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Lord Nuneham.

CHAPTER VI.

Lord Nuneham.-Madame de Sévigné.-Charles Fox.-Mrs. Clive and Cliveden.-Goldsmith and Garrick.-Dearth of News.— Madame de Trop.-A Bunch of Grapes.-General Election.Perils by Land and Water.-Sir Horace Mann.-Lord Clive.— The History of Manners.-A Traveller from Lima.-The Sçavoir Vivre Club.-Reflections on Life.-The Pretender's Happiness. -Paris Fashions.-Madame Du Deffand ill.-Growth of London. -Sir Joshua Reynolds.-Change in Manners.-Our Climate.

THE following letter is a specimen of Horace's gossiping style at its best. It is addressed to Lord Nuneham, who was in Ireland with his father, Simon Earl Harcourt, the then Lord-Lieutenant. Elsewhere Walpole salutes his correspondent as "Your O'Royal Highness":

"Strawberry Hill, Dec. 6, 1773

"I wanted an excuse for writing to you, my dear Lord, and your letter gives me an opportunity of thanking you; yet that is not all I wanted to say. I would, if I had dared, have addressed myself to Lady Nuneham, but I had not confidence enough, especially on so unworthy a subject as myself. Lady Temple, my friend, as well as that of Human Nature, has shown me some verses; but alas! how came such charming

Maaame de Sévigné.

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poetry to be thrown away on so unmeritorious a topic? I don't know whether I ought to praise the lines most, or censure the object most. Voltaire makes the excellence of French poetry consist in the number of difficulties it vanquishes. Pope, who celebrated Lord Bolingbroke, could not have succeeded, did not succeed, better; and yet I hope that, though a meaner subject, I am not so bad an one! Well! with all my humility, I cannot but be greatly flattered. Madame de Sévigné spread her leaf-gold over all her acquaintance, and made them shine; I should not doubt of the same glory, when Lady Nuneham's poetry shall come to light, if my own works were but burnt at the same time; but alas! Coulanges' verses were preserved, and so may my writings too. Apropos, my Lord, I have got a new volume of that divine woman's letters. Two are entertaining; the rest, not very divine. But there is an application, the happiest, the most exquisite, that even she herself ever made! She is joking with a President de Provence, who was hurt at becoming a grandfather. She assures him there is no such great misfortune in it; I have experienced the case,' says she, and, believe me, Pate, non dolet.' If you are not both transported with this, ye are not the Lord and Lady Nuneham I take ye to be. There are besides some twenty letters of Madame de Simiane, who shows she would not have degenerated totally, if she had not lived in the country, or had anything to say. At the end are reprinted Madame de Sévigné's letters on Fouquet's Trial, which are very interesting.

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"I do not know how you like your new subjects, but I hear they are extremely content with their Prince and Princess. I ought to wish your Lordship joy of all your prosperities, and of Mr. Fludd's baptism into the Catholic or Universal Faith; but I reserve public felicities for your old Drawing-Room in Leicester Fields. Private news we have little but Lord Carmarthen's and Lord Cranborne's marriages, and the approaching one of Lady Bridget Lane and Mr. Tall-Match. Lord Holland has given Charles Fox a draught of an hundred thousand pounds, and it pays all his debts, but a trifle of thirty thousand pounds, and those of Lord Carlisle, Crewe, and Foley, who being only friends, not Jews, may wait. So now any younger son may justify losing his father's and elder brother's estate on precedent.*

"Neither Lord nor Lady Temple are well, and yet they are both gone to Lord Clare's, in Essex, for a week. Lord Temple had a very bad fall in the Park, and lost his senses for an hour. Yet, though the horse is a vicious one, he has been upon it again. In short, there are no right-headed people but the Irish !

"As it is ancient good breeding not to conclude a

'I went to the House of Commons the other day to hear Charles Fox, contrary to a resolution I had made of never setting my foot there again. It is strange how disuse makes one awkward. I felt a palpitation, as if I were going to speak there myself. The object answered: Fox's abilities are amazing at so very early a period, especially under the circumstances of such a dissolute life. He was just arrived from Newmarket, had sat up drinking all night, and had not been in bed. How such talents make one laugh at Tully's rules for an orator, and his indefatigable application! His laboured orations are puerile in comparison with this boy's manly reason.'-Walpole to Mann, April 9, 1772.

Mrs. Clive and Cliveden.

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letter without troubling the reader with compliments, and as I have none to send, I must beg your Lordship not to forget to present my respects to the Countesses of Barrymore and Massareene, my dear Sisters in Loo. You may be sure I am charged with a large parcel from Cliveden,* where I was last night. Except being extremely ill, Mrs. Clive is extremely well; but the tax-gatherer is gone off, and she must pay her windowlights over again; and the road before her door is very bad, and the parish won't mend it, and there is some suspicion that Garrick is at the bottom of it; so if you please to send a shipload of the Giant's Causey by next Monday, we shall be able to go to Mr. Rofey's rout at Kingston. The Papers said she was to act at Covent Garden, and she has printed a very proper answer in the Evening Post. Mr. Raftort told me, that formerly, when he played Luna in 'The Rehearsal,' he never could learn to dance the Hays, and at last he went to the Man that teaches grown gentlemen.

"Miss Davis is the admiration of all London, but of me, who do not love the perfection of what anybody can do, and wish she had less top to her voice and more bottom. However, she will break Millico's heart, which will not break mine. Fierville has sprained his leg, and there is another man who sprains his mouth with smiling on himself as I have heard, for I have

* Walpole's playful name for Little Strawberry Hill, a cottage near his villa, and belonging to him, which he gave to Mrs. Clive, the actress, for her life.

Mrs. Clive's brother, who lived with her.

A new singer who attained great celebrity.

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Goldsmith and Garrick.

not seen him yet, nor a fat old woman and her lean daughter, who dance with him. London is very dull, so pray come back as soon as you can. Mason is up to the ears in 'Gray's Life;' you will like it exceedingly, which is more than you will do this long letter. Well! you have but to go into Lady Nuneham's dressingroom, and you may read something ten thousand times more pleasing. No, no! you are not the most to be pitied of any human being, though in the midst of Dublin Castle."

Next to the above, Walpole's liveliest letters about this date were written to Lady Ossory. Sometimes he has to lament the want of news: "Pray, Madam, where is the difference between London and the country, when everybody is in the country and nobody in town? The houses do not marry, intrigue, talk politics, game, or fling themselves out of window. The streets do not all run to the Alley, nor the squares mortgage themselves over head and ears. The playhouses do not pull themselves down; and all summer long, when nobody gets about them, they behave soberly and decently as any Christian in the parish of Marylebone. The English of this preface is that I have not the Israelitish art of making bricks without straw. I cannot invent news when nobody commits it." He has nothing better to tell than an anecdote of Goldsmith, who died a few months later, and Garrick : "I dined and passed Saturday at Beauclerk's, with the Edgecombes, the Garricks, and Dr. Goldsmith, and

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