years. Their apprehension seems to be of his growing a fine gentleman. I could not help saying, "Why, is he not to be one?" My wish is to have him with you-what an opportunity of his learning the world and business under such a tutor and such a parent! Oh! but they think he will dress and run into diversions. I tried to convince them that of all spots upon earth dress is least necessary at Florence, and where one can least divert oneself. I am answered with the necessity of Latin and mathematics-the one soon forgot, the other never got to any purpose. I cannot bear his losing the advantage of being brought up by you, with all the advantages of such a situation, and where he may learn in perfection living languages, never attained after twenty. I am so earnest on this, for I doat on him for dear Gal.'s sake, that I will insist to rudeness on his remaining at Cambridge but two years; and before that time you shall write to second my motions. The Parliament is up, and news are gone out of town: I expect none but what we receive from Germany. As to the Pretender, his life or death makes no impression here. When a real King is so soon forgot, how should an imaginary one be remembered? Besides, since Jacobites have found the way to St. James's, it is grown so much the fashion to worship Kings, that people don't send their adorations so far as Rome. He at Kensington is likely long to outlast his old rival. The spring is far from warm, yet he wears a silk coat and has left off fires. Thank you for the entertaining history of the Pope and the Genoese. I am flounced again into building-a round tower, gallery, cloister, and chapel, all starting up-if I am forced to run away by ruining myself, I will come to Florence, steal your nephew, and bring him with me. Adieu! MY DEAR LORD, TO THE EARL OF STRAFFORD. Strawberry Hill, June 7, 1760. WHEN at my time of day one can think a ball worth going to London for on purpose, you will not wonder that I am childish enough to write an account of it. I could give a better reason, your bidding me send you any news; but I scorn a good reason when I am idle enough to do any thing for a bad one. You had heard, before you left London, of Miss Chudleigh's intended loyalty on the Prince's birthday. Poor thing, I fear she has thrown away above a quarter's salary! It was magnificent and wellunderstood-no crowd-and though a sultry night, one was not a moment incommoded. The court was illuminated on the whole summit of the wall with a battlement of lamps; smaller ones on every step, and a figure of lanterns on the outside of the house. The virginmistress began the ball with the Duke of York, who was dressed in a pale blue watered tabby, which, as I told him, if he danced much, would soon be tabby all over, like the man's advertisement; but nobody did dance much. There was a new Miss Bishop from Sir Cecil's endless hoard of beauty daughters, who is still prettier than her sisters. The new Spanish embassy was there-alas! Sir Cecil Bishop has never been in Spain! Monsieur de Fuentes is a halfpenny print of my Lord Huntingdon. His wife homely, but seems goodhumoured and civil. The son does not degenerate from such highborn ugliness-the daughter-in-law was sick, and they say is not ugly, and has as good set of teeth as one can have, when one has but two and those black. They seem to have no curiosity, sit where they are placed, and ask no questions about so strange a country. Indeed, the ambassadress could see nothing; for Doddington stood before her the whole time, sweating Spanish at her, of which it was evident, by her civil nods without answers, she did understand a word. She speaks bad French, danced a bad minuet, and went away -though there was a miraculous draught of fishes for their supper, as it was a fast-but being the octave of their fete-dicu, they dared not even fast plentifully. Miss Chudleigh desired the gamblers would go up into the garrets-"Nay, they are not garrets-it is only the roof of the house hollowed for upper servants-but I have no upper servants." Every body ran up there is a low gallery with bookcases, and four chambers practised under the pent of the roof, each hung with the finest Indian pictures on different colours, and with Chinese chairs of the same colours. Vases of flowers in each for nosegays, and in one retired nook a most critical couch! The lord of the festival was there, and seemed neither ashamed nor vain of the expense of his pleasures. At supper she offered him Tokay, and told him she believed he would find it good. The supper was in two rooms and very fine, and on the sideboards, and even on the chairs, were pyramids and troughs of strawberries and cherries; you would have thought she was kept by Vertumnus. Last night my Lady Northumberland lighted up her garden for the Spaniards: I was not there, having excused myself for a headache, which I had not, but ought to have caught the night before. Mr. Doddington entertained these Fuentes's at Hammersmith; and to the shame of our nation, while they were drinking tea in the summer-house, some gentlemen, ay, my lord, gentlemen, went into the river and showed the ambassadress and her daughter more than ever they expected to see of England. I dare say you are sorry for poor Lady Anson. She was exceedingly good-humoured, and did a thousand good-natured and generous actions. I tell you nothing of the rupture of Lord Halifax's match, of which you must have heard so much; but you will like a bon-mot upon it. They say, the hundreds of Drury have got the better of A staymaker of the time, who advertised in the newspapers that he made stays at such a price, "tabby all over." c The Duke of Kingston. b Dodington had been minister in Spain. the thousands of Drury. The pretty Countess is still alive, was thought actually dying on Tuesday night, and I think will go off very soon. I think there will soon be a peace: my only reason is, that every body seems so backward at making war. Adieu! my dear lord! TO SIR HORACE MANN. Arlington Street, June 20, 1760. WHO the deuce was thinking of Quebec? America was like a book one has read and done with; or at least, if one looked at the book, one just recollected that there was a supplement promised, to contain a chapter on Montreal, the starving and surrender of it—but here are we on a sudden reading our book backwards. An account came two days ago that the French on their march to besiege Quebec, had been attacked by General Murray, who got into a mistake and a morass, attacked two bodies that were joined, when he hoped to come up with one of them before the junction, was enclosed, embogged, and defeated. By the list of officers killed and wounded, I believe there has been a rueful slaughter-the place, too, I suppose will be retaken. The year 1760 is not the year 1759. Added to the war we have a kind of plague too, an epidemic fever and sore throat: Lady Anson is dead of it; Lord Bute and two of his daughters were in great danger; my Lady Waldegrave has had it, and I am mourning for Mrs. Thomas Walpole, who died of it-you may imagine I don't come much to town; I had some business here to-day, particularly with Dagge, whom I have sent for to talk about Sophia; he will be here presently, and then I will let you know what he says. The embassy and House of Fuentes are arrived-many feasts and parties have been made for them, but they do not like those out of town, and have excused themselves rather ungraciously. They were invited to a ball last Monday at Wanstead, but did not go: yet I don't know where they can see such magnificence. The approach, the coaches, the crowds of spectators to see the company arrive, the grandeur of the façade and apartments, were a charming sight; but the town is so empty that that great house appeared so too. He, you know, is all attention, generosity, and good breeding. I must tell you a private wo that has happened to me in my neighbourhood-Sir William Stanhope bought Pope's house and garden. The former was so small and bad, one could not avoid pardoning his hollowing out that fragment of the rock Parnassus into habitable chambers-but would you believe it, he has cut down the sacred a Lord Halifax kept an actress belonging to Drury Lane Theatre; and the marriage broken off was with a daughter of Sir Thomas Drury, an heiress.-E. b The Countess of Coventry. She survived till the 1st of October.-E. c Daughter of Sir Gerard Vanneck. d Natural daughter of Mr. Whitehed, mentioned in preceding letters, by a Florentine woman. groves themselves! In short, it was a little bit of ground of five acres, inclosed with three lanes, and seeing nothing. Pope had twisted and twirled, and rhymed and harmonized this, till it appeared two or three sweet little lawns opening beyond one another, and the whole surrounded with thick impenetrable woods. Sir William, by advice of his son-in-law, Mr. Ellis, has hacked and hewed these groves, wriggled a winding-gravel walk through them with an edging of shrubs, in what they call the modern taste, and in short, has desired the three lanes to walk in again-and now is forced to shut them out again by a wall, for there was not a Muse could walk there but she was spied by every country fellow that went by with a pipe in his mouth. It is a little unlucky for the Pretender to be dying just as the Pope seems to design to take Corsica into his hands, and might give it to so faithful a son of the church. I have heard nothing yet of Stosch. Presently. Mr. Dagge has disappointed me, and I am obliged to go out of town, but I have writ to him to press the affair, and will press it, as it is owing to his negligence. Mr. Chute, to whom I spoke, says he told Dagge he was ready to be a trustee, and pressed him to get it concluded. TO SIR DAVID DALRYMPLE.b June 20th, 1760. I AM obliged to you, Sir, for the volume of Erse poetry: all of it has merit; but I am sorry not to see in it the six descriptions of night, with which you favoured me before, and which I like as much as any of the pieces. I can, however, by no means agree with the publisher, that they seem to be parts of an heroic poem; nothing to me can be more unlike. I should as soon take all the epitaphs in Westminster Abbey, and say it was an epic poem on the History of England. The greatest part are evidently elegies; and though I should not expect a bard to write by the rules of Aristotle, I would not, on the other hand, give to any work a title that must convey so different an idea to every common reader. I could wish, too, that the authenticity had been more largely stated. A man who knows. Dr. Blair's character, will undoubtedly take his word; but the gross of mankind, considering how much it is the fashion' to be sceptical in reading, will demand proofs, not assertions. I am glad to find, Sir, that we agree so much on the Dialogues of the Dead; indeed, there are very few that differ from us. It is well Welbore Ellis, afterwards Lord Mendip, married the only daughter of Sir William Stanhope; in right of whom he afterwards enjoyed Pope's villa at Twickenham.—E. b Now first collected. for the author, that none of his critics have undertaken to ruin book by improving it, as you have done in the lively little spec. you sent me. Dr. Brown has writ a dull dialogue, called Per and Aristides, which will have a different effect from what yo would have. One of the most objectionable passages in Lord L telton's book is, in my opinion, his apologizing for the moderate vernment of Augustus. A man who had exhausted tyranny in t. most lawless and unjustifiable excesses is to be excused, because, out of weariness or policy, he grows less sanguinary at last! There is a little book coming out, that will amuse you. It is a new edition of Isaac Walton's Complete Angler, full of anecdotes and historic notes. It is published by Mr. Hawkins, a very worthy gentleman in my neighbourhood, but who, I could wish, did not think angling so very innocent an amusement. We cannot live without destroying animals, but shall we torture them for our sport-sport in their destruction? I met a rough officer at his house t'other day, who said he knew such a person was turning Methodist; for, in the middle of conversation, he rose, and opened the window to let out a moth. I told him I did not know that the Methodists had any principle so good, and that I, who am certainly not on the point of becoming one, always did so too. One of the bravest and best men I ever knew, Sir Charles Wager, I have often heard declare he never killed a fly willingly. It is a comfortable reflection to me, that all the victories of last year have been gained since the suppression of the bear garden and prize-fighting; as it is plain, and nothing else would have made it so, that our valour did not singly and solely depend upon those two universities. Adieu! TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY.c Strawberry Hill, June 21, 1760. THERE is nothng in the world so tiresome as a person that always says they will come to one and never does; that is a mixture of promises and excuses; that loves one better than anybody, and yet will not stir a step to see one; that likes nothing but their own ways and own books, and that thinks the Thames is not as charming in one place as another, and that fancies Strawberry Hill is the only thing upon earth worth living for-all this you would say, if even I could make you peevish: but since you cannot be provoked, you see I am son.-E. Afterwards Sir John Hawkins, Knight, the executor and biographer of Dr. Johnb Lord Byron, like Walpole, had a mortal dislike to angling, and describes it as "the cruelest, the coldest, and the stupidest of pretended sports." Of good Isaac Walton he says, "The quaint, old, cruel coxcomb, in his gullet Now first printed. |