Not ev❜n thy virtues, tyrant, shall avail ! Is not it the plainest thing in the world that I cannot go to you yet, but that you must come to me? Elzevir, I tell you no news, for I know none, think of none. Aldus, and Stephens are the freshest personages in my memory. Unless I was appointed printer of the Gazette, I think nothing could at present make me read an article in it. Seriously, you must come to us, and shall be witness that the first holidays we have I will return with you. Adieu ! 513. TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ. Strawberry Hill, July 16, 1757. You do me justice in believing that I enjoy your satisfaction; I do heartily, and particularly on this point: you know how often I have wished this reconciliation: indeed you have taken the handsomest manner of doing it, and it has been accepted handsomely. I always had a good opinion of your cousin [Halifax] and I am not apt to throw about my esteem lightly. He has ever behaved with sense and dignity, and this country has more obligations to him than to most men living. The weather has been so hot, and we are so unused to it, that nobody knew how to behave themselves: even Mr. Bentley has done shivering. Elzevirianum opens to-day; you shall taste its first fruits. I find people have a notion that it is very mysterious; they don't know how I should abhor to profane Strawberry Hill with politics. Adieu. 514. TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ. Strawberry Hill, Thursday, 17. I ONLY write you a line to tell you, that as you mention Miss Montagu's being well and alone, if she could like to accompany the Colonel' and you to Strawberry Hill and the Vine, the seneschals of those castles will be very proud to see her. I am sorry to be forced to say anything civil in a letter to you; you deserve nothing but ill-usage for disappointing us so often, but we stay till we 1 Mr. Montagu's brother.-CUNNINGHAM. have got you into our power, and then-why then, I am afraid we shall still be what I have been so long. 515. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Strawberry Hill, July 25, 1757. THE Empress-Queen has not yet hurt my particular. I have received two letters from you within this week, dated July 2nd and 9th. Yet she has given up Ostend and Nieuport, and, I think, Furnes and Yprés, to the French. We are in a piteous way! The French have passed the Weser, and a courier yesterday brought word that the Duke was marching towards them, and within five miles by this time his fate is decided. The world here is very inquisitive about a secret expedition' which we are fitting out: a letter is not a proper place to talk about it; I can only tell you, that be it whither it will, I do not augur well about it, and what makes me dislike it infinitely more, Mr. Conway is of it. I am more easy about your situation than I was, though I do not like the rejoicings ordered at Leghorn for the victory over the Prussians. I have so little to say to-day that I should not have writ, but for one particular reason. The Mediterranean trade being arrived, I concluded the vases for Mr. Fox were on board it, but we cannot discover them. Unluckily it happens that the bill of lading is lost, and I have forgot in what ship they were embarked. In short, my dear Sir, I think that, as I always used to do, I gave the bill to your dearest brother, by which means it is lost. I imagine you have a duplicate; send it as soon as you can. I thank you for what you have given to Mr. Phelps. I don't call this billet part of the acknowledgment. All the world is dispersed the ministers are at their several villas; one day in a week serves to take care of a nation, let it be in as bad a plight as it will! We have a sort of Jewish superstition, and would not come to town on a Saturday or Sunday though it were to defend the Holy of Holies. Adieu! The expedition to Rochfort.-Walpole. 516. TO JOHN CHUTE, ESQ. Strawberry Hill, July 26, 1757. I LOVE to communicate my satisfactions to you. You will imagine that I have got an original portrait of John Guttemburg, the first inventor of printing, or that I have met with a little boke called Eneydos, which I am going to translate and print. No, no; far beyond any such thing! Old Lady Sandwich' is dead at Paris, and my Lord has given me her picture of Ninon l'Enclos; given it me in the prettiest manner in the world. I beg, if he should ever meddle in any election in Hampshire, that you will serve him to the last drop of your shrievalty. If you reckon by the thermometer of my natural impatience, the picture would be here already, but I fear I must wait some time for it. The press goes on as fast as if I printed myself. I hope in a very few days to send you a specimen, though I could wish you was at the birth of the first produce. Gray has been gone these five days. Mr. Bentley has been ill, and is not recovered of the sweatingsickness, which I now firmly believe was only a hot summer like this, and England, being so unused to it, took it for a malady. Mr. Müntz is not gone; but pray don't think that I keep him: he has absolutely done nothing this whole summer but paste two chimney-boards. In short, instead of Claude Lorrain, he is only one of Bromwich's men. You never saw anything so droll as Mrs. Clive's countenance, between the heat of the summer, the pride in her legacy, and the efforts to appear concerned. We have given ourselves for a day or two the air of an earthquake, but it proved an explosion of the powder-mills at Epsom. I asked Louis [his servant] if it had done any mischief: he said, "Only blown a man's head off;" as if that was a part one could spare! P. S. I hope Dr. Warburton will not think I encroach either 1 Daughter of the famous Wilmot Earl of Rochester.-WALPOLE. her father seventy-seven years.-CUNNINGHAM. She survived A legacy of fifty pounds, left her by John Robarts [died 1757], the last Earl of Radnor of that family.-WALPOLE. upon his commentatorship or private pretensions,' if I assume these lines of Pope, thus altered, for myself: "Some have at first for wits, then poets pass'd; Turn'd printers next, and proved plain fools at last." 517. TO SIR HORACE MANN. 2 Strawberry Hill, Aug. 4, 1757. MR. PHELPS (who is Mr. Phelps ?) has brought me the packet safe, for which I thank you. I would fain have persuaded him to stay and dine, that I might ask him more questions about you. He told me how low your ministerial spirits are: I fear the news that came last night will not exalt them. The French attacked the Duke for three days together, and at last defeated him. I find it is called at Kensington an encounter of fourteen squadrons; but any defeat must be fatal to Hanover. I know few particulars, and those only by a messenger dispatched to me by Mr. Conway on the first tidings: the Duke exposed himself extremely, but is unhurt, as they say all his small family are. In what a situation is our Prussian hero, surrounded by Austrians, French, and Muscovites- even impertinent Sweden is stealing in to pull a feather out of his tail! What devout plunderers will every little Catholic prince of the empire become! The only good I hope to extract out of this mischief is, that it will stifle our secret expedition, and preserve Mr. Conway from going on it. I have so ill an opinion of our secret expeditions, that I hope they will for ever remain so. What a melancholy picture is there of an old monarch at Kensington, who has lived to see such inglorious and fatal days! Admiral Boscawen is disgraced. I know not the cause exactly, as ten miles out of town are a thousand out of politics. He is said to have refused to serve under Sir Edward Hawke in this armament. Shall I tell you what, more than distance, has thrown me out of attention to news? A little packet which I shall give your brother for you, will explain it. In short, I am turned printer, and have converted a little cottage here into a printing-office. My abbey is a perfect college ́or academy. I keep a painter [Müntz] in the house, and a printer [Robinson]-not to mention Mr. Bentley, who is an academy him 1 See vol. i. p. lxxii.-CUNNINGHAM. self. I send you two copies (one for Dr. Cocchi) of a very honourable opening of my press-two amazing Odes of Mr. Gray; they are Greek, they are Pindaric, they are sublime! consequently I fear a little obscure; the second particularly, by the confinement of the measure and the nature of prophetic vision, is mysterious. I could not persuade him to add more notes; he says whatever wants to be explained, don't deserve to be. I shall venture to place some in Dr. Cocchi's copy, who need not be supposed to understand Greek and English together, though he is so much master of both separately. To divert you in the mean time, I send you the following copy of a letter written by my printer' to a friend in Ireland. I should tell you that he has the most sensible look in the world; Garrick said he would give any money for four actors with such eyes-they are more Richard the Third's than Garrick's own; but whatever his eyes are, his head is Irish. Looking for something I wanted in a drawer, I perceived a parcel of strange romantic words in a large hand beginning a letter; he saw me see it, yet left it, which convinces me it was left on purpose: it is the grossest flattery to me, couched in most ridiculous scraps of poetry, which he has retained from things he has printed; but it will best describe itself: "SIR, "I DATE this from shady bowers, nodding groves, and amaranthine shadesclose by old Father Thames's silver side-fair Twickenham's luxurious shadesRichmond's near neighbour, where great George the King resides. You will wonder at my prolixity-in my last I informed you that I was going into the country to transact business for a private gentleman. This gentleman is the Hon. Horatio Walpole, son to the late great Sir Robert Walpole, who is very studious, and an admirer of all the liberal arts and sciences; amongst the rest he admires printing. He has fitted out a complete printing-house at this his country seat, and has done me the favour to make me sole manager and operator (there being no one but myself). All men of genius resorts his house, courts his company, and admires his understanding -what with his own and their writings, I believe I shall be pretty well employed. I have pleased him, and I hope to continue so to do. Nothing can be more warm than the weather has been here this time past; they have in London, by the help of glasses, roasted in the Artillery-ground fowls and quarters of lamb. The coolest days that I have felt since May last, are equal to, nay, far exceed the warmest I ever felt in Ireland. The place I am in now is all my comfort from the heat-the situation of it is close to the Thames, and is Richmond Gardens (if you were ever in them) in miniature, surrounded by bowers, groves, cascades, and ponds, and on a rising ground, not very common in this part of the country-the building elegant, and the furniture of 1 William Robinson, first printer to the press at Strawberry Hill.-Walpole. |