656. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Arlington Street, March 26, 1760. I HAVE a good mind to have Mr. Sisson tried by a Court-Martial, in order to clear my own character for punctuality. It is time immemorial since he promised me the machine and the drawing in six weeks. After above half of time immemorial was elapsed, he came and begged for ten guineas. Your brother and I called one another to a council of war, and at last gave it him nemine contradicente. The moment your hurrying letter arrived, I issued out a warrant and took Sisson up, who, after all his promises, was guilty by his own confession, of not having begun the drawing. However, after scolding him black and blue, I have got it from him, have consigned it to your brother James, and you will receive it, I trust, along with this. I hope too time enough for the purposes it is to serve, and correct; if it is not, I shall be very sorry. You shall have the machine as soon as possible, but that must go by sea. I shall execute your commission about Stoschino' much better; he need not fear my receiving him well, if he has virtù to sell,-I am only afraid, in that case, of receiving him too well. You know what a dupe I am when I like anything. I shall handle your brother James as roughly as I did Sissonsix months without writing to you! Sure he must turn black in the face, if he has a drop of brotherly ink in his veins. As to your other brother,' he is so strange a man, that is, so common a one, that I am not surprised at anything he does or does not do. Bless your stars that you are not here, to be worn out with the details of Lord George's Court-Martial! One hears of nothing else. It has already lasted much longer than could be conceived, and now the end of it is still at a tolerable distance. The colour of it is more favourable for him than it looked at first. Prince Ferdinand's narrative has proved to set out with a heap of lies. There is an old gentleman' of the same family who has spared no indecency to give weight to them-but, you know, general officers are men of strict honour, and nothing can bias them. Lord Charles Hay's CourtMartial is dissolved, by the death of one of the members-and as no 1 Nephew of Baron Stosch, a well-known virtuoso and antiquary, who died at Florence.-WALPOLE. Edward Louisa Mann, the eldest brother.-WALPOLE. 3 George the Second.-WALPOLE, German interest is concerned to ruin him, it probably will not be re-assumed. Lord Ferrers's trial is fixed for the 16th of next month. Adieu ! P.S. Don't mention it from me, but if you have a mind you may make your court to my Lady Orford, by announcing the ancient barony of Clinton, which is fallen to her, by the death of the last incumbentess.' 657. TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ. Arlington Street, March 27, 1760. I SHOULD have thought that you might have learnt by this time, that when a tradesman promises anything on Monday, or Saturday, or any particular day of the week, he means any Monday or any Saturday of any week, as nurses quiet children and their own consciences by the refined salvo of to-morrow is a new day. When Mr. Smith's Saturday and the frame do arrive, I will pay the one and send you the other. Lord George's trial is not near being finished. By its draggling beyond the term of the old Mutiny-bill, they were forced to make out a new warrant: this lost two days, as all the depositions were forced to be read over again to, and re-sworn by, the witnesses; then there will be a contest, whether Sloper' shall re-establish his own credit by pawning it farther. Lord Ferrers comes on the stage on the sixteenth of next month. I breakfasted the day before yesterday at Ælia Lælia Chudleigh's. There was a concert for Prince Edward's birthday, and at three, a vast cold collation, and all the town. The house is not fine, nor in good taste, but loaded with finery. Execrable varnished pictures, chests, cabinets, commodes, tables, stands, boxes, riding on one another's backs, and loaded with terrenes, filligree, figures, and everything upon earth. Every favour she has bestowed is registered by a bit of Dresden china. There is a glass-case full of enamels, eggs, ambers, lapis lazuli, cameos, toothpick-cases, and all kinds of trinkets, things that she told me were her playthings; another cupboard, full of the finest japan, and candlesticks and vases of rock crystal, ready to be thrown down, in every corner. But of all 1 Mrs. Fortescue, sister of Hugh, last Lord Clinton.-WALPOLE. curiosities, are the conveniences in every bedchamber: great mahogany projections, with brass handles, cocks, &c. I could not help saying, it was the loosest family I ever saw. Adieu! SIR: 658. TO SIR DAVID DALRYMPLE. Strawberry Hill, April 4, 1760. As I have very little at present to trouble you with myself, I should have deferred writing till a better opportunity, if it were not to satisfy the curiosity of a friend; a friend whom you, Sir, will be glad to have made curious, as you originally pointed him out as a likely person to be charmed with the old Irish poetry you sent me. It is Mr. Gray, who is an enthusiast about those poems, and begs me to put the following queries to you; which I will do in his own words, and I may say truly, Poeta loquitur. "I am so charmed with the two specimens of Erse poetry, that I cannot help giving you the trouble to inquire a little farther about them, and should wish to see a few lines of the original, that I may form some slight idea of the language, the measures, and the rhythm. "Is there anything known of the author or authors, and of what antiquity are they supposed to be? "Is there any more to be had of equal beauty, or at all approaching to it ? "I have been often told, that the poem called Hardykanute' (which I always admired and still admire) was the work of somebody that lived a few years ago. This I do not at all believe, though it has evidently been retouched in places by some modern hand; but, however, I am authorised by this report to ask, whether the two poems in question are certainly antique and genuine. I make this inquiry in quality of an antiquary, and am not otherwise concerned about it; for if I were sure that any one now living in Scotland had written them, to divert himself and laugh at the credulity of the world, I would undertake a journey into the Highlands only for the pleasure of seeing him." You see, Sir, how easily you may make our greatest southern 1 It was written by Mrs. Halket of Wardlaw. Mr. Lockhart states, that on the blank leaf of his copy of Allan Ramsay's " Evergreen," Sir Walter Scott has written, "Hardyknute was the first poem that I ever learnt, the last that I shall forget."WRIGHT. bard travel northward to visit a brother. The young translator has nothing to do but to own a forgery, and Mr. Gray is ready to pack up his lyre, saddle Pegasus, and set out directly. But seriously, he, Mr. Mason, my Lord Lyttelton, and one or two more, whose taste the world allows, are in love with your Erse elegies: I cannot say in general they are so much admired-but Mr. Gray alone is worth satisfying. The "Siege of Aquileia," of which you ask, pleased less than Mr. Home's other plays.' In my own opinion, "Douglas" far exceeds both the other. Mr. Home seems to have a beautiful talent for painting genuine nature and the manners of his country. There was so little of nature in the manners of both Greeks and Romans, that I do not wonder at his success being less brilliant when he tried those subjects; and, to say the truth, one is a little weary of them. At present, nothing is talked of, nothing admired, but what I cannot help calling a very insipid and tedious performance: it is a kind of novel, called "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy;" the great humour of which consists in the whole narration always going backwards. I can conceive a man saying that it would be droll to write a book in that manner, but have no notion of his persevering in executing it. It makes one smile two or three times at the beginning, but in recompense makes one yawn for two hours. The characters are tolerably kept up, but the humour is for ever attempted and missed. The best thing in it is a Sermon, oddly coupled with a good deal of bawdy, and both the composition of a clergyman. The man's head, indeed, was a little turned before, now topsy-turvy with his success and fame. Dodsley has given him six hundred and fifty pounds for the second edition and two more volumes (which I suppose will reach backwards to his great-greatgrandfather); Lord Fauconberg,' a donative' of one hundred and sixty pounds a-year; and Bishop Warburton gave him a purse of gold and this compliment (which happened to be a contradiction), "that it was quite an original composition, and in the true Cervantic vein :" the only copy that ever was an original, except in painting, where they all pretend to be so. Warburton, however, not content with this, recommended the book to the bench of 1 The 'Siege of Aquileia,' a tragedy, by John Home, produced at Drury Lane, 21st February, 1760.-CUNNINGHAM. 2 Thomas Belasyse, Earl of Fauconberg, died 1774.-CUNNINGHAM. 3 The living of Coxwold, in Yorkshire. See unpublished letters of Laurence Sterne, in vol. ii. of the 'Miscellanies of the Philobiblon Society,' 1855-6.—CUNNINGHAM. bishops, and told them Mr. Sterne, the author, was the English Rabelais. They had never heard of such a writer. Adieu ! 659. TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ. Arlington Street, April 19, 1760. WELL, this big week is over! Lord George's sentence, after all the communications of how terrible it was, is ended in proclaiming him unfit for the King's service. Very moderate, in comparison of what was intended and desired, and truly not very severe, considering what was proved. The other trial, Lord Ferrers's, lasted three days. You have seen the pomp and awfulness of such doings, so I will not describe it to you. The judge and criminal were far inferior to those you have seen. For the Lord High Steward,' he neither had any dignity, nor affected any; nay, he held it all so cheap, that he said at his own table, t'other day, "I will not send for Garrick and learn to act a part." At first I thought Lord Ferrers shocked, but in general he behaved rationally and coolly; though it was a strange contradiction to see a man trying, by his own sense, to prove himself out of his senses. It was more shocking to see his two brothers brought to prove the lunacy in their own blood, in order to save their brother's life. Both are almost as ill-looking men as the Earl; one of them is a clergyman, suspended by the Bishop of London for being a Methodist; the other a wild vagabond, whom they call in the country, ragged and dangerous. After Lord Ferrers was condemned, he made an excuse for pleading madness, to which he was forced by his family. He is respited till Monday fortnight, and will then be hanged, I believe in the Tower; and to the mortification of the peerage, is to be anatomised, conformably to the late act for murder. Many peers were absent; Lord Foley and Lord Jersey attended only the first day; and Lord Huntingdon, and my nephew Orford (in compliment to his mother), as related to the prisoner, withdrew without voting. But never was a criminal more literally tried by his peers, for the three persons, who interested 1 "I pride myself in having warmly recommended 'Tristram Shandy' to all the best company in town, except that at Arthur's. I was charged in a very grave assembly, as Dr. Newton can tell him, for a particular patronising of the work, and how I acquitted myself of the imputation the said Doctor can tell him." Warburton to Gar rick, 7th March, 1760.-CUNNINGHAM. Robert Henley, afterwards Earl of Northington.-WRIGHT. |