DEAR SIR, TO THE REV. MR. COLE. I AM impatient for your manuscript, but have not yet received it. You may depend on my keeping it to myself, and returning it safely. I do not know that history of my father, which you mention, by the name of Musgrave. If it is the critical history of his administration, I have it; if not, I shall be obliged to you for it. Your kindness to your tenants is like yourself, and most humane. I am glad your prize rewards you, and wish your fortune had been as good as mine, who with a single ticket in this last lottery got five hundred pounds. I have nothing new, that is, nothing old to tell you. You care not about the present world, and are the only real philosopher I know. I this winter met with a very large lot of English heads, chiefly of the reign of James I, which very nearly perfects my collection. There were several which I had in vain hunted for these ten years. I have bought too, some very scarce, but more modern ones out of Sir Charles Cotterell's collection. Except a few of Faithorne's, there are scarce any now that I much wish for. With my Anecdotes I packed up for you the head of Archbishop Hutton, and a new little print of Strawberry. If the volumes, as I understand by your letter, stay in town to be bound, I hope your bookseller will take care not to lose those trifles. TO SIR DAVID DALRYMPLE.1 Arlington Street, Jan. 31, 1764. I AM very sorry, Sir, that your obliging corrections of my Anecdotes of Painting have come so late, that the first volume is actually reprinted. The second shall be the better for 1 Now first collected. them. I am now publishing the third volume, and another of Engravers. I wish you would be so kind as to tell me how I may convey them speedily to you: you waited too long the last time for things that have little merit but novelty. These volumes are of still less worth than the preceding; our latter painters not compensating by excellence for the charms that antiquity has bestowed on their antecessors. I wish I had known in time what heads of Nanteuil you want. There has been a very valuable sale of Sir Clement Cotterell's prints, the impressions most beautiful, and of which Nanteuil made the capital part. I do not know who particularly collects his works now, but I have ordered my bookseller Bathoe,1 who is much versed in those things, to enquire; and if I hear of any purchaser, Sir, I will let you know. I have not bought the Anecdotes of Polite Literature, suspecting them for a bookseller's compilation, and confirmed in it by never hearing them mentioned. Our booksellers here at London disgrace literature, by the trash they bespeak to be written, and at the same time prevent everything else from being sold. They are little more or less than upholsters, who sell sets or bodies of arts and sciences for furniture; and the purchasers, for I am sure they are not readers, buy only in that view. I never thought there was much merit in reading: but yet it is too good a thing to be put upon no better footing than damask and mahogany. Whenever I can be of the least use to your studies or collections, you know, Sir, that you may command me freely. This very intelligent bookseller, who lived near Exeter 'Change, in the Strand, died in 1768.-E. 2 This was a very amusing and judicious selection, in five small volumes, very neatly printed.-E. 3 "I once said to Dr. Johnson, I am sorry, Sir, you did not get more for your Dictionary.' His answer was, I am sorry too; but it was very well: the booksellers are generous liberal-minded men.' He, upon all occasions, did ample justice to their character in this respect. He considered them as the patrons of literature; and, indeed, although they have eventually been considerable gainers by his Dictionary, it is to them that we owe its having been undertaken and carried through at the risk of great expense; for they were not absolutely sure of being indemnified." Boswell's Johnson, vol. ii. p. 58.-E. TO THE EARL OF HERTFORD. Arlington Street, Feb. 6, 1764. You have, I hope, long before this, my dear lord, received the immense letter that I sent you by old Monin. It explained much, and announced most part of which has already happened; for you will observe that when I tell you anything very positively, it is on good intelligence. I have another much bigger secret for you, but that will be delivered to you by word of mouth. I am not a little impatient for the long letter you promised me. In the mean time thank you for the account you give me of the King's extreme civility to you. It is like yourself, to dwell on that, and to say little of M. de Chaulnes's dirty behaviour; but Monsieur and Madame de Guerchy have told your brother and me all the particulars. I was but too good a prophet when I warned you to expect new extravagances from the Duc de Chaulnes's son. Some weeks ago he lost five hundred pounds to one Virette, an equivocal being, that you remember here. Paolucci, the Modenese minister, who is not in the odour of honesty, was of the party. The Duc de Pecquigny said to the latter, "Monsieur, ne jouez plus avec lui, si vous n'êtes pas de moitié." So far was very well. On Saturday, at the Maccaroni Club1 (which is composed of all the travelled young men who wear long curls and spying-glasses,) they played again: the Duc lost, but not much. In the passage at the Opera, the Duc saw Mr. Stuart talking to Virette, and told the former that Virette was a coquin, a fripon, &c. &c. Virette retired, say The "maccaroni" of 1764 was nearly synonymous with the term "dandy" at present in vogue, and even become classical by the use of it by Lord Byron; who, in his story of Beppo, written in 1817, speaks of -"the dynasty of Dandies, now Perchance succeeded by some other class Of imitated imitators:-how Irreparably soon decline, alas! The demagogues of fashion: all belo v By love, or war, and now and then by frost!"-E. ing only, "Voilà un fou." The Duc then desired Lord Tavistock to come and see him fight Virette, but the Marquis desired to be excused. After the Opera, Virette went to the Duc's lodgings, but found him gone to make his complaint to Monsieur de Guerchy, whither he followed him; and farther this deponent knoweth not. I pity the Count (De Guerchy), who is one of the best-natured amiable men in the world, for having this absurd boy upon his hands! 3 4 Well! now for a little politics. The Cider-bill1 has not answered to the minority, though they ran the ministry hard ;2 but last Friday was extraordinary. George Grenville was pushed upon some Navy-bills. I don't understand a syllable, you know, of money and accounts; but whatever was the matter, he was driven from entrenchment to entrenchment by Baker and Charles Townshend. After that affair was over, and many gone away, Sir W. Meredith moved for the depositions on which the warrant against Wilkes had been granted. The ministers complained of the motion being made so late in the day; called it a surprise; and Rigby moved to adjourn, which was carried but by 73 to 60. Had a surprise been intended, you may imagine the minority would have been better provided with numbers; but it certainly had not been concerted: however, a majority, shrunk to thirteen, frightened them out of the small senses they possess. Heaven, earth, A bill, passed in the last session, for an additional duty on cider and perry, which was violently opposed by the cider counties, and taken up as a general opposition question. This measure was considered as a great error on the part of Lord Bute, and the unpopularity consequent upon it is said to have contributed to his resignation.-C. 2 On a motion for a committee on the Cider-bill on the 24th of January. Mr. James Grenville, in a letter to his sister, Lady Chatham, speaking of this debate, says, "I should make you as old a woman as either Sandys or Rushout, if I were to state all the jargon that arose in this debate. It was plain the Court meant to preclude any repeal of the bill; the cider people coldly wished to obtain it. Sir Richard Bamfylde, at the head of them, spoke, not his own sentiments, as he declared, but those which the instructions and petitions of his constituents forced him to maintain. We divided 127 with us; against us, 167." Chatham Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 282.-E. 3 It was a proposal for converting certain outstanding navy-bills into annuities at four per cent.-C. Sir William Baker, member for Plympton; an alderman of London. He married the eldest daughter of the second Jacob Tonson, the bookseller.-E. and the treasury, were moved to recover their ground to-day, when the question was renewed. For about two hours the debate hobbled on very lamely, when on a sudden your brother rose, and made such a speech-but I wish anybody was to give you the account except me, whom you will think partial: but you will hear enough of it, to confirm anything I can say. Imagine fire, rapidity, argument, knowledge, wit, ridicule, grace, spirit; all pouring like a torrent, but without clashing. Imagine the House in a tumult of continued applause: imagine the ministers thunder-struck; lawyers abashed 'There is no other account of this remarkable speech to be found; and indeed we have little notice of General Conway's parliamentary efforts, except Mr. Burke's general and brilliant description of his conduct as leader of the House of Commons in the Rockingham administration. As General Conway's reputation in the House of Commons has been in some degree forgotten, it may be as well to cite the passage from Mr. Burke's speech, in 1774, on American taxation, in support of what Mr. Walpole says of the General's powers in debate:-" I will likewise do justice, I ought to do it, to the honourable gentleman who led us in this House. Far from the duplicity wickedly charged on him, he acted his part with alacrity and resolution. We all felt inspired by the example he gave us, down even to myself, the weakest in that phalanx. I declare for one, I knew well enough (it could not be concealed from anybody) the true state of things; but, in my life, I never came with so much spirits into this House. It was a time for a man to act in. We had powerful enemies; but we had faithful and determined friends, and a glorious cause. We had a great battle to fight, but we had the means of fighting; not as now, when our arms are tied behind us. We did fight that day, and conquer. I remember, Sir, with a melancholy pleasure, the situation of the honourable gentleman (General Conway) who made the motion for the repeal; in that crisis, when the whole trading interest of this empire, crammed into your lobbies with a trembling and anxious expectation, waited, almost to a winter's return of light, their fate from your resolution. When, at length, you had determined in their favour, and your doors thrown open, showed them the figure of their deliverer in the well-earned triumph of his important victory, from the whole of that grave multitude there arose an involuntary burst of gratitude and transport. They jumped upon him like children on a long-absent father. They clung about him as captives about the redeemer. All England, all America, joined in his applause. Nor did he seem insensible to the best of all earthly regards the love and admiration of his fellow-citizens. Hope elevated, and joy brightened his crest. I stood near him; and his face, to use the expression of the Scripture of the first Martyr, his face was as if it had been the face of an angel.' I do not know how others feel; but if I had stood in that situation, I never would have exchanged it for all that kings, in their profusion, could bestow. I did hope, that that day's danger and honour would have been a bond to hold us all together for ever. But alas! that, with other pleasing visions, is long since vanished.” —C. |