Which
interval
is the more convenient, as it gives time to rejoice
with you on your new honours.
with you on your new honours.
Selection of English Letters
.
.
You will now expect that I should give you some account of the Isle of
Skye, of which, though I have been twelve days upon it, I have little
to say. It is an island perhaps fifty miles long, so much indented by
inlets of the sea that there is no part of it removed from the water
more than six miles. No part that I have seen is plain; you are always
climbing or descending, and every step is upon rock or mire. A walk
upon ploughed ground in England is a dance upon carpets compared to
the toilsome drudgery of wandering in Skye. There is neither town nor
village in the island, nor have I seen any house but Macleod's, that
is not much below your habitation at Brighthelmstone. In the mountains
there are stags and roebucks, but no hares, and few rabbits; nor have
I seen anything that interested me as a zoologist, except an otter,
bigger than I thought an otter could have been.
You perhaps are imagining that I am withdrawn from the gay and
the busy world into regions of peace and pastoral felicity, and am
enjoying the relics of the golden age; that I am surveying nature's
magnificence from a mountain, or remarking her minuter beauties on the
flowery bank of a winding rivulet; that I am invigorating myself in
the sunshine, or delighting my imagination with being hidden from
the invasion of human evils and human passions in the darkness of a
thicket; that I am busy in gathering shells and pebbles on the shore,
or contemplative on a rock, from which I look upon the water, and
consider how many waves are rolling between me and Streatham.
The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and
instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are. Here
are mountains which I should once have climbed, but to climb steps
is now very laborious, and to descend them dangerous; and I am now
content with knowing, that by scrambling up a rock, I shall only see
other rocks, and a wider circuit of barren desolation. Of streams, we
have here a sufficient number, but they murmur not upon pebbles, but
upon rocks. Of flowers, if Chloris herself were here, I could present
her only with the bloom of heath. Of lawns and thickets, he must read
that would know them, for here is little sun and no shade. On the sea
I look from my window, but am not much tempted to the shore; for since
I came to this island, almost every breath of air has been a storm,
and what is worse, a storm with all its severity, but without its
magnificence, for the sea is here so broken into channels that there
is not a sufficient volume of water either for lofty surges or a loud
roar. . . .
TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE EARL OF CHESTERFIELD
_Patronage_
7 _Feb_. 1775.
MY LORD,
I have been lately informed, by the proprietor of _The World_, that
two papers, in which my _Dictionary_ is recommended to the public, are
by your lordship. To be so distinguished is an honour, which, being
very little accustomed to favours from the great, I know not well how
to receive, or in what terms to acknowledge.
When, upon some slight encouragement, I first visited your lordship, I
was overpowered, like the rest of mankind, by the enchantment of your
address, and could not forbear to wish that I might boast myself _le
vainqueur du vainqueur de la terre_;--that I might obtain that regard
for which I saw the world contending; but I found my attendance so
little encouraged, that neither pride nor modesty would suffer me to
continue it. When I had once addressed your lordship in public, I
had exhausted all the art of pleasing which a retired and uncourtly
scholar can possess. I had done all I could; and no man is well
pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever so little.
Seven years, my lord, have now passed, since I waited in your outward
rooms, or was repulsed from your door; during which time I have been
pushing on my work through difficulties, of which it is useless to
complain, and have brought it at last to the verge of publication,
without one act of assistance, one word of encouragement, or one smile
of favour. Such treatment I did not expect, for I never had a patron
before.
The shepherd in _Virgil_ grew at last acquainted with Love, and found
him a native of the rocks.
Is not a patron, my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man
struggling for life in the water, and when he has reached ground,
encumbers him with help? The notice which you have been pleased to
take of my labours, had it been early had been kind; but it has
been delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till I am
solitary, and cannot impart it; till I am known, and do not want it. I
hope it is no very cynical asperity, not to confess obligations,
where no benefit has been received, or to be unwilling that the public
should consider me as owing that to a patron, which Providence has
enabled me to do for myself.
Having carried on my work thus far with so little obligation to any
favourer of learning, I shall not be disappointed though I shall
conclude it, if less be possible, with less; for I have been long
wakened from that dream of hope in which I once boasted myself with so
much exultation.
My Lord,
Your Lordship's most humble,
most obedient servant.
To JAMES BOSWELL
_A silent friend_
13 _July_, 1779.
DEAR SIR,
What can possibly have happened that keeps us two such strangers to
each other? I expected to have heard from you when you came home; I
expected afterwards. I went into the country and returned, and yet
there is no letter from Mr. Boswell. No ill, I hope, has happened; and
if ill should happen, why should it be concealed from him who loves
you? Is it a fit of humour, that has disposed you to try who can hold
out longest without writing? If it be, you have the victory. But I am
afraid of something bad; set me free from my suspicions.
My thoughts are at present employed in guessing the reason of your
silence; you must not expect that I should tell you anything, if I had
anything to tell. Write, pray write to me, and let me know what is or
what has been the cause of this long interruption.
To MRS. THRALE
_A great man's fortitude_
19 _June_, 1783.
ON Monday the 16th, I sat for my picture and walked a considerable way
with little inconvenience. In the afternoon and evening I felt myself
light and easy, and began to plan schemes of life. Thus I went to bed,
and in a short time waked and sat up, as has been long my custom,
when I felt a confusion and indistinctness in my head, which lasted,
I suppose, about half a minute. I was alarmed, and prayed God, that
however he might afflict my body, he would spare my understanding.
This prayer, that I might try the integrity of my faculties, I made in
Latin verse. The lines were not very good, but I knew them not to be
very good: I made them easily, and concluded myself to be unimpaired
in my faculties.
Soon after I perceived that I had suffered a paralytic stroke,
and that my speech was taken from me. I had no pain, and so little
dejection in this dreadful state, that I wondered at my own apathy,
and considered that perhaps death itself, when it should come, would
excite less horror than seems now to attend it.
In order to rouse the vocal organs, I took two drams. Wine has been
celebrated for the production of eloquence. I put myself into violent
motion, and I think repeated it; but all was vain. I then went to bed,
and strange as it may seem, I slept. When I saw light, it was time to
contrive what I should do. Though God stopped my speech, he left me
my hands; I enjoyed a mercy which was not granted to my dear friend
Lawrence, who now perhaps overlooks me as I am writing, and rejoices
that I have what he wanted. My first note was necessarily to my
servant, who came in talking, and could not immediately comprehend why
he should read what I put into his hands. I then wrote a card to Mr.
Allen, that I might have a discreet friend at hand, to act as occasion
should require. In penning this note I had some difficulty; my hand,
I knew not how nor why, made wrong letters. I then wrote to Dr. Taylor
to come to me, and bring Dr. Heberden: and I sent to Dr. Brocklesby,
who is my neighbour. My physicians are very friendly, and give me
great hopes; but you may imagine my situation. I have so far recovered
my vocal powers, as to repeat the Lord's Prayer with no very imperfect
articulation. My memory, I hope, yet remains as it was! but such an
attack produces solicitude for the safety of every faculty.
LAURENCE STERNE
1713-1768
To Miss LUMLEY
_The disconsolate lover_
[1740-1]
You bid me tell you, my dear L. , how I bore your departure for S----,
and whether the valley, where D'Estella stands, retains still its
looks, or if I think the roses or jessamines smell as sweet as when
you left it. Alas! everything has now lost its relish and look! The
hour you left D'Estella I took to my bed. I was worn out with fevers
of all kinds, but most by that fever of the heart with which thou
knowest well I have been wasting these two years--and shall continue
wasting till you quit S----. The good Miss S----, from the forebodings
of the best of hearts, thinking I was ill, insisted upon my going to
her. What can be the cause, my dear L. , that I never have been able to
see the face of this mutual friend, but I feel myself rent to pieces?
She made me stay an hour with her, and in that short space I burst
into tears a dozen different times, and in such affectionate gusts of
passion, that she was constrained to leave the room, and sympathize
in her dressing-room. I have been weeping for you both, said she, in
a tone of the sweetest pity--for poor L. 's heart, I have long known
it--her anguish is as sharp as yours--her heart as tender--her
constancy as great--her virtues as heroic--Heaven brought you not
together to be tormented. I could only answer her with a kind look,
and a heavy sigh, and returned home to your lodgings (which I have
hired till your return) to resign myself to misery. Fanny had prepared
me a supper--she is all attention to me--but I sat over it with tears;
a bitter sauce, my L. , but I could eat it with no other; for the
moment she began to spread my little table, my heart fainted within
me. One solitary plate, one knife, one fork, one glass! I gave a
thousand pensive, penetrating looks at the chair thou hadst so often
graced, in those quiet and sentimental repasts, then laid down my
knife and fork, and took out my handkerchief, and clapped it across
my face, and wept like a child. I could do so this very moment, my L. ;
for, as I take up my pen, my poor pulse quickens, my pale face glows,
and tears are trickling down upon the paper, as I trace the word
L----. O thou! blessed in thyself, and in thy virtues, blessed to all
that know thee--to me most so, because more do I know of thee than all
thy sex. This is the philtre, my L. , by which thou hast charmed me,
and by which thou wilt hold me thine, while virtue and faith hold this
world together. This, my friend, is the plain and simple magic, by
which I told Miss ---- I have won a place in that heart of thine, on
which I depend so satisfied, that time, or distance, or change of
everything which might alarm the hearts of little men, create no
uneasy suspense in mine. Wast thou to stay in S---- these seven
years, thy friend, though he would grieve, scorns to doubt, or to be
doubted--'tis the only exception where security is not the parent of
danger.
I told you poor Fanny was all attention to me since your
departure--contrives every day bringing in the name of L. She told
me last night (upon giving me some hartshorn), she had observed my
illness began the very day of your departure for S----; that I had
never held up my head, had seldom, or scarce ever, smiled, had fled
from all society; that she verily believed I was broken-hearted, for
she had never entered the room, or passed by the door, but she heard
me sigh heavily; that I neither eat, or slept, or took pleasure in
anything as before. Judge then, my L. , can the valley look so well,
or the roses and jessamines smell so sweet as heretofore? Ah me! but
adieu--the vesper bell calls me from thee to my GOD.
To DAVID GARRICK
_Le chevalier Shandy_
Paris, 19 _March_, 1762.
DEAR GARRICK,
This will be put into your hands by Dr. Shippen, a physician, who has
been here some time with Miss Poyntz, and is at this moment setting
out for your metropolis; so I snatch the opportunity of writing to you
and my kind friend Mrs. Garrick. I see nothing like her here, and yet
I have been introduced to one half of their best Goddesses, and in a
month more shall be admitted to the shrines of the other half; but I
neither worship or fall (much) on my knees before them; but, on the
contrary, have converted many unto Shandeism; for be it known, I
Shandy it away fifty times more than I was ever wont, talk more
nonsense than ever you heard me talk in your days--and to all sorts
of people. _Qui le diable est cet homme-là_--said Choiseul t'other
day--_ce chevalier Shandy_? You'll think me as vain as a devil, was I
to tell you the rest of the dialogue; whether the bearer knows it or
no, I know not. 'Twill serve up after supper, in Southampton-street,
amongst other small dishes, after the fatigues of Richard III. O God!
they have nothing here, which gives the nerves so smart a blow, as
those great characters in the hands of Garrick! but I forgot I
am writing to the man himself. The devil take (as he will) these
transports of enthusiasm! Apropos, the whole city of Paris is
_bewitched_ with the comic opera, and if it was not for the affair
of the Jesuits, which takes up one half of our talk, the comic opera
would have it all. It is a tragical nuisance in all companies as it
is, and was it not for some sudden starts and dashes of Shandeism,
which now and then either break the thread, or entangle it so, that
the devil himself would be puzzled in winding it off, I should die a
martyr--this by the way I never will.
I send you over some of these comic operas by the bearer, with the
_Sallon_, a satire. The French comedy, I seldom visit it--they act
scarce in anything but tragedies--and the Clairon is great, and Mile.
Dumesnil, in some places, still greater than her; yet I cannot bear
preaching--I fancy I got a surfeit of it in my younger days. There
is a tragedy to be damned to-night--peace be with it, and the gentle
brain which made it! I have ten thousand things to tell you I cannot
write, I do a thousand things which cut no figure, _but in the
doing_--and as in London, I have the honour of having done and said a
thousand things I never did or dreamed of--and yet I dream abundantly.
If the devil stood behind me in the shape of a courier, I could not
write faster than I do, having five letters more to dispatch by the
same gentleman; he is going into another section of the globe, and
when he has seen you, will depart in peace.
The Duke of Orleans has suffered my portrait to be added to the number
of some odd men in his collection; and a gentleman who lives with him
has taken it most expressively, at full length: I purpose to obtain an
etching of it, and to send it you. Your prayer for me of _rosy health_
is heard. If I stay here for three or four months, I shall return more
than reinstated. My love to Mrs. Garrick.
To MR. FOLEY AT PARIS
_An adventure on the road_
Toulouse, 14 _Aug_. 1762.
MY DEAR FOLEY,
After many turnings (_alias_ digressions), to say nothing of downright
overthrows, stops, and delays, we have arrived in three weeks at
Toulouse, and are now settled in our houses with servants, &c. , about
us, and look as composed as if we had been here seven years. In
our journey we suffered so much from the heats, it gives me pain to
remember it; I never saw a cloud from Paris to Nismes half as broad as
a twenty-four sols piece. Good God! we were toasted, roasted, grilled,
stewed and carbonaded on one side or other all the way; and being all
done enough (_assez cuits_) in the day, we were eat up at night by
bugs, and other unswept-out vermin, the legal inhabitants (if length
of possession gives right) of every inn we lay at. Can you conceive
a worse accident than that in such a journey, in the hottest day and
hour of it, four miles from either tree or shrub which could cast a
shade of the size of one of Eve's fig leaves, that we should break a
hind wheel into ten thousand pieces, and be obliged in consequence
to sit five hours on a gravelly road, without one drop of water, or
possibility of getting any? To mend the matter, my two postillions
were two dough-hearted fools, and fell a-crying. Nothing was to be
done! By heaven, quoth I, pulling off my coat and waistcoat, something
shall be done, for I'll thrash you both within an inch of your lives,
and then make you take each of you a horse, and ride like two devils
to the next post for a cart to carry my baggage, and a wheel to
carry ourselves. Our luggage weighed ten quintals. It was the fair
of Baucaire, all the world was going, or returning; we were asked by
every soul who passed by us, if we were going to the fair of Baucaire.
No wonder, quoth I, we have goods enough! _vous avez raison, mes
amis_. . . .
THOMAS GRAY
1716-1771
To RICHARD WEST
_Scenery at Tivoli_
Tivoli, 20 _May_, 1740.
This day being in the palace of his Highness the Duke of Modena, he
laid his most serene commands upon me to write to Mr. West, and said
he thought it for his glory, that I should draw up an inventory of all
his most serene possessions for the said West's perusal. Imprimis,
a house, being in circumference a quarter of a mile, two feet and an
inch; the said house containing the following particulars, to wit,
a great room. Item, another great room; item, a bigger room; item,
another room; item, a vast room; item, a sixth of the same; a seventh
ditto; an eighth as before; a ninth as above said; a tenth (see No.
1); item, ten more such, besides twenty besides, which, not to be too
particular, we shall pass over. The said rooms contain nine chairs,
two tables, five stools and a cricket. From whence we shall proceed
to the garden, containing two millions of superfine laurel hedges,
a clump of cypress trees, and half the river Teverone. --Finis. Dame
Nature desired me to put in a list of her little goods and chattels,
and, as they were small, to be very minute about them. She has built
here three or four little mountains, and laid them out in an irregular
semi-circle; from certain others behind, at a greater distance, she
has drawn a canal, into which she has put a little river of hers,
called Anio; she has cut a huge cleft between the two innermost of her
four hills, and there she has left it to its own disposal; which she
has no sooner done, but, like a heedless chit, it tumbles headlong
down a declivity fifty feet perpendicular, breaks itself all to
shatters, and is converted into a shower of rain, where the sun forms
many a bow, red, green, blue, and yellow. To get out of our metaphors
without any further trouble, it is the most noble sight in the world.
The weight of that quantity of waters, and the force they fall with,
have worn the rocks they throw themselves among into a thousand
irregular craggs, and to a vast depth. In this channel it goes boiling
along with a mighty noise till it comes to another steep, where you
see it a second time come roaring down (but first you must walk
two miles farther) a greater height than before, but not with that
quantity of waters; for by this time it has divided itself, being
crossed and opposed by the rocks, into four several streams, each of
which, in emulation of the great one, will tumble down too; and it
does tumble down, but not from an equally elevated place; so that you
have at one view all these cascades intermixed with groves of olive
and little woods, the mountains rising behind them, and on the top of
one (that which forms the extremity of one of the half-circle's horns)
is seated the town itself. At the very extremity of that extremity, on
the brink of the precipice, stands the Sybil's temple, the remains
of a little rotunda, surrounded with its portico, above half of whose
beautiful Corinthian pillars are still standing and entire; all this
on one hand. On the other, the open Campagna of Rome, here and there
a little castle on a hillock, and the city itself at the very brink of
the horizon, indistinctly seen (being eighteen miles off) except the
dome of St. Peter's; which, if you look out of your window, wherever
you are, I suppose, you can see. I did not tell you that a little
below the first fall, on the side of the rock, and hanging over that
torrent, are little ruins which they show you for Horace's house, a
curious situation to observe the
Praeceps Anio et Tiburni lucus, et uda
Mobilibus pomaria rivis.
Maecenas did not care for such a noise, it seems, and built him a
house (which they also carry one to see) so situated that it sees
nothing at all of the matter, and for anything he knew there might be
no such river in the world. Horace had another house on the other side
of the Teverone, opposite to Maecenas's; and they told us there was
a bridge of communication, by which _andava il detto Signor per
trastullarsi coll' istesso Orazio_. In coming hither we crossed the
Aquae Albulae, a vile little brook that stinks like a fury, and they
say it has stunk so these thousand years. I forgot the Piscina of
Quintilius Varus, where he used to keep certain little fishes. This
is very entire, and there is a piece of the aqueduct that supplied it
too; in the garden below is old Rome, built in little, just as it was,
they say. There are seven temples in it, and no houses at all; they
say there were none.
TO THE SAME
_A poet's melancholy_
London, 27 _May_, 1742.
Mine, you are to know is a white Melancholy, or rather Leucocholy
for the most part; which, though it seldom laughs or dances, nor ever
amounts to what one called Joy or Pleasure, yet is a good easy sort
of a state, and _ça ne laisse que de s'amuser. _ The only fault is its
insipidity; which is apt now and then to give a sort of Ennui, which
makes one form certain little wishes that signify nothing. But there
is another sort, black indeed, which I have now and then felt, that
has somewhat in it like Tertullian's rule of faith, _Credo quia
impossibile est_; for it believes, nay, is sure of everything that is
unlikely, so it be but frightful; and on the other hand excludes and
shuts its eyes to the most possible hopes, and everything that is
pleasurable; from this the Lord deliver us! for none but he and
sunshiny weather can do it. In hopes of enjoying this kind of weather
I am going into the country for a few weeks, but shall be never the
nearer any society; so, if you have any charity, you will continue to
write. My life is like Harry the Fourth's supper of Hens, 'Poulets à
la broche, Poulets en Ragoût, Poulets en Hâchis, Poulets en Fricassées
'. Reading here, Reading there; nothing but books with different
sauces. Do not let me lose my desert then; for though that be Reading
too, yet it has a very different flavour. The May seems to be come
since your invitation; and I propose to bask in her beams and dress me
in her roses.
Et caput in verna semper habere rosa.
I shall see Mr. ---- and his Wife, nay, and his Child, too, for he has
got a Boy. Is it not odd to consider one's Cotemporaries in the grave
light of Husband and Father? There is my lords Sandwich and Halifax,
they are Statesmen: Do not you remember them dirty boys playing at
cricket? As for me, I am never a bit the older, nor the bigger, nor
the wiser than I was then: no, not for having been beyond sea. Pray,
how are you? . . .
To HORACE WALPOLE
_The fate of Selima_
Cambridge, 1 _March_, 1747.
As one ought to be particularly careful to avoid blunders in a
compliment of condolence, it would be a sensible satisfaction to
me (before I testify my sorrow, and the sincere part I take in your
misfortune) to know for certain, who it is that I lament. I knew Zara
and Selima (Selima, was it? or Fatima? ) or rather I knew both of them
together; for I cannot justly say which was which. Then as to your
handsome Cat, the name you distinguished her by, I am no less at a
loss, as well knowing one's handsome cat is always the cat one likes
best; or if one be alive and the other dead, it is usually the latter
that is the handsomest. Besides, if the point were never so clear, I
hope you do not think me so ill-bred or so imprudent as to forfeit all
my interest in the survivor; Oh no! I would rather seem to mistake,
and to be sure it must be the tabby one that had met with this sad
accident. Till this affair is a little better determined, you will
excuse me if I do not begin to cry:
Tempus inane peto, requiem, spatiumque doloris.
Which interval is the more convenient, as it gives time to rejoice
with you on your new honours. This is only a beginning; I reckon next
week we shall hear you are a free-Mason, or a Gormorgon at least.
Heigh ho! I feel (as you to be sure have done long since) that I have
very little to say, at least in prose. Somebody will be the better for
it; I do not mean you, but your Cat, feuë Mademoiselle Selime, whom I
am about to immortalize for one week or fortnight, as follows.
. . . There's a poem for you, it is rather too long for an Epitaph.
TO THE SAME
_Publication of the Elegy_
Cambridge, 11 _Feb_. 1751.
As you have brought me into a little sort of distress, you must assist
me, I believe, to get out of it as well as I can. Yesterday I had
the misfortune of receiving a letter from certain gentlemen (as their
bookseller expresses it), who have taken the _Magazine of Magazines_
into their hands. They tell me that an _ingenious_ poem, called
_Reflections in a Country Churchyard_, has been communicated to them,
which they are printing forthwith; that they are informed that the
_excellent_ author of it is I by name, and that they beg not only his
_indulgence_, but the _honour_ of his correspondence, &c. As I am not
at all disposed to be either so indulgent, or so correspondent, as
they desire, I have but one bad way left to escape the honour they
would inflict upon me; and, therefore, am obliged to desire you would
make Dodsley print it immediately (which may be done in less than a
week's time) from your copy, but without my name, in what form is
most convenient for him, but on his best paper and character; he must
correct the press himself, and print it without any interval between
the stanzas, because the sense is in some places continued
beyond them; and the title must be,--_Elegy, written in a Country
Churchyard_. If he would add a line or two to say it came into
his hands by accident, I should like it better. If you behold the
_Magazine of Magazines_ in the light that I do, you will not refuse to
give yourself this trouble on my account, which you have taken of your
own accord before now. If Dodsley do not do this immediately, he may
as well let it alone.
TO THE SAME
_At Burnham_
[Burnham,] _Sept_. 1737.
I was hindered in my last, and so could not give you all the trouble
I would have done. The description of a road, which your coach wheels
have so often honoured, it would be needless to give you; suffice
it that I arrived safe at my uncle's, who is a great hunter in
imagination; his dogs take up every chair in the house, so I am forced
to stand at this present writing; and though the gout forbids him
galloping after them in the field, yet he continues to regale his ears
and nose with their comfortable noise and stink. He holds me mighty
cheap, I perceive, for walking when I should ride, and reading when
I should hunt. My comfort amidst all this is, that I have at the
distance of half a mile, through a green lane, a forest (the vulgar
call it a common) all my own, at least as good as so, for I spy no
human thing in it but myself. It is a little chaos of mountains and
precipices; mountains, it is true, that do not ascend much above the
clouds, nor are the declivities quite so amazing as Dover Cliff; but
just such hills as people who love their necks as well as I do may
venture to climb, and crags that give the eye as much pleasure as if
they were more dangerous. Both vale and hill are covered with most
venerable beeches, and other very reverend vegetables, that, like most
other ancient people, are always dreaming out their old stories to the
winds.
_And as they bow their hoary tops relate,
In murm'ring sounds, the dark decrees of fate;
While visions, as poetic eyes avow,
Cling to each leaf, and swarm on every bough. _
At the foot of one of these squats ME I (_ilpenseroso_), and there
grow to the trunk for a whole morning. The timorous hare and sportive
squirrel gambol round me like Adam in Paradise, before he had an Eve;
but I think he did not use to read Virgil, as I commonly do there.
In this situation I often converse with my Horace, aloud too, that is
talk to you, but I do not remember that I ever heard you answer me.
I beg pardon for taking all the conversation to myself, but it is
entirely your own fault. . . .
To THE REV. WILLIAM MASON
_The Laureateship_
19 _Dec_. 1757.
DEAR MASON,
Though I very well know the bland emollient saponaceous qualities both
of sack and silver, yet if any great man would say to me, 'I make you
Rat-catcher to his Majesty, with a salary of £300 a-year and two butts
of the best Malaga; and though it has been usual to catch a mouse or
two, for form's sake, in public once a year, yet to you, sir, we shall
not stand on these things,' I cannot say I should jump at it; nay, if
they would drop the very name of the office, and call me Sinecure
to the King's Majesty, I should feel a little awkward, and think
everybody I saw smelt a rat about me; but I do not pretend to blame
any one else that has not the same sensations; for my part, I would
rather be serjeant trumpeter or pinmaker to the palace. Nevertheless
I interest myself a little in the history of it, and rather wish
somebody may accept it who will retrieve the credit of the thing, if
it be retrieveable, or ever had any credit. Rowe was, I think, the
last man of character that had it. As to Settle, whom you mention,
he belonged to my lord mayor, not to the King. Eusden was a person
of great hopes in his youth, though at last he turned out a drunken
person. Dryden was as disgraceful to the office from his character,
as the poorest scribbler could have been from his verses. The office
itself has always humbled the professor hitherto (even in an age when
kings were somebody), if he were a poor writer by making him more
conspicuous, and if he were a good one by setting him at war with the
little fry of his own profession, for there are poets little enough to
envy even a poet laureate.
To DR. WHARTON
_A holiday in Kent_
Pembroke College, 26 _Aug_. 1766.
DEAR DOCTOR,
Whatever my pen may do, I am sure my thoughts expatiate nowhere
oftener, or with more pleasure, than to Old Park. I hope you have made
my peace with Miss Deborah. It is certain, whether her name were in
my letter or not, she was as present to my memory as the rest of the
little family; and I desire you would present her with two kisses
in my name, and one a piece to all the others; for I shall take the
liberty to kiss them all (great and small) as you are to be my proxy.
In spite of the rain, which I think continued with very short
intervals till the beginning of this month, and quite effaced the
summer from the year, I made a shift to pass May and June, not
disagreeably, in Kent. I was surprised at the beauty of the road
to Canterbury, which (I know not why) had not struck me in the same
manner before. The whole country is a rich and well cultivated garden;
orchards, cherry grounds, hop grounds, intermixed with corn and
frequent villages, gentle risings covered with wood, and everywhere
the Thames and Medway breaking in upon the landscape, with all their
navigation. It was indeed owing to the bad weather that the whole
scene was dressed in that tender emerald green, which one usually sees
only for a fortnight in the opening of Spring; and this continued till
I left the country. My residence was eight miles east of Canterbury,
in a little quiet valley on the skirts of Barham Down; in these parts
the whole soil is chalk, and whenever it holds up, in half an hour
it is dry enough to walk out. I took the opportunity of three or four
days fine weather to go into the Isle of Thanet, saw Margate (which
is Bartholomew Fair by the seaside), Ramsgate, and other places there;
and so came by Sandwich, Deal, Dover, Folkestone, and Hythe, back
again. The coast is not like Hartlepool, there are no rocks, but
only chalky cliffs, of no great height, till you come to Dover. There
indeed they are noble and picturesque, and the opposite coasts of
France begin to bound your view, which was left before to range
unlimited by anything but the horizon; yet it is by no means a
_shipless_ sea, but everywhere peopled with white sails and vessels of
all sizes in motion; and take notice (except in the Isle, which is all
corn fields, and has very little enclosure), there are in all places
hedgerows and tall trees, even within a few yards of the beach,
particularly Hythe stands on an eminence covered with wood. I shall
confess we had fires of a night (aye and a day too) several times even
in June: but don't go too far and take advantage of this, for it was
the most untoward year that ever I remember.
Your friend Rousseau (I doubt) grows tired of Mr. Davenport and
Derbyshire; he has picked a quarrel with David Hume, and writes
him letters of fourteen pages folio, upbraiding him with all his
_noirceurs_; take one only as a specimen. He says, that at Calais
they chanced to sleep in the same room together, and that he overheard
David talking in his sleep, and saying, '_Ah! je le tiens, ce
Jean-Jacques là_. ' In short (I fear), for want of persecution and
admiration (for these are his real complaints), he will go back to the
Continent.
What shall I say to you about the ministry? I am as angry as a
common council man of London about my Lord Chatham; but a little more
patient, and will hold my tongue till the end of the year. In the
meantime I do mutter in secret, and to you, that to quit the House of
Commons, his natural strength, to sap his own popularity and grandeur
(which no one but himself could have done) by assuming a foolish
title; and to hope that he could win by it, and attach to him a court
that hate him, and will dismiss him as soon as ever they dare, was the
weakest thing that ever was done by so great a man. Had it not been
for this, I should have rejoiced at the breach between him and Lord
Temple, and at the union between him and the Duke of Grafton and
Mr. Conway: but patience! we shall see! Stonehewer perhaps is in the
country (for he hoped for a month's leave of absence), and if you see
him you will learn more than I can tell you.
HORACE WALPOLE
1717-1797
To RICHARD WEST
_Floods in the Arno_
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 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 anything 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 stayed, 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, and everybody out of town. I have
seen nothing but cards and dull pairs of cicisbeos. I have literally
seen so much of love and pharaoh since being here, that I believe I
shall never love either again so 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.
[Footnote 1: MS. torn here. ]
To RICHARD BENTLEY
_Pictures and Garrick_
Strawberry Hill, 15 _Aug_. 1755.
MY DEAR SIR,
Though I wrote to you so lately, and have certainly nothing new to
tell you, I can't help scribbling a line to you to-night, as I am
going to Mr. Rigby's for a week or ten days, and must thank you first
for the three pictures. One of them charms me, the Mount Orgueil,
which is absolutely fine; the sea, and shadow upon it, are masterly.
The other two I don't, at least won't, take for finished. If you
please, Elizabeth Castle shall be Mr. Müntz's performance: indeed I
see nothing of you in it. I do reconnoitre you in the Hercules and
Nessus; but in both, your colours are dirty, carelessly dirty: in
your distant hills you are improved, and not hard. The figures are too
large--I don't mean in the Elizabeth Castle, for there they are neat;
but the centaur, though he dies as well as Garrick can, is outrageous.
Hercules and Deianira are by no means so: he is sentimental, and she
most improperly sorrowful. However, I am pleased enough to beg you
would continue. As soon as Mr. Müntz returns from the Vine, you shall
have a good supply of colours. In the meantime why give up the good
old trade of drawing? Have you no Indian ink, no soot-water, no snuff,
no coat of onion, no juice of anything? If you love me, draw: you
would if you knew the real pleasure you can give me. I have been
studying all your drawings; and next to architecture and trees, I
determine that you succeed in nothing better than animals. Now (as
the newspapers say) the late ingenious Mr. Seymour is dead, I would
recommend horses and greyhounds to you. I should think you capable of
a landscape or two with delicious bits of architecture. I have known
you execute the light of a torch or lanthorn so well, that if it
was called Schalken, a housekeeper at Hampton Court or Windsor, or
a Catherine at Strawberry Hill, would show it, and say it cost ten
thousand pounds. Nay, if I could believe that you would ever execute
any more designs I proposed to you, I would give you a hint for a
picture that struck me t'other day in Péréfixe's _Life of Henry IV_.
He says, the king was often seen lying upon a common straw-bed among
the soldiers, with a piece of brown bread in one hand, and a bit
of charcoal in t'other, to draw an encampment, or town that he was
besieging. If this is not character and a picture, I don't know what
is.
I dined to-day at Garrick's: there were the Duke of Grafton, Lord and
Lady Rochford, Lady Holderness, the crooked Mostyn, and Dabreu the
Spanish minister; two regents, of which one is lord chamberlain, the
other groom of the stole; and the wife of a secretary of state. This
is being _sur un assez bon ton_ for a player! Don't you want to ask me
how I like him? Do want, and I will tell you. --I like her exceedingly;
her behaviour is all sense, and all sweetness too. I don't know how,
he does not improve so fast upon me: there is a great deal of parts,
and vivacity, and variety, but there is a great deal too of mimicry
and burlesque. I am very ungrateful, for he flatters me abundantly;
but unluckily I know it. I was accustomed to it enough when my father
was first minister: on his fall I lost it all at once: and since that,
I have lived with Mr. Chute, who is all vehemence; with Mr. Fox, who
is all disputation; with Sir Charles Williams, who has no time from
flattering himself; with Gray, who does not hate to find fault with
me; with Mr. Conway, who is all sincerity; and with you and Mr. Rigby,
who have always laughed at me in a good-natured way. I don't know how,
but I think I like all this as well--I beg his pardon, Mr. Raftor does
flatter me; but I should be a cormorant for praise, if I could swallow
it whole as he gives it me.
Sir William Yonge, who has been extinct so long, is at last dead; and
the war, which began with such a flirt of vivacity, is I think gone to
sleep. General Braddock has not yet sent over to claim the surname of
Americanus. But why should I take pains to show you in how many ways I
know nothing? --Why; I can tell it you in one word--why, Mr. Cambridge
knows nothing! --I wish you good-night!
To GEORGE, LORD LYTTELTON
_Gray's Odes_
Strawberry Hill, 25 _Aug_. 1757.
MY LORD,
It is a satisfaction one can't often receive, to show a thing of
great merit to a man of great taste. Your Lordship's approbation is
conclusive, and it stamps a disgrace on the age, who have not given
themselves the trouble to see any beauties in these _Odes_ of Mr.
Gray. They have cast their eyes over them, found them obscure, and
looked no further, yet perhaps no compositions ever had more sublime
beauties than are in each. I agree with your Lordship in preferring
the last upon the whole; the three first stanzas and half, down to
_agonizing King_, are in my opinion equal to anything in any language
I understand. Yet the three last of the first Ode please me very near
as much. The description of Shakespeare is worthy Shakespeare: the
account of Milton's blindness, though perhaps not strictly defensible,
is very majestic. The character of Dryden's poetry is as animated as
what it paints. I can even like the epithet _Orient_; as the last is
the empire of fancy and poesy, I would allow its livery to be erected
into a colour. I think _blue-eyed Pleasures_ is allowable: when Homer
gave eyes of what hue he pleased to his Queen-Goddesses, sure Mr. Gray
may tinge those of their handmaids.
In answer to your Lordship's objection to _many-twinkling_, in that
beautiful epode, I will quote authority to which you will yield. As
Greek as the expression is, it struck Mrs. Garrick, and she says, on
that whole picture, that Mr. Gray is the only poet who ever understood
dancing.
These faults I think I can defend, and can excuse others; even the
great obscurity of the latter, for I do not see it in the first; the
subject of it has been taken for music,--it is the Power and Progress
of Harmonious Poetry. I think his objection to prefixing a title to it
was wrong--that Mr. Cooke published an ode with such a title. If the
Louis the Great, whom Voltaire has discovered in Hungary, had not
disappeared from history himself, would not Louis Quatorze have
annihilated him? I was aware that the second would have darknesses,
and prevailed for the insertion of what notes there are, and would
have had more. Mr. Gray said, whatever wanted explanation did not
deserve it, but that sentence was never so far from being an axiom as
in the present case. Not to mention how he had shackled himself with
strophe, antistrophe, and epode (yet acquitting himself nobly),
the nature of prophecy forbade him naming his kings. To me they are
apparent enough--yet I am far from thinking either piece perfect,
though with what faults they have, I hold them in the first rank of
genius and poetry. The second strophe of the first Ode is inexcusable,
nor do I wonder your Lordship blames it; even when one does understand
it, perhaps the last line is too turgid. I am not fond of the
antistrophe that follows. In the second Ode he made some corrections
for the worse. _Brave Urion_ was originally _stern_: brave is insipid
and commonplace. In the third antistrophe, _leave me unblessed,
unpitied_, stood at first, _leave your despairing Caradoc_. But the
capital faults in my opinion are these--what punishment was it to
Edward I to hear that his grandson would conquer France? or is so
common an event as Edward III being deserted on his death-bed, worthy
of being made part of a curse that was to avenge a nation? I can't
cast my eye here, without crying out on those beautiful lines that
follow, _Fair smiles the morn_? Though the images are extremely
complicated, what painting in the whirlwind, likened to a lion lying
in ambush for his evening prey, _in grim repose_. Thirst and hunger
mocking Richard II appear to me too ludicrously like the devils in
_The Tempest_, that whisk away the banquet from the shipwrecked Dukes.
From thence to the conclusion of Queen Elizabeth's portrait, which he
has faithfully copied from Speed, in the passage where she humbled the
Polish Ambassador, I admire. I can even allow that image of Rapture
hovering like an ancient grotesque, though it strictly has little
meaning: but there I take my leave--the last stanza has no beauties
for me. I even think its obscurity fortunate, for the allusions to
Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, are not only weak, but the two last
returning again, after appearing so gloriously in the first Ode, and
with so much fainter colours, enervate the whole conclusion.
Your Lordship sees that I am no enthusiast to Mr. Gray: his great
lustre has not dazzled me, as his obscurity seems to have blinded his
contemporaries. Indeed, I do not think that they ever admired him,
except in his Churchyard, though the Eton Ode was far its superior,
and is certainly not obscure. The Eton Ode is perfect: those of more
masterly execution have defects, yet not to admire them is total want
of taste. I have an aversion to tame poetry; at best, perhaps the art
is the sublimest of the _difficiles nugae_; to measure or rhyme prose
is trifling without being difficult.
To GEORGE MONTAGU
_At Lady Suffolk's_
Arlington Street, 11 _Jan_. 1764.
It is an age, I own, since I wrote to you; but except politics,
what was there to send you? and for politics, the present are too
contemptible to be recorded by anybody but journalists, gazetteers,
and such historians! The ordinary of Newgate, or Mr. ----, who write
for their monthly half-crown, and who are indifferent whether Lord
Bute, Lord Melcombe, or Maclean is their hero, may swear they
find diamonds on dunghills; but you will excuse _me_, if I let our
correspondence lie dormant rather than deal in such trash. I am forced
to send Lord Hertford and Sir Horace Mann such garbage, because
they are out of England, and the sea softens and makes palatable any
potion, as it does claret; but unless I can divert _you_, I had rather
wait till we can laugh together; the best employment for friends,
who do not mean to pick one another's pockets, nor make a property of
either's frankness.
You will now expect that I should give you some account of the Isle of
Skye, of which, though I have been twelve days upon it, I have little
to say. It is an island perhaps fifty miles long, so much indented by
inlets of the sea that there is no part of it removed from the water
more than six miles. No part that I have seen is plain; you are always
climbing or descending, and every step is upon rock or mire. A walk
upon ploughed ground in England is a dance upon carpets compared to
the toilsome drudgery of wandering in Skye. There is neither town nor
village in the island, nor have I seen any house but Macleod's, that
is not much below your habitation at Brighthelmstone. In the mountains
there are stags and roebucks, but no hares, and few rabbits; nor have
I seen anything that interested me as a zoologist, except an otter,
bigger than I thought an otter could have been.
You perhaps are imagining that I am withdrawn from the gay and
the busy world into regions of peace and pastoral felicity, and am
enjoying the relics of the golden age; that I am surveying nature's
magnificence from a mountain, or remarking her minuter beauties on the
flowery bank of a winding rivulet; that I am invigorating myself in
the sunshine, or delighting my imagination with being hidden from
the invasion of human evils and human passions in the darkness of a
thicket; that I am busy in gathering shells and pebbles on the shore,
or contemplative on a rock, from which I look upon the water, and
consider how many waves are rolling between me and Streatham.
The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and
instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are. Here
are mountains which I should once have climbed, but to climb steps
is now very laborious, and to descend them dangerous; and I am now
content with knowing, that by scrambling up a rock, I shall only see
other rocks, and a wider circuit of barren desolation. Of streams, we
have here a sufficient number, but they murmur not upon pebbles, but
upon rocks. Of flowers, if Chloris herself were here, I could present
her only with the bloom of heath. Of lawns and thickets, he must read
that would know them, for here is little sun and no shade. On the sea
I look from my window, but am not much tempted to the shore; for since
I came to this island, almost every breath of air has been a storm,
and what is worse, a storm with all its severity, but without its
magnificence, for the sea is here so broken into channels that there
is not a sufficient volume of water either for lofty surges or a loud
roar. . . .
TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE EARL OF CHESTERFIELD
_Patronage_
7 _Feb_. 1775.
MY LORD,
I have been lately informed, by the proprietor of _The World_, that
two papers, in which my _Dictionary_ is recommended to the public, are
by your lordship. To be so distinguished is an honour, which, being
very little accustomed to favours from the great, I know not well how
to receive, or in what terms to acknowledge.
When, upon some slight encouragement, I first visited your lordship, I
was overpowered, like the rest of mankind, by the enchantment of your
address, and could not forbear to wish that I might boast myself _le
vainqueur du vainqueur de la terre_;--that I might obtain that regard
for which I saw the world contending; but I found my attendance so
little encouraged, that neither pride nor modesty would suffer me to
continue it. When I had once addressed your lordship in public, I
had exhausted all the art of pleasing which a retired and uncourtly
scholar can possess. I had done all I could; and no man is well
pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever so little.
Seven years, my lord, have now passed, since I waited in your outward
rooms, or was repulsed from your door; during which time I have been
pushing on my work through difficulties, of which it is useless to
complain, and have brought it at last to the verge of publication,
without one act of assistance, one word of encouragement, or one smile
of favour. Such treatment I did not expect, for I never had a patron
before.
The shepherd in _Virgil_ grew at last acquainted with Love, and found
him a native of the rocks.
Is not a patron, my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man
struggling for life in the water, and when he has reached ground,
encumbers him with help? The notice which you have been pleased to
take of my labours, had it been early had been kind; but it has
been delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till I am
solitary, and cannot impart it; till I am known, and do not want it. I
hope it is no very cynical asperity, not to confess obligations,
where no benefit has been received, or to be unwilling that the public
should consider me as owing that to a patron, which Providence has
enabled me to do for myself.
Having carried on my work thus far with so little obligation to any
favourer of learning, I shall not be disappointed though I shall
conclude it, if less be possible, with less; for I have been long
wakened from that dream of hope in which I once boasted myself with so
much exultation.
My Lord,
Your Lordship's most humble,
most obedient servant.
To JAMES BOSWELL
_A silent friend_
13 _July_, 1779.
DEAR SIR,
What can possibly have happened that keeps us two such strangers to
each other? I expected to have heard from you when you came home; I
expected afterwards. I went into the country and returned, and yet
there is no letter from Mr. Boswell. No ill, I hope, has happened; and
if ill should happen, why should it be concealed from him who loves
you? Is it a fit of humour, that has disposed you to try who can hold
out longest without writing? If it be, you have the victory. But I am
afraid of something bad; set me free from my suspicions.
My thoughts are at present employed in guessing the reason of your
silence; you must not expect that I should tell you anything, if I had
anything to tell. Write, pray write to me, and let me know what is or
what has been the cause of this long interruption.
To MRS. THRALE
_A great man's fortitude_
19 _June_, 1783.
ON Monday the 16th, I sat for my picture and walked a considerable way
with little inconvenience. In the afternoon and evening I felt myself
light and easy, and began to plan schemes of life. Thus I went to bed,
and in a short time waked and sat up, as has been long my custom,
when I felt a confusion and indistinctness in my head, which lasted,
I suppose, about half a minute. I was alarmed, and prayed God, that
however he might afflict my body, he would spare my understanding.
This prayer, that I might try the integrity of my faculties, I made in
Latin verse. The lines were not very good, but I knew them not to be
very good: I made them easily, and concluded myself to be unimpaired
in my faculties.
Soon after I perceived that I had suffered a paralytic stroke,
and that my speech was taken from me. I had no pain, and so little
dejection in this dreadful state, that I wondered at my own apathy,
and considered that perhaps death itself, when it should come, would
excite less horror than seems now to attend it.
In order to rouse the vocal organs, I took two drams. Wine has been
celebrated for the production of eloquence. I put myself into violent
motion, and I think repeated it; but all was vain. I then went to bed,
and strange as it may seem, I slept. When I saw light, it was time to
contrive what I should do. Though God stopped my speech, he left me
my hands; I enjoyed a mercy which was not granted to my dear friend
Lawrence, who now perhaps overlooks me as I am writing, and rejoices
that I have what he wanted. My first note was necessarily to my
servant, who came in talking, and could not immediately comprehend why
he should read what I put into his hands. I then wrote a card to Mr.
Allen, that I might have a discreet friend at hand, to act as occasion
should require. In penning this note I had some difficulty; my hand,
I knew not how nor why, made wrong letters. I then wrote to Dr. Taylor
to come to me, and bring Dr. Heberden: and I sent to Dr. Brocklesby,
who is my neighbour. My physicians are very friendly, and give me
great hopes; but you may imagine my situation. I have so far recovered
my vocal powers, as to repeat the Lord's Prayer with no very imperfect
articulation. My memory, I hope, yet remains as it was! but such an
attack produces solicitude for the safety of every faculty.
LAURENCE STERNE
1713-1768
To Miss LUMLEY
_The disconsolate lover_
[1740-1]
You bid me tell you, my dear L. , how I bore your departure for S----,
and whether the valley, where D'Estella stands, retains still its
looks, or if I think the roses or jessamines smell as sweet as when
you left it. Alas! everything has now lost its relish and look! The
hour you left D'Estella I took to my bed. I was worn out with fevers
of all kinds, but most by that fever of the heart with which thou
knowest well I have been wasting these two years--and shall continue
wasting till you quit S----. The good Miss S----, from the forebodings
of the best of hearts, thinking I was ill, insisted upon my going to
her. What can be the cause, my dear L. , that I never have been able to
see the face of this mutual friend, but I feel myself rent to pieces?
She made me stay an hour with her, and in that short space I burst
into tears a dozen different times, and in such affectionate gusts of
passion, that she was constrained to leave the room, and sympathize
in her dressing-room. I have been weeping for you both, said she, in
a tone of the sweetest pity--for poor L. 's heart, I have long known
it--her anguish is as sharp as yours--her heart as tender--her
constancy as great--her virtues as heroic--Heaven brought you not
together to be tormented. I could only answer her with a kind look,
and a heavy sigh, and returned home to your lodgings (which I have
hired till your return) to resign myself to misery. Fanny had prepared
me a supper--she is all attention to me--but I sat over it with tears;
a bitter sauce, my L. , but I could eat it with no other; for the
moment she began to spread my little table, my heart fainted within
me. One solitary plate, one knife, one fork, one glass! I gave a
thousand pensive, penetrating looks at the chair thou hadst so often
graced, in those quiet and sentimental repasts, then laid down my
knife and fork, and took out my handkerchief, and clapped it across
my face, and wept like a child. I could do so this very moment, my L. ;
for, as I take up my pen, my poor pulse quickens, my pale face glows,
and tears are trickling down upon the paper, as I trace the word
L----. O thou! blessed in thyself, and in thy virtues, blessed to all
that know thee--to me most so, because more do I know of thee than all
thy sex. This is the philtre, my L. , by which thou hast charmed me,
and by which thou wilt hold me thine, while virtue and faith hold this
world together. This, my friend, is the plain and simple magic, by
which I told Miss ---- I have won a place in that heart of thine, on
which I depend so satisfied, that time, or distance, or change of
everything which might alarm the hearts of little men, create no
uneasy suspense in mine. Wast thou to stay in S---- these seven
years, thy friend, though he would grieve, scorns to doubt, or to be
doubted--'tis the only exception where security is not the parent of
danger.
I told you poor Fanny was all attention to me since your
departure--contrives every day bringing in the name of L. She told
me last night (upon giving me some hartshorn), she had observed my
illness began the very day of your departure for S----; that I had
never held up my head, had seldom, or scarce ever, smiled, had fled
from all society; that she verily believed I was broken-hearted, for
she had never entered the room, or passed by the door, but she heard
me sigh heavily; that I neither eat, or slept, or took pleasure in
anything as before. Judge then, my L. , can the valley look so well,
or the roses and jessamines smell so sweet as heretofore? Ah me! but
adieu--the vesper bell calls me from thee to my GOD.
To DAVID GARRICK
_Le chevalier Shandy_
Paris, 19 _March_, 1762.
DEAR GARRICK,
This will be put into your hands by Dr. Shippen, a physician, who has
been here some time with Miss Poyntz, and is at this moment setting
out for your metropolis; so I snatch the opportunity of writing to you
and my kind friend Mrs. Garrick. I see nothing like her here, and yet
I have been introduced to one half of their best Goddesses, and in a
month more shall be admitted to the shrines of the other half; but I
neither worship or fall (much) on my knees before them; but, on the
contrary, have converted many unto Shandeism; for be it known, I
Shandy it away fifty times more than I was ever wont, talk more
nonsense than ever you heard me talk in your days--and to all sorts
of people. _Qui le diable est cet homme-là_--said Choiseul t'other
day--_ce chevalier Shandy_? You'll think me as vain as a devil, was I
to tell you the rest of the dialogue; whether the bearer knows it or
no, I know not. 'Twill serve up after supper, in Southampton-street,
amongst other small dishes, after the fatigues of Richard III. O God!
they have nothing here, which gives the nerves so smart a blow, as
those great characters in the hands of Garrick! but I forgot I
am writing to the man himself. The devil take (as he will) these
transports of enthusiasm! Apropos, the whole city of Paris is
_bewitched_ with the comic opera, and if it was not for the affair
of the Jesuits, which takes up one half of our talk, the comic opera
would have it all. It is a tragical nuisance in all companies as it
is, and was it not for some sudden starts and dashes of Shandeism,
which now and then either break the thread, or entangle it so, that
the devil himself would be puzzled in winding it off, I should die a
martyr--this by the way I never will.
I send you over some of these comic operas by the bearer, with the
_Sallon_, a satire. The French comedy, I seldom visit it--they act
scarce in anything but tragedies--and the Clairon is great, and Mile.
Dumesnil, in some places, still greater than her; yet I cannot bear
preaching--I fancy I got a surfeit of it in my younger days. There
is a tragedy to be damned to-night--peace be with it, and the gentle
brain which made it! I have ten thousand things to tell you I cannot
write, I do a thousand things which cut no figure, _but in the
doing_--and as in London, I have the honour of having done and said a
thousand things I never did or dreamed of--and yet I dream abundantly.
If the devil stood behind me in the shape of a courier, I could not
write faster than I do, having five letters more to dispatch by the
same gentleman; he is going into another section of the globe, and
when he has seen you, will depart in peace.
The Duke of Orleans has suffered my portrait to be added to the number
of some odd men in his collection; and a gentleman who lives with him
has taken it most expressively, at full length: I purpose to obtain an
etching of it, and to send it you. Your prayer for me of _rosy health_
is heard. If I stay here for three or four months, I shall return more
than reinstated. My love to Mrs. Garrick.
To MR. FOLEY AT PARIS
_An adventure on the road_
Toulouse, 14 _Aug_. 1762.
MY DEAR FOLEY,
After many turnings (_alias_ digressions), to say nothing of downright
overthrows, stops, and delays, we have arrived in three weeks at
Toulouse, and are now settled in our houses with servants, &c. , about
us, and look as composed as if we had been here seven years. In
our journey we suffered so much from the heats, it gives me pain to
remember it; I never saw a cloud from Paris to Nismes half as broad as
a twenty-four sols piece. Good God! we were toasted, roasted, grilled,
stewed and carbonaded on one side or other all the way; and being all
done enough (_assez cuits_) in the day, we were eat up at night by
bugs, and other unswept-out vermin, the legal inhabitants (if length
of possession gives right) of every inn we lay at. Can you conceive
a worse accident than that in such a journey, in the hottest day and
hour of it, four miles from either tree or shrub which could cast a
shade of the size of one of Eve's fig leaves, that we should break a
hind wheel into ten thousand pieces, and be obliged in consequence
to sit five hours on a gravelly road, without one drop of water, or
possibility of getting any? To mend the matter, my two postillions
were two dough-hearted fools, and fell a-crying. Nothing was to be
done! By heaven, quoth I, pulling off my coat and waistcoat, something
shall be done, for I'll thrash you both within an inch of your lives,
and then make you take each of you a horse, and ride like two devils
to the next post for a cart to carry my baggage, and a wheel to
carry ourselves. Our luggage weighed ten quintals. It was the fair
of Baucaire, all the world was going, or returning; we were asked by
every soul who passed by us, if we were going to the fair of Baucaire.
No wonder, quoth I, we have goods enough! _vous avez raison, mes
amis_. . . .
THOMAS GRAY
1716-1771
To RICHARD WEST
_Scenery at Tivoli_
Tivoli, 20 _May_, 1740.
This day being in the palace of his Highness the Duke of Modena, he
laid his most serene commands upon me to write to Mr. West, and said
he thought it for his glory, that I should draw up an inventory of all
his most serene possessions for the said West's perusal. Imprimis,
a house, being in circumference a quarter of a mile, two feet and an
inch; the said house containing the following particulars, to wit,
a great room. Item, another great room; item, a bigger room; item,
another room; item, a vast room; item, a sixth of the same; a seventh
ditto; an eighth as before; a ninth as above said; a tenth (see No.
1); item, ten more such, besides twenty besides, which, not to be too
particular, we shall pass over. The said rooms contain nine chairs,
two tables, five stools and a cricket. From whence we shall proceed
to the garden, containing two millions of superfine laurel hedges,
a clump of cypress trees, and half the river Teverone. --Finis. Dame
Nature desired me to put in a list of her little goods and chattels,
and, as they were small, to be very minute about them. She has built
here three or four little mountains, and laid them out in an irregular
semi-circle; from certain others behind, at a greater distance, she
has drawn a canal, into which she has put a little river of hers,
called Anio; she has cut a huge cleft between the two innermost of her
four hills, and there she has left it to its own disposal; which she
has no sooner done, but, like a heedless chit, it tumbles headlong
down a declivity fifty feet perpendicular, breaks itself all to
shatters, and is converted into a shower of rain, where the sun forms
many a bow, red, green, blue, and yellow. To get out of our metaphors
without any further trouble, it is the most noble sight in the world.
The weight of that quantity of waters, and the force they fall with,
have worn the rocks they throw themselves among into a thousand
irregular craggs, and to a vast depth. In this channel it goes boiling
along with a mighty noise till it comes to another steep, where you
see it a second time come roaring down (but first you must walk
two miles farther) a greater height than before, but not with that
quantity of waters; for by this time it has divided itself, being
crossed and opposed by the rocks, into four several streams, each of
which, in emulation of the great one, will tumble down too; and it
does tumble down, but not from an equally elevated place; so that you
have at one view all these cascades intermixed with groves of olive
and little woods, the mountains rising behind them, and on the top of
one (that which forms the extremity of one of the half-circle's horns)
is seated the town itself. At the very extremity of that extremity, on
the brink of the precipice, stands the Sybil's temple, the remains
of a little rotunda, surrounded with its portico, above half of whose
beautiful Corinthian pillars are still standing and entire; all this
on one hand. On the other, the open Campagna of Rome, here and there
a little castle on a hillock, and the city itself at the very brink of
the horizon, indistinctly seen (being eighteen miles off) except the
dome of St. Peter's; which, if you look out of your window, wherever
you are, I suppose, you can see. I did not tell you that a little
below the first fall, on the side of the rock, and hanging over that
torrent, are little ruins which they show you for Horace's house, a
curious situation to observe the
Praeceps Anio et Tiburni lucus, et uda
Mobilibus pomaria rivis.
Maecenas did not care for such a noise, it seems, and built him a
house (which they also carry one to see) so situated that it sees
nothing at all of the matter, and for anything he knew there might be
no such river in the world. Horace had another house on the other side
of the Teverone, opposite to Maecenas's; and they told us there was
a bridge of communication, by which _andava il detto Signor per
trastullarsi coll' istesso Orazio_. In coming hither we crossed the
Aquae Albulae, a vile little brook that stinks like a fury, and they
say it has stunk so these thousand years. I forgot the Piscina of
Quintilius Varus, where he used to keep certain little fishes. This
is very entire, and there is a piece of the aqueduct that supplied it
too; in the garden below is old Rome, built in little, just as it was,
they say. There are seven temples in it, and no houses at all; they
say there were none.
TO THE SAME
_A poet's melancholy_
London, 27 _May_, 1742.
Mine, you are to know is a white Melancholy, or rather Leucocholy
for the most part; which, though it seldom laughs or dances, nor ever
amounts to what one called Joy or Pleasure, yet is a good easy sort
of a state, and _ça ne laisse que de s'amuser. _ The only fault is its
insipidity; which is apt now and then to give a sort of Ennui, which
makes one form certain little wishes that signify nothing. But there
is another sort, black indeed, which I have now and then felt, that
has somewhat in it like Tertullian's rule of faith, _Credo quia
impossibile est_; for it believes, nay, is sure of everything that is
unlikely, so it be but frightful; and on the other hand excludes and
shuts its eyes to the most possible hopes, and everything that is
pleasurable; from this the Lord deliver us! for none but he and
sunshiny weather can do it. In hopes of enjoying this kind of weather
I am going into the country for a few weeks, but shall be never the
nearer any society; so, if you have any charity, you will continue to
write. My life is like Harry the Fourth's supper of Hens, 'Poulets à
la broche, Poulets en Ragoût, Poulets en Hâchis, Poulets en Fricassées
'. Reading here, Reading there; nothing but books with different
sauces. Do not let me lose my desert then; for though that be Reading
too, yet it has a very different flavour. The May seems to be come
since your invitation; and I propose to bask in her beams and dress me
in her roses.
Et caput in verna semper habere rosa.
I shall see Mr. ---- and his Wife, nay, and his Child, too, for he has
got a Boy. Is it not odd to consider one's Cotemporaries in the grave
light of Husband and Father? There is my lords Sandwich and Halifax,
they are Statesmen: Do not you remember them dirty boys playing at
cricket? As for me, I am never a bit the older, nor the bigger, nor
the wiser than I was then: no, not for having been beyond sea. Pray,
how are you? . . .
To HORACE WALPOLE
_The fate of Selima_
Cambridge, 1 _March_, 1747.
As one ought to be particularly careful to avoid blunders in a
compliment of condolence, it would be a sensible satisfaction to
me (before I testify my sorrow, and the sincere part I take in your
misfortune) to know for certain, who it is that I lament. I knew Zara
and Selima (Selima, was it? or Fatima? ) or rather I knew both of them
together; for I cannot justly say which was which. Then as to your
handsome Cat, the name you distinguished her by, I am no less at a
loss, as well knowing one's handsome cat is always the cat one likes
best; or if one be alive and the other dead, it is usually the latter
that is the handsomest. Besides, if the point were never so clear, I
hope you do not think me so ill-bred or so imprudent as to forfeit all
my interest in the survivor; Oh no! I would rather seem to mistake,
and to be sure it must be the tabby one that had met with this sad
accident. Till this affair is a little better determined, you will
excuse me if I do not begin to cry:
Tempus inane peto, requiem, spatiumque doloris.
Which interval is the more convenient, as it gives time to rejoice
with you on your new honours. This is only a beginning; I reckon next
week we shall hear you are a free-Mason, or a Gormorgon at least.
Heigh ho! I feel (as you to be sure have done long since) that I have
very little to say, at least in prose. Somebody will be the better for
it; I do not mean you, but your Cat, feuë Mademoiselle Selime, whom I
am about to immortalize for one week or fortnight, as follows.
. . . There's a poem for you, it is rather too long for an Epitaph.
TO THE SAME
_Publication of the Elegy_
Cambridge, 11 _Feb_. 1751.
As you have brought me into a little sort of distress, you must assist
me, I believe, to get out of it as well as I can. Yesterday I had
the misfortune of receiving a letter from certain gentlemen (as their
bookseller expresses it), who have taken the _Magazine of Magazines_
into their hands. They tell me that an _ingenious_ poem, called
_Reflections in a Country Churchyard_, has been communicated to them,
which they are printing forthwith; that they are informed that the
_excellent_ author of it is I by name, and that they beg not only his
_indulgence_, but the _honour_ of his correspondence, &c. As I am not
at all disposed to be either so indulgent, or so correspondent, as
they desire, I have but one bad way left to escape the honour they
would inflict upon me; and, therefore, am obliged to desire you would
make Dodsley print it immediately (which may be done in less than a
week's time) from your copy, but without my name, in what form is
most convenient for him, but on his best paper and character; he must
correct the press himself, and print it without any interval between
the stanzas, because the sense is in some places continued
beyond them; and the title must be,--_Elegy, written in a Country
Churchyard_. If he would add a line or two to say it came into
his hands by accident, I should like it better. If you behold the
_Magazine of Magazines_ in the light that I do, you will not refuse to
give yourself this trouble on my account, which you have taken of your
own accord before now. If Dodsley do not do this immediately, he may
as well let it alone.
TO THE SAME
_At Burnham_
[Burnham,] _Sept_. 1737.
I was hindered in my last, and so could not give you all the trouble
I would have done. The description of a road, which your coach wheels
have so often honoured, it would be needless to give you; suffice
it that I arrived safe at my uncle's, who is a great hunter in
imagination; his dogs take up every chair in the house, so I am forced
to stand at this present writing; and though the gout forbids him
galloping after them in the field, yet he continues to regale his ears
and nose with their comfortable noise and stink. He holds me mighty
cheap, I perceive, for walking when I should ride, and reading when
I should hunt. My comfort amidst all this is, that I have at the
distance of half a mile, through a green lane, a forest (the vulgar
call it a common) all my own, at least as good as so, for I spy no
human thing in it but myself. It is a little chaos of mountains and
precipices; mountains, it is true, that do not ascend much above the
clouds, nor are the declivities quite so amazing as Dover Cliff; but
just such hills as people who love their necks as well as I do may
venture to climb, and crags that give the eye as much pleasure as if
they were more dangerous. Both vale and hill are covered with most
venerable beeches, and other very reverend vegetables, that, like most
other ancient people, are always dreaming out their old stories to the
winds.
_And as they bow their hoary tops relate,
In murm'ring sounds, the dark decrees of fate;
While visions, as poetic eyes avow,
Cling to each leaf, and swarm on every bough. _
At the foot of one of these squats ME I (_ilpenseroso_), and there
grow to the trunk for a whole morning. The timorous hare and sportive
squirrel gambol round me like Adam in Paradise, before he had an Eve;
but I think he did not use to read Virgil, as I commonly do there.
In this situation I often converse with my Horace, aloud too, that is
talk to you, but I do not remember that I ever heard you answer me.
I beg pardon for taking all the conversation to myself, but it is
entirely your own fault. . . .
To THE REV. WILLIAM MASON
_The Laureateship_
19 _Dec_. 1757.
DEAR MASON,
Though I very well know the bland emollient saponaceous qualities both
of sack and silver, yet if any great man would say to me, 'I make you
Rat-catcher to his Majesty, with a salary of £300 a-year and two butts
of the best Malaga; and though it has been usual to catch a mouse or
two, for form's sake, in public once a year, yet to you, sir, we shall
not stand on these things,' I cannot say I should jump at it; nay, if
they would drop the very name of the office, and call me Sinecure
to the King's Majesty, I should feel a little awkward, and think
everybody I saw smelt a rat about me; but I do not pretend to blame
any one else that has not the same sensations; for my part, I would
rather be serjeant trumpeter or pinmaker to the palace. Nevertheless
I interest myself a little in the history of it, and rather wish
somebody may accept it who will retrieve the credit of the thing, if
it be retrieveable, or ever had any credit. Rowe was, I think, the
last man of character that had it. As to Settle, whom you mention,
he belonged to my lord mayor, not to the King. Eusden was a person
of great hopes in his youth, though at last he turned out a drunken
person. Dryden was as disgraceful to the office from his character,
as the poorest scribbler could have been from his verses. The office
itself has always humbled the professor hitherto (even in an age when
kings were somebody), if he were a poor writer by making him more
conspicuous, and if he were a good one by setting him at war with the
little fry of his own profession, for there are poets little enough to
envy even a poet laureate.
To DR. WHARTON
_A holiday in Kent_
Pembroke College, 26 _Aug_. 1766.
DEAR DOCTOR,
Whatever my pen may do, I am sure my thoughts expatiate nowhere
oftener, or with more pleasure, than to Old Park. I hope you have made
my peace with Miss Deborah. It is certain, whether her name were in
my letter or not, she was as present to my memory as the rest of the
little family; and I desire you would present her with two kisses
in my name, and one a piece to all the others; for I shall take the
liberty to kiss them all (great and small) as you are to be my proxy.
In spite of the rain, which I think continued with very short
intervals till the beginning of this month, and quite effaced the
summer from the year, I made a shift to pass May and June, not
disagreeably, in Kent. I was surprised at the beauty of the road
to Canterbury, which (I know not why) had not struck me in the same
manner before. The whole country is a rich and well cultivated garden;
orchards, cherry grounds, hop grounds, intermixed with corn and
frequent villages, gentle risings covered with wood, and everywhere
the Thames and Medway breaking in upon the landscape, with all their
navigation. It was indeed owing to the bad weather that the whole
scene was dressed in that tender emerald green, which one usually sees
only for a fortnight in the opening of Spring; and this continued till
I left the country. My residence was eight miles east of Canterbury,
in a little quiet valley on the skirts of Barham Down; in these parts
the whole soil is chalk, and whenever it holds up, in half an hour
it is dry enough to walk out. I took the opportunity of three or four
days fine weather to go into the Isle of Thanet, saw Margate (which
is Bartholomew Fair by the seaside), Ramsgate, and other places there;
and so came by Sandwich, Deal, Dover, Folkestone, and Hythe, back
again. The coast is not like Hartlepool, there are no rocks, but
only chalky cliffs, of no great height, till you come to Dover. There
indeed they are noble and picturesque, and the opposite coasts of
France begin to bound your view, which was left before to range
unlimited by anything but the horizon; yet it is by no means a
_shipless_ sea, but everywhere peopled with white sails and vessels of
all sizes in motion; and take notice (except in the Isle, which is all
corn fields, and has very little enclosure), there are in all places
hedgerows and tall trees, even within a few yards of the beach,
particularly Hythe stands on an eminence covered with wood. I shall
confess we had fires of a night (aye and a day too) several times even
in June: but don't go too far and take advantage of this, for it was
the most untoward year that ever I remember.
Your friend Rousseau (I doubt) grows tired of Mr. Davenport and
Derbyshire; he has picked a quarrel with David Hume, and writes
him letters of fourteen pages folio, upbraiding him with all his
_noirceurs_; take one only as a specimen. He says, that at Calais
they chanced to sleep in the same room together, and that he overheard
David talking in his sleep, and saying, '_Ah! je le tiens, ce
Jean-Jacques là_. ' In short (I fear), for want of persecution and
admiration (for these are his real complaints), he will go back to the
Continent.
What shall I say to you about the ministry? I am as angry as a
common council man of London about my Lord Chatham; but a little more
patient, and will hold my tongue till the end of the year. In the
meantime I do mutter in secret, and to you, that to quit the House of
Commons, his natural strength, to sap his own popularity and grandeur
(which no one but himself could have done) by assuming a foolish
title; and to hope that he could win by it, and attach to him a court
that hate him, and will dismiss him as soon as ever they dare, was the
weakest thing that ever was done by so great a man. Had it not been
for this, I should have rejoiced at the breach between him and Lord
Temple, and at the union between him and the Duke of Grafton and
Mr. Conway: but patience! we shall see! Stonehewer perhaps is in the
country (for he hoped for a month's leave of absence), and if you see
him you will learn more than I can tell you.
HORACE WALPOLE
1717-1797
To RICHARD WEST
_Floods in the Arno_
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 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 anything 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 stayed, 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, and everybody out of town. I have
seen nothing but cards and dull pairs of cicisbeos. I have literally
seen so much of love and pharaoh since being here, that I believe I
shall never love either again so 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.
[Footnote 1: MS. torn here. ]
To RICHARD BENTLEY
_Pictures and Garrick_
Strawberry Hill, 15 _Aug_. 1755.
MY DEAR SIR,
Though I wrote to you so lately, and have certainly nothing new to
tell you, I can't help scribbling a line to you to-night, as I am
going to Mr. Rigby's for a week or ten days, and must thank you first
for the three pictures. One of them charms me, the Mount Orgueil,
which is absolutely fine; the sea, and shadow upon it, are masterly.
The other two I don't, at least won't, take for finished. If you
please, Elizabeth Castle shall be Mr. Müntz's performance: indeed I
see nothing of you in it. I do reconnoitre you in the Hercules and
Nessus; but in both, your colours are dirty, carelessly dirty: in
your distant hills you are improved, and not hard. The figures are too
large--I don't mean in the Elizabeth Castle, for there they are neat;
but the centaur, though he dies as well as Garrick can, is outrageous.
Hercules and Deianira are by no means so: he is sentimental, and she
most improperly sorrowful. However, I am pleased enough to beg you
would continue. As soon as Mr. Müntz returns from the Vine, you shall
have a good supply of colours. In the meantime why give up the good
old trade of drawing? Have you no Indian ink, no soot-water, no snuff,
no coat of onion, no juice of anything? If you love me, draw: you
would if you knew the real pleasure you can give me. I have been
studying all your drawings; and next to architecture and trees, I
determine that you succeed in nothing better than animals. Now (as
the newspapers say) the late ingenious Mr. Seymour is dead, I would
recommend horses and greyhounds to you. I should think you capable of
a landscape or two with delicious bits of architecture. I have known
you execute the light of a torch or lanthorn so well, that if it
was called Schalken, a housekeeper at Hampton Court or Windsor, or
a Catherine at Strawberry Hill, would show it, and say it cost ten
thousand pounds. Nay, if I could believe that you would ever execute
any more designs I proposed to you, I would give you a hint for a
picture that struck me t'other day in Péréfixe's _Life of Henry IV_.
He says, the king was often seen lying upon a common straw-bed among
the soldiers, with a piece of brown bread in one hand, and a bit
of charcoal in t'other, to draw an encampment, or town that he was
besieging. If this is not character and a picture, I don't know what
is.
I dined to-day at Garrick's: there were the Duke of Grafton, Lord and
Lady Rochford, Lady Holderness, the crooked Mostyn, and Dabreu the
Spanish minister; two regents, of which one is lord chamberlain, the
other groom of the stole; and the wife of a secretary of state. This
is being _sur un assez bon ton_ for a player! Don't you want to ask me
how I like him? Do want, and I will tell you. --I like her exceedingly;
her behaviour is all sense, and all sweetness too. I don't know how,
he does not improve so fast upon me: there is a great deal of parts,
and vivacity, and variety, but there is a great deal too of mimicry
and burlesque. I am very ungrateful, for he flatters me abundantly;
but unluckily I know it. I was accustomed to it enough when my father
was first minister: on his fall I lost it all at once: and since that,
I have lived with Mr. Chute, who is all vehemence; with Mr. Fox, who
is all disputation; with Sir Charles Williams, who has no time from
flattering himself; with Gray, who does not hate to find fault with
me; with Mr. Conway, who is all sincerity; and with you and Mr. Rigby,
who have always laughed at me in a good-natured way. I don't know how,
but I think I like all this as well--I beg his pardon, Mr. Raftor does
flatter me; but I should be a cormorant for praise, if I could swallow
it whole as he gives it me.
Sir William Yonge, who has been extinct so long, is at last dead; and
the war, which began with such a flirt of vivacity, is I think gone to
sleep. General Braddock has not yet sent over to claim the surname of
Americanus. But why should I take pains to show you in how many ways I
know nothing? --Why; I can tell it you in one word--why, Mr. Cambridge
knows nothing! --I wish you good-night!
To GEORGE, LORD LYTTELTON
_Gray's Odes_
Strawberry Hill, 25 _Aug_. 1757.
MY LORD,
It is a satisfaction one can't often receive, to show a thing of
great merit to a man of great taste. Your Lordship's approbation is
conclusive, and it stamps a disgrace on the age, who have not given
themselves the trouble to see any beauties in these _Odes_ of Mr.
Gray. They have cast their eyes over them, found them obscure, and
looked no further, yet perhaps no compositions ever had more sublime
beauties than are in each. I agree with your Lordship in preferring
the last upon the whole; the three first stanzas and half, down to
_agonizing King_, are in my opinion equal to anything in any language
I understand. Yet the three last of the first Ode please me very near
as much. The description of Shakespeare is worthy Shakespeare: the
account of Milton's blindness, though perhaps not strictly defensible,
is very majestic. The character of Dryden's poetry is as animated as
what it paints. I can even like the epithet _Orient_; as the last is
the empire of fancy and poesy, I would allow its livery to be erected
into a colour. I think _blue-eyed Pleasures_ is allowable: when Homer
gave eyes of what hue he pleased to his Queen-Goddesses, sure Mr. Gray
may tinge those of their handmaids.
In answer to your Lordship's objection to _many-twinkling_, in that
beautiful epode, I will quote authority to which you will yield. As
Greek as the expression is, it struck Mrs. Garrick, and she says, on
that whole picture, that Mr. Gray is the only poet who ever understood
dancing.
These faults I think I can defend, and can excuse others; even the
great obscurity of the latter, for I do not see it in the first; the
subject of it has been taken for music,--it is the Power and Progress
of Harmonious Poetry. I think his objection to prefixing a title to it
was wrong--that Mr. Cooke published an ode with such a title. If the
Louis the Great, whom Voltaire has discovered in Hungary, had not
disappeared from history himself, would not Louis Quatorze have
annihilated him? I was aware that the second would have darknesses,
and prevailed for the insertion of what notes there are, and would
have had more. Mr. Gray said, whatever wanted explanation did not
deserve it, but that sentence was never so far from being an axiom as
in the present case. Not to mention how he had shackled himself with
strophe, antistrophe, and epode (yet acquitting himself nobly),
the nature of prophecy forbade him naming his kings. To me they are
apparent enough--yet I am far from thinking either piece perfect,
though with what faults they have, I hold them in the first rank of
genius and poetry. The second strophe of the first Ode is inexcusable,
nor do I wonder your Lordship blames it; even when one does understand
it, perhaps the last line is too turgid. I am not fond of the
antistrophe that follows. In the second Ode he made some corrections
for the worse. _Brave Urion_ was originally _stern_: brave is insipid
and commonplace. In the third antistrophe, _leave me unblessed,
unpitied_, stood at first, _leave your despairing Caradoc_. But the
capital faults in my opinion are these--what punishment was it to
Edward I to hear that his grandson would conquer France? or is so
common an event as Edward III being deserted on his death-bed, worthy
of being made part of a curse that was to avenge a nation? I can't
cast my eye here, without crying out on those beautiful lines that
follow, _Fair smiles the morn_? Though the images are extremely
complicated, what painting in the whirlwind, likened to a lion lying
in ambush for his evening prey, _in grim repose_. Thirst and hunger
mocking Richard II appear to me too ludicrously like the devils in
_The Tempest_, that whisk away the banquet from the shipwrecked Dukes.
From thence to the conclusion of Queen Elizabeth's portrait, which he
has faithfully copied from Speed, in the passage where she humbled the
Polish Ambassador, I admire. I can even allow that image of Rapture
hovering like an ancient grotesque, though it strictly has little
meaning: but there I take my leave--the last stanza has no beauties
for me. I even think its obscurity fortunate, for the allusions to
Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, are not only weak, but the two last
returning again, after appearing so gloriously in the first Ode, and
with so much fainter colours, enervate the whole conclusion.
Your Lordship sees that I am no enthusiast to Mr. Gray: his great
lustre has not dazzled me, as his obscurity seems to have blinded his
contemporaries. Indeed, I do not think that they ever admired him,
except in his Churchyard, though the Eton Ode was far its superior,
and is certainly not obscure. The Eton Ode is perfect: those of more
masterly execution have defects, yet not to admire them is total want
of taste. I have an aversion to tame poetry; at best, perhaps the art
is the sublimest of the _difficiles nugae_; to measure or rhyme prose
is trifling without being difficult.
To GEORGE MONTAGU
_At Lady Suffolk's_
Arlington Street, 11 _Jan_. 1764.
It is an age, I own, since I wrote to you; but except politics,
what was there to send you? and for politics, the present are too
contemptible to be recorded by anybody but journalists, gazetteers,
and such historians! The ordinary of Newgate, or Mr. ----, who write
for their monthly half-crown, and who are indifferent whether Lord
Bute, Lord Melcombe, or Maclean is their hero, may swear they
find diamonds on dunghills; but you will excuse _me_, if I let our
correspondence lie dormant rather than deal in such trash. I am forced
to send Lord Hertford and Sir Horace Mann such garbage, because
they are out of England, and the sea softens and makes palatable any
potion, as it does claret; but unless I can divert _you_, I had rather
wait till we can laugh together; the best employment for friends,
who do not mean to pick one another's pockets, nor make a property of
either's frankness.
