about it, I can secure you a ticket for lord Lincoln's gallery. The Antiquarian Society have got goody Carlisle for their president, and I suppose she will sit upon a Saxon chalkstone till the return of king Arthur. Adieu! Yours ever. DEAR SIR: TO THE REV. MR. COLE. Strawberry-hill, Feb. 28, 1765. As you do not deal with newspapers, nor trouble yourselves with occurrences of modern times, you may perhaps conclude from what I have told you, and from my silence, that I am in France. This will tell you that I am not; though I have been long thinking of it, and still intend it, though not exactly yet. My silence I must lay on this uncertainty, and from having been much out of order above a month with a very bad cold and cough, for which I am come hither to try change of air. Your brother Apthorpe, who was so good as to call upon me about a fortnight ago in town, found me too hoarse to speak to him. We both asked one another the same question-news of you? You have, I hope, got rid of all trouble from your impertinent neighbour, and reverted to the tranquillity you love. I have for some time had the pictures from Dr. Cock, and shall have the one engraved that I conclude your ancestor, though there seems no very accurate marks to specify it. I have lately had an accession to my territory here, by the death of good old Franklin, to whom I had given for his life the lease of the cottage and garden across the road. Besides a little pleasure in planting and in crowding it with flowers, I intend to make, what I am sure you are antiquarian enough to approve, a bower, though your friends the abbots did not indulge in such retreats, at least not under that appellation: but though we love the same ages, you must excuse worldly me for preferring the romantic scenes of antiquity. If you will tell me how to send it, and are partial enough to me to read a accordingly shown into one, and a single candle placed upon the table. In a few minutes the bell was rung, and Mr. Chaworth was found mortally wounded. [Ed.] profane work in the style of former centuries, I shall convey to you a little story-book, which I published some time ago, though not boldly with my own name: but it has succeeded so well, that I do not any longer entirely keep the secret. Does the title, The Castle of Otranto,' tempt you? I shall be glad to hear you are well and happy. Ever yours. P.S. Pray direct your answer to Arlington-street. DEAR SIR: TO THE REV. MR. COLE. Strawberry-hill, March 9, 1765. I had time to write but a short note with the Castle of Otranto, as your messenger called on me at four o'clock, as I was going to dine abroad. Your partiality to me and Strawberry have, I hope, inclined you to excuse the wildness of the story. You will even have found some traits to put you in mind of this place. When you read of the picture quitting its panel, did not you recollect the portrait of lord Falkland, all in white, in my gallery? Shall I even confess to you what was the origin of this romance? I waked one morning, in the beginning of last June, from a dream, of which all I could recover was, that I had thought myself in an ancient castle, (a very natural dream for a head filled like mine with Gothic story,) and that on the uppermost bannister of a great staircase I saw a gigantic hand in armour. In the evening, I sat down, and began to write, without knowing in the least what I intended to say or relate. The work grew on my hands, and I grew fond of it-add, that I was very glad to think of any thing 1 The first edition of this work, of which but very few copies were printed, is now extremely rare. Its title runs as follows: The Castle of Otranto, a Story, translated by William Marshal, gent., from the original Italian of Onuphrio Muralto, canon of the church of St. Nicholas at Otranto. London: printed for Thomas Lownds, in Fleet-street, MDCCLXV. 8vo. A second edition was published in the same year, to which was prefixed a sonnet to lady Mary Coke, signed H. W., and a second preface. [Ed.] rather than politics. In short, I was so engrossed with my tale, which I completed in less than two months, that one evening I wrote from the time I had drunk my tea, about six o'clock, till half-an-hour after one in the morning, when my hand and fingers were so weary, that I could not hold the pen to finish the sentence, but left Matilda and Isabella talking in the middle of a paragraph. You will laugh at my earnestness; but, if I have amused you, by retracing with any fidelity the manners of ancient days, I am content, and give you leave to think me as idle as you please. You are, as you have long been to me, exceedingly kind, and I should, with great satisfaction, embrace your offer of visiting the solitude of Blechely, though my cold is in a manner gone, and my cough quite, if I was at liberty: but as I am preparing for my fresh journey, and have forty businesses upon my hands, and can only now and then purloin a day, or half a day, to come hither. You know I am not cordially disposed to your French journey, which is much more serious, as it is to be much more lasting. However, though I may suffer by your absence, I would not dissuade what may suit your inclination and circumstances. One thing, however, has struck me, which I must mention, though it would depend on a circumstance that would give me the most real concern. It was suggested to me by that real fondness I have for your MSS., for your kindness about which I feel the utmost gratitude. You would not, I think, leave them behind you: and are you aware of the danger you would run if you settled entirely in France? Do you know that the king of France is heir to all strangers who die in his dominions, by what they call the Droit d'Aubaine? Sometimes, by great interest and favour, persons have obtained a remission of this right in their lifetime: and yet that, even that, has not secured their effects from being embezzled. Old lady Sandwich' had obtained this remission, and yet, though she left every thing to the present lord, her grandson, a man for whose rank one should have thought they would have had regard, the king's officers forced themselves into her house, after her death, and 1 Elizabeth, second daughter of John Wilmot, earl of Rochester, and sister and co-heiress of Charles, third earl, and widow of Edward Montagu, third earl of Sandwich, who died 20th October 1729. It was lady Sandwich who gave Walpole the well known miniature of Ninon de l'Enclos, and which had been presented to her by Ninon herself. [Ed.] plundered. You see, if you go, I shall expect to have your MSS. deposited with me-Seriously, you must leave them in safe custody behind you. Lord Essex's trial is printed with the state trials. In return for your obliging offer, I can acquaint you with a delightful publication of this winter, A Collection of Old Ballads and Poetry, in three volumes, many from Pepys's Collection at Cambridge. There were three such published between thirty and forty years ago, but very carelessly, and wanting many in this set indeed there were others, of a looser sort, which the present editor, who is a clergyman,2 thought it decent to omit. When you go into Cheshire, and upon your ramble, may I trouble you with a commission? but about which you must promise me not to go a step out of your way. Mr. Bateman has got a cloister at Old Windsor, furnished with ancient wooden chairs, most of them triangular, but all of various patterns, and carved and turned in the most uncouth and whimsical forms. He picked them up one by one, for two, three, five, or six shillings a-piece, from different farm-houses in Hertfordshire. I have long envied and coveted them. There may be such in poor cottages, in so neighbouring a county as Cheshire. I should not grudge any expense for purchase or carriage; and should be glad even of a couple such for my cloister here. When you are copying inscriptions in a churchyard in any village, think of me, and step into the first cottage you see-but don't take further trouble than that. I long to know what your bundle of MSS. from Cheshire contains. My bower is determined, but not at all what it is to be. Though I write romances, I cannot tell how to build all that belongs to them. Madame Danois, in the Fairy Tales, used to tapestry them with jonquils; but as that furniture will not last above a fortnight in the year, I shall prefer something more huckaback. I have decided that the outside shall be of treillage, 2 "Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry," the most delightful collection of national ballads which has appeared in this or any other country, not even excepting the celebrated Herder's beautiful selection of "Volkslieder," is the work alluded to. The editor was the reverend Thomas Percy, fellow of St. John's College, Oxford, and afterwards bishop of Dromore. [Ed.] which, however, I shall not commence till I have again seen some of old Louis's old-fashioned Galanteries at Versailles. Rosamond's bower,3 you, and I, and Tom Hearne know, was a labyrinth but as my territory will admit of a very short clew, I lay aside all thoughts of a mazy habitation: though a bower is very different from an arbour, and must have more chambers than one. In short, I both know, and don't know, what it should be. I am almost afraid I must go and read Spenser, and wade through his allegories and drawling stanzas, to get at a picture. But, good night! you see how one gossips when one is alone and at quiet on one's own dunghill !—Well! it may be trifling; yet it is such trifling as ambition never is happy enough to know! ambition orders palaces, but it is content that chats for a page or two over a bower. Yours ever. TO MONSIEUR ELIE DE BEAUMONT. [With the Castle of Otranto.] Strawberry-hill, March 18, 1765. SIR: When I had the honour of seeing you here, I believe I told you that I had written a novel, in which I was flattered to find that I had touched an effusion of the heart in a manner similar to a passage in the charming letters of the marquis de Roselle.' I have since that time published my little story, but was so diffident of its merit that I gave it as a translation from the Italian. Still I should not have ventured to offer it to so great a mistress of the passions as madame de Beaumont, if the approbation of London, that is, of a country to which she and you, sir, are so good as to be partial, had not encouraged me to send it to you. After I have talked of the passions, and the 3 The Bower of Rosamond, is said, or rather fabled, to have been a retreat built at Woodstock by Henry II., for the safe residence of his lovely mistress, Rosamond Clifford; the approaches of which were so intricate that it could not be entered without the guidance of a thread, which the king always kept in his own possession. His queen, Eleanor, having, however, gained possession of the thread, obtained access to, and speedily destroyed, her fair and amiable, although not spotless, rival. [Ed.] 1 A French novel written by madame de Beaumont, wife of Monsieur Elie de Beaumont. [Or.] |