can one lay great stress on the five. I shall, however, have these figures copied, especially as I know of no other image of the son. Mr. Astle is to come to me to-morrow morning to explain the writing. I wish you had told me in what age your Franciscan friars lived; and what the passage in Comines is. I am very ready to make amende honorable. Thank you for the notes on the Noble Authors. They shall be inserted when I make a new edition, for the sake of the trouble the person has taken, though they are of little conse‐ quence. Dodsley has asked me for a new edition; but I have had little heart to undertake such work, no more than to mend my old linen. It is pity one cannot be born an ancient, and have commentators to do such jobs for one! Adieu! Yours ever. Saturday morning. On reading over your letter again this morning, I do find the age in which the friars lived-I read and write in such a hurry, that I think I neither know what I read or say. To GEORGE MONTAGU, Esq. Arlington-street, March 12, 1768. THE house, &c. described in the enclosed advertisement I should think might suit you; I am sure its being in my neighbourhood would make me glad, if it did. I know no more than what you will find in this scrap of paper, nor what the rent is, nor whether it has a chamber as big as Westminster-hall; but as you have flown about the world, and are returned to your ark without finding a place to rest your foot, I should think you might as well inquire about the house I notify to you, as set out with your caravan to Greatworth, like a Tartar chief; especially as the laws of this country will not permit you to stop in the first meadow you like, and turn your horses to grazing, without saying by your leave. As my senatorial dignity is gone,' and the sight of my name is no longer worth threepence, I shall not put you to the expense of a cover, and I hope the advertisement will not be 1 Walpole had retired from Parliament at the election in the beginning of the year 1768. He had announced his intention of doing so in the preceding year, in the following letter addressed to William Langley, esq., mayor of Lynn, which is inserted as a specimen of his official correspondence. SIR, TO WILLIAM LANGLEY, Esq., Mayor of Lynn, Norfolk. Arlington-street, March 13, 1767. The declining state of my health, and a wish of retiring from all public business, have for some time made me think of not offering my service again to the town of Lynn as one of their representatives in Parliament. I was even on the point, above eighteen months ago, of obtaining to have my seat vacated by one of those temporary places, often bestowed for that purpose; but I thought it more respectful, and more consonant to the great and singular obligations I have to the corporation and town of Lynn, to wait till I had executed their commands to the last hour of the commission they had voluntarily intrusted to me. Till then, sir, I did not think of making this declaration; but hearing that dissatisfaction and dissension have arisen amongst you (of which I am so happy as to have been in no shape the cause), that a warm contest is expected, and dreading to see in the uncorrupted town of Lynn what has spread too fatally in other places, and what I fear will end in the ruin of this constitution and country, I think it my duty by an early declaration, to endeavour to preserve the integrity and peace of so great, so respectable, and so unblemished a borough. My father was rechosen by the free voice of Lynn, when imprisoned and expelled by an arbitrary court and prostitute parliament; and from affection to his name, not from the smallest merit in me, they unanimously demanded me for their member, while I was sitting for Castle Rising. Gratitude exacts what in any other light might seem vain-glorious in me to declare, but it is to the lasting honour of the town of Lynn I declare, that I have represented them in two parliaments without offering or being asked for the smallest gratification by any one of my constituents. May I be permitted, sir, to flatter myself they are persuaded their otherwise unworthy representative has not disgraced so free and unbiassed a choice. I have sat above five-and-twenty years in parliament, and allow me to say, sir, as I am, in a manner, giving up my account to my constituents, that my conduct in Parliament has been as pure as my manner of coming thither. No man who is, or has been minister, can say that I have ever asked or received a personal favour. My votes, which have neither been dictated by favour nor influence, but by the principles on which the revolution was founded, the principles by which we enjoy the establishment of the present royal family, the principles to which the town of Lynn has ever adhered, taxed, as I seal it to the paper. In short, I retain so much 1 iniquity from the last infamous parliament that you see I would still cheat the public. The comfort I feel in sitting peaceably here, instead of being at Lynn in the high fever of a contested election, which at best would end in my being carried about that large town like the figure of a pope at a bonfire, is very great. I do not think, when that function is over, that I shall repent my resolution. What could I see but sons and grandsons playing over the same knaveries, that I have seen their fathers and grandfathers act? Could I hear oratory beyond my lord Chatham's? Will there ever be parts equal to Charles Townshend's? Will George Grenville cease to be the most tiresome of beings? Will he not be constantly whining, and droning, and interrupting, like a cigala in a sultry day in Italy. Guthrie has published two criticisms on my Richard; one abusive in the Critical Review; t'other very civil and even flattering in a pamphlet; both so stupid and contemptible, that I rather prefer the first, as making some attempt at vivacity; but in point of argument, nay, and of humour, at which he makes an effort too, both things are below scorn. As an instance of the former, he says, the duke of Clarence might die of drinking sack, and so be said to be drowned in a butt of malmsey; of the latter sort, are his calling the lady Bridget lady Biddy, and the duke of York poor little fellow! I will weary you with no more such stuff! The weather is so very March, that I cannot enjoy my new and by which my father commenced and closed his venerable life. The best and only honours I desire, would be to find that my conduct has been satisfactory to my constituents. From your kindness, sir, I must intreat to have the notification made in the most respectful and grateful manner to the corporation and town of Lynn. Nothing can exceed the obligation I owe to them, but my sensibility to their favours. And be assured, sir, that no terms can outgo the esteem I have for so upright and untainted a borough, or the affection I feel for all their goodness to my family and me. My trifling services will be overpaid if they graciously accept my intention of promoting their union and preserving their virtue, and though I may be forgotten, I never shall or can forget the obligations they have conferred on, Sir, their and your most devoted humble servant, 2 William Guthrie, the reputed writer of the well-known Geographical Grammar, which it is said he did not write. [Ed.] holidays at Strawberry yet; I sit reading and writing close to the fire. Sterne has published two little volumes, called Sentimental Travels. They are very pleasing, though too much dilated, and infinitely preferable to his tiresome Tristram Shandy, of which I never could get through three volumes. In these there is great good-nature and strokes of delicacy Gray has added to his poems three ancient odes from Norway and Wales. The subjects of the two first are grand and picturesque, and there is his genuine vein in them; but they are not interesting, and do not, like his other poems, touch any passion. Our human feelings, which he masters at will in his former pieces, are here not affected. Who can care through what horrors a Runic savage arrived at all the joys and glories tney could conceive, the supreme felicity of boozing ale out of the skull of an enemy in Odin's hall? Oh! yes, just now perhaps these odes would be toasted at many a contested election. Adieu! Yours ever. To GEORGE MONTAGU, Esq. Strawberry-hill, April 15, 1769. MR. CHUTE tells me that you have taken a new house in Squireland, and have given yourself up for two years more to port and parsons. I am very angry, and resign you to the works of the devil or the church, I don't care which. You will get the gout, turn methodist, and expect to ride to heaven upon your own great toe. I was happy with your telling me how well you love me, and though I don't love loving, I could have poured out all the fulness of my heart to such an old and true friend; but what am I the better for it, if I am to see you but two or three days in the year? I thought you would at last come and while away the remainder of life on the banks of the Thames in gaiety and old tales. I have quitted the stage, and the Clive is preparing to leave it. We shall neither of us ever be grave: dowagers roost all round us, and you could never want cards or mirth. Will you end like a fat farmer, repeating annually the price of oats, and discussing stale newspapers? There have you got, I hear, into an old gallery, that has not been glazed since queen Elizabeth, and under the nose of an infant duke and duchess, that will understand you no more than if you wore a ruff and a coif, and talked to them of a call of serjeants the year of the Spanish armada! Your wit and humour will be as much lost upon them, as if you talked the dialect of Chaucer; for, with all the divinity of wit, it grows out of fashion like a fardingale. I am convinced that the young men at White's already laugh at George Selwyn's bon-mots only by tradition. I avoid talking before the youth of the age as I would dancing before them; for if one's tongue don't move in the steps of the day, and thinks to please by its old graces, it is only an object of ridicule, like Mrs. Hobart in her cotillon. I tell you we should get together, and comfort ourselves with reflecting on the brave days that we have known-not that I think people were a jot more clever or wise in our youth than they are now; but as my system is always to live in a vision as much as I can, and as visions don't increase with years, there is nothing so natural as to think one remembers what one does not remember. I have finished my tragedy, but as you would not bear the subject, I will say no more of it, but that Mr. Chute, who is not easily pleased, likes it, and Gray, who is still more difficult, approves it. I am not yet intoxicated enough with it to think it would do for the stage, though I wish to see it acted; but, as Mrs. Pritchard leaves the stage next month, I know nobody could play the countess; nor am I disposed to expose myself to the impertinences of that jackanapes Garrick, who lets nothing appear but his own wretched stuff, or that of creatures still duller, who suffer him to alter their pieces as he pleases. I have written an epilogue in character for the Clive, which she would speak admirably; but I am not so sure that she would like to speak it. Mr. Conway, lady Aylesbury, lady Lyttelton, and Miss Rich, are to come hither the day after to-morrow, and Mr. Conway and I are to read my play to them, for I have not strength enough to go through the whole alone. My press is revived, and is printing a French play written by 1 The Mysterious Mother: a Tragedy: Strawberry-hill, 1768. 8vo. [Ed.] 2 This celebrated actress, who excelled alike in tragedy and comedy, died in August 1768. [Ed.] |