nation. She sent to demand her picture and other presents. "Other presents," to be sure, were billet-doux, bracelets woven of her own bristles-for I look upon the hair of a Muscovite Majesty in the light of the chairs which Gulliver made out of the combings of the Empress of Brobdignag's tresses: the stumps he made into very good large-tooth combs. You know the present is a very Amazon; she has grappled with all her own grenadiers. I should like to see their loves woven into a French opera: La Chétardie's character is quite adapted to the civil discord of their stage: and then a northern heroine to reproach him in their outrageous quavers, would make a most delightful crash of sentiment, impertinence, gallantry, contempt, and screaming. The first opera that I saw at Paris, I could not believe was in earnest, but thought they had carried me to the opera-comique. The three acts of the piece were three several interludes, of the Loves of Antony and Cleopatra, of Alcibiades and the Queen of Sparta, and of Tibullus with a niece of Mæcenas; besides something of Circe, who was screamed by a Mademoiselle Hermans, seven feet high. She was in black, with a nosegay of black flowers, (for on the French stage they pique themselves on propriety,) and without powder whenever you are a widow, are in distress, or are a witch, you are to leave off powder. I have no news for you, and am going to have less, for I am going into Norfolk. I have stayed till I have not one acquaintance left: the next billow washes me last off the plank. I have not cared to stir, for fear of news from Flanders; but I have convinced myself that there will be none. Our army is much superior to the Count de Saxe; besides, they have ten large towns to garrison, which will reduce their army to nothing; or they must leave us the towns to walk into coolly. I have received yours of July 21. Did neither I nor your brother tell you, that we had received the Neapolitan snuff-box? it is above a month ago: how could I be so forgetful? but I have never heard one word of the cases, nor of Lord Conway's guns, nor Lord Hartington's melon-seeds, all which you mention to have sent. Lestock has long been arrived, so to be sure the cases never came with him: I hope Matthews will discover them. Pray thank Dr. Cocchi very particularly for his book. I am very sorry too for your father's removal; it was not done in the most obliging manner by Mr. Winnington; there was something exactly like a breach of promise in it to my father, which was tried to be softened by a civil alternative, that was no alternative at all. He was forced to it by my Lady Townshend, who has an implacable aversion to all my father's people; and not having less to Mr. Pelham's, she has been as brusque with Winnington about them. He has no principles himself, and those no principles of his are governed absolutely by hers, which are no-issimes. * I think it was the ballet de la paix. b It was for a present to Mr. Stone, the Duke of Newcastle's secretary. I don't know any of your English. I should delight in your Vauxhall-ets what a figure my Grifona must make in such a romantic scene! I have lately been reading the poems of the Earl of Surrey," in Henry the Eighth's time; he was in love with the fair Geraldine of Florence; I have a mind to write under the Grifona's picture these two lines from one of his sonnets: "From Tuscane came my lady's worthy race, Fair Florence was some time her auncient seat." And then these: "Her beauty of kinde, her vertue from above; I don't know what of kinde means, but to be sure it was something prodigiously expressive and gallant in those days, by its being unintelligible now. Adieu! Do the Chutes cicisbe it? TO SIR HORACE MANN. London, Aug. 16, 1744. I AM writing to you two or three days beforehand, by way of settling my affairs: not that I am going to be married or to die; but something as bad as either if it were to last as long. You will guess that it can only be going to Houghton; but I make as much an affair of that, as other people would of going to Jamaica. Indeed I don't lay in store of cake and bandboxes, and citron-water, and cards, and cold meat, as country-gentlewomen do after the session. My packingup and travelling concerns lie in very small compass; nothing but myself and Patapan, my footman, a cloak-bag, and a couple of books. My old Tom is even reduced upon the article of my journey; he is at the Bath, patching together some very bad remains of a wornout constitution. I always travel without company; for then I take my own hours and my own humours, which I don't think the most tractable to shut up in a coach with any body else. You know, St. Evremont's rule for conquering the passions, was to indulge them; mine for keeping my temper in order, is never to leave it too long with another person. I have found out that it will have its way, but I make it take its way by itself. It is such sort of reflection as this, that makes me hate the country: it is impossible in one house with one set of company, to be always enough upon one's guard to make one's self agreeable, which one ought to do, as one always expects it from others. If I had a house of my own in the country, and could live there now and then alone, or frequently changing my company, I am a Henry Howard, son of the Duke of Norfolk. Under a charge of high-treason, of which he was manifestly innocent, this noble soldier and accomplished poet was found guilty, and in 1547, in his thirty-first year, was beheaded on Tower Hill. History is silent as to the name of fair Geraldine.-E. 33 VOL. 1. persuaded I should like it; at least, I fancy I should; for when one begins to reflect why one don't like the country, I believe one grows near liking to reflect in it. I feel very often that I grow to correct twenty things in myself, as thinking them ridiculous at my age; and then with my spirit of whim and folly, I make myself believe that this is all prudence, and that I wish I were young enough to be as thoughtless and extravagant as I used to be. But if I know any thing of the matter, this is all flattering myself: I grow older, and love my follies less-if I did not, alas! poor prudence and reflection! I think I have pretty well exhausted the chapter of myself. I will now go talk to you of another fellow, who makes me look upon myself as a very perfect character; for as I have little merit naturally, and only pound a stray virtue now and then by chance, the other gentleman seems to have no vice, rather no villany, but what he nurses in himself and methodizes with as much pains as a stoic would patience. Indeed his pains are not thrown away. This painstaking person's name is Frederic, King of Prussia. Pray remember for the future never to speak of him and H. W. without giving the latter the preference. Last week we were all alarm! He was before Prague with fifty thousand men, and not a man in Bohemia to ask him, "What dost thou ?" This week we have raised a hundred thousand Hungarians, besides vast militias and loyal nobilities. The King of Poland is to attack him on his march, and the Russians to fall on Prussia. In the mean time, his letter or address to the people of England has been published here it is a poor performance! His Voltaires and his litterati should correct his works before they are printed. A careless song, with a little nonsense in it now and then, does not misbecome a monarch; but to pen manifestoes worse than the lowest commis that is kept jointly by two or three margraves, is insufferable! a We are very strong in Flanders, but still expect to do nothing this campaign. The French are so intrenched, that it is impossible to attack them There is talk of besieging Maubeuge; I don't know how certainly. Lord Middlesex's match is determined, and the writings signed. She proves an immense fortune; they pretend a hundred and thirty thousand pounds-what a fund for making operas! My Lady Carteret is going to Tunbridge-there is a hurry for a son: his only one is gone mad about a fortnight ago he was at the Duke of Bedford's, and as much in his few senses as ever. At five o'clock in the morning he waked the duke and duchess all bloody, and with the lappet of his coat held up full of ears: he had been in • This alludes to the King of Prussia's retreat from Prague, on the approach of the Austrian army commanded by Prince Charles of Lorraine.-D. In speaking of this address of the King of Prussia, Lady Hervey, in a letter of the 17th, says, "I think it very well and very artfully drawn for his purpose, and very impertinently embarrassing to our King. He is certainly a very artful prince, and I cannot but think his projects and his ambition still more extensive, than people at present imagine them."—È. the stable and cropped all the horses! He is shut up. My lady is in the honeymoon of her grandeur: she lives in public places, whither she is escorted by the old beaux of her husband's court; fair whitewigged old gallants, the Duke of Bolton, Lord Tweedale, Lord Bathurst, and Charles Fielding; and she all over knots, and small hoods, and ribands. Her brother told me the other night, "Indeed I think my thister doesth countenanth Ranelagh too mutch." They call my Lord Pomfret, King Stanislaus, the queen's father. I heard an admirable dialogue, which has been written at the army on the battle of Dettingen, but one can't get a copy; I must tell you two or three strokes in it that I have heard. Pierot asks Harlequin, "Que donne-t'on aux généraux qui ne se sont pas trouvés à la bataille?" Harl. "On leur donne le cordon rouge." Pier. "Et que donne-t'on au général en chef, qui a gagné la victoire!" Harl. "Son congé." Pier. "Qui a soin des blessés ?" Harl. "L'ennemi." Adieu! TO SIR HORACE MANN. Houghton, Sept. 1, 1744. I WISH you joy of your victory at Velletri! I call it yours, for you are the great spring of all that war. I intend to publish your life, with an Appendix, that shall contain all the letters to you from princes, cardinals, and great men of the time. In speaking of Prince Lobkowitz's attempt to seize the King of Naples at Velletri, I shall say, “for the share our hero had in this great action, vide the Appendix, Card. Albani's letter, p. 14." You shall no longer be the dear Miny, but Manone, the Great Man; you shall figure with the Great Pan, and the Great Patapan. I wish you and your laurels and your operations were on the Rhine, in Piedmont, or in Bohemia; and then Prince Charles would not have repassed the first, nor the Prince of Conti advanced within three days of Turin, and the King of Prussia would already have been terrified from entering the last-all this lumping bad news came to counterbalance your Neapolitan triumphs. Here is all the war to begin again! and perhaps next winter a second edition of Dunkirk. We could not even have the King of France die, though he was so near it. He was in a woful fright, and promised the Bishop of Soissons, that if he lived, he would have done with his women. A man with all these crowns on his head, and attacking On the death of his father this son succeeded to the earldom in 1763. He died in 1776, when the title became extinct.-E. b Charles Poulett, third Duke of Bolton. The Hon. Charles Fielding, third son of William, third Earl of Denbigh; a lieutenantcolonel in the guards, and Gentleman-usher to Queen Caroline. He died in 1765.—E. d Lord Stair.-D. • The Austrians had formed a scheme to surprise the Neapolitan King and general at Velletri, and their first column penetrated into the place, but reinforcements coming up, they were repulsed with considerable slaughter.-E. On the 8th of August, Louis the Fifteenth was seized at Metz, on his march to and disturbing all those on the heads of other princes, who is the soul of all the havoc and ruin that has been and is to be spread through Europe in this war, haggling thus for his bloody life, and cheapening it at the price of a mistress or two! and this was the fellow that they fetched to the army to drive the brave Prince Charles beyond the Rhine again. It is just such another paltry mortal" that has fetched him back into Bohemia-I forget which of his battles it was, that when his army had got the victory, they could not find the King: he had run away for a whole day without looking behind him. I thank you for the particulars of the action, and the list of the prisoners: among them is one Don Theodore Diamato Amor, a cavalier of so romantic a name, that my sister and Miss Leneve quite interest themselves in his captivity; and make their addresses to you, who, they hear, have such power with Prince Lobkowitz, to obtain his liberty. If he has Spanish gallantry in any proportion to his name, he will immediately come to England, and vow himself their knight. Those verses I sent you on Mr. Pope, I assure you, were not mine; I transcribed them from the newspapers; from whence I must send you a very good epigram on Bishop Berkeley's tar-water: "Who dare deride what pious Cloyne has done? I am not at all surprised at my Lady Walpole's ill-humour to you about the messenger. If the resentments of women did not draw them into little dirty spite, their hatred would be very dangerous; but they vent the leisure they have to do mischief in a thousand meannesses, which only serve to expose themselves. Adieu! I know nothing here but public politics, of which I have already talked to you, and which you hear as soon as I do. Thank dear Mr. Chute for his letter; I will answer it very soon; but in the country I am forced to let my pen lie fallow between letter and letter. TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY. MY DEAREST HARRY, Houghton, Oct. 6, 1744. My lord bids me tell you how much he is obliged to you for your letter, and hopes you will accept my answer for his. I'll tell you what, we shall both be obliged to you if you will inclose a magnifying-glass Alsace, with a malignant putrid fever, which increased so rapidly, that, in a few days, his life was despaired of. In his illness, he dismissed his reigning mistress, Madame de Chateauroux.-E. a The King of Prussia. b The battle of Molwitz. |