Adieu! Ma chi è reo per nativo prurito? TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY. Arlington Street, July 20, 1744. MY DEAREST HARRY, I FEEL that I have so much to say to you, that I foresee there will be but little method in my letter; but if, upon the whole, you see my meaning, and the depth of my friendship for you, I am content. It was most agreeable to me to receive a letter of confidence from you, at the time I expected a very different one from you; though, by the date of your last, I perceive you had not then received some letters, which, though I did not see, I must call simple, as they could only tend to make you uneasy for some months. I should not have thought of communicating a quarrel to you at a distance, and I don't conceive the sort of friendship of those that thought it necessary. When I heard it had been wrote to you, I thought it right to myself to give you my account of it, but, by your brother's desire, suppressed my letter, and left it to be explained by him, who wrote to you so sensibly on it, that I shall say no more but that I think myself so ill-used that it will prevent my giving you thoroughly the advice you ask of me; for how can I be sure that my resentment might not make me see in a stronger light the reasons for your breaking off an affair" which you know before I never approved? You know my temper is so open to any body I love that I must be happy at seeing you lay aside a reserve with me, which is the only point that ever made me dissatisfied with you. That silence of yours has, perhaps, been one of the chief reasons that has always prevented my saying much to you on a topic which I saw was so near your heart. Indeed, its being so near was another reason; for how could I expect you would take my advice, even if you bore it? But, my dearest Harry, how can I advise you now? Is it not gone too far for me to expect you should keep any resolution about it, especially in absence, which must be destroyed the moment you meet again? And if ever you should marry and be happy, won't you reproach me with having tried to hinder it? I think you as just and honest as I think any man This was an early attachment of Mr. Conway's. By his having complied with the wishes and advice of his friends on this subject, and got the better of his passion, he probably felt that he, in some measure, owed to Mr. Walpole the subsequent happiness of his life, in his marriage with another person. [The lady alluded to was Lady Caroline Fitzroy, afterwards Countess of Harrington, whose sister, Lady Isabella, had, three years before, married Mr. Conway's elder brother, afterwards Earl and Marquis of Hertford.] living; but any man living in that circumstance would think I had been prompted by private reasons. I see as strongly as you can all the arguments for your breaking off; but, indeed, the alteration of your fortune adds very little strength to what they had before. You never had fortune enough to make such a step at all prudent: she loved you enough to be content with that; I can't believe this change will alter her sentiments, for I must do her the justice to say that it is plain she preferred you with nothing to all the world. I could talk upon this head, but I will only leave you to consider, without advising you on either side, these two things-whether you think it honester to break off with her after such engagements as yours (how strong I don't know), after her refusing very good matches for you, and show her that she must think of making her fortune; or whether you will wait with her till some amendment in your fortune can put it in your power to marry her. My dearest Harry, you must see why I don't care to say more on this head. My wishing it could be right for you to break off with her (for, without it is right, I would not have you on any account take such a step) makes it impossible for me to advise it; and, therefore, I am sure you will forgive my declining an act of friendship which your having put in my power gives me the greatest satisfaction. But it does put something else in my power, which I am sure nothing can make me decline, and for which I have long wanted an opportunity. Nothing could prevent my being unhappy at the smallness of your fortune, but its throwing it into my way to offer you to share mine. As mine is so precarious, by depending on so bad a constitution, I can only offer you the immediate use of it. I do that most sincerely. My places still (though my Lord Walpole has cut off three hundred pounds a-year to save himself the trouble of signing his name ten times for once) bring me in near two thousand pounds a-year. I have no debts, no connexions; indeed, no way to dispose of it particularly. By living with my father, I have little real use for a quarter of it. I have always flung it away all in the most idle manner; but, my dear Harry, idle as I am, and thoughtless, I have sense enough to have real pleasure in denying myself baubles, and in saving a very good income to make a man happy, for whom I have a just esteem and most sincere friendship. I know the difficulties any gentleman and man of spirit must struggle with, even in having such an offer made him, much more in accepting it. I hope you will allow there are some in making it. But hear me: if there is such a thing as friendship in the world, these are the opportunities of exerting it, and it can't be exerted without it is accepted. I must talk of myself to prove to you that it will be right for you to accept it. I am sensible of having more follies and weaknesses, and fewer real good qualities than most men. I sometimes reflect on this, though I own too seldom. I always want to begin acting like a man, and a sensible one, which I think I might be if I would. Can I begin better, than by taking care of my fortune for one I love? You have seen (I have seen you have) that I am fickle, and foolishly fond of twenty new people; but I don't really love them-I have always loved you constantly: I am willing to convince you and the world, what I have always told you, that I loved you better than any body. If I ever felt much for any thing, which I know may be questioned, it was certainly my mother. I look on you as my nearest relation by her, and I think I can never do enough to show my gratitude and affection to her. For these reasons, don't deny me what I have set my heart on-the making your fortune easy to you. ** [The rest of this letter is wanting.] TO SIR HORACE MANN. Arlington Street, July 22, 1744. I HAVE not written to you, my dear child, a good while, I know; but, indeed, it was from having nothing to tell you. You know I love you too well for it to be necessary to be punctually proving it to you; so, when I have nothing worth your knowing, I repose myself upon the persuasion that you must have of my friendship. But I will never let that grow into any negligence, I should say, idleness, which is always mighty ready to argue me out of every thing I ought to do; and letter-writing is one of the first duties that the very best people let perish out of their rubric. Indeed, I pride myself extremely in having been so good a correspondent; for, besides that every day grows to make one hate writing more, it is difficult, you must own, to keep up a correspondence of this sort with any spirit, when long absence makes one entirely out of all the little circumstances of each other's society, and which are the soul of letters. We are forced to deal only in great events, like historians; and, instead of being Horace Mann and Horace Walpole, seem to correspond as Guicciardin and Clarendon would: Discedo Alcæus puncto Illius; ille meo quis! Apropos to writing histories and Guicciardin; I wish to God, Boccalini was living! never was such an opportunity for Apollo's playing off a set of fools, as there is now! The good city of London, who, from long dictating to the government, are now come to preside over taste and letters, have given one Carte, a Jacobite parson, fifty pounds a-year, for seven years, to write the history of England; and four aldermen and six common councilmen are to inspect his materials and a Thomas Carte, a laborious writer of history. His principal works are, his Life of the Duke of Ormonde, in three volumes, folio, and his History of England, in four. He died in 1754.-D. [The former, though ill-written, was considered by Dr. Johnson as a work of authority; and of the latter Dr. Warton remarks, "You may read Hume for his eloquence, but Carte is the historian for facts."] the progress of the work. Surveyors and common sewers turned supervisors of literature! To be sure, they think a history of Eng-" land is no more than Stowe's Survey of the Parishes! Instead of having books published with the imprimatur of an university, they will be printed, as churches are whitewashed, John Smith and Thomas Johnson, churchwardens. But, brother historian, you will wonder I should have nothing to communicate, when all Europe is bursting with events, and every day "big with the fate of Cato and of Rome." But so it is; I know nothing; Prince Charles's great passage of the Rhine has hitherto produced nothing more: indeed, the French armies are moving towards him from Flanders; and they tell us, ours is crossing the Scheldt to attack the Count de Saxe, now that we are equal to him, from our reinforcement and his diminutions. In the mean time, as I am at least one of the principal heroes of my own politics, being secure of any invasion, I am going to leave all my lares, that is, all my antiquities, household gods and pagods, and take a journey into Siberia for six weeks, where my father's grace of Courland has been for some time. Lord Middlesex is going to be married to Miss Boyle, Lady Shannon's daughter; she has thirty thousand pounds, and may have as much more, if her mother, who is a plump widow, don't happen to Nugentize. The girl is low and ugly, but a vast scholar. Young Churchill has got a daughter by the Frasi ; Mr. Winnington calls it the opera-comique; the mother is an opera girl; the grandmother was Mrs. Oldfield. I must tell you of a very extraordinary print, which my Lady Burlington gives away, of her daughter Euston, with this inscription: This print was taken from a picture drawn by memory seven weeks after her death, by her most afflicted mother; DOROTHY BURLINGTON.4 I am forced to begin a new sheet, lest you should think my letter came from my Lady Burlington, as it ends so patly with her name. But is it not a most melancholy way of venting oneself? She has drawn numbers of these pictures: I don't approve her having them engraved; but sure the inscription is pretty. I was accosted the other night by a little, pert petit-maitre figure, Grace Boyle, daughter and sole heiress of Richard, Viscount Shannon. She became afterwards a favourite of Frederick, Prince of Wales, and died in 1763.-D. c Prima Donna at the Opera. b See antè, p. 205. This is an incorrect copy of the inscription on Lady Euston's picture, given in a note at 329 of this volume.-D. • It is said to be Pope's. that claimed me for acquaintance. Do you remember to have seen at Florence an Abbé Durazzo, of Genoa? well, this was he: it is mighty dapper and French: however, I will be civil to it: I never lose opportunities of paving myself an agreeable passage back to Florence. My dear Chutes, stay for me: I think the first gale of peace will carry me to you. Are you as fond of Florence as ever? of me you are not, I am sure, for you never write me a line. You would be diverted with the grandeur of our old Florence beauty, Lady Carteret. She dresses more extravagantly, and grows more short-sighted every day: she can't walk a step without leaning on one of her ancient daughtersin law. Lord Tweedale and Lord Bathurst are her constant gentlemen-ushers. She has not quite digested her resentment to Lincoln yet. He was walking with her at Ranelagh the other night, and a Spanish refugee marquis, who is of the Carteret court, but who, not being quite perfect in the carte du pais, told my lady, that Lord Lincoln had promised him to make a very good husband to Miss Pelham. Lady Carteret, with an accent of energy, replied, "J'espère qu'il tiendra sa promesse!" Here is a good epigram that has been made on her: "Her beauty, like the Scripture feast, Was given to the old and lame." Adieu! here is company; I think I may be excused leaving off at the sixth side. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Arlington Street, Aug. 6, 1744. I DON'T tell you any thing about Prince Charles, for you must hear all his history as soon as we do: at least much sooner than it can come to the very north, and be despatched back to Italy. There is nothing from Flanders: we advance and they retire-just as two months ago we retired and they advanced: but it is good to be leading up this part of the tune. Lord Stair is going into Scotland: the King is grown wonderfully fond of him, since he has taken the resolution of that journey. He said the other day, "I wish my Lord Stair was in Flanders! General Wade is a very able officer, but he is not alert." I, in my private litany, am beseeching the Lord, that he may contract none of my Lord Stair's alertness. When I first wrote you word of la Chétardie's disgrace, I did not believe it; but you see it is now public. What I like is, her Russian Majesty's making her amour keep exact pace with her public indig a The Marquis Tabernego. |