DEAR SIR, TO THE REV. MR. COLE. Strawberry-hill, October 30, 1764. I am rejoiced to hear you are well, but horridly vexed at my own negligence and oversight. Assure yourself I never wrote procurer, but procureur, leaving the original term, as I think one seldom gives a just idea by translating titles. If I castrate the whole half sheet, I will not leave it procurer. I am obliged to go to London on Saturday for two or three days, but have no doubt of being back here before Thursday, 8th, and if I am, hope to see you for longer than a dinner. Thank you for your notices; I am sure, say what you will, I am still in your debt for a thousand obliging instances of friendship; and in truth am willing to be more so, for the communication of your MSS. Yours most sincerely. P.S. The enclosed trifle is only to fill up the packet. TO THE REV. MR. COLE. Strawberry-hill, Nov. 8, 1764. I AM much disappointed, I own, dear sir, at not seeing you: more so, as I fear it will be long before I shall, for I think of going to Paris early in February. I ought indeed to go directly, as the winter does not agree with me here. Without being positively ill, I am positively not well: about this time of year, I have little fevers every night, and pains in my breast and stomach, which bid me repair to a more flannel climate. These little complaints are already begun; and, as soon as affairs will permit me, I mean to transport them southward. I am sorry it is out of my power to make the addition you wish to Mr. Tuer's article: many of the following sheets are printed off, and there is no inserting any thing now, without shoving the whole text forward, which you see is impossible. You promised to bring me a portrait of him: as I shall have four or five new plates, I can get his head into one of them : will you send it as soon as you can possibly to my house in Arlington-street; I will take great care of it, and return it you safe. I thank you much for your corrections, though they are too late for my next edition; it is printed to past the middle of the third volume. Yours most sincerely. TO THE RIGHT HON. LADY HERVEY. November 10, 1764. SOн! madam, you expect to be thanked, because you have done a very obliging thing! But I won't thank you, and I won't be obliged. It is very hard one can't come into your house and commend any thing, but you must recollect it and send it after one! I will never dine in your house again; and, when I do, I will like nothing; and when I do, I will commend nothing; and when I do, you shan't remember it. You are very grateful indeed to providence that gave you so good a memory, to stuff it with nothing but bills of fare of what every body likes to eat and drink! I wonder you are not ashamed-I wonder you are not ashamed! Do Do you think there is no such thing as gluttony of the memory?-You a Christian! A pretty account you will be able to give of yourself!-Your fine folks in France may call this friendship and attention, perhaps but sure, if I was to go to the devil, it should be for thinking of nothing but myself, not of others, from morning to night. I would send back your temptations; but, as I will not be obliged to you for them, verily I shall retain them to punish you; ingratitude being a proper chastisement for sinful friendliness. Thine in the spirit, PILCHARD WHITFIELD. 1 Lady Hervey, it is supposed, had sent Mr. Walpole some potted pilchards. [Or.] To GEORGE MONTAGU, Esq. Arlington-street, Dec. 16, 1764. As I have not read in the paper that you died lately at Greatworth, in Northamptonshire, nor have met with any Montagu or Trevor in mourning, I conclude you are living: I send this, however, to inquire, and if you should happen to be departed, hope your executor will be so kind as to burn it. Though you do not seem to have the same curiosity about my existence, you may gather from my hand-writing that I am still in being; which being perhaps full as much as you want to know of me, I will trouble you with no farther particulars about myself-nay, nor about any body else; your curiosity seeming to be pretty much the same about all the world. News there are certainly none; nobody is even dead, as the bishop of Carlisle told me to-day, which I repeat to you in general, though I apprehend in his own mind he meant no possessor of a better bishopric. If you like to know the state of the town, here it is. In the first place, it is very empty; in the next, there are more diversions than the week will hold. A charming Italian opera, with no dances and no company, at least on Tuesdays; to supply which defect, the subscribers are to have a ball and supper-a plan that in my humble opinion will fill the Tuesdays and empty the Saturdays. At both playhouses are woful English operas; which, however, fill better than the Italian, patriotism being entirely confined to our ears: how long the sages of the law may leave us those I cannot say. Mrs. Cornelis, apprehending the future assembly at Almack's, has enlarged her vast room, and hung it with blue satin, and another with yellow satin; but Almack's room, which is to be ninety feet long, proposes to swallow up both hers, as easily as Moses's rod gobbled down those of the magicians. Well, but there are more joys; a dinner and assembly every Tuesday at the Austrian minister's; ditto on Thursdays at the Spaniard's; ditto on Wednesdays and Sundays at the French ambassador's; besides madame de Welderen's on Wednesdays, lady Harrington's Sundays, and occasional private mobs at my lady Northumberland's. Then for the mornings, there are levees and drawing-rooms without end. Not to mention the maccaroni-club, which has quite absorbed Arthur's; for The you know old fools will hobble after young ones. Of all these pleasures, I prescribe myself a very small pittance,—my dark corner in my own box at the opera, and now and then an ambassador, to keep my French going till my journey to Paris. Politics are gone to sleep, like a paroli at Pharaoh, though there is the finest tract lately published that ever was written, called an Inquiry into the Doctrine of Libels. It would warm your old Algernon blood; but for what any body cares, might as well have been written about the wars of York and Lancaster. thing most in fashion is my edition of lord Herbert's life; people are mad after it, I believe because only two hundred were printed; and, by the numbers that admire it, I am convinced that if I had kept his lordship's counsel, very few would have found out the absurdity of it. The caution with which I hinted at its extravagance, has passed with several for approbation, and drawn on theirs. This is nothing new to me; it is when one laughs out at their idols that one angers people. I do not wonder now that sir Philip Sidney was the darling ero, when lord Herbert, who followed him so close and trod in his steps, is at this time of day within an ace of rivalling him. I wish I had let him; it was contradicting one of my own maxims, which I hold to be very just; that it is idle to endeavour to cure the world of any folly, unless we could cure it of being foolish. Tell me whether I am likely to see you before I go to Paris, which will be early in February. I hate you for being so indifferent about me. I live in the world, and yet love nothing; care a straw for nothing, but two or three old friends, that I have loved these thirty years. You have buried yourself with half-adozen parsons and 'squires, and yet never cast a thought upon those you have always lived with. You come to town for two months, grow tired in six weeks, hurry away, and then one hears no more of you till next winter. I don't want you to like the world, I like it no more than you; but I stay awhile in it, because while one sees it one laughs at it, but when one gives it up one grows angry with it; and I hold it much wiser to laugh than to be out of humour. You cannot imagine how much ill blood this perseverance has cured me of; I used to say to myself, 1 " Inquiry into the doctrine lately propagated concerning Juries, Libels, &c., upon the principles of the law and the constitution."-London, 8vo., 1764. [Ed.] "Lord! this person is so bad, that person is so bad, I hate them." I have now found out that they are all pretty much alike, and I hate nobody. Having never found you out, but for integrity and sincerity, I am much disposed to persist in a friendship with you, but if I am to be at all the pains of keeping it up, I shall imitate my neighbours (I don't mean those at next door, but in the scripture sense of neighbour, any body) and say "That is a very good man, but I don't care a farthing for him." Till I have taken my final resolution on that head, I am, Yours most cordially. To GEORGE MONTAGU, Esq. Christmas-eve, 1764. You are grown so good, and I delight so much in your letters when you please to write them, that though it is past midnight and I am to go out of town to-morrow morning, I must thank you. I shall put your letter to Rheims into the foreign post with a proper penny, and it will go much safer and quicker than if I sent it to lord Hertford, for his letters lie very often till enough are assembled to compose a jolly caravan. I love your good brother John, as I always do, for keeping your birthday; I, who hate ceremonious customs, approve of what I know comes so much from the heart as all he and you do and say. The general surely need not ask leave to enclose letters to me. There is neither news nor any body to make it but the clergy, who are all gaping after or about the Irish mitre,' which your old antagonist has quitted. Keene has refused it; Newton hesitates, and they think will not accept it; Ewer pants for it, and many of the bench I believe do every thing but pray for it. Goody Carlisle hopes for Worcester if it should be vacated, but I believe would not dislike to be her Grace. This comes with your muff, my Anecdotes of Painting, the fine pamphlet on libels, and the Castle of Otranto, which came out to-day. All this will make some food for your fireside. 1 Dr. John Stone, archbishop of Armagh and primate of all Ireland, died 19th December, 1764. [Ed.] |