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said the Earl, "I am much obliged to you. I feared the disagreeableness of the duty might make you depute your under-sheriff. As you are so good as to execute it yourself, I am persuaded the dreadful apparatus will be conducted with more expedition." The chaplain of the Tower, who sat backwards, then thought it his turn to speak, and began to talk on religion; but Lord Ferrers received it impatiently. However, the chaplain persevered, and said, he wished to bring his Lordship to some confession or acknowledgment of contrition for a crime so repugnant to the laws of God and man, and wished him to endeavour to do whatever could be done in so short a time. The Earl replied, "He had done everything he proposed to do with regard to God and man; and as to discourses on religion, you and I, Sir," said he to the clergyman, "shall probably not agree on that subject. The passage is very short; you will not have time to convince me, nor I to refute you; it cannot be ended before we arrive." The clergyman still insisted, and urged, that, at least, the world would expect some satisfaction. Lord Ferrers replied, with some impatience, "Sir, what have I to do with the world? I am going to pay a forfeit life, which my country has thought proper to take from me-what do I care now what the world thinks of me? But, Sir, since you do desire some confession, I will confess one thing to you: I do believe there is a God. As to modes of worship, we had better not talk on them. I always thought Lord Bolingbroke in the wrong to publish his notions on religion: I will not fall into the same error." The chaplain, seeing sensibly that it was in vain to make any more attempts, contented himself with representing to him, that it would be expected from one of his calling, and that even decency required, that some prayer should be used on the scaffold, and asked his leave, at least to repeat the Lord's Prayer there. Lord Ferrers replied, "I always thought it a good prayer; you may use it if you please."

While these discourses were passing, the procession was stopped by the crowd. The Earl said he was dry, and wished for some wine and water. The sheriff said, he was sorry to be obliged to refuse him. By late regulations they were enjoined not to let prisoners drink from the place of imprisonment to that of execution, as great indecencies had been formerly committed by the lower species of criminals getting drunk; "And though," said he, "my Lord, I might think myself excusable in overlooking this order out of regard to a person of your Lordship's rank, yet there is another reason which, I am sure, will weigh with you :-your Lordship is sensible of

the greatness of the crowd: we must draw up to some tavern; the confluence would be so great, that it would delay the expedition which your Lordship seems so much to desire." He replied, he was satisfied, adding,-"Then I must be content with this," and took some pigtail tobacco out of his pocket. As they went on, a letter was thrown into his coach; it was from his mistress, to tell him, it was impossible, from the crowd, for her to get up to the spot where he had appointed her to meet and take leave of him, but that she was in a hackney-coach of such a number. He begged Vaillant to order his officers to try to get the hackney-coach up to his. "My Lord," said Vaillant, "you have behaved so well hitherto, that I think it is pity to venture unmanning yourself." He was struck, and was satisfied without seeing her. As they drew nigh, he said, "I perceive we are almost arrived; it is time to do what little more I have to do;" and then taking out his watch, gave it to Vaillant, desiring him to accept it as a mark of his gratitude for his kind behaviour, adding, "It is scarce worth your acceptance; but I have nothing else; it is a stop-watch, and a pretty accurate one." He gave five guineas to the chaplain, and took out as much for the executioner. Then giving Vaillant a pocket-book, he begged him to deliver it to Mrs. Clifford his mistress, with what it contained, and with his most tender regards, saying, "The key of it is to the watch, but I am persuaded you are too much a gentleman to open it." it." He destined the remainder of the money in his purse to the same person, and with the same tender regards.

When they came to Tyburn, his coach was detained some minutes by the conflux of people; but as soon as the door was opened, he stepped out readily and mounted the scaffold it was hung with black, by the undertaker, and at the expense of his family. Under the gallows was a new invented stage, to be struck from under him. He showed no kind of fear or discomposure, only just looking at the gallows with a slight motion of dissatisfaction. He said little, kneeled for a moment to the prayer, said, "Lord have mercy upon me, and forgive me my errors," and immediately mounted the upper stage. He had come pinioned with a black sash, and was unwilling to have his hands tied, or his face covered, but was persuaded to both. When the rope was put round his neck, he turned pale, but recovered his countenance instantly, and was but seven minutes from leaving the coach, to the signal given for striking the stage. As the machine was new, they were not ready at it: his toes touched it, and he suffered a little, having had time, by their bungling, to raise

his cap; but the executioner pulled it down again, and they pulled his legs, so that he was soon out of pain, and quite dead in four minutes. He desired not to be stripped and exposed, and Vaillant promised him, though his clothes must be taken off, that his shirt should not. This decency ended with him: the sheriffs fell to eating and drinking on the scaffold, and helped up one of their friends to drink with them, as he was still hanging, which he did for above an hour, and then was conveyed back with the said pomp to Surgeons' Hall, to be dissected. The executioners fought for the rope, and the one who lost it cried. The mob tore off the black cloth as relics; but the universal crowd behaved with great decency and admiration, as they well might; for sure no exit was ever made with more sensible resolution and with less ostentation.

If I have tired you by this long narrative, you feel differently from me. The man, the manners of the country, the justice of so great and curious a nation, all to me seem striking, and must, I believe, do more so to you, who have been absent long enough to read of your own country as History.

I have run into so much paper, that I am ashamed at going on, but, having a bit left, I must say a few more words. The other prisoner, from whom the mob had promised themselves more entertainment, is gone into the country, having been forbid the court, with some barbarous additions to the sentence, as you will see in the papers. It was notified, too, to the second court,' who have had the prudence to countenance him no longer. The third prisoner, and second madman, Lord Charles Hay, is luckily dead, and has saved much trouble.

Have you seen the works of the philosopher of Sans Souci, or rather of the man who is no philosopher, and who has more Souci than any man now in Europe? How contemptible they are! Miserable poetry; not a new thought, nor an old one newly expressed. I say nothing of the folly of publishing his aversion to the English, at the very time they are ruining themselves for him; nor of the greater folly of his irreligion. The epistle to Keith is puerile and shocking. He is not so sensible as Lord Ferrers, who did not think such sentiments ought to be published. His Majesty

1 The Prince of Wales's.-WALPOLE.

"The town are reading the King of Prussia's poetry, and I have done like the town; they do not seem so sick of it as I am. It is all the scum of Voltaire and Bolingbroke, the crambe recocta of our worst freethinkers tossed up in German-French rhyme." Gray's Works, by Mitford, vol. iii. p. 241.—WRIGHT.

could not resist the vanity of showing how disengaged he can be even at this time.

I am going to give a letter for you to Strange, the engraver, who is going to visit Italy. He is a very first-rate artist, and by far our best. Pray countenance him, though you will not approve his politics.' I believe Albano is his Loretto.

I shall finish this vast volume with a very good story, though not so authentic as my sheriff's. It is said that General Clive's father has been with Mr. Pitt, to notify, that if the government will send his son four hundred thousand pounds, and a certain number of ships, the heaven-born general knows of a part of India, where such treasures are buried, that he will engage to send over enough to pay the National Debt. "Oh!" said the minister, "that is too much; fifty millions would be sufficient." Clive insisted on the hundred millions,-Pitt, that half would do as well. "Lord, Sir!" said the old man, "consider, if your administration lasts, the National Debt will soon be two hundred millions." Good night for a twelvemonth!

SIR:

664. TO SIR DAVID DALRYMPLE.

Arlington Street, May 15, 1760.

I AM extremely sensible of your obliging kindness in sending me for Mr. Gray the account of Erse poetry, even at a time when you were so much out of order. That indisposition I hope is entirely removed, and your health perfectly re-established. Mr. Gray is very thankful for the information.

I have lately bought, intending it for Dr. Robertson, a Spanish MS. called "Annales del Emperador Carlos V. Autor, Francisco Lopez de Gonara." As I am utterly ignorant of the Spanish tongue, I do not know whether there is the least merit in my purchase. It is not very long; if you will tell me how to convey it, I will send it to him.

We have nothing new but some Dialogues of the Dead by Lord Lyttelton. I cannot say they are very lively or striking. The best, I think, relates to your country, and is written with a very good design; an intention of removing all prejudices and disunion between the two parts of our island. I cannot tell you how the book is liked. in general, for it appears but this moment.

1 Strange was a confirmed Jacobite.-WALPOLE.
The residence of the Pretender.-WALPole.

You have scen, to be sure, the King of Prussia's Poems. If he intended to raise the glory of his military capacity by depressing his literary talents, he could not, I think, have succeeded better. One would think a man had been accustomed to nothing but the magnificence of vast armies, and to the tumult of drums and trumpets, who is incapable of seeing that God is as great in the most minute parts of creation as in the most enormous. His Majesty does not seem to admire a mite, unless it is magnified by a Brobdignag microscope! While he is struggling with the force of three empires, he fancies that it adds to his glory to be unbent enough to contend for laurels with the triflers of a French Parnassus! Adieu! Sir.

you

665. TO SIR HORACE MANN.

Strawberry Hill, May 24, 1760.

WELL! at last Sisson's machine sets out-but, my dear Sir, how still talk of him! You seem to think him as grave and learned as a professor of Bologna-why, he is an errant, low, indigent mechanic, and however Dr. Perelli found him out, is a shuffling knave, and I fear no fitter to execute his orders than to write the letter you expect. Then there was my ignorance and your brother James's ignorance to be thrown into the account. For the drawing, Sisson says Dr. Perelli has the description of it already; however, I have insisted on his making a reference to that description in a scrawl we have with much ado extorted from him. I pray to Sir Isaac Newton that the machine may answer; it costs, the stars know what! The whole charge comes to upwards of threescore pounds! He had received twenty pounds, and yet was so necessitous, that on our hesitating, he wrote me a most impertinent letter for his money. I dreaded at first undertaking a commission for which I was so unqualified, and though I have done all I could, I fear you and your friend will be but ill-satisfied.

Along with the machine I have sent you some new books; Lord George's trial, Lord Ferrers's, and the account of him; a fashionable thing called Tristram Shandy, and my Lord Lyttelton's new Dialogues of the Dead, or rather Dead Dialogues; and something less valuable still than any of these, but which I flatter myself you will not despise; it is my own print,' done from a picture that is

1 The fine mezzotint by McArdell after the portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds. See ante, p. 223.-CUNNINGHAM.

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