It

your amazing industry, neatness, legibility, with notes, arms, &c. I know no such repositories."* is true that the student who chooses to search with the requisite diligence may find "something or other" to suit his taste: it is equally true that he will find a vast mass not likely to suit him at all. Mr. Cole possessed wonderful industry, but was terribly deficient in discrimination.

His letters to Horace Walpole indicate the plodding character of the man: but many passages have been omitted that would, had they been retained, have shown him in a less favourable light. For he had an extraordinary facility sometimes for writing a great deal about nothing, and managed to fill up several sheets of paper, when it was painfully evident he had nothing to say. He was a great sufferer from the gout, but the disease would have been terrible indeed that had prevented the untiring occupation of his pen. On he proceeded year after year adding to his transcripts, and multiplying annotations, till the month of December, 1782, when his labours ceased for ever.

Mr. Essex, writing to his friend Mr. Gough, December 18, 1782, says,

"It is with much concern I now write to acquaint you that our old friend Mr. Cole is no more. He was confined to his bed for the first time, last Thursday se'nnight. On Tuesday, the 10th, he sent for me and Mr. Lombe, the attorney, having, as he said, no time to lose, and gave directions about his will, which he had written himself; but desired him to put it into proper form, with some few alterations. His manuscripts, consisting of about 100 volumes, he

has given to the British Museum; likewise a collection of loose letters and papers of antiquities, which he has directed to be sorted and coarsely bound, and deposited with the manuscripts in a large strong box, not to be opened until twenty years after his death: he likewise desires that no person, except his executors, may be admitted into his study until all his letters and loose papers are sorted and locked up with the manuscripts. All his printed books are to be sold with the house and furniture, painted glass, &c., &c., and has appointed me and his old servant Tom, executors, with Mr. Lombe as overseer of his will. He died on Monday the 16th inst., about half after five in the afternoon, perfectly resigned, and sensible to the last moment, without a sigh or groan. He took a very affectionate leave of me, for the last time, about three hours before he died. He was in his 68th year. He desired to be buried under the old wooden belfry in St. Clement's parish, Cambridge, in a vault ; and after the death of his sister Jane, a tower to be built over it by way of monument. He has likewise left 10l. for a black marble stone, to be laid in St. John's College Chapel, over the place where Mr. Baker was buried."*

Mr. Cole took the trouble of drawing up his own epitaph, whence we learn that he resided in the University of Cambridge for 20 years, that he was in the commission of the Peace for the county, and was one of the justices for the borough of Cambridge.t

His death was a great loss to his friend at Strawberry Hill. Their friendship had lasted from boyhood without the slightest interruption, and Walpole always expressed himself gratified with the affection which Mr. Cole constantly evinced towards him.

"Nicholl's Illustrations of Literature in 18th Century." Vol. vi.

p. 297.

"Cole's MSS. British Museum." Vol. vii. p. 179.

CHAPTER IX.

WALPOLE AS CONNOISSEUR AND FINE GENTLEMAN.

WALPOLE, in his early days at Strawberry Hill, offered patronage to several individuals likely to be of assistance to him in the decoration of his gothic castle. One of these was a Swiss artist, whom Mr. Bentley secured at a fixed salary, and he was kept constantly at work, painting pictures, till he appears to have become a little impatient at the occupation. The cause of the quarrel between Mr. Müntz and his patron, according to the authority of the latter, in a letter dated November 17, 1759, was:-

"A tolerable quantity of ingratitude on his side, both to me and Mr. Bentley. The story is rather too long for a letter; the substance was most extreme impertinence to me, concluded by an abusive letter against Mr. Bentley, who sent him from starving on seven pictures for a guinea, to one hundred pounds a-year, my house, table, and utmost countenance. In short I turned his head, and was forced to turn him out of doors. You shall see the documents Poets and painters imagine

as it is the fashion to call proof papers. they confer the honour when they are protected; and they set down impertinence to the article of their own virtue, when you dare to begin to think that an ode or a picture is not a pattern for all manner of insolence."*

The lord of Strawberry Hill grows grandiloquent in describing the patronage he confers on a clever artist; and evidently fancies that a paltry hundred pounds a-year, for which poor Müntz gave at least double the value in pictures*, turned his head, and made him insolent. The concluding sentence about "poets and painters," if it mean anything, only betrays the flippant spirit with which the amateur virtuoso and man of letters regarded professional talent. It seems as if he had no real sympathy for genius, and could scarcely be brought to recognize it, unless the possessor had certain pretensions to the character of a fine gentleman.

Whether poets and painters imagine they confer any honour when they are protected, is not certain; but, in most instances, we think they confer quite as much as they obtain. Who received the highest distinction in the intimacy, Francis I. or Titian, Leo X. or Raffaelle, might be the subject of argument; but there can surely be little question that Tasso's protector was the only person honoured at the ducal court at which the poet resided; and the one title by which Lord Southampton is remembered at the present day, is the truly enviable one of having been the patron of Shakspeare.

"The utmost countenance" of Walpole, on which he chooses to lay such stress, we are inclined to think he very much overvalued. How much it added to the poor painter's weekly wages-a sum less than two

* At the Strawberry Hill sale they fetched about two guineas each.

pounds, which might be earned by a skilful and industrious mechanic-he does not condescend to state. We entertain some suspicion that Müntz was ill-used, and left Strawberry Hill in disgust. Walpole, had he anything like a just sense of art, would not have ventured to speak of parting with an artist of recognized talent who had become dissatisfied with his position, in the terms he could only with common decency have used when relating the dismissal of a menial detected in some act of flagrant delinquency. All the tirade in which he indulges, about impertinence, insolence, and turning out of doors, is in very bad taste. His criticism on art could sometimes be in a taste equally bad.

In a letter dated May 5, 1761, he writes:

"The true frantic Estus resides at present with Mr. Hogarth; I went t'other morning to see a portrait he is painting of Mr. Fox. Hogarth told me he had promised if Mr. Fox would sit as he liked, to make as good a picture as Vandyke or Rubens could, I was silent- Why, now,' said he: 'you think this very vain, but why should not one speak truth?' This truth was uttered in the face of his own Sigismunda, which is exactly a maudlin w tearing off the trinkets that her keeper had given her, to fling at his head. She has her father's picture in a bracelet on her arm, and her fingers are bloody with the heart, as if she had just bought a sheep's pluck in St. James' market."

This is not only disgusting, it is false; the fingers are not bloody. He proceeds :

"As I was going, Hogarth put on a very grave face, and said, 'Mr. Walpole, I want to speak to you.' I sat down and said I was ready to receive his commands. For shortness, I will mark this wonderful dialogue by initial letters. H.-I am told you are going to entertain the town with something in our way. W.-Not