there is no English word for ennui; 3 I think you may translate it most literally by what is called " entertaining people," and " doing the honours : " that is, you sit an hour with somebody you don't know and don't care for, talk about the wind and the weather, and ask a thousand foolish questions, which all begin with, " I think you live a good deal in the country," or, " I think you don't love this thing or that." Oh! 'tis dreadful ! I'll tell you what is delighful the Dominichin ! 3 My dear Sir, 1 Either Lady Turner or Mrs. Hammond. CUNNINGHAM. " Ennui is a growth of English root, Though nameless in our language : we retort The fact for words, and let the French translate That awful yawn, which sleep cannot abate." Byron. WRIGHT. 3 Thus described by Walpole in his description of the pictures at Houghton : 266 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1743. if ever there was a Dominichin, if there was ever an original picture, this is one. I am quite happy ; for my father is as much trans- ported with it as I am. It is hung in the gallery, where are all his most capital pictures, and he himself thinks it beats all but the two Guido's. That of the Doctors and the Octagon I don't know if you ever saw them ? What a chain of thought this leads me into ! but why should I not indulge it ? I will flatter myself with your, some time or other, passing a few days here with me. Why must I never expect to see anything but Beefs in a gallery which would not yield even to the Colonna ! If I do not most unlimitcdly wish to see you and Mr. Whithed in it this very moment, it is only because I would not take you from our dear Mimj. Adieu ! you charming people all. Is not Madam Bosville a Beef ? Yours, most sincerely. 126. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Hougldon, August 29, 1743. You frighten me about the Spaniards entering Tuscany : it is so probable, that I have no hopes against it but in their weakness. If all the accounts of their weakness and desertion are true, it must be easy to repel them. If their march to Florence is to keep pace with Prince Charles's entering Lorrain, it is not yet near : hitherto, he has not found the passage of the Rhine practicable. The French have assembled greater armies to oppose it than was expected. We are marching to assist him : the King goes on with the army. I am extremely sorry for the Chevalier de Beauvau's 1 accident ; as sorry, perhaps, as the Prince or Princess ; for you know he was no favourite. The release of the French prisoners prevents the civilities which I would have taken care to have had shown him. You may tell the Princess, that though it will be so much honour to us to have any of her family in our power, yet I shall always be extremely concerned to have such an opportunity of showing my attention to them. There's a period in her own style " Comment! Monsieur, des attentions ! qu'il est poli ! qu'il scait tourner une civilite ! " " Ha ! 2 la brave Angloise ! e viva ! " What would I have given " The Virgin and Child, a most beautiful, bright, and capital picture, by Domini- chino : bought out of the Zambeccari Palace at Bologna by Horace Walpole, junior." WRIGHT. 1 Third son of Prince Craon, and Knight of Malta. WALPOLE. 2 This relates to an intrigue which was observed in a church between an English 1743.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 267 to have overheard you breaking it to the gallant ! But of all, com- mend me to the good man Nykin ! Why, Mamie l himself could not have cuddled up an affair for his sovereign lady better. I have a commission from my Lord to send you ten thousand thanks for his bronze : he admires it beyond measure. It came down last Friday, on his birthday [August 26], and was placed at the upper end of the gallery, which was illuminated on the occasion : indeed, it is incredible what a magnificent appearance it made. There were sixty-four candles, which showed all the pictures to great advantage. The Dominichin did itself and us honour. There is not the least question of its being original : one might as well doubt the originality of King Patapan ! His patapanic majesty is not one of the least curiosities of Houghton. The crowds that come to see the house stare at him, and ask what creature it is. As he does not speak one word of Norfolk, there are strange conjectures made about him. Some think that he is a foreign prince come to marry Lady Mary. The disaffected say he is a Hanoverian : but the common people, who observe my Lord's vast fondness for him, take him for his good genius, which they call his familiar. You will have seen in the papers that Mr. Pelham is at last first Lord of the Treasury. Lord Bath had sent over Sir John Rush- out's valet de chambre to Hanau to ask it. It is a great question now what side he will take ; or rather, if any side will take him, It is not yet known what the good folks in the Treasury will do I believe, what they can. Nothing farther will be determined till the King's return. 127. TO SIR HORACE MANN. H&ugUon, Sept. 7, 1743. MY letters are now at their ne plus ultra of nothingness ; so you may hope they will grow better again. I shall certainly go to town gentleman and a lady who was at Florence with her husband. Mr. Mann was desired to speak to the lover to choose more proper places. WALPOLE. 1 Prince Craon's name for the Princess. She was mistress of Leopold, the last Duke of Lorrain, who married her to M. de Beauvau, and prevailed on the Emperor to make him a prince of the empire. Leopold had twenty children by her, who all resembled him ; and he got his death by a cold which he contracted in standing to see a new house, which he had built for her, furnished. The Duchess was extremely jealous, and once retired to Paris, to complain to her brother the Regent; but he was not a man to quarrel with his brother-in-law for things of that nature, and sent hia sister back. Madame de Craon gave into devotion after the Duke's death. WALPOLK. 268 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTEES. [1743. soon, for my patience is worn out. Yesterday, the weather grew cold ; I put on a new waistcoat for its being winter's birthday the season I am forced to love ; for summer has no charms for me when I pass it in the country. "We are expecting another battle, and a congress at the same time. Ministers seem to be flocking to Aix la Chapelle : and, what will much surprise you, unless you have lived long enough not to be surprised, is, that 'Lord Bolingbroke has hobbled the same way too you will suppose, as a minister for France ; I tell you, no. My uncle [old Horace], who is here, was yesterday stumping along the gallery with a very political march : my Lord asked him whither he was going. Oh, said I, to Aix la Chapelle. You ask me about the marrying Princesses. I know not a tittle. Princess Louisa ' seems to be going, her clothes are bought ; but marrying our daughters makes no conversation. For either of the other two, all thoughts seem to be dropped of it. The senate of Sweden design themselves to choose a wife for their man of Lubeck. The City, and our supreme governors, the mob, are very angry that there is a troop of French players at Cliefden. 2 One of them was lately impertinent to a countryman, who thrashed him. His Royal Highness sent angrily to know the cause. The fellow replied, " he thought to have pleased his Highness in beating one of them, who had tried to kill his father and had wounded his brother." This was not easy to answer. I delight in Prince Craoii's exact intelligence ! For his satisfac- tion, I can tell him that numbers, even here, would believe any story full as absurd as that of the King and my Lord Stair ; or that very one, if anybody will write it over. Our faith in politics will match any Neapolitan's in religion. A political missionary will make more converts in a county progress than a Jesuit in the whole empire of China, and will produce more preposterous miracles. Sir Watkin Williams, at the last Welsh races, convinced the whole principality (by reading a letter that affirmed it), that the King was not within two miles of the battle of Dettingen. We are not good at hitting off anti-miracles, the only way of defending one's own religion. I have read an admirable story of the Duke of Buckingham, who, 1 Youngest daughter of George II. She was married in the following October, and died in 1751, at the age of twenty-seven. WRIGHT. 2 Cliefden, in Buckinghamshire, the residence of the Prince of Wales. This noble building was burnt to the ground in 1795, and nothing of its furniture preserved but the tapestry that represented the Duke of Marlborough's victories. WRIGHT. 1743.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 269 when James II. sent a priest to him to persuade him to turn Papist, and was plied by him with miracles, told the doctor, that if miracles were proofs of a religion, the Protestant cause was as well supplied as theirs. We have lately had a very extraordinary one near my estate in the country. A very holy man, as you might be, Doctor, was travelling on foot, and was benighted. He came to the cottage of a poor dowager, who had nothing in the house for herself and daughter but a couple of eggs and a slice of bacon. However, as she was a pious widow, she made the good man welcome. In the morning, at taking leave, the saint made her over to God for payment, and prayed that whatever she should do as soon as he was gone she might continue to do all day. This was a very unlimited request, and, unless the saint was a prophet too, might not have been very pleasant retribution. The good woman, who minded her affairs, and was not to be put out of her way, went about her business. She had a piece of coarse cloth to make a couple of shifts for herself and child. She no sooner began to measure it but the yard fell a measuring, and there was no stopping it. It was sunset before the good woman had time to take breath. She was almost stifled, for she was up to her ears in ten thousand yards of cloth. She could have afforded to have sold Lady Mary Wortley a clean shift, 1 of the usual coarseness she wears, for a groat halfpenny. I wish you would tell the Princess this story. Madame Biccardi, or the little Countess d'Elbenino, will doat on it. I don't think it will be out of Pandolfini's way, if you tell it to the little Albizzi. You see I have not forgot the tone of my Florentine acquaintance. I know I should have translated it to them : you remember what admirable work I used to make of such stories in broken Italian. I have heard old Churchill tell Bussy English puns out of jest-books : particularly a reply about eating hare, which he translated, "j'ai mon ventre plein de poil." Adieu ! 128. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Houghton, Sept. 17, 1743. As much as we laughed at Prince Craon's history of the King and Lord Stair, you see it was not absolutely without foundation. I 1 Lady Mary Wortlej's linen "linen worthy Lady Mary " and her "dirty smock " are commemorated in verse by Pope. CUNNINGHAM. 270 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1743. don't just believe that he threatened his master with the Parliament. They say he gives for reason of his quitting, their not having accepted one plan of operation that he has offered. There is a long memorial that he presented to the King, with which I don't doubt but his Lordship will oblige the public. 1 He has ordered all his equipages to be sold by public auction in the camp. This is all I can tell you of this event, and this is more than has been written to the Ministry here. They talk of great uneasiness among the English officers, all of which I don't believe. The army is put into com- mission. Prince Charles has not passed the Rhine, nor we anything but our time. The papers of to-day tell us of a definitive treaty signed by us and the Queen of Hungary with the King of Sardinia, which I will flatter myself will tend to your defence. I am not in much less trepidation about Tuscany than Richcourt is, though I scarce think my fears reasonable ; but while you are concerned, I fear everything. My Lord does not admire the account of the Lanfranc ; thanks you, and will let it alone. I am going to town in ten days, not a little tired of the country, and in the utmost impatience for the winter ; which I am sure, from all political prospects, must be entertaining to one who only intends to see them at the length of a telescope. I was lately diverted with an article in the Abecedario Pittorico, in the article of William Dobson : it says, " Nacque nel quartiere d'Holbrons in Inghilterra." 2 Did the author take Holborn for a city, or Inghilterra for the capital of the island of London ? Adieu ! 129. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Newmarket, Oct. 3, 1743. I AM writing to you in an inn on the road to London. What a paradise should I have thought this when I was in the Italian inns ! in a wide barn with four ample windows, which had nothing more like glass than shutters and iron bars ! no tester to the bed, and the saddles and portmanteaus heaped on me to keep off the cold. What 1 In this memorial Lord Stair complained that his advice had been slighted, hinted at Hanoverian partialities, and asked permission to retire, as he expressed it, to his plough. His resignation was accepted, with marks of the King's displeasure at the language in which it was tendered. WRIGHT. 8 William Dobson, whom King Charles called the English Tintoret, was born in 1610, in St. Andrew's parish, in Holborn. Walpole's Anecdotes. CUNKINGHAM. 1743.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 271 a paradise did I think the inn at Dover when I came back ! and what magnificence were twopenny prints, salt-sellers, and boxes to hold the knives ; but the summiim bonum was small-beer and the newspaper. " I bless'd my stars, and call'd it luxury ! " Who was the Neapolitan ambassadress 1 that could not live at Paris, because there was no maccaroni ? Now am I relapsed into all the dissatisfied repinement of a true English grumbling volup- tuary. I could find in my heart to write a Craftsman against the Government, because I am not quite so much at my ease as on my own sofa. I could persuade myself that it is my Lord Carteret's fault that I am only sitting in a common arm-chair, when I would be lolling in a peche-mortel. How dismal, how solitary, how scrub does this town look ; and yet it has actually a street of houses better than Parma or Modena. Nay, the houses of the people of fashion, who come hither for the races, are palaces to what houses in London itself were fifteen years ago. People do begin to live again now, and I suppose in a term we shall revert to York Houses, Clarendon Houses, &c. But from that grandeur all the nobility had contracted themselves to live in coops of a dining-room, a dark back-room, with one eye in a corner, and a closet. Think what London would be, if the chief houses were in it, as in the cities in other countries, and not dispersed like great rarity-plums in a vast pudding of country. Well, it is a tolerable place as it is ! Were I a physician, I would prescribe nothing but recipe, CCCLXV drachm. Londin. Would you know why I like London so much ? Why, if the world must consist of so many fools as it does, I choose to take them in the gross, and not made into separate pills, as they are prepared in the country. Besides, there is no being alone but in a metropolis : the worst place in the world to find solitude is the country : questions grow there, and that unpleasant Christian commodity, neighbours. Oh ! they are all good Samaritans, and do so pour balms and nostrums upon one, if one has but the toothache, or a journey to take, that they break one's head. A journey to take ay ! they talk over the miles to you, and tell you, you will be late in. My Lord Lovel says, John always goes two hours in the dark in the morning, to avoid being one hour in the dark in the evening. I was pressed to set out to-day before seven : I did before nine ; and here am I arrived at a quarter past five, for the rest of the night. 1 The Princess of Campoflorido. 272 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1743. I am more convinced every day, that there is not only no know- ledge of the world out of a great city, but no decency, no practicable society I had almost said, not a virtue. I will only instance in modesty, which all old Englishmen are persuaded cannot exist within the atmosphere of Middlesex. Lady Mary has a remarkable taste and knowledge of music, and can sing ; I don't say, like your sister, but I am sure she would be ready to die if obliged to sing before three people, or before one with whom she is not intimate. The other day there came to see her a Norfolk heiress ; the young gentle- woman had not been three hours in the house, and that for the first time of her life, before she notified her talent for singing, and invited herself up-stairs, to Lady Mary's harpsichord ; where, with a voice like thunder, and with as little harmony, she sang to nine or ten people for an hour. "Was ever nymph like Rossymonde?" no, d'honmur. We told her she had a very strong voice. " Lord, Sir ! my master says it is nothing to what it was." My dear child, she brags abominably ; if it had been a thousandth degree louder, you must have heard it at Florence. I did not write to you last post, being overwhelmed with this* sort of people : I will be more punctual in London. Patapan is in my lap ; I had him wormed lately, which he took heinously ; I made it up with him by tying a collar of rainbow riband about his neck, for a token that he is never to be wormed any more. I had your long letter of two sheets of Sept. 17th, and wonder at your perseverance in telling me so much as you always do, when I, dull creature, find so little for you. I can only tell you that the more you write, the happier you make me ; and I assure you, the more details the better : I so often lay schemes for returning to you, that I am persuaded I shall, and would keep up my stock of Florentine ideas. I honour Matthews's punctilious observance of his Holincss's dignity. How incomprehensible Englishmen are ! I should have sworn that he would have piqued himself on calling the Pope the w of Babylon, and have begun his remonstrance, with " you old d d ." What extremes of absurdities ! to flounder from Pope Joan to his Holiness ! I like your reflection, " that every body can bully the Pope." There was a humourist called Sir James of the Peak, who had been beat by a fellow, who afterwards under- went the same operation from a third hand. " Zounds," said Sir James, " that I did not know this fellow would take a beating ! " Nay, my dear child, I don't know that Matthews would ! 1743.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 273 You know I always thought the Testi comique, pendant que f devroit etre tragique. I am happy that my sovereign Lady expressed my opinion so well by the way, is De Sade still with you ? Is he still in pawn by the proxy of his clothes ? Has the Princess as constant retirements to her bedchamber with the colique and Antenori ! Oh ! I was struck the other day with a resemblance of mine hostess at Brandon to old Sarazin. You must know, the ladies of Norfolk universally wear periwigs, and affirm that it is the fashion at London. "Lord, Mrs. "White, have you been ill, that you have shaved your head ? " Mrs. White, in all the days of my acquaintance with her, had a professed head of red hair : to-day, she had no hair at all before, and at a distance above her ears, I descried a smart brown bob, from beneath which had escaped some long strings of original scarlet so like old Sarazin at two in the morning, when she has been losing at Pharaoh, and clawed her wig aside, and her old trunk is shaded with the venerable white ivy of her own locks. I agree with you, that it would be too troublesome to send me the things now the quarantine exists, except the gun-barrels for Lord Conway, the length of which I know nothing about, being, as you conceive, no sportsman. I must send you, with the Life of Theodore, a vast pamphlet [" Faction Detected "] in defence of the new admi- nistration, which makes the greatest noise. It is written, as supposed, by Dr. Pearse, 1 of St. Martin's, whom Lord Bath lately made a dean ; the matter furnished by him. There is a good deal of useful knowledge of the famous change to be found in it, and much more impudence. Some parts are extremely fine; in particular, the answer to the Hanoverian pamphlets, where he has collected the flower of all that was said in defence of that measure. Had you those pamphlets ? I will make up a parcel : tell me what other books you would have : I will send you nothing else, for if I give you the least bauble, it puts you to infinite expense, which I can't forgive, and indeed will never bear again : you would ruin yourself, and there is nothing I wish so much as the contrary. Here is a good Ode, written on the supposition of that new book being Lord Bath's ; I believe by the same hand as those charming ones which I sent you last year : the author is not yet known. 2 1 Zachariah Pearse, afterwards Bishop of Bangor [afterwards of Rochester]. He was not the author, but Lord Perceval, afterwards Earl of Egmont. WALPOLB. 2 The Ode by Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, beginning, " Your sheets I've per- used." DOVF.K. 274 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1743. The Duke of Argyle ' is dead a death of how little moment, and of how much it would have been a year or two ago ! It is provoking, if one must die, that one can't even die a propos ! How does your friend Dr. Cocchi ? You never mention him : do only knaves and fools deserve to be spoken of? Adieu ! 130. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Arlington Street, Oct. 12, 1743. THEY had sent your letter of Sept. 24th to Houghton the very night I came to town. I did not receive it back till yesterday, and soon after another with Mr. Chute's inclosed, for which I will thank him presently. But, my dear child, I can, like you, think of nothing but your bitter father's letter. ! and that I should have contributed to it! how I detest myself! 2 My dearest Sir, you know all I ever said to him : indeed, I never do see him, and I assure you that now I would worship him as the Indians do the devil, for fear he should hurt you : tempt you I find he will not. He is so avaricious, that I believe, if you asked him for a fish, he would think it even extravagance to give you a stone : in these bad times, stones may come to be dear, and if he loses his place and his lawsuit, who knows but he may be reduced to turn pavior ? Oh ! the brute ! and how shocking, that, for your sake, one can't literally wish to see him want bread ! But how can you feel the least tender- ness, when the wretch talks of his bad health, and of not denying himself comforts ! It is weakness in you : whose health is worse, yours or his ? or when did he ever deny himself a comfort to please any mortal ? My dear child, what is it possible to do for you ? is there anything in my power ? What would I not do for you ? and, indeed, what ought I not, if I have done you any disservice ? I don't think there is any danger of your father's losing his place, 3 for who- 1 John, Duke of Argyll and Greenwich, commonly called the Great Duke, died 4th Oct. 1743. CUNNINGHAM. 2 Sir Horace Mann, in a letter to Walpole, dated Sept. 24th, 1743, gives an account of his father's refusal to give him any money ; and then quotes the following passage from his father's letter : " He tells me he has been baited by you and your uncle on my account, which was very disagreeable, and believes he may charge it to me." DOVER. 3 Mr. Robert Mann, father of Sir Horace Mann, had a place in Chelsea College, under the Paymaster of the Forces. WALPOLE. He was Deputy Treasurer of Chelsea Hospital. CCNNINGHAM. 1743.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 275 ever succeeds Mr. Pelham is likely to be a friend to this house, and would not turn out one so connected with it. I should be very glad to show my Lord an account of those statues you mention: they are much wanted in his hall, where, except the Laocoon, he has nothing but busts. For Graburri's drawings, I am extremely pleased with what you propose to me. I should be well content with two of each master. I can't well fix on any price ; but would not the rate of a sequin a-piece be sufficient ? to be sure he never gave anything like that : when one buys the quantity you mention to me, I can't but think that full enough for one with another. At least, if I bought so many as two hundred, I would not venture to go beyond that. I am not at all easy from what you tell me of the Spaniards. I have now no hopes but in the winter, and what it may produce. I fear ours will be most ugly : the disgusts about Hanover swarm and increase every day. The King and Duke [of Cumberland] have left the army, which is marching to winter-quarters in Flanders. He will not be here by his birth-day, but it will be kept when he comes. The Parliament meets the 22nd of November. All is distraction ! no union in the Court : no certainty about the House of Commons : Lord Carteret making no friends, the King making enemies : Mr. Pelham in vain courting Pitt, &c. Pulteney unresolved. How will it end ? No joy but in the Jacobites. I know nothing more, so turn to Mr. Chute. My dear Sir, how I am obliged to you for your poem ! Patapan is so vain with it, that he will read nothing else ; I only offered him a Martial to compare it with the original, and the little coxcomb threw it into the fire, and told me, " He never heard of a lapdog's reading Latin ; that it was very well for house-dogs and pointers that live in the country, and have several hours upon their hands : for my part," said he, " I am so nice, who ever saw A Latin book on my sofa 1 You'll find as soon a primer there Or recipes for pastry ware. Why do ye think I ever read But Crgbillon or Calprenede? This very thing of Mr. Chute's Scarce with my taste and fancy suits. Oh ! had it but in French been writ, 'Twere the genteelest, sweetest bit ! One hates a vulgar English poet : I vow t'ye, I should blush to show it, T 2 276 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1743. To women de ma connoissance, Did not that agr cable stance, Cher double entendre ! furnish means Of making sweet Patapanins ! " l My dear Sir, your translation shall stand foremost in the Pata- paniana : I hope in time to have poems upon him, and sayings of his own, enough to make a notable hook. En attendant, I have sent you some pamphlets to amuse your solitude ; for, do you see, as tramontane as I am, and as much as I love Florence, and hate the country, while we make such a figure in the world, or at least such a noise in it, one must consider you other Florentines as country gentlemen. Tell our dear Miny, that when he unfolds the enchanted carpet, which his brother the wise Galfridus sends him, he will find all the kingdoms of the earth portrayed in it. In short, as much history as was described on the ever-memorable and wonderful piece 1 Mr. Chute had sent Mr. Walpole the following imitation of an epigram of Martial : " Issa est passere nequior Catulli, Issa est purior osculo columbae." Martial, Lib. I. Ep. 110. " Pata is frolicsome and smart, As Geoffry once was (Oh my heart !) He's purer than a turtle's kiss, And gentler than a little miss ; A jewel for a lady's ear, And Mr. Walpole's pretty dear. He laughs and cries with mirth or spleen ; He does not speak, but thinks, 'tis plain. One knows his little Guai's as well As if he'd little words to tell. Coil'd in a heap, a plumy wreathe, He sleeps, you hardly hear him breathe. Then he 's so nice, who ever saw A drop that sullied his sofa 1 His bended leg ! what 's this but sense ? Points out his little exigence. He looks and points, and whisks about, And says, pray dear Sir, let me out. Where shall we find a little wife, To be the comfort of his life, To frisk and skip, and furnish means Of making sweet Patapanins ? England, alas ! can boast no she, Fit only for his cicisbee. Must greedy Fate then have him all ? No ; Wootton to our aid we'll call The immortality's the same, Built on a shadow, or a name. He shall have one by Wootton's means, The other Wootton for his pains. ' WALPOLH. 1743.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 277 of silk, which the puissant White Cat 1 inclosed in a nut-shell, and presented to her paramour Prince. In short, in this carpet, which (filberts being out of season) I was reduced to pack up in a walnut, he will find the following immense library of political lore : Maga- zines for October, November, December ; with an Appendix for the year 1741 ; all the Magazines for 1742, bound in one volume ; and nine Magazines for 1743. The Life of King Theodore, a certain fairy monarch; with the Adventures of this Prince and the fair Republic of Genoa. The " Miscellaneous Thoughts " of the fairy Hervey. The Question Stated. Case of the Hanover Troops ; and the Vindication of the Case. " Faction Detected." Congratulatory Letter to Lord Bath. The Mysterious Congress ; and four Old England Journals. Tell Mr. Mann, or Mr. Mann tell himself, that I would send bim nothing but this enchanted carpet, which he can't pretend to return. I will accept nothing under enchantment. Adieu all! Continue to love the two Patapans. 131. TO SIR HORACE MANN. London, Nov. 17, 1743. I WOULD not write on Monday till I could tell you the King was come. He arrived at St. James's between five and six on Tuesday. We were in great fears of his coming through the city, after the treason that has been publishing for these two months ; but it is incredible how well his reception was beyond what it had ever been before : in short, you would have thought that it had not been a week after the victory at Dettingen. They almost carried him into the palace on their shoulders ; and at night the whole town was illuminated and bonfired. He looks much better than he has for these five years, and is in great spirits. The Duke limps a little. The King's reception of the Prince, who was come to St. James's to wait for him, and who met bim on the stairs with his two sisters and the privy councillors, was not so gracious -pas un mot though the Princess was brought to bed the day before, 2 and Prince George [George III.] is ill of the small pox. It is very unpopular ! You will possibly, by next week, hear great things : hitherto, all is silence, expectation, struggle, and ignorance. The birth-day is kept on 1 See the story of the White Cat in the fairy tales. WALPOLB. 2 Of a son, afterwards Duke of Gloucester, and married to Walpole's niece, the Dowager Lady AValdegrave. CUNNINGHAM. 278 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1743; Tuesday, when the Parliament was to have met; but that can't be yet. Lord Holderness has brought home a Dutch bride : ' I have not seen her. The Duke of Richmond had a letter yesterday from Lady Albemarle, 2 at Altona. She says the Prince of Denmark is not so tall as his bride, but far from a bad figure : he is thin, and not ugly, except having too wide a mouth. When she returns, as I know her particularly, I will tell you more ; for the present, I think I have very handsomely despatched the chapter of royalties. My Lord comes to town the day after to-morrow. The Opera is begun, but is not so well as last year. The Rosa Mancini, who is second woman, and whom I suppose you have heard, is now old. In the room of Amorevoli, they have got a dreadful bass, who, the Duke of Montagu says he believes, was organist at Aschafienburgh. 3 Do you remember a tall Mr. Vernon, 4 who travelled with Mr. Cotton ? He is going to be married to a sister of Lord Strafford. I have exhausted my news, and you shall excuse my being short to-day. For the future, I shall overflow with preferments, alterations, and parliaments. Your brother brought me yesterday two of yours together, of Oct. 22 and 27, and I find you still overwhelmed with Richcourt's folly and the Admiral's explanatory ignorance. It is unpleasant to have old Pucci 5 added to your embarras. Chevalier Ossorio 6 was with me the other morning, and we were 1 Her name was Mademoiselle Doublette, and she is called in the Peerages " the niece of M. Van Haaren, of the province of Holland." DOVER. 2 Lady Anne Lenox, sister of the Duke of Richmond, and wife of William Anne van Keppel, Earl of Albemarle : she had been lady of the bedchamber to the Queen ; and this year conducted Princess Louisa to Altona, to be married to the Prince Royal of Denmark. WALPOLE. " Tho' rough Selingenstadt The harmony defeat, Tho' Kleen Ostein The verse confound ; Yet in the joyful strain Aschaffenburg or Dettingen Shall charm the ear they seem to wound." Collet/ Gibber's Ode for the King's Birthday, 1743. CUNHINGHAM. 4 Henry Vernon, Esq., a nephew of Admiral Vernon, married to Lady Henrietta Wentworth, daughter of Thomas, first Earl of Strafford, of the second creation. DOVER. 8 Signer Pucci was resident from Tuscany at the Court of England. WALPOLE. 6 Chevalier Ossorio was several years minister in England from the King of Sardinia, to whom he afterwards became first minister. WALPOLE. 1743.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 279 talking over the Hanoverians, as everybody does. I complimented him very sincerely on his master's great bravery and success : he answered very modestly and sensibly, that he was glad, amidst all the clamours, that there had been no cavil to be found with the subsidy paid to his King. Prince Lobkowitz makes a great figure, and has all my wishes and blessings for having put Tuscany out of the question. There is no end of my giving you trouble with packing me up cases : I shall pay the money to your brother. Adieu ! Embrace the Chutes, who are heavenly good to you, and must have been of great use in all your illness and disputes. 132. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Arlington Street, Nov. 30, 1743. I HAVE had two letters from you since I wrote myself. This I begin against to-morrow, for I should have little time to write. The Parliament opens, and we are threatened with a tight Opposition, though it must be vain, if the numbers turn out as they are cal- culated ; three hundred for the Court, two hundred and five opponents ; that is, in town ; for, you know, the whole amounts to five hundred and fifty-eight. The division in the Ministry has been more violent than between parties ; though now, they tell you, it is all adjusted. The Secretary [Lord Carteret], since his return, has carried all with a high hand, and treated the rest as ciphers ; but he has been so beaten in the cabinet council, that in appearance he submits, though the favour is most evidently with him. All the old ministers have flown hither as zealously as in former days ; and of the three levees' in this street, the greatest is in this house, as my Lord Carteret told them the other day ; " I know you all go to Lord Orford : he has more company than any of us do you think I can't go to him too ?" He is never sober ; his rants are amazing ; So are his parts and spirits. He has now made up with the Pelhams, though after naming to two vacancies in the Admiralty without their knowledge ; Sir Charles Hardy and Mr. Philipson. The other alterations are at last fixed. Winnington is to be Paymaster; Sandys, cofferer, on resigning the Exchequer to Mr. Pelham ; Sir John Eushout, Treasurer of the Navy ; and Harry Fox, Lord of the 1 Lord Carteret's, Mr. Pelham's, and Lord Orford's. WALPOLB. 280 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1743. Treasury. Mr. Compton 1 and Gybbons remain at that board. Wat. Plumber, a known man, said, the other day, " Zounds, Mr. Pulteney took those old dishclouts to wipe out the Treasury, and now they are going to lace them and lay them up ! " It is a most just idea : to be sure, Sandys and Rushout, and their fellows, are dish- clouts, if dishclouts there are in the world : and now to lace them ! The Duke of Marlborough has resigned everything, to reinstate himself in the old Duchess's will. She said the other day, " It is very natural : he listed as soldiers do when they are drunk, and repented when he was sober." So much for news : now for your letters. All joy to Mr. Whithed on the increase of his family ! and joy to you ; for now he is established in so comfortable a way, I trust you will not lose him soon and la Dame s'appelle ? If my Lady Walpole has a mind once in her life to speak truth, or to foretell, the latter of which has as seldom anything to do with truth as her ladyship has, why she may now about the Tesi's dog, for I shall certainly forget what it would be in vain to remember. My dear Sir, how should one convey a dog to Florence ! There are no travelling Princes of Saxe Gotha or Modena here at present, who would carry a little dog in a nutshell. The poor Maltese cats, to the tune of how many ! never arrived here ; and how should one little dog ever find its way to Florence! But tell me, and, if it is possible, I will send it. "Was it to be a greyhound, or of King Charles's breed ? It was to have been the latter ; but I think you told me that she rather had a mind to the other sort, which, by the way, I don't think I could get for her. Thursday, eight o'clock at night. I am just come from the House, and dined. Mr. Coke ' 2 moved the address, seconded by Mr. Yorke> the lord chancellor's son. 3 The Opposition divided 149 against 278 ; which gives a better prospect of carrying on the winter easily. In the Lords' house there was no division. Mr. Pitt called Lord Carteret the execrable author of our measures, and sole minister. 4 Mr. "Winnington replied, that he did 1 The Hon. George Compton, second son of George, fourth Earl of Northampton. He succeeded his elder brother James, the fifth earl, in the family titles and estates in 1754, and died in 1758. DOVER. 2 Edward Coke, only son of Lord Lovel. [See p. 57.] CUNNINGHAM. 8 Philip Yorke, eldest son of Lord Hardwicke ; and afterwards the second earl of that title. DOVER, 4 In Mr. Yorke's MS. Parliamentary Journal, the words are "an execrable, a sole 1743.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 281 not know of any sole minister ; but if my Lord Carteret was so, the gentlemen of the other side had contributed more to make him so than he had. I am much pleased with the prospect you show me of the Correggio. My Lord is so satisfied with the Dominichin, that he will go as far as a thousand pounds for the Correggio. Do you really think we shall get it, and for that price ? You talk of the new couple, and of giving the sposa a mantilla : what new couple ? you don't say. I suppose, some Suares, by the raffle. Adieu ! 133. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Dec. 15, 1743. I WRITE in a great fright, lest this letter should come too late. My Lord has been told by a Dr. Bragge, a virtuoso, that, some years ago, the monks asked ten thousand pounds for our Correggio, 1 and that there were two copies then made of it : that afterwards, he is persuaded, the King of Portugal bought the original ; he does not know at what price. Now, I think it very possible that this doctor, hearing the picture was to be come at, may have invented this Portuguese history ; but as there is a possibility, too, that it may be true, you must take all imaginable precautions to be sure it is the very original a copy would do neither you nor me great honour. We have entered upon the Hanoverian campaign. Last Wed- nesday, Waller moved in our House an address to the King, to continue them no longer in our pay than to Christmas-day, the term for which they were granted. The debate lasted till half an hour after eight at night. Two young officers a told some very trifling stories against the Hanoverians, which did not at all add any weight to the arguments of the Opposition ; but we divided 231 to 181. On Friday, Lord Sandwich and Lord Halifax, in good speeches, brought the same motion into the Lords. I was there, and heard Lord Chesterfield make the finest oration I ever did hear. 3 My father minister, who had renounced the British nation, and seemed to have drunk of the potion described in poetic fictions." WEIGHT. 1 One of the most celebrated pictures of Correggio, with the Madonna and Child, paints, and angels, in a convent at Parma. WALPOLB. 2 Captain Ross and Lord Charles Hay. WRIGHT. 3 " Lord Chesterfield's performance was much cried up ; but few of his admirers could distinguish the faults of his eloquence from its beauties." Yorke, MS. Parl. Journal. WRIGHT. 282 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1743. did not speak, nor Lord Bath. They threw out the motion by 71 to 36. These motions will determine the bringing on the demand for the Hanoverians for another year in form ; which was a doubtful point, the old part of the ministry being against it, though very contrary to my lord's advice. Lord Gower, finding no more Tories were to be admitted, resigned on Thursday ; and Lord Cobham in the afternoon. The Privy-Seal was the next day given to Lord Cholmondeley. Lord Gower's resignation is one of the few points in which I am content the prophecy in the old Jacobite ballad should be fulfilled "The King shall have his own again." ' The changes are begun, but will not be completed till the recess, as the preferments will occasion more re-elections than they can spare just now in the House of Commons. Sandys has resigned the Exchequer to Mr. Pelham ; Sir John Rushout is to be Treasurer of the Navy; Winnington, Paymaster; Harry Fox, Lord of the Treasury ; Lord Edgcumbe, I believe, Lord of the Treasury, 2 and Sandys, Cofferer and a peer. I am so scandalised at this, that I will fill up my letter (having told you all the news) with the first fruits of my indignation. VERSES ADDRESSED TO THE HOUSE OF LORDS ON ITS RECEIVING A NEW PEEK. 3 THOU senseless Hall, whose injudicious space, Like Death, confounds a various mismatch'd race, Where kings and clowns, th' ambitious and the mean, Compose th' inactive soporific scene, Unfold thy doors ! and a promotion see, That must amaze ev'n prostituted thee ! Shall not thy sons, incurious as they are, Raise their dull lids, and meditate a stare ? Thy sons, who sleep in monumental state, To show the spot where their great fathers sate. Ambition first, and specious warlike worth, Call'd our old peers and brave patricians forth ; And subject provinces produced to fame Their lords with scarce a less than regal name. 1 111 one of his ballads he [the Duke of Wharton] has bantered his own want of heroism ; it was in a song he made on being seized by the guard in St. James's Park, for singing the Jacobite air " The King shall have his own again." Walpole, Roy. and N. Authors. Gower had been a Jacobite, ante, p. 176. CUNNINGHAM. 2 This did not happen. WALPOLE. 3 Samuel Sandys, created Lord Sandys, Baron of Ombersley, co. Worcester, Dec. 20, 1743 ; died April 21, 1770. CUNNINGHAM. 1743.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 283 Then blinded monarchs, flattery's fondled race, Their fav'rite minions stamp'd with titled grace, And bade the tools of power succeed to Virtue's place. Hence Spencers, Gavestons, by crimes grown great, Vaulted into degraded Honour's seat : Hence dainty Villiers sits in high debate Where manly Beauchamps, Talbots, Cecils sate : Hence Wentworth, 1 perjured patriot, burst each tie, Profaned each oath, and gave his life the lie ; Renounced whate'er he sacred held and dear, Renounced his country's cause, and sank into a Peer. Some have bought ermine, venal Honour's veil, When set by bankrupt Majesty to sale ; Or drew Nobility's coarse ductile thread From some distinguish'd harlot's titled bed. Not thus ennobled Samuel ! no worth Call'd from his mud the sluggish reptile forth ; No parts to flatter, and no grace to please, With scarce an insect's impotence to tease, He struts a Peer though proved too dull to stay, Whence 2 ev'n poor Gybbons is not brush'd away. Adieu ! I am just going to Leicester House, where the Princess sees company to-day and to-morrow, from seven to nine, on her lying-in. I mention this per amor del Signer Marchese Cosimo Riccardi. 3 134. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Arlington Street, Dec. 26, 1743. I SHALL complain of inflammations in my eyes, till you think it is an excuse for not writing ; but your brother is my witness that I have been shut up in a dark room for this week. I get frequent colds, which fall upon my eyes ; and then I have bottles of sovereign eye- waters from all my acquaintance ; but as they are only acciden- tal colds, I never use anything but sage, which braces my eye-fibres again in a few days. I have had two letters since my last to you ; one complaining of my silence, and the other acknowledging one from me after a month's intermission : indeed, I never have been so long without writing to you : I do sometimes miss two weeks on any great dearth of news, which is all I have to fill a letter ; for living as I do among people, whom, from your long absence, you cannot 1 Earl of Strafford ; but it alludes to Lord Bath. WALPOLE. 2 The Treasury. WALPOLE. 3 A gossiping old Florentine nobleman, whose whole employment was to inform himself of the state of marriages, pregnancies, lyings-in, and such like histories. WALPOLE. 284 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1743. know, I should talk Hebrew to mention them to you. Those, that from eminent birth, folly, or parts, are to be found in the chronicles of the times, I tell you of, whenever necessity or the King puts them into new lights. The latter, for I cannot think the former had any hand in it, has made Sandys, as I told you, a lord and Cofferer ! Lord Middlesex is one of the new Treasury, not ambassador as you heard. So the Opera-house and White's have contributed a Com- missioner and a Secretary to the Treasury, 1 as their quota to the government. It is a period to make a figure in history. There is a recess of both Houses for a fortnight ; and we are to meet again, with all the quotations and flowers that the young orators can collect and forcibly apply to the Hanoverians ; with all the malice which the disappointed Old have hoarded against Carteret, and with all the impudence his defenders can sell him : and when all that is vented what then ? why then, things will be just where they were. General "Wade * is made Field-Marshal, and is to have the com- mand of the army, as it is supposed, on the King's not going abroad ; but that is not declared. The French preparations go on with much more vigour than ours ; they not having a House of Commons to combat all the winter ; a campaign that necessarily engages all the attention of ministers, who have no great variety of apartments in their understandings. I have paid your brother the bill I received from you, and give you a thousand thanks for all the trouble you have had ; most particularly from the plague of hams, 3 from which you have saved me. Heavens ! how blank I should have looked at unpacking a great case of bacon and wine ! My dear child, be my friend, and preserve me from heroic presents. I cannot possibly at this distance begin a new courtship of regali ; for I suppose all those hams were to be converted into watches and toys. Now it would suit Sir Paul Methuen 4 very well, who is a knight-errant at seventy-three, to carry on an amour between Mrs. Chenevix's* shop and a noble cellar in 1 John Jeffries. WALPOLE. 2 General George Wade, afterwards commander of the forces in Scotland. He died in 1748. A fine monument, by Roubiliac, was erected to his memory in Westminster Abbey. WRIGHT. 3 Madame Grifoni was going to send Mr. W. a present of hams and Florence wine. WALPOLE. 4 Sir Paul Methuen, of Corsham, in the co. of Wilts, died 1757. See p. 100. CUNNINGHAM. 8 The noted toy-woman, formerly an inhabitant of Strawberry Hill. CUNNINGHAM. 1744.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 285 Florence ; but alas ! I am neither old enough nor young enough to be gallant, and should ill become the writing of heroic epistles to a fair mistress in Italy No, no : " ne sono uscito con onore, mi pare, e non voglio riprendere quel impegno piu." You see how rustic I am grown again ! I knew your new brother-in-law [Mr. Foote] at school, but have not seen him since. But your sister was in love, and must conse- quently be happy to have him. Yet I own, I cannot much felicitate anybody that marries for love. It is bad enough to marry ; but to marry where one loves, ten times worse. It is so charming at first, that the decay of inclination renders it infinitely more disagreeable afterwards. Your sister has a thousand merits ; but they don't count : but then she has good sense enough to make her happy, if her merit cannot make him so. Adieu ! I rejoice for your sake that Madame Royale ' is recovered, as I saw in the papers. 135. TO SIR HORACE MANN. DEAR SIR : I HAVE been much desired by a very particular friend, to recom- mend to you Sir William Maynard, 2 who is going to Florence. You will oblige me extremely by any civilities you show him while he stays there ; in particular, by introducing him to the Prince and Princess de Craon, Madame Suares, and the rest of my acquaintance there, who, I dare say, will continue their goodness to me, by receiving him with the same politeness that they received me. I am, &c. 136. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Arlington Street, Jan. 24, 1744. DON'T think me guilty of forgetting you a moment, though I have missed two or three posts. If you knew the incessant hurry and fatigue in which I live, and how few moments I have to myself, 1 The Duchess of Lorrain, mother of the Great Duke : her death would have occa- sioned a long mourning at Florence. WALPOLE. Elizabeth of Orleans, only daughter of Philip, Duke of Orleans (Monsieur), by his second wife, the Princess Palatine. DOVER. 2 Sir William Maynard, the fourth baronet of the family, and a younger branch of the Lords Maynard. DOVER. 286 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1744. you would not suspect me. You know, I am naturally indolent, and without application to any kind of business ; yet it is impossible, in this country, to live in the world, and be in parliament, and not find oneself every day more hooked into politics and company, especially inhabiting a house that is again become the centre of affairs. My Lord becomes the last resource, to which they are all forced to apply One part of the Ministry, you may be sure, do ; and for the other, they affect to give themselves the honour of it too. Last Thursday I would certainly have written to give you a full answer to your letter of grief, 1 but I was shut up in the House till past ten at night ; and the night before till twelve. But I must speak to you in private first. I don't in the least doubt but my Lady "Walpole and Bichcourt would willingly be as mischievous as they are malicious, if they could : but, my dear child, it is impos- sible. Don't fear from Lord Carteret's silence to you; he never writes : if that were a symptom of disgrace, the Duke of Newcastle would have been out long ere this : and when the Regency were not thought worthy of his notice, you could not expect it. As to your being attached to Lord Orford, that is your safety. Carteret told him the other day, " My Lord, I appeal to the Duke of Newcastle, if I did not tell the King, that it was you who had carried the Hanover troops." That, too, disproves the accusation of Sir Robert's being no friend to the Queen of Hungary. That is now too stale and old. However, I will speak to my Lord and Mr. Pelham would I had no more cause to tremble for you, than from little cabals ! But, my dear child, when we hear every day of the Toulon fleet sailing, can I be easy for you? or can I not foresee where that must break, unless Matthews and the wonderful fortune of England can interpose effectually ? We are not without our own fears ; the Brest fleet of twenty-two sail is out at sea ; they talk, for Barbadoes. I believe we wish it may be thither destined ? Judge what I think ; I cannot, nor may write : but I am in the utmost anxiety for your situation. The whole world, nay the Prince himself allows, that if Lord Orford had not come to town, the Hanover troops had been lost. 8 1 Sir Horace Mann had written in great uneasiness, in consequence of his having heard that Count Richcourt, the Great Duke's minister, was using all his influence with the English government, in conjunction with Lady Walpole, to have Sir Horace removed from his situation at Florence. DOVER. 2 " Lord Orford's personal credit with his friends was the main reason that the question was so well disposed of : he never laboured any point during his own admi- 1744.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 287 They were in effect given up by all but Carteret. We carried our own army in Flanders by a majority of 112. 1 Last "Wednesday was the great day of expectation: we sat in the committee on the Hanover troops till twelve at night : the numbers were 271 to 226. The next day on the report we sat again till past ten, the Oppo- sition having moved to adjourn till Monday, on which we divided, 265 to 177. Then the Tories all went away in a body, and the troops were voted. We have still tough work to do : there are the estimates on the extraordinaries of the campaign, and the treaty of Worms 2 to come I know who 8 thinks this last more difficult to fight than the Hanover troops. It is likely to turn out as laborious a session as ever was. All the comfort is, all the abuse don't lie at your door nor mine ; Lord Carteret has the full perquisites of the ministry. The other day, after Pitt had called him "the Hanover troop- minister, a flagitious task-master," and said, "that the sixteen thousand Hanoverians were all the party he had, and were his placemen ; " in short, after he had exhausted invectives, he added, " But I have done : if he were present, I would say ten times more." 4 Murray shines as bright as ever he did at the bar ; which he seems to decline, to push his fortune in the House of Commons under Mr. Pelham. This is the present state of our politics, which is our present state ; for nothing else is thought of. We fear the King will again go abroad. nistration with more zeal, and at a dinner at Hanbury Williams's had a meeting with such of the old court party as were thought most averse to concurring in this measure; where he took great pains to convince them of the necessity there was for repeating it." Mr. P. Torke's MS. Journal. WEIGHT. 1 It appears from Mr. Philip Yorke's Parliamentary Journal, that the letter-writer took a part in the debate " Young Mr. Walpole's speech," he says, " met with deserved applause from every body : it was judicious and elegant : he applied the verse which Lucan puts in Curio's mouth to Caesar, to the King : ' Livor edax tibi cuncta negat, Gallasque subactos, Vix impune feres.' WEIGHT. z Between the King of England, the Queen of Hungary, and the King of Sardinia, to whom were afterwards added Holland and Saxony. It is sometimes called " the triple alliance." DOVEE. 3 Lord Orford. WALPOLE. 4 " Pitt as usual," says Mr. Yorke, in his MS. Parliamentary Journal, " fell foul of Lord Carteret, called him a Hanover troop-minister ; that they were his party, his placemen ; that he had conquered the cabinet by their means, and after being very lavish of his abuse, wished he was in the House, that he might give him more of it." To the uncommon accuracy of Mr. Walpole's reports of the proceedings in Parliament, the above-quoted journal bears strong evidence. WEIGHT. 288 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [17U. Lord Hartington has desired me to write to you for some melon- seeds, which you will be so good to get the best, and send to me for him. I can't conclude without mentioning again the Toulon squadron : we vapour and say, by this time Matthews has beaten them, while / see them in the port of Leghorn ! My dear Mr. Chute, I trust to your friendship to comfort our poor Miny : for my part I am all apprehension ! My dearest child, if it turns out so, trust to my friendship for working every engine to restore you to as good a situation as you will lose, if my fears prove prophetic ! The first peace would reinstate you in your favourite Florence, whoever were sovereign of it. I wish you may be able to smile at the vanity of my fears, as I did at yours about Eichcourt. Adieu ! adieu ! 137. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Feb. 9, 1744. I HAVE scarce time to write, or to know what I write. I live in the House of Commons. "We sat on Tuesday till ten at night, on a "Welsh election ; and shall probably stay as long to-day on the same. I have received all your letters by the couriers and the post : I am persuaded the Duke of Newcastle is much pleased with your despatch ; but I dare not enquire, for fear he should dislike your having written the same to me. I believe we should have heard more of the Brest squadron, if their appearance off the Land's End on Friday was se'n-night, steering towards Ireland, had occasioned greater consternation. It is incredible how little impression it made : the stocks hardly fell : though it was then generally believed that the Pretender's son was on board. "We expected some invasion ; but as they were probably disappointed on finding no rising in their favour, it is now believed that they are gone to the Mediterranean. They narrowly missed taking the Jamaica fleet, which was gone out convoyed by two men- of-war. The French pursued them, outsailed them, and missed them by their own inexpertness. Sir John Norris is at Portsmouth, ready to sail with nineteen men-of-war, and is to be joined by two more from Plymouth. We hope to hear that Matthews has beat the Toulon squadron before they can be joined by the Brest. This is the state of our situation. They have stopped the embarkation of the six thousand men for Flanders ; and I hope the King's journey 1744.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 289 thither. The Opposition fight every measure of supply, but very unsuccessfully. When this Welsh election is over, they will probably go out of town, and leave the rest of the session at ease. I think you have nothing to apprehend from the new mine that is preparing against you. My Lord is convinced it is an idle attempt ; and it will always be in his power to prevent any such thing from taking effect. I am very unhappy for Mr. Chute's gout, or for any- thing that disturbs the peace of people I love so much, and that I have such vast reason to love. You know my fears for you : pray Heaven they end well ! It is universally believed that the Pretender's son, who is at Paris, will make the campaign in one of their armies. I suppose this will soon produce a declaration of war ; and then France, perhaps, will not find her account in having brought him as near to England as ever he is like to be. Adieu ! My Lord is hurrying me down to the House. I must go ! 138. TO SIR HORACE MANN. House of Commons, Feb. 16, 1744. WE are come nearer to a crisis than indeed I expected ! After the various reports about the Brest squadron, it has proved that they are sixteen ships of the line off Torbay ; in all probability to draw our fleet from Dunkirk, where they have two men-of-war and sixteen large India-men to transport eight thousand foot and two thousand horse which are there in the town. There has been some difficulty to persuade people of the imminence of our danger ; but yesterday the King sent a message to both Houses to acquaint us that he has certain information of the young Pretender being in France, and of the designed invasion from thence, in concert with the disaffected here. 1 Immediately the Duke of Marlborough, who most handsomely and seasonably was come to town on purpose, moved for an Address 1 "1744, February 13. Talking upon this subject with Horace Walpole, he told me confidentially that Admiral Matthews intercepted, last summer, a felucca in her passage from Toulon to Genoa, on board of which were found several papers of great consequence relating to a French invasion in concert with the Jacobites ; one of them particularly was in the style of an invitation from several of the nobility and gentry of England to the Pretender. These papers, he thought, had not been sufficiently looked into, and were not laid before the cabinet council until the night before the message was sent to both Houses." Mr. P. Yorke's Parliamentary Journal. \VKIGHT. 290 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1744. to assure the "King of standing by him with lives and fortunes. Lord Hartington, seconded by Sir Charles Windham, 1 the convert son of Sir William, moved the same in our House. To our amazement, and little sure to their own honour, "Waller and Dodington, supported in the most indecent manner by Pitt, moved to add, that we would immediately inquire into the state of the Navy, the causes of our danger by negligence, and the sailing of the Brest fleet. They insisted on this amendment, and debated it till seven at night, not one (professed) Jacobite speaking. The division was 287 against 123. In the Lords, Chesterfield moved the same amendment, seconded by old dull Westmoreland ; but they did not divide. All the troops have been sent for in the greatest haste to London ; but we shall not have above eight thousand men together at most. An express is gone to Holland, and General Wentworth followed it last night, to demand six thousand men, who will probably be here by the end of next week. Lord Stair 2 has offered the King his service, and is to-day named Com m ander-in- Chief. This is very generous, and will be of great use. He is extremely beloved in the army, and most firm to this family. I cannot say our situation is the most agreeable ; we know not whether Norris is gone after the Brest fleet or not. We have three ships in the Downs, but they cannot prevent a landing, which will probably be in Essex or Suffolk. Don't be surprised if you hear that this crown is fought for on land. As yet there is no rising ; but we must expect it on the first descent. Don't be uneasy for me, when the whole is at stake. I don't feel as if my friends would have any reason to be concerned for me : my warmth will carry me as far as any man ; and I think I can bear as I should the worst that can happen : though the delays of the French, I don't know from what cause, have not made that likely to happen. The King keeps his bed with the rheumatism. He is not less obliged to Lord Orford for the defence of his crown, now he is out of place, than when he was in the administration. His zeal, his courage, his attention, are indefatigable and inconceivable. He regards his own life no more than when it was most his duty to expose it, and fears for everything but that. 1 Afterwards Earl of Egremont. WAEPOLE : and Secretary of State, died Aug. 21, 1 763. CUNNINGHAM. 2 The Duke of Marlborougli and Lord Stair had quitted the army in disgust, after 1744.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 291 I flatter myself that next post I shall write you a more comfort- able letter. I would not have written this, if it were a time to admit deceit. Hope the best, and fear as little as you would do if you were here in the danger. My best love to the Chutes ; tell them I never knew how little I was a Jacobite till it was almost my interest to be one. Adieu ! 139. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Thursday, Feb. 23, 1744. I WRITE to you in the greatest hurry, at eight o'clock at night, while they are all at dinner round me. I am this moment come from the House, where we have carried a great Welsh election against Sir Watkyn Williams by 26. I fear you have not had my last, for the packet-boat has been stopped on the French stopping our messenger at Calais. There is no doubt of the invasion : the young Pretender is at Calais, and the Count de Saxe is to command the embarkation. Hitherto the spirit of the nation is with us. Sir John Norris was to sail yesterday to Dunkirk, to try to burn their transports; we are in the utmost expectation of the news. The Brest squadron was yesterday on the coast of Sussex. We have got two thousand men from Ireland, and have sent for two more. The Dutch are coming : Lord Stair is general. Nobody is yet taken up God knows why not ! We have repeated news of Matthews having beaten and sunk eight of the Toulon ships ; but the French have so stopped all communication that we don't yet know it certainly ; I hope you do. Three hundred arms have been seized in a French merchant's house at Plymouth. Attempts have been made to raise the clans in Scotland, but unsuccessfully. My dear child, I write short, but it is much ; and I could not say more in ten thousand words. All is at stake ; we have great hopes, but they are but hopes ! I have no more time : I wait with patience for the event, though to me it must and shall be decisive. 140. TO SIR HORACE MANN. March let, 1744. I WISH I could put you out of the pain my last letters must have last campaign, on the King's showing such immeasurable preference to the Hano- verians. WALPOLK. u 2 292 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1744. given you. I don't know whether your situation, to be at such a distance on so great a crisis, is not more disagreeable than ours, who are expecting every moment to hear the French are landed. We had great ill-luck last week : Sir John Norris, with four-and-twenty sail, came within a league of the Brest squadron, which had but fourteen. The coasts were covered with people to see the engagement ; but at seven in the evening the wind changed, and they escaped. There have been terrible winds these four or five days : our fleet has not suffered materially, but theirs less. Ours lies in the Downs ; five of theirs at Torbay the rest at La Hogue. We hope to hear that these storms, which blew directly on Dunkirk, have done great damage to their transports. By the fortune of the winds, which have detained them in port, we have had time to make preparations ; if they had been ready three weeks ago, when the Brest squadron sailed, it had all been decided. We expect the Dutch in four or five days. Ten battalions, which make seven thousand men, are sent for from our army in Flanders, and four thousand from Ireland, two of which are arrived. If they still attempt the invasion, it must be a bloody war ! The spirit of the nation has appeared extraordinarily in our favour. I wish I could say as much for that of the Ministry. Addresses are come from all parts, but you know how little they are to be depended on King James had them. The merchants of London are most zealous : the French name will do more harm to their cause than the Pretender's service. One remarkable circumstance happened to Colonel Cholmondeley's regiment on their march to London : the public-houses on all the road would not let them pay anything, but treated them, and said, " You are going to defend us against the French." There are no signs of any rising. Lord Barrimore, 1 the Pretender's general, and Colonel Cecil, his secretary of state, are at last taken up ; the latter, who having removed his papers, had sent for them back, thinking the danger over, is com- mitted to the Tower, on discoveries from them ; but, alas ! these discoveries go on but lamely." One may perceive who is not minister, rather than who is. The Opposition tried to put off the 1 James Barry, fourth Earl of Barry more. He died in 1747. See ante, p. 187. WRIGHT. 2 " Some treasonable papers of consequence were found in Cecil's pockets, which gave occasion to the apprehending of Lord Barrymore. They were both concerned in the affair of transmitting the Pretender's letter to the late Duke of Argyle ; which it was now lamented had not then undergone a stricter examination. I observed the Tories much struck with the news of his being secured." Mr. P. Yorke's Purl. Journal. WRIGHT. 1744.] TO SIB HOKACE MANN. 293 suspension of the Habeas Corpus feebly. Vernon [the Admiral] and the Grenvilles are the warmest : Pitt and Lyttelton went away without voting. 1 My father has exerted himself most amazingly : the other day, on the King's laying some information before the House, when the Ministry had determined to make no address on it, he rose up in the greatest agitation, and made a long and fine speech on the present situation. 2 The Prince was so pleased with it, that he has given him leave to go to his court, which he never would before. He went yesterday, and was most graciously received. Lord Stair is at last appointed general. General Oglethorpe 3 is to have a commission for raising a regiment of Hussars, to defend the coasts. The Swiss servants in London have offered to form them- selves into a regiment ; six hundred are already clothed and armed, but no colonel or officers appointed. "We flatter ourselves that the divisions in the French ministry will repair what the divisions in our own^xndo. The answer from the Court of France to Mr. Thomson on the subject of the boy * is most arrogant : " that when we have given them satisfaction for the many complaints which they have made on our infraction of treaties, then they will think of giving us des eclair- cissements." We have no authentic news yet from Matthews : the most credited is a letter from Marseilles to a Jew, which says it was the most bloody battle ever fought ; that it lasted three days ; that the two first we had the worst, and the third, by a lucky gale, totally defeated 1 " Lord Barrington's motion for deferring the suspension was thrown out by 181 against 83. Pitt and Lyttelton walked down the House whilst Lord Barrington was speaking, and went away ; so did Mr. Browne, though a Tory ; but most of that party voted with the Ayes. Lord Chesterfield told the Chancellor there was no opposition to this bill intended amongst the Lords ; not even a disposition to it in anybody ; and greatly approved the limiting it to so short a time." Mr. P. Yorke's Parl. Journal. WRIGHT. 2 " Lord Orford, though he had never spoken in the House of Lords, having remarked to his brother Horatio that he had left his tongue in the House of Commons, yet on this occasion his eloquent voice was once more raised, beseeching their lord- ships to forget their cavils and divisions, and unite in affection round the throne. It was solely owing to him that the torrent of public opposition was braved and over- come." Lord Mahon, Hist. voL iii. p. 273. WEIGHT. 3 General James Oglethorpe, born 1698, died 1785. He is immortalised by Pope : " One, driven by strong benevolence of soul, Shall fly, like Oglethorpe, from pole to pole." He was the friend of Dr. Johnson, and in his old age visited Walpole, who has given in his letters a brief account of him. CUNNINGHAM. 4 Charles Edward, the young Pretender. CUNNINGHAM. 294 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1744. them. Sir diaries Wager always said, " that if a sea-fight lasted three days, he was sure the English suffered the most for the two first, for no other nation would stand beating for two days to- gether/* Adieu! my dear child. I have told you every circumstance I know : I hope you receive my letters ; I hope their accounts will grow more favourable. I never found my spirits so high, for they never were so provoked. Hope the best, and believe that, as long as I am, I shall always be yours sincerely. P. S. My dear Chutes, I hope you will still return to your own England. 141. TO SIR HORACE MANN. March 5th, 1744, eight o' doc foot nigJd. I HAVE but time to write you a minute-line, but it will be a com- fortable one. There is just come advice, that the great storm on the 25th of last month, the very day the embarkation was to have sailed from Dunkirk, destroyed twelve of their transports, and obliged the whole number of troops, which were fifteen thousand, to debark. You may look upon the invasion as at an end, at least for the present ; though, as everything is to come to a crisis, one shall not be surprised to hear of the attempt renewed. We know nothing yet certain from Matthews ; his victory grows a great doubt. As this must go away this instant, I cannot write more but what could be more ? Adieu ! I wish you all joy. 142. TO SIR HORACE MANN. March 15th, 1744. I HAVE nothing new to tell you : that great storm certainly saved us from the invasion then. 1 Whether it has put an end to the design is uncertain. They say the embargo at Dunkirk and Calais is taken off, but not a vessel of ours is come in from thence. They 1 " The pious motto," says Mr. P. Yorke, "upon the medal struck by Queen Elizabeth after the defeat of the Armada, may, with as much propriety, be applied to this event ' Flavit vento, et dissipati Bunt ;' for, as Bishop Burnet somewhere ob- serves, ' our preservation at this juncture was one of those providential events, for which we have much to answer.' " MS. Purl. Journal. WRIGHT. 1744.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 295 have, indeed, opened again the communication with Ypres and Nieuport, &c., but we don't yet hear whether they have renewed their embarkation. However, we take it for granted it is all over from which, I suppose, it will not be over. We expect the Dutch troops every hour. That reinforcement, and four thousand men from Ireland, will be all the advantage we shall have made of gaining time. At last we have got some light into our Mediterranean affair, for there is no calling it a victory. Villettes has sent a courier, by which it seems we sunk one great Spanish ship ; the rest escaped, and the French fled shamefully ; that was, I suppose, designedly and artfully. "We can't account for Lestock's not coming up with his seventeen ships, and we have no mind to like it, which will not amaze you. We flatter ourselves that, as this was only the first day, we shall get some more creditable history of some succeeding day. The French are going to besiege Mons : I wish all the war may take that turn ; I don't desire to see England the theatre of it. We talk no more of its becoming so, nor of the plot, than of the gun- powder treason. Party is very silent ; I believe, because the Jacobites have better hopes than from parliamentary divisions, those in the ministry run very high, and, I think, near some crisis. I have enclosed a proposal from my bookseller to the undertaker of the " Museum Florentinum," or the concerners of it, as the paper called them; but it was expressed in such wonderfully-battered English, that it was impossible for Dodsley ' or me to be sure of the meaning of it. He is a fashionable author, and though that is no sign of perspicuity, I hope more intelligible. Adieu ! 143. TO SIR HORACE MANN. London, March 22, 1744. I AM sorry this letter must date the era of a new correspondence, the topic of which must be blood ! Yesterday, came advice from Mr. Thompson, 11 that Monsieur Amelot had sent for him and given him notice to be gone, for a declaration of war with England was to be published in two days. Politically, I don't think it so bad ; 1 Robert Dodsley, the celebrated bookseller, originally a footman; died 1764. CUNNINGHAM. 2 Chaplain to the late Lord Waldegrave ; after whose death he acted as minister at Paris, till the war, when he returned, and was made a dean in Ireland. WALPOLB. 296 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1744. for the very name of war, though in effect, on foot before, must make our governors take more precautions ; and the French declaring it will range the people more on our side than on the Jacobite : besides, the latter will have -their communication with France cut off. But, my dear child, what lives, what misfortunes, must and may follow all this ! As a man, I feel my humanity more touched than my spirit I feel myself more an universal man than an Englishman! We have already lost seven millions of money and thirty thousand men in the Spanish war and all the fruit of all this blood and treasure is the glory of having Admiral Vernon's head on alehouse signs ! ' for my part, I would not purchase another Duke of Marl- borough at the expense of one life. How I should be shocked, were I a hero, when I looked on my own laurelled head on a medal, the reverse of which would be widows and orphans. 2 How many such will our patriots have made ! The embarkation at Dunkirk does not seem to go on, though, to be sure, not laid aside. We received yesterday the particulars of the Mediterranean engagement from Matthews. We conclude the French squadron retired designedly, to come up to Brest, where we every day expect to hear of them. If Matthews does not follow them, adieu our triumphs in the Channel and then ! Sir John Norris has desired leave to come back, as little satisfied with the world as the world is with him. He is certainly very unfortunate ; 3 but I can't say I think he has tried to correct his fortune. If Eng- land is ever more to be England, this sure is the crisis to exert all her vigour. We have all the disadvantage of Queen Elizabeth's prospect, without one of her ministers. Four thousand Dutch are landed, and we hope to get eight or twelve ships from them. Can we now say, " Quatuor maria vindico ? " 4 I will not talk any more politically, but turn to hymeneals, with as much indifference as if I were a first minister. Who do you think is going to marry Lady Sophia Fermor? only my Lord Carteret ! this very week ! a drawing-room conquest. Do but imagine how many passions will be gratified in that family ! her own ambition, vanity, and resentment love she never had any; the politics, management, and pedantry of the mother, who will think to govern her son-in-law out of Froissart. 5 Figure the instructions she 1 Admiral Vernon is still (1856) a public-house sign in London. CUNNINGHAM. 2 Copied from Swift. CUNNINGHAM. 3 He was called by the seamen " Foul-weather Jack." WALPOLE. 4 Motto of a medal of Charles II. WALPOLE. 5 Lady Pomfret had translated Froissart. WALPOLE. 1744.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 297 will give her daughter ! Lincoln is quite indifferent and laughs. My Lord Chesterfield says, " it is only another of Carteret's vigorous measures." I am really glad of it ; for her beauty and cleverness did deserve a better fate than she was on the point of having deter- mined for her for ever. How graceful, how charming, and how haughtily condescending she will be ! how, if Lincoln should ever hint past history, she will " Stare upon the strange man's face, As one she ne'er had known ! " 1 I wonder I forgot 2 to tell you that Dodington had owned a match of seventeen years' standing with Mrs. Behan, to whom the one you mention is sister. I have this moment received yours of March 10th, and thank you much for the silver medal, which has already taken its place in my museum. I feel almost out of pain for your situation, as by the motion of the fleets this way, I should think the expedition to Italy abandoned. "We and you have had great escapes, but we have still occasion for all providence ! I am very sorry for the young Sposa Panciatici, and wish all the other parents joy of the increase of their families. Mr. Whithed is en ban train ; but the recruits he is raising will scarce thrive fast enough to be of service this war. My best loves to bim and Mr. Chute. I except you three out of my want of public spirit. The other day, when the Jacobites and patriots were carrying everything to ruin, and had made me warmer than I love to be, one of them said to me, " Why don't you love your country ? " I replied, " I should love my country exceedingly, if it were not for my country- men." Adieu ! 144. TO SIR HORACE MANN. April 2, 1744. I AM afraid our correspondence will be extremely disjointed, and the length of time before you get my letters will make you very impatient, when all the world will be full of events ; but I flatter myself that you will hear everything sooner than by my letters ; I 1 Verses in Congreve's " Doris." WALPOLE. 2 He had not forgotten, ante, p. 216. CUNNINGHAM. 298 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1744. mean, that whatever happens will be on the Continent; for the danger from Dunkirk seems blown over. We declared war on Saturday : that is all I know, for everybody has been out of town for the Easter holidays. To-morrow the Houses meet again : the King goes, and is to make a speech. The Dutch seem extremely in earnest, and I think we seem to put all our strength in their preparations. The town is persuaded that Lord Clinton ' is gone to Paris to make peace : he is certainly gone thither, nobody knows why. He has gone thither every year all his life, when he was in the Opposition ; but, to be sure, this is a very strange time to take that journey. Lord Stafford, who came hither just before the intended invasion, (no doubt for the defence of the Protestant religion, especially as his father-in-law, Bulkeley, 2 was colonel of one of the embarked regiments), is going to carry his sister to be married to a Count de Rohan, 3 and then returns, having a sign manual for leaving his wife there. We shall not be surprised to hear that the Electorate [of Hanover] has got a new master ; shall you ? Our dear nephew of Prussia will probably take it, to keep it safe for us. I had written thus far on Monday, and then my Lord came from New Park [Richmond] : and I had not time the rest of the day to finish it. We have made very loyal addresses to the King on his speech, which I suppose they send you. There is not the least news, but that my Lord Carteret's wedding has been deferred- on Lady Sophia's [Fermor's] falling dangerously ill of a scarlet fever ; but they say it is to be next Saturday. She is to have sixteen hundred pounds a-year jointure, four hundred pounds pin-money, and two thousand of jewels. Carteret says, he does not intend to marry the mother [Lady Pomfret] and the whole family. What do you think my lady intends ? Adieu ! my dear Sir ! Pray for jeace. 1 Hugh Fortescue, afterwards Earl of Clinton and Knight of the Bath. Not long after he received that order he went into Opposition, and left off his ribbon and star for one day, but thought better of it, and put them on the next. WALPOLE. He was created Lord Fortescue and Earl of Clinton in 1746, and died in 1751. WRIQHT. 4 Mr. Bulkeley, an Irish Roman Catholic, married the widow Cantillon, mother of the Countess of Stafford. He rose high in the French army, and had the cordon bleu : his sister was second wife of the first Duke of Berwick. WALPOLE. 3 Afterwards Duke of Rohan Chabot. DOVER. 1744.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 299 145. TO SIR HORACE MANN. London, April 15, 1744. I COULD tell you a great deal of news, but it would not be what you would expect. It is not of battles, sieges, and declarations of war ; nor of invasions, insurrections, and addresses. It is the god of love, not he of war, who reigns in the newspapers. The town has made up a list of six-and-thirty weddings r which I shall not catalogue to you ; for you would know them no more than you do Antilochum, fortemque Gyan, fortemque Cloanthum. But the chief entertainment has been the nuptials of our great Quixote [Carteret] and the fair Sophia. On the point of matrimony, she fell ill of a scarlet fever, and was given over, while he had the gout, but heroically sent her word, that if she was well, he would be so. They corresponded every day, and he used to plague the Cabinet Council with reading her letters to them. Last night they were married ; and as all he does must have a particular air in it, they supped at Lord Pomfret's: at twelve, Lady Granville, 1 (his mother), and all his family went to bed, but the porter : then my Lord went home, and waited for her in the lodge : she came alone in a hackney-chair, met him in the hall, and was led up the back-stairs to bed. What is ridiculously lucky is, that Lord Lincoln goes into waiting to-day, and will be to present her ! On Tuesday she stands godmother with the King to Lady Dysart's 2 child, her new grand- daughter. I am impatient to see the whole menage; it will be admirable. There is a wild young Venetian ambassadress 3 come, who is reckoned very pretty. I don't think so ; she is foolish and childish to a degree. She said, " Lord ! the old Secretary is going to be married ! " They told her he was but fifty-four. " But fifty- four! why," said she, "my husband is but two-and-forty, and I think him the oldest man in the world:" Did I tell you that Lord 1 Grace Granville, aunt and co-heir of William Henry Granville, third Earl of Bath, and daughter of John Granville, first Earl of Bath, married George, first Baron Carteret. She was created January 1, 1714, Viscountess Carteret and Countess Granville, and died in 1744, shortly after her son's marriage to Lady Sophia Fermor. [See p. 222.} CUNNINGHAM. 2 Lady Grace Carteret (eldest daughter of Lord Carteret), married in 1729 to Lionel Tollemache, fourth Earl of Dysart. WEIGHT. 3 Wife of Signor Capello WALPOLE. 300 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1744. Holderness ' goes to Venice with the compliments of accommodation, and leaves Sir James Grey resident there ? The invasion from Dunkirk seems laid aside. We talk little of our fleets : Sir John Norris has resigned : Lestock is coming home, and has sent before him great complaints of Matthews ; so that affair must be cleared up. The King talks much of going abroad, which will not be very prudent. The campaign is not opened yet, but I suppose will disclose at once with great eclat in several quarters. I this instant receive your letter of March 31st, with the simple Demetrius, for which, however, I thank you. I hope by this time you have received all my letters, and are at peace about the invasion ; which we think so much over, that the Opposition are now breaking out about the Dutch troops, and call it the worst measure ever taken. Those terms so generally dealt to every measure successively, will at least soften the Hanoverian history. Adieu ! I have nothing more to tell you : I flatter myself you content yourself with news ; I cannot write sentences nor sentiments. My best love to the Chutes, and now and then let my friends the Prince and Princess and the Florentines know that I shall never forget their goodness to me. What is become of Prince Beauvau ? 146. TO SIR HORACE MANN. London, May 8, 1744. I BEGIN to breathe a little at ease ; we have done with the Parlia- ment for this year : it rises on Saturday. We have had but one material day lately, last Thursday. The Opposition had brought in a bill to make it treason to correspond with the young Pretenders : 2 the Lords added a clause, after a long debate, to make it forfeiture of estates, as it is for dealing with the father. We sat till one in the morning, and then carried it by 285 to 106. It was the best debate I ever heard. 3 The King goes to Kensington to-morrow, and not 1 Robert Darcy, Earl of Holderness, ambassador at Venice and the Hague, and afterwards Secretary of State. [See p. 17.] WALPOLB. 2 Charles Edward, and Henry, his brother, afterwards the Cardinal of York. DOVER. 3 " It was a warm and long debate, in which I think as much violence and dislike to the proposition was shown by the opposers, as in any which had arisen during the whole winter. I thought neither M r. Pelham's nor Pitt's performances equal on this occasion to what they are on most others. Many of the Prince's friends were absent; for what reason I cannot learn. This was the parting blow of the session ; for the 1744.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 301 abroad. We hear of great quarrels between Marshal Wade and Due d'Aremberg. The French King is at Valenciennes with Mon- sieur de Noailles, who is now looked upon as first minister. He is the least dangerous for us of all. It is affirmed that Cardinal Tencin is disgraced, who was the very worst for us. If he is, we shall at least have no invasion this summer. Successors of ministers seldom take up the schemes of their predecessors ; especially such as by failing caused their ruin, which, I believe, was Tencin's case at Dunkirk. For a week we heard of the affair at Villafranca in a worse light than was true : it certainly turns out ill for both sides. Though the French have had such bloody loss, I cannot but think they will carry their point, and force their passage into Italy. We have no domestic news, but Lord Lovel's being created Earl of Leicester, on an old promise which my father had obtained for him. Earl Berkeley' is married to Miss Drax, a very pretty maid of honour to the Princess ; and the Viscount Fitzwilliam 2 to Sir Matthew Decker's eldest daughter ; but these are people I am sure you don't know. There is to be a great ball to-morrow at the Duchess of Rich- mond's for my Lady Carteret : the Prince [of Wales] is to be there. Carteret's court pay her the highest honours, which she receives with the highest state. I have seen her but once, and found her just what I expected, tres grande dame ; full of herself, and yet not with an air of happiness. She looks ill and is grown lean, but is still the finest figure in the world. The mother [Lady Pomfret] is not so exalted as I expected ; I fancy Carteret has kept his resolution, and does not marry her too. My Lord does not talk of going out of town yet ; I don't propose to be at Houghton till August. Adieu ! King came and dismissed us on the 12th, and the Parliament broke up with a good deal of ill-humour and discontent on the part of the Opposition, and little expectation in those who knew the interior of the court, and the unconnected state of the alliance abroad, that much would be done in the ensuing campaign to allay it, or infuse a better temper into the nation." Mr. Torke's MS. Parliamentary Journal. WRIGHT. 1 Augustus, fourth Earl Berkeley, K.T. [See p. 91.] He married Elizabeth, daughter of Henry Drax, Esq. of Charborough, in Dorsetshire; and died in 1755. DOVER. 2 Richard, sixth Viscount Fitzwilliam, in Ireland, married Catherine, daughter and heiress of Sir Matthew Decker, Bart., and died in 1776. WRIGHT 302 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1744. 147. TO SIR HORACE MANN. London, May 29, 1744. SINCE I wrote I have received two from you of May 6th and 19th. I am extremely sorry you get mine so late. I have desired your brother to complain to Mr. Preverau : I get yours pretty regularly. I have this morning had a letter from Mr. Conway at the army ; he says he hears just then that the French have declared war against the Dutch: they had in effect before by besieging Menin, which siege our army is in full march to raise. They have laid bridges over the Scheldt, and intend to force the French to a battle. The latter are almost double our number, but their desertion is prodigious, and their troops extremely bad. Fourteen thousand more Dutch are ordered, and their six thousand are going from hence with four more of ours; so we seem to have no more apprehensions of an invasion. All thoughts of it are over ! no inquiry made into it ! The present ministry fear the detection of conspiracies more than the thing itself: that is, they fear everything that they are to do themselves. My father has been extremely ill, from a cold he caught last week at New-park [Richmond]. Princess Emily came thither to fish, and he, who is grown quite indolent, and has not been out of a hot room this twelvemonth, sat an hour and a half by the water side. He was in great danger one day, and more low-spirited than ever I knew him, though I think that grows upon him with his infirmities. My sister was at his bed-side ; I came into the room, he burst into tears and could not speak to me : but he is quite well now ; though I cannot say I think he will preserve his life long, as he has laid aside all exercise, which has been of such vast service to him. He talked the other day of shutting himself up in the farthest wing at Houghton ; I said, " Dear, my Lord, you will be at a distance from all the family there ! " He replied, " So much the better ! " Pope is given over with a dropsy, 1 which is mounted into his head: in an evening he is not in his senses ; the other day at Chiswick, he said to my Lady Burlington, " Look at our Saviour there ! how ill they have crucified him ! " There is a Prince of Ost-Frize 2 dead, which is likely to occasion 1 Pope died at Twickenham, May 30, 1744. CUNNINGHAM. 2 The Prince of East Friesknd. WALPOLE. 1744.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 303 most unlucky broils : Holland, Prussia, and Denmark have all pre- tensions to his succession; but Prussia is determined to make his good. If the Dutch don't dispute it, he will be too near a neighbour; if they do, we lose his neutrality, which is now so material. The town has been in a great bustle about a private match ; but which, by the ingenuity of the Ministry, has been made politics. Mr. Fox [Lord Holland] fell in love with Lady Caroline Lenox ; ' asked her, was refused, and stole her. His father [Sir Stephen Fox] was a footman ; her great grandfather [Charles II.] a king : hinc illce lachrymce ! all the blood royal have been up in arms. The Duke of Marlborough, who was a friend of the Richmond's, gave her away. If his Majesty's Princess Caroline had been stolen, there could not have been more noise made. The Pelhams, who are much attached to the Richmonds, but who have tried to make Fox and all that set theirs, wisely entered into the quarrel, and now don't know how to get out of it. They were for hindering [Hanbury] Williams, who is Fox's great friend, and at whose house they were married, from having the red ribbon ; but he has got it with four others, the Viscount Fitzwilliam, Calthorpe, Whitmore, and Harbord. Dash- wood (Lady Carteret's quondam lover), has stolen a great fortune, a Miss Bateman; the marriage had been proposed, but the fathers could not agree on the terms. I am much obliged to you for all your Sardinian and Neapolitan journals. I am impatient for the conquest of Naples, and have no notion of neglecting sure things, which may serve by way of dedommagement. I am very sorry I recommended such a troublesome booby to you. Indeed, dear Mr. Chute, I never saw him, but was pressed by Mr. Selwyn, whose brother's friend he is, to give him that letter to you. I now hear that he is a warm Jacobite ; I suppose you somehow disobliged him politically. We are now mad about tar- water, on the publication of a book that I will send you, written by Dr. Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne. 2 The book contains every subject from tar- water to the Trinity ; how- ever, all the women read, and understand it no more than they would if it were intelligible. A man came into an apothecary's shop the other day, " Do you sell tar- water ? " " Tar- water ! " replied the apothecary, " why, I sell nothing else ! " Adieu ! 1 Eldest daughter of Charles Duke of Richmond, grandson of King Charles II. WALPOLE. 2 " I then happened to recollect, upon a hint given me by the inimitable author of S04 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1744. 148. TO SIR HORACE MANN. June 11, 1744. PERHAPS you expect to hear of great triumphs and victories ; of General Wade grown into a Duke of Marlborough ; or of the King being in Flanders, with the second part of the Battle of Dcttingen why, ay ; you are bound in conscience, as a good Englishman, to expect all this but what if all these lo Pceans should be played to the Dunkirk tune ? I must prepare you for some such tiling ; for unless the French are as much their own foes as we are our own, I don't see what should hinder the festival of to-day ' being kept next year a day sooner. But I will draw no consequences : only sketch you out our present situation : and if Cardinal Tencin can miss making his use of it, we may burn our books and live hereafter upon good fortune. The French King's army is at least ninety thousand strong ; has taken Menin already, and Ypres almost. Remains then only Ostend ; which you will look in the map and see does not lie in the high road to the conquest of the Austrian Netherlands. Ostend may be laid under water, and the taking it an affair of time. But there lies all our train of artillery, which cost two hundred thousand pounds ; and what becomes of our communication with our army ? Why, they may go round by Williamstadt, and be in England just time enough to be some other body's army ! It turns out that the whole combined army, English, Dutch, Austrians, and Hanoverians, does not amount to above thirty-six thousand fighting men ! and yet forty thousand more French, under the Due d'Harcourt are coming into Flanders. When their army is already so superior to ours, for what can that reinforcement be intended, but to let them spare a triumph to Dunkirk ? Now you will naturally ask me three questions : where is Prince Charles ? where are the Dutch ? what force have you to defend England? Prince Charles is hovering about the Rhine to take Lorrain, which they seem not to care whether he does or not, and leaves you to defend the Netherlands. The Dutch seem indifferent whether their barrier is in the hands of the ' Female Quixote ' [Mrs. Lennox] that I had many years before, from curiosity only, taken a cursory view of Bishop Berkeley's treatise on the virtues of tar-water." Fielding, Voyage to Lisbon. CUNNINGHAM. 1 The 10th of June was the Pretender's birthday, and the llth the accession of George II. WALPOLE. 1744.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 305 the Queen or the Emperor ; and while you are so mad, think it prudent not to be so themselves. For our own force, it is too melancholy to mention : six regiments go away to-morrow to Ostend, with the six thousand Dutch. Carteret and Botzlaer, (the Dutch envoy extra- ordinary,) would have hurried them away without orders; hut General Smitsart, their commander, said, he was too old to be hanged. This reply was told to my father yesterday : " Ay," said he, " so I thought I was ; but I may live to be mistaken ! " When these troops are gone, we shall not have in the whole island above sis thousand men, even when the regiments are complete ; and half of those pressed and new-listed men. For our sea-force, I wish it may be greater in proportion ! Sir Charles Hardy, whose name 1 at least is ill-favoured, is removed, and old Balchen, 2 a firm Whig, put at the head of the fleet. Fifteen ships are sent for from Matthews ; but they may come as opportunely as the army from Williamstadt in short but I won't enter into reasonings the King is not gone. The Dutch have sent word, that they can let us have but six of the twenty ships we expected. My father is going into Norfolk, quite shocked at living to see how terribly his own conduct is justified. In the city the word is, " Old Sunderland's 3 game is acting over again." Tell me if you receive this letter : I believe you will scarce give it about in memorials. Here are arrived two Florentines, not recommended to me, but I have been very civil to them, Marquis Salviati and Conte Delci ; the latter remembers to have seen me at Madame Grifoni's. The Venetian ambassador met my father yesterday at my Lady Brown's : you would have laughed to have seen how he stared and eccelknza'd him. At last they fell into a broken Latin chat, and there was no getting the ambassador away from him. If you have the least interest in any one Madonna in Florence, pay her well for all the service she can do us. If she can work miracles, now is her time. If she can't, I believe we shall all be forced to adore her. Adieu ! Tell Mr. Chute I fear we shall not be quite so well received at the conversazioni, at Madame de Craon's, and the Casino/ when we are but refugee heretics. Well, we must hope ! Yours I am, and we will bear our wayward fate together. 1 He was of a Jacobite family. WALPOLB. 2 Sir John Balchen, afterwards Governor of Greenwich Hospital. CUNHINGHAK. 3 Lord Sunderland, who betrayed James II. WALPOLE. 4 The Florentine coffee-house. WALPOLB. VOL. I. X 306 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1744. 149. TO SIR HORACE MANN. London, June 18, 1744. I HAVE not any immediate bad news to tell you in consequence of my last. The siege of Ypres does not advance so expeditiously as was expected ; a little time gained in sieges goes a great way in a campaign. The Brest squadron is making just as great a figure in our channel as Matthews does before Toulon and Marseilles. I should be glad to be told by some nice computors of national glory, how much the balance is on our side. Anson ' is returned with vast fortune, substantial and lucky. He has brought the Acapulca ship into Portsmouth, and its treasure is at least computed at five hundred thousand pounds. He escaped the Brest squadron by a mist. You will have all the particulars in a gazette. I will not fail to make your compliments to the Pomfrets and Carterets. I see them seldom, but I am in favour ; so I conclude, for my Lady Pomfret told me the other night, that I said better things than anybody. I was with them all at a subscription-ball at Ranelagh last week, which my Lady Carteret thought proper to look upon as given to her, and thanked the gentlemen, who were not quite so well pleased at her condescending to take it to herself. My Lord stayed with her there till four in the morning. They are all fondness walk together, and stop every five steps to kiss. Madame de Craon is a cipher to her for grandeur. The ball was on an excessively hot night ; yet she was dressed in a magnificent brocade, because it was new that morning for the inauguration-day. I did the honours of all her dress : " How charming your ladyship's cross is! I am sure the design was your own." "No, indeed; my lord sent it me just as it is." " How fine your ear-rings are ! " " Oh ! but they are very heavy." Then as much to the mother [Lady Pomfret] . Do you wonder I say better things than anybody ? I send you by a ship going to Leghorn the only new books at all worth reading. The Abuse 2 of Parliaments is by Dodington and Waller, circumstantially scurrilous. The dedication of the Essay, 3 1 The celebrated circumnavigator, afterwards a peer, and first lord of the Admiralty. DOVER. . s " Detection of the Use and Abuse of Parliaments," by Ralph, under the direction of Dodington and Waller. WALPOLE. 3 Essay on Wit, Humour, and Ridicule, by Corbyn Morris. WALPOLE. 1744.] TO THE HON. H. S. CON WAY. 307 to my father is fine ; pray mind the quotation from Milton. There is Dr. Berkeley's mad book on tar- water, which has made everybody as mad as himself. I have lately made a great antique purchase of all Dr. Middleton's collection which he brought from Italy, and which he is now publishing. I will send you the book as soon as it comes out. I would not buy the things till the book was half printed, for fear of an Mmeo Walpoliano. Those honours are mighty well for such known and learned men as Mr. Smith, 1 the merchant of Venice. My dear Mr. Chute, how we used to enjoy the title-page 2 of his understanding ! Do you remember how angry he was when showing us a Guido, after pompous rooms full of Sebastian Bicci's, which he had a mind to establish for capital pictures, you told him he had now made amends for all the rubbish he had showed us before ? My father has asked, and with some difficulty got, his pension of four thousand pounds a-year, which the King gave him on his resignation, and which he dropped, by the wise fears of my uncle and the Selwyns. He has no reason to be satisfied with the manner of obtaining it now, or with the manner of the man [Mr. Pelham] whom he employed to ask it : yet it was not a point that required capacity merely gratitude. Adieu ! 150. TO THE HON. H. S. CON WAY. MY DEAREST HAEKY : Arlington Street, June 29, 1744. I DON'T know what made my last letter so long on the road : yours got hither as soon as it could. I don't attribute it to any examination at the post-office. God forbid I should suspect any branch of the present administration of attempting to know any one kind of thing ! I remember when I was at Eton, and Mr. Bland 3 had set me an extraordinary task, I used sometimes to pique myself upon not getting it, because it was not immediately my school business. What ! learn more than I was absolutely forced to learn ! I felt the weight of learning that ; for I was a blockhead, and pushed up above my parts. 1 Mr. Smith, consul at Venice, had a fine library, of which he knew nothing at all but the title-pages. [See p. 239.] WALPOLE. 2 Expression of Mr. Chute. WALPOLE. 3 Dr. Henry Bland. See Walpole's " Short Notes of his Life," prefixed to this volume. CUHNINGHAK. x 2 308 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1744. Lest you maliciously think I mean any application of this last sentence anywhere in the world, I shall go and transcribe some lines out of a new poem, that pretends to great impartiality, hut is evidently wrote by some secret friend of the ministry. It is called Pope's, but has no good lines but the following. The plan supposes him complaining of being put to death by the blundering discord of his two physicians, Burton and Thompson ; ' and from thence makes a transition, to show that all the present misfortunes of the world flow from a parallel disagreement ; for instance, in politics : " Ask you what cause this conduct can create 1 The doctors differ that direct the state. Craterus, wild as Thompson, rules and raves, A slave himself, yet proud of making slaves ; Fondly believing that his mighty parts Can guide all councils and command all hearts ; Give shape and colour to discordant things, Hide fraud in ministers and fear iu kings. Presuming on his power, such schemes he draws For bribing Iron, 2 and giving Europe laws, That camps, and fleets, and treaties fill the news, And succors unobtain'd and unaccomplish'd views. " Like solemn Burton grave Plumbosus acts ; He thinks in method, argues all from facts ; Warm in his temper, yet affecting ice, Protests his candour ere he gives advice ; Hints he dislikes the schemes he recommends, And courts his foes and hardly courts his friends ; Is fond of power, and yet concern'd for fame From different parties would dependents claim ; Declares for war, but in an awkward way, Loves peace at heart, which he's afraid to say ; His head perplex'd, altho' his hands are pure An honest man, but not a hero sure ! " I beg you will never tell me any news till it has past every impression of the Dutch gazette ; for one is apt to mention what is wrote to one : that gets about, comes at last to the ears of the ministry, puts them in a fright, and perhaps they send to beg to see your letter. Now, you know one should hate to have one's private correspondence made grounds for a measure, especially for an absurd one, which is just possible. 1 Dr. Thompson, a man who had, by large promises, and free censures of the com- mon practice of physic, forced himself up into a sudden reputation. Johnson's Life of Pope. He was one of the physicians who attended Frederick Prince of Wales in his last illness, and differed from the other physicians that were with him. Paul Whitehead addressed an epistle in verse to this Dr. Thompson. CUNNINGHAM. 2 This is nonsense. H. W. WALPOLE. 1744.] TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY. 309 If I was writing to anybody but you, who know me so well, I should be afraid this would be taken for pique and pride, and be construed into my thinking all ministers inferior to my father ; but, my dear Harry, you know it was never my foible to think over- abundantly well of him. Why I think as I do of the present great geniuses, answer for me, Admiral Matthews, great British Neptune, bouncing in the Mediterranean, while the Brest squadron is riding in the English Channel, and an invasion from Dunkirk every moment threatening your coasts ; against which you send for six thousand Dutch troops, while you have twenty thousand of your own in Flanders, which not being of any use, you send these very six thousand Dutch to them, with above half of the few of your own remaining in England ; a third part of which half of which few you countermand, because you are again alarmed with the invasion, and yet let the six Dutch go, who came for no other end but to protect you. And that our naval discretion may go hand-in-hand with our military, we find we have no force at home ; we send for fifteen ships from the Mediterranean to guard our coasts, and demand twenty from the Dutch. The first fifteen will be here, perhaps, in three months. Of the twenty Dutch, they excuse all but six, of which six they send all but four ; and your own small domestic fleet, five are going to the West Indies and twenty a hunting for some Spanish ships that are coming from the Indies. Don't it put you in mind of a trick that is done by calculation ? Think of a number : halve it double it add ten subtract twenty add half the first number take away all you added : now, what remains ? That you may not think I employ my time as idly as the great men I have been talking of, you must be informed, that every night constantly I go to Ranelagh; which has totally beat Yauxhall. Nobody goes anywhere else everybody goes there. My Lord Chesterfield is so fond of it, that he says he has ordered all his letters to be directed thither. If you had never seen it, I would make you a most pompous description of it, and tell you how the floor is all of beaten princes that you can't set your foot without treading on a Prince of Wales or Duke of Cumberland. The company is universal : there is from his Grace of Grafton down to children out of the Foundling Hospital from my Lady Townshend to the kitten from my Lord Sandys to your humble cousin and sincere friend. 310 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1744. 151. TO SIR HORACE MANN. London, June 29, 1744. WELL, at last this is not to be the year of our captivity ! There is a cluster of good packets come at once. The Dutch have marched twelve thousand men to join our army; the King of Sardinia (but this is only a report) has beaten the Spaniards back over the Varo, and I this moment hear from the Secretary's office, that Prince Charles has undoubtedly passed the Ehine at the head of four-score thousand men where, and with what circumstances, I don't know a word; ma basta cosL It is said, too, that the Marquis do la Chetardie ' is sent away from Russia ; but this one has no occasion to believe. False good news are always produced by true good, like the watergall by the rainbow. But why do I take upon me to tell you all this ? you, who are the centre of ministers and business ! the actuating genius in the conquest of Naples ! You cannot imagine how formidable you appear to me. My poor little, quiet Miny, with his headache and epuisemens, and Cocchio, and coverlid of cygnet's down, that had no dealings but with a little spy-abbe at Rome, a civil whisper with Count Lorenzi," or an explanation on some of Goldsworthy's absurdities, or with Richcourt about some sbirri, 3 that had insolently passed through the street in which the King of Great Britain's arms condescended to hang ! Bless me ! how he is changed ! become a trafficking plenipotentiary with Prince Lobkowitz, Cardinal Albani," and Admiral Matthews ! Why, my dear child, I should not know you again ; I should not dare to roll you up between a finger and thumb like wet brown-paper. Well, heaven prosper your arms ! But I hate you, for I now look upon you as ten times fatter than I am. I don't think it would be quite unadvisable for Bistino 5 to take a 1 French ambassador at the court of St. Petersburg, and for some time a favourite of the Empress Elizabeth. The report of his disgrace was correct. He died in 1758. WRIGHT. 2 A Florentine, but employed as minister by France. WALPOLE. 3 The officers of justice, who are reckoned so infamous in Italy, that the foreign ministers have always pretended to hinder them from passing through the streets where they reside. WALPOLE. 4 Cardinal Alexander Albani, nephew of Clement X I., was minister of the Queen of Hungary at Rome. WALPOLE. 5 Giovanni Battista Uguccioni, a Florentine nobleman, and great friend of the Pomfrets. WALPOLE. 1744.] TO SIR HOKACE MANN. 311 journey hither. My Lady Carteret would take violently to any thing that came so far to adore her grandeur. I believe even my Lady Pomfret would be persuaded he had seen the star of their glory travelling westward to direct him. For my part, I expect soon to make a figure too in the political magazine, for all our Florence set is coming to grandeur ; but you and my Lady Carteret have out- stripped me. I remain with the Duke of Courland in Siberia my father has actually gone thither for a long season. I met my Lady Carteret the other day at Knapton's, 1 and desired leave to stay while she sat for her picture. She is drawn crowned with com, like the Goddess of Plenty, and a mild dove in her arms, like Mrs. Venus. We had much of my lord and my lord. The countess-mother [Lady Pomfret] was glad my lord was not there he was never satisfied with the eyes ; she was afraid he would have had them drawn bigger than the cheeks. I made your compliments abundantly, and cried down the charms of the picture as politically as if you yourself had been there in ministerial person, To fill up this sheet, I shall transcribe some very good lines published to-day in one of the papers, by I don't know whom, on Pope's death. " Here lies, who died, as most folks die, in hope, The mould'ring, more ignoble part of Pope ; The bard, whose sprightly genius dared to wage Poetic war with an immoral age ; Made every vice and private folly known In friend and foe a stranger to his own ; Set virtue in its loveliest form to view, And still profess'd to be the sketch he drew. As humour or as interest served, his verse Could praise or flatter, libel or asperse : IJnharming innocence with guilt could load, Or lift the rebel patriot to a god : Give the censorious critic standing laws The first to violate them with applause ; The just translator and the solid wit, Like whom the passions few so truly hit : The scourge of dunces whom his malice made The impious plague of the defenceless dead : To real knaves and real fools a sore- Beloved by many, but abhorr'd by more. If here his merits are not full exprest, His never-dying strains shall tell the rest." Sure the greatest part was his true character. Here is another 1 George Knapton was a scholar of Richardson, but chiefly painted in crayons. He died at Kensington in 1778, and was there buried. CUNNINGHAM. 31-2 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1744. epitaph by Rolli ; ' which for the profound fall in some of the verses, especially in the last, will divert you. " Spento e il Pope : de' poeti Britanni Uno de' lumi che sorge in mille anni : Pur si vuol che la macchia d'Ingrato N'abbia reso il fulgor men sereno : Stato fora e piu giusto e piu grato, Men lodando e biasmando ancor meno. Ma chi 6 reo per nativo prurito ? Lode o biasmo, qui tutto e partito. Nasce, scorre, si legge, si sente ; Dopo un Di, tutto e per niente." Adieu! 152. TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY. MY DEAREST HARRY : Arlington Street, July 20, 1744. I FEEL that I have so much to say to you, that I foresee there will be but little method in my letter ; but if, upon the whole, you see my meaning, and the depth of my friendship for you, I am content. It was most agreeable to me to receive a letter of confidence from you, at the time I expected a very different one from you ; though, by the date of your last, I perceive you had not then received some letters, which, though I did not see, I must call simple, as they could only tend to make you uneasy for some months. I should not have thought of communicating a quarrel to you at this distance, and I don't conceive the sort of friendship of those that thought it necessary. When I heard it had been wrote to you, I thought it right to myself to give you my account of it, but, by your brother's desire, suppressed my letter, and left it to be explained by him, who wrote to you so sensibly on it, that I shall say no more but that I think myself so ill-used that it will prevent my giving you thoroughly the advice you ask of me ; for how can I be sure that my resent- ment might not make me see in a stronger light the reasons for your breaking off an affair 2 which you know before I never approved ? 1 Paolo Antonio Rolli, composer of the operas, translated and published several things. Thus hitched into the Dunciad " Rolli the feather to his ear conveys ; Then his nice taste directs our operas." Warburton says, " he taught Italian to some fine gentlemen, who affected to direct the operas." WRIGHT. 2 This was an early attachment of Mr. Conway's. By his having complied with 1744.] TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAT. 313 You know my temper is so open to anybody I love that I must be nappy at seeing you lay aside a reserve with me, which is the only point that ever made me dissatisfied with you. That silence of yours has, perhaps, been one of the chief reasons that has always prevented my saying much to you on a topic which I saw was so near your heart. Indeed, its being so near was another reason ; for how could I expect you would take my advice, even if you bore it ? But, my dearest Harry, how can I advise you now ? Is it not gone too far for me to expect you should keep any resolution about it, especially in absence, which must be destroyed the moment you meet again? And if ever you should marry and be happy, won't you reproach me with having tried to hinder it ? I think you as just and honest as I think any man living ; but any man living in that circumstance would think I had been prompted by private reasons. I see as strongly as you can all the arguments for your breaking off; but, indeed, the alteration of your fortune adds very little strength to what they had before. You never had fortune enough to make such a step at all prudent: she loved you enough to be content with that ; I can't believe this change will alter her sentiments, for I must do her the justice to say that it is plain she preferred you with nothing to all the world. I could talk upon this head, but I will only leave you to consider, without advising you on either side, these two things whether you think it honester to break off with her after such engagements as yours (how strong I don't know), after her refusing very good matches for you, and show her that she must think of making her fortune ; or whether you will wait with her till some amendment in your fortune can put it in your power to marry her. My dearest Harry, you must see why I don't care to say more on this head. My wishing it could be right for you to break off with her (for, without it is right, I would not have you on any account take such a step) makes it impossible for me to advise it; and, therefore, I am sure you will forgive my declining an act of friend- ship which your having put in my power gives me the greatest the wishes and advice of his friend on this subject, and got the better of his passion, he probably felt that he, in some measure, owed to Mr. Walpole the subsequent happiness of his life, in his marriage with another person. WALPOLE. The lady alluded to was Lady Caroline Fitzroy, afterwards [1746] Countess of Harrington, whose sister, Lady Isabella, had, three years before, married Mr. Conway's elder brother, afterwards Earl and Marquis of Hertford WEIGHT. Have not TOO felt a little twinge in a remote corner of your heart on Lady Harrington's death. Walpole to Conway, June 30, 1784. CUNNINGHAM. 314 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1744. satisfaction. But it does put something else in my power, which I am sure nothing can make me decline, and for which I have long wanted an opportunity. Nothing could prevent my being unhappy at the smallness of your fortune, but its throwing it into my way to offer you to share mine. As mine is so precarious, by depending on so bad a constitution, I can only offer you the immediate use of it. I do that most sincerely. My places still (though my Lord Walpole has cut off three hundred pounds a-year to save himself the trouble of signing his name ten times for once) brings me in near two thousand pounds a-year. I have no debts, no connections indeed ; no way to dispose of it particularly. By living with my father, I have little real use for a quarter of it. I have always flung it away all in the most idle manner ; but, my dear Harry, idle as I am, and thoughtless, I have sense enough to have real pleasure in denying myself baubles, and in saving a very good income to make a man happy, for whom I have a just esteem and most sincere friendship. I know the difficulties any gentleman and man of spirit must struggle with, even in having such an offer made him, much more in accepting it. I hope you will allow there are some in making it. But hear me : if there is any such thing as friendship in the world, these are the opportunities of exerting it, and it can't be exerted without it is accepted. I must talk of myself to prove to you that it will be right for you to accept it. I am sensible of having more follies and weaknesses, and fewer real good qualities, than most men. I sometimes reflect on this, though I own too seldom. I always want to begin acting like a man, and a sensible one, which I think y l might be if I would. Can I begin better, than by taking care of my fortune for one I love ? You have seen (I have seen you have) that I am fickle, and foolishly fond of twenty new people ; but I don't really love them I have always loved you constantly : I am willing to convince you and the world, what I have always told you, that I loved you better than anybody. If I ever felt much for any thing, (which I know may be questioned,) it was certainly for my mother. I look on you as my nearest relation ' by her, and I think I can never do enough to show my gratitude and affection to her. For these reasons, don't deny me what I have set my heart on the making your fortune easy to you. * * * [The rest of this letter is wanting.] Walpole and Conway were maternal cousins. CUNNINGHAM. 1744.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 315 153. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Arlington Street, Jvly 22, 1744. I HAVE not written to you, my dear child, a good while, I know ; but, indeed, it was from having nothing to tell you. You know I love you too well for it to be necessary to be punctually proving it to you ; so, when I have nothing worth your knowing, I repose myself upon the persuasion that you must have of my friendship. But I will never let that grow into any negligence, I should say, idleness, which is always mighty ready to argue me out of everything I ought to do ; and letter- writing is one of the first duties that the very best people let perish out of their rubric. Indeed, I pride myself extremely in having been so good a correspondent ; for, besides that every day grows to make one hate writing more, it is difficult, you must own, to keep up a correspondence of this sort with any spirit, when long absence makes one entirely out of all the little circumstances of each other's society, and which are the soul of letters. "We are forced to deal only in great events, like historians ; and, instead of being Horace Mann and Horace Walpole, seem to correspond as Guicciardin and Clarendon would : Discedo Alcaeus puncto Illius ; ille meo quis ! Quis nisi Callimachus? Apropos to writing histories and Guicciardin ; I wish to God, Boccalini was living ! never was such an opportunity for Apollo's playing off a set of fools, as there is now ! The good City of London, who, from long dictating to the government, are now come to preside over taste and letters, having giving one Carte, 1 a Jacobite parson, fifty pounds a-year for seven years, to write the history of England ; and four aldermen and six comm on-councilmen are to inspect his materials and the progress of the work. Surveyors of common sewers turned supervisors of literature ! To be sure, they think a history of England is no more than Stowe's Survey of the Parishes ! Instead of having books published with the imprimatur of an university, they will be printed, as churches are whitewashed, John Smith and Thomas Johnson, Churchwardens. But, brother historian, you will wonder, I should have nothing to 1 Thomas Carte, a laborious writer of history. His principal works are, his Life of the Duke of Ormonde, in three volumes, folio, and his History of England, in four. He died in 1754. DOVER. 316 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1744. communicate, when all Europe is bursting with events, and every day " big with the fate of Cato and of Rome." But so it is ; I know nothing; Prince Charles's great passage of the Rhine has hitherto produced nothing more : indeed, the French armies are moving towards him from Flanders; and they tell us, ours is crossing the Scheldt to attack the Count do Saxe, now that we are equal to him, from our reinforcement and his diminutions. In the meantime, as I am at least one of the principal heroes of my own politics, being secure of any invasion, I am going to leave all my lares, that is, all my antiquities, household gods and pagods, and take a journey into Siberia for six weeks, where my father's grace of Courland has been for some time. Lord Middlesex is going to be married to Miss Boyle, 1 Lady Shannon's daughter; she has thirty thousand pounds, and may have as much more, if her mother, who is a plump widow, don't happen to Nugentize? The girl is low and ugly, but a vast scholar. Young Churchill 3 has got a daughter by the Frasi; 4 Mr. "Winnington calls it the opera-comiqne ; the mother is an opera girl ; the grandmother was Mrs. Oldfield. I must tell you of a very extraordinary print, which my Lady Burlington gives away, of her daughter Euston, with this inscription : * Lady Dorothy Boyle, Once the pride, the joy, the comfort of her parents, The admiration of all that saw her, The delight of all that knew her. Born May 14, 1724, married, alas ! Oct. 10, 1741, and delivered from extremest misery May 2, 1742. This print was taken from a picture drawn by memory seven weeks after her death, by her most afflicted mother ; DOROTHY BURLINGTON. I am forced to begin a new sheet, lest you should think my letter came from my Lady Burlington, as it ends so partly with her name. 1 Grace Boyle, daughter and sole heiress of Richard, Viscount Shannon. She became afterwards a favourite of Frederick, Prince of Wales, and died in Arlington Street, 10 May, 1763. DOVER. Lady Middlesex was very short, very plain and very yellow, a vain girl, full of Greek and Latin, and music and painting, but neither mischievous nor political. Walpole, Memoire.s of George II. See also p. 367. CUNNINGHAM. 2 That is pick up an Irish adventurer like Hussey or Nugent, as the Duchess of Montague did, in Mr. Hussey, and Mrs. Newsham, Craggs' daughter, did in Mr. Nugent (Goldsmith's Lord Clare). CUNNINGHAM. 3 General Churchill's son by Mrs. Oldfield, afterwards married to the natural daughter of Sir Robert Walpole. CUNNINGHAM. 4 Prima Donna at the Opera. WALPOLE. 5 See a more correct copy of the inscription, ante, p. 252. CDNNINGHAM. 1744.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 317 But is it not a most melancholy way of venting oneself ? She has drawn numbers of these pictures : I don't approve her having them engraved; but sure the inscription 1 is pretty. I was accosted the other night by a little, pert petit-maitre figure, that claimed me for acquaintance. Do you remember to have seen at Florence an Abbe Durazzo, of Genoa? well, this was he: it is mighty dapper and French : however, I will be civil to it : I never lose opportunities of paving myself an agreeable passage back to Florence. My dear Chutes, stay for me : I think the first gale of peace will carry me to you. Are you as fond of Florence as ever ? of me you are not, I am sure, for you never write me a line. You would be diverted with the grandeur of our old Florence beauty, Lady Carteret. She dresses more extravagantly, and grows more short-sighted every day : she can't walk a step without leaning on one of her ancient daughters-in-law. Lord Tweedale and Lord Bathurst are her constant gentlemen-ushers. She has not quite digested her resentment to Lincoln yet. He was walking with her at Ranelagh the other night, and a Spanish refugee marquis, 2 who is of the Carteret court, but who, not being quite perfect in the carte dn pais, told my lady, that Lord Lincoln had promised him to make a very good husband to Miss Pelham. Lady Carteret, with an accent of energy, replied, " J'espere qu'il tiendra sa promesse ! " Here is a good epigram that has been made on her : " Her beauty, like the Scripture feast, To which the invited never came, Deprived of its intended guest, Was given to the old and lame." Adieu ! here is company ; I think I may be excused leaving off at the sixth side. 154. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Arlington Street, Aug. 6, 1744. I DON'T tell you any thing about Prince Charles, for you must hear all his history as soon as we do ; at least much sooner than it can come to the very north, and be despatched back to Italy. There is nothing from Flanders : we advance and they retire just as two 1 It is said to be Pope's. WALPOLE. 2 The Marquis Tabernego. WALPOLE. Carteret was an accomplished Spanish scholar. CUNNINGHAM. 318 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1744. months ago we retired and they advanced: but it is good to be leading up this part of the tune. Lord Stair is going into Scotland : the King is grown wonderfully fond of him, since he has taken the resolution of that journey. He said the other day, " I wish my Lord Stair was in Flanders ! General Wade is a very able officer, but he is not alert." I, in my private litany, am beseeching the Lord, that he may contract none of my Lord Stair's alertness. When I first wrote you word of La Chetardie's disgrace, I did not believe it ; but you see it is now public. What I like is, her Russian Majesty's making her amour keep exact pace with her public indignation. She sent to demand her picture and other presents. "Other presents," to be sure, were Ulkt-doux, bracelets woven of her own bristles for I look upon the hair of a Muscovite Majesty in the light of the chairs which Gulliver made out of the combings of the Empress of Brobdingnag's tresses ; the stumps he made into very good large tooth-combs. You know the present is a very Amazon ; she has grappled with all her own grenadiers. I should like to see their loves woven into a French opera : La Chetardie's character is quite adapted to the civil discord of their stage : and then a northern heroine to reproach him in their outrageous quavers, would make a most delightful crash of sentiment, impertinence, gal- lantry, contempt, and screaming. The first opera that I saw at Paris, I could not believe was in earnest, but thought they had carried me to the opera-comique. The three acts of the piece ' were three several interludes, of the Loves of Antony and Cleopatra, of Alcibiades and the Queen of Sparta, and of Tibullus with a niece of Maecenas ; besides something of Circe, who was screamed by a Mademoiselle Hermans, seven feet high. She was in black, with a nosegay of black flowers (for on the French stage they pique them- selves on propriety), and without powder : whenever you are a widow, are in distress, or are a witch, you are to leave off powder. I have no news for you, and am going to have less, for I am going into Norfolk. I have stayed till I have not one acquaintance left: the next billow washes me last off the plank. I have not cared to stir, for fear of news from Flanders ; but I have convinced myself that there will be none. Our army is much superior to the Count de Saxe ; besides, they have ten large towns to garrison, which will reduce their army to nothing ; or they must leave us the towns to walk into coolly. 1 I think it was the ballet de la paix. WALPOLB. 1744.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 319 I have received yours of July 21. Did neither I nor your brother tell you, that we had received the Neapolitan snuff-box? 1 it is above a month ago : how could I be so forgetful ; but I have never heard one word of the cases, nor of Lord Conway's guns, nor Lord Hartington's melon-seeds, all which you mention to have sent. Lestock has long been arrived, so to be sure the cases never came with him: I hope Matthews will discover them. Pray thank Dr. Cocchi very particularly for his book. I am very sorry too for your father's removal [from Chelsea Hospital] ; it was not done in the most obliging manner by Mr. Winnington ; there was something exactly like a breach of promise in it to my father, which was tried to be softened by a civil alternative, that was no alternative at all. He was forced to it by my Lady Townshend [Harrison], who has an implacable aversion to all my father's people ; and not having less to Mr. Pelham's, she has been as brusque with Winnington about them. He has no principles himself, and those no principles of his are governed absolutely by hers, which are no-issimes. I don't know any of your English. I should delight in your Vaux-hall-ets : what a figure my Grrifona must make in such a romantic scene ! I have lately been reading the poems of the Earl of Surrey, in Henry the Eighth's time ; he was in love with the fair Geraldine of Florence; I have a mind to write under the Grifona's picture these two lines from one of his sonnets : " From Tuscane came my lady's worthy race. Fair Florence was some time her auncient seat." And then these : \ " Her beauty of kinde, her vertue from above ; Happy is he that can obtaine her love ! " I don't know what of kinde means, but to be sure it was some- thing prodigiously expressive and gallant in those days, by its being unintelligible now. Adieu ! Do the Chutes ticisbe it ? 155. TO SIR HORACE MANN. London, Aug. 16, 1744. I AM writing to you two or three days before-hand, by way of 1 It was for a present to Mr. Stone [p. 223], the Duke of Newcastle's secretary. WALPOLE. 820 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTEES. [1744. settling my affairs : not that I am going to be married or to die ; but something as bad as either if it were to last as long. You will guess that it can only be going to Houghton ; but I make as much an affair of that, as other people would of going to Jamaica. Indeed I don't lay in store of cake and band-boxes, and citron- water, and cards, and cold meat, as country-gentlewomen do after the session. My packing-up and travelling concerns lie in very small compass; nothing but myself and Patapan, my footman, a cloak-bag, and a couple of books. My old Tom is even reduced upon the article of my journey ; he is at the Bath, patching together some very bad remains of a worn-out constitution. I always travel without company; for then I take my own hours and my own humours, which I don't think the most tractable to be shut up in a coach with any body else. You know, St. Evremont's rule for conquering the passions, was to indulge them ; mine for keeping my temper in order, is never to leave it too long with another person. I have found out that it will have its way, but I make it take its way by itself. It is such sort of reflection as this, that makes me hate the country : it is impossible in one house with one set of company, to be always enough upon one's guard to make one's self agreeable, which one ought to do, as one always expects it from others. If I had a house of my own in the country, and could live there now and then alone, or frequently changing my company, I am persuaded I should like it; at least, I fancy I should; for when one begins to reflect why one don't like the country, I believe one grows near liking to reflect in it. I feel very often that I grow to correct twenty things in myself, as thinking them ridiculous at my age ; and then with my spirit of whim and folly, I make myself believe that this is all prudence, and that I wish I were young enough to be as thoughtless and extravagant as I used to be. But if I know any thing of the matter, this is all flattering myself: I grow older, and love my follies less if I did not, alas ! poor prudence and reflection ! I think I have pretty well exhausted the chapter of myself. I will now go talk to you of another fellow, who makes me look upon myself as a very perfect character; for as I have little merit naturally, and only pound a stray virtue now and then by chance, the other gentleman seems to have no vice, rather no villainy, but what he nurses in himself and methodises with as much pains as a stoic would patience. Indeed his pains are not thrown away. This pains-taking person's name is Frederic, king of Prussia. Pray 1744.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 321 remember for the future never to speak of him and H. W. without giving the latter the preference. Last week we were all alarm ! He was before Prague with fifty thousand men, and not a man in Bohemia to ask him, "What dost thou?" This week we have raised a hundred thousand Hungarians, besides vast militias and loyal nobilities. The King of Poland is to attack him on his march, and the Russians to fall on Prussia. 1 In the mean time, his letter or address to the people of England 2 has been published here : it is a poor performance ! His Voltaires and his litterati should correct his works before they are printed. A careless song, with a little nonsense in it now and then, does not misbecome a monarch ; but to pen manifestos worse than the lowest commis that is kept jointly by two or three margraves, is insufferable ! We are very strong in Flanders, but still expect to do nothing this campaign. The French are so intrenched, that it is impossible to attack them. There is talk of besieging Maubeuge ; I don't know how certainly. Lord Middlesex's match is determined, and the writings signed. She proves an immense fortune ; they pretend a hundred and thirty thousand pounds what a fund for making operas ! My Lady Carteret is going to Tunbridge there is a hurry for a son : his only one is gone mad : about a fortnight ago he was at the Duke of Bedford's, and as much in his few senses as ever. At five o'clock in the morning he waked the duke and duchess all bloody, and with the lappet of his coat held up full of ears : he had been in the stable and cropped all the horses ! He is shut up. 3 My lady is in the honey-moon of her grandeur : she lives in public places, whither she is escorted by the old beaux of her husband's court ; fair white-wigged old gallants, the Duke of Bolton, [Polly Peachem's Duke] Lord Tweedale, Lord Bathurst [Pope's friend] and Charles Fielding; 4 and she all over knots, and small hoods, and ribbons. Her brother told me the other night, " Indeed I think my 1 This alludes to the King of Prussia's retreat from Prague, on the approach of the Austrian army commanded by Prince Charles of Lorraine. DOVER. 2 In speaking of this address of the King of Prussia, Lady Hervey, in a letter of the 17th, cays, " I think it very well and very artfully drawn for his purpose, and very impertinently embarrassing to our King. He is certainly a very artful prince, and I cannot but think his projects and his ambition still more extensive, than people at present imagine them." WEIGHT. 3 On the death of his father [1763], this son succeeded to the earldom. He died in 1776, when the title became extinct. WRIGHT. 4 The Hon. Charles Fielding, third son of William, third earl of Denbigh; a lieu- tenant-colonel in the guards, and gentleman-usher to Queen Caroline. He died in 1765. WRIGHT. 322 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1744. thister doesth countenanth Ranelagh too mutch." They call my Lord Pomfret, King Stanislaus, the queen's father. I heard an admirable dialogue, which has been "written at the army on the battle of Dettingen, but one can't get a copy ; I must tell you two or three strokes in it that I have heard. Pierot asks Harlequin, " Que donne-t'on aux generaux qui ne se sont pas trouves a la bataille?" Harl. "On leur donne le cordon rouge." Pier. "Et que donne-t'on au general en chef, 1 qui a gagne la victoire ! " Harl. " Son conge*." Pier. " Qui a soin des blesses ? " Harl. "L'ennemi." Adieu! 156. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Houghton, Sept. 1, 1744. I WISH you joy of your victory at Velletri ! s I call it yours, for you are the great spring of all that war. I intend to publish your life, with an Appendix, that shall contain all the letters to you from princes, cardinals, and great men of the time. In speaking of Prince Lobkowitz's attempt to seize the King of Naples at Velletri, I shall say, " for the share our hero had in this great action, vide the Appendix, Card. Albani's letter, p. 14." You shall no longer be the dear Miny, but Hanone, the Great Man ; you shall figure with the Great Pan, and the Great Patapan. I wish you and your laurels and your operations were on the Rhine, in Piedmont, or in Bohemia ; and then Prince Charles would not have repassed the first, nor the Prince of Conti advanced within three days of Turin, and the King of Prussia would already have been terrified from entering the last all this lumping bad news came to counterbalance your Neapolitan triumphs. Here is all the war to begin again ! and perhaps next winter a second edition of Dunkirk. We could not even have the King of France [Louis XV.] die, though he was so near it. He was in a woful fright, and promised the Bishop of Soissons, that if he lived, he would have done with his women. 3 A man with all those crowns on his head, and attack- 1 Lord Stair. DOVER. 2 The Austrians had formed a scheme to surprise the Neapolitan King and general at Velletri, and their first column penetrated into the place, but reinforcements coming up, they were repulsed with considerable slaughter. WRIGHT. 3 On the 8th of August, Louis XV. was seized at Metz, on his march to Alsace, with a malignant putrid fever, which increased so rapidly, that, in a few days, his life was despaired of. In his illness, he dismissed his reigning mistress, Madame de Chateauroux. WRIGHT. 1744.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 823 ing and disturbing all those on the heads of other princes, who is the soul of all the havoc and ruin that has been and is to be spread through Europe in this war,, haggling thus for his bloody life, and cheapening it at the price of a mistress or two ! and this was the fellow that they fetched to the army, to drive the brave Prince Charles beyond the Rhine again ! It is just such another paltry mortal ' that has fetched him back into Bohemia I forget which of his battles 2 it was, that when his army had got the victory, they could not find the King : he had run away for a whole day without looking behind him. I thank you for the particulars of the action, and the list of the prisoners : among them is one Don Theodore Diamato Amor, a cavalier of so romantic a name, that my sister and Miss Leneve quite interest themselves in his captivity ; and make their addresses to you, who, they hear, have such power with Prince Lobkowitz, to obtain his liberty. If he has Spanish gallantry in any proportion to his name, he will immediately come to England, and vow himself their knight. / Those verses I sent you on Mr. Pope, I assure you, were not mine ; I transcribed them from the newspapers ; from whence I must send you a very good epigram on Bishop Berkeley's tar- water : " Who dare deride what pious Cloyne has done? The Church shall rise and vindicate her son ; She tells us, all her Bishops shepherds are And shepherds heal their rotten sheep with tar." I am not at all surprised at my Lady "Walpole's ill-humour to you about the messenger. If the resentments of women did not draw them into little dirty spite, their hatred would be very dangerous ; but they vent the leisure they have to do mischief in a thousand meannesses, which only serve to expose themselves. Adieu ! I know nothing here but public politics, of which I have already talked to you, and which you hear as soon as I do. Thank dear Mr. Chute for his letter ; I will answer it very soon ; but in the country I am forced to let my pen lie fallow between letter and letter. 1 The King of Prussia. WALPOLE. 1 The battle of Molwitz. WALPOLE. T 2 324 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1744. 157. TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY. MY DEAREST HARRY, Houghton, Oct. 6, 1744. MY lord bids me tell you how much he is obliged to you for your letter, and hopes you will accept my answer for his. I'll tell you what, we shall both be obliged to you if you will inclose a magnify- ing glass in your next letters ; for your two last were in so diminutive a character, that we were forced to employ all Mrs. Leneve's spec- tacles, besides an ancient family reading-glass, with which my grandfather used to begin the psalm, to discover what you said to us. Besides this, I have a piece of news for you : Sir Robert "Walpole, when he was made Earl of Orford, left the ministry, and with it the palace in Downing-street ; as numbers of people found out three years ago, who, not having your integrity, were quick in perceiving the change of his situation. Your letter was full as honest as you; for, though directed to Downing-street, it would not, as other letters would have done, address itself to the present pos- sessor. Do but think if it had ! The smallness of the hand would have immediately struck my Lord Sandys ' with the idea of a plot ; for what he could not read at first sight, he would certainly have concluded must be cypher. I march next week towards London, and have already begun to send my heavy artillery before me, consisting of half-a-dozcn books and part of my linen : my light-horse, commanded by Patapan, follows this day se'nnight. A detachment of hussars surprised an old bitch fox yesterday morning, who had lost a leg in a former engagement; and then, having received advice of another litter being advanced as far as Darsingham, Lord Walpole commanded Captain Eiley's horse, with a strong party of fox-hounds, to overtake them ; but on the approach of our troops the enemy stole off, and are now encamped at Sechford common, whither we every hour expect orders to pursue them. My dear Harry, this is all I have to tell you, and, to my great joy, which you must forgive me, is full as memorable as any part of the Flanders campaign. I do not desire to have you engaged in the least more glory than you have been. I should not love the remainder of you the least better for your having lost an arm or a 1 Lord Orford's successor as Chancellor of the Exchequer, of whom we have already heard so much. Horace Walpole hated him. CUNNINGHAM. 1744.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 325 leg, and have as full persuasion of your courage as if you had con- tributed to the slicing off twenty pair from French officers. Thank God, you have sense enough to content yourself without being a hero ! though I don't quite forget your expedition a huzzar-hunting the beginning of this campaign. Pray, no more of those jaunts. I don't know anybody you would oblige with a present of such game : for my part, a fragment of the oldest hussar on earth should never have a place in my museum they are not antique enough ; and for a live one, I must tell you, I Like my racoon infinitely better. Adieu! my dear Harry. I long to see you. You will easily believe the thought I have of being particularly well with you is a vast addition to my impatience, though you know it is nothing new to me to be overjoyed at your return. Yours ever. 158. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Houghtan, Oct. 6, 1744. DOES Decency insist upon one's writing within certain periods, when one has nothing to say ? because, if she does, she is the most formal, ceremonious personage I know. I shall not enter into a dispute with her, as my Lady Hervey did with the goddess of Indolence, or with the goddess of letter- writing, I forget which, in a long letter that she sent to the Duke of Bourbon ; because I had rather write than have a dispute about it. Besides, I am not at all used to converse with hieroglyphic ladies. But, I do assure you, it is merely to avoid scolding that I set about this letter : I don't mean your scolding, for you are all goodness to me ; but my own scolding of myself a correction I stand in great awe of, and which I am sure never to escape as often as I am to blame. One can scold other people again, or smile and jog one's foot, and affect not to mind it ; but those airs won't do with oneself; one always comes by the worst in a dispute with one's own conviction. Admiral Matthews sent me down hither your great packet : I am charmed with your prudence, and with the good sense of your orders for the Neapolitan expedition ; I wont say your good-nature, which is excessive ; for I think your tenderness of the little Queen 1 a little 1 The Queen of Naples Maria of Saxony, wife of Charles III. King of Naples, and subsequently, on the death of his elder brother, King of Spain. This alludes to the Austrian campaign in the Neapolitan territories ; the attack on the. town of Velletri, &c. WKIGHT. 326 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1744. outree, especially as their apprehensions might have added great weight to your menaces. I would threaten like a corsair, though I would conquer with all the good-breeding of a Scipio. I most devoutly wish you success ; you are sure of having me most happy with any honour you acquire. You have quite soared above all fear of Goldsworthy, and, I think, must appear of consequence to any ministry. I am much obliged to you for the medal, and like the design : I shall preserve it as part of your works. I can't forgive what you say to me about the coffee-pot: one would really think that you looked upon me as an old woman that had left a legacy to be kept for her sake, and a curse to attend the parting with it. My dear child, is it treating me justly to enter into the detail of your reasons ? was it even necessary to say, " I have changed your coffee-pot for some other plate ? " I have nothing to tell you, but that I go to town next week, and will then write you all I hear. Adieu ! 159. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Arlington Street, Oct. 19, 1744. I HAVE received two or three letters from you since I wrote to you last, and all contribute to give me fears for your situation at Florence. How absurdly all the Queen's haughtinesses are dictated to her by her ministers, or by her own Austriacity ! She lost all Silesia because she would not lose a small piece of it, and she is going to lose Tuscany for want of a neutrality, because she would not accept one for Naples, even after all prospect of conquering it was vanished. Every thing goes ill ! the King of Sardinia beaten ; and to-day we hear of Coni lost ! You will see in the papers too, that the Victory, our finest ship, is lost, with Sir John Balchen and nine hundred men. 1 The expense alone of the ship is computed at above two hundred thousand pounds. We have nothing good but a flying report of a victory of Prince Charles over the Prussian, who, it is said, has lost ten thousand men, and both his legs by a cannon- ball. I have no notion of his losing them, but by breaking them in over-hurry to run away. However, it comes from a Jew, who had the first news of the passage of the Rhine. 2 But, my dear child, 1 The Victory, of a hundred and ten brass guns, was lost, between the 4th and 5th of October, near Alderney. WRIGHT. 2 This report proved to be without foundation. WALPOLE. 1744.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 327 how will this comfort me, if you are not to remain in peace at Florence ! I tremble as I write ! Yesterday morning carried off those two old beldams, Sarah of Marlborough and the Countess Granville ; ' so now Uguccioni's 2 epithalamium must be new-tricked out in titles, for my Lady Carteret is Countess ! Poor Bistino ! I wish my Lady Pomfret may leave off her translation of Froissart to English the eight hundred and forty heroics ! When I know the particulars of old Marlborough's will, you shall. My Lord Walpole has promised me a letter for young Gardiner ; who, by the way, has pushed his fortune en vrai bdtard, without being so, for it never was pretended that he was my brother's : he protests he is not ; but the youth has profited of his mother's gallantries. I have not seen Admiral Matthews yet, but I take him to be very mad. He walks in the Park with a cockade of three colours : the Duke [of Cumberland] desired a gentleman to ask him the meaning, and all the answer he would give was, " The Treaty of Worms ! the Treaty of Worms ! " I design to see him, thank him for my packet, and inquire after the cases. It is a most terrible loss for his parents, Lord Beauchamp's 3 death : if they were out of the question, one could not be sorry for such a mortification to the pride of old Somerset. He has written the most shocking letter imaginable to poor Lord Hertford, telling him that it is a judgment upon him for all his undutifulness, and that he must always look upon himself as the cause of his son's death. Lord Hertford is as good a man as lives, and has always been most unreasonably ill-used by that old tyrant. The title of Somerset will revert to Sir Edward Seymour, whose line has been most unjustly deprived of it from the first creation. The Protector, when only Earl of Hertford, married a great heiress, and had a Lord Beauchamp, who was about twenty when his mother died. His father then married an Ann Stanhope, with whom he was in love, 1 Mother of John, Lord Carteret, who succeeded her in the title. WALPOLB. 2 A Florentine [p. 310], who had employed an abbe of his acquaintance to write an epithalamium on Lord Carteret's marriage, consisting of eight hundred and forty Latin lines. Sir H. Mann had given an account of the composition of this piece of literary flattery in one of his letters to AValpole. DOVER. 3 Only son of Algernon Seymour, Earl of Hertford, (afterwards the last Duke of Somerset of that branch,) ami the grandson of the proud Duke of Somerset. WAL- POI.E. Lord Beauchamp was seized with the small-pox at Bologna, and, after an illness of four days, died on the llth of September ; on which day he had completed his nineteenth year. WRIGHT. 323 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1741. and not only procured an act of parliament to deprive Lord Beau- champ of his honours, and to settle the title of Somerset, which he was going to have, on the children of this second match, hut took from him even his mother's fortune. From him descended Sir Edward Seymour, the Speaker, 1 who, on King "William's landing, when he said to him, " Sir Edward, I think you are of the Duke of Somerset's family ? " replied, " No, Sir : he is of mine." Lord Lincoln was married last Tuesday, and Lord Middlesex will he very soon. Have you heard the gentle manner of the French King's dismissing Madame de Chateauroux ? In the very circle, the Bishop of Soissons 2 told her, that, as the scandal the King had given with her was puhlic, his Majesty thought his repentance ought to he so too, and that he therefore forbad her the court ; and then turning to the monarch, asked him if that was not his pleasure, who replied, Yes. They have taken away her pension too, and turned out even laundresses that she had recommended for the future Danphiness. Apropos to the Chateauroux : there is a Hanoverian come over, who was so ingenuous as to tell Master Louis 3 how like he is to M. "VVal- moden. You conceive that " nous autres souvereins nous n'aimons pas qu'on se meprenne aux gens : " we don't love that our Fitzroys should be scandalised with any mortal resemblance. I must tell you a good piece of discretion of a Scotch soldier, whom Mr. Selwyn met on Bexley Heath walking back to the army. He had met with a single glove at Hingham, which had been left there last year in an inn by an officer now in Flanders : this the fellow was carrying in hopes of a little money; but, for fear he should lose the glove, wore it all the way. Thank you for General Braitwitz's deux potences.* I hope that one of them at least will rid us of the Prussian. Adieu ! my dear child ; all my wishes are employed about Florence. 1 Sir Edward Seymour, the Speaker, was the grandfather of Walpole's cousins, Lord Conway and Mr. Conway. CUNNINGHAM. 2 Son of Fit/James, Duke of Berwick. This Bishop of Soissons, on the King being given over at Metz, prevailed on him to part with his mistress, the Duchesse de Cha- teauroux ; but the King soon recalled her, and confined the bishop to his diocese. WALPOLE. 3 Son of King George II. by Madame Walmoden, created Countess of Yarmouth. WALPOLE. See a good story of Lord Chesterfield and Master Louis in Walpole's " Reminiscences," chapter vii., and compare vol. i. p. 116. CUNNINGHAM. 4 General Braitwitz, commander of the Queen of Hungary's troops in Tuscany, speaking of the two powers, his mistress and the King of Sardinia, instead of saying "ces deux pouvoirs," said, "ces deux potences." AVALPOLE. ;V44] TO SIR H011AOE MANN. 329 160. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Arlington Street, Nov. 9, 1744. I FIND I must not wait any longer for news, if I intend to keep up our correspondence. Nothing happens; nothing has since I wrote last, but Lord Middlesex's wedding ; which was over above a week before it was known. I believe the bride told it then ; for he and all his family are so silent, that they would never have mentioned it : she might have popped out a child, before a single Sackville would have been at the expense of a syllable to justify her. Our old acquaintance, the Pomfrets, are not so reserved about their great matrimony : the new Lady Granville was at home the other night for the first time of her being mistress of the house. I was invited, for I am in much favour with them all, but found myself extremely deplace: there was nothing but the Winchelseas and Baths, and the gleanings of a party stuffed out into a faction, some foreign ministers, and the whole blood of Fermor. My Lady Pomfret asked me if I corresponded still with the Grifona : "No," I said, " since I had been threatened with a regale of hams and Florence wine, I had dropped it." My Lady Granville said, " You was afraid of being thought interested." " Yes," said the Queen- mother [Lady Pomfret], with all the importance with which she is used to blunder out pieces of heathen mythology, " I think it was very ministerial" Don't you think that word came in as awkwardly as I did into their room ? The Minister [Carteret] is most gracious to me ; he has returned my visit, which, you know, is never practised by that rank : I put it all down to my father's account, who is not likely to keep up the civility. You will see the particulars of old Marlborough's will in the Evening Posts of this week : it is as extravagant as one should have expected ; but I delight in her begging that no part of the Duke of Marlborough's life may be written in verse by Glover and Mallet, to whom she gives five hundred pounds a-piece for writing it in prose. 1 There is a great deal of humour in the thought : to be sure the spirit of the dowager Leonidas 2 inspired her with it. 1 Glover in his Memoirs (p. 57) regrets that the " capricious restrictions of the will compelled him to reject the undertaking." He alludes to the power vested in Lord Chesterfield of revising his labours. Mallet accepted his own and Glover's legacies, but left not, when he died in 1765, anv historical labours behind him. CUNNINGHAM. 2 Glover wrote a dull heroic poem on the action of Leonidas at Thermopylae. WALPOLE. 330 HORACE WALPOLB'S LETTERS. [1744. All public affairs in agitation at present go well for us : Prince Charles in Bohemia, the raising of the siege of Coni, and probably of that of Fribourg, are very good circumstances. I shall be very tranquil this winter, if Tuscany does not come into play, or another scene of an invasion. In a fortnight meets the Parliament ; nobody guesses what the turn of the Opposition will be. Adieu ! My love to the Chutes. I hope you now and then make my other compli- ments : I never forget the Princess, nor (ware hams !) the Grifona. 161. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Arlington Street, Nov. 26, 1744. I HAVE not prepared you for a great event, because it was really so unlikely to happen, that I was afraid of being the author of a mere political report ; but, to keep you no longer in' suspense, Lord Gran- ville has resigned : that is the term, "1'honnete facon de parler ; " but, in a few words, the truth of the history is, that the Duke of Newcastle (by the way, mind that the words I am going to use are not mine, but his Majesty's) " being grown as jealous of Lord Granville ' as he had been of Lord Orford, and wanting to be first minister himself, which, a puppy ! how should he be ? " (autre phrase royale?) and his brother [Mr. Pelham] being as susceptible of the noble passion of jealousy as he is, have long been conspiring to overturn the great lord. Resolution and capacity were all they wanted to bring it about ; for the imperiousness and universal con- tempt which their rival had for them, and for the rest of the ministry, and for the rest of the nation, had made almost all men his enemies ; and, indeed, he took no pains to make friends : his maxim was, " Give any man the crown on his side, and he can defy every- thing." Winnington asked him, if that were true, how he came to be minister ? About a fortnight ago, the whole cabinet- council, except Lord Bath, Lord Winchelsea, Lord Tweedale, the Duke of Bolton, and my good brother-in-law, 3 (the two last severally bribed with the promise of Ireland,) did venture to let the King know, that he must part with them or with Lord Granville. The monarch does not love to be forced, and his son is full as angry. 1 By the death of his mother [18 Nov. 1744], Baron Carteret had become Earl Gran- ville. WRIGHT. 2 See in Lord Hervey's Memoirs, i. 197, a curious confirmation of the royal names which the King would frequently employ towards some of his subjects CUNNINGHAM. 3 George, Earl of Cholmondeley. WALPOLE. 1744.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 331 Both, tried to avoid the rupture. My father was sent for, but excused himself from coming till last Thursday, and even then would not go to the King ; and at last gave his opinion very unwillingly. But on Saturday it was finally determined : Lord Granville resigned the seals, which are given hack to my Lord President Harrington. Lord "Winchelsea quits too ; hut for all the rest of that connection, they have agreed not to quit, hut to be forced out : so Mr. Pelham must have a new struggle to remove every one. He can't let them stay in ; because, to secure his power, he must bring in Lord Chesterfield, Pitt, the chief patriots, and perhaps some Tories. The King has declared that my Lord Granville has his opinion and affection the Prince warmly and openly espouses him. Judge how agreeably the two brothers will enjoy their ministry ! To-morrow the Parliament meets : all in suspense ! everybody will be staring at each other ! I believe the war will still go on, but a little more Anglicized. For my part, I behold all with great tranquillity ; I cannot be sorry for Lord Granville, for he certainly sacrificed everything to please the King ; I cannot be glad for the Pelhams, for they sacrifice everything to their own jealousy and ambition. Who are mortified are the fair Sophia and Queen Stanislaus. 1 However, the daughter carries it off heroically ; the very night of her fall she went to the Oratorio. I talked to her much, and recol- lected all that had been said to me upon the like occasion three years ago ; I succeeded, and am invited to her assembly next Tues- day. Tell TJguccioni that she still keeps conversazioni, or he will hang himself. She had no court, but an ugly sister and the fair old- fashioned Duke of Bolton. It put me in mind of a scene in Harry VIII., where Queen Catherine appears after her divorce, with Patience her waiting-maid, and Griffith her gentleman-usher. My dear child, voild le monde I are you as great a philosopher about it as I am ? You cannot imagine how I entertain myself, especially as all the ignorant flock hither, and conclude that my lord must be minister again. Yesterday, three bishops came to do him homage ; and who should be one of them but Dr. Thomas, 2 the only man mitred by Lord Granville ! As I was not at all mortified with our fall, I am only diverted with this imaginary restoration. They little think how incapable my lord is of business again. He has this 1 Lady Granville and her mother, the Countess of Pomfret. CUNNINGHAM. 2 Bishop of Lincoln. WALPOLE. Successively translated to Salisbury and Win- chester. He died in 1781. WEIGHT. 332 HORACE WALl'OLE'S LETTERS. [1744. whole summer been troubled with bloody water upon the least motion ; and to-day Ranby assured me, that he has a stone in his bladder, which he himself believed before ; so now he must never use the least exercise, never go into a chariot again ; and if ever to Houghton, in a litter. Though this account will grieve you, I tell it you, that you may know what to expect ; yet it is common for people to live many years in his situation. If you are not as detached from everything as I am, you will wonder at my tranquillity, to be able to write such variety in the midst of hurricanes. It costs me nothing ! so I shall write on, and tell you an adventure of my own. The town has been trying all this winter to beat Pantomimes off the stage, very boisterously ; for it is the way here to make even an affair of taste and sense a matter of riot and arms. Fleetwood, 1 the master of Drury-Lane, has omitted nothing to support them, as they supported his house. About ten days ago, he let into the pit great numbers of Bear-garden bruisers (that is the term), to knock down everybody that hissed. The pit rallied their forces, and drove them out : I was sitting very quietly in the side-boxes, contemplating all this. On a sudden the curtain flew up, and discovered the whole stage filled with blackguards, armed with bludgeons and clubs, to menace the audience. This raised the greatest uproar ; and among the rest, who flew into a passion, but your friend the philosopher? In short, one of the actors, advancing to the front of the stage to make an apology for the manager, he had scarce begun to say, " Mr. Fleetwood " when your friend, with a most audible voice and dignity of anger, called out, " He is an impudent rascal ! " The whole pit huzzaed, and repeated the words. Only think of my being a popular orator ! But what was still better, while my shadow of a person was dilating to the consistence of a hero, one of the chief ringleaders of the riot, coming under the box where I sat, and pulling off his hat, said, " Mr. Walpole, what would you please to have us do next ? " It is impossible to describe to you the confusion into which this apostrophe threw me. I sank down into the box, and have never since ventured to set my foot into the playhouse. The next night, the uproar was repeated with greater violence, and nothing was heard but voices calling out, " Where's Mr. W. ? where's Mr. W. ? " In short, the whole town has been entertained with my prowess, and Mr. Conway has given me the name of Wat Tyler ; which, I believe, would have 1 Charles Fleetwood, the worst manager that old Drury, so often ill-managed, ever had. CUNNINGHAM. 1744.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 333 stuck by me, if this new episode of Lord Granville had not luckily interfered. We every minute expect news of the Mediterranean engagement ; for, besides your account, Birtles has written the same from Genoa. We expect good news, too, from Prince Charles, who is driving the King of Prussia before him. In the mean time, his wife the Archduchess is dead, which may be a signal loss to him. I forgot to tell you that, on Friday, Lord Charles Hay, 1 who has more of the parts of an Irishman than of a Scot, told my Lady Granville at the drawing-room, on her seeing so full a court, " that people were come out of curiosity." The Speaker [Onslow] is the happiest of any man in these bustles : he says, " this Parliament has torn two favourite ministers from the throne." His conclusion is, that the power of the Parliament will in the end be so great, that nobody can be minister but their own Speaker. Winnington says my Lord Chesterfield and Pitt will have places before old Marlborough's legacy to them for being patriots is paid. My compliments to the family of Suares on the Vittorina's marriage. Adieu! 162. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Arlington Street, Dec. 24, 1744. You will wonder what has become of me : nothing has. I know it is above three weeks since I wrote to you ; but I will tell you the reason. I have kept a parliamentary silence, which I must explain to you. Ever since Lord Granville went out, all has been in suspense. The leaders of the Opposition immediately imposed silence upon their party : every thing passed without the least debate in short, all u-tre making their bargains. One has heard of the corruption of courtiers; but believe me, the impudent prostitution of patriots, going to market with their honesty, beats it to nothing. Do but think of two hundred men of the most consummate virtue, setting themselves to sale for three weeks ! I have been reprimanded by the wise for saying that they all stood like servants at a country statute fair to be hired. All this while nothing was certain : one day the coalition was settled ; the next, the treaty broke off : I hated to write to you what I might contradict next post. Besides, in my last letter I remember telling you that the Archduchess was dead ; she did not die till a fortnight afterwards. 1 Brother of Lord Tweeddale. WALPOLE. 334 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1744. The result of the whole is this : the King, instigated by Lord Granville, has used all his ministry as ill as possible, and has with the greatest difficulty been brought to consent to the necessary changes. Mr. Pelham has had as much difficulty to regulate the disposition of places. Numbers of lists of the hungry have been given in by their centurions ; of those, several Tories have refused to accept the proffered posts: some, from an impossibility of being re-chosen for their Jacobite counties. But upon the whole, it appears that their leaders have had very little influence with them ; for not above four or five are come into place. The rest will stick to Opposition. Here is a list of the changes, as made last Saturday : Duke of Devonshire, Lord Steward, in the room of the Duke of Dorset. Duke of Dorset, Lord President, in Lord Harrington's room. Lord Chesterfield, t Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, in the Duke of Devonshire's. Duke of Bedford,f Lord Sandwich,+ George Grenville,t Lord Yere Beauclerc, 1 and Admiral Anson, Lords of the Admiralty, in the room of Lord Winchelsea,* Dr. Lee,* Cockburn,* Sir Charles Hardy,* and Philipson.* Mr. Arundel and George Lyttelton,t Lords of the Treasury, in the room of Compton* and Gybbon.* Lord Gowerf again Privy Seal in Lord Cholmondeley's* room, who is made Vice- Treasurer of Ireland in Harry Vane's.* Mr. Dodington,t Treasurer of the Navy, in Sir John Rushout's.* Mr. Waller,t Cofferer, in Lord Sandys'.* Lord Hobart, Captain of the Pensioners, in Lord Bathurst's.* Sir John Cotton, f 2 Treasurer of the Chambers, in Lord Hobart's. 3 Mr. Keene, Paymaster of the Pensions, in Mr. Hooper's.* Sir John Philippsf and John Pitt,t Commissioners of Trade, in Mr. Keene's and Sir Charles Gilmour's.* William Chetwynd,t Master of the Mint, in Mr. Arundel's. Lord Halifax,t Master of the Buck-hounds, in Mr. Jennison' s, who has a pension. All those with a cross are from the Opposition ; those with a star, the turned out, and are all of the Granville and Bath squadron, except Lord Chohnondeley, (who, too, had connected with the former,) and Mr. Philipson. The King parted with great regret with Lord Chohnondeley, and complains loudly of the force put upon him. 1 Lord Vere Beauclerk, third son of the first Duke of St. Albans, afterwards created Lord Vere of Hanworth. He entered early into a maritime life, and distinguished himself in several commands. He died in 1781. WEIGHT. - The King was much displeased that an adherent of the exiled family should be forced into the service of his own. In consequence of this appointment a caricature was circulated, representing ministers thrusting Sir John, who was extremely corpulent, down the King's throat. WEIGHT. 3 John, first Lord Hobart, so created in 1728, by the interest of his sister, Lady Suffolk, the mistress of George II. In 1746 he was created Earl of Buckinghamshire, and died in 1756. DOVER. 1745.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 335 The Prince, who is full as warm as his father for Lord Granville, has already turned out Lyttelton, who was his secretary, and Lord Halifax ; and has named Mr. Drax and Lord Inchiquin '' in their places. You perceive the great Mr. William Pitt is not in the list, though he comes thoroughly into the measures. To preserve his character and authority in the Parliament, he was unwilling to accept any thing yet : the ministry very rightly insisted that he should ; he asked for Secretary at War, knowing it would be refused and it was. 2 By this short sketch, and it is impossible to be more explanatory, you will perceive that all is confusion : all parties broken to pieces, and the whole Opposition by tens and by twenties selling themselves for profit power they get none ! It is not easy to say where power resides at present : it is plain that it resides not in the King ; and yet he has enough to hinder any body else from having it. His new governors have no interest with him scarce any converse with him. The Pretender's son is owned in France as Prince of Wales ; the princes of the blood have been to visit bfm in form. The Duchess of Chateauroux is poisoned there ; so their monarch is as ill-used as our most gracious King ! 3 How go your Tuscan affairs ? I am always trembling for you, though I am laughing at every thing else. My father is pretty well : he is taking a preparation of Mrs. Stephens's " medicine ; but I think all his physicians begin to agree that he has no large stone. Adieu ! my dear child : I think the present comedy cannot be of long duration. The Parliament is adjourned for the holidays : I am impatient to see the first division. 163. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Arlington Street, Jan. 4, 1745. WHEN I receive your long letters, I am ashamed : mine are notes 1 William O'Brien, fourth Earl of Inchiquin, in Ireland. He died in 1777. WEIGHT. 2 I ordered Mr. Stone to acquaint you that we had prevailed with the King to make Mr. Pitt Paymaster. His Majesty was determined not to give him the War Office. D. of Newcastle to D. of Bedford, April 28, 1746. CUNNINGHAM. 3 The Duchess died on the 8th of December. The Biog. Univ. says, that the rumour of her having been poisoned was altogether without foundation. WRIGHT. 4 It was Dr. Jurin's preparation. WALPOLE. A nostrum for the stone, prepared by Mrs. Joanna Stephens, for which the government gave her 5000^. Her method of preparation was published in the London Gazette of June 19, 1739. She died in 1774. CUNNINGHAM. 330 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1745. in comparison. How do you contrive to roll out your patience into two sheets ? You certainly don't love me better than I do you ; and yet if our loves were to be sold by the quire, you would have by far the more magnificent stock to dispose of. I can only say, that age has already an effect on the vigour of my pen ; none on yours : it is not, I assure you, for you alone, but my ink is at low water- mark for all my acquaintance. My present shame arises from a letter of eight sides, of December 8th, which I received from you last post ; but before I say a word to that, I must tell you that I have at last received the cases ; three with gesse figures, and one with Lord Conway's gun-barrels : I thought there were to be four, besides the guns ; but I quite forget, and did not even remember what they were to contain. Am not I in your debt again ? Tell me, for you know how careless I am. Look over your list, and see whether I have received all. There were four barrels, the Ganymede, the Sleeping Cupid, the model of my statue, the Musa3um Florentinum, and some seeds for your brother. But alas ! though I received them in gross, I did not at all in detail ; the model was broken into ten thousand bits, and the Ganymede short in two ; besides some of the fingers quite reduced to powder. Rysbrach ' has undertaken to mend him. The little Morpheus arrived quite whole, and is charmingly pretty ; I like it better in plaster than in the original black marble. It is not being an upright senator to promise one's vote before- hand, especially in a money-matter ; but I believe so many excel- lent patriots have just done the same thing, that I shall venture readily to engage my promise to you, to get you any sum for the defence of Tuscany why, it is to defend you and my own country ! my own palace in via di santo spirito? my own Princess epitisee, and all my family ! I shall quite make interest for you : nay, I would speak to our new ally, and your old acquaintance, Lord Sandwich, to assist in it ; but I could have no hope of getting at his ear, for he has put on such a first-rate tie-wig, on his admission to the admiralty-board, that nothing without the lungs of a boatswain can ever think to penetrate the thickness of the curls. I think, however, it does honour to the dignity of ministers : when he was but a patriot, his wig was not of half its present gravity. There are no more changes made: all is quiet yet; but next Thursday the Parliament meets to decide the complexion of the session. My 1 John Michael Rysbrach, the sculptor; died 1770. CUNNINGHAM. 2 The street in Florence where Mr. Mann lived. WALPOLE. 1745.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 337 Lord Chesterfield goes next week to Holland, and then returns for Ireland. The great present disturbance in politics is my Lady Granville's assembly ; which I do assure you distresses the Pelhams infinitely more than a mysterious meeting of the States would, and far more than the abrupt breaking up of the Diet at Grodno. She had begun to keep Tuesdays before her lord resigned, which now she continues with great zeal. Her house is very fine, she very handsome, her lord very agreeable and extraordinary ; and yet the Duke of New- castle wonders that people will go thither. He mentioned to my father my going there, who laughed at him ; Cato's a proper person to trust with such a childish jealousy ! Harry Fox says, " Let the Duke of Newcastle open his own house, and see if all that come thither are his friends." The fashion now is to send cards to the women, and to declare that all men are welcome without being asked. This is a piece of ease that shocks the prudes of the last age. You can't imagine how my Lady Granville shines in doing honours ; you know she is made for it. My lord has new furnished his mother's apartment for her, and has given her a magnificent set of dressing-plate : he is very fond of her, and she as fond of his being so. You will have heard of Marshal Belleisle's being made a prisoner at Hanover : the world will believe it was not by accident. He is sent for over hither : the first thought was to confine him to the Tower, but that is contrary to the politesse of modern war : they talk of sending him to Nottingham, where Tallard was. I am sure, if he is prisoner at large any where, we could not have a worse inmate ! so ambitious and intriguing a man, who was author of this whole war, will be no bad general to be ready to head the Jacobites on any insurrection. 1 I can say nothing more about young Gardiner, but that I don't think my father at all inclined now to have any letter written for him. Adieu ! 164. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Arlington Street, Jan. 14, 1745. I HAVE given my uncle the letter from M. de Magnan ; he had just received another from him at Venice, to desire his recommenda- 1 Belleisle and his brother, who had been sent by the King of France on a mission to the King of Prussia, were detained, while changing horses, at Elbengerode, and 838 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1745. tion to you. His history is, first, the Regent picked him up, (I don't know from whence, but he is of the Greek church,) to teach the present Duke of Orleans the Russ tongue, when they had a scheme for marrying him into Muscovy. At Paris Lord Walde- grave ' met with him, and sent him over hither, where they pensioned him, and he was to be a spy, but made nothing out ; till the King was weary of giving him money, and then they dispatched him to Vienna, with a recommendation to Count d'Uhlefeldt, who, I sup- pose, has tacked him upon the Great Duke. My uncle says, he knows no ill of him ; that you may be civil to him, but not enter into correspondence with him : you need not ; he is of no use. Apropos to you ; I have been in a fright about you ; we were told that Prince Lobkowitz was landed at Harwich ; I did not like the name ; and as he has been troublesome to you, I did not know but he might fancy he had some complaints against you. I wondered you had never mentioned his being set out ; but it is his son, a travelling boy of twenty ; he is sent under the care of an apothecary and surgeon. The Parliament is met : one hears of the Tory opposition con- tinuing, but nothing has appeared yet ; all is quiet. Lord Chester- field is set out for the Hague : I don't know what ear the States will lend to his embassy, when they hear with what difficulty the King was brought to give him a parting audience ; and which, by a watch, did not last five-and-forty seconds. The Granville faction are still the constant and only countenanced people at Court. Lord Win- chelsea, one of the disgraced, played at Court on Twelfth-night, and won : the King asked him next morning, how much he had for his own share ? " He replied, " Sir, about a quarter's salary." I liked the spirit, and was talking to him of it the next night at Lord Granville's : " Why, yes," said he, " I think it showed familiarity at least : tell it your father ; I don't think he will dislike it." My Lady Granville gives a ball this week, but in a manner a private one, to the two families of Carteret and Fermor and their intimacies : there is a fourth sister, Lady Juliana, 3 who is very handsome, but I think not so well as Sophia : the latter thinks herself breeding. from thence conveyed to England ; where, refusing to give their parole in the mode it was required, they were confined in Windsor Castle. WALPOLE. 1 James, first Earl of Waldegrave, ambassador at Paris, E.G. He died in 1741. DOVEK. 2 Those who play at court on Twelfth-night, make a bank with several people. WAX-POLE. 3 Lady Juliana Fermor, married in 1751 to Thomas Penn, Esq., (son of William Penn, the great legislator of the Quakers) one of the proprietors of Pennsylvania. He died in 1775, and Lady Juliana in 1781. WRIGHT. 1745.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 339 I will tell you a very good thing : Lord Baltimore will not come into the Admiralty, because in the new commission they give Lord Vere Beauclerc the precedence to him, and he has dispersed printed papers with precedents in his favour. A gentleman, I don't know who, the other night at Tom's coffee-house, 1 said, " It put him in mind of PenkethmanV petition in ' The Spectator,' where he com- plains, that formerly he used to act second chair in Dioclesian, but now was reduced to dance fifth flower-pot." The Duke of Montagu 3 has found out an old penny-history-book, called the Old Woman's Will of Ratcliffe-Highway, which he has bound up with his mother-in-law's, Old Maryborough, 4 only tearing away the title-page of the latter. My father has been extremely ill this week with his disorder ; I think the physicians are more and more persuaded that it is the stone in his bladder. He is taking a preparation of Mrs. Stephens's medicine, a receipt of one Dr. Jurin, which we began to fear was too violent for him : I made his doctor angry with me by arguing on this medicine, which I never could comprehend. It is of so great violence, that it is to split a stone when it arrives at it, and yet it is to do no damage to all the tender intestines through which it must first pass. I told him I thought it was like an admiral going on a secret expedition of war, with instructions, which are not to be opened till he arrives in such a latitude. George Townshend, 8 my lord's eldest son, who is at the Hague on his travels, has had an offer to raise a regiment for their service, of which he is to be colonel, with power of naming all his own oflicers. It was proposed that it should consist of Irish Roman Catholics, but the regency of Ireland have represented against that, 1 I suppose Tom's Coffee House in Great Russell Street, Covent Garden. CUNNINGHAM. 2 William Penkethman (familiarly known as Pinkey) : died 20th September, 1725. CUNNIHGHAM. 3 John, Duke of Montagu (1709-1749), eccentric in his humour, as well as in his , benevolence, was the contriver (16 January, 1748-9) of the notable hoax at the Hay- market Theatre, of a man squeezing himself into a quart bottle. " All his [the Duke of Montagu's] talents lie in things only natural in boys of fifteen years old, and he is about two and fifty ; to get people into his garden and wet them with squirts, and to invite people to his country houses, and put things into their beds to make them itch, and twenty such pretty-fancies like these." Sarah, Duchess of Marlborowjh (his mother-in-law), to Lord Stair. (Dalrymple's Opinions, p. 58.) See another instance of this practised on Dr. Misaubin, in the " Richardsoniana," p. 160. CUNNINGHAM. 4 The Duchess of Marlborough's will was published in a thin octavo volume. DOTEK. 6 Afterwards first Marquis Townshend, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Master General of the Ordnance, &c. WALPOLE. z 2 340 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1745. because they think they will all desert to the French. He is now to try it of Scotch, which will scarce succeed, unless he will let all the officers be of the same nation. An affair of this kind first raised the late Duke of Argyll [and Greenwich] ; and was the cause of his first quarrel with the Duke of Marlborough, who was against his coming into our army in the same rank. Sir Thomas Hanmer has at last published his Shakspeare : he has made several alterations, but they will be the less talked of, as he has not marked in the text, margin, or notes, where or why he has made any change ; but every body must be obliged to collate it with other editions. One most curiously absurd alteration I have been told. In Othello, it is said of Cassio, " a Florentine, one almost damned in a fair wife" It happens that there is no other mention in the play of Cassio's wife. Sir Thomas has altered it how do you think? no, I should be sorry if you could think how " almost damned in a fair phiz ! " what a tragic word ! and what sense! Adieu ! I see advertised a translation of Dr. Cocchi's book on living on vegetables : l does he know any thing of it ? My service to him and every body. 165. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Arlington Street, Feb. 1, 1745. I AM glad my letters, obscure as they of course must be, give you any light into England ; but don't mind them too much ; they may be partial ; must be imperfect ; don't negotiate upon this authority, but have CapelloV example before your eyes ! How I laugh when I see him important, and see my Lady Pomfret's letters at the bottom of his instructions ! how it would make a philosopher smile at the vanity of politics ! How it diverts me, who can entertain myself at the expense of philosophy, politics, or any thing else ! Mr. Con way says I laugh at all serious characters so I do and at myself too, who am far from being of the number. Who would not laugh at a world, where so ridiculous a creature as the Duke of Newcastle can overturn ministries ! Don't take me for a partisan of Lord Granville's because I despise his rivals ; I am not for adopting his 1 The Doctor's treatise " Di Vitto Pythagorico," appeared this year in England, under the title of " The Pythagorean Diet ; or, Vegetables only conducive to the Preservation of Health and the Cure of Diseases." WRIGHT. 2 The Venetian ambassador. WALPOLB. 1745.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 341 measures ; they were wild and dangerous : in his single capacity, I think him a great genius ; ' and without having recourse to the Countess's [Pomfret's] translatable periods, am pleased with his company. His frankness charms one when it is not necessary to depend upon it ; and his contempt of fools is very flattering to any one who happens to know the present ministry. Their coalition goes on as one should expect ; they have the name of having effected it ; and the Opposition is no longer mentioned : yet there is not a half-witted prater in the House hut can divide with every new minister on his side, except Lyttelton, whenever he pleases. They actually do every day bring in popular bills, and on the first tinkling of the brass, all the new bees swarm back to the Tory side of the House. The other day, on the Flanders army, Mr. Pitt came down to prevent this : he was very ill, but made a very strong and much admired speech for coalition,' which for that day succeeded, and the army was voted with but one negative. But now the Emperor 8 is dead, and every thing must wear a new face. If it produces a peace, Mr. Pelham is a fortunate man ! He will do extremely well at the beginning of peace, like the man in Madame de la Fayette's Me- moirs, " Qui exercoit extremement bien sa charge, quand il n'avoit rien a faire." However, do you keep well with them, and be sure don't write me back any treason, in answer to all I write to you : you are to please them ; I think of them as they are. The new Elector 4 seems to set out well for us, though there are accounts of his having taken the style of Archduke, as Claiming the Austrian succession : if he has, it will be like the children's game of beat knaves out of doors, where you play the pack twenty times over ; one gets pam, the other gets pam, but there is no conclusion of the game, till one side has never a card left. After my ill success with the baronet, 5 to whom I gave a letter for 1 Swift, in speaking of Lord Granville, says, that " he carried away from college more Greek, Latin, and philosophy than properly became a person of his rank ;" and Walpole, in his Memoires, describes him as "an extensive scholar, master of all classic criticism, and of all modern politics." WEIGHT. 2 " Mr. Pitt, who had been laid up with the gout, came down with the mien and apparatus of an invalid, on purpose to make a full declaration of his sentiments on our present circumstances. What he said was enforced with much grace both of action and elocution. He commended the ministry for pursuing moderate and healing measures, and such as tended to set the King at the head of all his people." See Mr. P. Yorke's MS. Parliamentary Journal. VV BIGHT. 3 Charles VII. Elector of Bavaria. WALPOLE. 4 Maximilian Joseph. He died in 1777. WRIGHT. 5 Sir William Maynard. WALPOLE. He married the daughter of Sir Cecil Bisshopp, and died in 1772. WRIGHT. 342 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1745. you, I shall always be very cautious how I recommend barbarians to your protection. I have this morning been solicited for some cre- dentials for a Mr. Oxenden. 1 I could not help laughing : he is son of Sir George, my Lady W[alpole]'s famous lover ! " Can he want recommendations to Florence ? However, I must give him a letter ; but beg you will not give yourself any particular trouble about him, for I do not know him enough to bow to. His person is good : that and his name, I suppose, will bespeak my lady's attentions, and save you the fatigue of doing him many honours. Thank Mr. Chute for his letter ; I will answer it very soon. I delight in the article of the Mantua Gazette. Adieu ! 166. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Arlington Street, Feb. 28, 1745. You have heard from your brother the reason of my not having written to you so long. I have been out but twice since my father fell into this illness, which is now near a month ; and all that time either continually in his room, or obliged to see multitudes of people ; for it is most wonderful how everybody of all kinds has affected to express their concern for him ! He has been out of danger above this week ; but I can't say he mended at all perceptibly, till these last three days. His spirits are amazing, and his constitution more ; for Dr. Hulse 3 said honestly from the first, that if he recovered, it would be from his own strength, not from their art. After the four or five first days, in which they gave him the bark, they resigned him to the struggles of his own good temperament and it has sur- mounted ! surmounted an explosion and discharge of thirty-two pieces of stone, a constant and vast effusion of blood for five days, a fever of three weeks, a perpetual flux of water, and sixty-nine years, already (one should think) worn down with his vast fatigues ! How much more he will ever recover, one scarce dare hope about : for us, he is greatly recovered ; for himself 1 Afterwards Sir Henry Oxenden, the sixth baronet of the family, and eldest son of Sir George Oxenden, for many years a lord of the Treasury during the reign of George II. He died in 1803. WRIGHT. 2 Sir George Oxenden (died 1775) was thought to be the father of Lady Walpole's son, afterwards third Earl of Orford. (See Lord Hervey's Memoirs, vol. ii., p. 347.) Lord Hervey has drawn an odious picture of Sir George Oxenden, " my Lady W.'g famous lover." CUNNINGHAM. 3 Dr. Hulse, father of Sir Edward Hulse, Bart. He was called in to Mr. Winning- ton when too late. CUNNINGHAM. 1745.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 343 March tih. I had written thus far last week, without being able to find a moment to finish. In the midst of all . my attendance on my lord and receiving visits, I am forced to go out and thank those that have come and sent ; for his recovery is now at such a pause, that I fear it is in vain to expect much farther amendment. How dismal a pro- spect for him, with the possession of the greatest understanding in the world, not the least impaired, to lie without any use of it ! for to keep him from pains and restlessness, he takes so much opiate, that he is scarce awake four hours of the four-and-twenty ; but I will say no more of this. Our coalition goes on thrivingly ; but at the expense of the old Court, who are all discontented, and are likely soon to show their resentment. The brothers have seen the best days of their ministry. The Hanover troops dismissed to please the Opposition, and taken again with their consent, under the cloak of an additional subsidy to the Queen of Hungary, who is to pay them. This has set the patriots in so villainous a light, that they will be ill able to support a minister who has thrown such an odium on the Whigs, after they had so stoutly supported that measure last year, and which, after all the clamour, is now universally adopted, as you see. If my Lord Granville had any resentment, as he seems to have nothing but thirst, sure there is no vengeance he might not take ! So far from contracting any prudence from his fall, he laughs it off every night over two or three bottles. The countess is with child. I believe she and the countess-mother [Pomfret] have got it ; for there is nothing ridiculous which they have not done and said about it. There was a private masquerade lately at the Venetian ambassadress's for the Prince of Wales, who named the company, and expressly excepted my Lady Lincoln [Miss Pelham] and others of the Pelham faction. My Lady Granville came late, dressed like Imoinda, and handsomer than one of the houris : the Prince asked her why she would not dance ? " Indeed, Sir, I was afraid I could not have come at all, for I had a fainting fit after dinner." The other night my Lady Townshend made a great ball on her son's coming of age : I went for a little while, little thinking of dancing. I asked my Lord Granville, why my lady did not dance ? " Oh, Lord ! I wish you would ask her ; she will with you." I was caught, and did walk down one country dance with her ; but the prudent Signora- madre would not let her expose the young Carteret any farther. 344 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1745. You say, you expect much information about Belleisle, but there has not (in the style of the newspapers) the least particular transpired. He was at first kept magnificently close at Windsor ; but the ex- pense proving above one hundred pounds per day, they have taken his parole, and sent him to Nottingham, d la Tattarde. Pray, is De Sede with you still ? his brother has been taken too by the Austrians. My Lord Coke is going to be married to a Miss Shawe, 1 of forty- thousand pounds. Lord Hartington a is contracted to Lady Charlotte Boyle, the heiress of Burlington, and sister of the unhappy Lady Euston ; but she is not yet old enough. Earl Stanhope, 3 too, has at last lifted up his eyes from Euclid, and directed them to matrimony. He has chosen the eldest sister of your acquaintance Lord Had- dington. I revive about you and Tuscany. I will tell you what is thought to have reprieved you : it is much suspected that the King of Spain" is dead. I hope those superstitious people will pinch the Queen, as they do witches, to make her loosen the charm that has kept the Prince of Asturias from having children. At least this must turn out better than the death of the Emperor has. The Duke [of Cumberland], you hear, is named generalissimo, with Count Koningseg, Lord Dunmore, 8 and Ligonier 6 under him. Poor boy! he is most Brunswickly happy with his drums and trumpets. Do but think that this sugar-plum was to tempt him to swallow that bolus the Princess of Denmark ! 7 What will they do if they have children ? The late Queen never forgave the Duke of Richmond, for telling her that his children would take place before the Duke's grandchildren. 1 This marriage did not take place. Lord Coke afterwards married Lady Mary Campbell [of whom we shall read so much] ; and Miss Shawe, William, fifth Lord Byron, the immediate prodecessor of the great poet. WRIGHT. 2 His marriage with Lady Charlotte Boyle took place in March, 1748. In 1755, he succeeded his father as fourth Duke of Devonshire. WEIGHT. 3 Philip, second Earl Stanhope. He married, in July following, Lady Grizel Hamilton, daughter of Charles, Lord Binning. WRIGHT. 4 The imbecile and insane Philip V. He did not die till 1746. The Prince of Asturias was Ferdinand VI., who succeeded him, and died childless in 1759. DOVER. 8 John Murray, second Earl of Dunmore : colonel of the third regiment of Scotch Foot Guards. He died in 1752. WRIGHT. 6 Sir John Ligonier, created Lord Ligonier, in Ireland, in 1757, an English peer by the same title in 1763, and Earl Ligonier in 1766. He died at the age of ninety- one, in 1770. DOVER. 7 Compare Walpole's " Reminiscences," chap. viii. CUNNINGHAM. 1745.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 345 I inclose you a pattern for a chair, which your brother desired me to send you. I thank you extremely for the views of Florence ; you can't imagine what wishes they have awakened. My best thanks to Dr. Cocchi for his book : I have delivered all the copies as directed. Mr. Chute will excuse me yet ; the first moment I have time, I will write. I have just received your letter of Feb. 16, and grieve for your disorder : you know how much concern your ill-health gives me. Adieu ! my dear child : I write with twenty people in the room. 167. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Arlington Street, March 29, 1745. I BEGGED your brother to tell you what it was impossible for me to tell you. 1 You share nearly in our common loss ! Don't expect me to enter at all upon the subject. After the melancholy two months that I have passed, and in my situation, you will not wonder I shun a conversation which could not be bounded by a letter a letter that would grow into a panegyric, or a piece of moral ; improper for me to write upon, and too distressful for us both ! a death is only to be felt, never to be talked over by those it touches ! I had yesterday your letter of three sheets : I began to flatter myself that the storm was blown over, but I tremble to think of the danger you are in ! a danger, in which even the protection of the great friend you have lost could have been of no service to you. How ridiculous it seems for me to renew protestations of my friend- ship for you, at an instant when my father is just dead, and the Spaniards just bursting into Tuscany ! How empty a charm would my name have, when all my interest and significance are buried in my father's grave ! All hopes of present peace, the only thing that could save you, seem vanished. We expect every day to hear of the French declaration of war against Holland. The new Elector of Bavaria is French, like his father ; and the King of Spain is not dead. I don't know how to talk to you. I have not even a belief that the Spaniards will spare Tuscany. My dear child, what will become of you ? whither will you retire till a peace restores you to your ministry ? for upon that distant view alone I repose ! 1 The death of his father. Lord Orford died at his house in Arlington Street, 18 March, 1745, and was buried at Houghton. CUNNINGHAM. 346 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTE11S. [17-15. Wo are every day nearer confusion. The King is in as bad humour as a monarch can be ; he wants to go abroad, and is detained by the Mediterranean affair ; the inquiry into which was moved by a Major Selwyn, a dirty pensioner, half-turned patriot, by the Court being overstocked with votes. 1 This inquiry takes up the whole time of the House of Commons, but I don't see what conclu- sion it can have. My confinement has kept me from being there, except the first day ; and all I know of what is yet come out is, as it was stated by a Scotch member the other day, " that there had been one (Matthews) with a bad head, another (Lestock) with a worse heart, and four (the captains of the inactive ships) with na heart at all." Among the numerous visits of form that I have received, one was from my Lord Sandys : as we two could only converse upon general topics, we fell upon this of the Mediterranean, and I made him allow, " that, to be sure, there is not so bad a court of justice in the world as the House of Commons ; and how hard it is upon any man to have his cause tried there ! " Sir Everard Falkner 2 is made secretary to the Duke, who is not yet gone : I have got Mr. Conway to be one of his aid-de-camps. Sir Everard has since been offered the joint-postmastership, vacant by Sir John Eyles's 3 death ; but he would not quit the Duke. It was then proposed to the King to give it to the brother : it happened to be a cloudy day, and he only answered, " I know who Sir Everard is, but I don't know who Mr. Falkner is." The world expects some change when the Parliament rises. My Lord Granville's physicians have ordered him to go to the Spa, as, you know, they often send ladies to the Bath who are very ill of a want of diversion. It will scarce be possible for the present ministry to endure this jaunt. Then they are losing many of their new allies : the new Duke of Beaufort, 4 a most determined and unwavering Jacobite, has openly set himself at the head of that party, and forced them to vote against the Court, and to renounce 1 " 1745, February 26. We had an unexpected motion from a very contemptible fellow, Major Selwyn, for an inquiry into the cause of the miscarriage of the fleet in the action off Toulon. Mr. Pelham, perceiving that the inclination of the House was for an inquiry, acceded to the motion ; but fonvarned it of the temper, patience, and caution with which it should be pursued." Mr. Yorlces MS. Journal. WEIGHT. 2 He had been ambassador at Constantinople. WALPOLE. 3 Sir John Eyles, Bart., an alderman of the city of London, and at one time member of parliament for the same. He died March 11, 1745. DOVER. 4 Charles Noel Somerset, fourth Duke of Beaufort, succeeded his elder brother Henry in the dukedom, February 14, 1745. DOVER. 1745.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 347 my Lord Gower. My wise cousin, Sir John Phillipps, has resigned his place ; and it is believed that Sir John Cotton will soon resign : but the Bedford, Pitt, Lyttelton, and that squadron, stick close to their places. Pitt has lately resigned his bedchamber to the Prince, which, in friendship to Lyttelton, it was expected he would have done long ago. They have chosen for this resignation a very apposite passage out of Cato : " He toss'd his arm aloft, and proudly told me He would not stay, and perish like Sempronius." This was Williams's. My Lord Coke's match is broken off, upon some coquetry of the lady [Miss Shawe] with Mr. Mackenzie ' at the Bidotto. My Lord Leicester says, " there shall not be a third lady in Norfolk of the species of the two fortunes 2 that matched at Rainham and Houghton." Pray, will the new Countess of Orford come to England ? The town flocks to a new play of Thomson's called " Tancred and Sigismunda : " it is very dull ; I have read it. I cannot bear modern poetry ; these refiners of the purity of the stage, and of the incorrectness of English verse, are most wofully insipid. I had rather have written the most absurd lines in Lee, than " Leonidas " or " The Seasons ; " as I had rather be put into the round-house for a wrong-headed quarrel, than sup quietly at eight o'clock with my grandmother. There is another of these tame genius's, a Mr. Akenside, who writes Odes : in one he has lately published, he says, " Light the tapers, urge the fire." 3 Had not you rather make gods " jostle in the dark," 4 than light the candles for fear they should break their heads? One E-ussel, a mimic, has a puppet- show to ridicule Operas ; I hear, very dull, not to mention its being twenty years too late : it consists of three acts, with foolish Italian songs burlesqued in Italian. 1 The Hon. James Stuart Mackenzie, second son of James, second Earl of Bute, and brother of John, Earl of Bute, the minister. He married Lady Elizabeth Campbell, one of the daughters of John, the great Duke of Argyll, and died in 1800. DOVEK. 2 Margaret Rolle, Countess of Orford, and Ethelreda Harrison, Viscountess Towns- hend. WALPOLE. Both were loose livers. The Holkham match, notwithstanding Lord Leicester's determination, proved anything but happy. CUNNINGHAM. 3 " Urge the warm bowl and ruddy fire," is Akenside's line in the first edition of his " Odes," 4to, 1745 the copy Walpole professes to quote. CUNNINGHAM. 4 As Nat Lee does in a passage which Warburton admired so extravagantly. CUNNINGHAM. 848 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1745. There is a very good quarrel on foot between two duchessses : she of Queensberry sent to invite Lady Emily Lenox l to a ball : her Grace of Richmond, who is wonderfully cautious since Lady Caroline's elopement [with Mr. Fox], sent word, "she could not determine." The other sent again the same night: the same answer. The Queensberry then sent word, that she had made up her company, and desired to be excused from having Lady Emily's ; but at the bottom of the card wrote, " Too great a trust." You know how mad she is, and how capable of such a stroke. There is no declaration of war come out from the other Duchess ; but, I believe it will be made a national quarrel of the whole illegitimate royal family. 2 It is the present fashion to make conundrums : there are books 01 them printed, and produced at all assemblies : they are full silly enough to be made a fashion. I will tell you the most renowned : " Why is my uncle Horace like two people conversing ? Because he is both teller and auditor." This was Winnington's. Well, I had almost forgot to tell you a most extraordinary imper- tinence of your Florentine Marquis Riccardi. About three weeks ago, I received a letter by Monsieur Wasner's footman from the marquis. He tells me most cavalierly, that he has sent me seventy- seven antique gems to sell for him, by the way of Paris, not caring it should be known in Florence. He will have them sold altogether, and the lowest price two thousand pistoles. You know what no- acquaintance 1 had with him. I shall be as frank as he, and not receive them. If I did, they might be lost in sending back, and then I must pay his two thousand doppie di Spagna. The refusing to receive them is positively all the notice I shall take of it. I inclose what I think a fine piece on my father : 3 it was written by Mr. Ashton," whom you have often heard me mention as a particular friend. You see how I try to make out a long letter, in 1 Second daughter of Charles, Duke of Richmond. WALPOLE. Afterwards married to James Fitzgerald, first Duke of Leinster, in Ireland. DOVER. 2 " I had like to have forgot to tell you, that the Duchess of Queensberry, wanting a man to make up her ball last night, condescended so far as to send for him, and he danced with Lady Emily Lenox, and every body that was there says, it was the prettiest sight upon earth to see the two Lady Emilys dance together. The Duchess never gives meat suppers, and Hobart told me himself, that he had nothing but halt an apple puff and a little wine and water. If you had been there yourself you could have ordered nothing properer. . . . Mr. Walpole sits by me while I write this." Sir C. H. Williams to Selwyn, 30 March, 1745. CUNNINGHAM. 3 It was printed in the public papers. WALPOLE. 4 Horace Walpole's early friend, see note, p. 2. CUNNINGHAM. 1745.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 349 return for your kind one, which yet gave me great pain by telling me of your fever. My dearest Sir, it is terrible to have illness added to your other distresses ! I will take the first opportunity to send Dr. Cocchi his translated book ; I have not yet seen it myself. Adieu ! my dearest child ! I write with a house full of relations, and must conclude. Heaven preserve you and Tuscany. 168. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Arlington Street, April 15, 1745. BY this time you have heard of my Lord's death : I fear it will have been a very great shock to you. I hope your brother will write you all the particulars ; for my part, you can't expect I should enter into the details of it. His enemies pay him the compliment of saying, " they do believe now that he did not plunder the public, as he was accused (as they accused him) of doing, he having died in such circumstances." If he had no proofs of his honesty but this, I don't think this would be such indisputable authority : not leaving immense riches would be scanty evidence of his not having acquired them, there happening to be such a thing as spending them. It is certain, he is dead very poor : his debts, with his legacies, which are trifling, amount to fifty thousand pounds. His estate, a nominal eight thousand a-year, much mortgaged. In short, his fondness for Houghton has endangered Houghton. If he had not so overdone it, he might have left such an estate to his family as might have secured the glory of the place for many years : another such debt must expose it to sale. If he had lived, his unbounded generosity and contempt of money would have run him into vast difficulties. However irreparable his personal loss may be to his friends, he cer- tainly died critically well for himself: he had lived to stand the rudest trials with honour, to see his character universally cleared, his enemies brought to infamy for their ignorance or villany, and the world allowing him to be the only man in England fit to be what he had been; and he died at a time when his age and infirmities prevented his again undertaking the support of a government, which engrossed his whole care, and which he foresaw was falling into the last confusion. In this I hope his judgment failed ! His fortune attended him to the last ; for he died of the most painful of all distempers, with little or no pain. 350 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1745 The House of Commons have at last finished their great affair, their inquiry into the Mediterranean miscarriage. It was carried on with more decency and impartiality than ever was known in so tumultuous, popular, and partial a court. I can't say it ended so ; for the Tories, all but one single man, voted against Matthews, whom they have not forgiven for lately opposing one of their friends in Monmouthshire, and for carrying his election. The greater part of the Whigs were for Lestock. This last is a very great man : his cause, most unfriended, came before the House with all the odium that could be laid on a man standing in the light of having betrayed his country. His merit, I mean his parts, prevailed, and have set him in a very advantageous point of view. Harry Fox has gained the greatest honour by his assiduity and capacity in this affair. Matthews remains in the light of a hot, brave, imperious, dull, con- fused fellow. The question was to address the King to appoint a trial, by court-martial, of the two admirals and the four coward captains. Matthews's friends were for leaving out his name, but, after a very long debate, were only 76 to 218. It is generally supposed, that the two admirals will be acquitted and the captains hanged. By what I can make out, (for you know I have been confined, and could not attend the examination,) Lestock preferred his own safety to the glory of his country ; I don't mean cowardly, for he is most unquestionably brave, but selfishly. Having to do with a man who, he knew, would take the slightest opportunity to ruin him, if he in the least transgressed his orders, and knowing that man too dull to give right orders, he chose to stick to the letter, when, by neglecting it, he might have done the greatest service. "We hear of great news from Bavaria, of that Elector being forced into a neutrality ; but it is not confirmed. Mr. Legge is made Lord of the Admiralty, and Mr. Philipson Surveyor of the Roads in his room. This is all I know. I look with anxiety every day into the Gazettes about Tuscany, but hitherto I find all is quiet. My dear Sir, I tremble for you ! I have been much desired to get you to send five gesse figures ; the Yenus, the Faun, the Mercury, the Cupid and Psyche, and the little Bacchus ; you know the original is modern : if this is not to be had, then the Ganymede. My dear child, I am sorry to give you this trouble ; order anybody to buy them, and to send them from Leghorn by the first ship. Let me have the bill, and bill of lading. Adieu! 1745.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. S51 169. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Arlington Street, April 29, 1745. WHEN you wrote your last of the 6th of this month, you was still in hopes about my father. I wish I had received your letters on his death, for it is most shocking to have all the thoughts opened again upon such a subject ! it is the great disadvantage of a distant correspondence. There was a report here a fortnight ago, of the new Countess [of Orford] coming over. She could not then have heard it. Can she be so mad ? Why should she suppose all her shame buried in my lord's grave ? or does not she know, has she seen so little of the world, as not to be sensible that she will now return in a worse light than ever ? A few malicious, who would have countenanced her to vex him, would now treat her like the rest of the world. It is a private family affair ; a husband, a mother, and a son, all party against her, all wounded by her conduct, would be too much to get over ! My dear child, you have nothing but misfortunes of your friends to lament. You have new subject by the loss of poor Mr. Chute's brother. 1 It really is a great loss ! he was a most rising man, and one of the best-natured and most honest that ever lived. If it would not sound ridiculously, though, I assure you, I am far from feeling it lightly, I would tell you of poor Patapan's death : he died about ten days ago. This peace with the Elector of Bavaria may produce a general one. You have given great respite to my uneasiness, by telling me that Tuscany seems out of danger. We have for these last three days been in great expectation of a battle. The French have invested Tournay ; our army came up with them last Wednesday, and is certainly little inferior, and determined to attack them ; but it is believed they are retired : we don't know who commands them ; it is said, the Due d'Harcourt. Our good friend, the Count de Saxe, is dying 2 by Venus, not by Mars. The King goes on Friday ; this 1 Francis Chute, a very eminent lawyer. [See p. 99.] WALPOLK. - The Marshal de Saxe did not die till 1750. He was, however, exceedingly ill at the time of the battle of Fontenoy. Voltaire, in his " Siecle de Louis XV." mentions having met him at Paris just as he was setting off for the campaign. Observing how unwell he seemed to be, he asked him whether he thought he had strength enough to go through the fatigues which awaited him. To this the Marshal's reply was, " II ne s'agit pas de vivre, mais de partir." DOVER. 852 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1745. may make the young Duke more impatient to give battle, to have all the honour his own. There is no kind of news ; the Parliament rises on Thursday, and every body is going out of town. I shall only make short excursions in visits ; you know I am not fond of the country, and have no call into it now ! My brother will not be at Houghton this year ; he shuts it up, to enter on new, and there very unknown, economy : he has much occasion for it ! Commend me to poor Mr. Chute ! Adieu ! 170. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Arlington Street, May 11, 1745. I STAYED till to-day, to be able to give you some account of the battle of Tournay : ' the outlines you will have heard already. don't allow it to be a victory on the French side : but that is, just as a woman is not called Mrs. till she is married, though she may have had half-a-dozen natural children. In short, we remained upon the field of battle three hours ; I fear, too many of us remain there still ! without palh'ating, it is certainly a heavy stroke. We never lost near so many officers. I pity the Duke [of Cumberland], for it is almost the first battle of consequence that we ever lost. By the letters arrived to-day, we find that Tournay still holds out. There are certainly killed Sir James Campbell, 2 General Ponsonby, 3 Colonel Carpenter, 4 Colonel Douglas, young Ross, 5 Colonel Montagu, Gee, Berkeley," and Kellet. Mr. Vanbrugh 7 is since dead. Most of the young men of quality in the Guards are wounded. I have had the vast fortune to have nobody hurt, for whom I was in the least inte- rested. Mr. Conway, in particular, has highly distinguished himself; he and Lord Petersham, 8 who is slightly wounded, are most com- 1 Since called the battle of Fontenoy. WALPOLE. The Marshal de Saxe com- manded the French army, and both Louis XV. and his son the Dauphin were pre- sent in the action. The Duke of Cumberland commanded the British forces. DOVER. 2 K.B., Lieutenant-General and Colonel of the Scotch Greys. CUNNINGHAM. 3 Brother to the Earl of Besborough. 4 Nearly related to Lord Carpenter. He left a wife and seven children. CUNNINGHAM. 5 M.P. for Ross-shire, and the same on whom Collins wrote his " Ode." CUNNINGHAM. 6 Nephew to Lady Betty Germain and cousin to Earl Berkeley. CUNNINGHAM. 7 The poet's only son, Ensign in the 2nd regiment of Foot Guards. CUNNINGHAM. 8 William, Lord Petersham, eldest son of the Earl of Harrington WALPOLE. 1745.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 353 mended ; though none behaved ill but the Dutch horse. There has been but very little consternation here : the King minded it so little, that being set out for Hanover, and blown back into Harwich-roads since the news came, he could not be persuaded to return, but sailed yesterday with the fair wind. I believe you will have the Gazette sent to-night ; but lest it should not be printed time enough, here is a list of the numbers, as it came over this morning : British foot Ditto horse Ditto foot . Ditto horse Ditto foot . Ditto horse Hanoverian foot Ditto horse Ditto foot . Ditto horse . Ditto horse and foot Dutch . Ditto . 1237 killed. 90 ditto. 1968 wounded, 232 ditto. 457 missing. 18 ditto. 432 killed. 78 ditto. 950 wounded. 192 ditto. 53 missing. 625 killed and wounded. 1019 missing. So the whole hors de combat is above seven thousand three hundred. The French own the loss of three thousand ; I don't believe many more, for it was a most rash and desperate perseverance on our side. The Duke behaved very bravely and humanely ;' but this will not have advanced the peace. However coolly the Duke may have behaved^ and coldly his father, at least his brother [the Prince of "Wales] has outdone both. He not only went to the play the night the news came, but in two days made a ballad. It is in imitation of the Regent's style, and has miscarried in nothing but the language, the thoughts, and the poetry. Did not I tell you in my last that he was going to act Paris in Con- greve's Masque ? The song 2 is addressed to the goddesses. VENEZ, mes cheres Dgesses, Venez calmer mon chagrin ; Aidez, mes belles Princesses, A le noyer dans le vin. 1 The Hon. Philip Yorke, in a letter to Horace Walpole, the elder, of the following day, says, " the Duke's behaviour was, by all accounts, the most heroic and gallant imaginable : he was the whole day in the thickest of the fire. His Royal Highness drew out a pistol upon an officer whom he saw running away." WRIGHT. 2 " Frederic Prince of Wales wrote French songs, in imitation of the Regent [Duke of Orleans], and did not miscarry solely by writing in a language not his own." Walpole, Works, i. 278, ed. 1798. The song was written immediately after the battle 354 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1745. Poussons cette douce Ivresse Jusqu'au milieu de la nuit, Et n'ecoutons que la tendresse D'un charmant vis-a-vis. Quand le chagrin me dSvore, Vite a table je me mets, Loin des objets que j'abhorre, Avec joie j'y trouve la paix. Peu d'amis, restes d'un naufragc Je rassemble autour de moi, Et je me ris de l'6talage Qu'a chez lui toujours un Roi. Que m'importe, que 1' Europe Ait un, ou plusieurs tyrans 1 Prions seulement Calliope, Qu'elle inspire nos vers, nos chants. Laissons Mars et toute la gloire ; Livrons nous tous a 1'amour ; Que Bacchus nous donne & boire ; A ces deux fasions la cour. Passons ainsi notre vie, Sans r ver , ce qui suit ; Avec ma chere Sylvie l Le terns trop vite me fuit. Mais si, par un malheur extrfime, Je perdois cet objet charmant, Oui, cette compagnie meTne Ne me tiendroit un moment. Me livrant & ma tristesse, Toujours plein de mon chagrin, Je n'aurois plus d'alle'gresse Pour mettre Bathurst 2 en train : Ainsi pour vous tenir en joie Invoquez toujours les Dieux, Qu'elle vive ct qu'elle soit Avec nous toujours heureuse ! Adieu! I am in great hurry. of Fontenoy, and was addressed to Lady Catherine Hanmer, Lady Fauconberg, and Lady Middlesex, who were to act the three goddesses, with the Prince of Wales, in Congreve's " Judgment of Paris," whom he was to represent, and Prince Lobkowitz, Mercury. WRIGHT. It was first printed in the Gentleman's Magazine for 1780, p. 196. CUNNINGHAM. 1 The Princess. WALPOLE. 2 Allen, Lord Bathurst. WALPOLB. 1745.] TO HORACE WALPOLE. 355 171. SIR EDWARD WALPOLE TO HORACE WALPOLE. 1 SIB : Pall Mall, May 17, 1745. CASTLE RISING is a family Borough. Lord Orford's son ought to be brought in there preferably to anybody. Next to him, I, and then you. My uncle and his children have the next claim, then the Townshends, and the Hammonds, who altogether make so large a number, that I did not imagine there was a possibility of a recom- mendation of mine taking place. Otherwise, as I have frequently wished it, I should have spoken to my lord long ago ; but I always thought he was bound to offer it to some one of them, whether they applied or not. And in case they should all of them decline it, I did imagine my lord must have out of his own particular friends more than one whom he would wish to distinguish by so great a favour ; for which reason, besides the consideration of our near rela- tions, I should have thought it presumption in me to apply, though there is no one thing I should covet more than thus to support a friend, and by it, to give myself an additional credit and weight in Parliament. 2 How you came never to think of me, who stand so directly before you, or, if you did think of me, how you happened to imagine that I was not to be consulted in an affair of this conse- quence, where birth and seniority give me so just and natural a pre- tension, I cannot conceive. It is so contemptuous and arrogant a treat- ment, that it is not easily to be forgotten ; for to be sensible yourself how very desirable a thing it is, either in a private view in regard to a friend, or in the eye of the world, in respect to oneself, and to think that I either did not desire it, or did not know its advantages, is to despise me beyond measure. But your conduct to me has always been of the same kind, and has made it the most painful thing in the world to me to have any commerce with you. You have, I must confess, showed a great disposition to me and to my children at all times, which is agreeable to the good nature that I shall ever do you 1 This remarkable letter, and the answers to it, still more remarkable, are now first published. The death of old General Churchill (a few weeks only after his friend, Sir Robert Walpole) caused a vacancy for Castle Rising, in Norfolk ; and Horace interested himself, greatly to the annoyance of his elder brother, Edward, in returning the new member for the family borough. Horace had his way. The member returned was John Rigby. CUNNINGHAM. 2 Sir Edward Walpole sat for Yarmouth ; Horace for Callington, in Cornwall. CUNNINGHAM. A A 2 356 HOEACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1745. the justice to think and say you possess in a great degree ; hut it has heen mixed with what I dare say you can't help, and never meant offence hy, hut still what I am not obliged to bear, such a confidence and presumption of some kind of superiority, that, my sentiments not tallying with yours upon that head, it has heen very unpleasant. You have assumed to yourself a pre-eminence, from an imaginary disparity between us in point of abilities and character, 1 that, although you are a very great man, I cannot submit to ; and you have crowned the whole with this most evident proof that I have not mistaken you ; therefore, since the conditions of your friendship and kindness are such that I must be subject to direct injuries, such as this cruel wrong done me now, or those kinds of hurts that a man feels most when they have the face of kindness, I must be excused, if I beg it of you as a favour, never to be kind to me again. I am your humble Servant, ED. WALPOLE. 172. HORACE WALPOLE TO SIR EDWARD WALPOLE. 8 May, 1745. BROTHER, I am sorry you won't let me say, Dear Brother ; but till you have still farther proved how impossible it is for you to have any affection for me, I will never begin my letters as you do " Sir," Before I enter upon your letter, I must be so impertinent even as to give my elder brother advice, and that is, the next letter you write, to consider whether the person it is addressed to, has any dependence upon you, or which I am sure your heart will tell you I have not any obligation to you. IT they have neither, they may happen to laugh at your style. Castle Rising is a Family-Borough. This is your first proposition, but not very definite. It is a borough in our family, but I never heard that it was parliamentary entailed upon every branch of our family. If it was, how came Mr. Churchill to be always chosen there ? However, before I ever undertake any thing again, I will certainly examine our genealogical table, and be sure that Lord Walpole, yourself, and all our eleven first cousins, have no mind to the same thing. Lord Orford's son ought to be brought in there preferably to anybody. 1 Sir Edward was ten years older than Horace. CUNNINGHAM. Endorsed. This answer not sent. CUNNINGHAM. 1745.] TO SIR EDWARD WALPOLE. 357 Lord Orfbrd's son is but fifteen, 1 and consequently incapable of being brought in anywhere these six years. Next to Mm I, and then you. N.B. "We are both in already, though to be sure you are right in the order of succession, which you seem to be perfectly master of. Otherwise, as I have long wished it, I should have spoke to my lord long ago. I spoke to my lord lately, and have got it. / always thought he was bound to offer it to some one of them. He does not seem to have been of your opinion. To give myself an additional credit and weight in Parliament. You might have left out additional. How you came never to think of me. For your sake I won't answer this. Or how you happened to imagine I was not to be consulted. I will ask you another question, how you happen to imagine it was neces- sary for me to consult you ? Have you ever given me any encouragement to consult you in anything ? How must I consult you ? By letter ? You never would see me either at your own house or here ! The authority you afiect over me is ridiculous ; and for consulting you, good God ! do you think you ever judge so dis- passionately, as that any man living would consult you ! Whose birth and seniority give me so just and natural a pretension. To my father's estate before me, to nothing else that I know of. It is so contemptuous and arrogant a treatment. Those words I return you, being full as proper and decent from me to you, as from you to me, whose birth, though thank God not my seniority, is as considerable as yours. At to the desirableness of this affair. Your whole paragraph may be very political but is not argumentative. But your conduct to me has always been of the same kind. As you are so kind afterwards as to explain what my conduct has always been to you, I shall certainly not endeavour to refute this passage, but submit myself to your own acknowledgments. The most painful thing in the world to have any commerce with you. I believe it, for I have always seen it, and in vain endeavoured to make it more tolerable to you. You have, I must confess, showed a great disposition to me and to my children at all times. Thank you. Good nature, which I think and say you possess in a great degree. Dear brother, I wish I could think the same of you. 1 George, third Earl of Orford, was born 1st April, 1730. CONSINGHAM. 358 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1745. It has been mixed with what I dare say you can't help and never meant offence by. I may, if I please, believe the same of your letter. A confidence and presumption of some kind of superiority. This I must answer a little fuller, as being the only thing in your letter which you have not confuted yourself. I won't appeal to everybody that has ever seen me with you, but to yourself. Lay your hand on your heart, and say, if I have not all my lifetime to this very instant, treated you with a respect, a deference, an awe, a submission beyond what, I say to my shame, I ever showed my father ; and you ought to be ashamed too, who made it necessary for his peace and for my own, that I should treat you so ; I never disputed your opinion, I never gave my own till you had yours: this was confidence and pre- sumption ! You have assumed to yourself a pre-eminence, from an imaginary disparity between us in point of abilities and character. Who told you so ? not your eyes, but your jealousy. I'll tell you, brother, the only superiority I ever pretended over you, was in my temper. Although you are a very great man. I leave that expression to support itself upon its own force, meaning, and elegance. Since the conditions of your friendship and kindness are such that 1 must be subject to direct injuries. What those direct injuries are, may be collected from what you have said above of my constant behaviour to you and your children at all times, or still more clearly from the next paragraph, wherein you call them, those kinds of hurts that a man feels most when they have the face of kindness. This, by all truth, is the only hurt I am ever conscious of having done you. Before I take notice of the conclusion of your letter, I must mention a few other things. In your letter to our brother [Lord Orford], who has still less deserved your monstrous behaviour to him, having always had that affection for you, which I was always desirous of having, you tell him he gives away his interest, and in the same letter are for recom- mending a friend of yours. Whatever your injustice may make you think of me and my friends, neither my brother Orford, nor I hope any man else, thinks his interest in worse hands, when given at my suit, than at yours. You tell him, too, your honour is concerned in this 'tis a strange point of honour you have always laid down to yourself of opposing everything I wish. 'Tis your own fault that I rake up your wrongs with me. Because I was always silent, did you imagine I was always ignorant ? In my mother's lifetime, you accused me of fomenting her anger against you. The instant she 1745.] TO SIB EDWARD WALPOLE. 859 died, did I not bring you all my letters to her which she had kept ; in never in any one of which was your name mentioned, hut to persuade her to continue that love to you, which your behaviour has always laboured to extinguish in the hearts of all your relations. As to my father, I well know how ill you always used him on my account. Your writing against Dr. Middleton, 1 who came to make me a visit at Houghton of two days, is one instance among many. Your converting all the jealousy you used to have of Lady Mary, 4 into a friendship with her, to prevent her loving me, is another. I only touch on these. Know, brother, that you never came where my father was, that I did not beg and beseech him never to take notice of me before you. This I have living witnesses to prove. For your transports of jealousy about my speaking in Parliament, I will say nothing, but this "Was it reasonable I should be silent there, because you had an ambition of making a figure ! Oh ! brother, so far from having that self-conceit you attribute to me, all my family and acquaintance know, that no man has a greater opinion of your parts ; no man has commended you more. I have always said, all the world would love you if you would let them ; but for your love to your father, I have always declared, that of all his children I was convinced you loved him the best. What have you said of me behind my back ? I have done, brother, though by this example believe I have not said the hardest things that I could to you. You conclude with disclaiming all friendship with, and relation to, me. After the vain pains I have taken to deserve that friendship, and the regard I have in vain had to that relation, I don't know whether I ought not readily to embrace this entire rupture. How- ever, as I think you are good-natured when you are cool, and must have repented the unmerited ill-treatment, I can forgive you, and for this last time offer you my friendship ; at the same time assuring you that I despise your anger, and if you persist in disclaiming my brotherhood, the only cover that you have for your abuse I must tell you, that you shall treat me like a gentleman. Yours or not, as you please, Hon. WALPOLE. P.S. If I have entered upon more points than your letter led me to, 1 Dr. Conyers Middleton, author of the " Life of Cicero." Walpole bought his collection of antiquities. CUNNINGHAM. 3 Sir Robert's daughter by Miss Skerrett. CUNKIHOHAM. 360 HOEACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1745. it was from my heart being full of resentment for a long series of your injustice to me, and from being glad to take the opportunity of making you sensible of it by this expostulation, which I have never been able to do by the most submissive behaviour, and by every instance I had in my power of showing you, how much I wished you would be my friend. But that is past, if you have anything farther to say to me, it must be in person, for I will not read any more such letters, nor will I be affronted. 173. HORACE WALPOLE TO SIR EDWARD WALPOLE. 1 DEAK BROTHER : May 17, 1745. You have used me very ill without any provocation or any pre- tence. I have always made it my study to deserve your friendship, as you yourself own, and by a submission which I did not owe you. For consulting you in what you had nothing to do, I certainly did not, nor ever will, while you profess so much aversion for me. I am still ready to live with you upon any terms of friendship and equality; but I don't mind your anger, which can only hurt yourself, when you come to reflect with what strange passion you have treated me, who have always loved you, have always tried to please you, have always spoken of you with regard, and who will yet be, if you will let me, Your affectionate brother and humble servant, HOR. "WALPOLE. 2 174. TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ. DEAR GEORGE : Arlington Street, May 18, 1745. I AM very sorry to renew our correspondence upon so melancholy a circumstance, but when you have lost so near a friend as your brother, 3 'tis sure the duty of all your other friends to endeavour to alleviate your loss, and offer all the increase of affection that is possible to compensate it. This I do most heartily ; I wish I could most effectually. 1 Endorsed by Walpole. This answer sent. CUNNINGHAM. 2 " There is nothing in the world the Baron of Englefield has such an aversion for as for his youngest brother." Walpole to Montagu, 25 May, 1745. They were after- wards reconciled, but their friendship was never intimate. John Rigby and Lord Andover sat for Castle Rising till 1747, when Horace Walpole himself was returned. CUNNINGHAM. 'Lieutenant-Colonel Edward Montagu, killed at the battle of Fontenoy. WALPOLE. HORACE "WALPOLE. FROM A HUT 6- PKE SEATED BT HORACE WALPOLE > KD AITD DEPDIT MBEDFOED . 1745.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 361 You will always find in me, dear Sir, the utmost inclination to be of service to you ; and let me beg that you will remember your promise of writing to me. As I am so much in town and in the world, I natter myself with having generally something to tell you that may make my letters agreeable in the country : you, any where, make yours charming. Be so good to say any thing you think proper from me to your sisters, and believe me, dear George, yours most sincerely. 175. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Arlington Street, May 24, 1745. I HAVE no consequences of the battle of Tournay to tell you but the taking of the town : the governor has eight days allowed him to consider whether he will give up the citadel. The French certainly lost more men than we did. Our army is still at Lessines, waiting for recruits from Holland and England ; ours are sailed. The King is at Hanover. All the letters are full of the Duke's humanity and bravery : he will be as popular with the lower class of men as he has been for three or four years with the low women : he will be the soldier's Great Sir as well as theirs. I am really glad ; it will be of great service to the family, if any one of them come to make a figure. Lord Chesterfield is returned from Holland ; you will see a most simple farewell speech of his in the papers. 1 I have received yours of the 4th of May, and am extremely obliged to you for your expressions of kindness : they did not at all surprise me, but every instance of your friendship gives me pleasure. I wish I could say the same to good Prince Craon. Yet I must set about answering his letter : it is quite an affair ; I have so great a disuse of writing French, that I believe it will be very barbarous. My fears for Tuscany are again awakened : the wonderful march which the Spanish Queen has made Monsieur de Gage take, may probably end in his turning short to the left ; for his route to Genoa will be full as difficult as what he has already passed. I watch eagerly every article from Italy, at a time when nobody will read a paragraph but from the army in Flanders. 1 " Have you Lord Chesterfield's speech on taking leave ? It is quite calculated for the language it is wrote in, and makes but an indifferent figure in English. The thoughts are common, and yet he strains hard to give them an air of novelty ; and the quaintness of the expression is quite d la Franyaise." The Hon. P. Torke to Horatio Walpole. WEIGHT. 1745.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 361 You will always find in me, dear Sir, the utmost inclination to be of service to you ; and let me beg that you will remember your promise of writing to me. As I am so much in town and in the world, I flatter myself with having generally something to tell you that may make my letters agreeable in the country : you, any where, make yours charming. Be so good to say any thing you think proper from me to your sisters, and believe me, dear George, yours most sincerely. 175. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Arlington Street, May 24, 1745. I HAVE no consequences of the battle of Tournay to tell you but the taking of the town : the governor has eight days allowed him to consider whether he will give up the citadel. The French certainly lost more men than we did. Our army is still at Lessines, waiting for recruits from Holland and England ; ours are sailed. The King is at Hanover. All the letters are full of the Duke's humanity and bravery : he will be as popular with the lower class of men as he has been for three or four years with the low women : he will be the soldier's Great Sir as well as theirs. I am really glad ; it will be of great service to the family, if any one of them come to make a figure. Lord Chesterfield is returned from Holland ; you will see a most simple farewell speech of his in the papers. 1 I have received yours of the 4th of May, and am extremely obliged to you for your expressions of kindness : they did not at all surprise me, but every instance of your friendship gives me pleasure. I wish I could say the same to good Prince Craon. Yet I must set about answering his letter : it is quite an affair ; I have so great a disuse of writing French, that I believe it will be very barbarous. My fears for Tuscany are again awakened : the wonderful march which the Spanish Queen has made Monsieur de Gage take, may probably end in his turning short to the left ; for his route to Genoa will be full as difficult as what he has already passed. I watch eagerly every article from Italy, at a time when nobody will read a paragraph but from the army in Flanders. 1 "Have you Lord Chesterfield's speech on taking leave ? It is quite calculated for the language it is wrote in, and makes but an indifferent figure in English. The thoughts are common, and yet he strains hard to give them an air of novelty ; and the quaintness of the expression is quite a la Franyaise" The Hon. P. Yorke to Horatio Walpole. WEIGHT. 362 HOEACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1745. I am diverted with my Lady's [Countess of Orford's] account of the great riches that are now coming to her. She has had so many foolish golden visions, that I should think even the Florentines would not be the dupes of any more. As for her mourning, she may save it, if she expects to have it notified. Don't you remember my Lady Pomfret's having a piece of economy of that sort, when she would not know that the Emperor was dead, because my Lord Chamberlain had not notified it to her ? I have a good story to tell you of Lord Bath, whose name you have not heard very lately ; have you ? He owed a tradesman eight hundred pounds, and would never pay him : the man deter- mined to persecute him till he did ; and one morning followed him to Lord Winchilsea's, and sent up word that he wanted to speak with him. Lord Bath came down, and said, " Fellow, what do you want with me ! " " My money," said the man, as loud as ever he could bawl, before all the servants. He bade him come the next morning, and then would not see him. The next Sunday the man followed him to church, and got into the next pew : he leaned over, and said, " My money ; give me my money ! " My lord went to the end of the pew ; the man too : " Give me my money ! " The sermon was on avarice, and the text, " Cursed are they that heap up riches." The man groaned out, " Lord ! " and pointed to my Lord Bath. In short, he persisted so much, and drew the eyes of all the congregation, that my Lord Bath went out and paid him directly. I assure you this is fact. Adieu ! 1'6. TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ. DEAR GEORGE : Arlington Street, May 25, 1745. I DON'T write to you now so much to answer your letter as to promote your diversion, which I am as much obliged to you for consulting me about, at least as much as about an affair of honour, or your marriage, or any other important transaction ; any one of which you might possibly dislike more than diverting yourself. For my part, I shall give you my advice on this point with as much reflection as I should, if it were necessary for me, like a true friend, to counsel you to displease yourself. You propose making a visit at Englefield Green, 1 and ask me, if 1 Where Horace Walpole's brother, Sir Edward, had a house. He was fond of this locality, and in his will desires to be buried in the chancel of the church at New Windsor, in the immediate neighbourhood of Englefield Green. CUNNINGHAM. 1745.] TO THE HOK H. S. CONWAY. 363 I think it right ? Extremely so. I have heard it is a very pretty place. You love a jaunt have a pretty chaise, I believe, and, I dare swear, very easy ; in all probability, you will have a fine even- ing too ; and, added to all this, the gentleman [Sir Edward Walpole] you would go to see is very agreeable and good-humoured. He has some very pretty children, 1 and a sensible, learned man that lives with him, one Dr. Thirlby, 2 whom, I believe, you know. The master of the house plays extremely well on the bass-viol, and has generally other musical people with him. He knows a good deal of the private history of a late Ministry ; and, my dear Greorge, you love Memoires. Indeed, as to personal acquaintance with any of the court beauties, I can't say you will find your account in him ; but, to make amends, he is perfectly master of all the quarrels that have been fashionably on foot about Handel, and can give you a very per- fect account of all the modern rival painters. 3 In short, you may pass a very agreeable day with him ; and if he does but take to you, as I can't doubt, who know you both, you will contract a great friend- ship with him, which he will preserve with the greatest warmth and partiality. In short, I can think of no reason in the world against your going there but one : do you know his youngest brother ? If you happen to be so unlucky, I can't flatter you so far as to advise you to make him a visit ; for there is nothing in the world the Baron of Englefield has such an aversion for as for his brother. 177. TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY. Mr DEAR HAEET : Arlington Street, May 27, 1745. As gloriously as you have set out, yet I despair of seeing you a 1 All natural children, by Mary Clement, a milliner. CUNNINGHAM. 2 Styan Thirlby [died 1751], Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, published an edition of Justin Martyr, and I think, wrote something against Middleton. He com- municated several notes to Theobald for his Shakespeare, and in the latter part of his life took to study the common law. He lived chiefly for his last years with Sir Edward Walpole, who had procured for him a small place in the Custom-house, and to whom he left his papers : he had lost his intellects some time before his death. WALPOLE. Mr. Nichols says, that, while in Sir Edward's house, he kept a miscel- laneous book of Memorables, containing whatever was said or done amiss by Sir Edward, or any part of his family. WRIGHT. 3 " He [Roubiliac] had little business till Sir Edward Walpole recommended him to execute half the busts at Trinity College, Dublin." Walpole' s Anecdotes. "Sir Edward Walpole has several of his [Scott's] largest and most capital works." Ditto. CUNNINGHAM. 364 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1745. perfect hero ! You have none of the charming violences that are so essential to that character. You write as coolly, after behaving well in a battle, as you fought in it. Can your friends natter themselves with seeing you, one day or other, be the death of thousands, when you wish for peace in three weeks after your first engagement, 1 and laugh at the ambition of those men who have given you this oppor- tunity of distinguishing yourself ? With the person of an Orondates, and the courage, you have all the compassion, the reason, and the reflection of one that never read a romance. Can one ever hope you will make a figure, when you only fight because it was right you should, and not because you hated the French or loved destroying mankind ? This is so un-English, or so un-heroic, that I despair of you ! Thank Heaven, you have one spice of madness ! Your admiration of your master * leaves me a glimmering of hope, that you will not be always so unreasonably reasonable. Do you remember the humorous lieutenant, in one of Beaumont and Fletcher's plays, that is in love with the king ? Indeed, your master is not behind-hand with you ; you seem to have agreed to puff one another. If you are all acting up to the strictest rules of war and chivalry in Flanders, we are not less scrupulous on this side the water in fulfilling all the duties of the same order. The day the young volunteer * departed for the army (unluckily, indeed, it was after the battle), his tender mother Sisygambis, and the beautiful Statira," a lady formerly known in your history by the name of Artemisia, from her cutting off her hair on your absence, were so afflicted and so inseparable, that they made a party together to Mr. Graham's 5 (you may read lapis, if you please) to be blooded. It was settled that this was a more precious way of expressing concern than shaving the head, which has been known to be attended with false locks the next day. For the other princess you wot of, who is not entirely so tall as the former, nor so evidently descended from a line of monarchs I don't hear her talk of retiring. At present, she is employed in buying up all the nosegays in Covent Garden and laurel-leaves at 1 The battle of Fontenoy, where Mr. Conway greatly distinguished himself. WALPOLE. 2 The Duke of Cumberland, to whom Mr. Conway was aide-de-camp. WALPOLE. 8 George, afterwards Marquis Townshend [d. 1807]. WALPOLE. 4 Ethelreda Harrison, Viscountess Townshend, and her daughter, the Hon. Audrey Townshend, afterwards married to Robert Orme, Esq. WALPOLB. 6 A celebrated apothecary in Pail-Mall. WALVOLK. 1745.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 365 the pastry-cooks, to weave chaplets for the return of her hero. Who that is I don't pretend to know or guess. All I know is, that in this age retirement is not one of the fashionable expressions of passion. 178. TO SIR HORACE MANN. I HAVE the pleasure of recommending you a new acquaintance, for which I am sure you will thank me. Mr. Hobart 1 proposes passing a little time at Florence, which I am sure you will endeavour to make as agreeable to him as possible. I beg you will introduce him to all my friends, who, I don't doubt, will show him the same civilities that I received. Dear Sir, this will be a particular obli- gation to me, who am, &c. 179. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Arlington Street, June 24, 1745. I HAVE been a fortnight in the country, and had ordered all my letters to be kept till I came to town, or I should have written to you sooner about my sister- countess [of Orford]. She is not arrived yet, but is certainly coming : she has despatched several letters to notify her intentions : a short one to her mother, saying, " Dear Madam, as you have often desired me to return to England, I am determined to set out, and hope you will give me reasons to subscribe myself your most affectionate daughter." This " often desired me to return " has never been repeated since the first year of her going away. The poor signora-madre is in a terrible fright, and will not come to town till her daughter is gone again, which all advices agree will be soon. Another letter is to my Lady Townshend, telling her, " that, as she knows her ladyship's way of thinking, she does not fear the continuance of her friendship." Another, a long one, to my Lord Chesterfield ; another to Lady Isabella Scot, 4 an old friend of hers ; and another to Lady Pomfret. This last says, that she hears from Uguccioni, my Lady O. will stay here very little time, having taken a house at Florence for three years. She is to come to 1 Eldest son of John, Earl of Buckinghamshire. WALPOLB. The Hon. John Hobart, afterwards second Earl of Buckinghamshire, and Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland [died 1793]. DOVEB. 2 Lady Isabella Scott, daughter of the Duchess of Monmouth, by her second hus- band, Charles, third Lord Cornwallis. She died unmarried, Feb. 18, 1748. DOVER. 866 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1745. my Lady Denbigh. 1 My brother [the Earl of Orford] is extremely obliged to you for all your notices about her, though he is very indifferent about her motions. If she happens to choose law (though on what foot no mortal can guess), he is prepared ; having, from the first hint of her journey, fee'd every one of the considerable lawyers. In short, this jaunt is as simple as all the rest of her actions have been hardy. Nobody wonders at her bringing no English servants with her they know, and consequently might tell too much. I feel excessively for you, my dear child, on the loss of Mr. [Francis] Chute ! so sensible and so good-natured a man would be a loss to anybody ; but to you, who are so meek and helpless, it is irreparable ! who will dry you when you are very wet I r own- paper ? 2 Though I laugh, you know how much I pity you : you will want somebody to talk over English letters, and to conjecture with you ; in short, I feel your distress in all its lights. The citadel of Tournay is gone ; 3 our affairs go ill. Your brother Charles of Lorraine 4 has lost a great battle grossly ! He was con- stantly drunk, and had no kind of intelligence. Now he acts from his own head, his head turns out a very bad one. I don't know, indeed, what they can say in defence of the great general to whom we have just given the garter, the Duke of Saxe AVeissenfels ; he is not of so serene a house but that he might have known something of the motions of the Prussians. Last night we heard that the Hungarian insurgents had cut to pieces two Prussian regiments. The King of Prussia and Prince Charles are so near, that we every day expect news of another battle. "We don't know yet what is to be the next step in Flanders. Lord Cobham has got Churchill's s regiment, and Lord Dim-more his government of Plymouth. At the Prince's Court there is a great revolution : he, or rather Lord Granville, or perhaps the Princess (who, I firmly believe, by all her quiet sense, will turn out a Caroline), have at last got rid of Lady 1 Isabella de Jonghe, a Dutch lady, and -wife of William Fielding, fifth Earl of Denbigh. She died in 1769. DOVER. 2 Mr. Mann was so thin and weak that Mr. Walpole used to compare him to wet brown-paper. [See p. 395.] WALPOLE. 3 The treachery of the principal engineer, who deserted to the enemy, and the timidity of other officers in the garrison, produced a surrender of the city in a fort- night, and of the citadel in another week. WRIGHT. 4 Brother of Francis, at this time Grand Duke of Tuscany. On the 3rd of June, theoKing of Prussia had gained a signal victory over him at Friedberg. WRIOHT. 8 Lieutenant-General Charles Churchill (the friend of Sir Robert Walpole), died 14 May, 1745. CUNNINGHAM. 1745.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 837 Archibald, 1 who was strongly attached to the coalition. They have civilly asked her, and grossly forced her to ask civilly to go away, which she has done, with a pension of twelve hundred a-year. Lady Middlesex a is Mistress of the Robes : she lives with them perpetually, and sits up till five in the morning at their suppers. Don't mistake ! not for her person, which is wondrous plain and little : the town says it is for her Mend Miss Granville, one of the maids of honour ; but at least yet, that is only scandal. She is a fair, red- haired girl, scarce pretty ; daughter of the poet, Lord Lansdown. 3 Lady Berkeley is lady of the bedchamber, and a Miss Lawson maid of honour. Miss Neville, a charming beauty, and daughter of the pretty, unfortunate Lady Abergavenny/ is named for the next vacancy. I was scarce settled in my joy for the Spaniards having taken the opposite route to Tuscany, when I heard of Mr. Chute's leaving you. I long to have no reason to be uneasy about you. I am obliged to you for the gesse figures, and beg you will send me the bill in your first letter. Rysbrach has perfectly mended the Ganymede and the model, which to me seemed irrecoverably smashed. I have just been giving a recommendatory letter for you to Mr. Hobart ; he is no particular friend of mine, but is Norfolk, and in the world ; so you will be civil to him. He is of the Damon- kind, and not one of whom you will make a Chute. Madame Suares may make something of him. Adieu ! 1 Lady Archibald Hamilton, daughter of Lord Abercorn, and wife of [1719] Lord Archibald Hamilton. WALPOLB. Lady Archibald was not young [in 1735], had never been very pretty, and had lost at least as much of that small share of beauty she once possessed as it is usual-for women to do at thirty-five, after being the mother often children." ffervey's Memoirs, ii. 17. CUNNINGHAM. 2 Daughter of Lord Shannon, and wife of Charles, Earl of Middlesex, eldest son of Lionel, Duke of Dorset. Her favour grew to be thought more than platonic. [See p. 316.] WALPOLB. 3 The Hon. Mrs. Eliza Granville (see p. 158), the last surviving child of the first Lord Lansdowne, died in Queen Street, May Fair, in 1790 (Gent's Mag. for 1790, p. 957). CUNNINGHAM. 4 Catherine Tatton, daughter of Lieutenant-General Tatton. She married, first, Edward Neville, thirteenth Lord Abergavenny, who died without issue in his nine- teenth year, in 1724. She remarried with his cousin and successor, William, fourteenth Lord Abergavenny, by whom she had issue one son, George, afterwards fifteenth Lord Abergavenny, and one daughter, Catherina, who is mentioned above. Lady Aber- gavenny herself died in childbed, Dec. 4, 1729, in less than one month after the detection of an intrigue between her and Richard Lyddel, Esq., against whom Lord Abergavenny brought an action for damages, and recovered five thousand pounds. In a poem written on her death by Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, she is praised for her gentleness, and pitied for her " cruel wrongs." Her husband is also called " that stern lord." All further details respecting her are, however, now unknown. DOVEK. Compare what Lady Mary W. Montagu says at p. 79 of this volume. CUNNINGHAM. 368 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1745. 180. TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ. DEAR GEORGE : Arlington Street, June 25, 1745. I HAVE been near three weeks in Essex, at Mr. Rigby's, 1 and had left your direction behind me, and could not write to you. It is the charmingest place by nature, and the most trumpery by art, that *ever I saw. The house stands on a high hill, on an arm of the sea, which winds itself before two sides of the house. On the right and left, at the very foot of this hill, lie two towns ; the one of market quality, and the other with a wharf where ships come up. This last was to have a church, but by a lucky want of religion in the inhabitants, who would not contribute to building a steeple, it remains an absolute antique temple, with a portico on the very strand. Cross this arm of the sea, you see six churches and charming woody hills in Suffolk. All this parent Nature did for this place ; but its godfathers and godmothers, I believe, promised it should renounce all the pomps and vanities of this world, for they have patched up a square house, full of windows, low rooms, and thin walls ; piled up walls wherever there was a glimpse of prospect ; planted avenues that go nowhere, and dug fishponds where there should be avenues. We had very bad weather the whole time I was there ; but however I rowed about and sailed, not having the same apprehensions of catching cold that Mrs. Kerwood had once at Chelsea, when I persuaded her not to go home by water, because it would be damp after rain. The town is not quite empty yet. My Lady Fitzwalter, Lady Betty Germain, Lady Granville [Sophia Fermor], and the dowager Strafford 2 have their At-homes, and amass company. Lady Brown has done with her Sundays, for she is changing her house into Upper Brook Street. In the mean time, she goes to Knightsbridge, and Sir Robert to the woman he keeps at Scarborough : "Winmngton goes on with the Frasi ; so my Lady Townshend is obliged only to 1 Mistley Hall, near Manningtree. WALPOLE. When W&lpole was about the Castle Rising election, Richard Rigby was one of a school, writes Lord John Russell, " which covered its loose morality and corrupt politics under the honoured mantle of Sir Robert Walpole." ' Horace Walpole has drawn his character in his " Memoires of George II.," vol. ii. p. 254. He was the willing tool of the Bedford faction ; and at his death, 8th April, 1788, was M.P. for Tavistock (a Bedford borough). Garrick was a frequent visitor at Mistley. He died involved in debt, with his accounts as Paymaster of the Forces hopelessly unsettled. CUNNINGHAM. 2 Ann, sole daughter and heir of Sir Henry Johnson, of Bradenham, Bucks. Married 1711, died 1754. CUNNINGHAM. 1745.] TO THE HON. MR. CON WAY. 369 lie of people. You have heard of the disgrace of the Archibald [Lady Archibald Hamilton], and that in future scandal she must only be ranked with the Lady Elizabeth Lucy and Madam Lucy Walters, instead of being historically noble among the Clevelands, Portsmouths, and Yarmouths. It is said Miss Granville has the reversion of her coronet ; others say, she won't accept the patent. Your friend Jemmy Lumley, 1 I beg pardon, I mean your kin, is not he ? I am sure he is not your friend ; well, he has had an assembly, and he would write all the cards himself, and every one of them was to desire he's company and she's company, with other pieces of curious orthography. Adieu, dear George ! I wish you a merry farm, as the children say at Vauxhall. My compli- ments to your sisters. 181. TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY. MY DEAR HAKRY : Arlington Street, July 1, 1745. IF it were not for that one slight inconvenience, that I should probably be dead now, I should have liked much better to have lived in the last war than in this ; I mean as to the pleasantness of writing letters. Two or three battles won, two or three towns taken, in a summer, were pretty objects to keep up the liveliness of a cor- respondence. But now it hurts one's dignity to be talking of English and French armies, at the first period of our history in which the tables are turned. After having learnt to spell out of the reigns of Edward the Third and Harry the Fifth, and begun lisping with Agincourt and Cressy, one uses one's self but awkwardly to the sounds of Tournay and Fontenoy. I don't like foreseeing the time so near, when all the young orators in Parliament will be haranguing out of Demosthenes upon the imminent danger we are in from the over- grown power of King Philip. As becoming as all that public spirit will be, which to be sure will now come forth, I can't but think we were at least as happy and as great when all the young Pitts and Lyt- teltons were pelting oratory at my father for rolling out a twenty years' peace, and not envying the trophies which he passed by every day in Westminster Hall. But one must not repine ; rather reflect on the glories which they have drove the nation headlong into. One must think all our distresses and dangers well laid out, when they 1 Seventh son of the first Earl of Scarborough. He died in 1766, unmarried. WRIGHT. 370 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1745. have purchased us Grlover's ' Oration for the merchants, the Admiralty for the Duke of Bedford, and the reversion of Secretary at war for Pitt, which he will certainly have, unless the French King should happen to have the nomination ; and then I fear, as much obliged as that court is to my Lord Cobham and his nephews, they would be so partial as to prefer some illiterate nephew of Cardinal Tencin's, who never heard of " Leonidas " or the Hanover troops. With all these reflections, as I love to make myself easy, espe- cially politically, I comfort myself with what St. Evremond (a favourite philosopher of mine, for he thought what he liked, not liked what he thought) said in defence of Cardinal Mazarin, when he was reproached with neglecting the good of the kingdom that he might engross the riches of it : " Well, let him get all the riches, and then he will think of the good of the kingdom, for it will all be his own." Let the French but have England, and they won't want to conquer it. We may possibly contract the French spirit of being supremely content with the glory of our monarch, and then why then it will be the first time we ever were contented yet. We hear of nothing but your retiring, 11 and of Dutch treachery : in short, 'tis an ugly scene ! I know of no home news but the commencement of the gaming act, 3 for which they are to put up a scutcheon at White's for the death of play ; and the death [on the 25th of June] of Win- nington's wife, which may be an unlucky event for my Lady Town- shend. As he has no children, he will certainly marry again ; and who will give him their daughter, unless he breaks off that affair [with the Frasi], which I believe he will now very willingly make a marriage article ? We want him to take Lady Charlotte Fermor." She was always his beauty, and has so many charming qualities, that she would make anybody happy. He will make a good husband ; for he is excessively good-natured, and was much better to that strange wife than he cared to own. You wondered at my journey to Houghton ; now wonder more, for I am going to Mount Edgecumbe. Now my summers are in my own hands, and I am not obliged to pass great part of them in 1 The author of " Leonidas." WALPOLE. 2 Mr. Conway was still with the army in Flanders. WALPOLE. 3 An act had recently passed to prevent excessive and deceitful gaming. WRIGHT. 4 Lady Charlotte Fermor married in 1746, in the year in which Winnington died, the Right Hon. William Finch. She died in 1813, and is now best remembered by the fire of her wardrobe. See p. 52. CUNNINGHAM. 1745.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 371 Norfolk, I find it is not so very terrible to dispose of them up and down. In about three weeks I shall set out, and see Wilton and Dodington's [at Eastbury] in my way. Dear Harry, do but get a victory, and I will let off every cannon at Plymouth ; reserving two, till I hear particularly that you have killed two more Frenchmen with your own hand. 1 Lady Mary [Walpole] sends you her com- pliments ; she is going to pass a week with Miss Townshend * at Muffits ; I don't think you will be forgot. Your sister Anne has got a new distemper, which she says feels like something jumping in her. You know my style on such an occasion, and may be sure I have not spared this distemper. Adieu ! Yours ever. 182. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Arlington Street, July 5, 1745. ALL yesterday we were in the utmost consternation ! an express came the night before from Ostend with an account of the French army in Flanders having seized Ghent and Bruges, cut off a detach- ment of four thousand men, surrounded our army, who must be cut to pieces or surrender themselves prisoners, and that the Duke was gone to the Hague, but that the Dutch had signed a neutrality. You will allow that here was ample subject for confusion ! To-day we are a little relieved, by finding that we have lost but five hundred men 3 instead of four thousand, and that our army, which is inferior by half to theirs, is safe behind a river. With this came the news of the Great Duke's victory over the Prince of Conti : " he has killed fifteen thousand, and taken six thousand prisoners. Here is already a third great battle this summer ! But Flanders is gone ! The Dutch have given up all that could hinder the French from over- running them, upon condition that the French should not overrun 1 Alluding to Mr. Conway's having been engaged with two French grenadiers at once in the battle of Fontenoy. WALPOLK. 2 Daughter of Charles Viscount Townshend, afterwards married to Edward Corn- wallis, brother to Earl Corn wallis, and groom of the bedchamber to the King. WALPOLE. 3 The French had been successful in a skirmish against the English army, at a place called Melle. The consequence of this success was their obtaining possession of Ghent. DOVER. 4 The army of the Prince of Conti, posted near the Maine, had been so weakened by the detachments sent from it to reinforce the army in Flanders, that it was obliged to retreat before the Austrians. This retrograde movement was effected with con- siderable loss, both of soldiers and baggage ; but it does not appear that any decisive general engagement took place during the campaign between the French and Austrians. DOVER. B B 2 372 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1745. them. Indeed, I cannot be so exasperated at the Dutch as it is the fashion to he ; they have not forgot the peace of Utrecht, though we have. Besides, how could they rely on any negotiation with a people whose politics alter so often as ours ? Or why were we to fancy that my Lord Chesterfield's parts would have more weight than my uncle had, whom, ridiculous as he was, they had never known to take a trip to Avignon to confer with the Duke of Ormond ? ' Our communication with the army is cut off through Flanders ; and we are in great pain for Ostend : the fortifications are all out of repair. Upon Marshal Wade's reiterated remonstrances, we did cast thirty cannon and four mortars for it and then the economic ministry would not send them. " What ! fortify the Queen of Hungary's towns ? there will be no end of that." As if Ostend was of no more consequence to us, than Mons or Namur ! Two more battalions are ordered over immediately ; and the old pensioners of Chelsea College are to mount guard at home ! Flourishing in a peace of twenty years, we were told that we were trampled upon by Spain and France. Haughty nations, like those, who can trample upon an enemy country, do not use to leave it in such wealth and happiness as we enjoyed ; but when the Duke of Marlborough's old victorious veterans are dug out of their colleges and repose, to guard the King's palace, and to keep up the show of an army which we have buried in America, or in a manner lost in Flanders, we shall soon know the real feel of being trampled upon ! In this crisis, you will hear often from me ; for I will leave you in no anxious un- certainty from which I can free you. The Countess [of Orford] is at Hanover, and, we hear, extremely well received. It is conjectured, and it is not impossible, that the Count may have procured for her some dirty dab of a negotiation about some acre of territory more for Hanover, in order to facilitate her reception. She has been at Hesse Cassel, and fondled extremely Princess Mary's 2 children ; just as you know she used to make a rout about the Pretender's boys. My Lord Chesterfield laughs at her letter to him ; and, what would anger her more than the neglect, ridicules the style and orthography. Nothing promises well for her here. You told me you wished I would condole with Prince Craon on 1 See note on Letter to Mann, 10 Dec. 1741. WRIGHT. 2 Princess Mary of England, daughter of George II.; married in 1740 to the Prince of Hesse Cassel, who treated her with great inhumanity. She died in June, 1771. WEIGHT. 1745.1 TO SIR HORACE MANN. 873 the death of his son : ' which son ? and where was he killed ? You don't tell me, and I never heard. Now it would he too late. I should have been uneasy for Prince Beauvau, hut that you say he is in Piedmont. Adieu ! my dear child : we have much to wish ! A little good fortune will not re-establish us. I am in pain for your health from the great increase of your business. 183. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Arlington Street, July 12, 1745. I AM charmed with the sentiments that Mr. Chute expresses for you ; but then you have lost him ! Here is an answer to his letter ; I send it unsealed, to avoid repeating what I have thought on our affairs. Seal it and send it. Its being open, prevented my saying half so much about you as I should have done. There is no more news : the Great Duke's victory, of which we heard so much last week, is come to nothing! So far from having defeated the Prince of Conti, it is not at all impossible but the Prince may wear the imperial coat of diamonds, though I am per- suaded the care of that will be the chief concern of the Great Duke, (next to his own person,) in a battle. Our army is retreated beyond Brussels; the French gather laurels and towns, and prisoners, as one would a nosegay. In the meantime you are bullying the King of Naples, in the person of the English fleet ; and I think may pos- sibly be doing so for two months after that very fleet belongs to the King of France ; as astrologers tell one that we should see stars shine for I don't know how long after they were annihilated. But I like your spirit ; keep it up ! Millamant, in the " "Way of the World," tells Mirabel, that she will be solicited to the very last ; nay, and afterwards. He replies, " What ? after the last ! " I am in great pain about your arrears : it is a bad season for obtaining payment. In the best times, they make a custom of pay- ing foreign ministers ill ; which may be very politic, when they send men of too great fortunes abroad, in order to lessen them : but, my dear child, God knows that is not your case ! I have some extremely pretty dogs of King Charles's breed, if I 1 The young Prince de Craon was killed at the head of his regiment at the battle of Fontenoy. DOVER. 874 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1745. knew how to convey them to you : indeed they are not Patapans. I can't tell how they would like travelling into Italy, when there is a prospect of the rest of their race returning from thence : hesides, you must certify me that none of them shall ever he married helow themselves ; for since the affair of Lady Caroline Fox, one durst not hazard the Duke of Richmond's resentment even about a dog and bitch of that breed. Lord Lempster ! is taken prisoner in the affair of the detachment to Ghent. My lady [Countess of Pomfret], who has heard of Spartan mothers, (though you know she once asserted that nobody knew anything of the Grecian Republics,) affects to bear it with a patriot insensibility. She told me the other day that the Abbe Niccolini and the eldest Pandolfini are coming to England : is it true ? I shall be very glad to be civil to them, especially to the latter, who, you know, was one of my friends. My Lady Orford is at Hanover, most graciously received by " the Father of all his people." In the papers of yesterday was this paragraph : " Lady 0., who has spent several years in Italy, arrived here (Hanover) the 3rd, on her return to England, and was graciously received by his Majesty." Lady Denbigh is gone into the country ; so I don't know where she is to lodge perhaps at St. James's, out of regard to my father's memory. Trust me, you escaped well in Pigwiggin's 2 not accepting your invitation of living with you : you must have aired your house, as Lady Pomfret was forced to air Lady Mary "Wortley's bedchamber. He has a most unfortunate breath : so has the Princess his sister. When I was at their country-house, I used to sit in the library and turn over books of prints : out of good-breeding they would not quit me ; nay, would look over the prints with me. A whiff would come from the east, and I turned short to the west, whence the Princess would puff me back with another gale full as richly perfumed as her brother's. Adieu ! 1 George Fermor; who, on the death of his father in 1753, became second Earl of Pomfret. He died in 1785. WEIGHT. 2 A nickname given by Walpole to his cousin Horace, eldest son of " Old Horace Walpole," afterwards first Earl of Orford of the second creation. He died in 1809, at the age of eighty -six. WRIGHT. His aunt Walpole went by the name of " Pug." See p. 200. CUNNINGHAM. 1745.] TO ME. MONTAGU. 876 184. TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ. DKAR GBOEOK : Arlington Street, July 13, 1745. WE are all Cabob'd and Cocqfagoed, as iny Lord Denbigh says. We, who formerly, you know, could any one of us beat three Frenchmen, are now so degenerated, that three Frenchmen can evidently beat one Englishman. Our army is running away, all that is left to run ; for half of it is picked up by three or four hundred at a time. In short, we must step out of the high pan- toufles that were made by those cunning shoemakers at Poitiers and Ramillies, and go clumping about perhaps in wooden ones. My_ Lady Hervey, who you know dotes upon everything French, is charmed with the hopes of these new shoes, and has already bespoke herself a pair of pigeon wood. How did the tapestry at Blenheim look ? Did it glow with victory, or did all our glories look overcast ? I remember a very admired sentence in one of my Lord Chester- field's speeches, when he was haranguing for this war ; with a most rhetorical transition, he turned to the tapestry in the House of Lords, 2 and said, with a sigh, he feared there were no historical looms at work now ! Indeed, we have reason to bless the good patriots, who have been for employing our manufactures so histori- cally. The Countess of that wise Earl [Denbigh], with whose two expressive words I began this letter, says, she is very happy now that my lord had never a place upon the coalition, for then all this bad situation of our affairs would have been laid upon him. Now I have been talking of remarkable periods in our annals, I must tell you what my Lord Baltimore thinks one : He said to the Prince [of Wales] t'other day, " Sir, your Royal Highness's marriage will be an area in English history." If it were not for the life that is put into the town now and then by very bad news from abroad, one should be quite stupified. There is nobody left but two or three solitary regents ; and they are always whisking backwards and forwards to their villas ; and about a dozen 1 Alluding to the success of the French army in Flanders, under the command of Mareschal Saxe. WALPOLE. 2 The tapestry in the House of Lords, representing the destruction, in 1588, of the Spanish Armada, wrought for the Earl of Nottingham, the Lord High Admiral, and destroyed with the Houses of Parliament, by fire, in 1 834. This historical tapestry was well engraved by Pine. CUNNINGHAM. 376 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1745. antediluvian dowagers, whose carcases have miraculously resisted the wet, and who every Saturday compose a very reverend catacomh at my old Lady Stratford's. She does not take money at the door for showing them, hut you pay twelvepence a piece under the denomina- tion of card money. Wit and heauty, indeed, remain in the per- sons of Lady Townshend [Harrison] and Lady Caroline Fitzroy [Petersham] ; but such is the want of taste of this age, that the former is very often forced to wrap up her wit in plain English before it can be understood ; and the latter is almost as often obliged to have recourse to the same artifices to make her charms be taken notice of. Of beauty, I can tell you an admirable story. One Mrs. Comyns, an elderly gentlewoman, has lately taken a house in St. James's Street : some young gentlemen went there t'other night : " "Well, Mrs. Comyns, I hope there won't be the same disturbances here that were at your other house in Air Street." " Lord, Sir, I never had any disturbances there : mine was as quiet a house as any in the neighbourhood, and a great deal of good company came to me : it was only the ladies of quality that envied me." " Envied you ! why, your house was pulled down about your ears." " Oh, dear, Sir! don't you know how that happened ? " " No ; pray how ? "- " Why, dear Sir, it was my Lady * * * *, who gave ten guineas to the mob to demolish my house, because her ladyship fancied I got women for Colonel Conway." My dear George, don't you delight in this story ? If poor Harry [Conway] comes back from Flanders, I intend to have infinite fun with his prudery about this anecdote, which is full as good as if it was true. I beg you will visit Mrs. Comyns when you come to town : she has infinite humour. 185. TO SIR HORACE MANN. July 15, 1745. You will be surprised at another from me so soon, when I wrote to you but four days ago. This is not with any news, but upon a private affair. You have never said any thing to me about the extraordinary procedure of Marquis Riccardi, of which I wrote you word. Indeed, as his letter came just upon my father's death, I had forgot it too ; so much so, that I have lost the catalogue which he sent me. Well, the other day I received his cargo. Now, my dear child, I don't write to him upon it, because, as he sent the 1745.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 377 things without asking my leave, I am determined never to acknow- ledge the receipt of them, because I will in no manner be liable to day for them if they are lost, which I think highly probable ; and as I have lost the catalogue, I cannot tell whether I have received all or not. I beg you will say just what follows to him. That I am extremely amazed he should think of employing me to sell his goods for him, especially without asking my consent : that an English gentleman, just come from France, has brought me a box of things, of which he himself had no account ; nor is there any letter or catalogue with them : that I suppose they may be the Marquis's collection, but that I have lost the catalogue, and consequently cannot tell whether I have received all or not, nor whether they are his : that as they came in so blind a manner, and have been opened at several custom- houses, I will not be answerable, especially having never given my consent to receive them, and having opened the box ignorantly, without knowing the contents : that when I did open it, I concluded it came from Florence, having often refused to buy most of the things, which had long lain upon the jeweller's hands on the old bridge, and which are very improper for sale here, as all the English for some years have seen them, and not thought them worth purchasing : that I remember in the catalogue the price for the whole was fixed at two thousand pistoles; that they are full as much worth two-and-twenty thousand ; and that I have been laughed at by people to whom I have showed them for naming so extravagant a price : that nobody living would think of buying all together : that for myself, I have entirely left off making any collection ; and if I had not, would not buy things dear now which I have formerly refused at much lower prices. That, after all, though I cannot think myself at all well used by Marquis Riccardi, either in sending me the things, in the price he has fixed on them, or in the things themselves, which to my knowledge he has picked up from the shops on the old bridge, and were no family collection, yet, as I received so many civilities at Florence from the nobility, and in particular from his wife, Madame Riccardi, if he will let me do any thing that is practicable, I will sell what I can for him. That if he will send me a new and distinct catalogue, with the price of each piece, and a price considerably less than what he has set upon the whole, I will endeavour to dispose of what I can for him. But as most of them are very indifferent, and the total value most unreasonable, I abso- lutely will not undertake the sale of them upon any other terms, 378 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS- [1745. but will pack them up, and send them away to Leghorn by the first ship that sails ; for as we are at war with France, I cannot send them that way, nor will I trouble any gentleman to carry them, as he might think himself liable to make them good if they met with any accident ; nor will I answer for them by whatever way they go, as I did not consent to receive them, nor am sure that I have received the Marquis's collection. My dear Sir, translate this very distinctly for him, for he never shall receive any other notice from me ; nor will I give them up to Wasner or Pucci, 1 or anybody else, though he should send me an order for it ; for nobody saw me open them, nor shall anybody be able to say I had them, by receiving them from me. In short, I think I cannot be too cautious in such a negotiation. If a man will send me things to the value of two thousand pistoles, whether they are really worth it or not, he shall take his chance for losing them, and shall certainly never come upon me for them. He must abso- lutely take his choice, of selh'ng them at a proper price and separately, or of having them directly sent back by sea ; for whether he consents to either or not, I shall certainly proceed in my resolution about them the very instant I receive an answer from you ; for the sooner I am clear of them the better. If ho will let me sell them without setting a price, he may depend upon my taking the best method for his service ; though really, my dear child, it will be for my own honour, not for his sake, who has treated me so impertinently. I am sorry to give you this trouble, but judge how much the fool gives me ! Adieu ! 186. TO SIR HORACE MANN Arlington Street, July 26, 1745. IT is a pain to me to write to you, when all I can tell you will but distress you. How much I wish myself with you ! anywhere, where I should have my thoughts detached in some degree by distance and by length of time from England ! With all the reasons that I have for not loving great part of it, it is impossible not to feel the shock of living at the period of all its greatness ! to be one of the Ultimi Romanorum ! I will not proceed upon the chapter of reflections, but mention some facts, which will supply your thoughts with all I should say. 1 Ministers of the Queen of Hungary and the Great Duke. WALI-OLK. 1745.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 379 The French make no secret of their intending to come hither ; the letters from Holland speak of it as a notoriety. Their Mediterranean fleet is come to Rochfort, and they have another at Brest. Their immediate design is to attack our army, the very lessening which will be victory for them. Our six hundred men, which have lain cooped up in the river till they had contracted diseases, are at last gone to Ostend. Of all this our notable ministry still make a secret: one cannot learn the least particulars from them. This anxiety for my friends in the army, this uncertainty about ourselves, if it can be called uncertain that we are undone, and the provoking folly that one sees prevail, have determined me to go to the Hague. I shall at least hear sooner from the army, and shall there know better what is likely to happen here. The moment the crisis is come I shall return hither, which I can do from Helvoetsluys in twelve hours. At all events, I shall certainly not stay there above a month or six weeks : it thickens too fast for something important not to happen by that time. You may judge of our situation by the conversation of Marshal Belleisle : he has said for some time, that he saw we were so little capable of making any defence, that he would engage, with five thousand scullions of the French army, to conquer England yet, just now, they choose to release him ! he goes away in a week. 1 "When he was told of the taking Cape Breton, he said, " he could believe that, because the ministry had no hand in it." "We are making bonfires for Cape Breton, and thundering over Genoa, while our army in Flanders is running away, and dropping to pieces by detachments taken prisoners every day ; while the King is at Hanover, the regency at their country-seats, not five thousand men in the island, and not above fourteen or fifteen ships at home ! Allelujah ! I received yours yesterday, with the bill of lading for the gesse figures, but you don't tell me their price ; pray do in your next. I don't know what to say to Mr. Chute's eagle ; 2 I would fain have it ; I can depend upon his taste but would not it be folly to be buying curiosities now ? how can I tell that I shall have anything in the world to pay for it, by the time it is bought ? You may present 1 The Marshal and his brother left England on the 13th of August. WRIGHT. 2 The famous Strawberry Hill eagle, found in the year 1742 in the gardens of Boccapadugli, within the precincts of Caracalla's baths at Rome ; sold at the Straw- berry Hill sale to the Earl of Leicester for 210/., and since sold by auction to Lord Fitzwilliam for a much larger sum. CUNNINOHAM. 380 HOEACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1745. these reasons to Mr. Chute ; and if he laughs at them, why then he will buy the eagle for me ; if he thinks them of weight, not. Adieu ! I have not time or patience to say more. 187. TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ. DEAR GEORGE : [August 1, 1745.] I CANNOT help thinking you laugh at me when you say such very civil things of my letters, and yet, coming from you, I would fain not have it all flattery : So much the more, as, from a little elf, I've had a high opinion of myself, Though sickly, slender, and not large of limb. With this modest prepossession, you may be sure I like to have you commend me, whom, after I have done with myself, I admire of all men living. I only beg that you will commend me no more : it is very ruinous ; and praise, like other debts, ceases to be due on being paid. One comfort indeed is, that it is as seldom paid as other debts. I have been very fortunate lately : I have met with an extreme good print of M. de Grignan ; l I am persuaded, very like ; and then it has his touffe ebourifee ; I don't, indeed, know what that was, but I am sure it is in the print. None of the critics could ever make out what Livy's Patavinity is ; though they are all confident it is in his writings. I have heard within these few days what, for your sake, I wish I could have told you sooner that there is in Belleisle's suite the Abbe" Perrin, who published Madame Sevigne's letters, and who has the originals in his hands. How one should have liked to have known him ! * The Marshal was privately in London last Friday. He is entertained to-day at Hampton Court by the Duke of Grafton. 2 Don't you believe it was to settle the binding the scarlet thread in the window, when the French shall come in unto the land to possess it ? I don't at all wonder at any shrewd observations the Marshal has made on our situation. The bringing him here at all the sending him away now in short, the whole series of our conduct convinces me, that we shall soon see as 1 Franc.ois-Adhemar de Monteil, Comte de Grignan, Lieutenant-General of Pro- vence. He married, in 1669, the daughter of Madame de Scvigne". WRIGHT. 2 As he was, on the preceding day, by the Duke of Newcastle, at Chiremont. WRIGHT. 1745.] TO MR. MONTAGU. 381 silent a change as that in " The Rehearsal," of King Usher and King Physician. It may well he so, when the disposition of the drama is in the hands of the Duke of Newcastle those hands that are always groping and sprawling, and fluttering, and hurrying on the rest of his precipitate person. But there is no describing him but as M. Courcelle, a French prisoner, did t'other day : " Je ne scais pas," dit il, " je ne scaurois m'exprimer, mais il a un certain tatillonage." If one could conceive a dead body hung in chains, always wanting to be hung somewhere else, one should have a comparative idea of him. For my own part, I comfort myself with the humane reflection of the Irishman in the ship that was on fire I am but a passenger ! If I were not so indolent, I think I should rather put in practice the late Duchess of Bolton's ' geographical resolution of going to China, when Whiston told her the world would be burnt in three years. Have you any philosophy ? Tell me what you think. It is quite the fashion to talk of the French coming here. Nobody sees it in any other light but as a thing to be talked of, not to be precautioned against. Don't you remember a report of the plague being in the City, and everybody went to the house where it was to see it ? You see I laugh about it, for I would not for the world be so unenglished as to do otherwise. I am persuaded that when Count Saxe, with ten thousand men, is within a day's march of London, people will be hiring windows at Charing-cross and Cheapside to see them pass by. 'Tis our characteristic to take dangers for sights, and evils for curiosities. Adieu ! dear George : I am laying in scraps of Cato against it may be necessary to take leave of one's correspondents a la Romaine, and before the play itself is suppressed by a lettre de cachet to the booksellers. P.S. Lord ! 'tis the first of August, 1745, a holiday 2 that is going to be turned out of the almanack ! 1 Henrietta Crofts, natural daughter of the Duke of Monmouth, by Eleanor, daughter of Sir Robert Needham. She was the third wife of the second Duke of Bolton, and died 27th Feb., 1729-30. "The Duchess Dowager of Bolton, who was natural daughter to the Duke of Monmouth, used to divert George I. by affecting to make blunders. Once when she had been at the play of ' Love's Last Shift,' she called it, 'La derniere Chemise de 1' Amour.' Another time she pretended to come to Court in a great fright, and the King asking the cause, she said she bad been at Mr. Whiston's, who told her the world would be burnt in three years ; and for her part she was deter- mined to go to China." Walpoliana, vol. i., p. 16. CUNNINGHAM. 2 The anniversary of the accession of the House of Brunswick to the throne of England. WALPOLE. 382 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1745. 188. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Arlington Street, Aug. 7, 1745. I HAVE no news to tell you : Ostend is besieged, and must be gone in a few days. The Regency are all come to town to prevent an invasion I should as soon think them able to make one not but old Stair, who still exists upon the embers of an absurd fire that warmed him ninety years ago, thinks it still practicable to march to Paris, and the other day in council prevented a resolution of sending for our army home ; but as we always do half of a thing, when even the whole would scarce signify, they seemed determined to send for ten thousand the other ten will remain in Flanders, to keep up the bad figure that we have been making there all this summer. Count Saxe has been three times tapped since the battle of Fontenoy ; but if we get rid of his enmity, there is Belleisle gone, amply to supply and succeed to his hatred ! Yan Hoey, the ingenious Dutchman at Paris, wrote to the States, to know if he should make new liveries against the rejoicings for the French conquests in Flanders. I love the governor of Sluys ; when the States sent him a reprimand, for not admitting our troops that retreated thither from the affair of Ghent, asking him if he did not know that he ought to admit their allies ? he replied, " Yes ; and would they have him admit the French too as their allies ? " There is a proclamation come out for apprehending the Pre- tender's son ; ' he was undoubtedly on board the frigate attendant on the Elizabeth, with which Captain Brett fought so bravely : 2 the boy is now said to be at Brest. I have put off my journey to the Hague, as the sea is full of ships, and many French ones about the siege of Ostend : I go to-morrow to Mount Edgecumbe. I don't think it impossible but you may receive a letter from me on the road, with a paragraph like that in Gibber's life, " Here I met the revolution." 3 1 The proclamation was dated the 1 st of August, and offered a reward of thirty thousand pounds for the Prince's apprehension. He left the island of Belleisle on the 13th of July, disguised in the habit of a student of the Scots' college at Paris, and allowing his beard to grow. WRIGHT. 2 Captain Brett was the same officer who, in Anson's expedition, had stormed Paita. His ship was called the Lion. After a well-matched fight of five or six hours, the vessels parted, each nearly disabled. WRIGHT. 3 " Met the revolution at Nottingham " is part of the contents of Chapter III. of Gibber's Apology. Walpole was fond of this expression of Gibber's. CUNNINGHAM. 1745.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 383 My Lady Orford is set out for Hanover : her gracious sovereign does not seem inclined to leave it. Mrs. Chute 1 has sent me this letter, which you will be so good as to send to Home. We have taken infinite riches ; vast wealth in the East Indies, vast from the West ; in short, we grow so fat, that we shall very soon be fit to kill. Your brother has this moment brought me a letter from you, full of your good-natured concern for the Genoese. I have not time to write you anything but short paragraphs, as I am in the act of writing all my letters and doing my business before my journey. I can say no more now about the affair of your secretary. Poor Mrs. Gibberne has been here this morning almost in fits about her son. She brought me a long letter to you, but I absolutely prevented her sending it, and told her I would let you know that it was my fault if you don't hear from her, but that I would take the answer upon myself. My dear Sir, for her sake, for the silly boy's, who is ruined if he follows his own whims, and for your own sake, who will have so much trouble to get and form another, I must try to pre- vent your parting. I am persuaded, that neither the fatigue of writing, nor the inclination of going to sea, are the boy's true motives. They are, the smallness of his allowance, and his aversion to waiting at table. For the first, the poor woman does not expect that you should put yourself to any inconvenience ; she only begs that you will be so good as to pay him twenty pounds a-year more, which she herself will repay to your brother ;' and not let her son know that it comes from her, as he would then refuse to take it. For the other point, I must tell you, my dear child, fairly, that in goodness to the poor boy, I hope you will give it up. He is to make bis fortune in your way of life, if he can be so lucky. It will be an insuperable obstacle to him that he is with you in the light of a menial servant. When you reflect that his fortune may depend upon it, I am sure you will free him from this servitude. Your brother and I, you know, from the very first, thought that you should not insist upon it. If he will stay with you upon the terms I propose, I am sure, from the trouble it will save yourself, and the ruin from which it will save him, you will yield to this request ; which I seriously make to you, and advise you to comply with. Adieu ! 1 Widow of Francis Chute, Esq. WALPOLB. , 384 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1745. 189. TO THE REV. THOMAS BIRCH. 1 SIB: Woolterton, [Aug.] 5, 1745- WHEN I was lately in town I was favoured with yours of the 21st past ; but my stay there was so short, and my hurry so great, that I had not time to see you as I intended. As I am persuaded that nobody is more capable than yourself, in all respects, to set his late Majesty's reign in a true light, I am sure there is nobody to whom I would more readily give my assistance, as far as I am able ; but, as I have never wrote any thing in a historical way, have now and then suggested hints to others as they were writing, and never published but two pamphlets one was to justify the taking and keeping in our pay the twelve thousand Hessians, of which I have forgot the title, and have it not in the country; the other was published about two years since, entitled " The Interest of Great Britain steadily Pursued," in answer to the pamphlets about the Hanover forces I can't tell in what manner, nor on what heads to answer your desire, which is conceived in such general terms : if you could point out some stated times, and some particular facts, and I had before me a sketch of your narration, I perhaps might be able to suggest or explain some things that are come but imperfectly to your knowledge, and some anecdotes might occur to my memory relating to domestic and foreign affairs, that are curious, and were never yet made public, and perhaps not proper to be published yet; particularly with regard to the alteration of the ministry in 1717, by the removal of my relation [his father], and the measures that were pursued in consequence of that alteration ; but in order to do this, or any thing else for your service, requires a personal conversation with you, in which I should be ready to let you know what might occur to me. I am most truly, &c. 190. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Arlington Street, Sept. 6, 1745. IT would have been inexcusable in me, in our present circum- stances, and after all I have promised you, not to have written to 1 Dr. Thomas Birch the best read man in English history and biography of his own time. He died in 1765. CUNNINGHAM. 1745.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 335 you for this last month, if I had been in London ; but I have been at Mount Edgecumbe, and so constantly upon the road, that I neither received your letters, had time to write, or knew what to write. I came back last night, and found three packets from you, which I have no time to answer, and but just time to read. The confusion I have found, and the danger we are in, prevent my talking of anything else. The young Pretender, 1 at the head of three thousand men, has got a march on General Cope, who is not eighteen hundred strong ; and when the last accounts came away, was fifty miles nearer Edinburgh than Cope, and by this time is there. The clans will not rise for the Government : the Dukes of Argyll 2 and Athol 3 are come post to town/ not having been able to raise a man. The young Duke of Gordon s sent for his uncle, and told him he must arm their clan. " They are in arms." " They must march against the rebels." " They will wait on the Prince of Wales." The Duke flew in a passion ; his uncle pulled out a pistol, and told him it was in vain to dispute. Lord Loudon, 6 Lord Fort- rose, 7 and Lord Panmure 8 have been very zealous, and have raised some men ; but I look upon Scotland as gone ! I think of what King "William said to Duke Hamilton, when he was extolling Scotland ; " My Lord, I only wish it was a hundred thousand miles oft, and that you was king of it ! " There are two manifestos published, signed Charles Prince, Regent for his father, King of Scotland, England, France, and Ireland. By one, he promises to preserve every body in their just rights ; and orders all persons who have public monies in their hands to bring it to him ; and by the other dissolves the union between England and Scotland. But all this is not the worst ! Notice came yesterday, that there are ten thousand men, thirty transports, and 1 The Pretender had landed, with a few followers, in the Highlands of Scotland, on the 25th of July. WRIGHT. 2 Archibald Campbell, Earl of Islay, and third Duke of Argyll. CUNNINGHAM. 3 James Murray, second Duke of Athol ; to which he succeeded upon the death of his father in 1724, in consequence of the attainder of his elder brother, William, Marquis of Tullibardine. DOVER. 4 This was not true of the Duke of Argyll ; for he did not attempt to raise any men, but pleaded a Scotch act of parliament against arming without authority WALPOLB. 5 Cosmo George, third Duke of Gordon. He died in 1752. DOVER. 6 John Campbell, fourth Earl of Loudon ; a general in the army. He died in 1782. DOVER. 7 The eldest son of Mackenzie, Earl of Seaforth. DOVER. 8 William Maule, Earl of Panmure, in Ireland, so created in 1743, in consequence of the forfeiture of the Scotch honours in 1715, by his elder brother, James, Earl of Panmure. DOVER. -. VOL. I. CO 386 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1745. ten men-of-war at Dunkirk. Against this force we have I don't know what scarce fears ! Three thousand Dutch we hope are by this time landed in Scotland ; three more arc coming hither. We have sent for ten regiments from Flanders, which may he here in a week, and we have fifteen men-of-war in the Downs. I am grieved to tell you all this ; but when it is so, how can I avoid telling you ? Your brother is just come in, who says he has written to you I have not time to expatiate. My Lady 0[rford] is arrived; I hear she says, only to endeavour to get a certain allowance. Her mother has sent to offer her the use of her house. She is a poor weak woman. I can say nothing to Marquis Ricardi, nor think of him ; only tell him that I will when I have time. My sister [Lady Maria "Walpole] has married herself, that is, declared she will, to young Churchill. It is a foolish match ; ' but I have nothing to do with it. Adieu ! my dear Sir ; excuse my haste, but you must imagine that one is not much at leisure to write long letters hope if you can ! 191. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Arlington Street, Sept. 13, 1745. THE Rebellion goes on ; but hitherto there is no rising in England, nor landing of troops from abroad ; indeed not even of ours or the Dutch. The best account I can give you is, that if the Boy has apparently no enemies in Scotland, at least he has openly very few friends. Nobody of note has joined him, but a brother of the Duke of Athol [the Marquis of Tullibardine], and another of Lord Dunmore. 2 For cannon, they have nothing but one-pounders : their greatest resource is money ; they have force Louis-d'ors. The last accounts left them at Perth, making shoes and stockings. It is certain that a serjeant of Cope's, with twelve men, put to flight two hundred, on killing only six or seven. Two hundred of the Monroe clan have joined our forces. Spirit seems to rise in London, though not in the proportion it ought; and then the person [the King] most concerned does every thing to check its progress : when 1 They were married 12 Feb., 1745-6. CUNNINGHAM. 2 John Murray, second Earl of Dunmore, brother of the Hon. Wm. Murray, of Taymount. He was subsequently pardoned for the part he took in the Rebellion, and succeeded to the earldom in 1754, on the death of Earl John. DOVER. 1745.] TO SIR HORACE MANN 387 the Ministers propose any thing with regard to the Rebellion, he cries, " Pho ! don't talk to me of that stuff." Lord Granville has persuaded him that it is of no consequence. Mr. Pelham talks every day of resigning : he certainly will as soon as this is got over ! if it is got over. So, at least we shall see a restoration of Queen Sophia [Lady Granville]. She has lain-in of a girl ; though she had all the pretty boys in town brought to her for patterns. The young Chevalier has set a reward on the King's head : we are told that his brother is set out for Ireland. However, there is hitherto little countenance given to the undertaking by France or Spain. It seems an effort of despair and weariness of the manner in which he has been kept in France. On the grenadiers' caps is written " a grave or a throne." He stayed some time at the Duke of Athol's, whither old Marquis Tullibardine l sent to bespeak dinner; and has since sent his brother word, that he likes the alterations made there. The Pretender found pine-apples there, the first he ever tasted. Mr. Breton, 2 a great favourite of the Southern Prince of Wales, went the other day to visit the Duchess of Athol, 3 and happened not to know that she is parted from her husband : he asked how the Duke did ? " Oh," said she, " he turned me out of his house, and now he is turned out himself." Every now and then a Scotchman comes and pulls the Boy by the sleeve ; " Prence, here is another mon taken ! " then with all the dignity in the world, the Boy hopes nobody was killed in the action ! Lord Bath has made a piece of a ballad, the Duke of Newcastle's speech to the Regency ; I have heard but these two lines of it : " Pray consider my Lords, how disastrous a thing, To have two Prince of Wales's and never a King ! " The merchants are very zealous, and are opening a great sub- scription for raising troops. The other day, at the city meeting to draw up the address, Alderman Heathcote proposed a petition for a redress of grievances, but not one man seconded him. In the midst of all this, no Parliament is called ! The Ministers say they have nothing ready to offer ; but they have nothing to notify ! I must tell you a ridiculous accident : when the magistrates of Elder brother of the Duke of Athol, but outlawed for the last rebellion. He was taken prisoner after the battle of Culloden, ar^ died in the Tower. -WALPOLE. 2 Afterwards Sir William Breton. He held an office in the household of Frederick, Prince of Wales. DOVER. 3 Jane, daughter of John Frederick, Esq., and widow of James Lanoy, Esq. DOVER. o c 2 388 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1745. Edinburgh were searching houses for arms, they came to Mr. Maule's, brother of Lord Panmure, and a great friend of the Duke of Argyll. The maid would not let them go into one room, which was locked, and, as she said, full of arms. They now thought they had found what they looked for, and had the door broke open where they found an ample collection of coats of arms ! The deputy governor of Edinburgh Castle has threatened the magistrates to beat their town about their ears, if they admit the rebels. Perth is twenty-four miles from Edinburgh, so we must soon know whether they will go thither ; or leave it, and come into England. We have great hopes that the Highlanders will not follow him so far. Very few of them could be persuaded the last time to go to Preston ; and several refused to attend King Charles II. when he marched to "Worcester. The Caledonian Mercury never calls them " the rebels," but " the Highlanders." Adieu ! my dear child : thank Mr. Chute for his letter, which I will answer soon. I don't know how to define my feeling : I don't despair, and yet I expect nothing but bad ! Yours, &c. P.S. Is not my Princess very happy with hopes of the restoration of her old tenant ? ' 192. TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ. DBAK GEORGE : Arlington Street, Sept. 17, 1745. How could you ask me such a question, as whether I should be glad to see you ? Have you a mind I should make you a formal speech, with honour, and pleasure, and satisfaction, &c. ? I will not, for that would be telling you I should not be glad. However, do come soon, if you should be glad to see me ; for we, I mean we old folks that came over with the Prince of Orange in eighty-eight, have had notice to remove by Christmas- day. The moment I have smugged up a closet or a dressing-room, I have always warning given me, that my lease is out. Four years ago I was mightily at my ease in Downing-street, and then the good woman, Sandys, 2 took my lodgings over my head, and was in such a hurry to junket her 1 When the Old Pretender was in Lorrain, he lived at Prince Craon's. WALPOLE. 2 Lord Sandys, who succeeded Sir Robert Walpole as Chancellor of the Exche- quer, and consequently in the Chancellor's official residence in Downing Street. CUNNINGHAM. 1745.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 389 neighbours, that I had scarce time allowed me to wrap my old china in a little hay. Now comes the Pretender's hoy, and promises all my comfortable apartments in the Exchequer and Custom-house to some forlorn Irish peer, who chooses to remove his pride and poverty out of some large unfurnished gallery at St. Germain's. Why really Mr. Montagu this is not pleasant ; I shall wonderfully dislike being a loyal sufferer in a thread-bare coat, and shivering in .an ante-chamber at Hanover, or reduced to teach Latin and English to the young princes at Copenhagen. The Dowager Strafford has already written cards for my Lady Nithsdale, my Lady Tullibardine, the Duchess of Perth and Berwick, and twenty more revived peeresses, to invite them to play at whisk, Monday three months : for your part, you will divert yourself with their old taffeties, and tarnished slippers, and their awkwardness, the first day they go to Court in shifts and clean linen. Will you ever write to me at my garret at Herenhausen ? I will give you a faithful account of all the promising speeches that Prince George and Prince Edward make whenever they have a new sword, and intend to reconquer England. At least write to me, while you may with acts of parliament on your side : but I hope you are coming. Adieu ! 193. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Arlington Street, Sept. 20, 1745. ONE really don't know what to write to you : the accounts from Scotland vary perpetually, and at best are never very certain. I was just going to tell you that the rebels are in England ; but my uncle [old Horace] is this moment come in, and says, that an ex- press came last night with an account of their being at Edinburgh to the number of five thousand. This sounds great, to have walked through a kingdom, and taken possession of the capital ! But this capital is an open town ; and the castle impregnable, and in our possession. There never was so extraordinary a sort of rebellion ! One can't tell what assurances of support they may have from the Jacobites in England, or from the French ; but nothing of either sort has yet appeared and if there does not, never was so desperate an enterprise.' One can hardly believe that the English are more dis- 1 Mr. Henry Fox, in letters to Sir C. H. Williams, of September 5th and 19th, writes, " England, Wade says, and I believe it, is for the first comer ; and if you can tell whether the six thousand Dutch, and the ten battalions of English, or five 390 HORACE WALPOLB'S LETTEKS. [1745. affected than the Scotch ; and among the latter, no persons of pro- perty have joined them : both nations seem to profess a neutrality. Their money is all gone, and they subsist merely by levying contri- butions. But, sure, banditti can never conquer a kingdom ! On the other hand, what cannot any number of men do, who meet no opposition ? They have hitherto taken no place but open towns, nor have they any artillery for a siege but one-pounders. Three bat- talions of Dutch are landed at Gravesend, and are ordered to Lancashire : we expect every moment to hear that the rest are got to Scotland ; none of our own are come yet. Lord Granville and his faction persist in persuading the King, that it is an affair of no con- sequence ; and for the Duke of Newcastle, he is glad when the rebels make any progress, in order to confute Lord Granville's assertions. The best of our situation is, our strength at sea : the Channel is well guarded, and twelve men of war more are arrived from Rowley. Vernon, that simple noisy creature, has hit upon a scheme that is of great service ; he has laid Folkstone cutters all round the coast, which are continually relieved, and bring constant notice of everything that stirs. I just now hear that the Duke of Bed- ford 1 declares he will be amused no longer, but will ask the King's leave to raise a regiment. The Duke of Montagu has a troop of horse ready, and the Duke of Devonshire is raising men in Derby- shire. The Yorkshiremen, headed by the Archbishop [Herring] 2 thousand French or Spaniards will be here first, you know our fate." " The French are not come, God be thanked ! But had five thousand landed in any part of this island a week ago, I verily believe the entire conquest would not huve cost them a battle." WRIGHT. 1 This plan of raising regiments afterwards degenerated into a gross job. Sir C. H. Williams gives an account of it in his ballad, entitled " The Heroes." To this Horace Walpole appended the following explanatory note : " In the time of the Rebellion these lords had proposed to raise regiments of their own dependants, and were allowed ; had they paid them too, the service had been noble : being paid by Government, obscured a little the merit ; being paid without raising them, would deserve too coarse a term. It is certain, that not six regiments ever were raised ; not four of which were employed. The chief persons who were at the head of this scheme were the Dukes of Bedford and Montagu; the Duke of Bedford actually raised and served with his regiment." The other lords mentioned in the ballad are, the Duke of Bolton, Lord Granby, Lord Harcourt, Lord Halifax, Lord Falmouth, Lord Cholmondeley, and Lord Berkeley. They were in all fifteen " Of fifteen nobles of great fame, All brib'd by one false muster." DOVER. See the Correspondence of the Duke of Bedford, vol. i. p. 51. CUNNINGHAM. 2 An excellent prelate, afterwards promoted to the see of Canterbury. Walpole, in his Memoires, mentioning his death, thus speaks of him: "On the 13th of March, 1757, died Dr. Herring, Archbishop of Canterbury, a very amiable man, to whom no fault was objected ; though perhaps the gentleness of his principles, his great merit, 1745.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 391 and Lord Malton, meet the gentlemen of the county the day after to-morrow, to defend that part of England. Unless we have more ill fortune than is conceivable, or the general supineness continues, it is impossible but we must get over this. You desire me to send you news : I confine myself to tell you nothing but what you may de- pend upon ; and leave you in a fright rather than deceive you. I confess my own apprehensions are not near so strong as they were ; and if we get over this, I shall believe that we never can be hurt ; for we never can be more exposed to danger. Whatever disaffection there is to the present family, it plainly does not proceed from love to the other. Hy Lady 0[rford] makes little progress in popularity. Neither the protection of my Lady Pomfret's prudery, nor of my Lady Town- shend's libertinism, do her any service. The women stare at her, think her ugly, awkward, and disagreeable ; and what is worse, the men think so too. For the height of mortification, the King has declared publicly to the Ministry, that he has been told of the great civilities which he was said to show her at Hanover ; that he pro- tests he showed her only the common civilities due to any English lady that comes thither ; that he never intended to take any parti- cular notice of her ; nor had, nor would let my Lady Yarmouth. In fact, my Lady Yarmouth peremptorily refused to carry her to court here ; and when she did go with my Lady Pomfret, the King but just spoke to her. She declares her intention of staying in England, and protests against all lawsuits and violences ; and says she only asks articles of separation, and to have her allowance settled by any two arbitrators chosen by my brother and herself. I have met her twice at my Lady Townshend's, just as I used at Florence. She dresses English and plays at whist. I forgot to tell a bon-mot of Leheup ' on her first coming over ; he was asked if he would not go and see her ? He replied, " No, I never visit modest women." Adieu ! my dear child ! I flatter myself you will collect hopes from this letter. was thought one. During the Rebellion he had taken up arms to defend from oppression that religion, which he abhorred making an instrument of oppression." DOVER. 1 Isaac Leheup, brother-in-law of Horace Walpole the elder. He was a man of great wit and greater brutality, and being minister at Hanover, was recalled for very indecent behaviour there. WALPOLE. Walpole is your tyrant to-day ; and any man his Majesty pleases to name, Horace or Leheup may be so to-morrow. JBolingbroke to Marchmont, 22 July, 1739. CUNNINGHAM. 392 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1745. 194. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Arlington Street, Sept. 27, 1745. I CAN'T doubt but the joy of the Jacobites has reached Florence before this letter. Your two or three Irish priests, I forget their names, will have set out to take possession of abbey-lands here. I feel for what you will feel, and for the insulting things that will be said to you upon the battle ! we have lost in Scotland ; but all this is nothing to what it prefaces. The express came hither on Tuesday morning, but the Papists knew it on Sunday night. Cope lay in face of the rebels all Friday ; he scarce two thousand strong, they vastly superior, though we don't know their numbers. The military people say that he should have attacked them. However, we are sadly convinced that they are not such raw ragamuffins as they were represented. The rotation that has been established in that country, to give all the Highlanders the benefit of serving in the independent companies, has trained and disciplined them. Macdonald 2 (I sup- pose, he from Naples), who is reckoned a very experienced able officer, is said to have commanded them, and to be dangerously wounded. One does not hear the Boy's personal valour cried up ; by which I conclude he was not in the action. Our dragoons most shamefully fled without striking a blow, and are with Cope, who escaped in a boat to Berwick. I pity poor him, 3 who with no shining abilities, and no experience, and no force, was sent to fight for a crown ! He never saw a battle but that of Dettingen, where he got his red ribbon : Churchill, whose led-captain he was, and my Lord Harrington, had pushed him up to this misfortune. 4 We have lost all our artillery, five hundred men taken and three killed, and several officers, as you will see in the papers. This defeat has frightened every body but those it rejoices, and those it should 1 At Preston-Pans, near Edinburgh ; where the Pretender completely defeated Sir John Cope, on the 21st of September. DOVER. " It is remarkable, that among the foremost to join Charles, was the father of Marshal Macdonald, Duke de Tarento, long after raised to these honours by his merit in the French revolutionary wars, and not more distinguished for courage and capacity than for integrity and honour." Motion's Hist. vol. iii. p. 344. CUNNINGHAM. 3 General Cope was tried afterwards for his behaviour in this action, and it appeared very clearly, that the Ministry, his inferior officers, and his troops, were greatly to blame ; and that he did all he could, so ill-directed, so ill-supplied, and so ill-obeyed. WALPOLK. "General Cope, whom the Earl of Harrington created and still preserves." Mallet to Aaron Hill, October 22, 1748 (MS.).-- CUNNINGHAM. 1745.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 393 frighten most ; but my Lord Granville still buoys up the King's spirits, and persuades him it is nothing. He uses his Ministers as ill as possible, and discourages every body that would risk their lives and fortunes with him. Marshal Wade is marching against the rebels ; but the King will not let him take above eight thousand men ; so that if they come into England, another battle, with no advantage on our side, may determine our fate. Indeed, they don't seem so unwise as to risk their cause upon so precarious an event ; but rather to design to establish themselves in Scotland, till they can be supported from France, and be set up with taking Edinburgh Castle, where there is to the value of a million, and which they would make a stronghold. It is scarcely victualled for a month, and must surely fall into their hands. Our coasts are greatly guarded, and London kept in awe by the arrival of the guards. I don't believe what I have been told this morning, that more troops are sent for from Flanders, and aid asked of Denmark. Prince Charles has called a Parliament in Scotland for the 7th of October ; ours does not meet till the 17th, so that even in the show of liberty and laws they are beforehand with us. With all this, we hear of no men of quality or fortune having joined him but Lord Elcho, 1 whom you have seen at Florence ; and the Duke of Perth, 2 a silly race-horsing boy, who is said to be killed in this battle. But I gather no confidence from hence : my father always said, " If you see them come again, they will begin by their lowest people ; their chiefs will not appear till the end." His prophecies verify every day! The town is still empty ; on this point only the English act contrary to their custom, for they don't throng to see a Parliament, though it is likely to grow a curiosity ! I have so trained myself to expect this ruin, that I see it approach without any emotion. I shall suffer with fools, without having any malice to our enemies, who act sensibly from principle and from interest. Ruling parties seldom have caution or common sense. I don't doubt but Whigs and Protestants will be alert enough in trying to recover what they lose so supinely. I know nothing of my Lady 0[rford]. In this situation I dare say 1 Eldest son of the Earl of Wemyss. WALPOLK. 3 James Drummond, who would have been the fifth Earl of Perth, had it not been for the attainder and outlawry under which his family laboured. His grandfather, the fourth earl, had been created a duke by James II. after his abdication. He was not killed at Preston Pans, DOVEK, 394 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1745. she will exert enough of the spirit of her Austrian party, to be glad the present government is oppressed ; her piques and the Queen of Hungary's bigotry will draw satisfaction from what ought to be so contrary to each of their wishes. I don't wonder my Lady hates you so much, as I think she meant to express by her speech to Blair " Quern non credit Cleopatra nocentem, A quo casta fuit ? " She lives chiefly with my Lady Townshend : the latter told me last night, that she had seen a new fat player, who looked like every- body's husband. I replied, " I could easily believe that, from seeing so many women who looked like everybody's wives." -Adieu! my dear Sir ; I hope your spirits, like mine, will grow calm, from being callous with ill-news. 195. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Arlington Street, Oct. 4, 1745. I AM still writing to you as " Resident de sa Majeste Britannique ;" and without the apprehension of your suddenly receiving letters of recall, or orders to notify to the council of Florence the new acces- sion. I dare say your fears made you think that the young Prince (for he is at least Prince of Scotland) had vaulted from Cope's neck into St. James's House ; but he is still at Edinburgh ; and his cousin Grafton, 1 the Lord Chamberlain, has not even given orders for fitting up this palace for his reception. The good people of England have at last rubbed their eyes and looked about them. A wonderful spirit is arisen in all counties, and among all sorts of people. The nobility are raising regiments, and every body else is being raised. Dr. Herring, the Archbishop of York, has set an example that would rouse the most indifferent : in two days after the news arrived at York of Cope's defeat, and when they every moment expected the victorious rebels at their gates, the Bishop made a speech to the assembled county, that had as much true spirit, honesty, and bravery in it, as ever was penned by an historian for an ancient hero. The rebels returned to Edinburgh, where they have no hopes of taking the Castle, for old Preston, the deputy-governor, and General 1 The Duke of Grafton was the grandson of Charles II. ; the young Pretender the grandson of James II. CUNNINGHAM. 1745.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 395 Guest, have obliged them to supply the Castle constantly with fresh provisions, on pain of having the town fired with red-hot bullets. They did fling a bomb on Holyrood House, and obliged the Boy to shift his quarters. Wade is marching against them, and will have a great army : all the rest of our troops are ordered from Flanders, and are to meet him in Yorkshire, with some Hessians too. That county raises four thousand men, besides a body of foxhunters, whom Oglethorpe has converted into hussars. I am told that old Stair, 1 who certainly does not want zeal, but may not want envy neither, has practised a little Scotch art to prevent Wade from having an army, and consequently the glory of saving this country. This I don't doubt he will do, if the rebels get no foreign aid ; and I have great reason to hope they will not, for the French are privately making us overtures of peace. My dear child, dry your wet-brown- paperness, 2 and be in spirits again ! It is not a very civil joy to send to Florence, but I can't help telling you how glad I am of news that came two days ago, of the King of Prussia having beat Prince Charles, 3 who attacked him just after we could have obtained for them a peace with that King. That odious house of Austria ! It will not be decent for you to insult Bichcourt, but I would, were I at Florence. Pray let Mr. Chute have ample accounts of our zeal to figure with at Rome ; of the merchants of London undertaking to support the public credit ; of universal associations ; of regiments raised by the Dukes of Devonshire, Bedford, Rutland, Montagu; Lords Herbert, Halifax, Cholmondeley, Falmouth, Malton, Derby, 4 &c. ; of Wade with an army of twenty thousand men ; of another about London of near as many and lastly, of Lord Gower 5 having in person assured the King that he is no Jacobite, but ready to serve him with his life and fortune. Tell him of the whole coast so guarded, that nothing can pass unvisited ; and in short, send him this adver- tisement out of to-day's paper, as an instance of more spirit and wit than there is in all Scotland : 1 By our news from the North it looks as if the rebels were upon the point to leave Edinburgh, it being now plain that they cannot take the Castle. Lord Stair to the Duke of Bedford, London, Oct. 11, 1745. 2 See note, p. 366. CUNNINGHAM. 3 The Battle of Soor in Bohemia, gained by the King of Prussia over the Austrians, on the 30th of September 1745. DOVER. 4 See note, p. 390. CUNNINGHAM. * See note, p. 176. CUNNINGHAM. 396 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1745. TO ALL JOLLY BUTCHERS. MY BOLD HEAKTS : The Papists eat no meat on Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays, nor during Lent. Your friend, JOHN STEEL. Just as I wrote this, a person is come in, who tells me that the rebels have cut off the communication between Edinburgh and the Castle : the commanders renewed their threats ; and the good magistrates have sent up hither to beg orders may be sent to forbid this execution. It is modest ! it is Scotch ! and, I dare say, will be granted. Ask a government to spare your town, whieh you your- self have given up to rebels ; and the consequence of saving which will be the loss of your Castle ! but they knew to what government they applied ! You need not be in haste to have this notified at Rome. Tell it not in Gtath ! Adieu ! my dear Sir. This account has put me so out of humour, and has so altered the strain of my letter, that I must finish. 196. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Arlington Street, Oct. 11, 1745. THIS is likely to be a very short letter ; for I have nothing to tell you, nor anything to answer. I have not had one letter from you this month, which I attribute to the taking of the packet-boat by the French, with two mails in it. It was a very critical time for our negotiations ; the Ministry will say, it puts their transactions out of order. Before I talk of any public news, I must tell you what you will be very sorry for Lady Granville [Lady Sophia Fermor] is dead. She had a fever for six weeks before her lying-in, and could never get it off. Last Saturday they called in another physician, Dr. Oliver : on Monday he pronounced her out of danger. About seven in the evening, as Lady Pomfret and Lady Charlotte [Fermor] were sitting by her, the first notice they had of her immediate danger, was her sighing and saying, " I feel death come very fast upon me ! " She repeated the same words frequently remained perfectly in her senses and calm, and died about eleven at night. Her mother and sister sat by her till she was cold. It is very shocking for anybody so young, so handsome, so arrived at the height of happiness, so sensible of it, 1745.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 397 and on whom all the joy and grandeur of her family depended, to be so quickly snatched away ! Poor Uguccioni ! he will be very sorry and simple about it. For the rebels, they have made no figure since their victory. The Castle of Edinburgh has made a sally, and taken twenty head of cattle, and about thirty head of Highlanders. We heard yesterday, that they are coming this way. The troops from Flanders are ex- pected to land in Yorkshire to-morrow. A privateer of Bristol has taken a large Spanish ship, laden with arms and money for Scotland. A piece of a plot has been discovered in Dorsetshire, and one Mr. Weld 1 taken up. The French have declared to the Dutch, that the House of Stuart is their ally, and that the Dutch troops must not act against them ; but we expect they shall. The Parliament meets next Thursday, and by that time, probably, the armies will too. The rebels are not above eight thousand, and have little artillery ; so you may wear what ministerial spirits you will. The Venetian ambassador has been making his entries this week : he was at Leicester-fields to-day with the Prince, and very pretty compliments passed between them in Italian. Do excuse this letter : I really have not a word more to say ; the next shall be all arma mrumque cano 197. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Arlington Street, Oct. 21, 1745. I HAD been almost as long without any of your letters as you had without mine ; but yesterday I received one, dated the 5th of this month, N.S. The rebels have not left their camp near Edinburgh, and, I sup- pose, will not now, unless to retreat into the Highlands. General Wade was to march yesterday from Doncaster for Scotland. By their not advancing, I conclude that either the Boy and bis council could not prevail on the Highlanders to leave their own country, or that they were not strong enough, and still wait for foreign assistance, which, in a new declaration, he intimates that he still expects." One 1 Edward Weld, Esq., of Lulworth Castle. Hutchins, in his History of Dorsetshire, says, that, " although he ever behaved as a peaceful subject, he was ordered into custody, in 1745, on account of his name being mentioned in a treasonable anonymous letter dropped near Poole ; but his immediate and honourable discharge is the most convincing proof of his innocence." WEIGHT. 2 " At three several councils did Charles propose to march into England and fight 398 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1745. only ship, I believe, a Spanish one, is got to them with arms, and Lord John Drummond * and some people of quality on board. We don't hear that the younger Boy is of the number. Four ships sailed from Corunna ; the one that got to Scotland, one taken by a privateer of Bristol, and one lost on the Irish coast ; the fourth is not heard of. At Edinburgh and thereabouts they commit the most horrid barbarities. We last night expected as bad here : informa- tion was given of an intended insurrection and massacre by the Papists ; all the Guards were ordered out, and the Tower shut up at seven. I cannot be surprised at anything, considering the supine- ness of the Ministry nobody has yet been taken up ! The Parliament met on Thursday. I don't think, considering the crisis, that the House was very full. Indeed, many of the Scotch members cannot come if they would. The young Pretender had published a declaration, threatening to confiscate the estates of the Scotch that should come to Parliament, and making it treason for the English. The only points that have been before the House, the address and the suspension of the Habeas corpus, met with obstruc- tions from the Jacobites. By this we may expect what spirit they will show hereafter." With all this, I am far from thinking that they are so confident and sanguine as their friends at Rome. I blame the Chutes extremely for cockading themselves : why take a part, when they are only travelling ? I should certainly retire to Florence on this occasion. You may imagine how little I like our situation; but I don't despair. The little use they made, or could make of their victory ; their not having marched into England ; their miscarriage at the Castle of Edinburgh ; the arrival of our forces, and the non-arrival of any French or Spanish, make me conceive great hopes of getting over this ugly business. But it is still an affair wherein the chance of battles, or perhaps of one battle, may decide. I write you but short letters, considering the circumstances of the Marshal Wade ; but as often was his proposal overruled. At length he declared, in a very peremptory manner, ' I see, gentlemen, you are determined to stay in Scotland and defend your country ; but I am not less resolved to try my fate in England, though I should go alone.' " Lord Malum, vol. iii. p. 241. WRIGHT. 1 Brother of the titular Duke of Perth. WALPOLE. 2 " As to the Parliament," writes Horatio Walpole to Mr. Milling, on the 29th of October, " although the address was unanimous on the first day, yesterday, upon a motion ' to enquire into the causes of the progress of the rebellion,' the House was so fully convinced of the necessity of immediately putting an end to it, and that the fire should be quenched before we should enquire who kindled or promoted it, that it was carried, not to put that question at this time, by 194 against 112." WRIGHT. 1745.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 399 time ; but I hate to send you paragraphs only to contradict them again : I still less choose to forge events ; and, indeed, am glad I have so few to tell you. My Lady 0[rford] has forced herself upon her mother, who receives her very coolly: she talks highly of her demands, and quietly of her methods : the fruitlessness of either will, I hope, soon send her back I am sorry it must be to you ! You mention Holdisworth : l he has had the confidence to come and visit me within these ten days ; and (I suppose, from the over- flowing of his joy) talked a great deal and quick with as little sense as when he was more tedious. Since I wrote this, I hear the Countess [of Orford] has told her mother, that she thinks her husband the best of our family, and me the worst nobody so bad, except you ! I don't wonder at my being so ill with her ; but what have you done ? or is it, that we are worse than anybody, because we know more of her than anybody does ? Adieu ! 198. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Arlington Street, Nov. 4, 1745. IT is just a fortnight since I wrote to you last : in all that time the Rebellion has made no progress, nor produced any incidents worth mentioning. They have intrenched themselves very strongly in the Duke of Buccleuch's park, whose seat, about seven miles from Edinburgh, they have seized. We had an account last week of the Boy's being retired to Dunkirk, but it was not true. Kelly, 1 who is gone to solicit succour from France, was seized at Helvoet, but by a stupid burgher released. Lord London is very brisk in the north of Scotland, and has intercepted and beat some of their parties. Marshal Wade was to march from Newcastle yesterday. But the Rebellion does not make half the noise here that one of its consequences does. Fourteen lords (most of them I have named to you), at the beginning, offered to raise Regiments ; these regi- ments, so handsomely tendered at first, have been since put on the regular establishment ; not much to the honour of the undertakers or of the firmness of the Ministry, and the King is to pay them. One of the great grievances of this is, that these most disinterested colonels have named none but their own relations and dependents 1 A nonjnror, who travelled with Mr. George Pitt. WALPOLE. 2 He had been confined in the Tower ever since the assassination-plot, in the reign of King William ; but at last made his escape. WALPOLB. 400 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1745. for the officers, who are to have rank; and consequently both colonels and subalterns will interfere with the brave old part of the army, who have served all the war. This has made great clamour. The King was against their having rank, but would not refuse it ; yet wished that the House of Commons would address him not to grant it. This notification of his royal mind encouraged some of the old part of the Ministry, particularly Winnington and Fox, to under- take to procure this address. Friday it came on in the committee ; the Jacobites and patriots (such as are not included in the coalition) violently opposed the regiments themselves ; so did Fox, in a very warm speech, levelled particularly at the Duke of Montagu, who, besides his old regiment, has one of horse and one of foot on this new plan. 1 Pitt defended them as warmly : the Duke of Bedford, Lord Q-ower, and Lord Halifax, being at the head of this job. At last, at ten at night, the thirteen regiments of foot were voted with- out a division, and the two of horse carried by 192 to 82. Then came the motion for the address, and in an hour and half more, was rejected by 126 to 124. Of this latter number were several of the old corps ; I among the rest. It is to be reported to the House to- morrow, and will, I conclude, be at least as warm a day as the former. The King is now against the address, and all sides are using their utmost efforts. The fourteen lords threaten to throw up, unless their whole terms are complied with ; and the Duke of Bedford is not moderately insolent against such of the King's servants as voted against him. Mr. Pelham espouses him ; not recollecting, that at least twice a- week all his new allies are suffered to oppose him as they please. I should be sorry, for the appearance, to have the regiments given up ; but I am sure our affair is over, if our two old armies are beaten and we should come to want these new ones ; four only of which are pretended to be raised. Pitt, who has alternately bullied and flattered Mr. Pelham, is at last to bo Secretary- at- War ; 2 Sir "W. Yonge to be removed to Yice-Treasurer 1 This circumstance is thus alluded to in Sir C. H. Williams's ballad of " The Heroes." " Three regiments one Duke contents, With two more places you know : Since his Bath Knights, his Grace delights In Tri-a-junct' in U-no." The Duke of Montagu was master of the great wardrobe, a place worth eight thou- sand pounds a-year. He was also grand-master of the order of the Bath. DOVER. 3 In the May following, Mr. Pitt was appointed paymaster of the forces. WRIGHT. 1745.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 401 of Ireland, and Lord Torriugton l to have a pension in lieu of it. An ungracious parallel between the mercenary views of these patriot heroes, the regiment factors, and of their acquiescent agents, the ministry, with the disinterested behaviour of my Lord Kildare, 2 was drawn on Friday by Lord Doneraile ; who read the very proposals of the latter for raising, clothing, and arming a regiment at his own expense, and for which he had been told, but the very day before this question, that the King had no occasion. " And how," said Lord Doneraile, " can one account for this, but by saying, that we have a ministry who are either too good-natured to refuse a wrong thing, or too irresolute to do a right one ! " I am extremely pleased with the purchase of the Eagle and Altar, 3 and think them cheap : I even begin to believe that I shall be able to pay for them. The gesse statues are all arrived safe. Your last letter was dated Oct. 19, N.S. and left you up to the chin in water/ just as we were drowned five years ago. Good night, if you are alive still ! 199. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Arlington Street, Nov. 15, 1745. I TOLD you in my last what disturbance there had been about the new Regiments ; the affair of rank was again disputed on the report till ten at night, and carried by a majority of 23. The Xing had been persuaded to appear for it, though Lord Granville made it a party point against Mr. Pelham. Winnington did not speak. I was not there, for I could not vote for it, and yielded not to give any hindrance to a public measure (or at least what was called so) just now. The prince acted openly, and influenced his people against it ; but it only served to let Mr. Pelham see, what, like every thing else, he did not know, how strong he is. The King will scarce speak to him, and he cannot yet get Pitt into place. The rebels are come into England : for two days we believed them near Lancaster, but the ministry now own that they don't know if they have passed Carlisle. Some think they will besiege that town, which has an old wall, and all the militia, in it of Cumber- 1 Pattee Byng, second Viscount Torrington [1733-1747]. He had been made vice- treasurer of Ireland upon the going out of the Walpole administration. DOVER. 2 James Fitzgerald, twentieth Earl of Kildare ; created in 1761, Marquis of Kildare ; and in 1766 Duke of Leinster Irish honours. DOVER. 3 See note, ante. p. 379. CUNNINGHAM. 4 By an inundation cf the Arno. WALPOLE. VOL. I. 3D D 402 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1745. land mid Westmoreland ; but as they can pass by it, I don't see why they should take it ; for they are not strong enough to leave garrisons. Several desert them as they advance south ; and alto- gether, good men and bad, nobody believes them ten thousand. By their marching westward to avoid Wade, it is evident that they are not strong enough to fight him. They may yet retire back into their mountains, but if once they get to Lancaster, their retreat is cut off ; for Wade will not stir from Newcastle, till he has embarked them deep into England, and then he will be behind them. He has sent General Handasyde from Berwick with two regiments to take possession of Edinburgh. The rebels are certainly in a very desperate situation : they dared not meet Wade ; and if they had waited for him, their troops would have deserted. Unless they meet with great risings in their favour in Lancashire, I don't see what they can hope, except from a continuation of our neglect. That, indeed, has nobly exerted itself for them. They were suffered to march the whole length of Scotland, and take possession of the capital, without a man appearing against them. Then two thousand men sailed to them, to run from them. Till the flight of Cope's army, Wade was not sent. Two roads still lay into England, and till they had chosen that which Wade had not taken, no army was thought of being sent to secure the other. Now Ligonier, with seven old regiments, and six of the new, is ordered to Lancashire : before this first division of the army could get to Coventry, they are forced to order it to halt, for fear the enemy should be up with it before it was all assembled. It is uncertain if the rebels will march to the north of Wales, to Bristol, or towards London. If to the latter, Ligonier must fight them : if to either of the other, which I hope, the two armies may join and drive them into a corner, where they must all perish. They cannot subsist in Wales, but by being supplied by the Papists in Ireland. The best is, that we are in no fear from France ; there is no preparation for invasions in any of their ports. Lord Clancarty, 1 a Scotchman of great parts, but mad and drunken, and whose family forfeited 90,000/. a-year, for King James, is made vice-admiral at Brest. The Duke of Bedford goes in his little round person with his regiment ; he now takes to the land, and says he is tired of being a pen and ink man. Lord Gower insisted, too, upon going with his regiment, but is laid up with the gout. 1 Donagh Maccarty, Earl of Clancarty, was an Irishman, and not a Scotchman. DOVER. 1745.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 403 With the rebels in England, you may imagine we have no private news, nor think of foreign. From this account you may judge, that our case is far from desperate, though disagreeable. The Prince, while the Princess lies-in, has taken to give dinners, to which he asks two of the ladies of the bed-chamber, two of the maids of honour, &c., by turns, and five or six others. He sits at the head of the table, drinks and harangues to all this medley till nine at night ; and the other day, after the affair of the regiments, drank Mr Fox's health in a bumper, with three huzzas, for opposing Mr. Pelham " Si quit fata aspera rumpas, Tu Marcellus eris ! " You put me in pain for my Eagle, and in more for the Chutes, whose zeal is very heroic, but very ill-placed. I long to hear that all my Chutes and eagles are safe out of the Pope's hands ! Pray wish the Suares's joy of all their espousals. Does the Princess pray abundantly for her friend the Pretender ? Is she extremely abbatue with her devotion? and does she fast till she has got a violent appetite for supper ? And then, does she eat so long, that old Sarrasin is quite impatient to go to cards again ? Good night ! I intend you shall still be resident from King Q-eorge. P. S. I forgot to tell you, that the other day I concluded the ministry knew the danger was all over ; for the Duke of Newcastle ventured to have the Pretender's declaration burnt at the Royal Exchange. 200. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Arlington Street, Nov. 22, 1745. FOR these two days we have been expecting news of a battle. "Wade marched last Saturday from Newcastle, and must have got up with the rebels if they stayed for him, though the roads are exceed- ingly bad and great quantities of snow have fallen. But last night there was some notice of a body of rebels being advanced to Penryth. We were put into great spirits by an heroic letter from the mayor of Carlisle, who had fired on the rebels and made them retire ; he concluded with saying, " And so I think the town of Carlisle has done his Majesty more service than the great city of Edinburgh, or than all Scotland together." But this hero, who was grown the whole fashion for four-and-twenty hours, had chosen to stop all other D 2 404 HOKACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [17J5. letters. Tlie King spoke of him at his lewe with great encomiums ; Lord Stair said, " Yes, sir, Mr. Patterson has behaved very bravely." The Duke of Bedford interrupted him ; " My lord, his name is not Paterson ; that is a Scotch name ; his name is Patinson." But, alack ! the next day the rebels returned, having placed the won: sn and children of the countiy in waggons in front of their army, and forcing the peasants to fix the scaling-ladders. The great Mr. Pattin- son, or Patterson (for now his name may be which one pleases), instantly surrendered the town, and agreed to pay two thousand pounds to save it from pillage. Well ! then we were assured that the citadel could hold out seven or eight days ; but did not so many hours. On mustering the militia, there were not found above four men in a company ; and for two companies, which the ministry, on a report of Lord Albemarle, who said they were to be sent from "Wade's army, thought were there, and did not know were not there, there was nothing but two of invalids. Colonel Durand, the governor, fled, because he would not sign the capitulation, by which the garrison, it is said, has sworn never to bear arms against the house of Stuart. The Colonel sent two expresses, one to Wade, and another to Ligonier at Preston ; but the latter was playing at whist with Lord Harrington at Petersham. Such is our diligence and attention ! All my hopes are in Wade, who was so sensible of the ignorance of our governors, that he refused to accept the command, till they consented that he should be subject to no kind of orders from hence. The rebels are reckoned up at thirteen thousand ; Wade marches with about twelve ; but if they come southward, the other army will probably be to fight them ; the Duke is to command it, and sets out next week with another brigade of Guards, and Ligonier under him. There are great apprehensions for Chester from the Flintshire-men, who are ready to rise. A quarter-master, first sent to Carlisle, was seized and carried to Wade ; he behaved most inso- lently ; and being asked by the General, how many the rebels were, replied, " Enough to beat any army you have in England." A Mackintosh has been taken, who reduces their formidability, by being sent to raise two clans, and with orders, if they would not rise, at least to give out they had risen, for that three clans would leave the Pretender, unless joined by those two. Five hundred new rebels are arrived at Perth, where our prisoners are kept. I had this morning a subscription-book brought me for our parish ; ' 1 St. James's, Westminster, in whi,:h Arlington Street wap. Lord Granville and Horace Walpole had hous;> there. CUNNINGHAM. 1745.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 405 Lord Granville had refused to subscribe. This is in the style of his friend Lord Bath, who has absented himself whenever any act ot authority was to be executed against the rebels. Five Scotch lords are going to raise regiments a I'Anglwse ! resident in London, while 'the rebels were in Scotland ; they are to receive military emoluments for their neutrality ! The Fox man-of-war of 20 guns is lost off Dunbar. One Beavor, the captain, has done us notable service : the Pretender sent to com- mend his zeal and activity, and to tell him, that if he would return to his allegiance, he should soon have a flag. Beavor replied, " He never treated with any but principals ; that if the Pretender would come on board him, he would talk with him." I must now tell you of our great Vernon : without once complaining to the Ministry, he has written to Sir John Philipps, a distinguished Jacobite, to com- plain of want of provisions ; yet they do not venture to recall him ! Yesterday they had another baiting from Pitt, who is ravenous for the place of Secretary at War : they would give it him ; but as a preliminary, he insists on a declaration of our having nothing to do with the continent. He mustered his forces, but did not notify his intention ; only at two o'clock Lyttelton said at the Treasury, that there would be business at the House. The motion was, to augment our naval force, which, Pitt said, was the only method of putting an end to the rebellion. Ships built a year hence to suppress an army of Highlanders, now marching through England ! My uncle {old Horace] attacked him, and congratulated his country on the wisdom of the modern young men ; and said he had a son of two-and-twenty, who, he did not doubt, would come over wiser than any of them. Pitt was provoked, and retorted on his negotiations and grey-headed experience. At those words, my uncle, as if he had been at Bartholomew fair, snatched off his wig, and showed his grey hairs, which made the august senate laugh, and put Pitt out, who, after laughing himself, diverted his venom upon Mr. Pelham. Upon the question, Pitt's party amounted but to thirty-six : in short, he has nothing left but his words, and his haughtiness, and his Lytteltons, and his Grenvilles. Adieu ! 201. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Arlington Street, Nov. 29, 1745. have had your story here this week of the pretended Pretender, but with the unlucky circumstance of its coming from 406 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1745. the Roman Catholics. With all the faith you have in your little spy, I cannot helieve it ; though, to be sure, it has a Stuart- air, the not exposing the real hoy to danger. The Duke of Newcastle men- tioned your account this morning to my uncle ; hut they don't give any credit to the courier's relation. It grows so near being necessary for the young man to get off by any evasion, that I am persuaded all that party will try to have it believed. We are so far from thinking that they have not sent us one son, that two days ago we believed we had got the other too. A small ship has taken the Soleil privateer from Dunkirk, going to Montrose, with twenty French officers, sixty others, and the brother of the beheaded Lord Derwentwater and his son, 1 who at first was believed to be the second boy. News came yesterday of a second privateer, taken with arms and money ; of another lost on the Dutch coast, and of Vernon being in pursuit of two more. All this must be a great damp to the party, who are coming on fast fast to their destruction. Last night they were to be at Preston, but several repeated accounts make them under five thousand none above seven ; they must have diminished greatly by desertion. The country is so far from rising for them, that the towns are left desolate on their approach, and the people hide and bury their effects, even to their pewter. Warrington bridge is broken down, which will turn them some miles aside. The Duke, with the flower of that brave army which stood all the fire at Fontenoy, will rendezvous at Stone, beyond Litchfield, the day after to-morrow: Wade is advancing behind them, and will be at Wetherby in Yorkshire to-morrow. In short, I have no conception of their daring to fight either army, nor see any visible possibility of their not being very soon destroyed. JVIy fears have been great, from the greatness of our stake ; but I now write in the greatest confidence of our getting over this ugly business. We have another very disagreeable affair, that may have fatal consequences : there rages a murrain among the cows ; we dare not eat milk, butter, beef, nor anything froni that species. Unless there is snow or frost soon, it is likely to spread dreadfully ; though hitherto it has not reached many miles from London. At first, it was imagined that the Papists had poisoned the pools ; but the physicians have pronounced it infectious, and brought from abroad. 1 Charles Radcliffe, brother of James, Earl of Derwentwater, who was executed for the share he took in the rebellion of 1715. Charles was executed in 1746, upon the sentence pronounced against him in 1716, which he had then evaded, by escaping from Newgate. His son was Bartholomew, third Earl of Newburgh, a Scotch title he inherited from his mother. DOVKR. 1745.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. -107 I forgot to tell you, that my uncle [old Horace] begged the Duke of Newcastle to stifle this report of the sham Pretender, lest the King should hear it and recall the Duke, as too great to fight a counterfeit. It is certain that the army adore the Duke, and are gone in the greatest spirits ; and on the parade, as they began their march, the Guards vowed that they would neither give nor take quarter. For bravery, his Royal Highness is certainly no Stuart, but literally loves to be in the act of fighting. His brother [the Prince of Wales] has so far the same taste, that the night of his new sou's christening, he had the citadel of Carlisle in sugar at supper, and the company besieged it with sugar plums. It was well imagined, considering the time and the circumstances. One thing was very proper ; old Marshal Stair was there, who is grown child enough to be fit to war only with such artillery. Another piece of ingenuity of that Court was on the report of Pitt being named Secretary at War. The Prince hates him, since the fall of Lord Granville : he said, Miss Chudleigh,' one of the Maids, was fitter for the employment ; and dictated a letter, which, he made her write to Lord Harrington, to desire he would draw the warrant for her. There were fourteen people at table, and all were to sign it : the Duke of Queensberry 2 would not, as being a friend of Pitt, nor Mrs. Layton, 3 one of the dressers : however, it was actually sent, and the footman ordered not to deliver it till Sir William Yonge was at Lord Harrington's alas ! it would be endless to tell you all his Caligulisms ! A. ridiculous thing happened when the Princess saw company : the new-born babe 4 was shown in a mighty pretty cradle, designed by Kent, under a canopy in the great drawing- room. Sir William Stanhope went to look at it ; Mrs. Herbert, the governess, advanced to unmantle it : he said, " In wax, I suppose." "Sir!" "In wax, Madam?" "The young Prince, Sir." "Yes, in wax, I suppose." This is his odd humour : when he went to see this Duke at his birth, he said, " Lord : it sees ! " The good Provost of Edinburgh has been with Marshal Wade at Newcastle, and it is said, is coming to London he must trust hugely to the inactivity of the Ministry ! They have taken an 1 Miss Elizabeth Chudleigh, afterwards the well-known Duchess of Kingston. The Maids of Honour of the Princess of Wales were at this time Albinia Selwyn, Elizabeth Hamilton, Lucy Boscawen, Miss Lawson, and Miss Chudleigh. CUNNINGHAM. 2 Gay's Duke, husband of Gay's Duchess. CUNNINGHAM. 3 Jane Layton, one of the Bedchamber-women to the Princess CUNNINGHAM. 4 Henry Frederic, Duke of Cumberland, born 26 October, 1745 the same who married Mrs. Horton. CUNNINGHAM. 403 HORACE WALPOLK'S LETTERS. [1745. agent there going with large contributions from the Roman Catholics, who have pretended to be so quiet ! The Duchess of Richmond, while her husband is at the army, was going to her grace of Norfolk : l when he was very uneasy at her intention, she showed him letters from the Norfolk, " wherein she prays God that this wicked rebellion may be soon suppressed, lest it hurt the poor Roman Catholics." But this wise jaunt has made such a noise that it is laid aside. Your friend Lord Sandwich has got one of the Duke of Montagu's regiments ; he stayed quietly till all the noise was over. He is now Lord of the Admiralty, lieutenant-colonel to the Duke of Bedford, aid- de-camp to the Duke of Richmond, and colonel of a regiment ! A friend of mine, Mr. Talbot, who has a good estate in Cheshire, with the great tithes, which he takes in kind, and has generally fifteen hundred pounds stock, has expressly ordered his steward to burn it, if the rebels come that way : I don't think this will make a bad figure in Mr. Chute's brave gazette. As we go on prospering, I will take care to furnish him with paragraphs, till he kills Riviera 2 and all the faction. When my lovely Eagle comes, I will consecrate it to his Roman memory ; don't think I want spirits more than he, when I beg you to send me a case of drams : I remember your getting one for Mr. Trevor. I guessed at having lost two letters from you in the packet-boat that was taken : I have received all you mention, but those of the 21st and 28th of September, one of which I suppose was about Gib- berne : his mother has told me how happy you have made her and him, for which I much thank you and your usual good-nature. Adieu ! I trust all my letters will grow better and better. You must have passed a lamentable scene of anxiety ; we have had a good deal ; but I think we grow in spirits again. There never was so melancholy a town ; no kind of public place but the playhouses, and they look as if the rebels had just driven away the company. No- body but has some fear for themselves, for their money, or for their friends in the army : of this number am I deeply ; Lord Bury 3 and Mr. Conway, two of the first in my list, are aid-de-camps to 1 Mary Blount, Duchess of Norfolk, the wife of Duke Edward. She and her husband were suspected of Jacobitism. DOVER. 2 Cardinal Riviera, promoted to the purple by the interest of the Pretender. WALPOLE. 3 George Keppcl, eldest son of the Earl of Albemarlc, whom he succeeded iu the title in 1754. WALPOLE. 1745.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 409 the Duke, and another, Mr. Cornwallis, 1 is in the same army, and my nephew, Lord Malpas 2 so I still fear the rehels heyond my reason. Good night. P.S. It is now generally helieved from many circumstances, that the youngest Pretender is actually among the prisoners taken on board the Soleil : pray wish Mr. Chute joy for me. 202. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Arlington Street, Dec. 9, 1745. I AM glad I did not write to you last post as I intended ; I should have sent you an account that would have alarmed you, and the danger would have heen over before the letter had crossed the sea. The Duke, from some strange want of intelligence, lay last week for four-and-twenty hours under arms at Stone, in Stafford- shire, expecting the rebels every moment, while they were marching in all haste to Derby. 3 The news of this threw the town into great consternation ; but his Royal Highness repaired his mistake, and got to Northampton, between the Highlanders and London. They got nine thousand pounds at Derby, and had the books brought to them, and obliged everybody to give them what they had subscribed against them. Then they retreated a few miles, but returned again to Derby, got ten thousand pounds more, plundered the town, and burnt a house of the Countess of Exeter. They are gone again, and go back to Leake, in Staffordshire, but miserably harassed, and, it is said, have left all their cannon behind them, and twenty waggons of sick. The Duke has sent General Hawley with the dragoons to harass them in their retreat, and despatched Mr. Conway to Marshal Wade, to hasten his march upon the back of them. They must either go to North "Wales, where they will probably all perish, or to Scotland, with great loss. "We dread them no longer. We are threatened with great preparations for a French invasion, but the coast is exceedingly guarded ; and for the people, the spirit against the rebels increases every day. Though they have marched thus 1 Edward, brother of Earl Cornwallis, groom of the bedchamber to the King, and afterwards governor of Nova Scotia. WALPOI.E. 2 George, eldest son of George, Earl of Cholmondeley, and of Mary, second daughter of Sir Robert Walpole. WALPOLE. 3 The consternation was so great as to occasion that day being named Black Friday. "\VALPOLE. 410 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1745. into the heart of the kingdom, there has not been the least symptom of a rising, not even in the great towns of which they possessed themselves. They have got no recruits since their first entry into England, excepting one gentleman in Lancashire, one hundred and fifty common men, and two parsons, at Manchester, and a physician from York. But here in London, the aversion to them is amazing : on some thoughts of the King's going to an encampment at Finchley, 1 the weavers not only offered him a thousand men, but the whole body of the Law formed themselves into a little army, under the command of Lord Chief- Justice Willes, 2 and were to have done duty at St. James's, to guard the royal family in the King's absence. But the greatest demonstration of loyalty appeared on the prisoners being brought to town from the Soleil prize : the young man is cer- tainly Mr. Radcliffe's son ; but the mob, persuaded of his being the youngest Pretender, could scarcely be restrained from tearing him to pieces all the way on the road, and at his arrival. He said he had heard of English mobs, but could not conceive they were so dreadful, and wished he had been shot at the battle of Dettingen, where he had been engaged. The father, whom they call Lord Derwentwater, said, on entering the Tower, that he had never expected to arrive there alive. For the young man, he must only be treated as a French captive ; for the father, it is sufficient to produce him at the Old Bailey, and prove that he is the individual person condemned for last Rebellion, and so to Tyburn. We begin to take up people, but it is with as much caution and timidity as women of quality begin to pawn their jewels ; we have not ventured upon any great stone yet ! The Provost of Edinburgh is in custody of a messenger ; and the other day they seized an odd man, who goes by the name of Count St. Germain. He has been here these two years, and will not tell who he is, or whence, but pro- fesses that he does not go by his right name. He sings, plays on the violin wonderfully, composes, is mad, and not very sensible. He is called an Italian, a Spaniard, a Pole ; a somebody that married a great fortune in Mexico, and ran away with her jewels to Constan- tinople ; a priest, a fiddler, a vast nobleman. The Prince of Wales has had unsatiated curiosity about him, but in vain. However, 1 The march of the Guards to Finchley has been made immortal by Hogarth. CUNNINGHAM. 2 Sir John Willes, knight, chief-justice of the common pleas from 1737 to 1762. DOVER. 1745.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 411 nothing has been made out against him ; ' he is released ; and, what convinces me that he is not a gentleman, stays here, and talks of his being taken up for a spy. I think these accounts, upon which you may depend, must raise your spirits, and figure in Mr. Chute's loyal journal. But you don't get my letters : I have sent you eleven since I came to town ; how many of these have you received ? Adieu ! 203. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Arlington Street, Dec. 20, 1745. I HAVE at last got your great letter by Mr. Gambier, and the views of the villas, 2 for which I thank you much. I can't say I think them too well done, nor the villas themselves pretty, but the prospects are charming. I have since received 'two more letters from you, of November 30th and December 7th. You seem to receive mine at last, though very slowly. We have at last got a spring-tide of good luck. The rebels turned back from Derby, and have ever since been flying with the greatest precipitation. The Duke, with all his horse, and a thou- sand foot mounted, has pursued them with astonishing rapidity ; and General Oglethorpe, with part of Wade's horse, has crossed over upon them. There has been little prospect of coming up with their entire body, but it dismayed them ; their stragglers were picked up, and the towns in their way preserved from plunder, by their not having time to do mischief. This morning an express is arrived from Lord Malton 3 in Yorkshire, who has had an account of Oglethorpe's cutting a part of them to pieces, and of the Duke's overtaking their rear and entirely demolishing it. We believe all this ; but, as it is not yet confirmed, don't depend upon it too much. The fat East India ships are arrived safe from Ireland I mean the prizes ; 1 In the beginning of the year 1755, on rumours of a great armament at Brest, one Virette, a Swiss, who had been a kind of toad-eater to this St. Germain, was denounced to Lord Holderness for a spy ; but Mr. Stanley going pretty surlily to his lordship, on his suspecting a friend of his, Virette was declared innocent, and the penitent secretary of state made him the amende honorable of a dinner in form. About the same time, a spy of ours was seized at Brest, but not happening to be acquainted with Mr. Stanley, was broken upon the wheel. WALPOLE. 2 Villas of the Florentine nobility. WALPOLE. 3 Sir Thomas Watson Wentworth, Knight of the Bath and Earl of Malton. WALPOLE. Afterwards, 1746, Marquis of Rockingham. He died in 1750, and was succeeded by his second son, the Minister Marquis of Rockingham. CUNNINGHAM. 412 HORACE WALPOLB'S LETTERS. [1745. and yesterday a letter arrived from Admiral Townshend iu tlie West Indies, where he has fallen in with the Martinico fleet (each ship valued at eight thousand pounds), taken twenty, sunk ten, and driven ashore two men-of-war, their convoy, and battered them to pieces. All this will raise the pulse of the stocks, which have been exceedingly low this week, and the bank itself in danger. The private rich are making immense fortunes out of the public distress : the dread of the French invasion has occasioned this. They have a vast embarkation at Dunkirk ; the Due de Richelieu, Marquis Fimarcon, and other general officers, are named in form to command. Nay, it has been notified in form by the insolent Lord John Drum- mond, 1 who has got to Scotland, and sent a drum to Marshal Wade, to announce himself commander for the French King in the war he designs to wage in England, and to propose a cartel for the exchange of prisoners. No answer has been made to this rebel ; but the King has acquainted the Parliament with this audacious message. We have a vast fleet at sea ; and the main body of the Duke's army is coming down to the coast to prevent their landing, if they should slip our ships. Indeed, I can't believe they will attempt coming hither, as they must hear of the destruction of the rebels in England ; but they will, probably, dribble away to Scotland, where the war may last considerably. Into England, I scarce believe the Highlanders will be drawn again : to have come as far as Derby to have found no rising in their favour, and to find themselves not strong enough to fight either army, will make lasting impressions ! Yernon, I hear, is recalled for his absurdities, and s at his own request, and Martin named for his successor. We had yesterday a very remarkable day in the House : the King notified his having sent for six thousand Hessians into Scotland. Mr. Pelham for an address of thanks. Lord Corubury (indeed, an exceedingly honest man 2 ) was for thanking for the notice, not for the sending for the troops ; and proposed to add a representation of the national being the only constitutional troops, and to hope we should be exonerated of these foreigners as soon as possible. Pitt, and that clan, joined him; but the voice of the House, and the desires of the whole 1 Brother of the titular Duke of Perth. WALPOLK. 2 Henry Hyde, only son of Henry, the last Earl of Clarendon. Tie was called up to the House of Peers, by the style of Lord Hyde, and died unmarried, before his father, at Paris, 1753. WALPOLK. Pope's Lord Cornbury, the same to whom Bolingbroke addressed his "Letters on the Study of History," and to whose comedy of "The Mistakes" Walpule wrote the " Advertisement," in the name of Mrs. Porter the actress (Works, i. 228). See vol. i., p. Ixiv. CUNNINGHAM. 1745.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 413 kingdom for all the troops we can get, were so strong, that, on the division, we were 190 to 44 : I think and hope this will produce some Hanoverians too. That it will produce a dismission of the Cobhamites is pretty certain ; the Duke of Bedford and Lord Gower are warm for both points. The latter has certainly renounced Jacobitism. Boetslaar is come again from Holland, but his errand not yet known. You will have heard of another victory 1 which the Prussian has gained over the Saxons ; very bloody on both sides : but now he is master of Dresden. We again think that we have got the second son, 2 under the name of Macdonald. Nobody is permitted to see any of the prisoners. In the midst of our political distresses, which, I assure you, have reduced the town to a state of Presbyterian dulness, we have been entertained with the marriage of the Duchess of Bridgewater 3 and Dick Lyttelton : she, forty, plain, very rich, and with five children ; he, six-and-twenty, handsome, poor, and proper to get her five more. I saw, the other day, a very good Irish letter. A gentleman in Dublin, full of the great qualities of my Lord Chesterfield, has written a panegyric on them, particularly on his affability and humility ; with a comparison between him and the hauteur of all other lord-lieutenants. As an instance, he says, the earl was invited to a great dinner, whither he went, by mistake, at one, instead of three. The master was not at home, the lady not dressed, every thing in confusion. My lord was so humble as to dismiss his train and take a hackney-chair, and went and stayed with Mrs. Phipps till dinner-time la belle humilite! I am not at all surprised to hear of my cousin Don Sebastian's stupidity. Why, child, he cannot articulate ; how would you have had him educated ? Cape Breton, Bastia, Martinico ! if we are undone this year, at least we go out with eclat. Good night. 1 The battle of Kesselsdorf, gained by Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Deasau over the Saxon army, commanded by Count Rutowsky. This event took place on the 15th of December, and was followed by the taking of Dresden by the King of Prussia. DOVER. 2 Henry Stuart, afterwards Cardinal of York. This intelligence did not prove true. DOVER. 3 Lady Rachel Russel, eldest sister of John, Duke of Bedford, and widow of Scrope Egerton, Duke of Bridgewater ; married to her second husband, Colonel Richard Lyttelton, brother of Sir George Lyttelton, and afterwards Knight of the Bath. WALPOLE. 414 HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS. [1746. 204. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Arlington Street, Jan. 3, 1746. I DEFERRED writing to you till I could tell you that the rebellion was at an end in England. The Duke has taken Carlisle, but was long enough before it to prove how basely or cowardly it was yielded to the rebel : you will see the particulars in the Gazette. His Royal Highness is expected in town every day ; but I still think it probable that he will go to Scotland. 1 That country is very clamorous for it. If the King does send him, it should not be with that sword of mercy with which the present family have governed those people. All the world agrees in the fitness of severity to highwaymen, for the sake of the innocent who suffer; then, can rigour be ill placed against banditti who have so terrified, pillaged, and injured the poor people in Cumberland, Lancashire, Derbyshire, and the counties through which this rebellion has stalked ? There is a military magistrate of some fierceness sent into Scotland with Wade's army, who is coming to town ; it is General Hawley. 2 He will not sow the seeds of future disloyalty by too easily pardoning the present. The French still go on with their preparations at Dunkirk and their sea-ports ; but, I think, few people believe now that they will be exerted against us : we have a numerous fleet in the Channel, and a large army on the shores opposite to France. The Dutch fear that all this storm is to burst on them. Since the Queen's making peace with Prussia, the Dutch are applying to him for protection ; and, I am told, wake from their neutral lethargy. We are in a good quiet state here in town ; the Parliament is reposing itself for the holidays ; the ministry is in private agitation ; 1 The Duke of Cumberland entered Carlisle on the 31st of December; but his pursuit of the Highlanders in person was interrupted by despatches, which called him to London, to be ready to take command against the projected invasion from France. WRIGHT. 2 Lieutenant General Henry Hawley, Governor of Portsmouth and Colonel of the Royal Regiment of Dragoons, died unmarried at his seat near Portsmouth, 24th March, 1759, aged 80. His extraordinary will is printed in the "The Gentleman's Magazine" for 1759, p. 157. CUNNINGHAM. "Hawley," says Lord Mahon, "was an officer of some experience, but destitute of capacity, and hated, not merely by his enemies, but by his own soldiers, for a most violent and vindictive temper. One of his first measures, on arriving at Edinburgh to take the chief command, was to order two gibbets to be erected, ready for the rebels who might fall into his hands ; and, with a similar view, he bid several executioners attend his army on his march." Vol. Hi. p. 357. WKIGHT. 1746] TO SIR HORACE MANN. 415 the Cobham part of the coalition is going to be disbanded ; Pitt's wild ambition cannot content itself with what he had asked, and had had granted ; and he has driven Lyttelton and the Grenvilles to adopt all his extravagances. But then, they are at variance again within themselves : Lyttelton's wife ' hates Pitt, and does not approve his governing her husband and hurting their family ; so that, at present, it seems he does not care to be a martyr to Pitt's caprices, which are in excellent training ; for he is governed by her mad Grace of Queensberry. All this makes foul weather ; but, to me, it is only a cloudy landscape. The Prince has dismissed Hume Campbell, 2 who was his Solicitor, for attacking Lord Tweeddale 3 on the Scotch affairs : the latter has resigned the Seals of Secretary of State for Scotland to-day. I con- clude, when the holidays are over, and the rebellion travelled so far back, we shall have warm inquiries in Parliament. This is a short letter, I perceive ; but I know nothing more ; and the Carlisle part of it will make you wear your beaver more erect than I believe you have of late. Adieu ! 1 Lucy Fortescue, sister of Lord Clinton, first wife of Sir George, afterwards, Lord Lyttelton. WALPOLK. She died in January, 1747, at the age of twenty-nine. WRIGHT. 2 Twin-brother to the Earl of Marchmont [see p. 117]; who, in his diary of the 2nd of January, says, " My brother told me he had been, last night, with Mr. Drax, the Prince's secretary, when he had notified to him, that the Prince expected all his family to go together to support the measures of the administration, and that, as Mr. Hume did not act so, he was to write him a letter, discharging him. In the conversation, Mr. Drax said, that the Prince was to support the Pelhams, and that his dismission was to be ascribed to Lord Granville. My brother said, that he had nothing to say to the Prince, other than that he would support all the measures he thought conducive to the King's interests, but no others. WRIGHT. 3 The Marquis of Tweeddale was one of the discontented Whigs, during the administration of Sir Robert Walpole ; on whose removal he came to Court, and was made Secretary of State, attaching himself to Lord Granville's faction, whose youngest daughter, Prances, he afterwards married. He was reckoned a pood civilian, but was a very dull man. WALPOLB. END OF THE FIRST VOLUME. London : Printed by W. Cr.owis and SONS Stamford-street. University of California SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 305 De Neve Drive - Parking Lot 17 Box 951388 LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90095-1388 Return this material to the library from which it was borrowed. AC MAY REC'DYRL O 000632513 8 - - . . . . >> >> H'^Vv >Ul.|ibltt|p utiBWf F ttklcd2&vi! mm* m H. />//{<{ mW SUM >->>A# Wi ? j >; v*,/^ im II r4^ P^DI '/ f/s 1 ri / . I I fill 1 ? I {; I Vf' II 7 - jsity of Call tern Regio >rary FacilH .