I had like to have lost her this
morning!
Selection of English Letters
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. Instead of politics, therefore, I shall amuse you
to-day with a fairy tale.
I was desired to be at my Lady Suffolk's on New Year's morn, where I
found Lady Temple and others. On the toilet Miss Hotham spied a small
round box. She seized it with all the eagerness and curiosity of
eleven years. In it was wrapped up a heart-diamond ring, and a paper
in which, in a hand as small as Buckinger's, who used to write the
Lord's Prayer in the compass of a silver penny, were the following
lines:
Sent by a sylph, unheard, unseen,
A new-year's gift from Mab our queen:
But tell it not, for if you do,
You will be pinch'd all black and blue.
Consider well, what a disgrace,
To show abroad your mottled face:
Then seal your lips, put on the ring,
And sometimes think of Ob. the King.
You will easily guess that Lady Temple was the poetess, and that we
were delighted with the genteelness of the thought and execution. The
child, you may imagine, was less transported with the poetry than the
present. Her attention, however, was hurried backwards and forwards
from the ring to a new coat, that she had been trying on when sent for
down; impatient to revisit her coat, and to show the ring to her maid,
she whisked upstairs; when she came down again, she found a letter
sealed, and lying on the floor--new exclamations! Lady Suffolk bade
her open it: here it is:
Your tongue, too nimble for your sense,
Is guilty of a high offence;
Hath introduced unkind debate,
And topsy-turvy turn'd our state.
In gallantry I sent the ring,
The token of a love-sick king:
Under fair Mab's auspicious name
From me the trifling present came.
You blabb'd the news in Suffolk's ear;
The tattling zephyrs brought it here,
As Mab was indolently laid
Under a poppy's spreading shade.
The jealous queen started in rage;
She kick'd her crown, and beat her page:
'Bring me my magic wand ', she cries;
'Under that primrose, there it lies;
I'll change the silly, saucy chit,
Into a flea, a louse, a nit,
A worm, a grasshopper, a rat,
An owl, a monkey, hedgehog, bat.
But hold, why not by fairy art
Transform the wretch, into--?
Ixion once a cloud embraced,
By Jove and jealousy well placed;
What sport to see proud Oberon stare
And flirt it with a--! '
Then thrice she stamped the trembling ground,
And thrice she waved her wand around;
When I, endow'd with greater skill,
And less inclined to do you ill,
Mutter'd some words, withheld her arm,
And kindly stopp'd the unfinish'd charm.
But though not changed to owl or bat,
Or something more indelicate;
Yet, as your tongue has run too fast,
Your boasted beauty must not last.
No more shall frolic Cupid lie
In ambuscade in either eye,
From thence to aim his keenest dart
To captivate each youthful heart:
No more shall envious misses pine
At charms now flown, that once were thine:
No more, since you so ill behave,
Shall injured Oberon be your slave.
There is one word which I could wish had not been there, though it is
prettily excused afterwards. The next day my Lady Suffolk desired I
would write her a patent for appointing Lady Temple poet laureate to
the fairies. I was excessively out of order with a pain in my stomach,
which I had had for ten days, and was fitter to write verses like
a poet laureate, than for making one; however, I was going home to
dinner alone, and at six I sent her some lines, which you ought to
have seen how sick I was, to excuse; but first, I must tell you my
tale methodically. The next morning by nine o'clock Miss Hotham (she
must forgive me twenty years hence for saying she was eleven, for I
recollect she is but ten) arrived at Lady Temple's, her face and neck
all spotted with saffron, and limping. 'Oh, madam! ' said she, 'I am
undone for ever if you do not assist me! ' 'Lord, child,' cried my Lady
Temple, 'what is the matter? ' thinking she had hurt herself, or lost
the ring, and that she was stolen out before her aunt was up. 'Oh,
madam,' said the girl, 'nobody but you can assist me! ' My Lady Temple
protests the child acted her part so well as to deceive her. 'What can
I do for you? ' 'Dear madam, take this load from my back; nobody but
you can. ' Lady Temple turned her round, and upon her back was tied a
child's waggon. In it were three tiny purses of blue velvet; in one of
them a silver cup, in another a crown of laurel, and in the third
four new silver pennies, with the patent, signed at top, 'Oberon
Imperator'; and two sheets of warrants strung together with blue silk
according to form; and at top an office seal of wax and a chaplet of
cut paper on it. The warrants were these:
From the Royal Mews:
A waggon with the draught horses, delivered by
command without fee.
From the Lord Chamberlain's Office:
A warrant with the royal sign manual, delivered
by command without fee, being first entered
in the office books.
From the Lord Steward's Office:
A butt of sack, delivered without fee or gratuity,
with an order for returning the cask for the
use of the office, by command.
From the Great Wardrobe:
Three velvet bags, delivered without fee, by
command.
From the Treasurer of the Household's Office:
A year's salary paid free from land-tax, poundage,
or any other deduction whatever, by command.
From the Jewel Office:
A silver butt, a silver cup, a wreath of bays, by
command without fee.
Then came the Patent:
By these presents be it known,
To all who bend before our throne,
Fays and fairies, elves and sprites,
Beauteous dames and gallant knights,
That we, Oberon the grand,
Emperor of fairy-land,
King of moonshine, prince of dreams,
Lord of Aganippe's streams,
Baron of the dimpled isles
That lie in pretty maidens' smiles,
Arch-treasurer of all the graces
Dispersed through fifty lovely faces,
Sovereign of the slipper's order,
With all the rites thereon that border,
Defender of the sylphic faith,
Declare--and thus your monarch saith:
Whereas there is a noble dame,
Whom mortals Countess Temple name,
To whom ourself did erst impart
The choicest secrets of our art,
Taught her to tune the harmonious line
To our own melody divine,
Taught her the graceful negligence,
Which, scorning art and veiling sense,
Achieves that conquest o'er the heart
Sense seldom gains, and never art;
This lady, 'tis our royal will,
Our laureate's vacant seat should fill:
A chaplet of immortal bays
Shall crown her brow and guard her lays;
Of nectar sack an acorn cup
Be at her board each year filled up;
And as each quarter feast comes round
A silver penny shall be found
Within the compass of her shoe--
And so we bid you all adieu!
Given at our palace of Cowslip Castle, the shortest night of the year.
OBERON.
And underneath,
HOTHAMINA.
How shall I tell you the greatest curiosity of the story? The whole
plan and execution of the second act was laid and adjusted by my
Lady Suffolk herself and Will. Chetwynd, Master of the Mint, Lord
Bolingbroke's Oroonoho-Chetwynd; he fourscore, she past seventy-six;
and what is more, much worse than I was, for, added to her deafness,
she has been confined these three weeks with the gout in her eyes, and
was actually then in misery, and had been without sleep. What
spirits, and cleverness, and imagination, at that age, and under those
afflicting circumstances! You reconnoitre her old court knowledge, how
charmingly she has applied it! Do you wonder I pass so many hours and
evenings with her? Alas!
I had like to have lost her this morning!
They had poulticed her feet to draw the gout downwards, and began to
succeed yesterday, but to-day it flew up into her head, and she was
almost in convulsions with the agony, and screamed dreadfully; proof
enough how ill she was, for her patience and good breeding make her
for ever sink and conceal what she feels. This evening the gout has
been driven back to her foot, and I trust she is out of danger. Her
loss would be irreparable to me at Twickenham, where she is by far the
most rational and agreeable company I have. . . .
To LADY HERVEY
_A quiet life_
Strawberry Hill, 11 _June_, 1765.
I am almost as much ashamed, Madam, to plead the true cause of my
faults towards your ladyship, as to have been guilty of any neglect.
It is scandalous, at my age, to have been carried backwards and
forwards to balls and suppers and parties by very young people, as
I was all last week. My resolutions of growing old and staid are
admirable: I wake with a sober plan, and intend to pass the day with
my friends--then comes the Duke of Richmond, and hurries me down to
Whitehall to dinner--then the Duchess of Grafton sends for me to too
in Upper Grosvenor Street--before I can get thither, I am begged
to step to Kensington, to give Mrs. Anne Pitt my opinion about
a bow-window--after the loo, I am to march back to Whitehall to
supper--and after that, am to walk with Miss Pelham on the terrace
till two in the morning, because it is moonlight and her chair is not
come. All this does not help my morning laziness; and by the time I
have breakfasted, fed my birds and my squirrels, and dressed, there is
an auction ready. In short, Madam, this was my life last week, and
is I think every week, with the addition of forty episodes. --Yet,
ridiculous as it is, I send it to your ladyship, because I had
rather you should laugh at me than be angry. I cannot offend you in
intention, but I fear my sins of omission are equal to a good many
Christian's. Pray forgive me. I really will begin to be between forty
and fifty by the time I am fourscore: and I truly believe I shall
bring my resolutions within compass; for I have not chalked out any
particular business that will take me above forty years more; so that,
if I do not get acquainted with the grandchildren of all the present
age, I shall lead a quiet sober life yet before I die. . . .
To THE REV. WILLIAM COLE
_Gray's death_
Paris, 12 _Aug_. 1771.
DEAR SIR,
I am excessively shocked at reading in the papers that Mr. Gray is
dead! I wish to God you may be able to tell me it is not true! Yet
in this painful uncertainty I must rest some days! None of my
acquaintance are in London. I do not know to whom to apply but to you.
Alas! I fear in vain! Too many circumstances speak it true! the detail
is exact;--a second paper arrived by the same post, and does not
contradict it--and what is worse, I saw him but four or five
days before I came hither; he had been to Kensington for the air,
complained of gout flying about him, of sensations of it in his
stomach, and indeed, thought him changed, and that he looked
ill--still I had not the least idea of his being in danger. --I started
up from my chair, when I read the paragraph--a cannon-ball could
not have surprised me more! The shock but ceased, to give way to my
concern; and my hopes are too ill founded to mitigate it. If nobody
has the charity to write to me, my anxiety must continue till the end
of the month, for I shall set out on my return on the 26th; and unless
you receive this time enough for your answer to leave London on the
20th, in the evening, I cannot meet it, till I find it in Arlington
Street, whither I beg you to direct it.
If the event is but too true, pray add to this melancholy service,
that of telling me any circumstances you know of his death. Our long,
very long friendship, and his genius, must endear to me everything
that relates to him. What writings has he left? Who are his executors?
I should earnestly wish, if he has destined anything to the public,
to print it at my press--it would do me honour, and would give me an
opportunity of expressing what I feel for him. Methinks, as we grow
old, our only business here is to adorn the graves of our friends, or
to dig our own.
To THE REV. WILLIAM MASON
_The quarrel with Gray_
2 _March_, 1773.
What shall I say? How shall I thank you for the kind manner in which
you submit your papers to my correction? But if you are friendly, I
must be just. I am so far from being dissatisfied, that I must beg to
shorten your pen, and in that respect only would I wish, with regard
to myself, to alter your text. I am conscious that in the beginning of
the differences between Gray and me, the fault was mine. I was
young, too fond of my own diversions; nay, I do not doubt, too much
intoxicated by indulgence, vanity, and the insolence of my situation,
as a prime minister's son, not to have been inattentive to the
feelings of one, I blush to say it, that I knew was obliged to me;
of one, whom presumption and folly made me deem not very superior
in parts, though I have since felt my infinite inferiority to him.
I treated him insolently. He loved me, and I did not think he did. I
reproached him with the difference between us, when he acted from the
conviction of knowing that he was my superior. I often disregarded
his wish of seeing places, which I would not quit my own amusements to
visit, though I offered to send him thither without me. Forgive me,
if I say that his temper was not conciliating, at the same time that I
will confess to you that he acted a most friendly part, had I had the
sense to take advantage of it. He freely told me my faults. I declared
I did not wish to hear them, nor would correct them. You will not
wonder, that with the dignity of his spirit, and the obstinate
carelessness of mine, the breach must have widened till we became
incompatible.
After this confession, I fear you will think I fall short in the
words I wish to have substituted for some of yours. If you think them
inadequate to the state of the case, as I own they are, preserve this
letter, and let some future Sir John Dalrymple produce it to load my
memory; but I own I do not desire that any ambiguity should aid his
invention to forge an account for me. If you have no objection, I
would propose your narrative should run thus . . . and contain no more,
till a proper time shall come for publishing the truth, as I have
stated it to you. While I am living, it is not pleasant to see my
private disagreements discussed in magazines and newspapers.
To THE COUNTESS OF UPPER OSSORY
_Fashionable intelligence_
Strawberry Hill, 27 _March_, 1773.
What play makes you laugh very much, and yet is a very wretched
comedy? Dr. Goldsmith's _She Stoops to Conquer_. Stoops indeed! --so
she does, that is the Muse; she is draggled up to the knees, and has
trudged, I believe, from Southwark fair. The whole view of the
piece is low humour, and no humour is in it. All the merit is in the
situations, which are comic; the heroine has no more modesty than Lady
Bridget, and the author's wit is as much _manqué_ as the lady's; but
some of the characters are well acted, and Woodward speaks a poor
prologue, written by Garrick, admirably.
You perceive, Madam, that I have boldly sallied to a play; but the
heat of the house and of this sultry March half killed me, yet I limp
about as if I was young and pleased. From the play I travelled
to Upper Grosvenor Street, to Lady Edgecumbe's, supped at Lady
Hertford's. That Maccaroni rake, Lady Powis, who is just come to her
estate and spending it, calling in with news of a fire in the Strand
at past one in the morning, Lady Hertford, Lady Powis, Mrs. Howe, and
I, set out to see it, and were within an inch of seeing the Adelphi
buildings burnt to the ground. I was to have gone to the Oratorio
next night for Miss Linley's sake, but, being engaged to the French
ambassador's ball afterwards, I thought I was not quite Hercules
enough for so many labours, and declined the former.
The house was all arbours and bowers, but rather more approaching to
Calcutta, where so many English were stewed to death; for as the Queen
would not dis-Maid of Honour herself of Miss Vernon till after the
Oratorio, the ball-room was not opened till she arrived, and we were
penned together in the little hall till we could not breathe. The
quadrilles were very pretty: Mrs. Darner, Lady Sefton, Lady Melbourne,
and the Princess Czartoriski in blue satin, with blond and _collets
montés à la reine Elizabeth_; Lord Robert Spencer, Mr. Fitzpatrick,
Lord Carlisle, and I forget whom, in like dresses with red sashes,
_derouge_, black hats with diamond loops and a few feathers before,
began; then the Henri Quatres and Quatresses, who were Lady Craven,
Miss Minching, the two Misses Vernons, Mr. Storer, Mr. Hanger, the Duc
de Lauzun, and George Damer, all in white, the men with black hats and
white feathers napping behind, danced another quadrille, and then both
quadrilles joined; after which Mrs. Hobart, all in gauze and spangles,
like a spangle-pudding, a Miss I forget, Lord Edward Bentinck, and
a Mr. Corbet, danced a _pas-de-quatre_, in which Mrs. Hobart indeed
performed admirably.
The fine Mrs. Matthews in white, trimmed down all the neck and
petticoat with scarlet cock's feathers, appeared like a new macaw
brought from Otaheite; but of all the pretty creatures next to the
Carrara (who was not there) was Mrs. Bunbury; so that with her I was
in love till one o'clock, and then came home to bed. The Duchess of
Queensberry had a round gown of rose-colour, with a man's cape, which,
with the stomacher and sleeves, was all trimmed with mother-of-pearl
earrings. This Pindaric gown was a sudden thought to surprise the
Duke, with whom she had dined in another dress. Did you ever see so
good a joke? . . .
Lord Chesterfield was dead before my last letter that foretold his
death set out. Alas! I shall have no more of his lively sayings,
Madam, to send you. Oh yes! I have his last: being told of the quarrel
in Spitalfields, and even that Mrs. F[itzroy] struck Miss P[oole], he
said, I always thought Mrs. F. a _striking_ beauty. '
Thus, having given away all his wit to the last farthing, he has left
nothing but some poor witticisms in his will, tying up his heir by
forfeitures and jokes from going to Newmarket.
I wrote this letter at Strawberry, and find nothing new in town to add
but a cold north-east that has brought back all our fires and furs.
Pray tell me a little of your Ladyship's futurity, and whether you
will deign to pass through London.
TO THE REV. WILLIAM COLE
_Antiquaries and authors_
Arlington Street, 27 _April_, 1773.
. . . Mr. Gough wants to be introduced to me! Indeed! I would see
him;. . . but he is so dull that he would only be troublesome--and
besides, you know I shun authors, and would never have been one
myself, if it obliged me to keep such bad company. They are always
in earnest, and think their profession serious, and will dwell upon
trifles, and reverence learning. I laugh at all these things, and
write only to laugh at them, and divert myself. None of us are authors
of any consequence; and it is the most ridiculous of all vanities to
be vain of being _mediocre_. A page in a great author humbles me
to the dust; and the conversation of those that are not superior
to myself, reminds me of what will be thought of myself. I blush to
flatter them, or to be flattered by them, and should dread letters
being published some time or other, in which they would relate our
interviews, and we should appear like those puny conceited witlings
in Shenstone's and Hughes's _Correspondence_, who give themselves airs
from being in possession of the soil of Parnassus for the time being;
as peers are proud, because they enjoy the estates of great men who
went before them. Mr. Gough is very welcome to see Strawberry Hill; or
I would help him to any scraps in my possession, that would assist
his publications; though he is one of those industrious who are
only re-burying the dead--but I cannot be acquainted with him. It is
contrary to my system and my humour; and besides, I know nothing
of barrows, and Danish intrenchments, and Saxon barbarisms, and
Phoenician characters--in short, I know nothing of those ages that
knew nothing--how then should I be of use to modern litterati? All the
Scotch metaphysicians have sent me their works. I did not read one of
them, because I do not understand what is not understood by those that
write about it; and I did not get acquainted with one of the writers.
I should like to be acquainted with Mr. Anstey, even though he wrote
Lord Buckhorse, or with the author of the _Heroic Epistle_--I have no
thirst to know the rest of my contemporaries, from the absurd bombast
of Dr. Johnson down to the silly Dr. Goldsmith; though the latter
changeling has had bright gleams of parts, and though the former had
sense, till he changed it for words, and sold it for a pension. Don't
think me scornful. Recollect that I have seen Pope, and lived with
Gray. Adieu!
TO THE MISS BERRYS
_Their first meeting_
Tuesday night, 8 o'clock, 17 _Sept. _ 1793.
My beloved spouses,
Whom I love better than Solomon loved his one spouse--or his one
thousand. I lament that the summer is over; not because of its
iniquity, but because you two made it so delightful to me, that six
weeks of gout could not sour it. Pray take care of yourselves--not
for your own sakes, but for mine; for, as I have just had my quota of
gout, I may, possibly, expect to see another summer; and, as you allow
that I do know my own, and when I wish for anything and have it, am
entirely satisfied, you may depend upon it that I shall be as happy
with a third summer, if I reach it, as I have been with the two last.
Consider, that I have been threescore years and ten looking for a
society that I perfectly like; and at last there dropped out of the
clouds into Lady Herries's room two young gentlewomen, who I so little
thought were sent thither on purpose for me, that when I was told they
were the charming Miss Berrys, I would not even go to the side of the
chamber where they sat. But, as Fortune never throws anything at one's
head without hitting one, I soon found out that the charming Berrys
were precisely _ce qu'il me fallait_; and that though young enough to
be my great-grand-daughters, lovely enough to turn the heads of all
our youths, and sensible enough, if said youths have any brains, to
set all their heads to rights again. Yes, sweet damsels, I have found
that you can bear to pass half your time with an antediluvian, without
discovering any _ennui_ or disgust; though his greatest merit towards
you is, that he is not one of those old fools who fancy they are in
love in their dotage. I have no such vagary; though I am not
sorry that some folks think I am so absurd, since it frets their
selfishness.
OLIVER GOLDSMITH
1728-1774
TO HIS MOTHER
_At Cork_
[c. 1751. ]
My dear mother,
If you will sit down and calmly listen to what I say, you shall be
fully resolved in every one of those many questions you have asked me.
I went to Cork and converted my horse, which you prize so much higher
than Fiddleback, into cash, took my passage in a ship bound for
America, and, at the same time, paid the captain for my freight and
all the other expenses of my voyage. But it so happened that the wind
did not answer for three weeks; and you know, mother, that I could not
command the elements. My misfortune was, that, when the wind served, I
happened to be with a party in the country, and my friend the captain
never inquired after me, but set sail with as much indifference as if
I had been on board. The remainder of my time I employed in the city
and its environs, viewing everything curious; and you know no one can
starve while he has money in his pocket.
Reduced, however, to my last two guineas, I began to think of my
dear mother and friends whom I had left behind me, and so bought
that generous beast Fiddleback, and made adieu to Cork with only five
shillings in my pocket. This, to be sure, was but a scanty allowance
for man and horse towards a journey of above a hundred miles; but I
did not despair, for I knew I must find friends on the road.
I recollected particularly an old and faithful acquaintance I made at
college, who had often and earnestly pressed me to spend a summer
with him, and he lived but eight miles from Cork. This circumstance
of vicinity he would expatiate on to me with peculiar emphasis. 'We
shall,' says he, 'enjoy the delights of both city and country, and you
shall command my stable and my purse. '
However, upon the way, I met a poor woman all in tears, who told me
her husband had been arrested for a debt he was not able to pay, and
that his eight children must now starve, bereaved as they were of his
industry, which had been their only support. I thought myself at home,
being not far from my good friend's house, and therefore parted with
a moiety of all my store; and pray, mother, ought I not to have given
her the other half-crown, for what she got would be of little use to
her? However, I soon arrived at the mansion of my affectionate friend,
guarded by the vigilance of a huge mastiff, who flew at me, and
would have torn me to pieces but for the assistance of a woman, whose
countenance was not less grim than that of the dog; yet she with great
humanity relieved me from the jaws of this Cerberus, and was prevailed
on to carry up my name to her master.
Without suffering me to wait long, my old friend, who was then
recovering from a severe fit of sickness, came down in his nightcap,
nightgown, and slippers, and embraced me with the most cordial
welcome, showed me in, and after giving me a history of his
indisposition, assured me that he considered himself peculiarly
fortunate in having under his roof the man he most loved on earth, and
whose stay with him must, above all things, contribute to his perfect
recovery. I now repented sorely I had not given the poor woman the
other half-crown, as I thought all my bills of humanity would be
punctually answered by this worthy man. I revealed to him my whole
soul; I opened to him all my distresses; and freely owned that I
had but one half-crown in my pocket; but that now, like a ship after
weathering out the storm, I considered myself secure in a safe and
hospitable harbour. He made no answer, but walked about the room,
rubbing his hands as one in deep study. This I imputed to the
sympathetic feelings of a tender heart, which increased my esteem for
him, and as that increased, I gave the most favourable interpretation
to his silence. I construed it into delicacy of sentiment, as if he
dreaded to wound my pride by expressing his commiseration in words,
leaving his generous conduct to speak for itself.
It now approached six o'clock in the evening; and as I had eaten no
breakfast, and as my spirits were raised, my appetite for dinner grew
uncommonly keen. At length the old woman came into the room with two
plates, one spoon, and a dirty cloth which she laid upon the table.
This appearance, without increasing my spirits, did not diminish my
appetite. My protectress soon returned with a small bowl of sago, a
small porringer of sour milk, a loaf of stale brown bread, and
the heel of an old cheese all over crawling with mites. My friend
apologized that his illness obliged him to live on slops, and that
better fare was not in the house; observing, at the same time, that
a milk diet was certainly the most healthful; and at eight o'clock he
again recommended a regular life, declaring that for his part he would
lie down with the lamb and rise with the lark. My hunger was at this
time so exceedingly sharp that I wished for another slice of the loaf,
but was obliged to go to bed without even that refreshment.
This lenten entertainment I had received made me resolve to depart as
soon as possible; accordingly, next morning, when I spoke of going,
he did not oppose my resolution; he rather commended my design, adding
some very sage counsel upon the occasion. 'To be sure,' said he, 'the
longer you stay away from your mother, the more you will grieve her
and your other friends; and possibly they are already afflicted at
hearing of this foolish expedition you have made. ' Notwithstanding all
this, and without any hope of softening such a sordid heart, I again
renewed the tale of my distress, and asking 'how he thought I could
travel above a hundred miles upon one half-crown? ' I begged to borrow
a single guinea, which I assured him should be repaid with thanks.
'And you know, sir,' said I, 'it is no more than I have often done for
you. ' To which he firmly answered, 'Why, look you, Mr. Goldsmith, that
is neither here nor there. I have paid you all you ever lent me, and
this sickness of mine has left me bare of cash. But I have bethought
myself of a conveyance for you; sell your horse, and I will furnish
you with a much better one to ride on. ' I readily grasped at his
proposal, and begged to see the nag; on which he led me to his
bedchamber, and from under the bed he pulled out a stout oak stick.
'Here he is,' said he; 'take this in your hand, and it will carry you
to your mother's with more safety than such a horse as you ride. ' I
was in doubt, when I got it into my hand, whether I should not in the
first place apply it to his pate; but a rap at the street-door
made the wretch fly to it, and when I returned to the parlour,
he introduced me, as if nothing of the kind had happened, to the
gentleman who entered, as Mr. Goldsmith, his most ingenious and worthy
friend, of whom he had so often heard him speak with rapture. I could
scarcely compose myself; and must have betrayed indignation in my mien
to the stranger, who was a counsellor-at-law in the neighbourhood, a
man of engaging aspect and polite address.
After spending an hour, he asked my friend and me to dine with him at
his house. This I declined at first, as I wished to have no further
communication with my hospitable friend; but at the solicitation of
both I at last consented, determined as I was by two motives; one,
that I was prejudiced in favour of the looks and manner of the
counsellor; and the other, that I stood in need of a comfortable
dinner. And there, indeed, I found everything that I could wish,
abundance without profusion, and elegance without affectation. In the
evening, when my old friend, who had eaten very plentifully at his
neighbour's table, but talked again of lying down with the lamb, made
a motion to me for retiring, our generous host requested I should take
a bed with him, upon which I plainly told my old friend that he might
go home and take care of the horse he had given me, but that I should
never re-enter his doors. He went away with a laugh, leaving me to
add this to the other little things the counsellor already knew of his
plausible neighbour.
And now, my dear mother, I found sufficient to reconcile me to all
my follies; for here I spent three whole days. The counsellor had
two sweet girls to his daughters, who played enchantingly on the
harpsichord; and yet it was but a melancholy pleasure I felt the first
time I heard them: for that being the first time also that either of
them had touched the instrument since their mother's death, I saw
the tears in silence trickle down their father's cheeks. I every day
endeavoured to go away, but every day was pressed and obliged to stay.
On my going, the counsellor offered me his purse, with a horse and
servant to convey me home; but the latter I declined, and only took a
guinea to bear my necessary expenses on the road.
TO ROBERT BRYANTON
_In Scotland_
Edinburgh, 26 _Sept. _ 1753
MY DEAR BOB,
How many good excuses (and you know I was ever good at an excuse)
might I call up to vindicate my past shameful silence! I might tell
how I wrote a long letter on my first coming hither, and seem vastly
angry at my not receiving an answer; I might allege that business
(with business you know I was always pestered) had never given me
time to finger a pen--but I suppress those and twenty more equally
plausible, and as easily invented, since they might be attended with
a slight inconvenience of being known to be lies. Let me then speak
truth. An hereditary indolence (I have it from the mother's side) has
hitherto prevented my writing to you, and still prevents my writing
at least twenty-five letters more, due to my friends in Ireland.
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. Instead of politics, therefore, I shall amuse you
to-day with a fairy tale.
I was desired to be at my Lady Suffolk's on New Year's morn, where I
found Lady Temple and others. On the toilet Miss Hotham spied a small
round box. She seized it with all the eagerness and curiosity of
eleven years. In it was wrapped up a heart-diamond ring, and a paper
in which, in a hand as small as Buckinger's, who used to write the
Lord's Prayer in the compass of a silver penny, were the following
lines:
Sent by a sylph, unheard, unseen,
A new-year's gift from Mab our queen:
But tell it not, for if you do,
You will be pinch'd all black and blue.
Consider well, what a disgrace,
To show abroad your mottled face:
Then seal your lips, put on the ring,
And sometimes think of Ob. the King.
You will easily guess that Lady Temple was the poetess, and that we
were delighted with the genteelness of the thought and execution. The
child, you may imagine, was less transported with the poetry than the
present. Her attention, however, was hurried backwards and forwards
from the ring to a new coat, that she had been trying on when sent for
down; impatient to revisit her coat, and to show the ring to her maid,
she whisked upstairs; when she came down again, she found a letter
sealed, and lying on the floor--new exclamations! Lady Suffolk bade
her open it: here it is:
Your tongue, too nimble for your sense,
Is guilty of a high offence;
Hath introduced unkind debate,
And topsy-turvy turn'd our state.
In gallantry I sent the ring,
The token of a love-sick king:
Under fair Mab's auspicious name
From me the trifling present came.
You blabb'd the news in Suffolk's ear;
The tattling zephyrs brought it here,
As Mab was indolently laid
Under a poppy's spreading shade.
The jealous queen started in rage;
She kick'd her crown, and beat her page:
'Bring me my magic wand ', she cries;
'Under that primrose, there it lies;
I'll change the silly, saucy chit,
Into a flea, a louse, a nit,
A worm, a grasshopper, a rat,
An owl, a monkey, hedgehog, bat.
But hold, why not by fairy art
Transform the wretch, into--?
Ixion once a cloud embraced,
By Jove and jealousy well placed;
What sport to see proud Oberon stare
And flirt it with a--! '
Then thrice she stamped the trembling ground,
And thrice she waved her wand around;
When I, endow'd with greater skill,
And less inclined to do you ill,
Mutter'd some words, withheld her arm,
And kindly stopp'd the unfinish'd charm.
But though not changed to owl or bat,
Or something more indelicate;
Yet, as your tongue has run too fast,
Your boasted beauty must not last.
No more shall frolic Cupid lie
In ambuscade in either eye,
From thence to aim his keenest dart
To captivate each youthful heart:
No more shall envious misses pine
At charms now flown, that once were thine:
No more, since you so ill behave,
Shall injured Oberon be your slave.
There is one word which I could wish had not been there, though it is
prettily excused afterwards. The next day my Lady Suffolk desired I
would write her a patent for appointing Lady Temple poet laureate to
the fairies. I was excessively out of order with a pain in my stomach,
which I had had for ten days, and was fitter to write verses like
a poet laureate, than for making one; however, I was going home to
dinner alone, and at six I sent her some lines, which you ought to
have seen how sick I was, to excuse; but first, I must tell you my
tale methodically. The next morning by nine o'clock Miss Hotham (she
must forgive me twenty years hence for saying she was eleven, for I
recollect she is but ten) arrived at Lady Temple's, her face and neck
all spotted with saffron, and limping. 'Oh, madam! ' said she, 'I am
undone for ever if you do not assist me! ' 'Lord, child,' cried my Lady
Temple, 'what is the matter? ' thinking she had hurt herself, or lost
the ring, and that she was stolen out before her aunt was up. 'Oh,
madam,' said the girl, 'nobody but you can assist me! ' My Lady Temple
protests the child acted her part so well as to deceive her. 'What can
I do for you? ' 'Dear madam, take this load from my back; nobody but
you can. ' Lady Temple turned her round, and upon her back was tied a
child's waggon. In it were three tiny purses of blue velvet; in one of
them a silver cup, in another a crown of laurel, and in the third
four new silver pennies, with the patent, signed at top, 'Oberon
Imperator'; and two sheets of warrants strung together with blue silk
according to form; and at top an office seal of wax and a chaplet of
cut paper on it. The warrants were these:
From the Royal Mews:
A waggon with the draught horses, delivered by
command without fee.
From the Lord Chamberlain's Office:
A warrant with the royal sign manual, delivered
by command without fee, being first entered
in the office books.
From the Lord Steward's Office:
A butt of sack, delivered without fee or gratuity,
with an order for returning the cask for the
use of the office, by command.
From the Great Wardrobe:
Three velvet bags, delivered without fee, by
command.
From the Treasurer of the Household's Office:
A year's salary paid free from land-tax, poundage,
or any other deduction whatever, by command.
From the Jewel Office:
A silver butt, a silver cup, a wreath of bays, by
command without fee.
Then came the Patent:
By these presents be it known,
To all who bend before our throne,
Fays and fairies, elves and sprites,
Beauteous dames and gallant knights,
That we, Oberon the grand,
Emperor of fairy-land,
King of moonshine, prince of dreams,
Lord of Aganippe's streams,
Baron of the dimpled isles
That lie in pretty maidens' smiles,
Arch-treasurer of all the graces
Dispersed through fifty lovely faces,
Sovereign of the slipper's order,
With all the rites thereon that border,
Defender of the sylphic faith,
Declare--and thus your monarch saith:
Whereas there is a noble dame,
Whom mortals Countess Temple name,
To whom ourself did erst impart
The choicest secrets of our art,
Taught her to tune the harmonious line
To our own melody divine,
Taught her the graceful negligence,
Which, scorning art and veiling sense,
Achieves that conquest o'er the heart
Sense seldom gains, and never art;
This lady, 'tis our royal will,
Our laureate's vacant seat should fill:
A chaplet of immortal bays
Shall crown her brow and guard her lays;
Of nectar sack an acorn cup
Be at her board each year filled up;
And as each quarter feast comes round
A silver penny shall be found
Within the compass of her shoe--
And so we bid you all adieu!
Given at our palace of Cowslip Castle, the shortest night of the year.
OBERON.
And underneath,
HOTHAMINA.
How shall I tell you the greatest curiosity of the story? The whole
plan and execution of the second act was laid and adjusted by my
Lady Suffolk herself and Will. Chetwynd, Master of the Mint, Lord
Bolingbroke's Oroonoho-Chetwynd; he fourscore, she past seventy-six;
and what is more, much worse than I was, for, added to her deafness,
she has been confined these three weeks with the gout in her eyes, and
was actually then in misery, and had been without sleep. What
spirits, and cleverness, and imagination, at that age, and under those
afflicting circumstances! You reconnoitre her old court knowledge, how
charmingly she has applied it! Do you wonder I pass so many hours and
evenings with her? Alas!
I had like to have lost her this morning!
They had poulticed her feet to draw the gout downwards, and began to
succeed yesterday, but to-day it flew up into her head, and she was
almost in convulsions with the agony, and screamed dreadfully; proof
enough how ill she was, for her patience and good breeding make her
for ever sink and conceal what she feels. This evening the gout has
been driven back to her foot, and I trust she is out of danger. Her
loss would be irreparable to me at Twickenham, where she is by far the
most rational and agreeable company I have. . . .
To LADY HERVEY
_A quiet life_
Strawberry Hill, 11 _June_, 1765.
I am almost as much ashamed, Madam, to plead the true cause of my
faults towards your ladyship, as to have been guilty of any neglect.
It is scandalous, at my age, to have been carried backwards and
forwards to balls and suppers and parties by very young people, as
I was all last week. My resolutions of growing old and staid are
admirable: I wake with a sober plan, and intend to pass the day with
my friends--then comes the Duke of Richmond, and hurries me down to
Whitehall to dinner--then the Duchess of Grafton sends for me to too
in Upper Grosvenor Street--before I can get thither, I am begged
to step to Kensington, to give Mrs. Anne Pitt my opinion about
a bow-window--after the loo, I am to march back to Whitehall to
supper--and after that, am to walk with Miss Pelham on the terrace
till two in the morning, because it is moonlight and her chair is not
come. All this does not help my morning laziness; and by the time I
have breakfasted, fed my birds and my squirrels, and dressed, there is
an auction ready. In short, Madam, this was my life last week, and
is I think every week, with the addition of forty episodes. --Yet,
ridiculous as it is, I send it to your ladyship, because I had
rather you should laugh at me than be angry. I cannot offend you in
intention, but I fear my sins of omission are equal to a good many
Christian's. Pray forgive me. I really will begin to be between forty
and fifty by the time I am fourscore: and I truly believe I shall
bring my resolutions within compass; for I have not chalked out any
particular business that will take me above forty years more; so that,
if I do not get acquainted with the grandchildren of all the present
age, I shall lead a quiet sober life yet before I die. . . .
To THE REV. WILLIAM COLE
_Gray's death_
Paris, 12 _Aug_. 1771.
DEAR SIR,
I am excessively shocked at reading in the papers that Mr. Gray is
dead! I wish to God you may be able to tell me it is not true! Yet
in this painful uncertainty I must rest some days! None of my
acquaintance are in London. I do not know to whom to apply but to you.
Alas! I fear in vain! Too many circumstances speak it true! the detail
is exact;--a second paper arrived by the same post, and does not
contradict it--and what is worse, I saw him but four or five
days before I came hither; he had been to Kensington for the air,
complained of gout flying about him, of sensations of it in his
stomach, and indeed, thought him changed, and that he looked
ill--still I had not the least idea of his being in danger. --I started
up from my chair, when I read the paragraph--a cannon-ball could
not have surprised me more! The shock but ceased, to give way to my
concern; and my hopes are too ill founded to mitigate it. If nobody
has the charity to write to me, my anxiety must continue till the end
of the month, for I shall set out on my return on the 26th; and unless
you receive this time enough for your answer to leave London on the
20th, in the evening, I cannot meet it, till I find it in Arlington
Street, whither I beg you to direct it.
If the event is but too true, pray add to this melancholy service,
that of telling me any circumstances you know of his death. Our long,
very long friendship, and his genius, must endear to me everything
that relates to him. What writings has he left? Who are his executors?
I should earnestly wish, if he has destined anything to the public,
to print it at my press--it would do me honour, and would give me an
opportunity of expressing what I feel for him. Methinks, as we grow
old, our only business here is to adorn the graves of our friends, or
to dig our own.
To THE REV. WILLIAM MASON
_The quarrel with Gray_
2 _March_, 1773.
What shall I say? How shall I thank you for the kind manner in which
you submit your papers to my correction? But if you are friendly, I
must be just. I am so far from being dissatisfied, that I must beg to
shorten your pen, and in that respect only would I wish, with regard
to myself, to alter your text. I am conscious that in the beginning of
the differences between Gray and me, the fault was mine. I was
young, too fond of my own diversions; nay, I do not doubt, too much
intoxicated by indulgence, vanity, and the insolence of my situation,
as a prime minister's son, not to have been inattentive to the
feelings of one, I blush to say it, that I knew was obliged to me;
of one, whom presumption and folly made me deem not very superior
in parts, though I have since felt my infinite inferiority to him.
I treated him insolently. He loved me, and I did not think he did. I
reproached him with the difference between us, when he acted from the
conviction of knowing that he was my superior. I often disregarded
his wish of seeing places, which I would not quit my own amusements to
visit, though I offered to send him thither without me. Forgive me,
if I say that his temper was not conciliating, at the same time that I
will confess to you that he acted a most friendly part, had I had the
sense to take advantage of it. He freely told me my faults. I declared
I did not wish to hear them, nor would correct them. You will not
wonder, that with the dignity of his spirit, and the obstinate
carelessness of mine, the breach must have widened till we became
incompatible.
After this confession, I fear you will think I fall short in the
words I wish to have substituted for some of yours. If you think them
inadequate to the state of the case, as I own they are, preserve this
letter, and let some future Sir John Dalrymple produce it to load my
memory; but I own I do not desire that any ambiguity should aid his
invention to forge an account for me. If you have no objection, I
would propose your narrative should run thus . . . and contain no more,
till a proper time shall come for publishing the truth, as I have
stated it to you. While I am living, it is not pleasant to see my
private disagreements discussed in magazines and newspapers.
To THE COUNTESS OF UPPER OSSORY
_Fashionable intelligence_
Strawberry Hill, 27 _March_, 1773.
What play makes you laugh very much, and yet is a very wretched
comedy? Dr. Goldsmith's _She Stoops to Conquer_. Stoops indeed! --so
she does, that is the Muse; she is draggled up to the knees, and has
trudged, I believe, from Southwark fair. The whole view of the
piece is low humour, and no humour is in it. All the merit is in the
situations, which are comic; the heroine has no more modesty than Lady
Bridget, and the author's wit is as much _manqué_ as the lady's; but
some of the characters are well acted, and Woodward speaks a poor
prologue, written by Garrick, admirably.
You perceive, Madam, that I have boldly sallied to a play; but the
heat of the house and of this sultry March half killed me, yet I limp
about as if I was young and pleased. From the play I travelled
to Upper Grosvenor Street, to Lady Edgecumbe's, supped at Lady
Hertford's. That Maccaroni rake, Lady Powis, who is just come to her
estate and spending it, calling in with news of a fire in the Strand
at past one in the morning, Lady Hertford, Lady Powis, Mrs. Howe, and
I, set out to see it, and were within an inch of seeing the Adelphi
buildings burnt to the ground. I was to have gone to the Oratorio
next night for Miss Linley's sake, but, being engaged to the French
ambassador's ball afterwards, I thought I was not quite Hercules
enough for so many labours, and declined the former.
The house was all arbours and bowers, but rather more approaching to
Calcutta, where so many English were stewed to death; for as the Queen
would not dis-Maid of Honour herself of Miss Vernon till after the
Oratorio, the ball-room was not opened till she arrived, and we were
penned together in the little hall till we could not breathe. The
quadrilles were very pretty: Mrs. Darner, Lady Sefton, Lady Melbourne,
and the Princess Czartoriski in blue satin, with blond and _collets
montés à la reine Elizabeth_; Lord Robert Spencer, Mr. Fitzpatrick,
Lord Carlisle, and I forget whom, in like dresses with red sashes,
_derouge_, black hats with diamond loops and a few feathers before,
began; then the Henri Quatres and Quatresses, who were Lady Craven,
Miss Minching, the two Misses Vernons, Mr. Storer, Mr. Hanger, the Duc
de Lauzun, and George Damer, all in white, the men with black hats and
white feathers napping behind, danced another quadrille, and then both
quadrilles joined; after which Mrs. Hobart, all in gauze and spangles,
like a spangle-pudding, a Miss I forget, Lord Edward Bentinck, and
a Mr. Corbet, danced a _pas-de-quatre_, in which Mrs. Hobart indeed
performed admirably.
The fine Mrs. Matthews in white, trimmed down all the neck and
petticoat with scarlet cock's feathers, appeared like a new macaw
brought from Otaheite; but of all the pretty creatures next to the
Carrara (who was not there) was Mrs. Bunbury; so that with her I was
in love till one o'clock, and then came home to bed. The Duchess of
Queensberry had a round gown of rose-colour, with a man's cape, which,
with the stomacher and sleeves, was all trimmed with mother-of-pearl
earrings. This Pindaric gown was a sudden thought to surprise the
Duke, with whom she had dined in another dress. Did you ever see so
good a joke? . . .
Lord Chesterfield was dead before my last letter that foretold his
death set out. Alas! I shall have no more of his lively sayings,
Madam, to send you. Oh yes! I have his last: being told of the quarrel
in Spitalfields, and even that Mrs. F[itzroy] struck Miss P[oole], he
said, I always thought Mrs. F. a _striking_ beauty. '
Thus, having given away all his wit to the last farthing, he has left
nothing but some poor witticisms in his will, tying up his heir by
forfeitures and jokes from going to Newmarket.
I wrote this letter at Strawberry, and find nothing new in town to add
but a cold north-east that has brought back all our fires and furs.
Pray tell me a little of your Ladyship's futurity, and whether you
will deign to pass through London.
TO THE REV. WILLIAM COLE
_Antiquaries and authors_
Arlington Street, 27 _April_, 1773.
. . . Mr. Gough wants to be introduced to me! Indeed! I would see
him;. . . but he is so dull that he would only be troublesome--and
besides, you know I shun authors, and would never have been one
myself, if it obliged me to keep such bad company. They are always
in earnest, and think their profession serious, and will dwell upon
trifles, and reverence learning. I laugh at all these things, and
write only to laugh at them, and divert myself. None of us are authors
of any consequence; and it is the most ridiculous of all vanities to
be vain of being _mediocre_. A page in a great author humbles me
to the dust; and the conversation of those that are not superior
to myself, reminds me of what will be thought of myself. I blush to
flatter them, or to be flattered by them, and should dread letters
being published some time or other, in which they would relate our
interviews, and we should appear like those puny conceited witlings
in Shenstone's and Hughes's _Correspondence_, who give themselves airs
from being in possession of the soil of Parnassus for the time being;
as peers are proud, because they enjoy the estates of great men who
went before them. Mr. Gough is very welcome to see Strawberry Hill; or
I would help him to any scraps in my possession, that would assist
his publications; though he is one of those industrious who are
only re-burying the dead--but I cannot be acquainted with him. It is
contrary to my system and my humour; and besides, I know nothing
of barrows, and Danish intrenchments, and Saxon barbarisms, and
Phoenician characters--in short, I know nothing of those ages that
knew nothing--how then should I be of use to modern litterati? All the
Scotch metaphysicians have sent me their works. I did not read one of
them, because I do not understand what is not understood by those that
write about it; and I did not get acquainted with one of the writers.
I should like to be acquainted with Mr. Anstey, even though he wrote
Lord Buckhorse, or with the author of the _Heroic Epistle_--I have no
thirst to know the rest of my contemporaries, from the absurd bombast
of Dr. Johnson down to the silly Dr. Goldsmith; though the latter
changeling has had bright gleams of parts, and though the former had
sense, till he changed it for words, and sold it for a pension. Don't
think me scornful. Recollect that I have seen Pope, and lived with
Gray. Adieu!
TO THE MISS BERRYS
_Their first meeting_
Tuesday night, 8 o'clock, 17 _Sept. _ 1793.
My beloved spouses,
Whom I love better than Solomon loved his one spouse--or his one
thousand. I lament that the summer is over; not because of its
iniquity, but because you two made it so delightful to me, that six
weeks of gout could not sour it. Pray take care of yourselves--not
for your own sakes, but for mine; for, as I have just had my quota of
gout, I may, possibly, expect to see another summer; and, as you allow
that I do know my own, and when I wish for anything and have it, am
entirely satisfied, you may depend upon it that I shall be as happy
with a third summer, if I reach it, as I have been with the two last.
Consider, that I have been threescore years and ten looking for a
society that I perfectly like; and at last there dropped out of the
clouds into Lady Herries's room two young gentlewomen, who I so little
thought were sent thither on purpose for me, that when I was told they
were the charming Miss Berrys, I would not even go to the side of the
chamber where they sat. But, as Fortune never throws anything at one's
head without hitting one, I soon found out that the charming Berrys
were precisely _ce qu'il me fallait_; and that though young enough to
be my great-grand-daughters, lovely enough to turn the heads of all
our youths, and sensible enough, if said youths have any brains, to
set all their heads to rights again. Yes, sweet damsels, I have found
that you can bear to pass half your time with an antediluvian, without
discovering any _ennui_ or disgust; though his greatest merit towards
you is, that he is not one of those old fools who fancy they are in
love in their dotage. I have no such vagary; though I am not
sorry that some folks think I am so absurd, since it frets their
selfishness.
OLIVER GOLDSMITH
1728-1774
TO HIS MOTHER
_At Cork_
[c. 1751. ]
My dear mother,
If you will sit down and calmly listen to what I say, you shall be
fully resolved in every one of those many questions you have asked me.
I went to Cork and converted my horse, which you prize so much higher
than Fiddleback, into cash, took my passage in a ship bound for
America, and, at the same time, paid the captain for my freight and
all the other expenses of my voyage. But it so happened that the wind
did not answer for three weeks; and you know, mother, that I could not
command the elements. My misfortune was, that, when the wind served, I
happened to be with a party in the country, and my friend the captain
never inquired after me, but set sail with as much indifference as if
I had been on board. The remainder of my time I employed in the city
and its environs, viewing everything curious; and you know no one can
starve while he has money in his pocket.
Reduced, however, to my last two guineas, I began to think of my
dear mother and friends whom I had left behind me, and so bought
that generous beast Fiddleback, and made adieu to Cork with only five
shillings in my pocket. This, to be sure, was but a scanty allowance
for man and horse towards a journey of above a hundred miles; but I
did not despair, for I knew I must find friends on the road.
I recollected particularly an old and faithful acquaintance I made at
college, who had often and earnestly pressed me to spend a summer
with him, and he lived but eight miles from Cork. This circumstance
of vicinity he would expatiate on to me with peculiar emphasis. 'We
shall,' says he, 'enjoy the delights of both city and country, and you
shall command my stable and my purse. '
However, upon the way, I met a poor woman all in tears, who told me
her husband had been arrested for a debt he was not able to pay, and
that his eight children must now starve, bereaved as they were of his
industry, which had been their only support. I thought myself at home,
being not far from my good friend's house, and therefore parted with
a moiety of all my store; and pray, mother, ought I not to have given
her the other half-crown, for what she got would be of little use to
her? However, I soon arrived at the mansion of my affectionate friend,
guarded by the vigilance of a huge mastiff, who flew at me, and
would have torn me to pieces but for the assistance of a woman, whose
countenance was not less grim than that of the dog; yet she with great
humanity relieved me from the jaws of this Cerberus, and was prevailed
on to carry up my name to her master.
Without suffering me to wait long, my old friend, who was then
recovering from a severe fit of sickness, came down in his nightcap,
nightgown, and slippers, and embraced me with the most cordial
welcome, showed me in, and after giving me a history of his
indisposition, assured me that he considered himself peculiarly
fortunate in having under his roof the man he most loved on earth, and
whose stay with him must, above all things, contribute to his perfect
recovery. I now repented sorely I had not given the poor woman the
other half-crown, as I thought all my bills of humanity would be
punctually answered by this worthy man. I revealed to him my whole
soul; I opened to him all my distresses; and freely owned that I
had but one half-crown in my pocket; but that now, like a ship after
weathering out the storm, I considered myself secure in a safe and
hospitable harbour. He made no answer, but walked about the room,
rubbing his hands as one in deep study. This I imputed to the
sympathetic feelings of a tender heart, which increased my esteem for
him, and as that increased, I gave the most favourable interpretation
to his silence. I construed it into delicacy of sentiment, as if he
dreaded to wound my pride by expressing his commiseration in words,
leaving his generous conduct to speak for itself.
It now approached six o'clock in the evening; and as I had eaten no
breakfast, and as my spirits were raised, my appetite for dinner grew
uncommonly keen. At length the old woman came into the room with two
plates, one spoon, and a dirty cloth which she laid upon the table.
This appearance, without increasing my spirits, did not diminish my
appetite. My protectress soon returned with a small bowl of sago, a
small porringer of sour milk, a loaf of stale brown bread, and
the heel of an old cheese all over crawling with mites. My friend
apologized that his illness obliged him to live on slops, and that
better fare was not in the house; observing, at the same time, that
a milk diet was certainly the most healthful; and at eight o'clock he
again recommended a regular life, declaring that for his part he would
lie down with the lamb and rise with the lark. My hunger was at this
time so exceedingly sharp that I wished for another slice of the loaf,
but was obliged to go to bed without even that refreshment.
This lenten entertainment I had received made me resolve to depart as
soon as possible; accordingly, next morning, when I spoke of going,
he did not oppose my resolution; he rather commended my design, adding
some very sage counsel upon the occasion. 'To be sure,' said he, 'the
longer you stay away from your mother, the more you will grieve her
and your other friends; and possibly they are already afflicted at
hearing of this foolish expedition you have made. ' Notwithstanding all
this, and without any hope of softening such a sordid heart, I again
renewed the tale of my distress, and asking 'how he thought I could
travel above a hundred miles upon one half-crown? ' I begged to borrow
a single guinea, which I assured him should be repaid with thanks.
'And you know, sir,' said I, 'it is no more than I have often done for
you. ' To which he firmly answered, 'Why, look you, Mr. Goldsmith, that
is neither here nor there. I have paid you all you ever lent me, and
this sickness of mine has left me bare of cash. But I have bethought
myself of a conveyance for you; sell your horse, and I will furnish
you with a much better one to ride on. ' I readily grasped at his
proposal, and begged to see the nag; on which he led me to his
bedchamber, and from under the bed he pulled out a stout oak stick.
'Here he is,' said he; 'take this in your hand, and it will carry you
to your mother's with more safety than such a horse as you ride. ' I
was in doubt, when I got it into my hand, whether I should not in the
first place apply it to his pate; but a rap at the street-door
made the wretch fly to it, and when I returned to the parlour,
he introduced me, as if nothing of the kind had happened, to the
gentleman who entered, as Mr. Goldsmith, his most ingenious and worthy
friend, of whom he had so often heard him speak with rapture. I could
scarcely compose myself; and must have betrayed indignation in my mien
to the stranger, who was a counsellor-at-law in the neighbourhood, a
man of engaging aspect and polite address.
After spending an hour, he asked my friend and me to dine with him at
his house. This I declined at first, as I wished to have no further
communication with my hospitable friend; but at the solicitation of
both I at last consented, determined as I was by two motives; one,
that I was prejudiced in favour of the looks and manner of the
counsellor; and the other, that I stood in need of a comfortable
dinner. And there, indeed, I found everything that I could wish,
abundance without profusion, and elegance without affectation. In the
evening, when my old friend, who had eaten very plentifully at his
neighbour's table, but talked again of lying down with the lamb, made
a motion to me for retiring, our generous host requested I should take
a bed with him, upon which I plainly told my old friend that he might
go home and take care of the horse he had given me, but that I should
never re-enter his doors. He went away with a laugh, leaving me to
add this to the other little things the counsellor already knew of his
plausible neighbour.
And now, my dear mother, I found sufficient to reconcile me to all
my follies; for here I spent three whole days. The counsellor had
two sweet girls to his daughters, who played enchantingly on the
harpsichord; and yet it was but a melancholy pleasure I felt the first
time I heard them: for that being the first time also that either of
them had touched the instrument since their mother's death, I saw
the tears in silence trickle down their father's cheeks. I every day
endeavoured to go away, but every day was pressed and obliged to stay.
On my going, the counsellor offered me his purse, with a horse and
servant to convey me home; but the latter I declined, and only took a
guinea to bear my necessary expenses on the road.
TO ROBERT BRYANTON
_In Scotland_
Edinburgh, 26 _Sept. _ 1753
MY DEAR BOB,
How many good excuses (and you know I was ever good at an excuse)
might I call up to vindicate my past shameful silence! I might tell
how I wrote a long letter on my first coming hither, and seem vastly
angry at my not receiving an answer; I might allege that business
(with business you know I was always pestered) had never given me
time to finger a pen--but I suppress those and twenty more equally
plausible, and as easily invented, since they might be attended with
a slight inconvenience of being known to be lies. Let me then speak
truth. An hereditary indolence (I have it from the mother's side) has
hitherto prevented my writing to you, and still prevents my writing
at least twenty-five letters more, due to my friends in Ireland.
