804. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Arlington Street, Aug. 12, 1762. A PRINCE OF WALES [George IV.] was born this morning; the prospect of your old neighbour [the Pretender] at Rome does not improve; the House of Hanover will have numbers in its own family sufficient to defend their crown-unless they marry a Princess of Anhalt Zerbst.' What a shocking tragedy that has proved already! There is a manifesto arrived to-day that makes one shudder! This northern Athaliah, who has the modesty not to name her murdered husband in that light, calls him her neighbour; and, as if all the world were savages, like Russians, pretends that he died suddenly of a distemper that never was expeditious; mocks Heaven with pretensions to charity and piety; and heaps the additional inhumanity on the man she has dethroned and assassinated, of imputing his death to a judgment from Providence. In short, it is the language of usurpation and blood, counselled and apologised for by clergymen! It is Brunehault and an archbishop! I have seen Mr. Keith's first despatch; in general, my account was tolerably correct; but he does not mention Ivan.' The conspiracy advanced by one of the gang being seized, though for another crime; they thought themselves discovered. Orloff, one of them, hurried to the Czarina, and told her she had no time to lose. She was ready for anything; nay, marched herself at the head of fourteen thousand men and a train of artillery against her husband, but not being the only Alecto in Muscovy, she had been aided by a Princess Daschkaw, a nymph under twenty, and sister to the Czar's mistress. It was not the latter, as I told you, but the Chancellor's wife, who offered up the order of St. Catherine. I do not know how my Lord Buckingham [the English Minister at St. Petersburgh] feels, but unless to conjure up a tempest against this fury of the north, nothing could bribe me to set my foot in her dominions. Had she been priestess of the Scythian Diana, she would have sacrificed her brother by choice. It seems she does not degenerate; her mother was ambitious and passionate for intrigues; she went to Paris, and dabbled in politics with all her might. 1 The Czarina Catherine II. was Princess of Anhalt Zerbst.-WALPOLE. The world had been civilising itself till one began to doubt whether ancient histories were not ancient legends. Voltaire had unpoisoned half the victims to the Church and to ambition. Oh! there never was such a man as Borgia; the league seemed a romance. For the honour of poor historians, the assassinations of the Kings of France and Portugal, majesties still living in spite of Damien and the Jesuits, and the dethronement and murder of the Czar, have restored some credibility to the annals of former ages. Tacitus recovers his character by the edition of Petersburgh. We expect the definitive courier from Paris every day. Now it is said that they ask time to send to Spain. What? to ask leave to desert them! The Spaniards, not so expeditious in usurpation as the Muscovites, have made no progress in Portugal. Their absurd manifestoes appeared too soon. The Czarina and Princess Daschkaw stay till the stroke is struck. Really, my dear Sir, your Italy is growing unfashionably innocent,-if you don't take care, the Archbishop of Novogorod will deserve, by his crimes, to be at the head of the Christian Church. I fear my friend, good Benedict,' infected you all with his virtues. You see how this Russian revolution has seized every cell in my head-a Prince of Wales is passed over in a line, the peace in another line. I have not even told you that the treasure of the Hermione, reckoned eight hundred thousand pounds, passed the end of my street this morning in one-and-twenty waggons. Of the Havannah I could tell you nothing if I would; people grow impatient at not hearing from thence. Adieu! You see I am a punctual correspondent when Empresses commit murders. SIR: 805. TO THE REV. WILLIAM COLE. Strawberry Hill, August 19, 1762. I AM very sensible of the obligations I have to you and Mr. Masters, and ought to make separate acknowledgments to both; but, not knowing how to direct to him, I must hope that you will kindly be once more the channel of our correspondence; and that you will be so good as to convey to him an answer to what you communicated from him to me, and in particular my thanks for the most obliging offer he has made me of a picture of Henry VII.; of 1 Pope Benedict XIV. -WALPOLE. which I will by no means rob him. My view in publishing the Anecdotes was, to assist gentlemen in discovering the hands of pictures they possess; and I am sufficiently rewarded when that purpose is answered. If there is another edition, the mistake in the calculation of the Tapestry shall be rectified, and any others, which any gentleman will be so good as to point out. With regard to the monument of Sir Nathaniel Bacon, Vertue certainly describes it as at Culford; and in looking into the place to which I am referred, in Mr. Masters's History of Corpus Christi College, I think he himself allows in the note, that there is such a monument at Culford.' Of Sir Balthazar Gerbier there are several different prints. Nich. Laniere purchasing pictures at the King's sale, is undoubtedly a mistake for one of his brothers-I cannot tell now whether Vertue's mistake or my own. At Longleat is a whole-length of Frances, Duchess of Richmond, exactly such as Mr. Masters describes, but in oil. I have another whole-length of the same Duchess, I believe by Mytens, but younger than that at Longleat. But the best picture of her is in Wilson's Life of King James, and very diverting indeed.' I will not trouble you, Sir, or Mr. Masters, with any more at present; but, repeating my thanks to both, will assure you that I am, &c. SIR: 806. TO THE REV. THOMAS WARTON.3 Strawberry Hill, Aug. 21, 1762. I was last week surprised with a very unexpected present in your name; and still more, when, upon examining it, I found myself so much, and so undeservedly distinguished by your approbation. I certainly ought to have thanked you immediately, but I chose to defer my acknowledgments till I had read your volumes very attentively. The praise you have bestowed on me, debars me, Sir, from doing all the justice I ought to your work: the pleasure I received from it would seem to have grown out of the satisfaction I 1 Yes! and what has not hitherto been noticed, it is evidently the work of the same sculptor (unfortunately unknown) who made the Sic Sedebat statue of the great Lord Bacon.-CUNNINGHAM. 2 That curious whole length of Frances, Duchess of Richmond and Lenox came from Easton Neston, the seat of the Earl of Pomfret. We shall sit down here before her, and read the equally curious portrait of her by Wilson, in his Reign of James I. Walpoliana, ii. 119.-CUNNINGHAM. 3 Now first collected. From Wooll's Biographical Memoirs of Joseph Warton,' 1806, 4to. The work which Warton presented to Walpole was his 'Observations on Spenser.'-CUNNINGHAM, felt in what, if it would not be ungrateful, I should be humble enough to call flattery; for how can you, Sir, approve such hasty, superficial writings as mine, you, who in the same pursuits are so much more correct, and have gone so much deeper? for instance, compare your account of Gothic architecture with mine; I have scarce skimmed the subject; you have ascertained all its periods. If my Anecdotes' should ever want another edition, I shall take the liberty of referring the readers to your chronicle of our buildings. With regard to the Dance of Death, I must confess you have not convinced me. Vertue (for it was he, not I, that first doubted of that painting at Basil) persuaded me by the arguments I found in his MSS., and which I have given, that Holbein was not the author. The latter's prints, as executed by Hollar, confirmed me in that opinion and you must forgive me if I still think the taste of them superior to Albert Durer. This is mere matter of opinion, and of no consequence, and the only point in your book, Sir, in which I do not submit to you and agree with you. You will not be sorry to be informed, Sir, that in the library of the Antiquarian Society there is a large and very good print of Nonsuch, giving a tolerable idea of that pile, which was not the case of Speed's confused scrap. I have myself drawings of the two old palaces of Richmond and Greenwich; and should be glad to show them to you, if at any time of your leisure you would favour me with a visit here. You would see some attempts at Gothic, some miniatures of scenes which I am pleased to find pleased to find you love.-Cloisters, screens, round-towers, and a printing-house, all indeed of baby dimensions, would put you a little in mind of the age of Caxton and Wynken. You might play at fancying yourself in a castle described by Spenser. You see, Sir, by the persuasions I employ, how much I wish to tempt you hither! I am, Sir, Your most obliged and obedient servant, HORACE WALPOLE. P.S. You know, to be sure, that in Ames's Typographical Antiquities' are specified all the works of Stephen Hawes. 807. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Strawberry Hill, Sunday, August 29, 1762. WE cannot afford to stay any longer for the Havannah, and must make peace without it. The Duke of Bedford, on Wednesday next, is to be named in form Embassador Extraordinary, as the Duc de Nivernois will be the same day at Paris; on the 7th of next month they are to meet at Dover, cross over and figure-in. Our duke carries good dispositions, but as there is a grain of wrong-headed warmth in his temper, I hope it will not leaven the whole pacific cake. Still I fear that obstinate diadem in Spain! who will not be bullied as when he was plain Don Carlos King of Naples, and which perhaps he has not forgot. Lord Tyrawley is returned, and as they were not pleased to see him and English troops in Portugal, when they feared it would draw down the war upon them, he now will not allow there is any war there, calls it a combination to get our money, and says he will eat every man that is killed, if the Portuguese will engage to roast him. Absurd as this proposition is, it is the only tolerable excuse I have heard for the King of Spain. En attendant, the signing of preliminaries, we have a victory of the King of Prussia over Laudohn, and a new squabble with the Dutch. They were sending a convoy of naval stores to Cales-to sell underhand; our good allies do not injure us for nothing; Commodore More sent some men-of-war to visit them; their guardian would not be examined, which he intimated by a cannon; a fight ensued, he has lost his nose and his first-lieutenant, and is brought into Portsmouth. This is our story as arrived to-day. The Dutch minister Borel is very temperate about it, though the lost nose belonged to his nephew. I rejoice that you agree with me in abhorring that good woman the Czarina. Semiramis and her models never thought of palliating murders by manifestos. One would think that Peter the Great had not yet taught the Russians to read! or she could not have the confidence to write such horrid and such gross falsehoods. They are as ill-drawn as if penned in Spain or Portugal. But what do you think of her recollecting herself, crying for her husband, and wanting to attend his funeral? This, and her backward and forward dealing with the King of Prussia, show what confusion subsists in her councils. I do not grieve to hear that as much reigns in her empire. VOL. IV. |