so near either

find we have been beaten back; but at this present moment we are all dreaming of victory. A frigate has been taken going to France with an account that our troops landed on the island on the 16th of January, without opposition. A seventy-gun ship was dismissed at the same time, which is thought a symptom of their not intending to resist. It certainly is not Mr. Pitt's fault if we have not great success; and if we have, it is certainly owing to him. The French talk of invading us; I hope they will not come quite to victory or defeat, as to land on our Martinico! But you are going to have a war of your own. Pray send me all your Gazettes extraordinary. I wish the King of Sardinia's heroism may not be grown a little rusty. Time was when he was the only King in Europe that had fought in his waistcoat; but now the King of Prussia has almost made it part of their coronation oath. Apropos, pray remember that the Emperor's pavilion is not the Emperor's pavillon; though you are so far in the right, that he may have a pavilion, but I don't conceive how he comes by a pavillon. What Tuscan colours has he, unless a streamer upon the belfry at Leghorn ? You was so deep in politics when you wrote your last letter, that it was almost in cipher, and as I don't happen to have a key to bad writing, I could not read a word that interests my vanity extremely -I unravelled enough to learn that a new governor' of Milan is a great admirer of me, but I could not guess at one syllable of his name, and it is very uncomfortable in a dialogue between one's pride and oneself, to be forced to talk of Governor What-d'ye-call-em, who has so good a taste. I think you never can have a more important occasion for dispatching a courier than to tell me Governor

's name. In the mean time, don't give him any more Strawberry editions; of some I print very few, they are all begged immediately, and then you will not have a complete set, as I wish you to have, notwithstanding all my partiality for the governor of Milan. Perhaps, upon the peace I may send him a set richly bound! I am a little more serious in what I am going to say; you will oblige me if at your leisure you will pick up for me all or any little historical tracts that relate to the house of Medici. I have some distant thoughts of writing their history, and at the peace may probably execute what you know I have long retained in my wish, another journey to Florence. Stosch, I think, had great collections relating to them; would they sell a separate part of his library? Could I

1 Count Firmian, who understood English, and was fond of English authors. Sir Horace Mann had given him the Royal and Noble Authors.-WALPOLE

get at any state-letters and papers there? Do think of this; I assure you I do. Thank you for the trouble you have taken about the Neapolitan books, and for the medals that are coming.

Colonel Campbell and the Duchess of Hamilton are married. My sister [Lady Mary Churchill], who was at the Opera last Tuesday, and went from thence to a great ball at the Duke of Bridgewater's, where she stayed till three in the morning, was brought to bed in less than four hours afterwards of a fifth boy: she has had two girls too, and I believe left it entirely to this child to choose what it would be. Adieu! my dear Sir.

602. TO JOHN CHUTE, ESQ.

Arlington Street, March 13, 1759.

I AM puzzled to know how to deal with you: I hate to be officious, it has a horrid look; and to let you alone till you die at the Vine of mildew, goes against my conscience. Don't it go against yours to keep all your family there till they are mouldy? Instead of sending you a physician, I will send you a dozen brasiers; I am persuaded that you want to be dried and aired more than physicked. For God's sake don't stay there any longer :

"Mater Cyrene, mater quæ gurgitis hujus

Ima tenes-”

send him away!-Nymphs and Jew doctors! I don't know what I shall pray to next against your obstinacy.

No more news yet from Guadaloupe! A persecution seems to be raising against General Hobson-I don't wonder! Wherever Commodore Moore is, one may expect treachery and blood. Good night!

SIR:

603. TO THE REV. HENRY ZOUCH.

Arlington Street, March 15, 1759.

You judge very rightly, Sir, that I do not intend to meddle with accounts of religious houses; I should not think of them at all, unless I could learn the names of any of the architects, not of the founders. It is the history of our architecture that I should search after, especially the beautiful Gothic. I have by no means digested the plan of my intended work. The materials I have ready in great

quantities in Vertue's MSS.; but he has collected little with regard to our architects, except Inigo Jones. As our painters have been very indifferent, I must, to make the work interesting, make it historical; I would mix it with anecdotes of patrons of the arts, and with dresses and customs from old pictures, something in the manner of Montfauçon's Antiquities of France. I think it capable of being made a very amusing work, but I don't know whether I shall ever bestow the necessary time on it. At present, even my press is at a stop; my printer, who was a foolish Irishman, and who took himself for a genius, and who grew angry when I thought him extremely the former, and not the least of the latter, has left me, and I have not yet fixed upon another.

In

In what edition, Sir, of Beaumont and Fletcher, is the copy of verses you mention, signed "Grandison ?" They are not in mine.1 my Catalogue I mention the Countess of Montgomery's Eusebia; I shall be glad to know what her Urania is. I fear you will find little satisfaction in a library of noble works. I have got several, some duplicates, that shall be at your service if you continue your collection; but in general they are mere curiosities.

Mr. Hume has published his History of the House of Tudor. I have not advanced far in it, but it appears an inaccurate and careless, as it certainly has been a very hasty performance. Adieu! Sir.

604. TO SIR DAVID DALRYMPLE.

Strawberry Hill, March 25, 1759.

I SHOULD not trouble you, Sir, so soon again with a letter, but some questions and some passages in yours seem to make it necessary. I know nothing of the Life of Gustavus, nor heard of it, before it was advertised. Mr. Harte was a favoured disciple of Mr. Pope, whose obscurity he imitated more than his lustre. Of the History of the Revival of Learning' I have not heard a word. Mr. Gray a few years ago began a poem on that subject; but dropped it, thinking it would cross too much upon some parts of the Dunciad. It would make a signal part of a History of Learning which I lately proposed

1 Walpole had the second folio of 1679, in which the verses signed Grandison, of the folio of 1647, were not inserted. Lord Grandison is not included in Walpole's own edition of the Royal and Noble Authors.'-CUNNINGHAM.

2 The History of the Revival of Learning was the contemplated prose work of Collins the poet; Joseph Warton had a similar design.-CUNNINGHAM.

to Mr. Robertson. Since I wrote to him, another subject has started to me, which would make as agreeable a work, both to the writer and to the reader, as any I could think of; and would be a very tractable one, because capable of being extended or contracted, as the author should please. It is the History of the House of Medici. There is an almost unknown republic, factions, banishment, murders, commerce, conquests, heroes, cardinals, all of a new stamp, and very different from what appear in any other country. There is a scene of little polite Italian courts, where gallantry and literature were uncommonly blended, particularly in that of Urbino, which without any violence might make an episode. The Popes on the greater plan enter of course. What a morsel Leo the Tenth! the revival of letters! the torrent of Greeks that imported them! Extend still farther, there are Catherine and Mary, Queens of France. In short, I know nothing one could wish in a subject that would not fall into this—and then it is a complete subject, the family is extinct: even the state is so, as a separate dominion.

I could not help smiling, Sir, at being taxed with insincerity for my encomiums on Scotland. They were given in a manner a little too serious to admit of irony, and (as partialities cannot be supposed entirely ceased) with too much risk of disapprobation in this part of the world, not to flow from my heart. My friends have long known my opinion on this point, and it is too much formed on fact for me to retract it, if I were so disposed. With regard to the Magazines and Reviews, I can say with equal and great truth, that I have been much more hurt at a gross defence of me than by all that railing.

Mallet still defers his Life of the Duke of Marlborough; I don't know why sometimes he says he will stay till the peace; sometimes that he is translating it, or having it translated, into French, that he may not lose that advantage.

605. TO SIR HORACE MANN.

Arlington Street, April 11, 1759.

I HAVE waited and waited, in hopes of sending you the rest of Martinico or Guadaloupe; nothing else, as you guessed, has happened, or I should have told you. But at present I can stay no longer, for I, who am a little more expeditious than a squadron, have made a great conquest myself, and in less than a month since the first

thought started. I hurry to tell you, lest you should go and consult the map of Middlesex, to see whether I have any dispute about boundaries with the neighbouring Prince of Isleworth, or am likely to have fitted out a secret expedition upon Hounslow Heath-in short, I have married, that is, am marrying, my niece Maria, my brother's second daughter, to Lord Waldegrave.' What say you? A month ago I was told he liked her does he? I jumbled them together, and he has already proposed. For character and credit, he is the first match in England-for beauty, I think she is. She has not a fault in her face and person, and the detail is charming. A warm complexion tending to brown, fine eyes, brown hair, fine teeth, and infinite wit and vivacity. Two things are odd in this match; he seems to have been doomed to a Maria Walpole-if his father had lived, he had married my sister [Lady Maria Churchill]; and this is the second of my brother's daughters that has married into the house of Stuart. Mr. Keppel' comes from Charles,-Lord Waldegrave from James II. My brother has luckily been tractable and left the whole management to me. My family don't lose any rank or advantage, when they let me dispose of them-a Knight of the Garter for my Niece; 150,000l. for my Lord Orford if he would have taken her; these are not trifling establishments.

3

It were miserable after this to tell you that Prince Ferdinand has cut to pieces two or three squadrons of Austrians. I frame to myself that if I was a commander-in-chief, I should on a sudden appear in the middle of Vienna, and oblige the Empress to give an Archduchess with half a dozen provinces to some infant prince or other, and make a peace before the bread waggons were come up. Difficulties are nothing; all depends on the sphere in which one is placed.

You must excuse my altitudes; I feel myself very impertinent just now, but as I know it, I trust I shall not be more so than is becoming.

The Dutch cloud is a little dispersed; the privy council have squeezed out some rays of sunshine by restoring one of their ships, and by adjudging that we captors should prove the affirmative of contraband goods, instead of the goods proving themselves so just

1 James, second Earl of Waldegrave, knight of the garter, and governor of George Prince of Wales, afterwards George III.-WALPOLE.

2 Frederick Keppel, fourth son of William Anne, Earl of Albemarle, by Lady Anne Lenox, daughter of the first Duke of Richmond.-WALPOLE.

3 Miss Nichols, afterwards Marchioness of Carnarvon.-WALPOLE. See vol. i. p. lxxii; vol. ii. p. 246 and p. 254, and Walpole's George III. vol. i. p. 214.—CUNNINGHAM.