The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford Volume I Part 38

I heard the other day, that the Primate of Lorrain was dead of the smallpox. Will you make my compliments of condolence?

though I dare say they are little afflicted: he -was a 'most worthless creature, and all his wit and parts, I believe little comforted them for his brutality and other vices.

The fine Mr. Pit (629) is arrived: I dine with him to-day at Lord Lincoln's, with the Pomfrets. So now the old partie quarr'ee is complete again. The earl is not quite cured,(630) and a partner in sentiments may help to open the wound again. My Lady Townshend dines with us too. She flung the broadest Wortley-eye (631) on Mr. Pitt, the other night, in the park!

Adieu! my dear child; are you quite well? I trust the summer will perfectly re-establish you.

(625) Mr. Sandys, chancellor of the exchequer.

(626) Ceretesi.

(627) Count Richcourt.

(628) General Wachtendonck, commander of the Queen of Hungary's troops at Leghorn.

(629) George Pitt, of Strathfieldsea: he had been in love with Lady Charlotte Fermor, second daughter of Lord Pomfret, who was afterwards married to William Finch, vice-chamberlain. (Mr. Pitt was created Lord Rivers in 1776.

In 1761 he was British envoy at Turin in 1770, amba.s.sador extraordinary to Spain. He died in 1803.-D.)

(630) Of his love for lady Sophia Fermor.-D.

(631) Mr. Pitt was very handsome, and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu had liked him extremely, when he was in Italy.

267 Letter 74 To Sir Horace Mann.

Downing Street, June 30, 1742.

It is about six o'clock, and I am come from the House, where, at last, we have had another Report from the Secret Committee. They have been disputing this week among themselves, whether this should be final or not. The new ministry, thanked them! were for finis.h.i.+ng; but their arguments were not so persuasive as dutiful, and we are to have yet another. This lasted two hours and a half in reading, though confined to the affair of Burrel and Bristow, the Weymouth election, and secret-service money. They moved to print it; but though they had fetched most of their members from Ale and the country, they were not strong enough to divide. Velters Cornwall, whom I have mentioned to you, I believe, for odd humour, said, "ie believed the somethingness of this report would make amends for the nothingness of the last, and that he was for printing it, if it was only from believing that the King would not see it, unless it is printed." Perhaps it may be printed at the conclusion; at least it will without authority-and so you will see it.

I received yours of June 24, N. S. with one from Mr. Chute, this morning, and I will now go answer it and Your last. You seem still to be uneasy about my letters, and their being r.e.t.a.r.ded. I have not observed, lately, the same signs of yours being opened; and for my own, I think it may very often depend upon the packet-boat and winds.

You ask me if Pultney has lately received any new disgusts.-How can one answer for a temper so hasty, so unsettled!-not that I know, unless that he finds, what he has been twenty years undoing, is not yet undone.

I must interrupt the thread of my answer, to tell you that I hear news came last night that the States of Holland have voted [email protected] thousand men for the a.s.sistance of the Queen,(632) and that it was not doubted but the States--General would imitate this resolution. This seems to be the consequence of the King of Prussia's proceedings-but how can they trust him so easily?

I am amazed that your leghorn ministry are so wavering; they are very old style, above eleven days out of fas.h.i.+on, if they any longer fear the French: my only apprehension is, lest these successes should make Richcourt more impertinent.

You have no notion how I laughed at the man that "takes nothing but Madeira."(633) I told it to my Lady Pomfret, concluding it would divert her too; and forgetting that she repines when she should laugh, and reasons when she should be diverted. She asked gravely what language that was That Madeira being subject to an European prince, to be sure they talk some European dialect!" The grave personage! It was a piece with her saying, "that Swift would have written better, if he had never written ludicrously."

I met a friend of yours the other day at an auction, and though I knew him not the least, yet being your friend, and so like you (for, do you know, he is excessively,) I had a great need to speak to him-and did. He says, "he has left off writing to you, for he never could get an answer." I said, you had never received 'but one from him in all the time I was with you, and that I was witness to your having Answered it. He was with his mother, Lady Abercorn,(634) a most frightful gentlewoman: Mr. Winnington says, he one day overheard her and the d.u.c.h.ess of Devons.h.i.+re (635) talking of "hideous ugly women!" By the way, I find I have never told you that it was Lord Paisley;(636) but that you will have perceived.

Amorevoli is gone to Dresden for the summer; our directors are in great fear that he will serve them like Farinelli, and not return for the winter.

I am writing to you in one of the charming rooms towards the park: it is a delightful evening, and I am willing to enjoy this sweet corner while I may, for we are soon to quit it. Mrs.

Sandys came yesterday to give us warning; Lord Wilmington has lent it to them. Sir Robert might have had it for his own at first, but would only take it as first lord of the treasury.(637) He goes into a small house of his own in Arlington Street, opposite to where we formerly lived.

Whither I shall travel is yet uncertain: he is for my living with him; but then I shall be cooped-and besides, I never found that people loved one another the less for living asunder.

The drowsy Lord Mayor (638) is dead-so the newspapers say. I think he is not dead, but sleepeth. Lord Gower is laid up with the gout: this, they say, is the reason of his not having the privy seal yet. The town has talked of nothing lately but a plot: I will tell you the circ.u.mstances.

last week the Scotch hero (639) sent his brother (640) two papers, which he said had been left at his house by an Unknown hand; that he believed it was by Colonel Cecil, agent for the Pretender--though how could that be, for he had had no conversation with Colonel Cecil for these two years! He desired Lord Islay to lay them before the ministry. One of the papers seemed a letter, though with no address or subscription, written in true genuine Stuart characters. It was to thank Mr. Burnus (D. of A.) for his services, and that he hoped he would answer the a.s.surances given of him. The other was to command the Jacobites, and to exhort the patriots to continue what they had mutually so well begun, and to say how pleased he was with their having removed mr. Tench. Lord Islay showed these letters to Lord Orford, and then to the King, and told him he had showed them to my father. "You did well."-Lord Islay, "Lord Orford says one is of the Pretender's hand."-King, "He (641) knows it: whenever any thing of this sort comes to your hand, carry it to Walpole." This private conversation you must not repeat. A few days afterwards, the Duke wrote to his brother, "That upon recollection he thought it right to say, that he had received those letters from Lord Barrimore"(642) who is as well known for General to the Chevalier, as Montemar is to the Queen of Spain-or as the Duke of A. would be to either of them.

Lord Islay asked Sir R. if he was against publis.h.i.+ng this story, which he thought was a justification both of his brother and Sir R. The latter replied, he could certainly have no objection to its being public-but pray, will his grace's sending these letters to the secretaries of state Justify him from the a.s.surances that had been given of' him?(643) However, the Pretender's being of opinion that the dismission of Mr. Tench was for his service, will scarce be an argument to the new ministry for making more noise about these papers.

I am sorry the boy is so uneasy at being on the foot of a servant. I will send for his mother, and ask her why she did not tell him the conditions to which we had agreed; at the same time, I will tell her that she may send any letters for him to me.

Adieu! my dear child: I am going to write to Mr. Chute, that is, to-morrow. I never was more diverted than with his letter.

(632) The Queen of Hungary, Maria Theresa.-D.

(633) The only daughter and heiress of the Marquis Accianoli at Florence, was married to one of the same name, who was born at Madeira.

(634) Anne Plummer, Countess of Abercorn, wife of James, the seventh earl. She died in 1756.-E.

(635) Catherine, daughter of John Hoskins, Esq. She was married to the third Duke of Devons.h.i.+re in 171@, and died in 1777.-E.

(636) James Hamilton succeeded as eighth Earl of Abercorn, on the death of his father in 1743. He was created Viscount Hamilton in England in 1786, and died unmarried in 1789.-D.

(637) This is the house, in Downing Street, which is still the residence of the first lord of the treasury. George the First gave it to Baron Bothmar, the Hanoverian minister-, for life. On his death, George the Second offered to give it to Sir Robert Walpole; who, however, refused it, and begged of the King that it might be attached to the office of first lord of the treasury.-D.

(638) Sir Robert G.o.dschall.

(639) The Duke of Argyll.

(640) Earl of Islay.

(641) Besides intercepted letters, Sir R. Walpole had more than once received letters from the Pretender, making him the greatest offers, which Sir R. always carried to the King, and got him to endorse, when he returned them to Sir R.

(642) James Barry, fourth Earl of Barrymore, succeeded his half-brother Lawrence in the family t.i.tles in 1699, and died in 1747, at the age of eighty. James, Lord Barrymore, was an adherent of the Pretender, whereas Lawrence had been so great a supporter of the revolution, that he was attainted, and his estates sequestered by James the Second's Irish parliament, in 1689.-D.

(643) The Duke of Argyll, in the latter part of his life, was often melancholy and disordered in his understanding.

After this transaction, and it is supposed he had gone still farther, he could with difficulty be brought even to write his name. The marriage of his eldest daughter with the Earl of Dalkeith was deferred for some time, because the duke could not be prevailed upon to sign the writings.

269 Letter 75 To Sir Horace Mann.

On the Death of Richard West, Esq.(644)

While surfeited with life, each h.o.a.ry knave Grows, here, immortal, and eludes the grave, Thy virtues immaturely met their fate, Cramp'd in the limit of too short a date!

Thy mind, not exercised so oft in vain, In health was gentle, and composed in pain: successive trials still refined thy soul, And plastic Patience perfected the whole.

A friendly aspect, not suborn'd by art; An eye, which look'd the meaning of thy heart; A tongue, With simple truth and freedom fraught, The faithful index of thy honest thought.

Thy pen disdain'd to seek the servile ways Of partial censure, and more partial praise; Through every tongue it flowed in nervous ease, With sense to Polish , and With wit to please.

No lurking venom from thy pencil fell; Thine was the kindest satire, living well: The vain, the loose, the base, might blush to see In what thou wert, what they themselves should be,

Let me not charge on Providence a crime, Who s.n.a.t.c.h'd thee, blooming, to a better clime, To raise those virtues to a higher sphere: Virtues! which only could have starved thee here;