as I believe, they mean to refuse you, and to reproach you with asking too late.

If the time is come for Mr. Pitt to want you, you will not long be unemployed; if it is not, then you would get nothing by asking. Consider, too, how much more graceful a reparation of your honour it will be, to have them forced to recall you, than to force yourself on desperate service, as if you yourself, not they, had injured your reputation.

I can say nothing now on any other chapter, this has so much engrossed all my thoughts. I see no one reason upon earth for your asking now. If you ever should ask again, you will not want opportunities; and the next time you ask, will have just the same merit that this could have, and by asking in time, would be liable to none of the objections of that sort which I have mentioned. Adieu! Timeo Lord George et dona.

SIR:

580. TO THE REV. HENRY ZOUCH.

Strawberry Hill, Oct. 21, 1758. EVERY letter I receive from you is a new obligation, bringing me new information: but, sure, my Catalogue was not worthy of giving you so much trouble. Lord Fortescue is quite new to me; I have sent him to the press. Lord Dorset's poem it will be unnecessary to mention separately, as I have already said that his works are to be found among those of the minor poets.

1

I don't wonder, Sir, that you prefer Lord Clarendon to Polybius; nor can two authors well be more unlike: the former wrote a general history in a most obscure and almost unintelligible style; the latter, a portion of private history, in the noblest style in the world. Whoever made the comparison, I will do them the justice to believe that they understood bad Greek better than their own language in its elevation. For Dr. Jortin's Erasmus, which I have very nearly finished, it has given me a good opinion of the author, and he has given me a very bad one of his subject. By the Doctor's labour and impartiality, Erasmus appears a begging parasite, who had parts enough to discover truth, and not courage enough to profess it: whose vanity made him always writing; yet his writings

1 It is evident that Mr. Walpole has here transposed, contrary to his meaning, the references to Lord Clarendon and Polybius: the latter wrote the general history, the former the portion of history.-CROKER.

ought to have cured his vanity, as they were the most abject things in the world. Good Erasmus's honest mean' was alternate timeserving. I never had thought much about him, and now heartily despise him.

When I speak my opinion to you, Sir, about what I dare say you care as little for as I do, (for what is the merit of a mere man of letters ?) it is but fit I should answer you as sincerely on a question about which you are so good as to interest yourself. That my father's life is likely to be written, I have no grounds for believing. I mean I know nobody that thinks of it. For myself, I certainly shall not, for many reasons, which you must have the patience to hear. A reason to me myself is, that I think too highly of him, and too meanly of myself, to presume I am equal to the task. They who do not agree with me in the former part of my position, will undoubtedly allow the latter part. In the next place, the very truths that I should relate would be so much imputed to partiality, that he would lose of his due praise by the suspicion of my prejudice. In the next place, I was born too late in his life to be acquainted with him in the active part of it. Then I was at school, at the university, abroad, and returned not till the last moments of his administration. What I know of him I could only learn from his own mouth in the last three years of his life; when, to my shame, I was so idle, and young, and thoughtless, that I by no means profited of his leisure as I might have done; and, indeed, I have too much impartiality in my nature to care, if I could, to give the world a history, collected solely from the person himself of whom I should write. With the utmost veneration for his truth, I can easily conceive, that a man who had lived a life of party, and who had undergone such persecution from party, should have had greater bias than he himself could be sensible of. The last, and that a reason which must be admitted, if all the others are not-his papers are lost. Between the confusion of his affairs, and the indifference of my elder brother to things of that sort, they were either lost, burnt, or what we rather think, were stolen by a favourite servant of my brother, who proved a great rogue, and was dismissed in my brother's life; and the papers were not discovered to be missing till after my brother's death. Thus, Sir, I should want vouchers for many things I could say of much importance. I have another personal reason that discourages me from attempting this task, or any other, besides the great reluctance that I have to being

a voluminous author. Though I am by no means the learned man you are so good as to call me in compliment; though, on the contrary, nothing can be more superficial than my knowledge, or more trifling than my reading,—yet, I have so much strained my eyes, that it is often painful to me to read even a newspaper by daylight. In short, Sir, having led a very dissipated life, in all the hurry of the world of pleasure, I scarce ever read, but by candlelight, after I have come home late at nights. As my eyes have never had the least inflammation or humour, I am assured I may still recover them by care and repose. I own I prefer my eyes to anything I could ever read, much more to anything I could write. However, after all I have said, perhaps I may now and then, by degrees, throw together some short anecdotes of my father's private life and particular story, and leave his public history to more proper and more able hands, if such will undertake it. Before I finish on this chapter, I can assure you he did forgive my Lord Bolingbroke his nature was forgiving: after all was over, and he had nothing to fear or disguise, I can say with truth, that there were not three men of whom he ever dropped a word with rancour. What I meant of the clergy not forgiving Lord Bolingbroke, alluded not to his doctrines, but to the direct attack and war he made on the whole body. And now, Sir, I will confess my own weakness to you. I do not think so highly of that writer, as I seem to do in my book; but I thought it would be imputed to prejudice in me, if I appeared to undervalue an author of whom so many persons of sense still think highly. My being Sir Robert Walpole's son warped me to praise, instead of censuring Lord Bolingbroke. With regard to the Duke of Leeds, I think you have misconstrued the decency of my expression. I said, Burnet had treated him severely; that is, I chose that Burnet should say so, rather than myself. I have never praised where my heart condemned. Little attentions, perhaps, to worthy descendants, were excusable in a work of so extensive a nature, and that approached so near to these times. I may, perhaps, have an opportunity, at one day or other of showing you some passages suppressed on these motives, which yet I do not intend to destroy.

Crew, Bishop of Durham, was as abject a tool as possible. I would be very certain he is an author before I should think him worth mentioning. If ever you should touch on Lord Willoughby's

1 This alludes to an epigrammatic passage in the article "Bolingbroke" in the 'Noble Authors.' He wrote against Sir Robert Walpole, who did forgive him; and against the clergy, who never will forgive him."-CROKER.

sermon, I should be obliged for a hint of it. I actually have a printed copy of verses by his son, on the marriage of the Princess Royal; but they are so ridiculously unlike measure, and the man was so mad and so poor,' that I determined not to mention them.

If these details, Sir, which I should have thought interesting to no mortal but myself, should happen to amuse you, I shall be glad; if they do not, you will learn not to question a man who thinks it his duty to satisfy the curiosity of men of sense and honour, and who, being of too little consequence to have secrets, is not ambitious of the less consequence of appearing to have any.

P. S. I must ask you one question, but to be answered entirely at your leisure. I have a play in rhyme called 'Saul,' said to be written by a peer. I guess Lord Orrery. If ever you happen to find out, be so good to tell me.

581. TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ.

Arlington Street, Oct. 24, 1758.

I AM a little sorry that my preface, like the show-cloth to a sight, entertained you more than the bears that it invited you in to see. I don't mean that I am not glad to have written anything that meets your approbation, but if Lord Whitworth's work is not better than my preface, I fear he has much less merit than I thought he had.

Your complaint of your eyes makes me feel for you: mine have been very weak again, and I am taking the bark, which did them so much service last year. I don't know how to give up the employment of them, I mean reading; for as to writing, I am absolutely winding up my bottom for twenty reasons. The first, and perhaps the best, I have writ enough. The next; by what I have writ, the world thinks I am not a fool, which was just what I wished them to think, having always lived in terror of that oracular saying, Ηρωων παιδες λωβοι, which Mr. Bentley translated with so much more parts than the vain and malicious hero could have done that set him the task-I mean his father, the sons of heroes are loobies. My last reason is, I find my little stock of reputation very troublesome, both to maintain and to undergo the consequences--it has dipped me in erudite correspondences-I receive letters every week that

This seems a singular reason for excluding him from a list of authors.-CROKER.

compliment my learning; now, as there is nothing I hold so cheap as a learned man, except an unlearned one, this title is insupportable to me; if I have not a care, I shall be called learned, till somebody abuses me for not being learned, as they, not I, fancied I was. In short, I propose to have nothing more to do with the world, but divert myself in it as an obscure passenger-pleasure, virtù, politics, and literature, I have tried them all, and have had enough of them. Content and tranquillity, with now and then a little of three of them, that I may not grow morose, shall satisfy the rest of a life that is to have much idleness, and I hope a little goodness; for politics-a long adieu! With some of the Cardinal de Retz's experience, though with none of his genius, I see the folly of taking a violent part without any view (I don't mean to commend a violent part with a view, that is still worse); I leave the state to be scrambled for by Mazarine, at once cowardly and enterprising, ostentatious, jealous, and false; by Louvois, rash and dark; by Colbert, the affecter of national interest, with designs not much better; and I leave the Abbé de la Rigbiere to sell the weak Duke of Orleans to whoever has money to buy him, or would buy him to get money; at least these are my present reflections-if I should change them to-morrow, remember I am not only a human creature, but that I am I, that is, one of the weakest of human creatures, and so sensible of my fickleness that I am sometimes inclined to keep a diary of my mind, as people do of the weather. To-day you see it temperate, to-morrow it may again blow politics and be stormy; for while I have so much quicksilver left, I fear my passionometer will be susceptible of sudden changes. What do years give one? Experience; experience, what? Reflections; reflections, what? nothing that I ever could find-nor can I well agree with Waller, that

"The soul's dark cottage, batter'd and decay'd,

Lets in new light through chinks that time has made."

Chinks I am afraid there are, but instead of new light, I find nothing but "darkness visible," that serves only to discover sights of woe. I look back through my chinks-I find errors, follies, faults; forward, old age and death, pleasures fleeting from me, no virtues succeeding to their place il faut avouer, I want all my quicksilver to make such a background receive any other objects!

I am glad Mr. Frederick Montagu thinks so well of me as to be sure I shall be glad to see him without an invitation. For you, I