of Cumberland. But why me? Here is that hopeful young fellow, Sir John Rushout, the oldest member of the House, and, as extremes meet, very proper to begin again; why overlook him? However, as the secret is kept from me myself, I am perfectly easy about it. I shall call to-day or to-morrow to ask his commands, but certainly shall not obey those you mention.1

The waters certainly are not so beneficial to me as at first: I have almost every morning my pain in my stomach. I do not pretend this to be the cause of my leaving Bath. The truth is, I cannot bear it any longer. You laugh at my regularity; but the contrary habit is so strong in me, that I cannot continue such sobriety. The public rooms, and the loo, where we play in a circle, like the hazard on Twelfth-night, are insupportable. This coming into the world again, when I am so weary of it, is as bad and ridiculous as moving an address would be. I have no affectation; for affectation is a monster at nine-and-forty; but if I cannot live quietly, privately, and comfortably, I am perfectly indifferent about living at all. I would not kill myself, for that is a philosopher's affectation, and I will come hither again, if I must; but I shall always drive very near, before I submit to do anything I do not like. In short, I must be as foolish as I please, as long as I can keep without the limits of absurdity. What has an old man to do but to preserve himself from parade on one hand, and ridicule on the other? Charming youth may indulge itself

Mr. Conway had intimated to Walpole, that it was the wish of Lord Chatham, that he should move the address on the King's speech at the opening of the session.-E.

On the topic of ridicule, Walpole had, a few days before, thus expressed himself in a letter to Madame du Deffand ::-"Il y avoit longtemps avant la date de notre connaissance, que cette crainte de ridicule s'étoit plantée dans mon esprit, et vous devez assurément vous ressouvenir à quel point elle me possédoit, et combien de fois je vous en ai entretenu. N'allez pas lui chercher une naissance récente. Dès le moment que je cessais d'être jeune, j'ai eu une peur horrible de devenir un veillard ridicule." To this the lady replied-" Vos craintes sur le ridicule sont des terreurs paniques, mais on ne guérit point de la peur; je n'ai point une semblable foiblesse ; je sais qu'à mon age on est à l'abri de donner du scandale: si l'on aime, on n'a point à s'en cacher; l'amitié ne sera jamais un sentiment ridicule, quand elle ne fait pas faire des folies; mais gardons-nous d'en proférer le nom, puisque vous avez de si bonnes raisons de la vouloir proscrire."-E.

in either, may be censured, will be envied, and has time to correct. Adieu !

Monday evening.

You are a delightful manager of the House of Commons, to reckon 540, instead of 565! Sandwich was more accurate in lists, and would not have miscounted 25, which are something in a division.

TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ.

Strawberry Hill, Oct. 22, 1766.

THEY may say what they will, but it does one ten times more good to leave Bath than to go to it. I may sometimes drink the waters, as Mr. Bentley used to say I invited company hither that I did not care for, that I might enjoy the pleasure of their going away. My health is certainly mended, but I did not feel the satisfaction of it till I got home. I have still a little rheumatism in one shoulder, which was not dipped in Styx, and is still mortal; but, while I went to the rooms, or stayed in my chambers in a dull court, I thought I had twenty complaints. I don't perceive one of them.

Having no companion but such as the place afforded, and which I did not accept, my excursions were very few; besides that the city is so guarded with mountains, that I had not patience to be jolted like a pea in a drum, in my chaise alone. I did go to Bristol, the dirtiest great shop I ever saw, with so foul a river, that, had I seen the least appearance of cleanliness, I should have concluded they washed all their linen in it, as they do at Paris. Going into the town, I was struck with a large Gothic building, coal-black, and striped with white; I took it for the devil's cathedral. When I came nearer, I found it was an uniform castle, lately built, and serving for stables and offices to a smart false Gothic house on the other side of the road.

The real cathedral is very neat, and has pretty tombs, besides the two windows of painted glass, given by Mrs. Ellen Gwyn. There is a new church besides of St. Nicholas, neat

and truly Gothic, besides a charming old church at the other end of the town. The cathedral, or abbey, at Bath, is glaring and crowded with modern tablet-monuments; among others, I found two, of my cousin Sir Erasmus Phillips, and of Colonel Madan. Your cousin Bishop Montagu decked it much. I dined one day with an agreeable family, two miles from Bath, a Captain Miller1 and his wife, and her mother, Mrs. Riggs. They have a small new-built house, with a bow-window, directly opposite to which the Avon falls in a wide cascade, a church behind it in a vale, into which two mountains descend, leaving an opening into the distant country. A large village, with houses of gentry, is on one of the hills to the left. Their garden is little, but pretty, and watered with several small rivulets among the bushes. Meadows fall down to the road; and above, the garden is terminated by another view of the river, the city, and the mountains. 'Tis a very diminutive principality, with large pretensions.

I must tell you a quotation I lighted upon t'other day from Persius, the application of which has much diverted Mr. Chute. You know my Lord Milton, from nephew of the old usurer Damer, of Dublin, has endeavoured to erect himself into the representative of the ancient Barons Damory—

Apropos, or rather not àpropos, I wish you joy of the restoration of the dukedom in your house, though I believe we both think it very hard upon my Lady Beaulieu.

I made a second visit to Lady Lucy saw the latter one night at the rooms. so little altered as in the dusk Adieu!

me

1

and Mrs. Trevor, and She did not appear to of her own chamber. Yours ever.

Captain John Miller, of Ballicasey, in the county of Clare. In the preceding year he had married Anne, the only daughter of Edward Riggs, Esq. In 1778, he was created an Irish baronet, and in 1784, chosen representative for Newport in parliament. See post, Walpole's letter to General Conway, of the 15th of January 1775.-E.

2 Joseph Damer Lord Milton, of Shrone Hill, in the kingdom of Ireland, was created a baron of Great Britain in May 1762, by the title of Baron Milton of Milton Abbey, Dorsetshire.-E.

SIR,

TO SIR DAVID DALRYMPLE.1

Strawberry Hill, Nov. 5, 1766.

ON my return from Bath, I found your very kind and agreeable present of the papers in King Charles's time; for which and all your other obliging favours I give you a thousand thanks.

I was particularly pleased with your just and sensible preface against the squeamish or bigoted persons who would bury in oblivion the faults and follies of princes, and who thence contribute to their guilt; for if princes, who living are above control, should think that no censure is to attend them when dead, it would be new encouragement to them to play the fool and act the tyrant. When they are so kind as to specify their crimes under their own hands, it would be foppish delicacy indeed to suppress them. I hope you will proceed, Sir, and with the same impartiality. It was justice due to Charles to publish the extravagancies of his enemies too. The comparison can never be fairly made, but when we see the evidence on both sides. I have done so in the trifles I have published, and have as much offended some by what I have said of the Presbyterians at the beginning of my third volume of the Painters, as I had others by condemnation of King Charles in my Noble Authors. In the second volume of my Anecdotes I praised him where he deserved praise; for truth is my sole object, and it is some proof, when one offends both sides. I am, Sir, your most obliged and obedient

servant.

1 Now first collected. In the March of this year, Sir David Dalrymple was made a judge of the Court of Session, when he assumed the name of Lord Hailes, by which he is best known.-E.

2 "The Memorials and Letters relating to the History of Britain in the Reigns of James the First and Charles the First, published from the originals in the Advocates' Library at Edinburgh," had just appeared, in two volumes, octavo.-E.

DEAR SIR,

TO DAVID HUME, ESQ.

Nov. 6, 1766.

You have, I own, surprised me by suffering your quarrel with Rousseau to be printed, contrary to your determination when you left London, and against the advice of all your best friends here; I may add, contrary to your own nature, which has always inclined you to despise literary squabbles, the jest and scorn of all men of sense. Indeed, I am sorry you have let yourself be over-persuaded, and so are all that I have seen who wish you well: I ought rather to use your own word extorted. You say your Parisian friends extorted your consent to this publication. I believe so. Your good sense could not approve what your good heart could not refuse. You add, that they told you "Rousseau had sent letters of defiance against you all over Europe? Good God! my dear Sir, could you pay any regard to such fustian? All Europe laughs at being dragged every day into these idle quarrels, with which Europe only * * *. Your friends talk as loftily as of a challenge between Charles the Fifth and Francis the First. What are become of all the controversies since the days of Scaliger and Scioppius, of Billingsgate memory? Why, they sleep in oblivion, till some Bayle drags them out of their dust, and takes mighty pains to ascertain the date of each author's death, which is of no more consequence to the world than the day of his birth. Many a country squire quarrels with his neighbour about game and manors; yet they never print their wrangles, though as much abuse passes between them as if they could quote all the philippics of the learned.

You have acted, as I should have expected if you would print, with sense, temper, and decency, and, what is still more uncommon, with your usual modesty. I cannot say so much for your editors. But editors and commentators are seldom modest. Even to this day that race ape the dictatorial tone of the commentators at the restoration of learning, when the mob thought that Greek and Latin could give men the sense