My thoughts are at present employed in
guessing
the reason of your
silence; you must not expect that I should tell you anything, if I had
anything to tell.
silence; you must not expect that I should tell you anything, if I had
anything to tell.
Selection of English Letters
Of all the troubles, do not decline,
as many people do, that of thinking.
TO THE SAME
_Public speaking_
London, 9 _Dec_. o. s. 1749.
DEAR BOY,
It is now above forty years since I have never spoken nor written
one single word, without giving myself at least one moment's time to
consider, whether it was a good one or a bad one, and whether I could
not find out a better in its place. An unharmonious and rugged period,
at this time, shocks my ears; and I, like all the rest of the world,
will willingly exchange and give up some degree of rough sense, for
a good degree of pleasing sound. I will freely and truly own to you,
without either vanity or false modesty, that whatever reputation I
have acquired as a speaker, is more owing to my constant attention to
my diction than to my matter, which was necessarily just the same as
other people's. When you come into parliament, your reputation as a
speaker will depend much more upon your words, and your periods than
upon the subject. The same matter occurs equally to everybody of
common sense, upon the same question: the dressing it well, is what
excites the attention and admiration of the audience.
It is in parliament that I have set my heart upon your making a
figure; it is there that I want to have you justly proud of yourself,
and to make me justly proud of you. This means that you must be a good
speaker there; I use the word _must_, because I know you may if you
will. The vulgar, who are always mistaken, look upon a speaker and a
comet with the same astonishment and admiration, taking them both for
preternatural phenomena. This error discourages many young men from
attempting that character; and good speakers are willing to have their
talent considered as something very extraordinary, if not a peculiar
gift of God to his elect. But, let you and I analyze and simplify this
good speaker; let us strip him of those adventitious plumes with which
his own pride and the ignorance of others have decked him; and we
shall find the true definition of him to be no more than this: a
man of good common sense, who reasons justly, and expresses himself
elegantly, on that subject upon which he speaks. There is, surely, no
witchcraft in this. A man of sense, without a superior and astonishing
degree of parts, will not talk nonsense upon any subject; nor will he,
if he has the least taste or application, talk inelegantly. What then
does all this mighty art and mystery of speaking in parliament amount
to? Why, no more than this, that the man who speaks in the House
of Commons, speaks in that house, and to four hundred people, that
opinion upon a given subject which he would make no difficulty of
speaking in any house in England, round the fire, or at table, to
any fourteen people whatsoever; better judges, perhaps, and severer
critics of what he says, than any fourteen gentlemen of the House of
Commons.
I have spoken frequently in parliament, and not always without some
applause; and therefore I can assure you, from my experience, that
there is very little in it. The elegancy of the style and the turn of
the periods make the chief impression upon the hearers. Give them but
one or two round and harmonious periods in a speech, which they will
retain and repeat, and they will go home as well satisfied as people
do from an opera, humming all the way one or two favourite tunes that
have struck their ears, and were easily caught. Most people have ears,
but few have judgement; tickle those ears, and, depend upon it, you
will catch their judgements, such as they are.
Cicero, conscious that he was at the top of his profession (for in
his time eloquence was a profession), in order to set himself off,
defines, in his treatise _de Oratore_, an orator to be such a man as
never was, or never will be; and, by this fallacious argument, says
that he must know every art and science whatsoever, or how shall he
speak upon them? But with submission to so great an authority, my
definition of an orator is extremely different from, and I believe
much truer than, his. I call that man an orator who reasons justly,
and expresses himself elegantly, upon whatever subjects he treats.
Problems in geometry, equations in algebra, processes in chemistry,
and experiments in anatomy, are never, that I have heard of, the
objects of eloquence; and therefore I humbly conceive that a man may
be a very fine speaker, and yet know nothing of geometry, algebra,
chemistry, or anatomy. The subjects of all parliamentary debates are
subjects of common sense singly.
Thus I write whatever occurs to me, that I think may contribute either
to form or inform you. May my labour not be in vain! and it will not,
if you will but have half the concern for yourself that I have for
you. Adieu.
TO THE SAME
_The new Earl of Chatham_
Blackheath, 1 _Aug. _ 1766.
MY DEAR FRIEND,
The curtain was at last drawn up, the day before yesterday, and
discovered the new actors together with some of the old ones. I do not
name them to you, because to-morrow's Gazette will do it full as well
as I could. Mr. Pitt, who had _carte blanche_ given him, named every
one of them: but what would you think he named himself for? Lord Privy
Seal; and (what will astonish you, as it does every mortal here) Earl
of Chatham. The joke here is, that he has had _a fall upstairs_, and
has done himself so much hurt, that he will never be able to stand
upon his legs again. Everybody is puzzled how to account for this
step; though it would not be the first time that great abilities have
been duped by low cunning. But be it what it will, he is now certainly
only Earl of Chatham; and no longer Mr. Pitt, in any respect whatever.
Such an event, I believe, was never read nor heard of. To withdraw,
in the fullness of his power, and in the utmost gratification of his
ambition, from the House of Commons, (which procured him his power,
and which could alone ensure it to him) and to go into that hospital
of incurables, the House of Lords, is a measure so unaccountable, that
nothing but proof positive could have made me believe it: but true it
is. Hans Stanley is to go ambassador to Russia; and my nephew, Ellis,
to Spain, decorated with the red ribband. Lord Shelburne is your
secretary of state, which I suppose he has notified to you this post
by a circular letter. Charles Townshend has now the sole management of
the House of Commons; but how long he will be content to be only Lord
Chatham's viceregent there, is a question which I will not pretend
to decide. There is one very bad sign for Lord Chatham in his new
dignity; which is, that all his enemies, without exception, rejoice at
it; and all his friends are stupefied and dumb-founded. If I mistake
not much, he will in the course of a year enjoy perfect _otium cum
dignitate_. Enough of politics.
Is the fair, or at least the fat Miss C---- with you still? It must
be confessed that she knows the art of courts, to be so received at
Dresden and so connived at in Leicester-fields.
There never was so wet a summer as this has been, in the memory of
man; we have not had one single day, since March, without some rain;
but most days a great deal. I hope that does not affect your health,
as great cold does; for with all these inundations it has not been
cold. God bless you!
SAMUEL JOHNSON
1709-1784
To BENNET LANGTON
_Postponement of a visit_
6 _May_, 1755.
SIR,
It has been long observed, that men do not suspect faults which
they do not commit; your own elegance of manners, and punctuality of
complaisance, did not suffer you to impute to me that negligence
of which I was guilty, and [for] which I have not since atoned.
I received both your letters, and received them with pleasure
proportioned to the esteem which so short an acquaintance strongly
impressed, and which I hope to confirm by nearer knowledge, though I
am afraid that gratification will be for a time withheld.
I have, indeed, published my book, of which I beg to know your
father's judgment, and yours; and I have now stayed long enough to
watch its progress in the world. It has, you see, no patrons, and
I think has yet had no opponents, except the critics of the
coffee-house, whose outcries are soon dispersed into the air, and are
thought on no more. From this, therefore, I am at liberty, and think
of taking the opportunity of this interval to make an excursion, and
why not then into Lincolnshire? or, to mention a stronger attraction,
why not to dear Mr. Langton? I will give the true reason, which I know
you will approve:--I have a mother more than eighty years old, who has
counted the days to the publication of my book, in hopes of seeing me;
and to her, if I can disengage myself here, I resolve to go.
As I know, dear sir, that to delay my visit for a reason like this
will not deprive me of your esteem, I beg it may not lessen your
kindness. I have very seldom received an offer of friendship which I
so earnestly desire to cultivate and mature. I shall rejoice to hear
from you, till I can see you, and will see you as soon as I can; for
when the duty that calls me to Lichfield is discharged, my inclination
will carry me to Langton. I shall delight to hear the ocean roar, or
see the stars twinkle, in the company of men to whom Nature does not
spread her volumes or utter her voice in vain.
Do not, dear sir, make the slowness of this letter a precedent
for delay, or imagine that I approved the incivility that I have
committed; for I have known you enough to love you, and sincerely to
wish a further knowledge; and I assure you once more, that to live in
a house that contains such a father and such a son, will be accounted
a very uncommon degree of pleasure by, dear sir, your most obliged and
most humble servant.
TO MISS PORTER
_A mother's death_
23 _Jan. _ 1759.
You will conceive my sorrow for the loss of my mother, of the best
mother. If she were to live again, surely I should behave better to
her. But she is happy, and what is past is nothing to her; and for me,
since I cannot repair my faults to her, I hope repentance will
efface them. I return you and all those that have been good to her
my sincerest thanks, and pray God to repay you all with infinite
advantage. Write to me and comfort me, dear child. I shall be glad
likewise, if Kitty will write to me. I shall send a bill of twenty
pounds in a few days, which I thought to have brought to my mother;
but God suffered it not. I have not power or composure to say much
more. God bless you, and bless us all.
To JOSEPH BARETTI
_A letter of counsel_
21 _Dec. _ 1762.
SIR,
You are not to suppose, with all your conviction of my idleness, that
I have passed all this time without writing to my Baretti. I gave
a letter to Mr. Beauclerk, who, in my opinion, and in his own, was
hastening to Naples for the recovery of his health; but he has stopped
at Paris, and I know not when he will proceed. Langton is with him.
I will not trouble you with speculations about peace and war. The good
or ill success of battles and embassies extends itself to a very small
part of domestic life: we all have good and evil, which we feel more
sensibly than our petty part of public miscarriage or prosperity. I am
sorry for your disappointment, with which you seem more touched than
I should expect a man of your resolution and experience to have been,
did I not know that general truths are seldom applied to particular
occasions; so that the fallacy of our self-love extends itself as wide
as our interest and affections. Every man believes that mistresses are
unfaithful, and patrons capricious; but he excepts his own mistress
and his own patron. We have all learned that greatness is negligent
and contemptuous, and that in courts, life is often languished away in
ungratified expectation; but he that approaches greatness, or glitters
in a court, imagines that destiny has at last exempted him from the
common lot.
Do not let such evils overwhelm you as thousands have suffered and
thousands have surmounted; but turn your thoughts with vigour to
some other plan of life, and keep always in your mind that, with due
submission to Providence, a man of genius has been seldom ruined but
by himself. Your patron's weakness or insensibility will finally do
you little hurt, if he is not assisted by your own passions. Of your
love I know not the propriety, nor can estimate the power; but in
love, as in every other passion, of which hope is the essence, we
ought always to remember the uncertainty of events. There is indeed
nothing that so much seduces reason from her vigilance, as the thought
of passing life with an amiable woman; and if all would happen that
a lover fancies, I know not what other terrestrial happiness would
deserve pursuit. But love and marriage are different states. Those who
are to suffer the evils together, and to suffer often for the sakes of
one another, soon lose that tenderness of look and that benevolence
of mind which arose from the participation of unmingled pleasure and
successive amusement. A woman we are sure will not be always fair,
we are not sure she will always be virtuous; and man cannot retain
through life that respect and assiduity by which he pleases for a day
or for a month. I do not however pretend to have discovered that life
has anything more to be desired than a prudent and virtuous marriage;
therefore know not what counsel to give you.
If you can quit your imagination of love and greatness, and leave your
hopes of preferment and bridal raptures to try once more the fortune
of literature and industry, the way through France is now open. We
flatter ourselves that we shall cultivate with great diligence the
arts of peace; and every man will be welcome among us who can teach
us anything we do not know. For your part, you will find all your old
friends willing to receive you. . . .
To MRS. THRALE
_Travel in Scotland_
Skye, 21 _Sept. _ 1773.
DEAREST MADAM,
I am so vexed at the necessity of sending yesterday so short a letter,
that I purpose to get a long letter beforehand by writing something
every day, which I may the more easily do, as a cold makes me now too
deaf to take the usual pleasure in conversation. Lady Macleod is very
good to me, and the place at which we now are, is equal in strength of
situation, in the wildness of the adjacent country, and in the plenty
and elegance of the domestic entertainment, to a castle in Gothic
romances. The sea with a little island is before us; cascades play
within view. Close to the house is the formidable skeleton of an old
castle probably Danish, and the whole mass of building stands upon
a protuberance of rock, inaccessible till of late but by a pair of
stairs on the sea side, and secure in ancient times against any enemy
that was likely to invade the kingdom of Skye.
Macleod has offered me an island; if it were not too far off I should
hardly refuse it: my island would be pleasanter than Brighthelmstone,
if you and my master could come to it; but I cannot think it pleasant
to live quite alone.
Oblitusque meorum, obliviscendus et illis.
That I should be elated by the dominion of an island to forgetfulness
of my friends at Streatham I cannot believe, and I hope never to
deserve that they should be willing to forget me.
It has happened that I have been often recognised in my journey
where I did not expect it. At Aberdeen I found one of my acquaintance
professor of physic; turning aside to dine with a country gentleman, I
was owned at table by one who had seen me at a philosophical lecture;
at Macdonald's I was claimed by a naturalist, who wanders about the
islands to pick up curiosities; and I had once in London attracted the
notice of Lady Macleod. I will now go on with my account.
The Highland girl made tea, and looked and talked not inelegantly; her
father was by no means an ignorant or a weak man; there were books in
the cottage, among which were some volumes of Prideaux's _Connection_:
this man's conversation we were glad of while we stayed. He had been
_out_, as they call it, in forty-five, and still retained his old
opinions. He was going to America, because his rent was raised beyond
what he thought himself able to pay.
At night our beds were made, but we had some difficulty in persuading
ourselves to lie down in them, though we had put on our own sheets;
at last we ventured, and I slept very soundly in the vale of Glen
Morrison, amidst the rocks and mountains. Next morning our landlord
liked us so well, that he walked some miles with us for our company,
through a country so wild and barren that the proprietor does not,
with all his pressure upon his tenants, raise more than four hundred
pounds a year for near one hundred square miles or sixty thousand
acres. He let us know that he had forty head of black cattle, an
hundred goats, and an hundred sheep, upon a farm that he remembered
let at five pounds a year, but for which he now paid twenty. He told
us some stories of their march into England. At last he left us,
and we went forward, winding among mountains, sometimes green and
sometimes naked, commonly so steep as not easily to be climbed by
the greatest vigour and activity: our way was often crossed by little
rivulets, and we were entertained with small streams trickling from
the rocks, which after heavy rains must be tremendous torrents.
About noon we came to a small glen, so they call a valley, which
compared with other places appeared rich and fertile; here our guides
desired us to stop, that the horses might graze, for the journey
was very laborious, and no more grass would be found. We made no
difficulty of compliance, and I sat down to take notes on a green
bank, with a small stream running at my feet, in the midst of savage
solitude, with mountains before me, and on either hand covered with
heath. I looked around me, and wondered that I was not more affected,
but the mind is not at all times equally ready to be put in motion;
if my mistress and master and Queeny had been there we should have
produced some reflections among us, either poetical or philosophical,
for though _solitude be the nurse of woe_, conversation is often the
parent of remarks and discoveries.
In about an hour we remounted, and pursued our journey. The lake by
which we had travelled for some time ended in a river, which we passed
by a bridge, and came to another glen, with a collection of huts,
called Auknashealds; the huts were generally built of clods of earth,
held together by the intertexture of vegetable fibres, of which earth
there are great levels in Scotland which they call mosses. Moss in
Scotland is bog in Ireland, and moss-trooper is bog-trotter: there
was, however, one hut built of loose stones, piled up with great
thickness into a strong though not solid wall. From this house we
obtained some great pails of milk, and having brought bread with us,
were very liberally regaled. The inhabitants, a very coarse tribe,
ignorant of any language but Erse, gathered so fast about us, that if
we had not had Highlanders with us, they might have caused more alarm
than pleasure; they are called the Clan of Macrae.
We had been told that nothing gratified the Highlanders so much as
snuff and tobacco, and had accordingly stored ourselves with both at
Fort Augustus. Boswell opened his treasure, and gave them each a piece
of tobacco roll. We had more bread than we could eat for the present,
and were more liberal than provident. Boswell cut it in slices, and
gave them an opportunity of tasting wheaten bread for the first time.
I then got some halfpence for a shilling, and made up the deficiencies
of Boswell's distribution, who had given some money among the
children. We then directed that the mistress of the stone house should
be asked what we must pay her: she, who perhaps had never before
sold anything but cattle, knew not, I believe, well what to ask, and
referred herself to us: we obliged her to make some demand, and one of
the Highlanders settled the account with her at a shilling. One of the
men advised her, with the cunning that clowns never can be without, to
ask more; but she said that a shilling was enough. We gave her half
a crown, and she offered part of it again. The Macraes were so well
pleased with our behaviour, that they declared it the best day they
had seen since the time of the old Laird of Macleod, who, I suppose,
like us, stopped in their valley, as he was travelling to Skye. . . .
I cannot forbear to interrupt my narrative. Boswell, with some of his
troublesome kindness, has informed this family and reminded me that
the 18th of September is my birthday. The return of my birthday, if I
remember it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general
care of humanity to escape. I can now look back upon three score
and four years, in which little has been done, and little has been
enjoyed; a life diversified by misery, spent part in the sluggishness
of penury, and part under the violence of pain, in gloomy discontent
or importunate distress. But perhaps I am better than I should have
been if I had been less afflicted. With this I will try to be content.
In proportion as there is less pleasure in retrospective
considerations, the mind is more disposed to wander forward into
futurity; but at sixty-four what promises, however liberal, of
imaginary good can futurity venture to make? Yet something will be
always promised and some promises will always be credited. I am hoping
and I am praying that I may live better in the time to come, whether
long or short, than I have yet lived, and in the solace of that
hope endeavour to repose. Dear Queeny's day is next, I hope she at
sixty-four will have less to regret. . . .
You will now expect that I should give you some account of the Isle of
Skye, of which, though I have been twelve days upon it, I have little
to say. It is an island perhaps fifty miles long, so much indented by
inlets of the sea that there is no part of it removed from the water
more than six miles. No part that I have seen is plain; you are always
climbing or descending, and every step is upon rock or mire. A walk
upon ploughed ground in England is a dance upon carpets compared to
the toilsome drudgery of wandering in Skye. There is neither town nor
village in the island, nor have I seen any house but Macleod's, that
is not much below your habitation at Brighthelmstone. In the mountains
there are stags and roebucks, but no hares, and few rabbits; nor have
I seen anything that interested me as a zoologist, except an otter,
bigger than I thought an otter could have been.
You perhaps are imagining that I am withdrawn from the gay and
the busy world into regions of peace and pastoral felicity, and am
enjoying the relics of the golden age; that I am surveying nature's
magnificence from a mountain, or remarking her minuter beauties on the
flowery bank of a winding rivulet; that I am invigorating myself in
the sunshine, or delighting my imagination with being hidden from
the invasion of human evils and human passions in the darkness of a
thicket; that I am busy in gathering shells and pebbles on the shore,
or contemplative on a rock, from which I look upon the water, and
consider how many waves are rolling between me and Streatham.
The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and
instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are. Here
are mountains which I should once have climbed, but to climb steps
is now very laborious, and to descend them dangerous; and I am now
content with knowing, that by scrambling up a rock, I shall only see
other rocks, and a wider circuit of barren desolation. Of streams, we
have here a sufficient number, but they murmur not upon pebbles, but
upon rocks. Of flowers, if Chloris herself were here, I could present
her only with the bloom of heath. Of lawns and thickets, he must read
that would know them, for here is little sun and no shade. On the sea
I look from my window, but am not much tempted to the shore; for since
I came to this island, almost every breath of air has been a storm,
and what is worse, a storm with all its severity, but without its
magnificence, for the sea is here so broken into channels that there
is not a sufficient volume of water either for lofty surges or a loud
roar. . . .
TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE EARL OF CHESTERFIELD
_Patronage_
7 _Feb_. 1775.
MY LORD,
I have been lately informed, by the proprietor of _The World_, that
two papers, in which my _Dictionary_ is recommended to the public, are
by your lordship. To be so distinguished is an honour, which, being
very little accustomed to favours from the great, I know not well how
to receive, or in what terms to acknowledge.
When, upon some slight encouragement, I first visited your lordship, I
was overpowered, like the rest of mankind, by the enchantment of your
address, and could not forbear to wish that I might boast myself _le
vainqueur du vainqueur de la terre_;--that I might obtain that regard
for which I saw the world contending; but I found my attendance so
little encouraged, that neither pride nor modesty would suffer me to
continue it. When I had once addressed your lordship in public, I
had exhausted all the art of pleasing which a retired and uncourtly
scholar can possess. I had done all I could; and no man is well
pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever so little.
Seven years, my lord, have now passed, since I waited in your outward
rooms, or was repulsed from your door; during which time I have been
pushing on my work through difficulties, of which it is useless to
complain, and have brought it at last to the verge of publication,
without one act of assistance, one word of encouragement, or one smile
of favour. Such treatment I did not expect, for I never had a patron
before.
The shepherd in _Virgil_ grew at last acquainted with Love, and found
him a native of the rocks.
Is not a patron, my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man
struggling for life in the water, and when he has reached ground,
encumbers him with help? The notice which you have been pleased to
take of my labours, had it been early had been kind; but it has
been delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till I am
solitary, and cannot impart it; till I am known, and do not want it. I
hope it is no very cynical asperity, not to confess obligations,
where no benefit has been received, or to be unwilling that the public
should consider me as owing that to a patron, which Providence has
enabled me to do for myself.
Having carried on my work thus far with so little obligation to any
favourer of learning, I shall not be disappointed though I shall
conclude it, if less be possible, with less; for I have been long
wakened from that dream of hope in which I once boasted myself with so
much exultation.
My Lord,
Your Lordship's most humble,
most obedient servant.
To JAMES BOSWELL
_A silent friend_
13 _July_, 1779.
DEAR SIR,
What can possibly have happened that keeps us two such strangers to
each other? I expected to have heard from you when you came home; I
expected afterwards. I went into the country and returned, and yet
there is no letter from Mr. Boswell. No ill, I hope, has happened; and
if ill should happen, why should it be concealed from him who loves
you? Is it a fit of humour, that has disposed you to try who can hold
out longest without writing? If it be, you have the victory. But I am
afraid of something bad; set me free from my suspicions.
My thoughts are at present employed in guessing the reason of your
silence; you must not expect that I should tell you anything, if I had
anything to tell. Write, pray write to me, and let me know what is or
what has been the cause of this long interruption.
To MRS. THRALE
_A great man's fortitude_
19 _June_, 1783.
ON Monday the 16th, I sat for my picture and walked a considerable way
with little inconvenience. In the afternoon and evening I felt myself
light and easy, and began to plan schemes of life. Thus I went to bed,
and in a short time waked and sat up, as has been long my custom,
when I felt a confusion and indistinctness in my head, which lasted,
I suppose, about half a minute. I was alarmed, and prayed God, that
however he might afflict my body, he would spare my understanding.
This prayer, that I might try the integrity of my faculties, I made in
Latin verse. The lines were not very good, but I knew them not to be
very good: I made them easily, and concluded myself to be unimpaired
in my faculties.
Soon after I perceived that I had suffered a paralytic stroke,
and that my speech was taken from me. I had no pain, and so little
dejection in this dreadful state, that I wondered at my own apathy,
and considered that perhaps death itself, when it should come, would
excite less horror than seems now to attend it.
In order to rouse the vocal organs, I took two drams. Wine has been
celebrated for the production of eloquence. I put myself into violent
motion, and I think repeated it; but all was vain. I then went to bed,
and strange as it may seem, I slept. When I saw light, it was time to
contrive what I should do. Though God stopped my speech, he left me
my hands; I enjoyed a mercy which was not granted to my dear friend
Lawrence, who now perhaps overlooks me as I am writing, and rejoices
that I have what he wanted. My first note was necessarily to my
servant, who came in talking, and could not immediately comprehend why
he should read what I put into his hands. I then wrote a card to Mr.
Allen, that I might have a discreet friend at hand, to act as occasion
should require. In penning this note I had some difficulty; my hand,
I knew not how nor why, made wrong letters. I then wrote to Dr. Taylor
to come to me, and bring Dr. Heberden: and I sent to Dr. Brocklesby,
who is my neighbour. My physicians are very friendly, and give me
great hopes; but you may imagine my situation. I have so far recovered
my vocal powers, as to repeat the Lord's Prayer with no very imperfect
articulation. My memory, I hope, yet remains as it was! but such an
attack produces solicitude for the safety of every faculty.
LAURENCE STERNE
1713-1768
To Miss LUMLEY
_The disconsolate lover_
[1740-1]
You bid me tell you, my dear L. , how I bore your departure for S----,
and whether the valley, where D'Estella stands, retains still its
looks, or if I think the roses or jessamines smell as sweet as when
you left it. Alas! everything has now lost its relish and look! The
hour you left D'Estella I took to my bed. I was worn out with fevers
of all kinds, but most by that fever of the heart with which thou
knowest well I have been wasting these two years--and shall continue
wasting till you quit S----. The good Miss S----, from the forebodings
of the best of hearts, thinking I was ill, insisted upon my going to
her. What can be the cause, my dear L. , that I never have been able to
see the face of this mutual friend, but I feel myself rent to pieces?
She made me stay an hour with her, and in that short space I burst
into tears a dozen different times, and in such affectionate gusts of
passion, that she was constrained to leave the room, and sympathize
in her dressing-room. I have been weeping for you both, said she, in
a tone of the sweetest pity--for poor L. 's heart, I have long known
it--her anguish is as sharp as yours--her heart as tender--her
constancy as great--her virtues as heroic--Heaven brought you not
together to be tormented. I could only answer her with a kind look,
and a heavy sigh, and returned home to your lodgings (which I have
hired till your return) to resign myself to misery. Fanny had prepared
me a supper--she is all attention to me--but I sat over it with tears;
a bitter sauce, my L. , but I could eat it with no other; for the
moment she began to spread my little table, my heart fainted within
me. One solitary plate, one knife, one fork, one glass! I gave a
thousand pensive, penetrating looks at the chair thou hadst so often
graced, in those quiet and sentimental repasts, then laid down my
knife and fork, and took out my handkerchief, and clapped it across
my face, and wept like a child. I could do so this very moment, my L. ;
for, as I take up my pen, my poor pulse quickens, my pale face glows,
and tears are trickling down upon the paper, as I trace the word
L----. O thou! blessed in thyself, and in thy virtues, blessed to all
that know thee--to me most so, because more do I know of thee than all
thy sex. This is the philtre, my L. , by which thou hast charmed me,
and by which thou wilt hold me thine, while virtue and faith hold this
world together. This, my friend, is the plain and simple magic, by
which I told Miss ---- I have won a place in that heart of thine, on
which I depend so satisfied, that time, or distance, or change of
everything which might alarm the hearts of little men, create no
uneasy suspense in mine. Wast thou to stay in S---- these seven
years, thy friend, though he would grieve, scorns to doubt, or to be
doubted--'tis the only exception where security is not the parent of
danger.
I told you poor Fanny was all attention to me since your
departure--contrives every day bringing in the name of L. She told
me last night (upon giving me some hartshorn), she had observed my
illness began the very day of your departure for S----; that I had
never held up my head, had seldom, or scarce ever, smiled, had fled
from all society; that she verily believed I was broken-hearted, for
she had never entered the room, or passed by the door, but she heard
me sigh heavily; that I neither eat, or slept, or took pleasure in
anything as before. Judge then, my L. , can the valley look so well,
or the roses and jessamines smell so sweet as heretofore? Ah me! but
adieu--the vesper bell calls me from thee to my GOD.
To DAVID GARRICK
_Le chevalier Shandy_
Paris, 19 _March_, 1762.
DEAR GARRICK,
This will be put into your hands by Dr. Shippen, a physician, who has
been here some time with Miss Poyntz, and is at this moment setting
out for your metropolis; so I snatch the opportunity of writing to you
and my kind friend Mrs. Garrick. I see nothing like her here, and yet
I have been introduced to one half of their best Goddesses, and in a
month more shall be admitted to the shrines of the other half; but I
neither worship or fall (much) on my knees before them; but, on the
contrary, have converted many unto Shandeism; for be it known, I
Shandy it away fifty times more than I was ever wont, talk more
nonsense than ever you heard me talk in your days--and to all sorts
of people. _Qui le diable est cet homme-là_--said Choiseul t'other
day--_ce chevalier Shandy_? You'll think me as vain as a devil, was I
to tell you the rest of the dialogue; whether the bearer knows it or
no, I know not. 'Twill serve up after supper, in Southampton-street,
amongst other small dishes, after the fatigues of Richard III. O God!
they have nothing here, which gives the nerves so smart a blow, as
those great characters in the hands of Garrick! but I forgot I
am writing to the man himself. The devil take (as he will) these
transports of enthusiasm! Apropos, the whole city of Paris is
_bewitched_ with the comic opera, and if it was not for the affair
of the Jesuits, which takes up one half of our talk, the comic opera
would have it all. It is a tragical nuisance in all companies as it
is, and was it not for some sudden starts and dashes of Shandeism,
which now and then either break the thread, or entangle it so, that
the devil himself would be puzzled in winding it off, I should die a
martyr--this by the way I never will.
I send you over some of these comic operas by the bearer, with the
_Sallon_, a satire. The French comedy, I seldom visit it--they act
scarce in anything but tragedies--and the Clairon is great, and Mile.
Dumesnil, in some places, still greater than her; yet I cannot bear
preaching--I fancy I got a surfeit of it in my younger days. There
is a tragedy to be damned to-night--peace be with it, and the gentle
brain which made it! I have ten thousand things to tell you I cannot
write, I do a thousand things which cut no figure, _but in the
doing_--and as in London, I have the honour of having done and said a
thousand things I never did or dreamed of--and yet I dream abundantly.
If the devil stood behind me in the shape of a courier, I could not
write faster than I do, having five letters more to dispatch by the
same gentleman; he is going into another section of the globe, and
when he has seen you, will depart in peace.
The Duke of Orleans has suffered my portrait to be added to the number
of some odd men in his collection; and a gentleman who lives with him
has taken it most expressively, at full length: I purpose to obtain an
etching of it, and to send it you. Your prayer for me of _rosy health_
is heard. If I stay here for three or four months, I shall return more
than reinstated. My love to Mrs. Garrick.
To MR. FOLEY AT PARIS
_An adventure on the road_
Toulouse, 14 _Aug_. 1762.
MY DEAR FOLEY,
After many turnings (_alias_ digressions), to say nothing of downright
overthrows, stops, and delays, we have arrived in three weeks at
Toulouse, and are now settled in our houses with servants, &c. , about
us, and look as composed as if we had been here seven years. In
our journey we suffered so much from the heats, it gives me pain to
remember it; I never saw a cloud from Paris to Nismes half as broad as
a twenty-four sols piece. Good God! we were toasted, roasted, grilled,
stewed and carbonaded on one side or other all the way; and being all
done enough (_assez cuits_) in the day, we were eat up at night by
bugs, and other unswept-out vermin, the legal inhabitants (if length
of possession gives right) of every inn we lay at. Can you conceive
a worse accident than that in such a journey, in the hottest day and
hour of it, four miles from either tree or shrub which could cast a
shade of the size of one of Eve's fig leaves, that we should break a
hind wheel into ten thousand pieces, and be obliged in consequence
to sit five hours on a gravelly road, without one drop of water, or
possibility of getting any? To mend the matter, my two postillions
were two dough-hearted fools, and fell a-crying. Nothing was to be
done! By heaven, quoth I, pulling off my coat and waistcoat, something
shall be done, for I'll thrash you both within an inch of your lives,
and then make you take each of you a horse, and ride like two devils
to the next post for a cart to carry my baggage, and a wheel to
carry ourselves. Our luggage weighed ten quintals. It was the fair
of Baucaire, all the world was going, or returning; we were asked by
every soul who passed by us, if we were going to the fair of Baucaire.
No wonder, quoth I, we have goods enough! _vous avez raison, mes
amis_. . . .
THOMAS GRAY
1716-1771
To RICHARD WEST
_Scenery at Tivoli_
Tivoli, 20 _May_, 1740.
This day being in the palace of his Highness the Duke of Modena, he
laid his most serene commands upon me to write to Mr. West, and said
he thought it for his glory, that I should draw up an inventory of all
his most serene possessions for the said West's perusal. Imprimis,
a house, being in circumference a quarter of a mile, two feet and an
inch; the said house containing the following particulars, to wit,
a great room. Item, another great room; item, a bigger room; item,
another room; item, a vast room; item, a sixth of the same; a seventh
ditto; an eighth as before; a ninth as above said; a tenth (see No.
1); item, ten more such, besides twenty besides, which, not to be too
particular, we shall pass over. The said rooms contain nine chairs,
two tables, five stools and a cricket. From whence we shall proceed
to the garden, containing two millions of superfine laurel hedges,
a clump of cypress trees, and half the river Teverone. --Finis. Dame
Nature desired me to put in a list of her little goods and chattels,
and, as they were small, to be very minute about them. She has built
here three or four little mountains, and laid them out in an irregular
semi-circle; from certain others behind, at a greater distance, she
has drawn a canal, into which she has put a little river of hers,
called Anio; she has cut a huge cleft between the two innermost of her
four hills, and there she has left it to its own disposal; which she
has no sooner done, but, like a heedless chit, it tumbles headlong
down a declivity fifty feet perpendicular, breaks itself all to
shatters, and is converted into a shower of rain, where the sun forms
many a bow, red, green, blue, and yellow. To get out of our metaphors
without any further trouble, it is the most noble sight in the world.
The weight of that quantity of waters, and the force they fall with,
have worn the rocks they throw themselves among into a thousand
irregular craggs, and to a vast depth. In this channel it goes boiling
along with a mighty noise till it comes to another steep, where you
see it a second time come roaring down (but first you must walk
two miles farther) a greater height than before, but not with that
quantity of waters; for by this time it has divided itself, being
crossed and opposed by the rocks, into four several streams, each of
which, in emulation of the great one, will tumble down too; and it
does tumble down, but not from an equally elevated place; so that you
have at one view all these cascades intermixed with groves of olive
and little woods, the mountains rising behind them, and on the top of
one (that which forms the extremity of one of the half-circle's horns)
is seated the town itself. At the very extremity of that extremity, on
the brink of the precipice, stands the Sybil's temple, the remains
of a little rotunda, surrounded with its portico, above half of whose
beautiful Corinthian pillars are still standing and entire; all this
on one hand. On the other, the open Campagna of Rome, here and there
a little castle on a hillock, and the city itself at the very brink of
the horizon, indistinctly seen (being eighteen miles off) except the
dome of St. Peter's; which, if you look out of your window, wherever
you are, I suppose, you can see. I did not tell you that a little
below the first fall, on the side of the rock, and hanging over that
torrent, are little ruins which they show you for Horace's house, a
curious situation to observe the
Praeceps Anio et Tiburni lucus, et uda
Mobilibus pomaria rivis.
Maecenas did not care for such a noise, it seems, and built him a
house (which they also carry one to see) so situated that it sees
nothing at all of the matter, and for anything he knew there might be
no such river in the world. Horace had another house on the other side
of the Teverone, opposite to Maecenas's; and they told us there was
a bridge of communication, by which _andava il detto Signor per
trastullarsi coll' istesso Orazio_. In coming hither we crossed the
Aquae Albulae, a vile little brook that stinks like a fury, and they
say it has stunk so these thousand years. I forgot the Piscina of
Quintilius Varus, where he used to keep certain little fishes. This
is very entire, and there is a piece of the aqueduct that supplied it
too; in the garden below is old Rome, built in little, just as it was,
they say. There are seven temples in it, and no houses at all; they
say there were none.
TO THE SAME
_A poet's melancholy_
London, 27 _May_, 1742.
Mine, you are to know is a white Melancholy, or rather Leucocholy
for the most part; which, though it seldom laughs or dances, nor ever
amounts to what one called Joy or Pleasure, yet is a good easy sort
of a state, and _ça ne laisse que de s'amuser. _ The only fault is its
insipidity; which is apt now and then to give a sort of Ennui, which
makes one form certain little wishes that signify nothing. But there
is another sort, black indeed, which I have now and then felt, that
has somewhat in it like Tertullian's rule of faith, _Credo quia
impossibile est_; for it believes, nay, is sure of everything that is
unlikely, so it be but frightful; and on the other hand excludes and
shuts its eyes to the most possible hopes, and everything that is
pleasurable; from this the Lord deliver us! for none but he and
sunshiny weather can do it. In hopes of enjoying this kind of weather
I am going into the country for a few weeks, but shall be never the
nearer any society; so, if you have any charity, you will continue to
write. My life is like Harry the Fourth's supper of Hens, 'Poulets à
la broche, Poulets en Ragoût, Poulets en Hâchis, Poulets en Fricassées
'. Reading here, Reading there; nothing but books with different
sauces. Do not let me lose my desert then; for though that be Reading
too, yet it has a very different flavour. The May seems to be come
since your invitation; and I propose to bask in her beams and dress me
in her roses.
Et caput in verna semper habere rosa.
I shall see Mr. ---- and his Wife, nay, and his Child, too, for he has
got a Boy. Is it not odd to consider one's Cotemporaries in the grave
light of Husband and Father? There is my lords Sandwich and Halifax,
they are Statesmen: Do not you remember them dirty boys playing at
cricket? As for me, I am never a bit the older, nor the bigger, nor
the wiser than I was then: no, not for having been beyond sea. Pray,
how are you? . . .
To HORACE WALPOLE
_The fate of Selima_
Cambridge, 1 _March_, 1747.
As one ought to be particularly careful to avoid blunders in a
compliment of condolence, it would be a sensible satisfaction to
me (before I testify my sorrow, and the sincere part I take in your
misfortune) to know for certain, who it is that I lament. I knew Zara
and Selima (Selima, was it? or Fatima? ) or rather I knew both of them
together; for I cannot justly say which was which. Then as to your
handsome Cat, the name you distinguished her by, I am no less at a
loss, as well knowing one's handsome cat is always the cat one likes
best; or if one be alive and the other dead, it is usually the latter
that is the handsomest. Besides, if the point were never so clear, I
hope you do not think me so ill-bred or so imprudent as to forfeit all
my interest in the survivor; Oh no! I would rather seem to mistake,
and to be sure it must be the tabby one that had met with this sad
accident. Till this affair is a little better determined, you will
excuse me if I do not begin to cry:
Tempus inane peto, requiem, spatiumque doloris.
Which interval is the more convenient, as it gives time to rejoice
with you on your new honours. This is only a beginning; I reckon next
week we shall hear you are a free-Mason, or a Gormorgon at least.
Heigh ho! I feel (as you to be sure have done long since) that I have
very little to say, at least in prose. Somebody will be the better for
it; I do not mean you, but your Cat, feuë Mademoiselle Selime, whom I
am about to immortalize for one week or fortnight, as follows.
. . . There's a poem for you, it is rather too long for an Epitaph.
TO THE SAME
_Publication of the Elegy_
Cambridge, 11 _Feb_. 1751.
As you have brought me into a little sort of distress, you must assist
me, I believe, to get out of it as well as I can. Yesterday I had
the misfortune of receiving a letter from certain gentlemen (as their
bookseller expresses it), who have taken the _Magazine of Magazines_
into their hands. They tell me that an _ingenious_ poem, called
_Reflections in a Country Churchyard_, has been communicated to them,
which they are printing forthwith; that they are informed that the
_excellent_ author of it is I by name, and that they beg not only his
_indulgence_, but the _honour_ of his correspondence, &c. As I am not
at all disposed to be either so indulgent, or so correspondent, as
they desire, I have but one bad way left to escape the honour they
would inflict upon me; and, therefore, am obliged to desire you would
make Dodsley print it immediately (which may be done in less than a
week's time) from your copy, but without my name, in what form is
most convenient for him, but on his best paper and character; he must
correct the press himself, and print it without any interval between
the stanzas, because the sense is in some places continued
beyond them; and the title must be,--_Elegy, written in a Country
Churchyard_. If he would add a line or two to say it came into
his hands by accident, I should like it better. If you behold the
_Magazine of Magazines_ in the light that I do, you will not refuse to
give yourself this trouble on my account, which you have taken of your
own accord before now. If Dodsley do not do this immediately, he may
as well let it alone.
TO THE SAME
_At Burnham_
[Burnham,] _Sept_. 1737.
I was hindered in my last, and so could not give you all the trouble
I would have done. The description of a road, which your coach wheels
have so often honoured, it would be needless to give you; suffice
it that I arrived safe at my uncle's, who is a great hunter in
imagination; his dogs take up every chair in the house, so I am forced
to stand at this present writing; and though the gout forbids him
galloping after them in the field, yet he continues to regale his ears
and nose with their comfortable noise and stink. He holds me mighty
cheap, I perceive, for walking when I should ride, and reading when
I should hunt. My comfort amidst all this is, that I have at the
distance of half a mile, through a green lane, a forest (the vulgar
call it a common) all my own, at least as good as so, for I spy no
human thing in it but myself. It is a little chaos of mountains and
precipices; mountains, it is true, that do not ascend much above the
clouds, nor are the declivities quite so amazing as Dover Cliff; but
just such hills as people who love their necks as well as I do may
venture to climb, and crags that give the eye as much pleasure as if
they were more dangerous. Both vale and hill are covered with most
venerable beeches, and other very reverend vegetables, that, like most
other ancient people, are always dreaming out their old stories to the
winds.
_And as they bow their hoary tops relate,
In murm'ring sounds, the dark decrees of fate;
While visions, as poetic eyes avow,
Cling to each leaf, and swarm on every bough. _
At the foot of one of these squats ME I (_ilpenseroso_), and there
grow to the trunk for a whole morning. The timorous hare and sportive
squirrel gambol round me like Adam in Paradise, before he had an Eve;
but I think he did not use to read Virgil, as I commonly do there.
In this situation I often converse with my Horace, aloud too, that is
talk to you, but I do not remember that I ever heard you answer me.
I beg pardon for taking all the conversation to myself, but it is
entirely your own fault. . . .
To THE REV. WILLIAM MASON
_The Laureateship_
19 _Dec_. 1757.
DEAR MASON,
Though I very well know the bland emollient saponaceous qualities both
of sack and silver, yet if any great man would say to me, 'I make you
Rat-catcher to his Majesty, with a salary of £300 a-year and two butts
of the best Malaga; and though it has been usual to catch a mouse or
two, for form's sake, in public once a year, yet to you, sir, we shall
not stand on these things,' I cannot say I should jump at it; nay, if
they would drop the very name of the office, and call me Sinecure
to the King's Majesty, I should feel a little awkward, and think
everybody I saw smelt a rat about me; but I do not pretend to blame
any one else that has not the same sensations; for my part, I would
rather be serjeant trumpeter or pinmaker to the palace. Nevertheless
I interest myself a little in the history of it, and rather wish
somebody may accept it who will retrieve the credit of the thing, if
it be retrieveable, or ever had any credit. Rowe was, I think, the
last man of character that had it. As to Settle, whom you mention,
he belonged to my lord mayor, not to the King. Eusden was a person
of great hopes in his youth, though at last he turned out a drunken
person. Dryden was as disgraceful to the office from his character,
as the poorest scribbler could have been from his verses.
as many people do, that of thinking.
TO THE SAME
_Public speaking_
London, 9 _Dec_. o. s. 1749.
DEAR BOY,
It is now above forty years since I have never spoken nor written
one single word, without giving myself at least one moment's time to
consider, whether it was a good one or a bad one, and whether I could
not find out a better in its place. An unharmonious and rugged period,
at this time, shocks my ears; and I, like all the rest of the world,
will willingly exchange and give up some degree of rough sense, for
a good degree of pleasing sound. I will freely and truly own to you,
without either vanity or false modesty, that whatever reputation I
have acquired as a speaker, is more owing to my constant attention to
my diction than to my matter, which was necessarily just the same as
other people's. When you come into parliament, your reputation as a
speaker will depend much more upon your words, and your periods than
upon the subject. The same matter occurs equally to everybody of
common sense, upon the same question: the dressing it well, is what
excites the attention and admiration of the audience.
It is in parliament that I have set my heart upon your making a
figure; it is there that I want to have you justly proud of yourself,
and to make me justly proud of you. This means that you must be a good
speaker there; I use the word _must_, because I know you may if you
will. The vulgar, who are always mistaken, look upon a speaker and a
comet with the same astonishment and admiration, taking them both for
preternatural phenomena. This error discourages many young men from
attempting that character; and good speakers are willing to have their
talent considered as something very extraordinary, if not a peculiar
gift of God to his elect. But, let you and I analyze and simplify this
good speaker; let us strip him of those adventitious plumes with which
his own pride and the ignorance of others have decked him; and we
shall find the true definition of him to be no more than this: a
man of good common sense, who reasons justly, and expresses himself
elegantly, on that subject upon which he speaks. There is, surely, no
witchcraft in this. A man of sense, without a superior and astonishing
degree of parts, will not talk nonsense upon any subject; nor will he,
if he has the least taste or application, talk inelegantly. What then
does all this mighty art and mystery of speaking in parliament amount
to? Why, no more than this, that the man who speaks in the House
of Commons, speaks in that house, and to four hundred people, that
opinion upon a given subject which he would make no difficulty of
speaking in any house in England, round the fire, or at table, to
any fourteen people whatsoever; better judges, perhaps, and severer
critics of what he says, than any fourteen gentlemen of the House of
Commons.
I have spoken frequently in parliament, and not always without some
applause; and therefore I can assure you, from my experience, that
there is very little in it. The elegancy of the style and the turn of
the periods make the chief impression upon the hearers. Give them but
one or two round and harmonious periods in a speech, which they will
retain and repeat, and they will go home as well satisfied as people
do from an opera, humming all the way one or two favourite tunes that
have struck their ears, and were easily caught. Most people have ears,
but few have judgement; tickle those ears, and, depend upon it, you
will catch their judgements, such as they are.
Cicero, conscious that he was at the top of his profession (for in
his time eloquence was a profession), in order to set himself off,
defines, in his treatise _de Oratore_, an orator to be such a man as
never was, or never will be; and, by this fallacious argument, says
that he must know every art and science whatsoever, or how shall he
speak upon them? But with submission to so great an authority, my
definition of an orator is extremely different from, and I believe
much truer than, his. I call that man an orator who reasons justly,
and expresses himself elegantly, upon whatever subjects he treats.
Problems in geometry, equations in algebra, processes in chemistry,
and experiments in anatomy, are never, that I have heard of, the
objects of eloquence; and therefore I humbly conceive that a man may
be a very fine speaker, and yet know nothing of geometry, algebra,
chemistry, or anatomy. The subjects of all parliamentary debates are
subjects of common sense singly.
Thus I write whatever occurs to me, that I think may contribute either
to form or inform you. May my labour not be in vain! and it will not,
if you will but have half the concern for yourself that I have for
you. Adieu.
TO THE SAME
_The new Earl of Chatham_
Blackheath, 1 _Aug. _ 1766.
MY DEAR FRIEND,
The curtain was at last drawn up, the day before yesterday, and
discovered the new actors together with some of the old ones. I do not
name them to you, because to-morrow's Gazette will do it full as well
as I could. Mr. Pitt, who had _carte blanche_ given him, named every
one of them: but what would you think he named himself for? Lord Privy
Seal; and (what will astonish you, as it does every mortal here) Earl
of Chatham. The joke here is, that he has had _a fall upstairs_, and
has done himself so much hurt, that he will never be able to stand
upon his legs again. Everybody is puzzled how to account for this
step; though it would not be the first time that great abilities have
been duped by low cunning. But be it what it will, he is now certainly
only Earl of Chatham; and no longer Mr. Pitt, in any respect whatever.
Such an event, I believe, was never read nor heard of. To withdraw,
in the fullness of his power, and in the utmost gratification of his
ambition, from the House of Commons, (which procured him his power,
and which could alone ensure it to him) and to go into that hospital
of incurables, the House of Lords, is a measure so unaccountable, that
nothing but proof positive could have made me believe it: but true it
is. Hans Stanley is to go ambassador to Russia; and my nephew, Ellis,
to Spain, decorated with the red ribband. Lord Shelburne is your
secretary of state, which I suppose he has notified to you this post
by a circular letter. Charles Townshend has now the sole management of
the House of Commons; but how long he will be content to be only Lord
Chatham's viceregent there, is a question which I will not pretend
to decide. There is one very bad sign for Lord Chatham in his new
dignity; which is, that all his enemies, without exception, rejoice at
it; and all his friends are stupefied and dumb-founded. If I mistake
not much, he will in the course of a year enjoy perfect _otium cum
dignitate_. Enough of politics.
Is the fair, or at least the fat Miss C---- with you still? It must
be confessed that she knows the art of courts, to be so received at
Dresden and so connived at in Leicester-fields.
There never was so wet a summer as this has been, in the memory of
man; we have not had one single day, since March, without some rain;
but most days a great deal. I hope that does not affect your health,
as great cold does; for with all these inundations it has not been
cold. God bless you!
SAMUEL JOHNSON
1709-1784
To BENNET LANGTON
_Postponement of a visit_
6 _May_, 1755.
SIR,
It has been long observed, that men do not suspect faults which
they do not commit; your own elegance of manners, and punctuality of
complaisance, did not suffer you to impute to me that negligence
of which I was guilty, and [for] which I have not since atoned.
I received both your letters, and received them with pleasure
proportioned to the esteem which so short an acquaintance strongly
impressed, and which I hope to confirm by nearer knowledge, though I
am afraid that gratification will be for a time withheld.
I have, indeed, published my book, of which I beg to know your
father's judgment, and yours; and I have now stayed long enough to
watch its progress in the world. It has, you see, no patrons, and
I think has yet had no opponents, except the critics of the
coffee-house, whose outcries are soon dispersed into the air, and are
thought on no more. From this, therefore, I am at liberty, and think
of taking the opportunity of this interval to make an excursion, and
why not then into Lincolnshire? or, to mention a stronger attraction,
why not to dear Mr. Langton? I will give the true reason, which I know
you will approve:--I have a mother more than eighty years old, who has
counted the days to the publication of my book, in hopes of seeing me;
and to her, if I can disengage myself here, I resolve to go.
As I know, dear sir, that to delay my visit for a reason like this
will not deprive me of your esteem, I beg it may not lessen your
kindness. I have very seldom received an offer of friendship which I
so earnestly desire to cultivate and mature. I shall rejoice to hear
from you, till I can see you, and will see you as soon as I can; for
when the duty that calls me to Lichfield is discharged, my inclination
will carry me to Langton. I shall delight to hear the ocean roar, or
see the stars twinkle, in the company of men to whom Nature does not
spread her volumes or utter her voice in vain.
Do not, dear sir, make the slowness of this letter a precedent
for delay, or imagine that I approved the incivility that I have
committed; for I have known you enough to love you, and sincerely to
wish a further knowledge; and I assure you once more, that to live in
a house that contains such a father and such a son, will be accounted
a very uncommon degree of pleasure by, dear sir, your most obliged and
most humble servant.
TO MISS PORTER
_A mother's death_
23 _Jan. _ 1759.
You will conceive my sorrow for the loss of my mother, of the best
mother. If she were to live again, surely I should behave better to
her. But she is happy, and what is past is nothing to her; and for me,
since I cannot repair my faults to her, I hope repentance will
efface them. I return you and all those that have been good to her
my sincerest thanks, and pray God to repay you all with infinite
advantage. Write to me and comfort me, dear child. I shall be glad
likewise, if Kitty will write to me. I shall send a bill of twenty
pounds in a few days, which I thought to have brought to my mother;
but God suffered it not. I have not power or composure to say much
more. God bless you, and bless us all.
To JOSEPH BARETTI
_A letter of counsel_
21 _Dec. _ 1762.
SIR,
You are not to suppose, with all your conviction of my idleness, that
I have passed all this time without writing to my Baretti. I gave
a letter to Mr. Beauclerk, who, in my opinion, and in his own, was
hastening to Naples for the recovery of his health; but he has stopped
at Paris, and I know not when he will proceed. Langton is with him.
I will not trouble you with speculations about peace and war. The good
or ill success of battles and embassies extends itself to a very small
part of domestic life: we all have good and evil, which we feel more
sensibly than our petty part of public miscarriage or prosperity. I am
sorry for your disappointment, with which you seem more touched than
I should expect a man of your resolution and experience to have been,
did I not know that general truths are seldom applied to particular
occasions; so that the fallacy of our self-love extends itself as wide
as our interest and affections. Every man believes that mistresses are
unfaithful, and patrons capricious; but he excepts his own mistress
and his own patron. We have all learned that greatness is negligent
and contemptuous, and that in courts, life is often languished away in
ungratified expectation; but he that approaches greatness, or glitters
in a court, imagines that destiny has at last exempted him from the
common lot.
Do not let such evils overwhelm you as thousands have suffered and
thousands have surmounted; but turn your thoughts with vigour to
some other plan of life, and keep always in your mind that, with due
submission to Providence, a man of genius has been seldom ruined but
by himself. Your patron's weakness or insensibility will finally do
you little hurt, if he is not assisted by your own passions. Of your
love I know not the propriety, nor can estimate the power; but in
love, as in every other passion, of which hope is the essence, we
ought always to remember the uncertainty of events. There is indeed
nothing that so much seduces reason from her vigilance, as the thought
of passing life with an amiable woman; and if all would happen that
a lover fancies, I know not what other terrestrial happiness would
deserve pursuit. But love and marriage are different states. Those who
are to suffer the evils together, and to suffer often for the sakes of
one another, soon lose that tenderness of look and that benevolence
of mind which arose from the participation of unmingled pleasure and
successive amusement. A woman we are sure will not be always fair,
we are not sure she will always be virtuous; and man cannot retain
through life that respect and assiduity by which he pleases for a day
or for a month. I do not however pretend to have discovered that life
has anything more to be desired than a prudent and virtuous marriage;
therefore know not what counsel to give you.
If you can quit your imagination of love and greatness, and leave your
hopes of preferment and bridal raptures to try once more the fortune
of literature and industry, the way through France is now open. We
flatter ourselves that we shall cultivate with great diligence the
arts of peace; and every man will be welcome among us who can teach
us anything we do not know. For your part, you will find all your old
friends willing to receive you. . . .
To MRS. THRALE
_Travel in Scotland_
Skye, 21 _Sept. _ 1773.
DEAREST MADAM,
I am so vexed at the necessity of sending yesterday so short a letter,
that I purpose to get a long letter beforehand by writing something
every day, which I may the more easily do, as a cold makes me now too
deaf to take the usual pleasure in conversation. Lady Macleod is very
good to me, and the place at which we now are, is equal in strength of
situation, in the wildness of the adjacent country, and in the plenty
and elegance of the domestic entertainment, to a castle in Gothic
romances. The sea with a little island is before us; cascades play
within view. Close to the house is the formidable skeleton of an old
castle probably Danish, and the whole mass of building stands upon
a protuberance of rock, inaccessible till of late but by a pair of
stairs on the sea side, and secure in ancient times against any enemy
that was likely to invade the kingdom of Skye.
Macleod has offered me an island; if it were not too far off I should
hardly refuse it: my island would be pleasanter than Brighthelmstone,
if you and my master could come to it; but I cannot think it pleasant
to live quite alone.
Oblitusque meorum, obliviscendus et illis.
That I should be elated by the dominion of an island to forgetfulness
of my friends at Streatham I cannot believe, and I hope never to
deserve that they should be willing to forget me.
It has happened that I have been often recognised in my journey
where I did not expect it. At Aberdeen I found one of my acquaintance
professor of physic; turning aside to dine with a country gentleman, I
was owned at table by one who had seen me at a philosophical lecture;
at Macdonald's I was claimed by a naturalist, who wanders about the
islands to pick up curiosities; and I had once in London attracted the
notice of Lady Macleod. I will now go on with my account.
The Highland girl made tea, and looked and talked not inelegantly; her
father was by no means an ignorant or a weak man; there were books in
the cottage, among which were some volumes of Prideaux's _Connection_:
this man's conversation we were glad of while we stayed. He had been
_out_, as they call it, in forty-five, and still retained his old
opinions. He was going to America, because his rent was raised beyond
what he thought himself able to pay.
At night our beds were made, but we had some difficulty in persuading
ourselves to lie down in them, though we had put on our own sheets;
at last we ventured, and I slept very soundly in the vale of Glen
Morrison, amidst the rocks and mountains. Next morning our landlord
liked us so well, that he walked some miles with us for our company,
through a country so wild and barren that the proprietor does not,
with all his pressure upon his tenants, raise more than four hundred
pounds a year for near one hundred square miles or sixty thousand
acres. He let us know that he had forty head of black cattle, an
hundred goats, and an hundred sheep, upon a farm that he remembered
let at five pounds a year, but for which he now paid twenty. He told
us some stories of their march into England. At last he left us,
and we went forward, winding among mountains, sometimes green and
sometimes naked, commonly so steep as not easily to be climbed by
the greatest vigour and activity: our way was often crossed by little
rivulets, and we were entertained with small streams trickling from
the rocks, which after heavy rains must be tremendous torrents.
About noon we came to a small glen, so they call a valley, which
compared with other places appeared rich and fertile; here our guides
desired us to stop, that the horses might graze, for the journey
was very laborious, and no more grass would be found. We made no
difficulty of compliance, and I sat down to take notes on a green
bank, with a small stream running at my feet, in the midst of savage
solitude, with mountains before me, and on either hand covered with
heath. I looked around me, and wondered that I was not more affected,
but the mind is not at all times equally ready to be put in motion;
if my mistress and master and Queeny had been there we should have
produced some reflections among us, either poetical or philosophical,
for though _solitude be the nurse of woe_, conversation is often the
parent of remarks and discoveries.
In about an hour we remounted, and pursued our journey. The lake by
which we had travelled for some time ended in a river, which we passed
by a bridge, and came to another glen, with a collection of huts,
called Auknashealds; the huts were generally built of clods of earth,
held together by the intertexture of vegetable fibres, of which earth
there are great levels in Scotland which they call mosses. Moss in
Scotland is bog in Ireland, and moss-trooper is bog-trotter: there
was, however, one hut built of loose stones, piled up with great
thickness into a strong though not solid wall. From this house we
obtained some great pails of milk, and having brought bread with us,
were very liberally regaled. The inhabitants, a very coarse tribe,
ignorant of any language but Erse, gathered so fast about us, that if
we had not had Highlanders with us, they might have caused more alarm
than pleasure; they are called the Clan of Macrae.
We had been told that nothing gratified the Highlanders so much as
snuff and tobacco, and had accordingly stored ourselves with both at
Fort Augustus. Boswell opened his treasure, and gave them each a piece
of tobacco roll. We had more bread than we could eat for the present,
and were more liberal than provident. Boswell cut it in slices, and
gave them an opportunity of tasting wheaten bread for the first time.
I then got some halfpence for a shilling, and made up the deficiencies
of Boswell's distribution, who had given some money among the
children. We then directed that the mistress of the stone house should
be asked what we must pay her: she, who perhaps had never before
sold anything but cattle, knew not, I believe, well what to ask, and
referred herself to us: we obliged her to make some demand, and one of
the Highlanders settled the account with her at a shilling. One of the
men advised her, with the cunning that clowns never can be without, to
ask more; but she said that a shilling was enough. We gave her half
a crown, and she offered part of it again. The Macraes were so well
pleased with our behaviour, that they declared it the best day they
had seen since the time of the old Laird of Macleod, who, I suppose,
like us, stopped in their valley, as he was travelling to Skye. . . .
I cannot forbear to interrupt my narrative. Boswell, with some of his
troublesome kindness, has informed this family and reminded me that
the 18th of September is my birthday. The return of my birthday, if I
remember it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general
care of humanity to escape. I can now look back upon three score
and four years, in which little has been done, and little has been
enjoyed; a life diversified by misery, spent part in the sluggishness
of penury, and part under the violence of pain, in gloomy discontent
or importunate distress. But perhaps I am better than I should have
been if I had been less afflicted. With this I will try to be content.
In proportion as there is less pleasure in retrospective
considerations, the mind is more disposed to wander forward into
futurity; but at sixty-four what promises, however liberal, of
imaginary good can futurity venture to make? Yet something will be
always promised and some promises will always be credited. I am hoping
and I am praying that I may live better in the time to come, whether
long or short, than I have yet lived, and in the solace of that
hope endeavour to repose. Dear Queeny's day is next, I hope she at
sixty-four will have less to regret. . . .
You will now expect that I should give you some account of the Isle of
Skye, of which, though I have been twelve days upon it, I have little
to say. It is an island perhaps fifty miles long, so much indented by
inlets of the sea that there is no part of it removed from the water
more than six miles. No part that I have seen is plain; you are always
climbing or descending, and every step is upon rock or mire. A walk
upon ploughed ground in England is a dance upon carpets compared to
the toilsome drudgery of wandering in Skye. There is neither town nor
village in the island, nor have I seen any house but Macleod's, that
is not much below your habitation at Brighthelmstone. In the mountains
there are stags and roebucks, but no hares, and few rabbits; nor have
I seen anything that interested me as a zoologist, except an otter,
bigger than I thought an otter could have been.
You perhaps are imagining that I am withdrawn from the gay and
the busy world into regions of peace and pastoral felicity, and am
enjoying the relics of the golden age; that I am surveying nature's
magnificence from a mountain, or remarking her minuter beauties on the
flowery bank of a winding rivulet; that I am invigorating myself in
the sunshine, or delighting my imagination with being hidden from
the invasion of human evils and human passions in the darkness of a
thicket; that I am busy in gathering shells and pebbles on the shore,
or contemplative on a rock, from which I look upon the water, and
consider how many waves are rolling between me and Streatham.
The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and
instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are. Here
are mountains which I should once have climbed, but to climb steps
is now very laborious, and to descend them dangerous; and I am now
content with knowing, that by scrambling up a rock, I shall only see
other rocks, and a wider circuit of barren desolation. Of streams, we
have here a sufficient number, but they murmur not upon pebbles, but
upon rocks. Of flowers, if Chloris herself were here, I could present
her only with the bloom of heath. Of lawns and thickets, he must read
that would know them, for here is little sun and no shade. On the sea
I look from my window, but am not much tempted to the shore; for since
I came to this island, almost every breath of air has been a storm,
and what is worse, a storm with all its severity, but without its
magnificence, for the sea is here so broken into channels that there
is not a sufficient volume of water either for lofty surges or a loud
roar. . . .
TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE EARL OF CHESTERFIELD
_Patronage_
7 _Feb_. 1775.
MY LORD,
I have been lately informed, by the proprietor of _The World_, that
two papers, in which my _Dictionary_ is recommended to the public, are
by your lordship. To be so distinguished is an honour, which, being
very little accustomed to favours from the great, I know not well how
to receive, or in what terms to acknowledge.
When, upon some slight encouragement, I first visited your lordship, I
was overpowered, like the rest of mankind, by the enchantment of your
address, and could not forbear to wish that I might boast myself _le
vainqueur du vainqueur de la terre_;--that I might obtain that regard
for which I saw the world contending; but I found my attendance so
little encouraged, that neither pride nor modesty would suffer me to
continue it. When I had once addressed your lordship in public, I
had exhausted all the art of pleasing which a retired and uncourtly
scholar can possess. I had done all I could; and no man is well
pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever so little.
Seven years, my lord, have now passed, since I waited in your outward
rooms, or was repulsed from your door; during which time I have been
pushing on my work through difficulties, of which it is useless to
complain, and have brought it at last to the verge of publication,
without one act of assistance, one word of encouragement, or one smile
of favour. Such treatment I did not expect, for I never had a patron
before.
The shepherd in _Virgil_ grew at last acquainted with Love, and found
him a native of the rocks.
Is not a patron, my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man
struggling for life in the water, and when he has reached ground,
encumbers him with help? The notice which you have been pleased to
take of my labours, had it been early had been kind; but it has
been delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till I am
solitary, and cannot impart it; till I am known, and do not want it. I
hope it is no very cynical asperity, not to confess obligations,
where no benefit has been received, or to be unwilling that the public
should consider me as owing that to a patron, which Providence has
enabled me to do for myself.
Having carried on my work thus far with so little obligation to any
favourer of learning, I shall not be disappointed though I shall
conclude it, if less be possible, with less; for I have been long
wakened from that dream of hope in which I once boasted myself with so
much exultation.
My Lord,
Your Lordship's most humble,
most obedient servant.
To JAMES BOSWELL
_A silent friend_
13 _July_, 1779.
DEAR SIR,
What can possibly have happened that keeps us two such strangers to
each other? I expected to have heard from you when you came home; I
expected afterwards. I went into the country and returned, and yet
there is no letter from Mr. Boswell. No ill, I hope, has happened; and
if ill should happen, why should it be concealed from him who loves
you? Is it a fit of humour, that has disposed you to try who can hold
out longest without writing? If it be, you have the victory. But I am
afraid of something bad; set me free from my suspicions.
My thoughts are at present employed in guessing the reason of your
silence; you must not expect that I should tell you anything, if I had
anything to tell. Write, pray write to me, and let me know what is or
what has been the cause of this long interruption.
To MRS. THRALE
_A great man's fortitude_
19 _June_, 1783.
ON Monday the 16th, I sat for my picture and walked a considerable way
with little inconvenience. In the afternoon and evening I felt myself
light and easy, and began to plan schemes of life. Thus I went to bed,
and in a short time waked and sat up, as has been long my custom,
when I felt a confusion and indistinctness in my head, which lasted,
I suppose, about half a minute. I was alarmed, and prayed God, that
however he might afflict my body, he would spare my understanding.
This prayer, that I might try the integrity of my faculties, I made in
Latin verse. The lines were not very good, but I knew them not to be
very good: I made them easily, and concluded myself to be unimpaired
in my faculties.
Soon after I perceived that I had suffered a paralytic stroke,
and that my speech was taken from me. I had no pain, and so little
dejection in this dreadful state, that I wondered at my own apathy,
and considered that perhaps death itself, when it should come, would
excite less horror than seems now to attend it.
In order to rouse the vocal organs, I took two drams. Wine has been
celebrated for the production of eloquence. I put myself into violent
motion, and I think repeated it; but all was vain. I then went to bed,
and strange as it may seem, I slept. When I saw light, it was time to
contrive what I should do. Though God stopped my speech, he left me
my hands; I enjoyed a mercy which was not granted to my dear friend
Lawrence, who now perhaps overlooks me as I am writing, and rejoices
that I have what he wanted. My first note was necessarily to my
servant, who came in talking, and could not immediately comprehend why
he should read what I put into his hands. I then wrote a card to Mr.
Allen, that I might have a discreet friend at hand, to act as occasion
should require. In penning this note I had some difficulty; my hand,
I knew not how nor why, made wrong letters. I then wrote to Dr. Taylor
to come to me, and bring Dr. Heberden: and I sent to Dr. Brocklesby,
who is my neighbour. My physicians are very friendly, and give me
great hopes; but you may imagine my situation. I have so far recovered
my vocal powers, as to repeat the Lord's Prayer with no very imperfect
articulation. My memory, I hope, yet remains as it was! but such an
attack produces solicitude for the safety of every faculty.
LAURENCE STERNE
1713-1768
To Miss LUMLEY
_The disconsolate lover_
[1740-1]
You bid me tell you, my dear L. , how I bore your departure for S----,
and whether the valley, where D'Estella stands, retains still its
looks, or if I think the roses or jessamines smell as sweet as when
you left it. Alas! everything has now lost its relish and look! The
hour you left D'Estella I took to my bed. I was worn out with fevers
of all kinds, but most by that fever of the heart with which thou
knowest well I have been wasting these two years--and shall continue
wasting till you quit S----. The good Miss S----, from the forebodings
of the best of hearts, thinking I was ill, insisted upon my going to
her. What can be the cause, my dear L. , that I never have been able to
see the face of this mutual friend, but I feel myself rent to pieces?
She made me stay an hour with her, and in that short space I burst
into tears a dozen different times, and in such affectionate gusts of
passion, that she was constrained to leave the room, and sympathize
in her dressing-room. I have been weeping for you both, said she, in
a tone of the sweetest pity--for poor L. 's heart, I have long known
it--her anguish is as sharp as yours--her heart as tender--her
constancy as great--her virtues as heroic--Heaven brought you not
together to be tormented. I could only answer her with a kind look,
and a heavy sigh, and returned home to your lodgings (which I have
hired till your return) to resign myself to misery. Fanny had prepared
me a supper--she is all attention to me--but I sat over it with tears;
a bitter sauce, my L. , but I could eat it with no other; for the
moment she began to spread my little table, my heart fainted within
me. One solitary plate, one knife, one fork, one glass! I gave a
thousand pensive, penetrating looks at the chair thou hadst so often
graced, in those quiet and sentimental repasts, then laid down my
knife and fork, and took out my handkerchief, and clapped it across
my face, and wept like a child. I could do so this very moment, my L. ;
for, as I take up my pen, my poor pulse quickens, my pale face glows,
and tears are trickling down upon the paper, as I trace the word
L----. O thou! blessed in thyself, and in thy virtues, blessed to all
that know thee--to me most so, because more do I know of thee than all
thy sex. This is the philtre, my L. , by which thou hast charmed me,
and by which thou wilt hold me thine, while virtue and faith hold this
world together. This, my friend, is the plain and simple magic, by
which I told Miss ---- I have won a place in that heart of thine, on
which I depend so satisfied, that time, or distance, or change of
everything which might alarm the hearts of little men, create no
uneasy suspense in mine. Wast thou to stay in S---- these seven
years, thy friend, though he would grieve, scorns to doubt, or to be
doubted--'tis the only exception where security is not the parent of
danger.
I told you poor Fanny was all attention to me since your
departure--contrives every day bringing in the name of L. She told
me last night (upon giving me some hartshorn), she had observed my
illness began the very day of your departure for S----; that I had
never held up my head, had seldom, or scarce ever, smiled, had fled
from all society; that she verily believed I was broken-hearted, for
she had never entered the room, or passed by the door, but she heard
me sigh heavily; that I neither eat, or slept, or took pleasure in
anything as before. Judge then, my L. , can the valley look so well,
or the roses and jessamines smell so sweet as heretofore? Ah me! but
adieu--the vesper bell calls me from thee to my GOD.
To DAVID GARRICK
_Le chevalier Shandy_
Paris, 19 _March_, 1762.
DEAR GARRICK,
This will be put into your hands by Dr. Shippen, a physician, who has
been here some time with Miss Poyntz, and is at this moment setting
out for your metropolis; so I snatch the opportunity of writing to you
and my kind friend Mrs. Garrick. I see nothing like her here, and yet
I have been introduced to one half of their best Goddesses, and in a
month more shall be admitted to the shrines of the other half; but I
neither worship or fall (much) on my knees before them; but, on the
contrary, have converted many unto Shandeism; for be it known, I
Shandy it away fifty times more than I was ever wont, talk more
nonsense than ever you heard me talk in your days--and to all sorts
of people. _Qui le diable est cet homme-là_--said Choiseul t'other
day--_ce chevalier Shandy_? You'll think me as vain as a devil, was I
to tell you the rest of the dialogue; whether the bearer knows it or
no, I know not. 'Twill serve up after supper, in Southampton-street,
amongst other small dishes, after the fatigues of Richard III. O God!
they have nothing here, which gives the nerves so smart a blow, as
those great characters in the hands of Garrick! but I forgot I
am writing to the man himself. The devil take (as he will) these
transports of enthusiasm! Apropos, the whole city of Paris is
_bewitched_ with the comic opera, and if it was not for the affair
of the Jesuits, which takes up one half of our talk, the comic opera
would have it all. It is a tragical nuisance in all companies as it
is, and was it not for some sudden starts and dashes of Shandeism,
which now and then either break the thread, or entangle it so, that
the devil himself would be puzzled in winding it off, I should die a
martyr--this by the way I never will.
I send you over some of these comic operas by the bearer, with the
_Sallon_, a satire. The French comedy, I seldom visit it--they act
scarce in anything but tragedies--and the Clairon is great, and Mile.
Dumesnil, in some places, still greater than her; yet I cannot bear
preaching--I fancy I got a surfeit of it in my younger days. There
is a tragedy to be damned to-night--peace be with it, and the gentle
brain which made it! I have ten thousand things to tell you I cannot
write, I do a thousand things which cut no figure, _but in the
doing_--and as in London, I have the honour of having done and said a
thousand things I never did or dreamed of--and yet I dream abundantly.
If the devil stood behind me in the shape of a courier, I could not
write faster than I do, having five letters more to dispatch by the
same gentleman; he is going into another section of the globe, and
when he has seen you, will depart in peace.
The Duke of Orleans has suffered my portrait to be added to the number
of some odd men in his collection; and a gentleman who lives with him
has taken it most expressively, at full length: I purpose to obtain an
etching of it, and to send it you. Your prayer for me of _rosy health_
is heard. If I stay here for three or four months, I shall return more
than reinstated. My love to Mrs. Garrick.
To MR. FOLEY AT PARIS
_An adventure on the road_
Toulouse, 14 _Aug_. 1762.
MY DEAR FOLEY,
After many turnings (_alias_ digressions), to say nothing of downright
overthrows, stops, and delays, we have arrived in three weeks at
Toulouse, and are now settled in our houses with servants, &c. , about
us, and look as composed as if we had been here seven years. In
our journey we suffered so much from the heats, it gives me pain to
remember it; I never saw a cloud from Paris to Nismes half as broad as
a twenty-four sols piece. Good God! we were toasted, roasted, grilled,
stewed and carbonaded on one side or other all the way; and being all
done enough (_assez cuits_) in the day, we were eat up at night by
bugs, and other unswept-out vermin, the legal inhabitants (if length
of possession gives right) of every inn we lay at. Can you conceive
a worse accident than that in such a journey, in the hottest day and
hour of it, four miles from either tree or shrub which could cast a
shade of the size of one of Eve's fig leaves, that we should break a
hind wheel into ten thousand pieces, and be obliged in consequence
to sit five hours on a gravelly road, without one drop of water, or
possibility of getting any? To mend the matter, my two postillions
were two dough-hearted fools, and fell a-crying. Nothing was to be
done! By heaven, quoth I, pulling off my coat and waistcoat, something
shall be done, for I'll thrash you both within an inch of your lives,
and then make you take each of you a horse, and ride like two devils
to the next post for a cart to carry my baggage, and a wheel to
carry ourselves. Our luggage weighed ten quintals. It was the fair
of Baucaire, all the world was going, or returning; we were asked by
every soul who passed by us, if we were going to the fair of Baucaire.
No wonder, quoth I, we have goods enough! _vous avez raison, mes
amis_. . . .
THOMAS GRAY
1716-1771
To RICHARD WEST
_Scenery at Tivoli_
Tivoli, 20 _May_, 1740.
This day being in the palace of his Highness the Duke of Modena, he
laid his most serene commands upon me to write to Mr. West, and said
he thought it for his glory, that I should draw up an inventory of all
his most serene possessions for the said West's perusal. Imprimis,
a house, being in circumference a quarter of a mile, two feet and an
inch; the said house containing the following particulars, to wit,
a great room. Item, another great room; item, a bigger room; item,
another room; item, a vast room; item, a sixth of the same; a seventh
ditto; an eighth as before; a ninth as above said; a tenth (see No.
1); item, ten more such, besides twenty besides, which, not to be too
particular, we shall pass over. The said rooms contain nine chairs,
two tables, five stools and a cricket. From whence we shall proceed
to the garden, containing two millions of superfine laurel hedges,
a clump of cypress trees, and half the river Teverone. --Finis. Dame
Nature desired me to put in a list of her little goods and chattels,
and, as they were small, to be very minute about them. She has built
here three or four little mountains, and laid them out in an irregular
semi-circle; from certain others behind, at a greater distance, she
has drawn a canal, into which she has put a little river of hers,
called Anio; she has cut a huge cleft between the two innermost of her
four hills, and there she has left it to its own disposal; which she
has no sooner done, but, like a heedless chit, it tumbles headlong
down a declivity fifty feet perpendicular, breaks itself all to
shatters, and is converted into a shower of rain, where the sun forms
many a bow, red, green, blue, and yellow. To get out of our metaphors
without any further trouble, it is the most noble sight in the world.
The weight of that quantity of waters, and the force they fall with,
have worn the rocks they throw themselves among into a thousand
irregular craggs, and to a vast depth. In this channel it goes boiling
along with a mighty noise till it comes to another steep, where you
see it a second time come roaring down (but first you must walk
two miles farther) a greater height than before, but not with that
quantity of waters; for by this time it has divided itself, being
crossed and opposed by the rocks, into four several streams, each of
which, in emulation of the great one, will tumble down too; and it
does tumble down, but not from an equally elevated place; so that you
have at one view all these cascades intermixed with groves of olive
and little woods, the mountains rising behind them, and on the top of
one (that which forms the extremity of one of the half-circle's horns)
is seated the town itself. At the very extremity of that extremity, on
the brink of the precipice, stands the Sybil's temple, the remains
of a little rotunda, surrounded with its portico, above half of whose
beautiful Corinthian pillars are still standing and entire; all this
on one hand. On the other, the open Campagna of Rome, here and there
a little castle on a hillock, and the city itself at the very brink of
the horizon, indistinctly seen (being eighteen miles off) except the
dome of St. Peter's; which, if you look out of your window, wherever
you are, I suppose, you can see. I did not tell you that a little
below the first fall, on the side of the rock, and hanging over that
torrent, are little ruins which they show you for Horace's house, a
curious situation to observe the
Praeceps Anio et Tiburni lucus, et uda
Mobilibus pomaria rivis.
Maecenas did not care for such a noise, it seems, and built him a
house (which they also carry one to see) so situated that it sees
nothing at all of the matter, and for anything he knew there might be
no such river in the world. Horace had another house on the other side
of the Teverone, opposite to Maecenas's; and they told us there was
a bridge of communication, by which _andava il detto Signor per
trastullarsi coll' istesso Orazio_. In coming hither we crossed the
Aquae Albulae, a vile little brook that stinks like a fury, and they
say it has stunk so these thousand years. I forgot the Piscina of
Quintilius Varus, where he used to keep certain little fishes. This
is very entire, and there is a piece of the aqueduct that supplied it
too; in the garden below is old Rome, built in little, just as it was,
they say. There are seven temples in it, and no houses at all; they
say there were none.
TO THE SAME
_A poet's melancholy_
London, 27 _May_, 1742.
Mine, you are to know is a white Melancholy, or rather Leucocholy
for the most part; which, though it seldom laughs or dances, nor ever
amounts to what one called Joy or Pleasure, yet is a good easy sort
of a state, and _ça ne laisse que de s'amuser. _ The only fault is its
insipidity; which is apt now and then to give a sort of Ennui, which
makes one form certain little wishes that signify nothing. But there
is another sort, black indeed, which I have now and then felt, that
has somewhat in it like Tertullian's rule of faith, _Credo quia
impossibile est_; for it believes, nay, is sure of everything that is
unlikely, so it be but frightful; and on the other hand excludes and
shuts its eyes to the most possible hopes, and everything that is
pleasurable; from this the Lord deliver us! for none but he and
sunshiny weather can do it. In hopes of enjoying this kind of weather
I am going into the country for a few weeks, but shall be never the
nearer any society; so, if you have any charity, you will continue to
write. My life is like Harry the Fourth's supper of Hens, 'Poulets à
la broche, Poulets en Ragoût, Poulets en Hâchis, Poulets en Fricassées
'. Reading here, Reading there; nothing but books with different
sauces. Do not let me lose my desert then; for though that be Reading
too, yet it has a very different flavour. The May seems to be come
since your invitation; and I propose to bask in her beams and dress me
in her roses.
Et caput in verna semper habere rosa.
I shall see Mr. ---- and his Wife, nay, and his Child, too, for he has
got a Boy. Is it not odd to consider one's Cotemporaries in the grave
light of Husband and Father? There is my lords Sandwich and Halifax,
they are Statesmen: Do not you remember them dirty boys playing at
cricket? As for me, I am never a bit the older, nor the bigger, nor
the wiser than I was then: no, not for having been beyond sea. Pray,
how are you? . . .
To HORACE WALPOLE
_The fate of Selima_
Cambridge, 1 _March_, 1747.
As one ought to be particularly careful to avoid blunders in a
compliment of condolence, it would be a sensible satisfaction to
me (before I testify my sorrow, and the sincere part I take in your
misfortune) to know for certain, who it is that I lament. I knew Zara
and Selima (Selima, was it? or Fatima? ) or rather I knew both of them
together; for I cannot justly say which was which. Then as to your
handsome Cat, the name you distinguished her by, I am no less at a
loss, as well knowing one's handsome cat is always the cat one likes
best; or if one be alive and the other dead, it is usually the latter
that is the handsomest. Besides, if the point were never so clear, I
hope you do not think me so ill-bred or so imprudent as to forfeit all
my interest in the survivor; Oh no! I would rather seem to mistake,
and to be sure it must be the tabby one that had met with this sad
accident. Till this affair is a little better determined, you will
excuse me if I do not begin to cry:
Tempus inane peto, requiem, spatiumque doloris.
Which interval is the more convenient, as it gives time to rejoice
with you on your new honours. This is only a beginning; I reckon next
week we shall hear you are a free-Mason, or a Gormorgon at least.
Heigh ho! I feel (as you to be sure have done long since) that I have
very little to say, at least in prose. Somebody will be the better for
it; I do not mean you, but your Cat, feuë Mademoiselle Selime, whom I
am about to immortalize for one week or fortnight, as follows.
. . . There's a poem for you, it is rather too long for an Epitaph.
TO THE SAME
_Publication of the Elegy_
Cambridge, 11 _Feb_. 1751.
As you have brought me into a little sort of distress, you must assist
me, I believe, to get out of it as well as I can. Yesterday I had
the misfortune of receiving a letter from certain gentlemen (as their
bookseller expresses it), who have taken the _Magazine of Magazines_
into their hands. They tell me that an _ingenious_ poem, called
_Reflections in a Country Churchyard_, has been communicated to them,
which they are printing forthwith; that they are informed that the
_excellent_ author of it is I by name, and that they beg not only his
_indulgence_, but the _honour_ of his correspondence, &c. As I am not
at all disposed to be either so indulgent, or so correspondent, as
they desire, I have but one bad way left to escape the honour they
would inflict upon me; and, therefore, am obliged to desire you would
make Dodsley print it immediately (which may be done in less than a
week's time) from your copy, but without my name, in what form is
most convenient for him, but on his best paper and character; he must
correct the press himself, and print it without any interval between
the stanzas, because the sense is in some places continued
beyond them; and the title must be,--_Elegy, written in a Country
Churchyard_. If he would add a line or two to say it came into
his hands by accident, I should like it better. If you behold the
_Magazine of Magazines_ in the light that I do, you will not refuse to
give yourself this trouble on my account, which you have taken of your
own accord before now. If Dodsley do not do this immediately, he may
as well let it alone.
TO THE SAME
_At Burnham_
[Burnham,] _Sept_. 1737.
I was hindered in my last, and so could not give you all the trouble
I would have done. The description of a road, which your coach wheels
have so often honoured, it would be needless to give you; suffice
it that I arrived safe at my uncle's, who is a great hunter in
imagination; his dogs take up every chair in the house, so I am forced
to stand at this present writing; and though the gout forbids him
galloping after them in the field, yet he continues to regale his ears
and nose with their comfortable noise and stink. He holds me mighty
cheap, I perceive, for walking when I should ride, and reading when
I should hunt. My comfort amidst all this is, that I have at the
distance of half a mile, through a green lane, a forest (the vulgar
call it a common) all my own, at least as good as so, for I spy no
human thing in it but myself. It is a little chaos of mountains and
precipices; mountains, it is true, that do not ascend much above the
clouds, nor are the declivities quite so amazing as Dover Cliff; but
just such hills as people who love their necks as well as I do may
venture to climb, and crags that give the eye as much pleasure as if
they were more dangerous. Both vale and hill are covered with most
venerable beeches, and other very reverend vegetables, that, like most
other ancient people, are always dreaming out their old stories to the
winds.
_And as they bow their hoary tops relate,
In murm'ring sounds, the dark decrees of fate;
While visions, as poetic eyes avow,
Cling to each leaf, and swarm on every bough. _
At the foot of one of these squats ME I (_ilpenseroso_), and there
grow to the trunk for a whole morning. The timorous hare and sportive
squirrel gambol round me like Adam in Paradise, before he had an Eve;
but I think he did not use to read Virgil, as I commonly do there.
In this situation I often converse with my Horace, aloud too, that is
talk to you, but I do not remember that I ever heard you answer me.
I beg pardon for taking all the conversation to myself, but it is
entirely your own fault. . . .
To THE REV. WILLIAM MASON
_The Laureateship_
19 _Dec_. 1757.
DEAR MASON,
Though I very well know the bland emollient saponaceous qualities both
of sack and silver, yet if any great man would say to me, 'I make you
Rat-catcher to his Majesty, with a salary of £300 a-year and two butts
of the best Malaga; and though it has been usual to catch a mouse or
two, for form's sake, in public once a year, yet to you, sir, we shall
not stand on these things,' I cannot say I should jump at it; nay, if
they would drop the very name of the office, and call me Sinecure
to the King's Majesty, I should feel a little awkward, and think
everybody I saw smelt a rat about me; but I do not pretend to blame
any one else that has not the same sensations; for my part, I would
rather be serjeant trumpeter or pinmaker to the palace. Nevertheless
I interest myself a little in the history of it, and rather wish
somebody may accept it who will retrieve the credit of the thing, if
it be retrieveable, or ever had any credit. Rowe was, I think, the
last man of character that had it. As to Settle, whom you mention,
he belonged to my lord mayor, not to the King. Eusden was a person
of great hopes in his youth, though at last he turned out a drunken
person. Dryden was as disgraceful to the office from his character,
as the poorest scribbler could have been from his verses.
