Christmas arrives:
everybody
goes
out of town; and a riot happens in one of the theatres.
out of town; and a riot happens in one of the theatres.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v26 - Tur to Wat
15555 (#509) ##########################################
15555
EDMUND WALLER
(1605-1687)
died away
he life of Edmund Waller extended over a period of important
change in English literature. When he began to write, in
the early part of the seventeenth century, the great liter-
ature of the Elizabethan era had been written, the surge of inspira-
tion and impassioned poetry of which Shakespeare was the heart had
The brilliant formalism which was to attain its apothe-
osis in Pope was already discernible. Edmund Waller made use in
his verse of the classic iambic and distich. He first appears among
the court poets of Charles I. In some re-
spects most commonplace, he yet presents
a singular figure among his associates, -
Cowley, Crashaw, Lovelace, and Suckling.
His poetry, like that of the other Cavalier
poets, was more of gallantry than of love;
he wrote with no great range of subjects,
nor depth of feeling. But the form of his
verse bears a closer resemblance to that of
Dryden and Pope, and indeed to the poetry
of to-day, than it does to the writing of
Crashaw and Cowley. Later in his life Wal-
ler invariably confined the sense within the
limits of the distich; making his verse some-
EDMUND WALLER
what monotonous,, but giving to it a finish
quite unusual in his time. The polish of his verse may have been
due to French influence, exerted during his nine years' exile in that
country; but Dr. Johnson declares that Waller wrote as smoothly at
eighteen as at eighty,— «smoothness being the particular quality
ascribed to him.
The poet's life was more varied than his poetry, furnishing him
an abundance of subjects to overlay with his light play of fancy. He
was born in Hertfordshire, March 3d, 1605. His family were wealthy
land-owners, and his mother, although related to Cromwell, was an
ardent royalist. He followed whichever side was victorious. At six-
teen he was in Parliament, but kept becomingly silent, merely using
the advantages of his position to marry a young heiress; and with her
fortune joined to his, he retired to the country to give himself up to
(
>
## p. 15556 (#510) ##########################################
15556
EDMUND WALLER
literary pursuits. Just when he began to write is not known. The
date of the subject of his first poem, "His Majesty's Escape, is 1623.
Some of his best poetry was written in an effort to win Lady Doro-
thea Sidney, his Saccharissa, between the death of his wife in 1634
and the marriage of Lady Dorothea in 1639. Meeting him years after,
the lady asked him when he would again write such verses to her.
« When you are as young, madam, and as handsome, as you were
then,” replied the poet. This remark furnishes a key to his char-
acter. He was facile and witty, but cold, shallow, and selfish.
In 1643, when the struggle between the King and Parliament grew
hotter, Waller was implicated in what was known as Waller's plot.
He was discovered, and behaved with the most abject meanness;
immediately turning informer, and saving himself by giving up three
others to death. He was let off with a fine of £ 1000, and was ban-
ished to France. From France he directed the publication of his
first volume of poems.
Here he lived in high reputation as a wit
for nine years; when, at the intervention of anti-royalist friends, he
was allowed to return to England. He immediately wrote a Pan-
egyric to my Lord Protector,' which is one of his best poems. Crom-
well was friendly to him; and on the Protector's death, Waller wrote
another poem to him, which under the circumstances must appear
somewhat disinterested. However, when Charles II. came into his
kingdom, Waller was ready with a series of verses for him. Charles,
who admitted the poet to his intimacy, complained that this poem
was inferior to Cromwell's. “Sire,” responded the quick-witted Wal-
ler, "poets succeed better in fiction than in truth. ”
Waller was in Parliament up to the time of his death in 1687.
He was said to be the delight of the Commons for his wit. His
poems went through several editions, and he continued to write.
Long before his death he saw the end of the romantic and irregular
school, and the full establishment of the classic and regular. John
Dryden has been called the first of the moderns. But «Edmund
Waller,” said Dryden, “first showed us to conclude the sense most
commonly in distichs; which, in the verse of those before him, runs
on for so many lines together that the reader is out of breath to
overtake it. ” Thus Waller becomes the founder of a school, the
influence of which extended over a hundred and fifty years; though
as a poet he sinks into insignificance beside Dryden and Pope, who
gave the school its character when they stamped it with their genius.
Fenton calls Waller (maker and model of melodious verse. ) In
the sense that he revived the form of a past age, and gave to it a
greater precision than it had ever possessed, he is a maker of verse.
Moreover, in 'Go, Lovely Rose,' he wrote one of the most perfect lyr-
ics in the tongue; and one such poem will embalm its writer. But
(
## p. 15557 (#511) ##########################################
EDMUND WALLER
15557
Waller's art was limited; the form was not new: and the popularity
of the poet exists chiefly through the praises of greater men, who
having too much to say to take time for the invention of a method
of their own, used the form to which he had directed their attention.
FROM THE POEM
OF THE DANGER HIS MAJESTY (BEING PRINCE) ESCAPED IN
THE ROAD AT ST. ANDERO
W'"Neptune's smooth face, and cleave the yielding
deep;
Which soon becomes the seat of sudden war
Between the wind and tide, that fiercely jar.
As when a sort of lusty shepherds try
Their force at football, care of victory
Makes them salute so rudely breast to breast,
That their encounter seems too rough for jest, –
They ply their feet, and still the restless ball,
Tost to and fro, is urgèd by them all, -
So fares the doubtful barge 'twixt tide and winds,
And like effect of their contention finds.
Yet the bold Britons still securely rowed:
Charles and his virtue was their sacred load;
Than which a greater pledge Heaven could not give,
That the good boat this tempest should outlive.
But storms increase! and now no hope of grace
Among them shines, save in the prince's face.
The pale Iberians had expired with fear,
But that their wonder did divert their care,
To see the prince with danger moved no more
Than with the pleasures of their court before:
Godlike his courage seemed, whom nor delight
Could soften, nor the face of Death affright;
Next to the power of making tempests cease,
Was in that storm to have so calm a peace.
## p. 15558 (#512) ##########################################
15558
EDMUND WALLER
THE COUNTESS OF CARLISLE
OF HER CHAMBER
T"
HEY taste of death, that do at heaven arrive;
But we this paradise approach alive.
Instead of Death, the dart of Love does strike:
And renders all within these walls alike;
The high in titles, and the shepherd here
Forgets his greatness, and forgets his fear.
All stand amazed, and gazing on the fair
Lose thought of what themselves or others are;
Ambition lose: and have no other scope,
Save Carlisle's favor, to employ their hope.
The Thracian could (though all those tales were true
The bold Greeks tell) no greater wonders do:
Before his feet so sheep and lions lay,
Fearless and wrathless while they heard him play.
The gay, the wise, the gallant, and the grave,
Subdued alike, all but one passion have;
No worthy mind but finds in hers there is
Something proportioned to the rule of his;
While she, with cheerful but impartial grace,
(Born for no one, but to delight the race
Of men,) like Phoebus, so divides her light,
And warms us, that she stoops not from her height.
ON A GIRDLE
HAT which her slender waist confined
Shall now my joyful temples bind :
No monarch but would give his crown,
His arms might do what this hath done.
T"
It was my heaven's extremest sphere,
The pale which held that lovely deer;
My joy, my grief, my hope, my love,
Did all within this circle move!
A narrow compass! and yet there
Dwelt all that's good and all that's fair:
Give me but what this ribbon bound,
Take all the rest the sun goes round.
## p. 15559 (#513) ##########################################
EDMUND WALLER
15559
GO, LOVELY ROSE
Gº
O, LOVELY rose !
Tell her that wastes her time and me,
That now she knows,
When I resemble her to thee,
How sweet and fair she seems to be.
Tell her that's young,
And shuns to have her graces spied,
That hadst thou sprung
In deserts, where no men abide,
Thou must have uncommended died.
Small is the worth
Of beauty from the light retired:
Bid her come forth,
Suffer herself to be desired,
And not blush so to be admired.
Then die! that she
The common fate of all things rare
May read in thee! -
How small a part of time they share
That are so wondrous sweet and fair!
FROM CA PANEGYRIC TO MY LORD PROTECTOR)
HILE with a strong and yet a gentle hand,
You bridle faction, and our hearts command,
Protect us from ourselves, and from the foe;
Make us unite, and make us conquer too.
W*
Let partial spirits still aloud complain,
Think themselves injured that they cannot reign,
And own no liberty, but where they may
Without control upon their fellows prey.
Above the waves, as Neptune showed his face,
To chide the winds and save the Trojan race,
So has your Highness, raised above the rest,
Storms of ambition tossing us repressed.
Your drooping country, torn with civil hate,
Restored by you, is made a glorious State;
## p. 15560 (#514) ##########################################
15560
EDMUND WALLER
The seat of empire, where the Irish come,
And the unwilling Scots, to fetch their doom.
The sea's our own: and now all nations greet,
With bending sails, each vessel of our fleet;
Your power extends so far as winds can blow,
Or swelling sails upon the globe may go.
Heaven, that hath placed this island to give law,
To balance Europe, and its States to awe,
In this conjunction doth on Britain smile,
The greatest leader and the greatest isle!
Whether this portion of the world were rent
By the rude ocean from the continent,
Or thus created, it was sure designed
To be the sacred refuge of mankind.
Hither the oppressèd shall henceforth resort,
Justice to crave, and succor at your court;
And then your Highness, not for ours alone,
But for the world's Protector, shall be known.
Still as you rise, the State exalted too,
Finds no distemper while 'tis changed by you;
Changed like the world's great scene! when, without
noise,
The rising sun night's vulgar lights destroys.
Had you, some ages past, this race of glory
Run, with amazement we should read your story;
But living virtue, all achievements past,
Meets envy still to grapple with at last.
This Cæsar found; and that ungrateful age,
With losing him, went back to blood and rage;
Mistaken Brutus thought to break their yoke,
But cut the bond of union with that stroke.
That sun once set, a thousand meaner stars
Gave a dim light to violence and wars,
To such a tempest as now threatens all,
Did not your mighty arm prevent the fall.
If Rome's great Senate could not wield that sword
Which of the conquered world had made them lord,
## p. 15561 (#515) ##########################################
EDMUND WALLER
15561
What hope had ours, while yet their power was new,
To rule victorious armies, but by you?
You, that had taught them to subdue their foes,
Could order teach, and their high sp'rits compose;
To every duty could their minds engage,
Provoke their courage, and command their rage.
So when a lion shakes his dreadful mane,
And angry grows, if he that first took pain
To tame his youth approach the haughty beast,
He bends to him, but frights away the rest.
As the vexed world, to find repose, at last
Itself into Augustus's arms did cast,
So England now does, with like toil opprest,
Her weary head upon your bosom rest.
Then let the Muses, with such notes as these,
Instruct us what belongs unto our peace.
Your battles they hereafter shall indite,
And draw the image of our Mars in fight:
Tell of towns stormed, and armies overrun,
And mighty kingdoms by your conduct won;
How, while you thundered, clouds of dust did choke
Contending troops, and seas lay hid in smoke.
Illustrious acts high raptures do infuse,
And every conqueror creates a Muse!
Here, in low strains, your milder deeds we sing,
But there, my lord, we'll bays and olives bring
To crown your head: while you in triumph ride
O'er conquered nations, and the sea beside;
While all your neighbor princes unto you,
Like Joseph's sheaves, pay reverence and due.
## p. 15562 (#516) ##########################################
15562
EDMUND WALLER
ON LOVE
A
NGER, in hasty words or blows,
Itself discharges on our foes;
And sorrow, too, finds some relief
In tears which wait upon our grief:
So every passion but fond love
Unto its own redress does move;
But that alone the wretch inclines
To what prevents his own designis :
Makes him lament, and sigh, and weep,
Disordered, tremble, fawn, and creep;
Postures which render him despised,
Where he endeavors to be prized.
For women — born to be controlled —
Stoop to the forward and the bold;
Affect the haughty and the proud,
The gay, the frolic, and the loud.
Who first the generous steed oppressed,
Not kneeling did salute the beast;
But with high courage, life, and force,
Approaching, tamed th' unruly horse.
Unwisely we the wiser East
Pity, supposing them oppressed
With tyrants' force, whose law is will,
By which they govern, spoil, and kill:
Each nymph, but moderately fair,
Commands with no less rigor here.
Should some brave Turk, that walks among
His twenty lasses, bright and young,
Behold as many gallants here,
With modest guise and silent fear,
All to one female idol bend,
While her pride does scarce descend
To mark their follies, he would swear
That these her guard of eunuchs were,
And that a more majestic queen,
Or humbler slaves, he had not seen.
All this with indignation spoke,
In vain I struggled with the yoke
Of mighty Love; that conquering look,
When next beheld, like lightning strook
## p. 15563 (#517) ##########################################
EDMUND WALLER
15563
My blasted soul, and made me bow
Lower than those I pitied now.
So the tall stag, upon the brink
Of soine smooth stream about to drink,
Surveying there his armèd head,
With shame remembers that he filed
The scornèd dogs, resolves to try
The combat next: but if their cry
Invades again his trembling ear,
He straight resumes his wonted care;
Leaves the untasted spring behind,
And winged with fear, outfies the wind.
AT PENSHURST
W"
Thile in this park I sing, the listening deer
Attend my passion, and forget to fear;
When to the beeches I report my flame,
They bow their heads as if they felt the same.
To gods appealing, when I reach their bowers
With loud complaints, they answer me in showers.
To thee a wild and cruel soul is given,
More deaf than trees, and prouder than the heaven!
Love's foe professed! why dost thou falsely feign
Thyself a Sidney? from which noble strain
He sprung, that could so far exalt the name
Of Love, and warm our nation with his flame,
That all we can of love or high desire,
Seems but the smoke of amorous Sidney's fire.
Nor call her mother who so well does prove
One breast may hold both chastity and love.
Never can she, that so exceeds the spring
In joy and bounty, be supposed to bring
One so destructive. To no human stock
We owe this fierce unkindness, but the rock —
That cloven rock produced thee, by whose side
Nature, to recompense the fatal pride
Of such stern beauty, placed those healing springs
Which not more help than that destruction brings.
Thy heart no ruder than the rugged stone,
I might, like Orpheus, with my numerous moan
## p. 15564 (#518) ##########################################
15564
EDMUND WALLER
Melt to compassion; now my traitorous song
With thee conspires to do the singer wrong:
While thus I suffer not myself to lose
The memory of what augments my woes;
But with my own breath still foment the fire,
Which flames as high as fancy can aspire!
This last complaint the indulgent ears did pierce
Of just Apollo, president of verse;
Highly concerned that the Muse should bring
Damage to one whom he had taught to sing,
Thus he advised me:-“On yon aged tree
Hang up thy lute, and hie thee to the sea,
That there with wonders thy diverted mind
Some truce, at least, may with this passion find. ”
Ah, cruel nymph! from whom her humble swain
Flies for relief unto the raging main,
And from the winds and tempests does expect
A milder fate than from her cold neglect!
Yet there he'll pray that the unkind may prove
Blest in her choice; and vows this endless love
Springs from no hope of what she can confer,
But from those gifts which Heaven has heaped on her.
## p. 15565 (#519) ##########################################
15565
HORACE WALPOLE
(1717-1797)
RO ORACE WALPOLE might be called the Beau Brummel of Eng-
lish men of letters; yet the criticism which takes account
chiefly of his elegances is in danger of overlooking his
substantial literary merits. These are well established, and singu-
lar in their class and degree: their limitations perhaps add to their
worth rather than detract from it. Walpole's writings have the dis-
tinctive little beauties of a Watteau landscape, whose artificiality is
part of its charm. They bear about them, moreover, an attractive
atmosphere of irresponsibility, as emanating
from one who disavowed the serious claims
of authorship, making of literature always
a gentlemanly diversion,- over which it
was permissible to wax serious, however, as
over the laying out of a garden maze, or
the construction of a lath-and-plaster Gothic
tower.
The life of Horace Walpole stretches
over the greater part of the eighteenth
century, of which century he was an
ganic part; reflecting its admirable good
sense, its complete materialism, its clever-
ness, and its wit. Born in 1717, the son of HORACE WALPOLE
the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole, the
fashionable world of the day was his by inheritance. Between the
beef-eating, coarse-living statesman, and his elegant little son, there
could not have been much sympathy; but the child accepted readily
enough the advantages which his father's position brought to him.
The fascination which royalty always exercised over him was early
shown by his insisting, at the age of ten years, upon a presenta-
tion to George I. He was sent in the same year to Eton, a place
forever memorable to him by reason of the lifelong friendships
which he formed there,— with his cousins Henry Conway and Lord
Hertford, with George Selwyn, with George and Charles Montagu, with
Thomas Gray the poet, with Richard West and Thomas Ashton. In
1734 he left Eton, without having specially distinguished himself. In
1735 he entered King's College, Cambridge, although his mathematical
or-
-
## p. 15566 (#520) ##########################################
15566
HORACE WALPOLE
attainments were summed up in an insecure knowledge of the multi-
plication table; at Cambridge, however, he broadened his knowledge
of the modern tongues, thus preparing himself for a Continental resi-
dence. In 1739, in company with Gray, he left the University to
make the conventional grand tour. From the Continent he wrote
many of the letters for which he is famous. The two young men
arrived at length in Florence, where they took up their residence
with Sir Horace Mann, the British minister plenipotentiary to Tus-
cany, who afterwards became one of Walpole's chief correspondents.
At Florence, Walpole was drawn more and more into fashionable
society; Gray more and more into the scholar's life, under the stimu-
lus of Italy's antiquities. The separation between the two friends,
inevitable under the circumstances, soon came. In after years Wal-
pole assumed all the blame of the quarrel which was the apparent
cause of their parting.
In September 1741 he himself returned to England, where the
ministry of Sir Robert was tottering to its fall. He took his seat
in the House as representative from the borough of Callington, mak-
ing at this time strong speeches in defense of his father. Sir Robert,
however, resigned in 1742, was created Earl of Orford, and immedi-
ately retired to Houghton, the seat of the family. His son joined
him there; but this residence in Norfolk, among the hunting gentry
of the county, was a weary exile to Horace. “Only imagine,” he
writes, that I here every day see men who are mountains of roast
beef, and only seem just roughly hewn out into outlines of human
form, like the giant rock of Pratolino. I shudder when I see them
brandish their knives in act to carve, and look on them as savages
that devour one another. ”
In 1745 Sir Robert Walpole died. Two years after his death his
son purchased the villa at Twickenham, which was to become one of
the famous houses of Europe under the name of Strawberry Hill.
The original villa was the nucleus of a fantastic Gothic structure,
which grew year after year, until it became not unlike a miniature
castle. Walpole, through his father's influence, had come into the
possession of several lucrative sinecures, and had also wealth by
inheritance. He could gratify his tastes to the utmost; it was at
Strawberry Hill that his life as an English man of letters, and as a
dilettante, really commences. His house became, more than the
houses of the majority of men, the expression of his mind. Its an-
cient stained glass, its armor, its rare china, its rare prints, its old
masters, its curious relics of departed greatness, its strange archi-
tecture following no known rules, seemed the outward symbols of
certain qualities of Walpole's mind, - his love of the choicest gossip,
his self-conscious aristocracy, his ingenuity, his frank insincerity. At
## p. 15567 (#521) ##########################################
HORACE WALPOLE
15567
-
Strawberry Hill he set up a printing-press, – as necessary a part of
a cultured gentleman's establishment as his library or his art gallery.
His old friendship with Gray having been resumed, he edited and
printed the works of the poet, with illustrations by Bentley. Among
other famous books which were issued from this press were the Life
of Lord Herbert of Cherbury,' Heutzner's Journey into England,'
and not a few of Walpole's own works. During his long residence at
Twickenham, he wrote the majority of those letters which stand in
the highest rank of their class. Among his correspondents were
Robert Jephson the playwright, the poet Mason, the Countess of
Ossory, his cousin Henry Conway, Sir Horace Mann, George Montagu,
and Madame du Deffand. With the last his friendship was long and
close. It was natural that the France of the latter half of the
eighteenth century should have peculiar attractions for a man of
Walpole's temperament. Moreover, he was always fond of women's
society: perhaps they understood his temperament better than men,
he himself, at least, possessing many lady-like tastes and qualities.
The two women who were nearest and dearest to him in his old
age were Mary and Agnes Berry, of whom he has left a charming
description in a letter to a friend. They lived near him until his
death; and he bequeathed to them Strawberry Hill, besides a consid-
erable sum of money. He died in 1797.
The reputation of Walpole as an author rests upon his letters.
His romantic novel (The Castle of Otranto,' and his dreadful tragedy
(The Mysterious Mother,' are famous only in their oblivion. His
Anecdotes of Painting in England, his (Memoirs of the Last Ten
Years of King George II. ,' his Journal of the Reign of George III. ,'
have greater claims to remembrance. It is in his letters, however,
that he fully expresses his individuality. They are among the most
entertaining letters that were ever written: full of high-toned gossip,
of the fruits of keen observation of men and things, displaying a
genuine love of the beautiful and the picturesque,- they are, in the
fullest sense, readable. They give the impression moreover of reserve
force, as if their writer might accomplish great things if he chose.
Subsequent generations have given the benefit of the doubt to the
elegant creator of Strawberry Hill. A man who does a small thing
to perfection, is generally suspected of having other, unknown pow-
ers at his command. What Horace Walpole might have done is
almost as prominent an element in his reputation as what he did do.
## p. 15568 (#522) ##########################################
15568
HORACE WALPOLE
COCK-LANE GHOST AND LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU
From Letter to Sir Horace Mann
I
-
AM ashamed to tell you that we are again dipped into an
egregious scene of folly. The reigning fashion is a ghost, -
a ghost that would not pass muster in the paltriest convent
in the Apennine. It only knocks and scratches; does not pre-
tend to appear or to speak. The clergy give it their benediction;
and all the world, whether believers or infidels, go to hear it. I,
in which number you may guess, go to-morrow; for it is as much
the mode to visit the ghost as the Prince of Mecklenburg, who
is just arrived. I have not seen him yet, though I left my name
for him. But I will tell you who is come too,-- Lady Mary
Wortley. I went last night to visit her; I give you my honor
(and you who know her would credit it me without it), the fol-
lowing is a faithful description. I found her in a little miserable
bedchamber of a ready-furnished house, with two tallow candles,
and a bureau covered with pots and pans. On her head, in full
of all accounts, she had an old black-laced hood, wrapped entirely
round, so as to conceal all hair or want of hair. No handker-
chief, but up to her chin a kind of horseman's riding-coat, call-
ing itself a pet-en-l'air, made of a dark green (green I think it
had been) brocade, with colored and silver flowers, and lined with
furs; boddice laced, a foul dimity petticoat sprig'd, velvet muffe-
teens on her arms, gray stockings and slippers. Her face less
changed in twenty years than I could have imagined: I told her
so, and she was not so tolerable twenty years ago that she needed
have taken it for flattery; but she did, and literally gave me a
box on the ear. She is very lively, all her senses perfect, her lan-
guages as imperfect as ever, her avarice greater. She entertained
me at the first with nothing but the dearness of provisions at
Helvoet. With nothing but an Italian, a French, and a Prussian,
all men-servants,- and something she calls an old secretary, but
whose age till he appears will be doubtful, - she receives all the
world, who go to homage her as Queen Mother, and crams them
into this kennel. The Duchess of Hamilton, who came in just
after me, was so astonished and diverted that she could not speak
to her for laughing: She says that she has left all her clothes
at Venice.
## p. 15569 (#523) ##########################################
HORACE WALPOLE
15569
A YEAR OF FASHION IN WALPOLE'S DAY
From Letter to the Earl of Hertford
YºY
a
are sensible, my dear lord, that any amusement from my
letters must depend upon times and seasons.
We are
very absurd nation (though the French are so good at pres-
ent as to think us a very wise one, only because they themselves
are now a very weak one); but then that absurdity depends upon
the almanac. Posterity, who will know nothing of our intervals,
will conclude that this age was a succession of events. I could
tell them that we know as well when an event, as when Easter,
will happen. Do but recollect these last ten years. The begin-
ning of October, one is certain that everybody will be at New-
market, and the Duke of Cumberland will lose, and Shafto win,
two or three thousand pounds. After that, while people are
preparing to come to town for the winter, the ministry is sud-
denly changed, and all the world comes to learn how it happened,
a fortnight sooner than they intended; and fully persuaded that
the new arrangement cannot last a month. The Parliament opens:
everybody is bribed; and the new establishment is perceived to
be composed of adamant. November passes with two or three
self-murders, and a new play.
Christmas arrives: everybody goes
out of town; and a riot happens in one of the theatres. The
Parliament meets again, taxes are warmly opposed; and some
citizen makes his fortune by a subscription. The Opposition
languishes; balls and assemblies begin; some master and miss
begin to get together, are talked of, and give occasion to forty
more matches being invented; an unexpected debate starts up at
the end of the session, that makes more noise than anything that
was designed to make a noise, and subsides again in a new peer-
age or two.
Ranelagh opens, and Vauxhall: one produces scan-
dal, and t’other a drunken quarrel. People separate, some to
Tunbridge, and some to all the horse-races in England; and so
the year comes again to October.
XXVI–974
## p. 15570 (#524) ##########################################
15570
HORACE WALPOLE
FUNERAL OF GEORGE II.
From Letter to George Montagu, Esq. '
Dº
o you know, I had the curiosity to go to the burying tother
night, - I had never seen a royal funeral; nay, I walked as
a rag of quality, which I found would be, and so it is, the
easiest way of seeing it. It is absolutely a noble sight. The
Prince's chamber, hung with purple, and a quantity of silver
lamps, the coffin under a canopy of purple velvet, and six vast
chandeliers of silver on high stands, had a very good effect. The
Ambassador from Tripoli and his son were carried to see that
chamber. The procession through a line of foot-guards, every
seventh man bearing a torch, the horse-guards lining the outside,
their officers with drawn sabres and crape sashes on horseback,
the drums muffled, the fifes, bells tolling, and minute-guns, - all
this was very solemn. But the charm was the entrance of the
Abbey, where we were received by the dean and chapter in rich
robes, the choir and almsmen bearing torches; the whole abbey
so illuminated that one saw it to greater advantage than by day,
— the tombs, long aisles, and fretted roof all appearing distinctly
and with the happiest chiaroscuro. There wanted nothing but
incense, and little chapels here and there, with priests saying
mass for the repose of the defunct; yet one could not complain
of its not being Catholic enough. I had been in dread of being
coupled with some boy of ten years old; but the heralds were
not very accurate, and I walked with George Grenville, taller and
older, to keep me in countenance. When we came to the chapel
of Henry the Seventh, all solemnity and decorum ceased; no
order was observed, people sat or stood where they could or
would; the yeomen of the guard were crying for help, oppressed
by the great weight of the coffin; the bishop read sadly and
blundered in the prayers; the fine chapter “Man that is born of
a woman” was chanted, not read; and the anthem, besides being
immeasurably tedious, would have served as well for a nuptial.
The real serious part was the figure of the Duke of Cumberland,
heightened by a thousand melancholy circumstances, He had a
dark brown Adonis, and a cloak of black cloth, with a train of
five yards. Attending the funeral of a father could not be pleas-
ant; his leg extremely bad, yet forced to stand upon it nearly
two hours; his face bloated and distorted with his late paralytic
stroke, which has affected, too, one of his eyes; and placed over
## p. 15571 (#525) ##########################################
HORACE WALPOLE
15571
This grave
the mouth of the vault, into which, in all probability, he must
himself so soon descend: think how unpleasant a situation! He
bore it all with a firm and unaffected countenance.
scene was fully contrasted by the burlesque Duke of Newcastle.
He fell into a fit of crying the moment he came into the chapel,
and flung himself back in a stall, the archbishop hovering over
him with a smelling-bottle; but in two minutes his curiosity got
the better of his hypocrisy, and he ran about the chapel with
his glass to spy who was was not there, spying with one
hand and mopping his eyes with the other. Then returned the
fear of catching cold; and the Duke of Cumberland, who was
sinking with heat, felt himself weighed down, and turning round,
found it was the Duke of Newcastle standing upon his train to
avoid the chill of the marble. It was very theatric to look down
into the vault where the coffin lay, attended by mourners with
lights. Clavering, the groom of the bedchamber, refused to sit
up with the body, and was dismissed by the King's order.
or
GOSSIP ABOUT THE FRENCH AND FRENCH WOMEN
From Letter to Mr. Gray
B'
Y WHAT I said of their religious or rather irreligious opinions,
you must not conclude their people of quality atheists - at
least, not the men. Happily for them, poor souls! they are
not capable of going so far into thinking. They assent to a great
deal, because it is the fashion, and because they don't know how
to contradict. They are ashamed to defend the Roman Catholic
religion, because it is quite exploded; but I am convinced they
believe it in their hearts. They hate the Parliaments and the
philosophers, and are rejoiced that they may still idolize royalty.
At present, too, they are a little triumphant,- the court has
shown a little spirit, and the Parliaments much less; but as the
Duc de Choiseul, who is very fluttering, unsettled, and inclined to
the philosophers, has made a compromise with the Parliament of
Bretagne, the Parliaments might venture out again, if, as I fancy
will be the case, they are not glad to drop a cause, of which
they began to be a little weary of the inconveniences.
The generality of the men, and more than the generality, are
dull and empty. They have taken up gravity, thinking it was
## p. 15572 (#526) ##########################################
15572
HORACE WALPOLE
philosophy and English, and so have acquired nothing in the
room of their natural levity and cheerfulness. However, as their
high opinion of their own country remains, for which they can no
longer assign any reason, they are contemptuous and reserved,
instead of being ridiculously, consequently pardonably, imperti-
nent. I have wondered, knowing my own countrymen, that we
had attained such a superiority. I wonder no longer, and have
a little more respect for English heads than I had.
The women do not seem of the same country; if they are
less gay than they were, they are more informed, enough to
make them very conversable. I know six or seven with very
superior understandings; some of them with wit, or with soft-
ness, or very good sense.
Madame Geoffrin, of whom you have heard much, is an ex-
traordinary woman, with more common-sense than I almost ever
met with Great quickness in discovering characters, penetration
in going to the bottom of them, and a pencil that ifever fails in
a likeness, — seldom a favorable one. She exacts and preserves,
spite of her birth and their nonsensical prejudices about nobility,
great court and attention. This she acquires by a thousand little
arts and offices of friendship; and by a freedom and severity
which seem to be her sole end of drawing a concourse to her,
for she insists on scolding those she inveigles to her. She has
little taste and less knowledge; but protects artisans and authors,
and courts a few people to have the credit of serving her de-
pendents. She was bred under the famous Madame Tencin,
who advised her never to refuse any man; for, said her mistress,
though nine in ten should not care a farthing for you, the tenth
may live to be a useful friend. She did not adopt or reject the
whole plan, but fully retained the purport of the maxim.
In
short, she is an epitome of empire, subsisting by rewards and
punishments. Her great enemy, Madame du Deffand, was for a
short time mistress of the Regent; is now very old and stone-
blind, but retains all her vivacity, wit, memory, judgment, pas-
sions, and agreeableness. She goes to operas, plays, suppers,
and Versailles; gives suppers twice a week; has everything new
read to her; makes new songs and epigrams, ay, admirably, and
remembers every one that has been made these fourscore years.
She corresponds with Voltaire, dictates charming letters to him,
contradicts him, is no bigot to him or anybody, and laughs both
at the clergy and the philosophers. In a dispute, into which
## p. 15573 (#527) ##########################################
HORACE WALPOLE
15573
(
she easily falls, she is very warm, and yet scarce ever in the
wrong: her judgment on every subject is as just as possible; on
every point of conduct as wrong as possible; for she is all love
and hatred, passionate for her friends to enthusiasm, still anxious
to be loved, - I don't mean by lovers, - and a vehement enemy,
but openly. As she can have no amusement but conversation,
the least solitude and ennui are insupportable to her, and put her
into the power of several worthless people, who eat her suppers
when they can eat nobody's of higher rank; wink to one another
and laugh at her; hate her because she has forty times more
parts, — and venture to hate her because she is not rich. She
has an old friend whom I must mention: a Monsieur Pondeveyle,
author of the Fat puni, and the Complaisant,' and of those
pretty novels the Comte de Cominge,' the “Siege of Calais,' and
Les Malheurs de l'Amour. ' Would you not expect this old
man to be very agreeable? He can be so, but seldom is;- yet
he has another very different and very amusing talent, the art
of, parody, and is unique in his kind. He composes tales to the
tunes of long dances: for instance, he has adapted the Regent's
(Daphnis and Chloe' to one, and made it ten times more in-
decent; but he is so old, and sings it so well, that it is permitted
in all companies. He has succeeded still better in les caractères
de la danse, to which he has adapted words that express all the
characters of love. With all this he has not the least idea of
cheerfulness in conversation : seldom speaks but on grave sub-
jects, and not often on them; is a humorist, very supercilious,
and wrapt up in admiration of his own country as the only judge
of his merit. His air and look are cold and forbidding; but ask
him to sing, or praise his works, his eyes and smiles open and
brighten up. In short, I can show him to you: the self-applauding
poet in Hogarth's Rake's Progress, the second print, is so like
his very features and very wig, that you would know him by it,
if you came hither,- for he certainly will not go to you.
Madame de Mirepoix's understanding is excellent of the useful
kind, and can be so when she pleases of the agreeable kind. She
has read, but seldom shows it; and has perfect taste.
Her man-
ner is cold, but very civil; and she conceals even the blood of
Lorraine, without ever forgetting it. Nobody in France knows
the world better, and nobody is personally so well with the
King. She is false, artful, and insinuating beyond measure when
it is her interest; but indolent and a coward. She never had any
## p. 15574 (#528) ##########################################
15574
HORACE WALPOLE
passion but gaming, and always loses. For ever paying court, the
sole produce of a life of art is to get money from the King to
carry on a course of paying debts or contracting new ones, which
she discharges as fast as she is able. She advertised devotion to
get made dame du palais to the Queen; and the very next day
this Princess of Lorraine was seen riding backwards with Madame
Pompadour in the latter's coach. When the King was stabbed,
and heartily frightened, the mistress took a panic too, and con-
sulted D'Argenson whether she had not best make off in time.
He hated her, and said, By all means. Madame de Mirepoix
advised her to stay. The King recovered his spirits, D'Argenson
was banished, and La Maréchale inherited part of the mistress's
credit. -I must interrupt my history of illustrious women with
an anecdote of Monsieur de Maurepas, with whom I am much
acquainted, and who has one of the few heads which approach to
good ones; and who luckily for us was disgraced, and the marine
dropped, because it was his favorite object and province. He
employed Pondeveyle to make a song on the Pompadour; it was
clever and bitter, and did not spare even Majesty. This was
Maurepas absurd enough to sing at supper at Versailles. Banish-
ment ensued; and lest he should ever be restored, the mistress
persuaded the King that he had poisoned her predecessor, Ma-
dame de Chateauroux. Maurepas is very agrecable, and exceed-
ingly cheerful; yet I have seen a transient silent cloud when
politics are talked of.
Madame de Boufflers, who was in England, is a savante, mis-
tress of the Prince of Conti, and very desirous of being his wife.
She is two women, the upper and the lower. I need not tell you
that the lower is gallant, and still has pretensions. The upper
is very sensible, too, and has a measured eloquence that is just
and pleasing, – but all is spoiled by an unrelaxed attention to
applause. You would think she was always sitting for her pict-
ure to her biographer.
Madame de Rochfort is different from all the rest. Her un-
derstanding is just and delicate; with a finesse of wit that is
the result of reflection. Her manner is soft and feminine, and
though a savante, without any declared pretensions. She is the
decent friend of Monsieur de Nivernois; for you must not believe
a syllable of what you read in their novels. It requires the
greatest curiosity, or the greatest habitude, to discover the small-
est connexion between the sexes here. No familiarity, but under
## p. 15575 (#529) ##########################################
HORACE WALPOLE
15575
the veil of friendship, is permitted; and Love's dictionary is as
much prohibited, as at first sight one should think his ritual was.
All you hear, and that pronounced with nonchalance, is that Mon-
sieur un tel has had Madame une telle.
The Duchess of Choiseul, the only young one of these hero-
ines, is not very pretty, but has fine eyes; and is a little model
in waxwork, which not being allowed to speak for some time as
incapable, has a hesitation and modesty, the latter of which the
court has not cured, and the former of which is atoned for by
the most interesting sound of voice, and forgotten in the most
elegant turn and propriety of expression. Oh! it is the gen-
tlest, amiable, civil little creature that ever came out of a fairy
egg! so just in its phrases and thoughts, so attentive and good-
natured! Everybody loves it but its husband, who prefers his
own sister, the Duchesse de Grammont,-- an Amazonian, fierce,
haughty dame, who loves and hates arbitrarily, and is detested.
Madame de Choiseul, passionately fond of her husband, was the
martyr of this union, but at last submitted with a good grace;
has gained a little credit with him, and is still believed to idolize
him.
But I doubt it: she takes too much pains to profess it.
I cannot finish my list without adding a much more com-
mon character, - but more complete in its kind than any of the
foregoing, - the Maréchale de Luxembourg. She has been very
handsome, very abandoned, and very mischievous. Her beauty
is gone, her lovers are gone, and she thinks the devil is coming.
This dejection has softened her into being rather agreeable, for
she has wit and good-breeding; but you would swear, by the rest-
lessness of her person and the horrors she cannot conceal, that
she had signed the compact, and expected to be called upon in a
week for the performance.
I could add many pictures, but none so remarkable. In those
I send you there is not a feature bestowed gratis or exaggerated.
For the beauties, of which there are a few considerable, -as
Mesdames de Brionne, de Monaco, et d'Egmont,- they have not
yet lost their characters, nor got any.
You must not attribute my intimacy with Paris to curiosity
alone. An accident unlocked the doors for me.
That passe-par-
tout called the fashion has made them fly open — and what do
you think was that fashion ? -I myself. Yes, like Queen Eleanor
in the ballad, I sunk at Charing Cross, and have risen in the
Fauxbourg St. Germain. A plaisanterie on Rousseau, whose
-
## p. 15576 (#530) ##########################################
15576
HORACE WALPOLE
arrival here in his way to you brought me acquainted with many
anecdotes conformable to the idea I had conceived of him,
got about, was liked much more than it deserved, spread like
wild-fire, and made me the subject of conversation. Rousseau's
devotees were offended. Madame de Boufflers, with a tone of
sentiment, and the accents of lamenting humanity, abused me
heartily, and then complained to myself with the utmost softness.
I acted contrition, but had liked to have spoiled all by growing
dreadfully tired of a second lecture from the Prince of Conti,
who took up the ball, and made himself the hero of a history
wherein he had nothing to do. I listened, did not understand
half he said (nor he either), forgot the rest, said Yes when I
should have said No, yawned when I should have smiled, and
was very penitent when I should have rejoiced at my pardon.
Madame de Boufflers was more distressed, for he owned twenty
times more than I had said: she frowned, and made him signs;
but she had wound up his clack, and there was no stopping it.
The moment she grew angry, the lord of the house grew
charmed, and it has been my fault if I am not at the head of a
numerous sect; but when I left a triumphant party in England,
I did not come here to be at the head of a fashion. However, I
have been sent for about like an African prince, or a learned
canary-bird; and was in particular carried by force to the Prin-
cess of Talmond, the Queen's cousin, who lives in a charitable
apartment in the Luxembourg, and was sitting on a small bed
hung with saints and Sobieskis, in a corner of one of those vast
chambers, by two blinking tapers. I stumbled over a cat and
a footstool in my journey to her presence. She could not find
a syllable to say to me, and the visit ended with her begging a
lap-dog. Thank the Lord! though this is the first month, it is
the last week, of my reign; and I shall resign my crown with a
great satisfaction to a bouillie of chestnuts, which is just invented,
and whose annals will be illustrated by so many indigestions
that Paris will not want anything else these three weeks. I
will inclose the fatal letter after I have finished this enormous
one; to which I will only add that nothing has interrupted my
Sévigné researches but the frost. The Abbé de Malesherbes has
given me full power to ransack Livry. I did not tell you that
by great accident, when I thought on nothing less, I stumbled on
an original picture of the Comte de Grammont. Adieu! You are
generally in London in March: I shall be there by the end of it.
>
## p. 15577 (#531) ##########################################
HORACE WALPOLE
15577
THE ENGLISH CLIMATE
From Letter to George Montagu, Esq.
Nº:
Z
STRAWBERRY Hill, June 15th, 1768.
I CANNOT be so false as to say I am glad you are pleased
with your situation. You are so apt to take root, that it
requires ten years to dig you out again when you once
begin to settle. As you go pitching your tent up and down, I
wish you were still more a Tartar, and shifted your quarters
perpetually. Yes, I will come and see you; but tell me first,
when do your Duke and Duchess (the Argylls) travel to the
North ? I know that he is a very amiable lad, and I do not
know that she is not as amiable a laddess, but I had rather see
their house comfortably when they are not there.
I perceive the deluge fell upon you before it reached us. It
began here but on Monday last, and then rained near eight-and-
forty hours without intermission. My poor hay has not a dry
thread to its back. I have had a fire these three days. In
short, every summer one lives in a state of mutiny and murmur,
and I have found the reason: it is because we will affect to
have a summer, and we have no title to any such thing. Our
poets learnt their trade of the Romans, and so adopted the terms
of their masters. They talk of shady groves, purling streams,
and cooling breezes, and we get sore throats and agues with
attempting to realize these visions. Master Damon writes a song,
and invites Miss Chloe to enjoy the cool of the evening, and
the deuce a bit have we of any such thing as a cool evening.
Zephyr is a northeast wind, that makes Damon button up to
the chin, and pinches Chloe's nose till it is red and blue; and
then they cry, This is a bad summer! as if we
ever had
any
other. The best sun we have is made of Newcastle coal, and I
am determined never to reckon upon any other. We ruin our-
selves with inviting over foreign trees, and making our houses
clamber up hills to look at prospects. How our ancestors would
laugh at us, who knew there was no being comfortable unless
you had a high hill before your nose, and a thick warm wood at
your back! Taste is too freezing a commodity for us, and, depend
upon it, will go out of fashion again.
There is indeed a natural warmth in this country, which, as
you say, I am very glad not to enjoy any longer; I mean the
## p. 15578 (#532) ##########################################
15578
HORACE WALPOLE
hot-house in St. Stephen's chapel. My own sagacity makes me
very vain, though there is very little merit in it. I had seen
I
so much of all parties, that I had little esteem left for any; it
is most indifferent to me who is in or who is out, or which is
set in the pillory, Mr. Wilkes or my Lord Mansfield. I see the
country going to ruin, and no man with brains enough to save it.
That is mortifying; but what signifies who has the undoing it ?
I seldom suffer myself to think on this subject: my patriotism
could do no good, and my philosophy can make me be at peace.
I am sorry you are likely to lose your poor cousin Lady
Hinchinbrook; I heard a very bad account of her when I was
last in town. Your letter to Madame Roland shall be taken care
of; but as you are so scrupulous of making me pay postage, I
must remember not to overcharge you, as I can frank my idle
letters no longer; therefore, good night!
P. S. -I was in town last week and found Mr. Chute still
confined. He had a return in his shoulder, but I think it more
rheumatism than gout.
THE QUIPU SYSTEM; PROPHECIES OF NATIONAL RUIN
From Letter to the Countess of Ossory)
)
I
RETURN the Quipos, madam, because if I retained them till
I understand them, I fear you would never have them again.
I should as soon be able to hold a dialogue with a rainbow,
by the help of its grammar, a prism; for I have not yet discov-
ered which is the first or last verse of four lines that hang like
ropes of onions.
Yet it is not for want of study, or want of
respect for the Peruvian manner of writing. I perceive it is a
very soft language; and though at first I tangled the poem and
spoiled the rhymes, yet I can conceive that a harlequin's jacket,
artfully arranged by a princess of the blood of Mango Capac,
may contain a deep tragedy, and that a tawdry trimming may
be a version of Solomon's Song Nay, I can already say my
alphabet of six colors, and know that each stands indiscrimi-
nately but for four letters, — which gives the Peruvian a great
advantage over the Hebrew tongue, in which the total want of
vowels left every word, at the mercy of the reader; and though
our salvation depended upon it, we did not know precisely what
any word signified, till the invention of points, that were not
## p. 15579 (#533) ##########################################
HORACE WALPOLE
15579
used till the language had been obsolete for some thousands of
years. A little uncertainty, as where one has but one letter
instead of four, may give rise to many beauties. Puns must be
greatly assisted by that ambiguity, and the delicacies of the
language may depend on an almost imperceptible variation in
the shades.
I have heard of a French perfumer who
wrote an essay on the harmony of essences. Why should not
that idea be extended? The Peruvian Quipos adapted a lan-
guage to the eyes, rather than to the ears. Why should not
there be one for the nose ? The more the senses can be used
indifferently for each other, the more our understandings would
be enlarged. A rose, a jessamine, a pink, a jonquil, and a honey-
suckle, might signify the vowels; the consonants to be repre-
sented by other flowers. The Cape jessamine, which has two
smells, was born a diphthong. How charming it would be to
smell an ode from a nosegay, and to scent one's handkerchief
with a favorite song. Indeed, many improvements might be
made on the Quipos themselves, especially as they might be
worn as well as perused. A trimming set on a new lute-string
would be equivalent to a second edition with corrections.
In good truth, I was glad of anything that would occupy me,
and turn my attention from all the horrors one hears or appre-
hends. I am sorry I have read the devastation of Barbadoes
and Jamaica, etc. , etc. : when one can do no good, can neither
prevent nor redress, nor has any personal share, by one's self or
one's friends, is it not excusable to steep one's attention in any-
thing? . . . The expedition sent against the Spanish settlements
is cut off by the climate, and not a single being is left alive.
The Duchess of Bedford told me last night that the poor soldiers
so averse, that they were driven to the march by the
point of the bayonet; and that, besides the men, twenty-five
officers have perished. Lord Cornwallis and his tiny army are
scarce in a more prosperous way. On this dismal canvas a fourth
war is embroidered; and what, I think, threatens still more, the
French administration is changed, and likely to be composed of
more active men, and much more hostile to England. Our ruin
seems to me inevitable. Nay, I know those who smile in the
drawing-room, that groan by their fireside: they own
we have
no more men to send to America, and think our credit almost as
nearly exhausted. Can you wonder, then, madam, if I am glad
to play with Quipos — Oh, no!
15555
EDMUND WALLER
(1605-1687)
died away
he life of Edmund Waller extended over a period of important
change in English literature. When he began to write, in
the early part of the seventeenth century, the great liter-
ature of the Elizabethan era had been written, the surge of inspira-
tion and impassioned poetry of which Shakespeare was the heart had
The brilliant formalism which was to attain its apothe-
osis in Pope was already discernible. Edmund Waller made use in
his verse of the classic iambic and distich. He first appears among
the court poets of Charles I. In some re-
spects most commonplace, he yet presents
a singular figure among his associates, -
Cowley, Crashaw, Lovelace, and Suckling.
His poetry, like that of the other Cavalier
poets, was more of gallantry than of love;
he wrote with no great range of subjects,
nor depth of feeling. But the form of his
verse bears a closer resemblance to that of
Dryden and Pope, and indeed to the poetry
of to-day, than it does to the writing of
Crashaw and Cowley. Later in his life Wal-
ler invariably confined the sense within the
limits of the distich; making his verse some-
EDMUND WALLER
what monotonous,, but giving to it a finish
quite unusual in his time. The polish of his verse may have been
due to French influence, exerted during his nine years' exile in that
country; but Dr. Johnson declares that Waller wrote as smoothly at
eighteen as at eighty,— «smoothness being the particular quality
ascribed to him.
The poet's life was more varied than his poetry, furnishing him
an abundance of subjects to overlay with his light play of fancy. He
was born in Hertfordshire, March 3d, 1605. His family were wealthy
land-owners, and his mother, although related to Cromwell, was an
ardent royalist. He followed whichever side was victorious. At six-
teen he was in Parliament, but kept becomingly silent, merely using
the advantages of his position to marry a young heiress; and with her
fortune joined to his, he retired to the country to give himself up to
(
>
## p. 15556 (#510) ##########################################
15556
EDMUND WALLER
literary pursuits. Just when he began to write is not known. The
date of the subject of his first poem, "His Majesty's Escape, is 1623.
Some of his best poetry was written in an effort to win Lady Doro-
thea Sidney, his Saccharissa, between the death of his wife in 1634
and the marriage of Lady Dorothea in 1639. Meeting him years after,
the lady asked him when he would again write such verses to her.
« When you are as young, madam, and as handsome, as you were
then,” replied the poet. This remark furnishes a key to his char-
acter. He was facile and witty, but cold, shallow, and selfish.
In 1643, when the struggle between the King and Parliament grew
hotter, Waller was implicated in what was known as Waller's plot.
He was discovered, and behaved with the most abject meanness;
immediately turning informer, and saving himself by giving up three
others to death. He was let off with a fine of £ 1000, and was ban-
ished to France. From France he directed the publication of his
first volume of poems.
Here he lived in high reputation as a wit
for nine years; when, at the intervention of anti-royalist friends, he
was allowed to return to England. He immediately wrote a Pan-
egyric to my Lord Protector,' which is one of his best poems. Crom-
well was friendly to him; and on the Protector's death, Waller wrote
another poem to him, which under the circumstances must appear
somewhat disinterested. However, when Charles II. came into his
kingdom, Waller was ready with a series of verses for him. Charles,
who admitted the poet to his intimacy, complained that this poem
was inferior to Cromwell's. “Sire,” responded the quick-witted Wal-
ler, "poets succeed better in fiction than in truth. ”
Waller was in Parliament up to the time of his death in 1687.
He was said to be the delight of the Commons for his wit. His
poems went through several editions, and he continued to write.
Long before his death he saw the end of the romantic and irregular
school, and the full establishment of the classic and regular. John
Dryden has been called the first of the moderns. But «Edmund
Waller,” said Dryden, “first showed us to conclude the sense most
commonly in distichs; which, in the verse of those before him, runs
on for so many lines together that the reader is out of breath to
overtake it. ” Thus Waller becomes the founder of a school, the
influence of which extended over a hundred and fifty years; though
as a poet he sinks into insignificance beside Dryden and Pope, who
gave the school its character when they stamped it with their genius.
Fenton calls Waller (maker and model of melodious verse. ) In
the sense that he revived the form of a past age, and gave to it a
greater precision than it had ever possessed, he is a maker of verse.
Moreover, in 'Go, Lovely Rose,' he wrote one of the most perfect lyr-
ics in the tongue; and one such poem will embalm its writer. But
(
## p. 15557 (#511) ##########################################
EDMUND WALLER
15557
Waller's art was limited; the form was not new: and the popularity
of the poet exists chiefly through the praises of greater men, who
having too much to say to take time for the invention of a method
of their own, used the form to which he had directed their attention.
FROM THE POEM
OF THE DANGER HIS MAJESTY (BEING PRINCE) ESCAPED IN
THE ROAD AT ST. ANDERO
W'"Neptune's smooth face, and cleave the yielding
deep;
Which soon becomes the seat of sudden war
Between the wind and tide, that fiercely jar.
As when a sort of lusty shepherds try
Their force at football, care of victory
Makes them salute so rudely breast to breast,
That their encounter seems too rough for jest, –
They ply their feet, and still the restless ball,
Tost to and fro, is urgèd by them all, -
So fares the doubtful barge 'twixt tide and winds,
And like effect of their contention finds.
Yet the bold Britons still securely rowed:
Charles and his virtue was their sacred load;
Than which a greater pledge Heaven could not give,
That the good boat this tempest should outlive.
But storms increase! and now no hope of grace
Among them shines, save in the prince's face.
The pale Iberians had expired with fear,
But that their wonder did divert their care,
To see the prince with danger moved no more
Than with the pleasures of their court before:
Godlike his courage seemed, whom nor delight
Could soften, nor the face of Death affright;
Next to the power of making tempests cease,
Was in that storm to have so calm a peace.
## p. 15558 (#512) ##########################################
15558
EDMUND WALLER
THE COUNTESS OF CARLISLE
OF HER CHAMBER
T"
HEY taste of death, that do at heaven arrive;
But we this paradise approach alive.
Instead of Death, the dart of Love does strike:
And renders all within these walls alike;
The high in titles, and the shepherd here
Forgets his greatness, and forgets his fear.
All stand amazed, and gazing on the fair
Lose thought of what themselves or others are;
Ambition lose: and have no other scope,
Save Carlisle's favor, to employ their hope.
The Thracian could (though all those tales were true
The bold Greeks tell) no greater wonders do:
Before his feet so sheep and lions lay,
Fearless and wrathless while they heard him play.
The gay, the wise, the gallant, and the grave,
Subdued alike, all but one passion have;
No worthy mind but finds in hers there is
Something proportioned to the rule of his;
While she, with cheerful but impartial grace,
(Born for no one, but to delight the race
Of men,) like Phoebus, so divides her light,
And warms us, that she stoops not from her height.
ON A GIRDLE
HAT which her slender waist confined
Shall now my joyful temples bind :
No monarch but would give his crown,
His arms might do what this hath done.
T"
It was my heaven's extremest sphere,
The pale which held that lovely deer;
My joy, my grief, my hope, my love,
Did all within this circle move!
A narrow compass! and yet there
Dwelt all that's good and all that's fair:
Give me but what this ribbon bound,
Take all the rest the sun goes round.
## p. 15559 (#513) ##########################################
EDMUND WALLER
15559
GO, LOVELY ROSE
Gº
O, LOVELY rose !
Tell her that wastes her time and me,
That now she knows,
When I resemble her to thee,
How sweet and fair she seems to be.
Tell her that's young,
And shuns to have her graces spied,
That hadst thou sprung
In deserts, where no men abide,
Thou must have uncommended died.
Small is the worth
Of beauty from the light retired:
Bid her come forth,
Suffer herself to be desired,
And not blush so to be admired.
Then die! that she
The common fate of all things rare
May read in thee! -
How small a part of time they share
That are so wondrous sweet and fair!
FROM CA PANEGYRIC TO MY LORD PROTECTOR)
HILE with a strong and yet a gentle hand,
You bridle faction, and our hearts command,
Protect us from ourselves, and from the foe;
Make us unite, and make us conquer too.
W*
Let partial spirits still aloud complain,
Think themselves injured that they cannot reign,
And own no liberty, but where they may
Without control upon their fellows prey.
Above the waves, as Neptune showed his face,
To chide the winds and save the Trojan race,
So has your Highness, raised above the rest,
Storms of ambition tossing us repressed.
Your drooping country, torn with civil hate,
Restored by you, is made a glorious State;
## p. 15560 (#514) ##########################################
15560
EDMUND WALLER
The seat of empire, where the Irish come,
And the unwilling Scots, to fetch their doom.
The sea's our own: and now all nations greet,
With bending sails, each vessel of our fleet;
Your power extends so far as winds can blow,
Or swelling sails upon the globe may go.
Heaven, that hath placed this island to give law,
To balance Europe, and its States to awe,
In this conjunction doth on Britain smile,
The greatest leader and the greatest isle!
Whether this portion of the world were rent
By the rude ocean from the continent,
Or thus created, it was sure designed
To be the sacred refuge of mankind.
Hither the oppressèd shall henceforth resort,
Justice to crave, and succor at your court;
And then your Highness, not for ours alone,
But for the world's Protector, shall be known.
Still as you rise, the State exalted too,
Finds no distemper while 'tis changed by you;
Changed like the world's great scene! when, without
noise,
The rising sun night's vulgar lights destroys.
Had you, some ages past, this race of glory
Run, with amazement we should read your story;
But living virtue, all achievements past,
Meets envy still to grapple with at last.
This Cæsar found; and that ungrateful age,
With losing him, went back to blood and rage;
Mistaken Brutus thought to break their yoke,
But cut the bond of union with that stroke.
That sun once set, a thousand meaner stars
Gave a dim light to violence and wars,
To such a tempest as now threatens all,
Did not your mighty arm prevent the fall.
If Rome's great Senate could not wield that sword
Which of the conquered world had made them lord,
## p. 15561 (#515) ##########################################
EDMUND WALLER
15561
What hope had ours, while yet their power was new,
To rule victorious armies, but by you?
You, that had taught them to subdue their foes,
Could order teach, and their high sp'rits compose;
To every duty could their minds engage,
Provoke their courage, and command their rage.
So when a lion shakes his dreadful mane,
And angry grows, if he that first took pain
To tame his youth approach the haughty beast,
He bends to him, but frights away the rest.
As the vexed world, to find repose, at last
Itself into Augustus's arms did cast,
So England now does, with like toil opprest,
Her weary head upon your bosom rest.
Then let the Muses, with such notes as these,
Instruct us what belongs unto our peace.
Your battles they hereafter shall indite,
And draw the image of our Mars in fight:
Tell of towns stormed, and armies overrun,
And mighty kingdoms by your conduct won;
How, while you thundered, clouds of dust did choke
Contending troops, and seas lay hid in smoke.
Illustrious acts high raptures do infuse,
And every conqueror creates a Muse!
Here, in low strains, your milder deeds we sing,
But there, my lord, we'll bays and olives bring
To crown your head: while you in triumph ride
O'er conquered nations, and the sea beside;
While all your neighbor princes unto you,
Like Joseph's sheaves, pay reverence and due.
## p. 15562 (#516) ##########################################
15562
EDMUND WALLER
ON LOVE
A
NGER, in hasty words or blows,
Itself discharges on our foes;
And sorrow, too, finds some relief
In tears which wait upon our grief:
So every passion but fond love
Unto its own redress does move;
But that alone the wretch inclines
To what prevents his own designis :
Makes him lament, and sigh, and weep,
Disordered, tremble, fawn, and creep;
Postures which render him despised,
Where he endeavors to be prized.
For women — born to be controlled —
Stoop to the forward and the bold;
Affect the haughty and the proud,
The gay, the frolic, and the loud.
Who first the generous steed oppressed,
Not kneeling did salute the beast;
But with high courage, life, and force,
Approaching, tamed th' unruly horse.
Unwisely we the wiser East
Pity, supposing them oppressed
With tyrants' force, whose law is will,
By which they govern, spoil, and kill:
Each nymph, but moderately fair,
Commands with no less rigor here.
Should some brave Turk, that walks among
His twenty lasses, bright and young,
Behold as many gallants here,
With modest guise and silent fear,
All to one female idol bend,
While her pride does scarce descend
To mark their follies, he would swear
That these her guard of eunuchs were,
And that a more majestic queen,
Or humbler slaves, he had not seen.
All this with indignation spoke,
In vain I struggled with the yoke
Of mighty Love; that conquering look,
When next beheld, like lightning strook
## p. 15563 (#517) ##########################################
EDMUND WALLER
15563
My blasted soul, and made me bow
Lower than those I pitied now.
So the tall stag, upon the brink
Of soine smooth stream about to drink,
Surveying there his armèd head,
With shame remembers that he filed
The scornèd dogs, resolves to try
The combat next: but if their cry
Invades again his trembling ear,
He straight resumes his wonted care;
Leaves the untasted spring behind,
And winged with fear, outfies the wind.
AT PENSHURST
W"
Thile in this park I sing, the listening deer
Attend my passion, and forget to fear;
When to the beeches I report my flame,
They bow their heads as if they felt the same.
To gods appealing, when I reach their bowers
With loud complaints, they answer me in showers.
To thee a wild and cruel soul is given,
More deaf than trees, and prouder than the heaven!
Love's foe professed! why dost thou falsely feign
Thyself a Sidney? from which noble strain
He sprung, that could so far exalt the name
Of Love, and warm our nation with his flame,
That all we can of love or high desire,
Seems but the smoke of amorous Sidney's fire.
Nor call her mother who so well does prove
One breast may hold both chastity and love.
Never can she, that so exceeds the spring
In joy and bounty, be supposed to bring
One so destructive. To no human stock
We owe this fierce unkindness, but the rock —
That cloven rock produced thee, by whose side
Nature, to recompense the fatal pride
Of such stern beauty, placed those healing springs
Which not more help than that destruction brings.
Thy heart no ruder than the rugged stone,
I might, like Orpheus, with my numerous moan
## p. 15564 (#518) ##########################################
15564
EDMUND WALLER
Melt to compassion; now my traitorous song
With thee conspires to do the singer wrong:
While thus I suffer not myself to lose
The memory of what augments my woes;
But with my own breath still foment the fire,
Which flames as high as fancy can aspire!
This last complaint the indulgent ears did pierce
Of just Apollo, president of verse;
Highly concerned that the Muse should bring
Damage to one whom he had taught to sing,
Thus he advised me:-“On yon aged tree
Hang up thy lute, and hie thee to the sea,
That there with wonders thy diverted mind
Some truce, at least, may with this passion find. ”
Ah, cruel nymph! from whom her humble swain
Flies for relief unto the raging main,
And from the winds and tempests does expect
A milder fate than from her cold neglect!
Yet there he'll pray that the unkind may prove
Blest in her choice; and vows this endless love
Springs from no hope of what she can confer,
But from those gifts which Heaven has heaped on her.
## p. 15565 (#519) ##########################################
15565
HORACE WALPOLE
(1717-1797)
RO ORACE WALPOLE might be called the Beau Brummel of Eng-
lish men of letters; yet the criticism which takes account
chiefly of his elegances is in danger of overlooking his
substantial literary merits. These are well established, and singu-
lar in their class and degree: their limitations perhaps add to their
worth rather than detract from it. Walpole's writings have the dis-
tinctive little beauties of a Watteau landscape, whose artificiality is
part of its charm. They bear about them, moreover, an attractive
atmosphere of irresponsibility, as emanating
from one who disavowed the serious claims
of authorship, making of literature always
a gentlemanly diversion,- over which it
was permissible to wax serious, however, as
over the laying out of a garden maze, or
the construction of a lath-and-plaster Gothic
tower.
The life of Horace Walpole stretches
over the greater part of the eighteenth
century, of which century he was an
ganic part; reflecting its admirable good
sense, its complete materialism, its clever-
ness, and its wit. Born in 1717, the son of HORACE WALPOLE
the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole, the
fashionable world of the day was his by inheritance. Between the
beef-eating, coarse-living statesman, and his elegant little son, there
could not have been much sympathy; but the child accepted readily
enough the advantages which his father's position brought to him.
The fascination which royalty always exercised over him was early
shown by his insisting, at the age of ten years, upon a presenta-
tion to George I. He was sent in the same year to Eton, a place
forever memorable to him by reason of the lifelong friendships
which he formed there,— with his cousins Henry Conway and Lord
Hertford, with George Selwyn, with George and Charles Montagu, with
Thomas Gray the poet, with Richard West and Thomas Ashton. In
1734 he left Eton, without having specially distinguished himself. In
1735 he entered King's College, Cambridge, although his mathematical
or-
-
## p. 15566 (#520) ##########################################
15566
HORACE WALPOLE
attainments were summed up in an insecure knowledge of the multi-
plication table; at Cambridge, however, he broadened his knowledge
of the modern tongues, thus preparing himself for a Continental resi-
dence. In 1739, in company with Gray, he left the University to
make the conventional grand tour. From the Continent he wrote
many of the letters for which he is famous. The two young men
arrived at length in Florence, where they took up their residence
with Sir Horace Mann, the British minister plenipotentiary to Tus-
cany, who afterwards became one of Walpole's chief correspondents.
At Florence, Walpole was drawn more and more into fashionable
society; Gray more and more into the scholar's life, under the stimu-
lus of Italy's antiquities. The separation between the two friends,
inevitable under the circumstances, soon came. In after years Wal-
pole assumed all the blame of the quarrel which was the apparent
cause of their parting.
In September 1741 he himself returned to England, where the
ministry of Sir Robert was tottering to its fall. He took his seat
in the House as representative from the borough of Callington, mak-
ing at this time strong speeches in defense of his father. Sir Robert,
however, resigned in 1742, was created Earl of Orford, and immedi-
ately retired to Houghton, the seat of the family. His son joined
him there; but this residence in Norfolk, among the hunting gentry
of the county, was a weary exile to Horace. “Only imagine,” he
writes, that I here every day see men who are mountains of roast
beef, and only seem just roughly hewn out into outlines of human
form, like the giant rock of Pratolino. I shudder when I see them
brandish their knives in act to carve, and look on them as savages
that devour one another. ”
In 1745 Sir Robert Walpole died. Two years after his death his
son purchased the villa at Twickenham, which was to become one of
the famous houses of Europe under the name of Strawberry Hill.
The original villa was the nucleus of a fantastic Gothic structure,
which grew year after year, until it became not unlike a miniature
castle. Walpole, through his father's influence, had come into the
possession of several lucrative sinecures, and had also wealth by
inheritance. He could gratify his tastes to the utmost; it was at
Strawberry Hill that his life as an English man of letters, and as a
dilettante, really commences. His house became, more than the
houses of the majority of men, the expression of his mind. Its an-
cient stained glass, its armor, its rare china, its rare prints, its old
masters, its curious relics of departed greatness, its strange archi-
tecture following no known rules, seemed the outward symbols of
certain qualities of Walpole's mind, - his love of the choicest gossip,
his self-conscious aristocracy, his ingenuity, his frank insincerity. At
## p. 15567 (#521) ##########################################
HORACE WALPOLE
15567
-
Strawberry Hill he set up a printing-press, – as necessary a part of
a cultured gentleman's establishment as his library or his art gallery.
His old friendship with Gray having been resumed, he edited and
printed the works of the poet, with illustrations by Bentley. Among
other famous books which were issued from this press were the Life
of Lord Herbert of Cherbury,' Heutzner's Journey into England,'
and not a few of Walpole's own works. During his long residence at
Twickenham, he wrote the majority of those letters which stand in
the highest rank of their class. Among his correspondents were
Robert Jephson the playwright, the poet Mason, the Countess of
Ossory, his cousin Henry Conway, Sir Horace Mann, George Montagu,
and Madame du Deffand. With the last his friendship was long and
close. It was natural that the France of the latter half of the
eighteenth century should have peculiar attractions for a man of
Walpole's temperament. Moreover, he was always fond of women's
society: perhaps they understood his temperament better than men,
he himself, at least, possessing many lady-like tastes and qualities.
The two women who were nearest and dearest to him in his old
age were Mary and Agnes Berry, of whom he has left a charming
description in a letter to a friend. They lived near him until his
death; and he bequeathed to them Strawberry Hill, besides a consid-
erable sum of money. He died in 1797.
The reputation of Walpole as an author rests upon his letters.
His romantic novel (The Castle of Otranto,' and his dreadful tragedy
(The Mysterious Mother,' are famous only in their oblivion. His
Anecdotes of Painting in England, his (Memoirs of the Last Ten
Years of King George II. ,' his Journal of the Reign of George III. ,'
have greater claims to remembrance. It is in his letters, however,
that he fully expresses his individuality. They are among the most
entertaining letters that were ever written: full of high-toned gossip,
of the fruits of keen observation of men and things, displaying a
genuine love of the beautiful and the picturesque,- they are, in the
fullest sense, readable. They give the impression moreover of reserve
force, as if their writer might accomplish great things if he chose.
Subsequent generations have given the benefit of the doubt to the
elegant creator of Strawberry Hill. A man who does a small thing
to perfection, is generally suspected of having other, unknown pow-
ers at his command. What Horace Walpole might have done is
almost as prominent an element in his reputation as what he did do.
## p. 15568 (#522) ##########################################
15568
HORACE WALPOLE
COCK-LANE GHOST AND LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU
From Letter to Sir Horace Mann
I
-
AM ashamed to tell you that we are again dipped into an
egregious scene of folly. The reigning fashion is a ghost, -
a ghost that would not pass muster in the paltriest convent
in the Apennine. It only knocks and scratches; does not pre-
tend to appear or to speak. The clergy give it their benediction;
and all the world, whether believers or infidels, go to hear it. I,
in which number you may guess, go to-morrow; for it is as much
the mode to visit the ghost as the Prince of Mecklenburg, who
is just arrived. I have not seen him yet, though I left my name
for him. But I will tell you who is come too,-- Lady Mary
Wortley. I went last night to visit her; I give you my honor
(and you who know her would credit it me without it), the fol-
lowing is a faithful description. I found her in a little miserable
bedchamber of a ready-furnished house, with two tallow candles,
and a bureau covered with pots and pans. On her head, in full
of all accounts, she had an old black-laced hood, wrapped entirely
round, so as to conceal all hair or want of hair. No handker-
chief, but up to her chin a kind of horseman's riding-coat, call-
ing itself a pet-en-l'air, made of a dark green (green I think it
had been) brocade, with colored and silver flowers, and lined with
furs; boddice laced, a foul dimity petticoat sprig'd, velvet muffe-
teens on her arms, gray stockings and slippers. Her face less
changed in twenty years than I could have imagined: I told her
so, and she was not so tolerable twenty years ago that she needed
have taken it for flattery; but she did, and literally gave me a
box on the ear. She is very lively, all her senses perfect, her lan-
guages as imperfect as ever, her avarice greater. She entertained
me at the first with nothing but the dearness of provisions at
Helvoet. With nothing but an Italian, a French, and a Prussian,
all men-servants,- and something she calls an old secretary, but
whose age till he appears will be doubtful, - she receives all the
world, who go to homage her as Queen Mother, and crams them
into this kennel. The Duchess of Hamilton, who came in just
after me, was so astonished and diverted that she could not speak
to her for laughing: She says that she has left all her clothes
at Venice.
## p. 15569 (#523) ##########################################
HORACE WALPOLE
15569
A YEAR OF FASHION IN WALPOLE'S DAY
From Letter to the Earl of Hertford
YºY
a
are sensible, my dear lord, that any amusement from my
letters must depend upon times and seasons.
We are
very absurd nation (though the French are so good at pres-
ent as to think us a very wise one, only because they themselves
are now a very weak one); but then that absurdity depends upon
the almanac. Posterity, who will know nothing of our intervals,
will conclude that this age was a succession of events. I could
tell them that we know as well when an event, as when Easter,
will happen. Do but recollect these last ten years. The begin-
ning of October, one is certain that everybody will be at New-
market, and the Duke of Cumberland will lose, and Shafto win,
two or three thousand pounds. After that, while people are
preparing to come to town for the winter, the ministry is sud-
denly changed, and all the world comes to learn how it happened,
a fortnight sooner than they intended; and fully persuaded that
the new arrangement cannot last a month. The Parliament opens:
everybody is bribed; and the new establishment is perceived to
be composed of adamant. November passes with two or three
self-murders, and a new play.
Christmas arrives: everybody goes
out of town; and a riot happens in one of the theatres. The
Parliament meets again, taxes are warmly opposed; and some
citizen makes his fortune by a subscription. The Opposition
languishes; balls and assemblies begin; some master and miss
begin to get together, are talked of, and give occasion to forty
more matches being invented; an unexpected debate starts up at
the end of the session, that makes more noise than anything that
was designed to make a noise, and subsides again in a new peer-
age or two.
Ranelagh opens, and Vauxhall: one produces scan-
dal, and t’other a drunken quarrel. People separate, some to
Tunbridge, and some to all the horse-races in England; and so
the year comes again to October.
XXVI–974
## p. 15570 (#524) ##########################################
15570
HORACE WALPOLE
FUNERAL OF GEORGE II.
From Letter to George Montagu, Esq. '
Dº
o you know, I had the curiosity to go to the burying tother
night, - I had never seen a royal funeral; nay, I walked as
a rag of quality, which I found would be, and so it is, the
easiest way of seeing it. It is absolutely a noble sight. The
Prince's chamber, hung with purple, and a quantity of silver
lamps, the coffin under a canopy of purple velvet, and six vast
chandeliers of silver on high stands, had a very good effect. The
Ambassador from Tripoli and his son were carried to see that
chamber. The procession through a line of foot-guards, every
seventh man bearing a torch, the horse-guards lining the outside,
their officers with drawn sabres and crape sashes on horseback,
the drums muffled, the fifes, bells tolling, and minute-guns, - all
this was very solemn. But the charm was the entrance of the
Abbey, where we were received by the dean and chapter in rich
robes, the choir and almsmen bearing torches; the whole abbey
so illuminated that one saw it to greater advantage than by day,
— the tombs, long aisles, and fretted roof all appearing distinctly
and with the happiest chiaroscuro. There wanted nothing but
incense, and little chapels here and there, with priests saying
mass for the repose of the defunct; yet one could not complain
of its not being Catholic enough. I had been in dread of being
coupled with some boy of ten years old; but the heralds were
not very accurate, and I walked with George Grenville, taller and
older, to keep me in countenance. When we came to the chapel
of Henry the Seventh, all solemnity and decorum ceased; no
order was observed, people sat or stood where they could or
would; the yeomen of the guard were crying for help, oppressed
by the great weight of the coffin; the bishop read sadly and
blundered in the prayers; the fine chapter “Man that is born of
a woman” was chanted, not read; and the anthem, besides being
immeasurably tedious, would have served as well for a nuptial.
The real serious part was the figure of the Duke of Cumberland,
heightened by a thousand melancholy circumstances, He had a
dark brown Adonis, and a cloak of black cloth, with a train of
five yards. Attending the funeral of a father could not be pleas-
ant; his leg extremely bad, yet forced to stand upon it nearly
two hours; his face bloated and distorted with his late paralytic
stroke, which has affected, too, one of his eyes; and placed over
## p. 15571 (#525) ##########################################
HORACE WALPOLE
15571
This grave
the mouth of the vault, into which, in all probability, he must
himself so soon descend: think how unpleasant a situation! He
bore it all with a firm and unaffected countenance.
scene was fully contrasted by the burlesque Duke of Newcastle.
He fell into a fit of crying the moment he came into the chapel,
and flung himself back in a stall, the archbishop hovering over
him with a smelling-bottle; but in two minutes his curiosity got
the better of his hypocrisy, and he ran about the chapel with
his glass to spy who was was not there, spying with one
hand and mopping his eyes with the other. Then returned the
fear of catching cold; and the Duke of Cumberland, who was
sinking with heat, felt himself weighed down, and turning round,
found it was the Duke of Newcastle standing upon his train to
avoid the chill of the marble. It was very theatric to look down
into the vault where the coffin lay, attended by mourners with
lights. Clavering, the groom of the bedchamber, refused to sit
up with the body, and was dismissed by the King's order.
or
GOSSIP ABOUT THE FRENCH AND FRENCH WOMEN
From Letter to Mr. Gray
B'
Y WHAT I said of their religious or rather irreligious opinions,
you must not conclude their people of quality atheists - at
least, not the men. Happily for them, poor souls! they are
not capable of going so far into thinking. They assent to a great
deal, because it is the fashion, and because they don't know how
to contradict. They are ashamed to defend the Roman Catholic
religion, because it is quite exploded; but I am convinced they
believe it in their hearts. They hate the Parliaments and the
philosophers, and are rejoiced that they may still idolize royalty.
At present, too, they are a little triumphant,- the court has
shown a little spirit, and the Parliaments much less; but as the
Duc de Choiseul, who is very fluttering, unsettled, and inclined to
the philosophers, has made a compromise with the Parliament of
Bretagne, the Parliaments might venture out again, if, as I fancy
will be the case, they are not glad to drop a cause, of which
they began to be a little weary of the inconveniences.
The generality of the men, and more than the generality, are
dull and empty. They have taken up gravity, thinking it was
## p. 15572 (#526) ##########################################
15572
HORACE WALPOLE
philosophy and English, and so have acquired nothing in the
room of their natural levity and cheerfulness. However, as their
high opinion of their own country remains, for which they can no
longer assign any reason, they are contemptuous and reserved,
instead of being ridiculously, consequently pardonably, imperti-
nent. I have wondered, knowing my own countrymen, that we
had attained such a superiority. I wonder no longer, and have
a little more respect for English heads than I had.
The women do not seem of the same country; if they are
less gay than they were, they are more informed, enough to
make them very conversable. I know six or seven with very
superior understandings; some of them with wit, or with soft-
ness, or very good sense.
Madame Geoffrin, of whom you have heard much, is an ex-
traordinary woman, with more common-sense than I almost ever
met with Great quickness in discovering characters, penetration
in going to the bottom of them, and a pencil that ifever fails in
a likeness, — seldom a favorable one. She exacts and preserves,
spite of her birth and their nonsensical prejudices about nobility,
great court and attention. This she acquires by a thousand little
arts and offices of friendship; and by a freedom and severity
which seem to be her sole end of drawing a concourse to her,
for she insists on scolding those she inveigles to her. She has
little taste and less knowledge; but protects artisans and authors,
and courts a few people to have the credit of serving her de-
pendents. She was bred under the famous Madame Tencin,
who advised her never to refuse any man; for, said her mistress,
though nine in ten should not care a farthing for you, the tenth
may live to be a useful friend. She did not adopt or reject the
whole plan, but fully retained the purport of the maxim.
In
short, she is an epitome of empire, subsisting by rewards and
punishments. Her great enemy, Madame du Deffand, was for a
short time mistress of the Regent; is now very old and stone-
blind, but retains all her vivacity, wit, memory, judgment, pas-
sions, and agreeableness. She goes to operas, plays, suppers,
and Versailles; gives suppers twice a week; has everything new
read to her; makes new songs and epigrams, ay, admirably, and
remembers every one that has been made these fourscore years.
She corresponds with Voltaire, dictates charming letters to him,
contradicts him, is no bigot to him or anybody, and laughs both
at the clergy and the philosophers. In a dispute, into which
## p. 15573 (#527) ##########################################
HORACE WALPOLE
15573
(
she easily falls, she is very warm, and yet scarce ever in the
wrong: her judgment on every subject is as just as possible; on
every point of conduct as wrong as possible; for she is all love
and hatred, passionate for her friends to enthusiasm, still anxious
to be loved, - I don't mean by lovers, - and a vehement enemy,
but openly. As she can have no amusement but conversation,
the least solitude and ennui are insupportable to her, and put her
into the power of several worthless people, who eat her suppers
when they can eat nobody's of higher rank; wink to one another
and laugh at her; hate her because she has forty times more
parts, — and venture to hate her because she is not rich. She
has an old friend whom I must mention: a Monsieur Pondeveyle,
author of the Fat puni, and the Complaisant,' and of those
pretty novels the Comte de Cominge,' the “Siege of Calais,' and
Les Malheurs de l'Amour. ' Would you not expect this old
man to be very agreeable? He can be so, but seldom is;- yet
he has another very different and very amusing talent, the art
of, parody, and is unique in his kind. He composes tales to the
tunes of long dances: for instance, he has adapted the Regent's
(Daphnis and Chloe' to one, and made it ten times more in-
decent; but he is so old, and sings it so well, that it is permitted
in all companies. He has succeeded still better in les caractères
de la danse, to which he has adapted words that express all the
characters of love. With all this he has not the least idea of
cheerfulness in conversation : seldom speaks but on grave sub-
jects, and not often on them; is a humorist, very supercilious,
and wrapt up in admiration of his own country as the only judge
of his merit. His air and look are cold and forbidding; but ask
him to sing, or praise his works, his eyes and smiles open and
brighten up. In short, I can show him to you: the self-applauding
poet in Hogarth's Rake's Progress, the second print, is so like
his very features and very wig, that you would know him by it,
if you came hither,- for he certainly will not go to you.
Madame de Mirepoix's understanding is excellent of the useful
kind, and can be so when she pleases of the agreeable kind. She
has read, but seldom shows it; and has perfect taste.
Her man-
ner is cold, but very civil; and she conceals even the blood of
Lorraine, without ever forgetting it. Nobody in France knows
the world better, and nobody is personally so well with the
King. She is false, artful, and insinuating beyond measure when
it is her interest; but indolent and a coward. She never had any
## p. 15574 (#528) ##########################################
15574
HORACE WALPOLE
passion but gaming, and always loses. For ever paying court, the
sole produce of a life of art is to get money from the King to
carry on a course of paying debts or contracting new ones, which
she discharges as fast as she is able. She advertised devotion to
get made dame du palais to the Queen; and the very next day
this Princess of Lorraine was seen riding backwards with Madame
Pompadour in the latter's coach. When the King was stabbed,
and heartily frightened, the mistress took a panic too, and con-
sulted D'Argenson whether she had not best make off in time.
He hated her, and said, By all means. Madame de Mirepoix
advised her to stay. The King recovered his spirits, D'Argenson
was banished, and La Maréchale inherited part of the mistress's
credit. -I must interrupt my history of illustrious women with
an anecdote of Monsieur de Maurepas, with whom I am much
acquainted, and who has one of the few heads which approach to
good ones; and who luckily for us was disgraced, and the marine
dropped, because it was his favorite object and province. He
employed Pondeveyle to make a song on the Pompadour; it was
clever and bitter, and did not spare even Majesty. This was
Maurepas absurd enough to sing at supper at Versailles. Banish-
ment ensued; and lest he should ever be restored, the mistress
persuaded the King that he had poisoned her predecessor, Ma-
dame de Chateauroux. Maurepas is very agrecable, and exceed-
ingly cheerful; yet I have seen a transient silent cloud when
politics are talked of.
Madame de Boufflers, who was in England, is a savante, mis-
tress of the Prince of Conti, and very desirous of being his wife.
She is two women, the upper and the lower. I need not tell you
that the lower is gallant, and still has pretensions. The upper
is very sensible, too, and has a measured eloquence that is just
and pleasing, – but all is spoiled by an unrelaxed attention to
applause. You would think she was always sitting for her pict-
ure to her biographer.
Madame de Rochfort is different from all the rest. Her un-
derstanding is just and delicate; with a finesse of wit that is
the result of reflection. Her manner is soft and feminine, and
though a savante, without any declared pretensions. She is the
decent friend of Monsieur de Nivernois; for you must not believe
a syllable of what you read in their novels. It requires the
greatest curiosity, or the greatest habitude, to discover the small-
est connexion between the sexes here. No familiarity, but under
## p. 15575 (#529) ##########################################
HORACE WALPOLE
15575
the veil of friendship, is permitted; and Love's dictionary is as
much prohibited, as at first sight one should think his ritual was.
All you hear, and that pronounced with nonchalance, is that Mon-
sieur un tel has had Madame une telle.
The Duchess of Choiseul, the only young one of these hero-
ines, is not very pretty, but has fine eyes; and is a little model
in waxwork, which not being allowed to speak for some time as
incapable, has a hesitation and modesty, the latter of which the
court has not cured, and the former of which is atoned for by
the most interesting sound of voice, and forgotten in the most
elegant turn and propriety of expression. Oh! it is the gen-
tlest, amiable, civil little creature that ever came out of a fairy
egg! so just in its phrases and thoughts, so attentive and good-
natured! Everybody loves it but its husband, who prefers his
own sister, the Duchesse de Grammont,-- an Amazonian, fierce,
haughty dame, who loves and hates arbitrarily, and is detested.
Madame de Choiseul, passionately fond of her husband, was the
martyr of this union, but at last submitted with a good grace;
has gained a little credit with him, and is still believed to idolize
him.
But I doubt it: she takes too much pains to profess it.
I cannot finish my list without adding a much more com-
mon character, - but more complete in its kind than any of the
foregoing, - the Maréchale de Luxembourg. She has been very
handsome, very abandoned, and very mischievous. Her beauty
is gone, her lovers are gone, and she thinks the devil is coming.
This dejection has softened her into being rather agreeable, for
she has wit and good-breeding; but you would swear, by the rest-
lessness of her person and the horrors she cannot conceal, that
she had signed the compact, and expected to be called upon in a
week for the performance.
I could add many pictures, but none so remarkable. In those
I send you there is not a feature bestowed gratis or exaggerated.
For the beauties, of which there are a few considerable, -as
Mesdames de Brionne, de Monaco, et d'Egmont,- they have not
yet lost their characters, nor got any.
You must not attribute my intimacy with Paris to curiosity
alone. An accident unlocked the doors for me.
That passe-par-
tout called the fashion has made them fly open — and what do
you think was that fashion ? -I myself. Yes, like Queen Eleanor
in the ballad, I sunk at Charing Cross, and have risen in the
Fauxbourg St. Germain. A plaisanterie on Rousseau, whose
-
## p. 15576 (#530) ##########################################
15576
HORACE WALPOLE
arrival here in his way to you brought me acquainted with many
anecdotes conformable to the idea I had conceived of him,
got about, was liked much more than it deserved, spread like
wild-fire, and made me the subject of conversation. Rousseau's
devotees were offended. Madame de Boufflers, with a tone of
sentiment, and the accents of lamenting humanity, abused me
heartily, and then complained to myself with the utmost softness.
I acted contrition, but had liked to have spoiled all by growing
dreadfully tired of a second lecture from the Prince of Conti,
who took up the ball, and made himself the hero of a history
wherein he had nothing to do. I listened, did not understand
half he said (nor he either), forgot the rest, said Yes when I
should have said No, yawned when I should have smiled, and
was very penitent when I should have rejoiced at my pardon.
Madame de Boufflers was more distressed, for he owned twenty
times more than I had said: she frowned, and made him signs;
but she had wound up his clack, and there was no stopping it.
The moment she grew angry, the lord of the house grew
charmed, and it has been my fault if I am not at the head of a
numerous sect; but when I left a triumphant party in England,
I did not come here to be at the head of a fashion. However, I
have been sent for about like an African prince, or a learned
canary-bird; and was in particular carried by force to the Prin-
cess of Talmond, the Queen's cousin, who lives in a charitable
apartment in the Luxembourg, and was sitting on a small bed
hung with saints and Sobieskis, in a corner of one of those vast
chambers, by two blinking tapers. I stumbled over a cat and
a footstool in my journey to her presence. She could not find
a syllable to say to me, and the visit ended with her begging a
lap-dog. Thank the Lord! though this is the first month, it is
the last week, of my reign; and I shall resign my crown with a
great satisfaction to a bouillie of chestnuts, which is just invented,
and whose annals will be illustrated by so many indigestions
that Paris will not want anything else these three weeks. I
will inclose the fatal letter after I have finished this enormous
one; to which I will only add that nothing has interrupted my
Sévigné researches but the frost. The Abbé de Malesherbes has
given me full power to ransack Livry. I did not tell you that
by great accident, when I thought on nothing less, I stumbled on
an original picture of the Comte de Grammont. Adieu! You are
generally in London in March: I shall be there by the end of it.
>
## p. 15577 (#531) ##########################################
HORACE WALPOLE
15577
THE ENGLISH CLIMATE
From Letter to George Montagu, Esq.
Nº:
Z
STRAWBERRY Hill, June 15th, 1768.
I CANNOT be so false as to say I am glad you are pleased
with your situation. You are so apt to take root, that it
requires ten years to dig you out again when you once
begin to settle. As you go pitching your tent up and down, I
wish you were still more a Tartar, and shifted your quarters
perpetually. Yes, I will come and see you; but tell me first,
when do your Duke and Duchess (the Argylls) travel to the
North ? I know that he is a very amiable lad, and I do not
know that she is not as amiable a laddess, but I had rather see
their house comfortably when they are not there.
I perceive the deluge fell upon you before it reached us. It
began here but on Monday last, and then rained near eight-and-
forty hours without intermission. My poor hay has not a dry
thread to its back. I have had a fire these three days. In
short, every summer one lives in a state of mutiny and murmur,
and I have found the reason: it is because we will affect to
have a summer, and we have no title to any such thing. Our
poets learnt their trade of the Romans, and so adopted the terms
of their masters. They talk of shady groves, purling streams,
and cooling breezes, and we get sore throats and agues with
attempting to realize these visions. Master Damon writes a song,
and invites Miss Chloe to enjoy the cool of the evening, and
the deuce a bit have we of any such thing as a cool evening.
Zephyr is a northeast wind, that makes Damon button up to
the chin, and pinches Chloe's nose till it is red and blue; and
then they cry, This is a bad summer! as if we
ever had
any
other. The best sun we have is made of Newcastle coal, and I
am determined never to reckon upon any other. We ruin our-
selves with inviting over foreign trees, and making our houses
clamber up hills to look at prospects. How our ancestors would
laugh at us, who knew there was no being comfortable unless
you had a high hill before your nose, and a thick warm wood at
your back! Taste is too freezing a commodity for us, and, depend
upon it, will go out of fashion again.
There is indeed a natural warmth in this country, which, as
you say, I am very glad not to enjoy any longer; I mean the
## p. 15578 (#532) ##########################################
15578
HORACE WALPOLE
hot-house in St. Stephen's chapel. My own sagacity makes me
very vain, though there is very little merit in it. I had seen
I
so much of all parties, that I had little esteem left for any; it
is most indifferent to me who is in or who is out, or which is
set in the pillory, Mr. Wilkes or my Lord Mansfield. I see the
country going to ruin, and no man with brains enough to save it.
That is mortifying; but what signifies who has the undoing it ?
I seldom suffer myself to think on this subject: my patriotism
could do no good, and my philosophy can make me be at peace.
I am sorry you are likely to lose your poor cousin Lady
Hinchinbrook; I heard a very bad account of her when I was
last in town. Your letter to Madame Roland shall be taken care
of; but as you are so scrupulous of making me pay postage, I
must remember not to overcharge you, as I can frank my idle
letters no longer; therefore, good night!
P. S. -I was in town last week and found Mr. Chute still
confined. He had a return in his shoulder, but I think it more
rheumatism than gout.
THE QUIPU SYSTEM; PROPHECIES OF NATIONAL RUIN
From Letter to the Countess of Ossory)
)
I
RETURN the Quipos, madam, because if I retained them till
I understand them, I fear you would never have them again.
I should as soon be able to hold a dialogue with a rainbow,
by the help of its grammar, a prism; for I have not yet discov-
ered which is the first or last verse of four lines that hang like
ropes of onions.
Yet it is not for want of study, or want of
respect for the Peruvian manner of writing. I perceive it is a
very soft language; and though at first I tangled the poem and
spoiled the rhymes, yet I can conceive that a harlequin's jacket,
artfully arranged by a princess of the blood of Mango Capac,
may contain a deep tragedy, and that a tawdry trimming may
be a version of Solomon's Song Nay, I can already say my
alphabet of six colors, and know that each stands indiscrimi-
nately but for four letters, — which gives the Peruvian a great
advantage over the Hebrew tongue, in which the total want of
vowels left every word, at the mercy of the reader; and though
our salvation depended upon it, we did not know precisely what
any word signified, till the invention of points, that were not
## p. 15579 (#533) ##########################################
HORACE WALPOLE
15579
used till the language had been obsolete for some thousands of
years. A little uncertainty, as where one has but one letter
instead of four, may give rise to many beauties. Puns must be
greatly assisted by that ambiguity, and the delicacies of the
language may depend on an almost imperceptible variation in
the shades.
I have heard of a French perfumer who
wrote an essay on the harmony of essences. Why should not
that idea be extended? The Peruvian Quipos adapted a lan-
guage to the eyes, rather than to the ears. Why should not
there be one for the nose ? The more the senses can be used
indifferently for each other, the more our understandings would
be enlarged. A rose, a jessamine, a pink, a jonquil, and a honey-
suckle, might signify the vowels; the consonants to be repre-
sented by other flowers. The Cape jessamine, which has two
smells, was born a diphthong. How charming it would be to
smell an ode from a nosegay, and to scent one's handkerchief
with a favorite song. Indeed, many improvements might be
made on the Quipos themselves, especially as they might be
worn as well as perused. A trimming set on a new lute-string
would be equivalent to a second edition with corrections.
In good truth, I was glad of anything that would occupy me,
and turn my attention from all the horrors one hears or appre-
hends. I am sorry I have read the devastation of Barbadoes
and Jamaica, etc. , etc. : when one can do no good, can neither
prevent nor redress, nor has any personal share, by one's self or
one's friends, is it not excusable to steep one's attention in any-
thing? . . . The expedition sent against the Spanish settlements
is cut off by the climate, and not a single being is left alive.
The Duchess of Bedford told me last night that the poor soldiers
so averse, that they were driven to the march by the
point of the bayonet; and that, besides the men, twenty-five
officers have perished. Lord Cornwallis and his tiny army are
scarce in a more prosperous way. On this dismal canvas a fourth
war is embroidered; and what, I think, threatens still more, the
French administration is changed, and likely to be composed of
more active men, and much more hostile to England. Our ruin
seems to me inevitable. Nay, I know those who smile in the
drawing-room, that groan by their fireside: they own
we have
no more men to send to America, and think our credit almost as
nearly exhausted. Can you wonder, then, madam, if I am glad
to play with Quipos — Oh, no!
