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REMINISCENCES. 
 
 WRITTEN IN 1768, 
 
 FOR THE AMUSEMENT OF 
 
 MISS MARY AND MISS AGNES B***Y. 
 
 BY 
 
 HORACE WALPOLE, 
 
 LATE EARL OF ORFORD. 
 
 IL NE FAUT POINT D’ESPRIT TOUR S'OCCUPER DES VIEUX 
 EVENEMENS. 
 
 Voltaire. 
 
REMINISCENCES 
 
 BY 
 
 HORACE WALPOLE, 
 
 LATE EARL OF ORFORD. 
 
 CHISWICK: 
 
 PRINTED BY C. WHITT INGHAM. 
 
 SOLD BY THOMAS TEGG, 73, CHEAPS1DE; 
 
 BOWDERY AND KERBY, OXFORD STREET, LONDON; 
 AND RICHARD GRIFFIN AND CO. GLASGOW. 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2016 with funding from 
 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Alternates 
 
 https://archive.org/details/reminiscencesOOwalp 
 
■_./jpy ts?- ’ S' 5 * MaKohau. 
 
 T> 
 
 
 This agreeable Historical Tale has hitherto been 
 secluded from the eye of the general reader, in the 
 retirement of five quarto volumes. The present 
 editor has frequently contemplated an impression 
 detached from the other works of the Noble Au- 
 thor; and as the public attention has recently been 
 directed to his name by an additional volume of his 
 Letters, it was thought that it could not pass the 
 press at a better opportunity than the present. 
 
 London, April, 1818. 
 
 His (Horace Walpole’s) Reminiscences of the reigns of 
 George I. and IT. make us better acquainted with the man- 
 ners of these princes and their courts than we should be 
 after perusing an hundred heavy historians ; and futurity 
 will long be indebted to the chance which threw into his 
 N vicinity, when age rendered him communicative, the ac- 
 complished ladies to whom these anecdotes were communi- 
 cated.— His certainty of success with posterity indeed will 
 rest upon his Letters and his Reminiscences. 
 
 Quarterly Review , Sept • 1818 . 
 
HORACE WALPOLE’S 
 
 REMINISCENCES. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 You were both so entertained with the old stories 
 I told you one evening lately, of what I recollected 
 to have seen and heard from my childhood of the 
 courts of king George the first, and of his son the 
 prince of Wales, afterwards George the second ; 
 and of the latter's princess, since queen Caroline ; 
 and you expressed such wishes that I would com- 
 mit those passages (for they are scarce worthy of 
 the title even of anecdotes) to writing ; that, having 
 no greater pleasure than to please you both, nor any 
 more important or laudable occupation, I will begin 
 to satisfy the repetition of your curiosity. — But ob- 
 serve, I promise no more than to begin ; for I not 
 only cannot answer that I shall have patience to 
 continue, but my memory is still so fresh, or rather 
 so retentive of trifles which first made impression 
 on it, that it is very possible my life, (turned of 
 seventy-one) may be exhausted before my stock of 
 remembrances ; especially as I am sensible of the 
 
REMINISCENCES. 
 
 6 
 
 garrulity of old age, and of its eagerness of relating 
 whatever it recollects, whether of moment or not. 
 Thus, while I fancy I am complying with you, I may 
 only be indulging myself, and consequently may 
 wander into many digressions for which you will 
 not care a straw, and which may intercept the com- 
 pletion of my design. Patience, therefore, young 
 ladies ; and if you coin an old gentleman into nar- 
 ratives, you must expect a good deal of alloy. I 
 engage for no method, no regularity, no polish. 
 My narrative will probably resemble siege-pieces, 
 which are struck of any promiscuous metals ; and, 
 though they bear the impress of some sovereign’s 
 name, only serve to quiet the garrison for the mo- 
 ment, and afterwards are merely hoarded by col- 
 lectors and virtuosos, who think their series not 
 complete, unless they have even the coins of base 
 metal of every reign. 
 
 As I date from my nonage, I must have laid up 
 no state-secrets. Most of the facts I am going to 
 tell you, though new to you and to most of the pre- 
 sent age, were known perhaps at the time to my 
 nurse and my tutors. Thus my stories will have 
 nothing to do with history. 
 
 Luckily there have appeared within these three 
 months two publications, that will serve as prece- 
 dents for whatever I am going to say : I mean, Les 
 fragmens of the correspondence of the duchess of 
 Orleans, and those of the Mtmoires of the due de 
 St. Simon. Nothing more decousu than both. They 
 tell you what they please — or rather what their 
 editors have pleased to let them tell. 
 
 In one respect I shall be less satisfactory. They 
 
REMINISCENCES. 
 
 ? 
 
 knew and were well acquainted, or thought they 
 were, with the characters of their personages. I 
 did not at ten years old penetrate characters ; and 
 as George I. died at the period where my Remi- 
 niscence begins, and was rather a good sort of man 
 than a shining king ; and as the duchess of Kendal 
 was no genius, I heard very little of either when he 
 and her power were no more. In fact, the reign of 
 George I. was little more than the proem to the 
 history of England under the house of Brunswic. 
 That family was established here by surmounting a 
 rebellion ; to which settlement perhaps the phrensy 
 of the South Sea scheme contributed, by diverting 
 the national attention from the game of faction to 
 the delirium of stock-jobbing ; and even faction was 
 split into fractions by the quarrel between the king 
 and the heir apparent — another interlude which 
 authorises me to call the reign of George I. a proem 
 to the history of the reigning house of Brunswic, 
 so successively agitated by parallel feuds. 
 
 Commengons. 
 
 As my first hero was going off the stage before I 
 ought to have come upon it, it will be necessary 
 to tell you, why the said two personages happened 
 to meet just two nights before they were to part 
 forever; a rencounter that barely enables me to 
 give you a general idea of the former’s person and 
 of his mistress’s — or, as has been supposed, his 
 wife’s. 
 
 As I was the youngest by eleven years of sir 
 Robert Walpole’s children by his first wife, and 
 was extremely weak and delicate, as you see me 
 
8 
 
 REMINISCENCES. 
 
 still, though with no constitutional complaint till I 
 had the gout after forty ; and as my two sisters * 
 were consumptive and died of consumptions ; the 
 supposed necessary care of me (and I have over- 
 heard persons saying, “ That child cannot possibly 
 live”) so engrossed the attention of my mother, 
 that compassion and tenderness soon became ex- 
 treme fondness : and as the infinite good nature of 
 iny fathei 1 never thwarted any of his children, he 
 suffered me to be too much indulged, and permitted 
 her to gratify the first vehement inclination that 
 ever I expressed, and which, as I have never since 
 felt any enthusiasm for royal persons, I must sup- 
 pose that the female attendants in the family must 
 have put into my head, to long to see the king. This 
 childish caprice was so strong, that my mother so- 
 licited the duchess of Kendal to obtain for me the 
 honour of kissing his majesty’s hand before he set 
 out for Hanover. — A favour so unusual to be asked 
 for a boy of ten years old, was still too slight to be 
 refused to the wife of the first minister for her 
 darling child : yet not being proper to be made a 
 precedent, it was settled to be in private and at 
 night. 
 
 Accordingly, the night but one before the king 
 began his last journey, my mother carried me at 
 ten at night to the apartment of the countess of 
 Walsingham f, on the ground-floor towards the 
 garden at St. James's, which opened into that of 
 her aunt the duchess of Kendal : apartments occu- 
 
 * Katherine Walpole, and Mary viscountess Malpas. 
 
 t Melusina Schulemberg, niece of the duchess of Kendal, 
 created countess of Walsingham, and afterwards married to 
 the famous Philip Stanhope, earl of Chesterfield. 
 
REMINISCENCES. 
 
 9 
 
 pied by George II. after his queen’s death, and by 
 his successive mistresses, the countesses of Suffolk 
 and Yarmouth. 
 
 Notice being given that the king was come down 
 to supper, lady Walsingham took me alone into the 
 duchess’s ante-room, where we found alone the king 
 and her. I knelt down, and kissed his hand. He 
 said a few words to me, and my conductress led me 
 back to my mother. 
 
 The person of the king is as perfect in my me- 
 mory as if I saw him but yesterday. It was that of 
 an elderly man, rather pale, and exactly like his 
 pictures and coins ; not tall, of an aspect rather 
 good than august, with a dark tie wig, a plain coat, 
 waistcoat, and breeches of snuff-coloured cloth, with 
 stockings of the same colour, and a blue riband over 
 all. So entirely was he my object, that I do not be- 
 lieve I once looked at the duchess ; but as I could 
 not avoid seeing heron entering the room, I remem- 
 ber that just beyond his majesty stood a very tall, 
 lean, ill-favoured old lady ; but I did not retain the 
 least idea of her features, nor know what the colour 
 of her dress was. 
 
 My childish loyalty, and the condescension in 
 gratifying it, were, I suppose, causes that contri- 
 buted very soon afterwards to make me shed a flood 
 of tears for that sovereign’s death, when with the 
 other scholars at Eton college I walked in proces- 
 sion to the proclamation of the successor; and 
 which (though I think they partly fell because I 
 imagined it became the son of a prime-minister to 
 be more concerned than other boys), were no doubt 
 imputed by many of the spectators who were poli- 
 
 b 2 
 
REMINISCENCES. 
 
 10 
 
 ticians, to my fears of my father's most probable 
 fall, but of which I had not the smallest conception ; 
 nor should have met with any more concern than I 
 did when it really arrived in the year 1742, by which 
 time I had lost all taste for courts and princes aud 
 power, as was natural to one who never felt an am- 
 bitious thought for himself. 
 
 It must not be inferred from her obtaining this 
 grace for me, that the duchess of Kendal was a friend 
 to my father. On the contrary, at that moment 
 she had been labouring to displace him, and intro- 
 duce lord Bolinbroke* into the administration; on 
 which I shall say more hereafter. 
 
 It was an instance of sir Robert’s singular for- 
 tune, or evidence of his talents, that he not only 
 preserved his power under two successive monarchs, 
 but in spite of the efforts of both their mistresses f 
 to remove him. It was perhaps still rr.ore remark- 
 able, and an instance unparalleled, that sir Robert 
 governed George the first in Latin, the king not 
 speaking English and his minister no German, 
 nor even French. It was much talked of, that sir 
 
 * The well-known Henry St. John, viscount Bolinbroke, 
 secretary of state to queen Anne, on whose death he fled 
 and was attainted. 
 
 | The duchess of Kendal and lady Suffolk. 
 
 4: Prince William (afterwards duke of Cumberland), then 
 a child, being carried to his grandfather on his birth-day, 
 the king asked him at what hour he rose. The prince re- 
 plied, “ when the chimney-sweepers went about.” ** Yat is 
 de chimney-sweeper ?” said the king. Have you been so 
 long in England,” said the boy, ** and do not know what 
 a chimney-sweeper is ? Why, they are like that man there” 
 — pointing to lord Finch, afterwards earl of Winchelsea 
 
REMINISCENCES. 
 
 11 
 
 Robert, detecting one of the Hanoverian ministers 
 in some trick or falsehood before the king’s face, 
 had the firmness to say to the German, “ Mentiris, 
 impudentissime !** — The good-humoured monarch 
 only laughed, as he often did when sir Robert com- 
 plained to him of his Hanoverians selling places, 
 nor would be persuaded that it was not the prac- 
 tice of the English court ; and which an incident 
 must have planted in his mind with no favourable 
 impression of English disinterestedness. “ This is 
 a strange country !” said his majesty: “'the first 
 morning after my arrival at St. James’s, I looked 
 out of the window, and saw a park with walks, a 
 canal, &c. which they told me were mine. The 
 next day lord Chetwynd, the ranger of my park, 
 sent me a fine brace of carp out of my canal ; and 
 I was told 1 must give five guineas to lord Chet- 
 wynd’s servant for bringing me my own carp out of 
 my own canal in my own park !” 
 
 I have said that the duchess of Kendal was no 
 friend of sir Robert, and wished to make lord Bo- 
 linbroke minister in his room. I was too young to 
 know any thing of that reign, nor was acquainted 
 with the political cabals of the court, which how- 
 ever I might have learnt from my father in the three 
 years after his retirement ; but being too thought- 
 less at that time, nor having your laudable curio- 
 sity, I neglected to inform myself of many passages 
 
 and Nottingham, of a family uncommonly swarthy and 
 dark, 
 
 “ the black funereal Finches — ” 
 
 Sir Ch. Williams’s Ode to a Number of Great Men, 17-12. 
 
REMINISCENCES. 
 
 12 
 
 and circumstances, of which I have often since re- 
 gretted my faulty ignorance. 
 
 By what I can at present recollect, the duchess 
 seems to have been jealous of sir Robert’s credit 
 with the king, which he had acquired, not by pay- 
 ing court, but by his superior abilities in the house 
 of commons, and by his knowledge in finance, of 
 which lord Sunderland and Craggs had betrayed 
 their ignorance in countenancing the South Sea 
 scheme; and who, though more agreeable to the 
 king, had been forced to give way to Walpole, as 
 the only man capable of repairing that mischief. 
 The duchess too might be alarmed at his attach- 
 ment to the princess of Wales, from whom, in case 
 of the king's death, her grace could expect no fa- 
 vour. Of her jealousy I do know the following in- 
 stance : Queen Anne had bestowed the rangership 
 of Richmond New Park on her relations the Hydes 
 for three lives, one of which was expired. King 
 George, fond of shooting, bought out the term of 
 the last earl of Clarendon and of his son lord Corn- 
 bury, and frequently shot there, having appointed 
 my eldest brother lord Walpole ranger nominally, 
 but my father in reality, who wished to hunt there 
 once or twice a week. The park had run to great 
 decay under the Hydes, nor was there any man- 
 sion* better than the common lodges of the keepers. 
 
 * The earl of Rochester, who succeeded to the title of 
 Clarendon on the extinction of the elder branch, had a villa 
 close without the park ; but it had been burnt down, and 
 only one wing was left. W. Stanhope, earl of Harrington, 
 purchased the ruins, and built the house, since bought by 
 lord Cam el ford. 
 
REMINISCENCES. 
 
 13 
 
 The king ordered a stone lodge, designed by Henry 
 earl of Pembroke, to be erected for himself, but 
 merely as a banquetting-house*, with a large eat- 
 ing-room, kitchen, and necessary offices, where he 
 might dine after his sport. Sir Robert began an- 
 other of brick for himself and the under- ranger, 
 which by degrees he much enlarged, usually retiring 
 thither from business, or rather, as he said him- 
 self, to do more business than he could in town, on 
 Saturdays and Sundays. On that edifice, on the 
 thatched house, and other improvements, he laid 
 out fourteen thousand pounds of his own money. 
 In the mean time, he hired a small house for him- 
 self on the hill without the park ; and in that small 
 tenement the king did him the honour of dining 
 with him more than once after shooting. His ma- 
 jesty, fond of privatef joviality, was pleased with 
 punch after dinner, and indulged in it freely. The 
 duchess, alarmed at the advantage the minister 
 might make of the openness of the king's heart in 
 those convivial unguarded hours, and at a crisis 
 when she was conscious sir Robert was apprised of 
 her inimical machinations in favour of Bolinbroke, 
 enjoined the few Germans who accompanied the 
 king at those dinners, to prevent his majesty from 
 
 * It was afterwards enlarged by princess Amelia, to whom 
 her father George II. had granted the reversion of the ranger- 
 ship after lord Walpole. Her royal highness sold it to George 
 III. for a pension on Ireland of 1200Z. a-year, and his ma- 
 jesty appointed lord Bute ranger for life. 
 
 t The king hated the parade of royalty. When he went 
 to the opera, it was in no state, nor did he sit in the stage 
 box, nor forwards, but behind the duchess of Kendal and 
 lady Walsingham, in the second box, now allotted to the 
 maids of honour. 
 
REMINISCENCES. 
 
 14 
 
 drinking too freely. Her spies obeyed too punctu- 
 ally, and without any address. The king was of- 
 fended, and silenced the tools by the coarsest epi- 
 thets in the German language. He even before his 
 departure ordered sir Robert to have the stone- 
 lodge finished against his return — no symptom of 
 a falling minister, as has since been supposed sir 
 Robert then was, and that lord Bolinbroke was to 
 have replaced him, had the king lived to come 
 back. But my presumption to the contrary is more 
 strongly corroborated by what had recently passed. 
 The duchess had actually prevailed on the king to 
 see Bolinbroke secretly in his closet. That in- 
 triguing Proteus, aware that he might not obtain 
 an audience long enough to efface former preju- 
 dices, and make sufficient impression on the king 
 against sir Robert, and in his own favour, went 
 provided with a long memorial, which he left in 
 the closet, and begged his majesty to peruse coolly 
 at his leisure. The king kept the paper — but no 
 longer than till he saw sir Robert, to whom he 
 delivered the poisoned remonstrance. — If that com- 
 munication prognosticated the minister's fall, I am 
 at a loss to know what a mark of confidence is. 
 
 Nor was that discovery the first intimation that 
 Walpole had received of the measure of Bolin- 
 broke’s gratitude. The minister, against the ear- 
 nest representations of his family and most inti- 
 mate friends, had consented to the recall of that 
 incendiary from banishment *, excepting only his 
 
 * Bolinbroke at his return could not avoid waiting on 
 sir Robert to thank him, and was invited to dine with him 
 at Chelsea ; but whether tortured at witnessing Walpole’s 
 serene frankness and felicity, or suffocated with indignation 
 
REMINISCENCES. 15 
 
 re- admission into the house of lords, that every 
 field of annoyance might not be open to his mis- 
 chievous turbulence. Bolinbroke, it seems, deemed 
 an embargo laid on his tongue would warrant his 
 hand to launch every envenomed shaft against his 
 benefactor, who by restricting had paid him the 
 compliment of avowing that his eloquence was not 
 totally inoffensive. Craftsmen, pamphlets, libels, 
 combinations, were showered on or employed for 
 years against the prime-minister, without shaking 
 his power or ruffling his temper : and Bolinbroke 
 had the mortification of finding his rival had abili- 
 ties to maintain his influence against the* mis- 
 tresses of two kings, with whom his antagonist had 
 plotted in vain to overturn him. 
 
 and confusion at being forced to be obliged to one whom he 
 hated and envied, the first morsel he put into his mouth 
 was near choking him, and he was reduced to rise from 
 table and leave the room for some minutes. I never heard 
 of their meeting more. 
 
 * George II. parted with lady Suffolk, on princess Ame- 
 lia informing queen Caroline from Bath that the mistress 
 had interviews there with lord Bolinbroke. Lady Suffolk, 
 above twenty years after, protested to me that she had not 
 once seen his lordship there ; and I should believe she did 
 not, for she was a woman of truth : but her great intimacy 
 and connexion with Pope and Swift, the intimate friends of 
 Bolinbroke, even before the death of George I. and her being 
 the channel through whom that faction had flattered them- 
 selves they should gain the ear of the new king, can leave 
 no doubt of lady Suffolk’s support of that party. Her dear- 
 est friend to her death was William afterwards lord Chet- 
 wynd, the known and most trusted confident of lord Bolin- 
 broke. Of those political intrigues I shall say more in 
 these Reminiscences. 
 
16 
 
 REMINISCENCES. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 George the first, while electoral prince, had mar- 
 ried his cousin the princess Dorothea*, only child 
 of the duke of Zell; a match of convenience to re- 
 unite the dominions of the family. Though she 
 was very handsome, the prince, who was extremely 
 amorous, had several mistresses ; which provoca- 
 tion, and his absence in the army of the confede- 
 rates, probably disposed the princess to indulge 
 some degree of coquetry. At that moment arrived 
 at Hanover the famous and beautiful count Konis- 
 mark f, the charms of whose person ought not ta 
 have obliterated the memory of his vile assassina- 
 tion of Mr. Thynne. His vanity, the beauty of the 
 electoral princess, and the neglect under which he 
 found her, encouraged his presumption to make 
 his addresses to her, not covertly ; and she, though 
 believed not to have transgressed her duty, did re- 
 ceive them too indiscreetly. The old elector flamed 
 at the insolence of so stigmatized a pretender, and 
 ordered him to quit his dominions the next day. 
 The princess, surrounded by women too closely 
 connected with her husband, and consequently ene- 
 
 * Her names were Sophia Dorothea ; but I call her by 
 the latter, to distinguish her from the princess Sophia, her 
 mother-in-law, on whom the crown of Great Britain was 
 settled. 
 
 f Konismark behaved with great intrepidity, and was 
 wounded at a bull-feast in Spain. See Letters from Spain 
 of the comtesse Danois, vol. ii. He was brother of the 
 beautiful comtesse de Konismark, mistress of Augustus 
 the second, king of Poland. 
 
REMINISCENCES. 
 
 17 
 
 mies of the lady they injured, was persuaded by 
 them to suffer the count to kiss her hand before his 
 abrupt departure ; and he was actually introduced 
 by them into her bed-chamber the next morning 
 before she rose. From that moment he disappear- 
 ed ; nor was it known what became of him, till on 
 the death of George I., on his son the new king’s 
 first journey to Hanover, some alterations in the 
 palace being ordered by him, the body of Konis- 
 mark was discovered under the floor of the elec- 
 toral princess’s dressing-room — the count having 
 probably been strangled there the instant he left 
 her, and his body secreted. The discovery was 
 hushed up ; George II. intrusted the secret to his 
 wife queen Caroline, who told it to my father : but 
 the king was too tender of the honour of his mo- 
 ther to utter it to his mistress ; nor did lady Suf- 
 folk ever hear of it, till I informed her of it several 
 years afterwards. The disappearance of the count 
 made his murder suspected, and various reports of 
 the discovery of his body have of late years been 
 spread, but not with the authentic circumstances. 
 
 The second George loved his mother as much as 
 he hated his father, and purposed, as was said, had 
 the former survived, to have brought her over and 
 declared her queen-dowager*. Lady Suffolk has 
 
 * Lady Suffolk thought he rather would have made her 
 regent of Hanover ; and she also told me, that George I. 
 had offered to live again with his wife, but she refused, 
 unless her pardon were asked publicly. She said, what 
 most affected her was the disgrace that would be brought 
 on her children ; and if she were only pardoned, that would 
 not remove it. Lady Suffolk thought she was then di- 
 vorced, though the divorce was never published ; and that 
 the old elector consented to his son’s marrying the duchess 
 
REMINISCENCES, 
 
 18 
 
 told me her surprise, on going to the new queen 
 the morning after the news arrived of the death of 
 George I. at seeing hung up in the queen’s dressing- 
 room a whole length of a lady in royal robes ; and 
 in the bed-chamber a half length of the same per- 
 son, neither of which lady Suffolk had ever seen 
 before. The prince had kept them concealed, not 
 daring to produce them during the life of his father. 
 The whole length he probably sent to Hanover* ; 
 the half length I have frequently and frequently seen 
 in the library of princess Amelia, who told me it 
 was the portrait of her grandmother. She be- 
 queathed it, with other pictures of her family, to 
 her nephew, the landgrave of Hesse. 
 
 Of the circumstances that ensued on Konismark's 
 disappearance I am ignorant ; nor am I acquainted 
 with the laws of Germany relative to divorce or 
 
 of Kendal with the left hand — but it seems strange that 
 George I. should offer to live again with his wife, and yet 
 be divorced from her. Perhaps George II., to vindicate his 
 mother, supposed that offer and her spirited refusal. 
 
 * George II. was scrupulously exact in separating and 
 keeping in each country whatever belonged to England or 
 Hanover. Lady Suffolk told me, that on his accession he 
 could not find a knife, fork, and spoon of gold which had 
 belonged to queen Anne, and which he remembered to have 
 seen here at his first arrival. He found them at Hanover 
 on his first journey thither after he came to the crown, and 
 brought them back to England. He could not recollect 
 much of greater value; for on queen Anne’s death, and in 
 the interval before the arrival of the new family, such a 
 clearance had been made of her majesty’s jewels, or the new 
 king so instantly distributed what he found amongst his 
 German favourites, that, as lady S. told me, queen Caroline 
 never obtained of the late queen’s jewels but one pearl-neck- 
 lace. 
 
REMINISCENCES. 
 
 19 
 
 separation : nor do I know or suppose that despo- 
 tism and pride allow the law to insist on much 
 formality when a sovereign has reason or a mind 
 to get rid of his wife. Perhaps too much difficulty 
 of untying the Gordian knot of matrimony thrown 
 in the way of an absolute prince would be no kind- 
 ness to the ladies, but might prompt him to use a 
 sharper weapon, like that butchering husband our 
 Henry VIII. Sovereigns, who narrow or let out 
 the law of God according to their prejudices and 
 passions, mould their own laws no doubt to the 
 standard of their convenience. Genealogic purity 
 of blood is the predominant folly of Germany ; and 
 the code of Malta seems to have more force in the 
 empire than the ten commandments. Thence was 
 introduced that most absurd evasion of the indis- 
 solubility of marriage, espousals with the left hand 
 — as if the Almighty had restrained his ordinance 
 to one half of a man’s person, and allowed a greater 
 latitude to his left side than to his right, or pro- 
 nounced the former more ignoble than the latter. 
 The consciences both of princely and noble persons 
 in Germany are quieted, if the more plebeian side 
 is married to one who would degrade the more 
 illustrious moiety — but, as if the laws of matri- 
 mony had no reference to the children to be thence 
 propagated, the children of a left-handed alliance 
 are not entitled to inherit. — Shocking consequence 
 of a senseless equivocation, that only satisfies pride, 
 not justice ; and calculated for an acquittal at the 
 herald’s office, not at the last tribunal. 
 
 Separated the princess Dorothea certainly was, 
 and never admitted even to the nominal honours of 
 her rank, being thenceforward always styled duchess 
 
REMINISCENCES. 
 
 20 
 
 of Halle. Whether divorced is problematic, at least 
 to me ; nor can l pronounce, as, though it was 
 generally believed, I am not certain that George 
 espoused the duchess of Kendal with his left hand. 
 As the princess Dorothea died only some months 
 before him, that ridiculous ceremony was scarcely 
 deferred till then ; and the extreme outward devo- 
 tion of the duchess, who every Sunday went seven 
 times to Lutheran chapels, seemed to announce a 
 legalized wife. As the genuine wife was always 
 detained in her husband’s power, he seems not to 
 have wholly dissolved their union ; for, on the ap- 
 proach of the French army towards Hanover, during 
 queen Anne’s reign, the duchess of Halle was sent 
 home to her father and mother, who doted on their 
 only child, and did retain her for a whole year, and 
 did implore, though in vain, that she might con- 
 tinue to reside with them. As her son too, George 
 II., had thoughts of bringing her over and declaring 
 her queen dowager, one can hardly believe that a 
 ceremonial divorce had passed, the existence of 
 which process would have glared in the face of her 
 royalty. But though German casuistry might allow 
 her husband to take another wife with his left hand, 
 because his legal wife had suffered her right hand 
 to be kissed in bed by a gallant, even Westphalian 
 or Aulic counsellors could not have pronounced that 
 such a momentary adieu constituted adultery ; and 
 therefore of a formal divorce I must doubt — and 
 there I must leave that case of conscience unde- 
 cided, till future search into the Hanoverian chan- 
 cery shall clear up a point of little real importance. 
 
 I have said that the disgraced princess died but 
 a short time before the king. It is known that in 
 
REMINISCENCES. 
 
 21 
 
 queen Anne’s time there was much noise about 
 French prophets. A female of that vocation (for 
 we know from Scripture that the gift of prophecy 
 is not limited to one gender) warned George the 
 first to take care of his wife, as he would not sur- 
 vive her a year. That oracle was probably dictated 
 to the French Deborah by the duke and duchess of 
 Zell, who might be apprehensive lest the duchess 
 of Kendal should be tempted to remove entirely the 
 obstacle to her conscientious union with their son- 
 in-law. Most Germans are superstitious, even such 
 as have few other impressions of religion. George 
 gave such credit to the denunciation, that on the 
 eve of his last departure he took leave of his son 
 and the princess of Wales with tears, telling them 
 he should never see them more. It was certainly 
 his own approaching fate that melted him, not the 
 thought of quitting for ever two persons he hated. 
 He did sometimes so much justice to his son as to 
 say, 66 II est fougueux, mais il a de Phoimeur.” — 
 For queen Caroline, to his confidents he termed her 
 cette diablesse madame la princesse. 
 
 I do not know whether it was about the same 
 period, that in a tender mood he promised the 
 duchess of Kendal, that if she survived him, and it 
 were possible for the departed to return to this 
 world, he would make her a visit. The duchess 
 on his death so much expected the accomplishment 
 of that engagement, that a large raven, or some 
 black fowl, flying into one of the windows of her 
 villa at Isleworth, she was persuaded it was the 
 soul of her departed monarch so accoutred, and 
 received and treated it with all the respect and 
 
REMINISCENCES. 
 
 22 
 
 tenderness of duty, till the royal bird or she took 
 their last flight. 
 
 George II., no more addicted than his father to 
 too much religious credulity, had yet implicit faith 
 in the German notion of vampires, and has more 
 than once been angry with my father for speaking 
 irreverently of those imaginary bloodsuckers. 
 
 The duchess of Kendal, of whom I have said so 
 much, was, when mademoiselle Schulemberg, maid 
 of honour to the electress Sophia, mother of king 
 George I., and destined by king William and the 
 act of settlement to succeed queen Anne. George 
 fell in love with mademoiselle Schulemberg, though 
 by no means an inviting object — so little, that one 
 evening when she was in waiting behind the elec- 
 tress’s chair at a ball, the princess Sophia, who had 
 made herself mistress of the language of her future 
 subjects, said in English to Mrs. Howard (after- 
 wards countess of Suffolk), then at her court, 
 <f Look at that mawkin, and think of her being my 
 son’s passion !” Mrs. Howard, who told me the 
 story, protested she was terrified, forgetting that 
 mademoiselle Schulemberg did not understand 
 English. 
 
 The younger mademoiselle Schulemberg, who 
 came over with her and was created countess of 
 Walsingham, passed for her niece ; but was so like 
 to the king; that it is not very credible that the 
 duchess, who had affected to pass for cruel, had 
 waited for the left-handed marriage. 
 
 The duchess, under whatever denomination, had 
 attained and preserved to the last her ascendant 
 over the king : but notwithstanding that influence. 
 
REMINISCENCES. 
 
 23 
 
 he was not more constant to her than he had been 
 to his avowed wife; for another acknowledged mis- 
 tress, whom he also brought over, was madam Kil- 
 mansegge, countess of Platen, who was created 
 countess of Darlington, and by whom he was in- 
 disputably father of Charlotte, married to lord vis- 
 count Howe, and mother of the present earl. Lady 
 Howe was never publicly acknowledged as the king’s 
 daughter ; but princess Amelia treated her daughter 
 Mrs. Howe* upon that foot, and one evening when 
 I was present, gave her a ring with a small portrait 
 of George I. with a crown of diamonds. 
 
 Lady Darlington, whom I saw at ray mother’s in 
 my infancy, and whom I remember by being terri- 
 fied at her enormous figure, was as corpulent and 
 ample as the duchess was long and emaciated. Two 
 fierce black eyes, large and rollingbeneath t wo lofty 
 arched eye-brows, two acres of cheeks spread with 
 crimson, an ocean of neck that overflowed and was 
 not distinguished from the lower part of her body, 
 and no part restrained by stays — no wonder that a 
 child dreaded such an ogress, and that the mob of 
 London were highly diverted at the importation of 
 so uncommon a seraglio ! They were food for all 
 the venom of the Jacobites ; and indeed nothing 
 could be grosser than the ribaldry that was vomited 
 out in lampoons, libels, and every channel of abuse, 
 against the sovereign and the new court, and chant- 
 ed even in their hearing about the public streets f. 
 
 * Caroline, the eldest of lady Howe’s children, had mar- 
 ried a gentleman of her own name, John Howe, esq. of 
 Hanslop, in the county of Bucks. 
 
 t One of the German ladies being abused by the mob, 
 was said to have put her head out of the coach, and cried 
 
24 
 
 REMINISCENCES. 
 
 On the other hand, it was not till the last year 
 or two of his reign that their foreign sovereign paid 
 the nation the compliment of taking openly an 
 English mistress. That personage was Anne Brett, 
 eldest daughter by her second husband of the repu- 
 diated wife of the earl of Macclesfield, the unna- 
 tural mother of Savage the poet. Miss Brett was 
 very handsome, but dark enough by her eyes, com- 
 plexion, and hair, for a Spanish beauty. Abishag 
 was lodged in the palace under the eyes of Bath- 
 sheba, who seemed to maintain her power, as other 
 favourite sultanas have done, by suffering partners 
 in the sovereign’s affections. When his majesty 
 should return to England, a countess’s coronet was 
 to have rewarded the young lady’s compliance, and 
 marked her secondary rank. She might, however, 
 have proved a troublesome rival, as she seemed so 
 confident of the power of her charms, that, what- 
 ever predominant ascendant the duchess might re- 
 tain, her own authority in the palace she thought 
 was to yield to no one else. George the first, when 
 his son the prince of Wales and the princess had 
 quitted St. James's on their quarrel with him, had 
 kept back their three eldest daughters, who lived 
 with him to his death, even after there had out- 
 wardly been a reconciliation between the king and 
 prince. Miss Brett, when the king set out, ordered 
 
 in bad English, «* Good people, why you abuse us ? We 
 come for all your goods.” “ Yes, damn ye,” answered a 
 fellow in the crowd, and for all our chattels too.” I men- 
 tion this, because, on the death of princess Amelia, the 
 newspapers revived the story and told it of her, though I 
 had heard it three-score years before of one of her grand- 
 father’s mistresses. 
 
REMIN-ISCESTCES. 
 
 25 
 
 a door to be broken out of her apartment into the 
 royal garden. Anne, the eldest of the princesses, 
 offended at that freedom, and not choosing such a 
 companion in her walks, ordered the door to be 
 walled up again. Miss Brett as imperiously reversed 
 that command. The king died suddenly, and the 
 empire of the new mistress and her promised coro- 
 net vanished. She afterwards married sir William 
 Leman, and was forgotten before her reign had 
 transpired beyond the confines of Westminster ! 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 One of the most remarkable occurrences in the 
 reign of George the first was the open quarrel 
 between him and his son the prince of Wales. 
 Whence the dissension originated ; whether the 
 prince’s attachment to his mother embittered his 
 mind against his father, or whether hatred of his 
 father occasioned his devotion to her, I do not 
 pretend to know. I do suspect from circumstances, 
 that the hereditary enmity in the house of Brunswic 
 between the parents and their eldest sons dated 
 earlier than the divisions between the first two 
 Georges. The princess Sophia was a woman of 
 parts and great vivacity : in the earlier part of her 
 life she had professed much zeal for the deposed 
 house of Stuart, as appeared by a letter of her’s in 
 print, addressed, I think, to the chevalier de St. 
 George. It is natural enough for all princes, who 
 have no prospect of being benefited by the depo- 
 sition of a crowned head, to choose to think roy- 
 
26 REMINISCENCES, 
 
 alty an indelible character. The queen of Prussia, 
 daughter of George the first, lived and died an 
 avowed Jacobite. The princess Sophia, youngest 
 child of the queen of Bohemia, was consequently 
 the most remote from any pretensions to the Bri- 
 tish crown* — but no sooner had king William pro- 
 cured a settlement of it after queen Anne on her 
 electoral highness, than nobody became a stancher 
 Whig than the princess Sophia, nor could be more 
 impatient to mount the throne of the expelled 
 Stuarts. It is certain that during the reign of 
 Anne, the elector George was inclined to the To- 
 ries ; though after his mother’s death and his own 
 accession he gave himself to the opposite party. 
 But if he and his mother espoused different fac- 
 tions, Sophia found a ready partisan in her grand- 
 son the electoral prince f ; and it is true, that the 
 demand made by the prince of his writ of summons 
 to the house of lords as duke of Cambridge, which 
 _ no wonder was so offensive to queen Anne, was 
 made in concert with his grandmother, without 
 the privity of the elector his father. Were it cer- 
 tain, as was believed, that Bolinbroke and the Ja- 
 
 * It is remarkable, that either the weak propensity of 
 the Stuarts to popery, or the visible connexion between 
 regal and ecclesiastic power, had such operation on many 
 of the branches of that family, who were at a distance from 
 the crown of England, to wear which it is necessary to be 
 a protestant, that two or three of the daughters of the king 
 and queen of Bohemia, though their parents had lost every 
 thing in the struggle between the two religions, turned Ro- 
 man catholics ; and so did one or more of the sons of the 
 princess Sophia, brothers of the protestant candidate, George 
 the first. 
 
 t Afterwards George the second. 
 
REMINISCENCES. 
 
 27 
 
 cobites prevailed on the queen * to consent to her 
 brother coming secretly to England, and to seeing 
 him in her closet ; she might have been induced to 
 that step, when provoked by an attempt to force a 
 distant and' foreign heir upon her while still alive. 
 
 The queen and her heiress being dead, the new 
 king and his son came over in apparent harmony ; 
 and on his majesty’s first visit to his electoral do- 
 minions, the prince of Wales was even left regent ; 
 but never being trusted afterwards with that dig- 
 nity on like occasions, it is probable that the son 
 discovered too much fondness for acting the king, 
 or that the father conceived a jealousy of his having 
 done so. Sure it is, that on the king’s return great 
 divisions arose in the court ; and the Whigs were 
 divided — some devoting themselves to the wearer 
 of the crown, and others to the expectant. I shall 
 not enter into the detail of those squabbles, of 
 which I am but superficially informed. The pre^ 
 dominant ministers were the earls of Sunderland 
 and Stanhope. The brothers-in-law, the viscount 
 Townshend and Mr. Robert Walpole, adhered to 
 the prince. Lord Sunderland is said to have too 
 much resembled as a politician the earl his father, 
 who was so principal an actor in the reign of James 
 the second, and in bringing about the revolution. Be- 
 
 * I believe it was a fact, that the poor weak queen, being 
 disposed even to cede the crown to her brother, consulted 
 bishop Wilkins, called the Prophet, to know what would be 
 the consequence of such a step. He replied, « Madam, you 
 would be in the Tower in a month, and dead in three.’' 
 This sentence, dictated by common sense, her majesty took 
 for inspiration, and dropped all thoughts of resigning the 
 crown. 
 
REMINISCENCES. 
 
 28 
 
 tween the earl in question and the prince of Wales 
 grew mortal antipathy; of which an anecdote told 
 to me by my father himself will leave no doubt. 
 When a reconciliation had been patched up be- 
 tween the two courts, and my father became first 
 lord of the treasury a second time, lord Sunderland 
 in a ttte-a-tUe with him said, “ Well, Mr. Wal- 
 pole, we have settled matters for the present ; but 
 we must think whom we will have next” (meaning- 
 in case of the king’s demise). Walpole replied, 
 “ Your lordship may think as you please, but my 
 p^rt is taken;” meaning to support the established 
 settlement. 
 
 Earl Stanhope was a man of strong and violent 
 passions, and had dedicated himself to the army ; 
 and was so far from thinking of any other line, that 
 when Walpole, who first suggested the idea of ap- 
 pointing him secretary of state, proposed it to him, 
 he flew into a furious rage, and was on the point of 
 a downright quarrel, looking on himself as totally 
 unqualified for the post, and suspecting it for a plan 
 of mocking him. He died in one of those tempes- 
 tuous sallies, being pushed in the house of lords on 
 the explosion of the South Sea scheme. That ini- 
 quitous affair, which Walpole had early exposed, 
 and to remedy the mischiefs of which hfi alone was 
 deemed adequate, had replaced him at the head of 
 affairs, and obliged Sunderland to submit to be only 
 a coadjutor of the administration. The younger 
 Craggs *, a showy vapouring man, had been brought 
 forward by the ministers to oppose Walpole ; but 
 
 * James Craggs, jun. buried in Westminster-abbey, with 
 an epitaph by Pope. 
 
REMINISCENCES. 
 
 29 
 
 was soon reduced to beg his assistance on one * of 
 their ways and means. Craggs caught his death by 
 calling at the gate of lady March +, who was ill of 
 the small-pox ; and being told so by the porter, 
 went home directly, fell ill of the same distemper, 
 and died. His father, the elder Craggs, whose very 
 good sense sir R. Walpole much admired, soon fol- 
 lowed his son, and his sudden death was imputed 
 to grief; but having been deeply dipped in the ini- 
 quities of the South Sea, and wishing to prevent 
 confiscation and save his ill-acquired wealth for his 
 daughters, there was no doubt of his having de- 
 spatched himself. When his death was divulged, sir 
 Robert owned that the unhappy man had in an 
 oblique manner hinted his resolution to him. 
 
 The reconciliation of the royal family was so 
 little cordial, that I question whether the prince 
 did not resent sir Robert Walpole’s return to the 
 king’s service. Yet had Walpole defeated a plan of 
 Sunderland that would in futurity have exceedingly 
 hampered the successor, as it was calculated to do ; 
 nor do I affect to ascribe sir Robert's victory di- 
 rectly to zeal for the prince : personal and just 
 views prompted his opposition, and the commoners 
 of England were not less indebted to him than the 
 prince. Sunderland had devised a bill to restrain 
 the crown from ever adding above six peers to a 
 number limited The actual peers were far from 
 
 * I think it was the sixpenny tax on offices. 
 
 t Sarah Cadogan, afterwards duchess of Richmond. 
 
 $ Queen Anne’s creation of twelve peers at once, to ob- 
 tain a majority in the house of lords, offered an ostensible 
 plea for the restriction. 
 
30 REMINISCENCES, 
 
 disliking the measure ; but Walpole, taking fire, 
 instantly communicated his dissatisfaction to all 
 the great commoners, who might for ever be ex- 
 cluded from the peerage. He spoke, he wrote, he 
 persuaded, and the bill was rejected by the com- 
 mons with disdain, after it had passed the house of 
 lords. 
 
 But the hatred of some of the junto at court had 
 gone farther, horridly farther. On the death of 
 George the first, queen Caroline found in his cabinet 
 a proposal of the earl of Berkeley *, then, I think, 
 first lord of the admiralty, to seize the prince of 
 Wales, and convey him to America, whence he 
 should never be heard of more. This detestable 
 project, copied probably from the earl of Fal- 
 mouth’s offer to Charles the second with regard to 
 his queen, was in the hand-writing of Charles 
 Stanhope, elder brother of the earl of Harringtonf : 
 and so deep was the impression deservedly made 
 on the mind of George the second by that abomi- 
 nable paper, that all the favour of lord Harrington, 
 when secretary of state, could never obtain the 
 smallest boon to his brother, though but the sub- 
 ordinate transcriber. George the first was too hu- 
 mane to listen to such an atrocious deed. It was 
 not very kind to the conspirators to leave such an 
 instrument behind him; — and if virtue and con- 
 science will not check bold bad men from paying 
 court by detestable offers, the king’s carelessness 
 
 * James Berkeley, earl of Berkeley, knight of the garter, 
 &c. 
 
 f William Stanhope, first earl of Harrington of that 
 family. 
 
REMINISCENCES. 
 
 31 
 
 or indifference in such an instance ought to warn 
 them of the little gratitude that such machinations 
 can inspire or expect. 
 
 Among those who had preferred the service of 
 the king to that of the heir apparent, was the duke 
 of Newcastle * ; who, having married his sister to 
 lord Townshend, both his royal highness and the 
 viscount had expected would have adhered to that 
 connexion — and neither forgave his desertion.-- — - 
 I am aware of the desultory manner in which 1 
 have told my story, having mentioned the recon- 
 ciliation of the king and prince before I have given 
 any account of their public rupture. The chain of 
 my thoughts led me into the preceding details, and, 
 if I do not flatter myself, will have let you into the 
 motives of my dramatis persons better than if I 
 had more exactly observed chronology; and as I 
 am not writing a regular tragedy, and profess but 
 to relate facts as I recollect them ; or (if you will 
 allow me to imitate French writers of tragedy), 
 may I not plead that I have unfolded my piece as 
 they do, by introducing two courtiers to acquaint 
 one another, and by bricole the audience, with 
 what had passed in the penetralia before the tra- 
 gedy commences ? 
 
 The exordium thus duly prepared, you must sup- 
 pose, ladies, that the second act opens with a royal 
 christening. The princess of Wales had been de- 
 livered of a second son. The prince had intended 
 
 * Thomas Holies Pelham, duke of Newcastle, lord cham- 
 berlain, then secretary of state, and lastly first lord of the 
 treasury under George the second ; the same king to whom 
 he had been so obnoxious in the preceding reign. He was 
 obliged by George the third to resign his post. 
 
32 
 
 REMINISCENCES. 
 
 his uncle the duke of York, bishop of Osnaburg, 
 should with his majesty be godfathers. Nothing 
 could equal the indignation of his royal highness 
 when the king named the duke of Newcastle for 
 second sponsor, and would hear of no other. The 
 christening took place as usual in the princess’s 
 bed-chamber. Lady Suffolk, then in waiting as 
 woman of the bed-chamber and of most accurate 
 memory, painted the scene to me exactly. On one 
 side of the bed stood the godfathers and godmother ; 
 on the other the prince, and the princess’s ladies. 
 No sooner had the bishop closed the ceremony, 
 than the prince, crossing the feet of the bed in a 
 rage, stepped up to the duke of Newcastle, and, 
 holding up his hand and fore-finger in a menacing 
 attitude, said, “ You are a rascal, but I shall find 
 you meaning, in broken English, “ I shall find 
 a time to be revenged .” — “ What was my astonish- 
 ment, continued lady Suffolk, “ when going to the 
 princess’s apartment the next morning, the yeomen 
 in the guard-chamber pointed their halberds at my 
 breast, and told me hniust not pass 1 I urged that 
 it was my duty to attend the princess. They said, 
 4 No matter ; 1 must not pass that way.* 
 
 In one word, the king had been so provoked at 
 the prince’s outrage in his presence, that it had 
 been determined to inflict a still greater insult on 
 his royal highness. His threat to the duke was 
 pretended to be understood as a challenge; and to 
 prevent a duel he had actually been put under ar- 
 rest — as if a prince of Wales could stoop to fight 
 with a subject. The arrest was soon taken off ; 
 but at night the prince and princess were ordered 
 to leave the palace, and retired to the house of her 
 
REMINISCENCES. 33 
 
 chamberlain, the earl of Grantham, in Albemarle- 
 street. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 As this trifling work is a miscellany of detached 
 recollections, I will, ere I quit the article of George 
 the first, mention two subjects of very unequal im- 
 port, which belong peculiarly to his reign. The 
 first was the deprivation of Atterbury, bishop of 
 Rochester. Nothing more offensive to men of 
 priestly principles could easily have happened : yet, 
 as in a country of which the constitution was 
 founded on rational and liberal grounds, and where 
 thinking men had so recently exerted themselves to 
 explode the prejudices attached to the persons of 
 kings and churchmen, it was impossible to defend 
 the bishop's treason, but by denying it ; or to con- 
 demn his condemnation, but by supposing illegali- 
 ties in the process : both were vehemently urged 
 by his faction, as his innocence was pleaded by 
 himself. That punishment and expulsion from his 
 country may stagger the virtue even of a good man, 
 and exasperate him against his country, is perhaps 
 natural, and humanity ought to pity it. But what- 
 ever were the prepossessions of his friends in his 
 favour, charity must now believe that Atterbury 
 was always an ambitious turbulent priest, attached 
 to the house of Stuart, and consequently no friend 
 to the civil and religious liberties of his country : 
 or it must be acknowledged, that the disappoint- 
 ment of his ambition by the queen’s death, and the 
 proscription of his ministerial associates, had driven 
 
 c 2 
 
REMINISCENCES. 
 
 34 
 
 on attempts to restore the expelled family in hopes 
 of realizing his aspiring views. His letters pub- 
 lished by Nichols breathe the impetuous spirit of 
 his youth. His exclamation on the queen’s death, 
 when he offered to proclaim the pretender at Cha- 
 ring-cross in pontificalibus, and swore, on not being 
 supported, that there was the best cause in England 
 lost for want of spirit, is now believed also. His 
 papers, deposited with king James’s in the Scottish 
 college at Paris, proclaimed in what sentiments he 
 died; and the fac-similes of his letters published 
 by sir David Dalrymple leave no doubt of his hav- 
 ing in his exile entered into the service of the pre- 
 tender. Culpable as he was, who but must lament 
 that so classic a mind had only assumed so elegant 
 and amiable a semblance as he adopted after the 
 disappointment of his prospect's and hopes ? His 
 letter in defence of the authenticity of lord Cla- 
 rendon’s history, is One of the most beautiful and 
 touching specimens of eloquence in our language. 
 
 It was not to load the character of the bishop, 
 nor to affect candour by applauding his talents, that 
 I introduced mention of him ; much less to im- 
 pute to him any consciousness of the intended 
 crime that I am going to relate. The person against 
 whom the blow was supposed to be meditated never 
 in the most distant manner suspected the bishop of 
 being privy to the plot — No : animosity of parties, 
 and malevolence to the champions of the house of 
 Brunswic, no doubt suggested to some blind zealots 
 the perpetration of a crime, which would neces- 
 sarily have injured the bishop’s cause, and could by 
 no means have prevented his disgrace. 
 
 Mr. Johnstone, an ancient gentleman, who had 
 
REMINISCENCES. 
 
 35 
 
 been secretary of state for Scotland, liis country, in 
 the reign of king William, was a zealous friend of 
 my father, sir Robert, and who, in that period of 
 assassination plots, had imbibed such a tincture of 
 suspicion, that he was continually notifying simi- 
 lar machinations to my father, and warning him 
 to be on his guard against them. Sir Robert, in- 
 trepid and unsuspicious *, used to rally his good 
 monitor ; and, when serious, told him, that his 
 life was too constantly exposed to his enemies to 
 make it of any use to be watchful on any particular 
 
 * At the time of the Preston rebellion, a Jacobite, who 
 sometimes furnished sir Robert with intelligence, sitting 
 alone with him one night, suddenly putting his hand into 
 his bosom and rising, said, “ Why do not I kill you now ?” 
 Walpole starting up, replied, te Because I am a younger 
 man and a stronger.” They sat down again and discussed 
 the person’s information. But sir Robert afterwards had 
 reasons for thinking that the spy had no intention of as- 
 sassination, but had hoped, by intimidating, to extort mo- 
 ney from him. Yet if no real attempt was made on his 
 life, it was not from want of suggestions to it. One of the 
 weekly journals pointed out sir Robert’s frequent passing 
 Putney-bridge late at night, attended but by one or two 
 servants, on his way to New Park, as a proper place : and 
 after sir Robert’s death, the second earl of Egmont told me, 
 that he was once at a consultation of the opposition, in 
 which it was proposed to have sir Robert murdered by a 
 mob, of which the earl had declared his abhorrence. Such 
 an attempt was actually made in 1733, at the time of the 
 famous excise-bill. As the minister descended the stairs of 
 the house of commons on the night he carried the bill, he 
 was guarded on one side by his second son Edward, and on 
 the other by general Charles Churchill ; but the crowd be- 
 hind endeavoured to throw him down, as he was a bulky 
 man, and trample him to death ; and that not succeeding, 
 they tried to strangle him by pulling his red cloak tight — 
 but fortunately the strings broke by the violence of the tug. 
 
REMINISCENCES. 
 
 36 
 
 occasion ; nor, though Johnstone often hurried to 
 him with intelligence of such designs, did he ever 
 see reason, but once, to believe in the soundness of 
 the information. That once arrived thus : A day 
 or two before the bill of pains and penalties w as to 
 pass the house of commons against the bishop of 
 Rochester, Mr. Johnstone advertised sir Robert to 
 be circumspect ; for three or four persons meditated 
 to assassinate him as he should leave the house at 
 night. Sir Robert laughed, and forgot the notice. 
 The morning after the debate, Johnstone came to 
 sir Robert wdth a kind of good-natured insult, tell™ 
 ing him, that though he had scoffed his advice, he 
 had for once followed it, and by so doing preserved 
 his life. Sir Robert understood not what he meant, 
 and protested he had not given more credit than 
 usual to his warning. “ Yes,” said Johnstone, 
 “ but you did ; for you did not come from the 
 house last night in your own chariot. Walpole 
 affirmed that he did. But his friend persisting in 
 his asseveration, sir Robert called one of his foot- 
 men, who replied, “ I did call up your honour s 
 carriage; but colonel Churchill being with you, 
 and his chariot driving up first, your honour step- 
 ped into that, and your own came home empty.” 
 Johnstone, triumphing on his own veracity, and 
 pushing the examination farther, sir Robert's 
 coachman recollected, that as he left Palace-yard 
 three men much muffled had looked into the empty 
 chariot. The mystery was never farther cleared 
 up; and my father frequently said, it was the only 
 instance of the kind in which he had ever seen any 
 appearance of a real design. 
 
 The second subject that I promised to mention, 
 
REMINISCENCES. 
 
 37 
 
 and it shall be very briefly, was the revival of the 
 order of the Bath. It was the measure of sir Robert 
 Walpole, and was an artful bank of thirty- six ri- 
 bands to supply a fund of favours in lieu of places. 
 He meant too to stave off the demands for garters, 
 and intended that the red should be. a step to the 
 blue ; and accordingly took one of the former him- 
 self. He offered the new order to old Sarah, duchess 
 of Marlborough, for her grandson the duke, and for 
 the duke of Bedford, who had married one of her 
 grand-daughters *. She haughtily replied, they 
 should take nothing but the garter. “ Madam,” 
 said sir Robert coolly, “ they who take the bath 
 will the sooner have the garter.” The next year 
 he took the latter himself with the duke of Rich- 
 mond, both having been previously installed knights 
 of the revived institution. 
 
 Before I quit king George the first, I will relate 
 a story very expressive of his good-humoured pre- 
 sence of mind. 
 
 On one of his journeys to Hanover his coach 
 broke. At a distance in view was a chateau of a 
 considerable German nobleman. The king sent to 
 borrow assistance. The possessor came, conveyed 
 the king to his house, and begged the honour of his 
 majesty’s accepting a dinner, while his carriage was 
 repairing; and, while the dinner was preparing, 
 begged leave to amuse his majesty with a collection 
 of pictures, which he had formed in several tours 
 to Italy. But what did the king see in one of the 
 
 * Wriothesly, duke of Bedford, had married lady Anne 
 Egerton, only daughter of Scroop, duke of Bridgewater, by 
 lady Elizabeth Churchill, daughter of John duke of Marl- 
 borough. 
 
38 
 
 REMINISCENCES. 
 
 rooms but an unknown portrait of a person in the 
 robes and with the regalia of the sovereigns of Great 
 Britain! George asked whom it represented. The 
 nobleman replied, with much diffident but decent 
 respect, that in various journeys to Rome he had 
 been acquainted with the chevalier de St. George, 
 who had done him the honour of sending him that 
 picture. “ Upon my word,” said the king in- 
 stantly, “ it is very like to the family.” It was 
 impossible to remove the embarrassment of the 
 proprietor with more good-breeding. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 The unexpected death of George the first on his 
 road to Hanover was instantly notified by lord 
 Townshend, secretary of state, who attended his 
 majesty, to his brother sir Robert Walpole, who as 
 expeditiously was the first to carry the news to the 
 successor and hail him king. The next step was, 
 to ask who his majesty would please should draw 
 his speech to the council — “ Sir Spencer Compton,” 
 replied the new monarch. — The answer was deci- 
 sive — and implied sir Robert’s dismission. Sir 
 Spencer Compton was speaker of the house of com- 
 mons, and treasurer, I think, at that time, to his 
 royal highness, who by that first command implied 
 his intention of making sir Spencer his prime mi- 
 nister. He was a worthy man, of exceedingly grave 
 formality, but of no parts — as his conduct imme- 
 diately proved. The poor gentleman was so little 
 qualified to accommodate himself to the grandeur 
 
REMINISCENCES. 
 
 39 
 
 of the moment, and to conceive how a new sove- 
 reign should address himself to his ministers, and 
 he had also been.so far from meditating to supplant 
 the premier*, that in his distress it was to sir Ro- 
 bert himself he had recourse, and whom he be- 
 sought to make the draught of the king’s speech 
 for him. The new queen, a better judge than her 
 busbaud of the capacities of the two candidates, 
 and who had silently watched for a moment proper 
 for overturning the new designations, did not lose 
 a moment in observing to the king how prejudicial 
 it would be to his affairs, to prefer to the minister 
 in possession a man in whose own judgment his 
 predecessor was the fittest person to execute his 
 office. From that moment there was no more 
 question of sir Spencer Compton as prime minister. 
 He was created an earl, soon received the garter, 
 and became president of that council, at the head 
 of which he was much fitter to sit than to direct. 
 Fourteen years afterwards he again was nominated 
 by the same prince to replace sir Robert as first lord 
 of the treasury, on the latter’s forced resignation ; 
 but not as prime minister, the conduct of affairs 
 being soon ravished from him by that dashing ge- 
 nius the earl of Granville, who reduced him to a 
 cipher for the little year in which he survived, and 
 in which his incapacity had been obvious. 
 
 * Sir Spencer Compton, afterwards earl of Wilmington, 
 was so far from resenting sir Robert’s superior talents, that 
 he remained stedfastly attached to him ; and when the 
 famous motion for removing sir Robert was made in both 
 houses, lord Wilmington, though confined to his bed, and 
 with his head blistered, rose and went to the house of lords, 
 to vote against a measure that avowed its own injustice, by 
 being grounded only on popular clamour. 
 
40 
 
 REMINISCENCES. 
 
 The queen, impatient to destroy all hopes of 
 change, took the earliest opportunity of declaring 
 her own sentiments. The instance I shall cite will 
 be a true picture of courtiers. Their majesties had 
 removed from Richmond to their temporary palace 
 in Leicester-fields * on the very evening of their 
 receiving notice of their accession to the crown ; 
 and the next day all the nobility and gentry in town 
 crowded to kiss their hands : my mother amongst 
 the rest, who, sir Spencer Compton’s designation, 
 and not its evaporation, being known, could not 
 make her way between the scornful backs and el- 
 bows of her late devotees, nor could approach nearer 
 to the queen than the third or fourth row : — but 
 no sooner was she descried by her majesty, than 
 the queen said aloud, “ There I am sure I see a 
 friend!” — The torrent divided and shrunk to either 
 side; “ and as I came away,” said my mother, 
 “ I might have walked over their heads, if I had 
 pleased.” 
 
 The pre-occupation of the queen in favour of 
 Walpole must be explained. He had early dis- 
 covered, that in whatever gallantries George prince 
 of Wales indulged or affected, even the person of 
 his princess was dearer to him than any charms in 
 his mistresses : and though Mrs. Howard (after- 
 wards lady Suffolk) was openly his declared fa- 
 vourite, as avowedly as the duchess of Kendal was 
 his father’s, sir Robert’s sagacity discerned that the 
 
 * It was the town residence of the Sidneys, earls of 
 Leicester, of whom it was hired, as it was afterwards by 
 Frederic, prince of Wales, on a similar quarrel with his 
 father: he added to it Saville-house, belonging to sir George 
 Saville, for his children. 
 
REMINISCENCES. 
 
 41 
 
 power would be lodged with the wife, not with the 
 mistress ; and he not only devoted himself to the 
 princess, but totally abstained from even visiting 
 Mrs. Howard ; while the injudicious multitude con- 
 cluded, that the common consequences of an in- 
 constant husband’s passion for his concubine would 
 follow ; and accordingly warmer, if not public, vows 
 were made to the supposed favourite than to the 
 prince’s consort. They especially, who in the late 
 reign had been out of favour at court, had, to pave 
 their future path to favour, and to secure the fall 
 of sir Robert Walpole, sedulously, and no doubt 
 zealously, dedicated themselves to the mistress : 
 Bolinbroke secretly, his friend Swift openly, and 
 as ambitiously, cultivated Mrs. Howard: and the 
 neighbourhood of Pope’s villa to Richmond facili- 
 tated their intercourse ; though his religion forbade 
 his entertaining views beyond those of serving his 
 friends. Lord Bathurst, another of that connexion, 
 and lord Chesterfield, too early for his interest, 
 founded their hopes on Mrs. Howard’s influence ; 
 but astonished and disappointed at finding Walpole 
 not shaken from his seat, they determined on an 
 experiment that should be the touch-stone of Mrs. 
 Howard’s credit. They persuaded her to demand 
 of the new king an earl’s coronet for lord Bathurst 
 * — She did — the queen put in her veto — and Swift 
 in despair returned to Ireland, to lament queen 
 Anne and curse queen Caroline, under the mask 
 of patriotism, in a country he abhorred and de- 
 spised. 
 
 To Mrs. Howard Swift’s ingratitude was base. 
 She indubitably had not only exerted all her interest 
 to second his and his faction’s interests, but loved 
 
42 
 
 REMINISCENCES. 
 
 queen Caroline and the minister as little as they 
 did. Yet, when Swift died, he left behind him a 
 character of Mrs. Howard by no means flattering, 
 which was published in his posthumous works. On 
 its appearance, Mrs. Howard (become lady Suffolk) 
 said to me in her calm, dispassionate manner, 4 All 
 i can say is, that it is very different from one that 
 he drew of me and sent to me many years ago, and 
 which I have, written by his own hand. 
 
 Lord Chesterfield, rather more ingenuous, as his 
 character of her, but under a feigned name, was 
 printed in his life, though in a paper of which he 
 was not known to be the author, was not more con- 
 sistent. Eudosia, described in the weekly journal 
 called Common Sense, for September 10, 1737, was 
 meant for lady Suffolk — yet was it no fault of hers 
 that he was proscribed at court ; nor did she per- 
 haps ever know, as he never did till the year before 
 his death, when 1 acquainted him with it by his 
 friend sir John Irwin, why he had been put into 
 the queen’s Index expurgatorius. The queen had 
 an obscure window at St. James’s that looked into 
 a dark passage, lighted only by a single lamp at 
 night, which looked upon Mrs. Howard’s apartment. 
 Lord Chesterfield, one twelfth-night, at court, had 
 won so large a sum of money, that he thought it 
 imprudent to carry it home in the dark, and depo- 
 sited it with the mistress. Thence the queen in- 
 ferred great intimacy; and thenceforwards lord 
 Chesterfield could obtain no favour from court ; 
 and, finding himself desperate, went into opposi- 
 tion. My father himself long afterwards told me 
 the story, and had become the principal object of 
 the peer's satiric wit, though he had not been the 
 
REMINISCENCES. 
 
 43 
 
 mover of his disgrace. The weight of that anger 
 fell more disgracefully on the king, as I shall men- 
 tion in the next chapter. 
 
 I will here interrupt the detail of what I have 
 heard of the commencement of that reign, and 
 farther anecdotes of the queen and the mistress, 
 till I have related the second very memorable trans- 
 action of that sera ; and which would come in awk- 
 wardly, if postponed till I have despatched many 
 subsequent particulars. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 At the first council held by the new sovereign, Dr. 
 Wake, archbishop of Canterbury, produced the will 
 of the late king, and delivered it to the successor, 
 expecting it would be opened and read in council. 
 On the contrary, his majesty put it into his pocket, 
 and stalked out of the room, without uttering a 
 word on the subject. The poor prelate was thun- 
 derstruck, and had not the presence of mind or the 
 courage to demand the testament’s being opened, 
 or, at least, to have it registered. No man present 
 ehose to be more hardy than the person to whom 
 the deposit had been trusted — perhaps none of them 
 immediately conceived the possible violation of so 
 solemn an act so notoriously existent. Still, as the 
 king never mentioned the will more, whispers only 
 by degrees informed the public, that the will was 
 burnt ; at least, that its injunctions were never ful- 
 filled. 
 
 What the contents were was never ascertained. 
 
REMINISCENCES. 
 
 44 
 
 Report said, that forty thousand pounds had been 
 bequeathed to the duchess of Kendal ; and more 
 vague rumours spoke of a large legacy to the queen 
 of Prussia, daughter of the late king. Of that be- 
 quest demands were afterwards said to have been 
 frequently and roughly made by her son, the great 
 king of Prussia, between whom and his uncle sub- 
 sisted much inveteracy. 
 
 The legacy to the duchess was some time after 
 on the brink of coming to open and legal discussion. 
 Lord Chesterfield marrying her niece and heiress, 
 the countess ofWalsingham, and resenting his own 
 proscription at court, was believed to have insti- 
 tuted, or at least to have threatened, a suit for 
 recovery of the legacy to the duchess, to which he 
 was then become entitled : and it was as confidently 
 believed that he was quieted by the payment of 
 twenty thousand pounds. 
 
 But if the archbishop had too timidly betrayed 
 the trust reposed in him from weakness and want 
 of spirit, there were two other men who had no 
 such plea of imbecility, and who, being independent 
 and above being awed, basely sacrificed their ho- 
 nour and integrity for positive sordid gain. George 
 the First had deposited duplicates of his will with 
 two sovereign German princes — I will not specify 
 them, because at this distance of time I do not per- 
 fectly recollect their titles ; but I was actually some 
 years ago shown a copy of a letter from one of our 
 ambassadors abroad to a secretary of state at that 
 period, in which the ambassador said, one of the 
 princes in question would accept the proffered sub- 
 sidy, and had delivered, or would deliver, the du- 
 plicate of the king’s will. The other trustee was 
 
REMINISCENCES. 
 
 45 
 
 no doubt as little conscientious and as corrupt. — It 
 is pity the late king of Prussia did not learn their 
 infamous treachery ! 
 
 Discoursing once with lady Suffolk on that sup- 
 pressed testament, she made the only plausible sha- 
 dow of an excuse that could be made for George the 
 Second — She told me, that George the First had 
 burnt two wills made in favour of his son. They 
 were probably the wills of the duke and duchess of 
 Zell ; or one of them might be that of his mother, 
 the princess Sophia. 
 
 The crime of the first George could only palliate, 
 not justify, the criminality of the second ; for the 
 second did not punish the guilty, but the innocent. 
 But bad precedents are always dangerous, and too 
 likely to be copied. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 I will now resume the story of lady Suffolk, whose 
 history, though she had none of that influence on 
 the transactions of the cabinet that was expected, 
 will still probably be more entertaining to two 
 young ladies, than a magisterial detail of political 
 events, the traces of which at least may be found in 
 journals and brief chronicles of the times. The in- 
 terior of courts, and the lesser features of history, 
 are precisely those with which we are least ac- 
 quainted — I mean of the age preceding our own. 
 Such anecdotes are forgotten in the multiplicity of 
 those that ensue, or reside only in the memory of 
 idle old persons, or have not yet emerged into 
 
46 REMINISCENCES, 
 
 publicity from the porte-feuilles of such garrulous 
 Brantomes as myself. Trifling I will not call my- 
 self ; for, while I have such charming disciples as 
 you two to inform ; and though acute or plodding 
 politicians, for whom they are not meant, may con- 
 demn these pages ; which is preferable, the labour 
 of an historian who toils for fame and for applause 
 from he knows not whom ; or my careless com- 
 mission to paper of perhaps insignificant passages 
 that I remember, but penned for the amusement of 
 a pair of such sensible and cultivated minds as I 
 never met at so early an age, and whose fine eyes 
 I do know will read me with candour, and allow 
 me that mite of fame to which I aspire, their ap- 
 probation of my endeavours to divert their evenings 
 in the country ? O Guicciardin ! is posthumous re- 
 nown so valuable as the satisfaction of reading these 
 court-tales to the lovely B — ys ? 
 
 Henrietta Hobart was daughter of sir Henry, and 
 sister of sir John Hobart, knight of the bath on 
 the revival of the order, and afterwards by her 
 interest made a baron ; and since created earl of 
 Buckinghamshire. 
 
 She was first married to Mr. Howard, the younger 
 brother of more than one earl of Suffolk ; to which 
 title he at last succeeded himself, and left a son by 
 her, who was the last earl of that branch. She 
 had but the slender fortune of an ancient baronet's 
 daughter ; and Mr. Howard’s circumstances were 
 the reverse of opulent. It was the close of queen 
 Anne’s reign : the young couple saw no step more 
 prudent than to resort to Hanover, and endeavour 
 to ingratiate themselves with the future sovereigns 
 of England. Still so narrow was their fortune, that 
 
REMINISCENCES. 
 
 47 
 
 Mr. Howard finding it expedient to give a dinner to 
 the Hanoverian ministers, Mrs. Howard is said to 
 have sacrificed her beautiful head of hair to pay for 
 the expense. It must be recollected, that at that 
 period were in fashion those enormous full-bottom-' 
 ed wigs which often cost twenty and thirty guineas. 
 Mrs. Howard was extremely acceptable to the in- 
 telligent princess Sophia — but did not at that time 
 make farther impression on the electoral prince, 
 than, on his father’s succession to the crown, to be 
 appointed one of the bedchamber-women to the 
 new princess of Wales. 
 
 The elder Whig politicians became ministers to 
 the king. The most promising of the young lords 
 and gentlemen of that party, and the prettiest and 
 liveliest of the young ladies, formed the new court 
 of the prince and princess of Wales. The apart- 
 ment of the bedchamber-woman in waiting became 
 the fashionable evening rendezvous of the most 
 distinguished wits and beauties. Lord Chester- 
 field, then lord Stanhope, lord Scarborough, Can- 
 lord Hervey, elder brother of the more known John 
 lord Hervey, and reckoned to have superior parts, 
 general (at that time only colonel) Charles Churchill, 
 and others not necessary to rehearse, were con- 
 stant attendants : miss Lepelle, afterwards lady 
 Hervey, my mother, lady Walpole, Mrs. Selwyn, 
 mother of the famous George, and herself of much 
 vivacity and pretty, Mrs. Howard, and above all for 
 universal admiration, m;ss-Bellenden, one of the 
 maids of honour. Her face and person were charm- 
 ing ; lively she was almost to etourderie ; and so 
 agreeable she was, that I never heard her mentioned 
 afterwards by one of her contemporaries who did 
 
REMINISCENCES. 
 
 48 
 
 not prefer her as the most perfect creature they 
 ever knew. The prince frequented the waiting- 
 room, and soon felt a stronger inclination for her 
 than he ever entertained but for his princess. Miss 
 Bellenden by no means felt a reciprocal passion. 
 The prince’s gallantry was by no means delicate ; 
 and his avarice disgusted her. One evening sitting 
 by her, he took out his purse and counted his mo- 
 ney. He repeated the numeration : the giddy Bel- 
 lenden lost her patience, and cried out, ‘ Sir, I 
 cannot bear it ! if you count your money any more 
 \ will go out of the room.’ The chink of the gold 
 did not tempt her more than the person of his 
 royal highness. In fact, her heart was engaged ; 
 and so the prince, finding his love fruitless, suspect- 
 ed. He was even so generous as to promise her, 
 that if she would discover the object of her choice, 
 and would engage not to marry without his privity, 
 he W'ouid consent to the match, and would be kind 
 to her husband. She gave him the promise he 
 exacted, but without acknowledging the person ; 
 and then, lest his highness should throw any ob- 
 stacle in the way, married, without his knowledge, 
 colonel Campbell, one of the grooms of his bed- 
 chamber, and who long afterwards succeeded to 
 the title of Argyle at the death of duke Archibald. 
 The prince never forgave the breach of her word ; 
 and whenever she went to the drawing-room, as 
 from her husband’s situation she was sometimes 
 obliged to do, though trembling at what she knew 
 she was to undergo, the prince always stepped up 
 to her, and whispered some very harsh reproach 
 in her ear. Mrs. Howard was the intimate friend 
 of miss Bellenden, had been the confidante of the 
 
REMINISCENCES. 
 
 49 
 
 prince’s passion, and, on Mrs. Campbell’s eclipse* 
 succeeded to her friend’s post of favourite — but 
 not to her resistance. 
 
 From the steady decorum of Mrs. Howard, 1 
 should conclude that she would have preferred the 
 advantages of her situation to the ostentatious eclat 
 of it : but many obstacles stood in the way of total 
 concealment; nor do I suppose that love had any 
 share in the sacrifice she made of her virtue. She 
 had felt poverty, and was far from disliking power. 
 Mr. Howard was probably as little agreeable to her 
 as he proved worthless. The king, though very 
 amorous, was certainly more attracted by a silly 
 idea he had entertained of gallantry being becoming, 
 than by a love of variety; and he added the more 
 egregious folly of fancying that inconstancy proved 
 he was not governed : but so awkwardly did he 
 manage that artifice, that it but demonstrated more 
 dearly the influence of the queen. With such a 
 disposition, secrecy would by no means have an- 
 swered his- majesty's views : yet the publicity of 
 the intrigue was especially owing to Mr. Howard, 
 who, far from ceding his wife quietly, went one 
 night into the quadrangle of St. James's, and voci- 
 ferously demanded her to be restored to him before 
 the guards and other audience. Being thrust out, 
 he sent a letter to her by the archbishop of Canter- 
 bury, reclaiming her, and the archbishop by his 
 instructions consigned the summons to the queen, 
 who had the malicious pleasure of delivering the 
 letter to her rival. 
 
 Such intemperate proceedings by no means in- 
 vited the new mistress to leave the asylum of St. 
 James’s. She was safe while under the royal roof : 
 
 D 
 
REMINISCENCES. 
 
 50 
 
 even after the rupture between the king and prince 
 (for the affair commenced in the reign of the first 
 George), and though the prince, on quitting St. 
 James’s, resided in a private house, it was too 
 serious an enterprise to attempt to take his wife by 
 force out of the palace of the prince of Wales. The 
 case was altered, when, on the arrival of summer, 
 their royal highnesses were to remove to Richmond. 
 Being only woman of the bedchamber, etiquette did 
 not allow Mrs. Howard the entree of the coach with 
 the princess. She apprehended that Mr. Howard 
 might seize her on the road. To baffle such an 
 attempt, her friends, John duke of Argyle, and his 
 brother, the earl of Ilay, called her in the coach of 
 one of them by eight o’clock in the morning of the 
 day, at noon of which the prince and princess were 
 to remove, and lodged her safely in their house at 
 Richmond. During the summer a negotiation was 
 commenced with the obstreperous husband, and he 
 sold his own noisy honour and the possession of his 
 wife for a pension of twelve hundred a- year. 
 
 These now little-known anecdotes of Mr. How- 
 ard’s behaviourl received between twenty and thirty 
 years afterwards from the mouth of lady Suffolk her- 
 self. She had left the court about the year 1735, 
 and passed her summers at her villa of Marble-hill 
 at Twickenham, living very retired both there and 
 in London. I purchased Strawberry-hill in 1747 ; 
 and being much acquainted with the houses of Dor- 
 set, Vere, and others of lady Suffolk’s intimates, 
 was become known to her; though she aud my 
 father had been at the head of two such hostile 
 factions at court. Becoming neighbours, and both, 
 after her second husband’s death, living single and 
 
REMINISCENCES. 
 
 51 
 
 alone, our acquaintance turned to intimacy. She 
 was extremely deaf, and consequently had more 
 satisfaction in narrating than in listening ; her me- 
 mory both of remote and of the most recent facts 
 was correct beyond belief. I, like you, was indul- 
 gent to, and fond of old anecdotes. Each of us 
 knew different parts of many court-stories, and each 
 was eager to learn what either could relate more ; 
 and thus, by comparing notes, we sometimes could 
 make out discoveries of a third circumstance*, be- 
 fore unknown to both. Those evenings, and I had 
 many of them in autumnal nights, were extremely 
 agreeable; and if this chain of minutiae proves so 
 to you, you owe perhaps to those conversations Ihe 
 fidelity of my memory, which those repetitions re- 
 called and stamped so lastingly. 
 
 In this narrative will it be unwelcome to you, if 
 I subjoin a faithful portrait of the heroine of this 
 part ? Lady Suffolk was of a just height, well made, 
 extremely fair, with the finest light brown hair; 
 was remarkably genteel, and always well dressed 
 with taste and simplicity. Those were her per- 
 sonal charms, for her face was regular and agree- 
 able rather than beautiful ; and those charms she 
 retained with little diminution to her death at the 
 age of 79. Her mental qualifications were by no 
 means shining; her eyes and countenance showed 
 her character, which was grave and mild. Her 
 ! strict love of truth and her accurate memory were 
 
 * The same thing has happened to me by books. A 
 passage lately read has recalled some other formerly per- 
 used ; and both together have opened to me, or cleared up 
 some third fact, which neither separately would have ex- 
 pounded. 
 
 LI6RW 
 
 UNIVERSITY <F fcUMtn* 
 
REMINISCENCES. 
 
 52 
 
 always in unison, and made her too circumstantial 
 on trifles. She was discreet without being reserved ; 
 and having no bad qualities, and being constant to 
 her connexions, she preserved uncommon respect 
 to the end of her life ; and from the propriety and 
 decency of her behaviour was always treated as if 
 her virtue had never been questioned; her friends 
 even affecting to suppose that her connexion with 
 the king had been confined to pure friendship. — 
 Unfortunately, his majesty’s passions were too in- 
 delicate to have been confined to Platonic love for 
 a woman who was deaf* — sentiments he had ex- 
 pressed in a letter to the queen, who, however 
 jealous of lady Suffolk, had latterly dreaded the 
 king's contracting a new attachment to a younger 
 rival, and had prevented lady Suffolk from leaving 
 the court as early as she had wished to do. u I 
 don't know," said his majesty, tC why you will not 
 let me part with an old deaf woman, of whom I am 
 weary." 
 
 Her credit had always been extremely limited by 
 the queen's superior influence, and by the devotion 
 of the minister to her majesty. Except a barony, 
 
 * Lady Suffolk was early affected with deafness. Chesel- 
 den the surgeon, then in favour at court, persuaded her 
 that he had hopes of being able to cure deafness by some 
 operation on the drum of the ear, and offered to try the 
 experiment on a condemned convict then in Newgate, who 
 was deaf. If the man could be pardoned, he would try it ; 
 and, if he succeeded, would practise the same cure on her 
 ladyship. She obtained the man’s pardon, who was cousin 
 to Cheselden, who had feigned that pretended discovery to 
 save his relation — and no more was heard of the experi- 
 ment. The man saved his ear too— but Cheselden was dis- 
 graced at court. 
 
REMINISCENCES. 
 
 53 
 
 a red riband, and a good place for her brother, lady 
 Suffolk could succeed but in very subordinate re- 
 commendations. Her own acquisitions were so mo- 
 derate, that, besides Marble-hill, which cost the 
 king ten or tw r elve thousand pounds, her com- 
 plaisance had not been too dearly purchased. She 
 left the court with an income so little to be envied, 
 that, though an economist and not expensive, by 
 the lapse of some annuities on lives not so pro- 
 longed as her own, she found herself straitened ; 
 and, besides Marble-hill, did not at most leave 
 twenty thousand pounds to her family. On quit- 
 ting court, she married Mr. George Berkeley, and 
 outlived him. 
 
 No established mistress of a sovereign ever en- 
 joyed less of the brilliancy of the situation than 
 lady Suffolk. Watched and thwarted by the queen, 
 disclaimed by the minister, she owed to the dignity 
 of her own behaviour, and to the contradiction of 
 their enemies, the chief respect that was paid to 
 her, and which but ill compensated for the slavery 
 of her attendance, and the mortifications she en- 
 dured. She was elegant ; her lover the reverse, 
 aud most unentertaining, and void of confidence in 
 her. His motions too were measured by etiquette 
 and the clock. He visited her every evening at 
 nine ; but with such dull punctuality, that he fre- 
 quently walked about his chamber for ten minutes 
 with his watch in his hand, if the stated minute 
 was not arrived. 
 
 But from the queen she tasted more positive 
 vexations. Till she became countess of Suffolk, 
 she constantly dressed the queen's head, who de- 
 lighted in subjecting her to such servile offices, 
 
54 REMINISCENCES, 
 
 though always apologizing to her good Howard. 
 Often her majesty had more complete triumph. It 
 happened more than once, that the king, coming 
 into the room while the queen was dressing, has 
 snatched off the handkerchief, and, turning rudely 
 to Mrs. Howard, has cried, “ Because you have an 
 ugly neck yourself, you hide the queen’s/’ 
 
 It is certain that the king always preferred the 
 queen’s person to that of any other woman ; nor 
 ever described his idea of beauty, but he drew the 
 picture of his wife. 
 
 Queen Caroline was said to have been very hand- 
 some at her marriage, soon after which she had 
 the small-pox; but was little marked by it, and 
 retained a most pleasing countenance. It was full 
 of majesty or mildness as she pleased, and her pe- 
 netrating eyes expressed whatever she had a mind 
 they should. Her voice too was captivating, and 
 her hands beautifully small, plump, and graceful. 
 Her understanding was uncommonly strong ; and 
 so was her resolution. From their earliest con- 
 nexion she had determined to govern the king, 
 and deserved to do so ; for her submission to his 
 will was unbounded, her sense much superior, and 
 his honour and interest always took place of her 
 own : so that her love of power, that was predo- 
 minant, was dearly bought, and rarely ill employed. 
 She was ambitious too of fame ; but, shackled by 
 her devotion to the king, she seldom could pursue 
 that object. She wished to be a patroness of learn- 
 ed men : but George had no respect for them or 
 their works ; and her majesty’s own taste was not 
 very exquisite, nor did he allow her time to culti- 
 vate any studies. Her generosity would have d Is- 
 
REMINISCENCES. 
 
 55 
 
 played itself, for she valued money but as the in- 
 strument of her good purposes : but he stinted her 
 alike in almost all her passions ; and though she 
 wished for nothing more than to be liberal, she 
 bore the imputation of his avarice, as she did of 
 others of his faults. Often, when she had made 
 prudent and proper promises of preferment, and 
 could not persuade the king to comply, she suffered 
 the breach of word to fall on her, rather than re- 
 flect on him. Though his affection and confidence 
 in her were implicit, he lived in dread of being 
 supposed to be governed by her; and that silly pa- 
 rade was extended even to the most private mo- 
 ments of business with my father. Whenever he 
 entered, the queen rose, curtsied, and retired, or 
 offered to retire. Sometimes the king condescended 
 to bid her stay — on both occasions she and sir Ro- 
 bert had previously settled the business to be dis- 
 cussed. Sometimes the king would quash the pro- 
 posal in question, and yield after retalking it over 
 with her — but then he boasted to sir Robert that 
 he himself had better considered it. 
 
 One of the queen’s delights was the improvement 
 of the garden at Richmond ; and the king believed 
 she paid for all with her own money— nor would 
 he ever look at her intended plans, saying he did 
 not care how she flung away her own revenue. He 
 little suspected the aids sir Robert furnished to her 
 from the treasury. When she died, she was in^ 
 debted twenty thousand pounds to the king. 
 
 Her learning I have said was superficial ; her 
 knowledge of languages as little accurate. The 
 king, with a bluff Westphalian accent, spoke En- 
 glish correctly. The queen’s chief study was di- 
 
REMINISCENCES. 
 
 56 
 
 vinity ; and she had rather weakened her faith than 
 enlightened it. She was at least not orthodox ; and 
 her confidante lady Sundon, an absurd .and pom- 
 pous simpleton, swayed her countenance towards 
 the less- believing clergy. The queen however was 
 so sincere at her death, that when archbishop Pot- 
 ter was to administer the sacrament to her, she 
 declined taking it, very few persons being in the 
 room. When the prelate retired, the courtiers in 
 the ante-room crowded round him, crying “ My 
 lord, has the queen received ?” His grace artfully 
 eluded the question, only saying most devoutly, 
 44 her majesty was in a heavenly disposition'* — and 
 the truth escaped the public. 
 
 She suffered more unjustly by declining to see her 
 son, the prince of Wales, to whom she sent her 
 blessing and forgiveness — but conceiving the ex- 
 treme distress it would lay on the king, should he 
 thus be forced to forgive so impenitent a son, or to 
 banish him again if once recalled, she heroically 
 preferred a meritorious husband to a worthless 
 child. 
 
 The queen's greatest error was too high an opi- 
 nion of her own address and art : she imagined 
 that all who did not dare to contradict her, were 
 imposed upon ; and she had the additional weak- 
 ness of thinking that she could play off many per- 
 sons without being discovered. That mistaken hu- 
 mour, and at other times her hazarding very offen- 
 sive truths, made her many enemies : and her du- 
 plicity in fomenting jealousies between the mini- 
 sters, that each might be more dependent on her- 
 self, was no sound wisdom. It was the queen who 
 blew into a flame the ill-blood between sir Robert 
 
REMINISCENCES. 
 
 57 
 
 Walpole and his brother-in-law lord Townshend. 
 Yet though she disliked some of the cabinet, she 
 never let her own prejudices disturb the king’s 
 affairs, provided the obnoxious paid no court to the 
 mistress. Lord Ilay was the only man, who, by 
 managing Scotland for sir Robert Walpole, was 
 maintained by him in spite of his attachment to 
 lady Suffolk. 
 
 The queen’s great secret was her own rupture, 
 which till her last illness nobody knew but the 
 king, her German nurse, Mrs. Mailborne, and one 
 other person. To prevent all suspicion, her ma- 
 jesty would frequently stand some minutes in her 
 shift talking to her ladies* ; and though labouring 
 with so dangerous a complaint, she made it so in- 
 variable a rule never to refuse a desire of the king, 
 that every morning at Richmond she walked several 
 miles with him ; and more than once, when she 
 had the gout in her foot, she dipped her whole leg 
 in cold water to be ready to attend him. The pain, 
 her bulk, and the exercise, threw her into such rits 
 of perspiration as vented the gout — but those ex- 
 ertions hastened the crisis of her distemper. It 
 was great shrewdness in sir Robert Walpole, who, 
 before her distemper broke out, discovered her se- 
 
 * While the queen dressed, prayers used to be read in the 
 outward room, where hung a naked Venus. Mrs. Selwyn, 
 bedchamber-woman in waiting, was one day ordered to bid 
 the chaplain Dr. Madox (afterwards bishop of Worcester) 
 begin the service. He said archly, * f And a very proper 
 altar-piece is here, madam !” Queen Anne had the same 
 custom ; and once ordering the door to be shut while she 
 shifted, the chaplain stopped. The queen sent to ask why 
 he did not proceed ? He replied, “ he would not whistle 
 the word of God through the key-hole.” 
 
 D 2 
 
58 REMINISCENCES, 
 
 cret. On my mother’s death, who was of the 
 queen’s age, her majesty asked sir Robert many 
 physical questions — but he remarked, that she 
 oftenest reverted to a rupture, which had not been 
 the illness of his wife. When he came home, he 
 said to me, “ Now, Horace, I know by possession 
 of what secret lady Sundon has preserved such an 
 ascendant over the queen.” He was in the right. 
 How lady Sundon had wormed herself into that 
 mystery was never known. As sir Robert main- 
 tained his influence over the clergy by Gibson 
 bishop of London, he often met with troublesome 
 obstructions from lady Sundon, who espoused, as l 
 have said, the heterodox clergy ; and sir Robert 
 could never shake her credit. 
 
 Yet the queen was constant in her protection of 
 sir Robert, and the day before she died gave a 
 strong mark of her conviction that he was the 
 firmest support the king had. As they two alone 
 w r ere standing by the queen’s bed, she pathetically 
 recommended, not the minister to the sovereign, 
 but the master to the servant. Sir Robert was 
 alarmed, and feared the recommendation would 
 leave a fatal impression — but a short time after, 
 the king reading with sir Robert some intercepted 
 letters from Germany, which said that now the 
 queen was gone sir Robert would have no protec- 
 tion : “ On the contrary,” said the king, “ you 
 know she recommended me to you.” This marked 
 the notice he had taken of the expression ; and it 
 was the only notice he ever took of it : nay, His 
 majesty’s grief was so excessive and so sincere, that 
 his kindness to his minister seemed to increase for 
 the queen’s sake. 
 
REMINISCENCES. 
 
 59 
 
 The queen’s dread of a rival was a feminine 
 weakness : the behaviour of her eldest son was a 
 real thorn. He early displayed his aversion to his 
 mother, who perhaps assumed too much at first ; 
 yet it is certain that her good sense, and the in- 
 terest of her family, would have prevented, if pos- 
 sible, the mutual dislike of the father and son, and 
 their reciprocal contempt. As the opposition gave 
 into all adulation towards the prince, his ill- poised 
 head and vanity swallowed all their incense. He 
 even early after his arrival had listened to a high 
 act of disobedience. Money he soon wanted : old 
 Sarah, duchess of Marlborough *, ever proud and 
 
 * That woman, who had risen to greatness and inde- 
 pendent wealth by the weakness of another queen, forgot, 
 like the due D’Epernon, her own unmerited exaltation, and 
 affected to brave successive courts, though sprung from 
 the dregs of one. When the prince of Orange came over to 
 marry the princess royal, Anne, a boarded gallery with a 
 pent-house roof was erected for the procession, from the 
 windows of the great drawing-room at St. James’s cross the 
 garden to the Lutheran chapel in the friary. The prince 
 being indisposed, and going to Bath, the marriage was de- 
 ferred for some weeks, and the boarded gallery remained,' 
 darkening the windows t)f Marlborough-house. The duchess 
 cried, “ I wonder when my neighbour George will take 
 away his orange chest !” — which it did resemble. She did 
 not want that sort of wit *, which ill-temper, long know- 
 ledge of the world, and insolence can sharpen — and envying 
 the favour which she no longer possessed, sir R. Walpole was 
 
 * Baron Gleicken, minister from Denmark to France, 
 being at Paris soon after the king his master had been there, 
 and a French lady being so ill-bred as to begin censuring 
 the king to him, saying, “ Ah ! monsieur, c’est une tote !” 
 <■— “ Couronnee,” replied he instantly, stopping her by so 
 genteel a hint. 
 
60 
 
 REMINISCENCES. 
 
 ever malignant, was persuaded to offer her fa- 
 vourite grand-daughter lady Diana Spencer, after- 
 wards duchess of Bedford, to the prince of Wales, 
 with a fortune of an hundred thousand pounds. 
 He accepted the proposal, and the day was fixed 
 for their being secretly married at the duchess’s 
 lodge in the great park at Windsor. Sir Robert 
 Walpole got intelligence of the project, prevented 
 it, and the secret was buried in silence. 
 
 Youth, folly, and indiscretion, the beauty of the 
 young lady, and a large sum of ready money, might 
 have offered something like a plea for so rash a 
 marriage, had it taken place : but what could ex- 
 cuse, what indeed could provoke, the senseless and 
 barbarous insult offered to the king and queen, by 
 Frederic's taking his wife out of the palace of 
 Hampton-court in the middle of the night, when 
 she was in actual labour, and carrying her, at the 
 imminent risk of the lives of her and the child, to 
 the unaired palace and bed at St. James’s ? Had 
 he no way of affronting his parents but by venturing 
 to kill his wife and the heir of the crown ? A baby 
 that wounds itself to vex its nurse is not more void 
 of reflection. The scene which commenced by un- 
 feeling idiotism closed with paltry hypocrisy. The 
 
 often the object of her satire. Yet her great friend, lord 
 Godolphin, the treasurer, had enjoined her to preserve very 
 different sentiments. The duchess and my father and mo- 
 ther were standing by the earl’s bed at St. Albans as he was 
 dying. Taking sir Robert by the hand, lord Godolphin 
 turned to the duchess, and said, “ Madam, should you ever 
 desert this young man, and there should be a possibility of 
 returning from the grave, I shall certainly appear to you.” 
 — Her grace did not believe in spirits. 
 
REMINISCENCES. 
 
 ei 
 
 queen, on the first notice of her son’s exploits, set 
 out for St. James’s to visit the princess by seven in 
 the morning. The gracious prince, so far from at- 
 tempting an apology, spoke not a word to his mo- 
 ther ; but on her retreat gave her his hand, led her 
 into the street to her coach — still dumb ! — but a 
 crowd being assembled at the gate, he kneeled 
 down in the dirt, and humbly kissed her majesty’s 
 hand. — Her indignation must have shrunk into 
 contempt ! 
 
 After the death of the queen, lady Yarmouth 
 came over, who had been the king’s mistress at 
 Hanover during his latter journeys — and with the 
 queen’s privity, for he always made her the con- 
 fidante of his amours ; which made Mrs. Selwyn 
 once tell him, he should be the last man with whom 
 she would have an intrigue, for she knew he would 
 tell the queen. In his letters to the latter from 
 Hanover, he said, “ You must love the Walmoden, 
 for she loves we.” She was created a countess, and 
 had much weight with him, but never employed 
 her credit but to assist his ministers, or to convert 
 some honours and favours to her own advantage. 
 She had two sons, who both bore her husband’s 
 name; but the younger, though never acknow- 
 ledged, was supposed the king’s, and consequently 
 did not miss additional homage from the courtiers. 
 That incense being one of the recommendations to 
 the countenance of lady Yarmouth, drew lord Ches- 
 terfield into a ridiculous distress. On his being made 
 secretary of state, he found a fair young lad in the 
 ante-chamber at St. James’s, who seeming much at 
 home, the earl, concluding it was the mistress’s 
 
REMINISCENCES. 
 
 62 
 
 son, was profuse of attentions to the boy, and more 
 prodigal still of his prodigious regard for his mam- 
 ma. The shrewd boy received all his lordship’s 
 vows with indulgence, and without betraying him- 
 self : — at last he said, “ I suppose your lordship 
 takes me for master Louis ; but I am only sir Wil- 
 liam Russel, one of the pages.” 
 
 The king’s last years passed as regularly as clock- 
 work. At nine at night he had cards in the apart- 
 ment of his daughters, the princesses Amelia and 
 Caroline, W'ith lady Yarmouth, two or three of the 
 late queen's ladies, and as many of the most fa- 
 voured officers of his own household. Every Satur- 
 day in summer he carried that uniform party, but 
 without his daughters, to dine at Richmond fthey 
 went in coaches and six in the middle of the day, 
 with the heavy horse-guards kicking up the dust 
 before them, dined, walked an hour in the garden, 
 returned in the same dusty parade; and his ma- 
 jesty fancied himself the most gallant and lively 
 prince in Europe. 
 
 His last year was glorious and triumphant be- 
 yond example ; and his death was most felicitous 
 to himself, being without a pang, without tasting a 
 reverse, and when his sight and hearing w'ere so 
 nearly extinguished, that any prolongation could 
 but have swelled to calamities. 
 
REMINISCENCES. 
 
 63 
 
 CHAPTER VUE 
 
 I am tempted to drain my memory of all its rub- 
 bish, and will set down a few more of my recollec- 
 tions, but with less method than I have used even 
 in the foregoing pages. 
 
 I have said little or nothing of the king’s two un- 
 married daughters. Though they lived in the pa- 
 lace with him, he never admitted them to any 
 share in his politics ; and if any of the ministers 
 paid them the compliment of seeming attachment, 
 it was more for the air than for the reality. The 
 princess royal Anne, married in Holland, was of a 
 most imperious and ambitious nature; and on her 
 mother’s death, hoping to succeed to her credit, 
 came from Holland on pretence of ill health : but 
 the king, aware of her plan, was so offended, that 
 he sent her to Bath as soon as she arrived, and as 
 peremptorily back to Holland — I think, without 
 suffering her to pass two nights in London. 
 
 Princess Amelia, as well-disposed to meddle, was 
 confined to receiving court from the duke of New- 
 castle, who aifected to be in love with her ; and 
 from the duke of Grafton, in whose connexion 
 with her there was more reality. 
 
 Princess Caroline, one of the most excellent of 
 women, was devoted to the queen, who, as well as 
 the king, had such confidence in her veracity, that 
 on any disagreement amongst their children, they 
 said, <c Stay, send for Caroline, and then we shall 
 know the truth.” 
 
 The memorable lord Hervey had dedicated him- 
 
REMINISCENCES. 
 
 64 
 
 self to the queen, and certainly towards her death 
 had gained great ascendance with her. She had 
 made him privy seal; and as he took care to keep 
 as well with sir Robert Walpole, no man stood in a 
 more prosperous light. But lord Hervey, who 
 handled all the weapons of a court, * had also made 
 a deep impression on the heart of the virtuous 
 princess Caroline ; and as there was a mortal an- 
 tipathy between the duke of Grafton and lord 
 Hervey, the court was often on the point of being 
 disturbed by the enmity of the favourites of the 
 two princesses. The death of the queen deeply af- 
 fected her daughter Caroline; and the change of 
 the ministry four years after dislodged lord Hervey, 
 whom for the queen’s sake the king would have 
 saved, and who very ungratefully satirised the king 
 in a ballad as if he had sacrificed him voluntarily. 
 Disappointment, rage, and a distempered constitu- 
 tion carried lord Hervey off, and overwhelmed his 
 princess : she never appeared in public after the 
 queen’s death ; and, being dreadfully afflicted with 
 the rheumatism, never stirred out of her apart- 
 ment, and rejoiced at her own dissolution some 
 years before her father. 
 
 Her sister Amelia leagued herself with the Bed- 
 ford faction during the latter part of her father’s 
 life. When he died, she established herself re- 
 
 * He had broken with Frederic prince of Wales, on hav- 
 ing shared the favours of his mistress, miss Vane, one of 
 the queen’s maids of honour. When she fell in labour at 
 St. James’s, and was delivered of a son, which she ascribed 
 to the prince, lord Hervey and lord Harrington each told 
 sir Robert Walpole that he believed himself father of the 
 child. 
 
REMINISCENCES. 
 
 05 
 
 spectably ; but enjoying no favour with her nephew, 
 and hating the princess dowager, she made a plea 
 of her deafness, and soon totally abstained from 
 St. James’s. 
 
 The duke of Cumberland never or very rarely in- 
 terfered in politics. Power he would have liked, 
 but never seemed to court it. His passion would 
 have been to command the army; and he would, I 
 doubt, have been too ready to aggrandize the crown 
 by it. But successive disgusts weaned his mind 
 from all pursuits ; and the grandeur of his sense* 
 and philosophy made him indifferent to a world 
 that had disappointed all his views. The unpopu- 
 larity which the Scotch and Jacobites spread against 
 him for his merit in suppressing the rebellion, his 
 brother’s jealousy, and the contempt he himself 
 felt for the prince, his own ill success in his battles 
 abroad, and his father’s treacherous sacrifice of him 
 on the convention of Closter-sevcn, the dereliction 
 of his two political friends lord Holland and lord 
 Sandwich, and the rebuffing spite of the princess 
 dowager; all those mortifications centering on a 
 constitution evidently tending to dissolution, made 
 him totally neglect himself, and ready to shake off 
 
 * The duke in his very childhood gave a mark of his 
 sense and firmness. He had displeased the queen, and she 
 sent him up to his chamber. When he appeared again, he 
 was sullen. «« William,” said the queen, «* what have you 
 
 been doing?” “ Reading.” «« Reading what ?” ** The 
 
 Bible.” “And what did you read there?” " About 
 
 Jesus and Mary.” “ And what about them ?” “ Why, 
 
 that Jesus said to Mary, Woman ! what hast thou to do 
 with me?” 
 
REMINISCENCES. 
 
 66 
 
 being, as an encumbrance not worth the attention 
 of a superior understanding. 
 
 From the time the duke first appeared on the 
 stage of the public, all his father's ministers had 
 been blind to his royal highness's capacity, or 
 were afraid of it. Lord Granville, too giddy him- 
 self to sound a young prince, had treated him ar- 
 rogautly, when the king and the earl had projected 
 a match for him with the princess of Denmark. 
 The duke, accustomed by the queen and his go- 
 vernor Mr. Poyntz to venerate the wisdom of sir 
 Robert Walpole, then on his death-bed, sent Mr. 
 Poyntz the day but one before sir Robert expired, 
 to consult him how to avoid the match. Sir Robert 
 advised his royal highness to stipulate for an ample 
 settlement. The duke took the sage counsel — and 
 heard no more of his intended bride. 
 
 The low ambition of lord Hardwicke, the child- 
 ish passion for power of the duke of Newcastle, 
 and the peevish jealousy of Mr. Pelham, com- 
 bined, on the death of the prince of Wales, to 
 exclude the duke of Cumberland from the regency 
 (in case of a minority), and to make them flatter 
 themselves that they should gain the favour of the 
 princess dowager by cheating her with the sem- 
 blance of power. The duke resented the slight, 
 but scorned to make any claim. The princess ne- 
 ver forgave the insidious homage, and, in concur- 
 rence with lord Bute, totally estranged the affec- 
 tion of the young king from his uncle, nor allowed 
 him a shadow of influence. 
 
REMINISCENCES. 
 
 67 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 I have done with royal personages. Shall I add a 
 codicil on some remarkable characters that I re- 
 member ? As I am writing for young ladies, I have 
 chiefly dwelt on heroines of your own sex. They 
 too shall compose my last chapter. Enter the 
 duchesses of Marlborough and Buckingham. 
 
 Those two women were considerable personages 
 in their day. The first, her own beauty, the supe- 
 rior talents of her husband in war, and the caprice 
 of a feeble princess, raised to the highest pitch of 
 power; and the prodigious wealth bequeathed to 
 her by her lord, and accumulated in concert with 
 her, gave her weight in a free country. The other, 
 proud of royal though illegitimate birth, was from 
 the vanity of that birth so zealously attached to her 
 expelled brother, the Pretender, that she never 
 ceased labouring to effect his restoration : and as 
 the opposition to the house of Brunswic was com- 
 posed partly of principled Jacobites ; of Tories, who 
 either knew not what their own principles were, 
 or dissembled them to themselves ; and of Whigs, 
 who, from hatred of the minister, both acted in 
 concert with the Jacobites, and rejoiced in their 
 assistance; two women of such wealth, rank, and 
 enmity to the court, were sure of great attention 
 from all the discontented. 
 
 The beauty of the duchess of Marlborough had 
 always been of the scornful and imperious kind ; 
 and her features and air announced nothing that 
 
REMINISCENCES. 
 
 68 
 
 her temper did not confirm. Both together, her 
 beauty and temper, enslaved her heroic lord. One 
 of her principal charms was a prodigious abundance 
 of fine fair hair. One day at her toilet, in anger to 
 him, she cut off those commanding tresses, and 
 flung them in his face. Nor did her insolence stop 
 there ; nor stop till it had totally estranged and 
 worn out the patience of the poor queen, her mis- 
 tress. The duchess w r as often seen to give her ma- 
 jesty her fan and gloves, and turn away her own 
 head, as if the queen had offensive smells. 
 
 Incapable of due respect to superiors, it was no 
 wonder she treated her children and inferiors with 
 supercilious contempt. Her eldest daughter and 
 she were long at variance, and never reconciled. 
 When the younger duchess exposed herself by 
 placing a monument and silly epitaph, of her own 
 composition and bad spelling, to Congreve, in West- 
 minster-abbey, her mother, quoting the words, 
 said, “ I know not what pleasure she might have 
 in his company, but I am sure it was no honour .” 
 With her youngest daughter, the duchess of Mon- 
 tagu, old Sarah agreed as ill. — “ I wonder,” said 
 the duke of Marlborough to them, “ that you can- 
 not agree, you are so alike!” Of her grand- 
 daughter, the duchess of Manchester, daughter of 
 the duchess of Montagu, she affected to be fond. 
 One day she said to her, “ Duchess of Manchester, 
 you are a good creature, and I love you mightily — 
 but you hate a mother !” “ And she has a mou- 
 
 ther !” answered the Manchester, who was all spi- 
 rit, justice, and honour, and could not suppress 
 sudden truth. 
 
 One of old Marlborough's capital mortifications 
 
REMINISCENCES. 
 
 09 
 
 sprung from a granddaughter. The most beautiful 
 of her four charming daughters, lady Sunderland*, 
 left two sonsf, the second duke of Marlborough, 
 and John Spencer, who became her heir, and Anne, 
 lady Bateman, and lady Diana Spencer, whom I 
 have mentioned, and who became duchess of Bed- 
 ford. The duke and his brother, to humour their 
 grandmother, were in opposition, though the eldest 
 she never loved. He had good sense, infinite ge- 
 nerosity, and not more oeconomy than was to be 
 expected from a young man of warm passions and 
 such vast expectations. He was modest and diffi- 
 dent too, but could not digest total dependence on 
 a capricious and avaricious grandmother. His sis- 
 ter, lady Bateman, had the intriguing spirit of her 
 father and grandfather, earls of Sunderland. She 
 was connected with Henry Fox, the first lord Hol- 
 land, and both had great influence over the duke of 
 Marlborough. What an object would it be to Fox 
 to convert to the court so great a subject as the 
 
 * Lady Sunderland was a great politician ; and having, 
 like her mother, a most beautiful head of hair, used, while 
 combing it at her toilet, to receive men whose votes or in- 
 terest she wished to influence. 
 
 f She had an elder son who died young, while only earl 
 of Sunderland. He had parts, and all the ambition of his 
 parents and of his family (which his younger brothers had 
 not) ; but George II. had conceived such an aversion to his 
 father that he would not employ him. The young earl at 
 last asked sir Robert Walpole for an ensigncy in the guards. 
 The minister, astonished at so humble a request from a 
 man of such consequence, expressed his surprise— “ 1 ask 
 it,” said the young lord, “ to ascertain whether it is deter- 
 mined that I shall never have any thing.” He died soon 
 after at Paris. 
 
REMINISCENCES. 
 
 70 
 
 duke ! Nor was it much less important to his 
 sister to give him a wife, who, with no reasons 
 for expectation of such shining fortune, should 
 owe the obligation to her. Lady Bateman struck 
 the first stroke, and persuaded her brother to marry 
 a handsome young lady, who unluckily was daugh- 
 ter of lord Trevor, who had been a bitter enemy of 
 his grandfather, the victorious duke. The gran- 
 dam's rage exceeded all bounds. Having a portrait 
 of lady Bateman, she blackened the face, and wrote 
 on it, “ Now her outside is as black as her inside.” 
 The duke she turned out of the little lodge in Wind- 
 sor Park ; and then pretending that the new duchess 
 and her female cousins, eight Trevors, had stripped 
 the house and garden, she had a puppet-show made 
 with waxen figures, representing the Trevors tear- 
 ing up the shrubs, and the duchess carrying off the 
 chicken- coop under her arm. 
 
 Her fury did but increase when Mr. Fox prevailed 
 on the duke to go over to the court. With her 
 coarse intemperate humour she said, “ That was 
 the Fox that had stolen her goose.” Repeated in- 
 juries at last drove the duke to go to law with her. 
 Fearing that even no lawyer would come up to the 
 Billingsgate with which she was animated herself, 
 she appeared in the court of justice, and with some 
 wit, and infinite abuse, treated the laughing public 
 with the spectacle of a woman who had held the 
 reins of empire, metamorphosed into the widow 
 Blackacre. Her grandson, in his suit, demanded a 
 sword set with diamonds, given to his grandsire by 
 the emperor. I retained it,” said the beldame, 
 “ lest he should pick out the diamonds and pawn 
 them.” 
 
REMINISCENCES. 
 
 71 
 
 I will repeat but one more instance of her in- 
 solent asperity, which produced an admirable reply 
 of the famous lady Mary Wortley Montague. Lady 
 Sundon had received a pair of diamond ear-rings 
 as a bribe for procuring a considerable post in 
 queen Caroline’s family for a certain peer ; and, 
 decked with those jewels, paid a visit to the old 
 duchess ; who, as soon as she was gone, said, 
 “ What an impudent creature, to come hither with 
 her bribe in her ear !” “ Madam,” replied lady 
 
 Mary Wortley, who was present, “ how should 
 people know where wine is sold, unless a bush is 
 hung out ?” 
 
 The duchess of Buckingham was as much elated 
 by owing her birth to James II. as the Marlborough 
 was by the favour of his daughter. Lady Dor- 
 chester,* the mother of the former, endeavoured 
 to curb that pride, and, one should have thought, 
 took an effectual method, though one few mother^ 
 
 * Lady Dorchester is well known for her wit, and for 
 saying that she wondered for what James chose his mis- 
 tresses: “We are none of us handsome,” said she; “ and 
 if we have wit, he has not enough to find it out.” — But I 
 do not know whether it is as public, that her style was gross 
 and shameless. Meeting the duchess of Portsmouth and 
 lady Orkney, the favourite of king Williatn, at the drawing- 
 room of George the first, “God!” said she, “ who would 
 have thought that we three whores should have met here ?” 
 Having, after the king’s abdication, married sir David Col- 
 lyer, by whom she had two sons, she said to them, “ If any 
 body should call you sons of a whore, you must bear it ; 
 for you are so : but if they call you bastards, fight till you 
 die ; for you are an honest man’s sons.” 
 
 Susan lady Bellasis, another of king James’s mistresses, 
 had wit, too, and no beauty. Mrs. Godfrey had neither. 
 Grammont has recorded why she was chosen. 
 
REMINISCENCES. 
 
 72 
 
 would have practised : “ You need not be so vain,” 
 said the old profligate, “ for you are not the king’s 
 daughter, but colonel Graham’s.” Graham was a 
 fashionable man of those days, and noted for dry 
 humour. His legitimate daughter, the countess of 
 Berkshire, was extremely like to the duchess of 
 Buckingham : “Well ! well !” said Graham, “ kings 
 are all-powerful, and one must not complain ; but 
 certainly the same man begot those two women.” 
 To discredit the wit of both parents, the duchess 
 never ceased labouring to restore the house of 
 Stuart, and to mark her filial devotion to it. Fre- 
 quent were her journeys to the continent for that 
 purpose. She always stopped at Paris, visited the 
 church where lay the unburied body of James, and 
 wept over it. A poor Benedictine of the convent, 
 observing her filial piety, took notice to her grace 
 that the velvet pall that covered the coffin was be- 
 come thread-bare — and so it remained ! 
 
 Finding all her efforts fruitless, and perhaps 
 aware that her plots were not undiscovered by sir 
 Robert Walpole, who was remarkable for his intel- 
 ligence, she made an artful double, and resolved to 
 try what might be done through him himself. I 
 forget how she contracted an acquaintance with 
 him — I do remember, that more than once he re- 
 ceived letters from the Pretender himself, which 
 probably were transmitted through her. Sir Robert 
 always carried them to George II. who endorsed 
 and returned them. That negotiation not succeed- 
 ing, the duchess made a more home push. Learn- 
 ing his extreme fondness for his daughter (after- 
 wards lady Mary Churchill), she sent for sir Ro- 
 bert, and asked him if he recollected what had not 
 
REMINISCENCES. 
 
 73 
 
 been thought too great a reward to lord Clarendon 
 for restoring the royal family ? He affected not to 
 understand her — “ Was not he allowed,” urged 
 the zealous duchess, “ to match his daughter to 
 the duke of York ?” Sir Robert smiled, and left 
 her. 
 
 Sir Robert being forced from court, the duchess 
 thought the moment* favourable, and took a new 
 journey to Rome ; but conscious of the danger she 
 might run of discovery, she made over her estate to 
 the famous Mr. Pulteney (afterwards earl of Bath), 
 and left the deed in his custody. What was her 
 astonishment, when on her return she re-demanded 
 the instrument. — It was mislaid — He could not 
 find it — He never could find it ! The duchess grew 
 clamorous. At last his friend lord Mansfield told 
 him plainly, he could never show his face unless he 
 satisfied the duchess. Lord Bath did then sign a 
 release to her of her estate. The transaction was 
 recorded in print by sir Charles Hanbury Williams 
 in a pamphlet that had great vogue, called A Con- 
 gratulatory Letter, with many other anecdotes of 
 the same personage, and was not less acute than 
 sir Charles's Odes on the same hero. The duchess 
 dying not long after sir Robert's entrance into the 
 house of lords, lord Oxford, one of her executors, 
 told him there, that the duchess had struck lord 
 Bath out of her will, and made him, sir Robert, 
 
 # I am not quite certain that, writing by memory at the 
 distance of fifty years, I place that journey exactly at the 
 right period, nor whether it did not take place before sir 
 Robert’s fall. Nothing material depends on the precise 
 period. 
 
 E 
 
REMINISCENCES. 
 
 74 
 
 one of her trustees in his room. “ Then,” said 
 sir Robert laughing, “ I see, my lord, that I have 
 got lord Bath’s place before he has got mine.” Sir 
 Robert had artfully prevented the last. Before he 
 quitted the king, he persuaded his majesty to insist, 
 as a preliminary to the change, that Mr. Pulteney 
 should go into the house of peers, his great credit 
 lying in the other house; and I remember my fa- 
 ther’s action when he returned from court and told 
 me what he had done — “ I have turned the key of 
 the closet on him” — making that motion with his 
 hand. Pulteney had jumped at the proffered earl- 
 dom, but saw his error when too late ; and was so 
 enraged at his own oversight, that, when he went 
 to take the oaths in the house of lords, he dashed 
 his patent on the floor, and vowed he would never 
 
 take it up But he had kissed the king’s hand 
 
 for it, and it was too late to recede. 
 
 But though madam of Buckingham could not 
 effect a coronation to her will, she indulged her 
 pompons mind with such puppet-shows as were 
 appropriate to her rank. She had made a funeral 
 for her husband as splendid as that of the great 
 Marlborough : she renewed that pageant for her 
 only son, a weak lad, who died under age ; and for 
 herself ; and prepared and decorated waxen dolls 
 of him and of herself to be exhibited in glass-cases 
 in Westminster-abbey. It was for the procession 
 at her son’s burial that she wrote to old Sarah of 
 Marlborough to borrow the triumphal car that had 
 transported the corpse of the duke. “ It carried 
 my lord Marlborough,” replied the other, “ and 
 shall never be used for any body else.” “ l have 
 
REMINISCENCES. 
 
 75 
 
 consulted the undertaker,** replied the Bucking- 
 ham, “ and he tells me I may have a finer for 
 twenty pounds/’ 
 
 One of the last acts of Buckingham's life was 
 marrying a grandson she had to a daughter of lord 
 Hervey. That intriguing man, sore, as I have said, 
 at his disgrace, cast his eyes every where to revenge 
 or exalt himself. Professions or recantations of 
 any principles cost him nothing : at least the con- 
 secrated day which was appointed for his first in- 
 terview with the duchess made it presumed, that 
 to obtain her wealth, with her grandson for his 
 daughter, he must have sworn fealty to the house 
 of Stuart. It was on the martyrdom of her grand- 
 father : she received him in the great drawing- 
 room of Buckingham-house, seated in a chair of 
 state, in deep mourning, attended by her women in 
 like weeds, in memory of the royal martyr. 
 
 It will be a proper close to the history of those 
 curious ladies to mention the anecdote of Pope re- 
 lative to them. Having drawn his famous character 
 of Atossa, he communicated it to each duchess, 
 pretending it was levelled at the other. The 
 Buckingham believed him : the Marlborough had 
 more sense, and knew herself — and gave him a 
 thousand pounds to suppress it — -And yet he left 
 the copy behind him ! 
 
 Bishop Burnet, from absence of mind, had drawn 
 as strong a picture of herself to the duchess of 
 Marlborough, as Pope did under covert of another 
 lady. Dining with the duchess after the duke’s 
 disgrace, Burnet was comparing him to Belisarius 
 
 “ But how,” said she, “ could so great a general 
 
76 REMINISCENCES. 
 
 be so abandoned ?” — “ Oh! madam/’ said the 
 bishop, “ do not you know what a brimstone of a 
 wife he had ?” 
 
 Perhaps you know this anecdote, and perhaps 
 
 several others that I have been relating No- 
 
 matter — they will go under the article of my do- 
 tage — and very properly — I began with tales of my 
 nursery and prove that I have been writing in my 
 second childhood. 
 
 January 13th, 178Q. 
 
 END OF THE REMINISCENCES. 
 
LETTERS. 
 
Every reader of taste will feel regret on arriving 
 at the close of the foregoing pages ; — the quantity 
 is, indeed, so small, as scarcely to make a volume. 
 To this edition are therefore added, the Letters 
 (not being found in the larger collections of his 
 Correspondence) which are scattered up and down 
 the Walpoliana ; and the remainder of that work 
 has, with some trifling exceptions, and a slight 
 change of arrangement, been printed as a com- 
 panion to the Reminiscences. 
 
 London, April, I8I9. 
 
LETTERS. 
 
 i. 
 
 TO THE EARL OF BUCHAN. 
 
 Berkeley-square, Dec. 1st, 1781. 
 
 I am truly sensible of, and grateful for, your lord- 
 ship’s benevolent remembrance of me, and shall 
 receive with great respect and pleasure the collec- 
 tion your lordship has been pleased to order to be 
 sent to me. I must admire too, my lord, the ge- 
 nerous assistance that you have lent to your adopted 
 children ; but more forcibly than all I feel your pa- 
 thetic expressions on the distress of the public, 
 which is visible even in this extravagant and 
 thoughtless city. The number of houses to be let 
 in every street, whoever runs may read. At the 
 time of your writing your letter, your lordship did 
 not know the accumulation of misfortune and dis- 
 grace that has fallen on us ; nor should I wish to 
 be the trumpeter of my country’s calamities. Yet 
 as they must float on the surface of the mind, and 
 blend their hue with all its emanations, they suggest 
 this reflection, that there can be no time so proper 
 for the institution of inquiries into past story as 
 
80 
 
 LETTERS. 
 
 the moment of the fall of an empire — a nation be- 
 comes a theme for antiquaries when it ceases to be 
 one for an historian ! — and while its ruins are fresh 
 and in legible preservation. 
 
 I congratulate your lordship on the discovery of 
 the Scottish monarch's portrait in Suabia, and am 
 sorry you did not happen to specify of which ; but 
 I cannot think of troubling your lordship to^vrite 
 again on purpose ; I may probably find it mentioned 
 in some of the papers I shall receive. 
 
 There is one passage in your lordship's letter, in 
 which I cannot presume to think myself included ; 
 and yet, if I could suppose I was, it would look 
 like most impertinent neglect and unworthiness of 
 the honour that your lordship and the society has 
 done me, if I did not at least offer very humbly to 
 obey it. You are pleased to say, my lord, that the 
 members, when authors, have agreed to give copies 
 of such of their works as any way relate to the ob- 
 jects of the institution. Amongst my very trifling 
 publications, 1 think there are none that can pre- 
 tend even remotely to that distinction but the Cata- 
 logue of Royal and Noble Authors, and the Anec- 
 dotes of Painting, in each of which are Scottish 
 authors or artists. If these should be thought 
 worthy of a corner on any shelf of the society's 
 library, I should be proud of sending, at your lord- 
 ship's command, the original edition of the first. 
 Of the latter I have not a single set left but my 
 own. But I am printing a new edition in octavo, 
 with many additions and corrections, though with- 
 out cuts, as the former edition was too ci eai ‘ for 
 many artists to purchase. The new I will send 
 when finished, if I could hope it would be accept- 
 
LETTERS. 81 
 
 able, and your lordship would please to tell me by 
 what channel. 
 
 I am ashamed, my lord, to have said so much, or 
 any thing, relating to myself. I ask your pardon 
 too for the slovenly writing of my letter, but my 
 hand is both lame and shaking, and I should but 
 write worse if t attempted transcribing. 1 have 
 the honour to be, with great respect, 
 
 My lord. 
 
 Your lordship’s most obedient 
 and obliged humble servant, 
 
 Horace Walpole. 
 
 P. S. It has this moment started into my mind, 
 my lord, that I have heard that at the old castle at 
 Aubigny, belonging and adjoining to the duke of 
 Richmond’s house, there are historic paintings or 
 portraits of the ancient house of Lenox. I recol- 
 lect too that father Gordon, superior of the Scots 
 college at Paris, showed me a whole length of queen 
 Mary, young, and which lie believed was painted 
 while she was queen of France. He showed me 
 too the original letter she wrote the night before 
 her execution, some deeds of Scottish kings, and 
 one of king (I think Robert) Bruce, remarkable for 
 having no seal appendent, which, father Gordon 
 said, was executed in the time of his so great dis- 
 tress that he was not possessed of a seal. I shall 
 be happy if these hints lead to any investigation of 
 use. 
 
 e 2 
 
32 
 
 l: etters. 
 
 II. 
 
 TO THE EARL OF BUCHAN. 
 
 Strawberry-hill, May 12, 1783. 
 
 My Lord, 
 
 I did not know, till I received the honour of your 
 lordship's letter, that any obstruction had been 
 given to your charter. I congratulate your lord- 
 ship and the society on the defeat of that op- 
 position, which does not seem to have been a 
 liberal one. The pursuit of national antiquities 
 has rarely been an object, I believe, with any uni- 
 versity : why should they obstruct others from 
 inarching in that track ? I have often thought the 
 English Society of Antiquaries have gone out of 
 their way when they meddled with Roman remains, 
 especially if not discovered within our island. Were 
 I to speak out, I should own that I hold most re- 
 lics of the Romans, that have been found in Bri- 
 tain, of little consequence, unless relating to such 
 emperors as visited us. Provincial armies, stationed 
 in so remote and barbarous a quarter as we were 
 then, acted little, produced little worth being re- 
 membered. Tombstones erected to legionary offi- 
 cers and their families, now dignified by the title 
 of Inscriptions; and banks and ditches that sur- 
 rounded camps, which we understand much bet- 
 ter by books and plans than by such faint frag- 
 ments, are given with much pomp, and tell us no- 
 thing new. Tour lordship's new foundation seems 
 
LETTERS. 
 
 83 
 
 to proceed on a much more rational and more use- 
 ful plan. The biography of the illustrious of your 
 country will be an honour to Scotland, to those 
 illustrious, and to the authors, and may contribute 
 considerably to the general history; for the inves- 
 tigation of particular lives may bring out many 
 anecdotes that may unfold secrets of state, or ex- 
 plain passages in such histories as have been already 
 written ; especially as the manners of the times 
 may enter into private biography, though before 
 Voltaire manners were rarely weighed in general 
 history, though very often the sources of consider- 
 able events. I shall be very happy to see such lives 
 as shall be published, while I remain alive. 
 
 I cannot contribute any thing of consequence to 
 your lordship’s meditated account of John Law. I 
 have heard many anecdotes of him, though none 
 that I can warrant, particularly that of the duel for 
 which he fled early. I met the other day with an 
 account in some French literary gazette, I forget 
 which, of his having carried off the wife of another 
 man. Lady Catherine Law his wife lived, during 
 his power in France, in the most stately manner. 
 Your lordship knows to be sure that he died and 
 is buried at Venice . I have two or three different 
 prints of him, and an excellent head of him in 
 crayons by Rosalba, the best of her portraits. It 
 is certainly very like; for were the flowing wig 
 converted into a female head-dress, it would be the 
 exact resemblance of lady Wallingford, his daugh- 
 ter, whom I see frequently at the duchess of Mont- 
 rose’s, and who has by no means a look of the age 
 to which she is arrived. Law was a very extra- 
 ordinary man, but not at all an estimable one. 
 
84 
 
 LETTERS. 
 
 Dr. Hunter's magnificent future donation will be 
 a great addition to the collection of curiosities in 
 Scotland, though, I suppose, not much connected 
 with the pursuits of your society : but it will gra- 
 tify the thirst of knowledge which does your coun- 
 try, my lord, so much honour. 
 
 I shall wish much to see lord Hailes’s life of Bar- 
 clay, and the other of James the first, when finished, 
 and that of the regent Murray. May I ask your 
 lordship if there is any portrait known of the last ? 
 
 I don’t remember whether 1 ever told your lord- 
 ship that there are many charters of your ancient 
 kings preserved in the Scots college at Paris, and 
 probably many other curiosities. I think I did 
 mention many paintings of the old house of Lenox 
 in the ancient castle at Aubigny. Was not one of 
 your countrymen, my lord, constable of France ? 1 
 suspect my memory is worse than it was, and there- 
 fore you will excuse me both if I make mistakes, 
 forget names, or repeat what I have said before, 
 when zeal to obey your commands draws me into 
 blunders or tautology. I have the honour to be 
 Your lordship’s 
 
 Most obedient, humble servant, 
 
 Hor. Walpole. 
 
LETTERS. 
 
 85 
 
 III. 
 
 Oct. 1784. 
 
 ***** * * 
 
 I am much obliged to you for the many civil and 
 kind expressions iu your letter, and for the friendly 
 information you give me. Partiality, I fear, dic- 
 tated the former ; but the last I can only ascribe to 
 the goodness of your heart. 
 
 1 have published nothing of any size but the 
 pieces you mention, and one or two small tracts, 
 now out of print and forgotten. The rest have 
 been prefaces to some of my Strawberry editions, 
 and to a few other publications, and some fugitive 
 pieces, which 1 reprinted some years ago in a small 
 volume, and which shall be at your service, with 
 the Catalogue of Noble Authors. 
 
 With regard to the bookseller who has taken 
 the pains of collecting my writings for an edition 
 (amongst which I do not doubt but he will gene- 
 rously bestow on me many that I did not write, ac- 
 cording to the liberal practice of such compilers), 
 and who also intends to write my life, to which (as 
 I never did any thing worthy of the notice of the 
 public) he must likewise be a volunteer contribu- 
 tor, it would be vain for me to endeavour to prevent 
 such a design. Whosoever has been so unadvised 
 as to throw himself on the public, must pay such a 
 tax in a pamphlet or magazine when he dies; but 
 happily the insects that prey on carrion are still 
 
86 
 
 LETTERS. 
 
 more short-lived than the carcasses were from which 
 they draw their nutriment. Those momentary abor- 
 tions live but a day, and are thrust aside like em- 
 bryos. Literary characters, when not illustrious, 
 are known only to a few literary men ; and amidst 
 the world of books, few readers can come to my 
 share. Printing, that secures existence (in libra- 
 ries) to indifferent authors of any bulk, is like those 
 cases of Egyptian mummies, which, in catacombs, 
 preserve bodies of one knows not whom, and which 
 are scribbled over with characters that nobody at- 
 tempts to read, till nobody understands the language 
 in which they were written. 
 
 I believe, therefore, it will be most wise to swim 
 for a moment on the passing current, secure that 
 it will soon hurry me into the ocean where all things 
 are forgotten. To appoint a biographer is to be- 
 speak a panegyric ; and I doubt whether they who 
 collect their works for the public, and, like me, are 
 conscious of no intrinsic worth, do but beg mankind 
 to accept of talents (whatever they were) in lieu of 
 virtues. To anticipate spurious publications by a 
 comprehensive and authentic one, is almost as great 
 an evil : it is giving a body to scattered atoms ; and 
 such an act in one’s old age is declaring a fondness 
 for the indiscretions of youth, or for the trifles of 
 an age, which, though more mature, is only the less 
 excuseable. It is most true, sir, that so far from 
 being prejudiced in favour of my own writings, I 
 am persuaded, that had I thought early as I think 
 now, I should never have appeared as an author. 
 Age, frequent illness, and pain, have given me as 
 many hours of reflection in the intervals of the two 
 latter, as the two latter have drawn from reflection ; 
 
LETTERS. 
 
 87 
 
 and, besides their showing me the inutility of all 
 our little views, they have suggested an observation 
 that I love to encourage in myself from the rationa- 
 lity of it. I have learnt and have practised the 
 humiliating task of comparing myself with great 
 authors ; and that comparison has annihilated all 
 the flattery that self love could suggest. I know 
 how trifling my own writings are, and how far be- 
 low the standard that constitutes excellence ; for 
 the shades that distinguish mediocrity, they are not 
 worth discrimination ; and he must be very modest, 
 or easily satisfied, who can be content to glimmer 
 for an instant a little more than his brethren glow- 
 worms. Mine, therefore, you find, sir, is not hu- 
 mility, but pride ! When young, I wished for fame, 
 not examining whether I was capable of attaining 
 it, nor considering in what lights fame was desirable. 
 There are two parts of honest fame ; that attendant 
 on the truly great, and that better sort that is due 
 to the good. I fear I did not aim at the latter, nor 
 discovered, till too late, that I could not compass 
 the former. Having neglected the best road, and 
 having, instead of the other, strolled into a narrow 
 path that led to no goal worth seeking, I see the 
 idleness of my journey, and hold it more graceful 
 to abandon my wanderings to chance or oblivion, 
 than to mark solicitude for trifles, which I think so 
 myself. 
 
 I beg your pardon for talking so much of myself ; 
 but an answer was due to the unmerited attention 
 which you have paid to my writings. I turn with 
 more pleasure to speak on yours. Forgive me if I 
 shall blame you, whether you either abandon your 
 intention, or are too impatient to execute it. A 
 
LETTERS. 
 
 88 
 
 mere recapitulation of authenticated facts would be 
 dry. A more enlarged plan would demand much 
 acquaintance with the characters of the actors, and 
 with the probable sources of measures. The pre- 
 sent time is accustomed to details and anecdotes ; 
 and the age immediately preceding one's own is 
 less known to any man than the history of any 
 other period. 
 
 ********* 
 
 Your obliged and obedient 
 
 humble servant, 
 
 Hor. Walpole. 
 
 IV. 
 
 ON IMPROVEMENTS OF THE ENGLISH LAN- 
 GUAGE, &c. 
 
 Since I received your book, sir, I scarce ceased 
 from reading till I had finished it; so admirable I 
 found it, and so full of good sense, brightly deli- 
 vered. Nay, I am pleased with myself, too, for 
 having formed the same opinion with you on se- 
 veral points, in which we do not agree with the 
 generality of men. On some topics I confess as 
 frankly I do not concur with you ; considering how 
 many you have touched, it would be wonderful if 
 we agreed on all, for I should not be sincere if I 
 said I did. There are others on which I have 
 formed no opinion, for I should give myself an im- 
 pertinent air with no truth, if I pretended to have 
 
LETTERS. 
 
 89 
 
 any knowledge of many subjects, of which, young 
 as you are, you seern to have made yourself master. 
 Indeed, I have gone deeply into nothing, and there- 
 fore shall not discuss those heads on which we 
 differ most, as probably I should not defend my 
 opinions well. There is but one part of your work 
 to which I will venture any objection, though you 
 have considered it much, and I little — very little, 
 indeed, with regard to your proposal, which to me 
 is but two days old. I mean, your plan for the im- 
 provement of our language, which I allow has some 
 defects, and which wants correction in several par- 
 ticulars. The specific amendment which you pro- 
 pose, and to which I object, is the addition of a’s 
 and i’s to our terminations. To change s for a in 
 the plural number of our substantives and adjectives, 
 would be so violent an alteration, that I believe 
 neither the power of Power, nor the power of Ge- 
 nius, would be able to effect it. In most cases, I 
 am convinced that very strong innovations are more 
 likely to make impression than small and almost 
 imperceptible differences, as in religion, medicine, 
 politics, &c. ; but I do not think that language can 
 be treated in the same manner, especially in a re- 
 fined age. When a nation first emerges from bar- 
 barism, two or three masterly writers may operate 
 wonders ; and the fewer the number of writers, as 
 the number is small at such a period, the more ab- 
 solute is their authority. But when a country has 
 been polishing itself for two or three centuries, and 
 when, consequently, authors are innumerable, the 
 most supereminent genius (or whoever is esteemed 
 so, though without foundation) possesses very li- 
 mited empire, and is far from meeting implicit 
 
90 
 
 LETTERS. 
 
 obedience. Every petty writer will contest very 
 novel institutions ; every inch of change in any lan- 
 guage will be disputed : and the language will re- 
 main as it was, longer than the tribunal, which 
 should dictate very heterogeneous alterations. 
 
 With regard to adding a or o to nasal consonants, 
 consider, sir, should the usage be adopted, what 
 havoc would it make ? All our poetry would be 
 defective In metre, or would become at once as ob- 
 solete as Chaucer; and could we promise ourselves 
 that we should acquire better harmony, and more 
 rhymes, we should have a new crop of poets to re- 
 place Milton, Dryden, Gray, and I am sorry you 
 will not allow me to add, Pope ! You might enjoin 
 our prose to be reformed, as you have done by the 
 Spectator in your *******^ but try Dryden’s Ode 
 by your new institution. 
 
 I beg your pardon for these trivial observations. 
 I assure you I could write a letter ten times as long, 
 if I were to specify all I like in your work. I more 
 than like most of it ; and I am charmed with your 
 glorious love of liberty, and your other humane and 
 noble sentiments. ******* 
 ************ 
 It is as great as uncommon, and gives me as good 
 an opinion of your heart, sir, as your book does of 
 your great sense. Both assure me that you will not 
 take ill the liberty I have used in expressing my 
 doubts on your plan for amending our language, or 
 for any I may use in dissenting from a few other 
 sentiments in your work ; as I shall in what I think 
 your too low opinion of some of the French writers ; 
 of your preferring Lady Mary Wortley to Madame 
 Sevigne; and of your esteeming Mr. Hume a man 
 
LETTERS. 
 
 91 
 
 of a deeper and more solid understanding than Mr. 
 Gray. In the two last articles it is impossible to 
 think more differently than we do. In Lady Mary's 
 letters, which I never could read but once, I dis- 
 covered no merit of any sort ; yet I have seen others 
 by her (unpublished) that have a good deal of wit : 
 and for Mr. Hume, give me leave to say, that I think 
 your opinion, that he might have rated a state , ought 
 to be qualified a little, as in the very next page you 
 say — his History is a mere apology for preroga- 
 tive , and a very weak one. If he could have ruled 
 a state, one must presume at best that he would have 
 been an able tyrant — and yet I should suspect that 
 a man who, sitting coolly in his chamber, could 
 forge but a weak apology for prerogative, would not 
 have exercised it very wisely. I knew personally, 
 and well, both Mr. Hume and Mr. Gray ; and thought 
 there was no degree of comparison between their 
 understandings — and, in fact, Mr. Hume's writings 
 were so superior to his conversation, that I fre- 
 quently said he understood nothing till he had writ- 
 ten upon it. What you say, sir, of the discord in 
 his history from his love of prerogative, and hatred 
 of churchmen, flatters me much, as I have taken 
 notice of that very unnatural discord in a piece I 
 printed some years ago, but did not publish, and 
 which I will show to you when I have the pleasure 
 of seeing you here ; a satisfaction I shall be glad to 
 taste whenever you will let me know you are at 
 leisure after the beginning of next week. 1 am, sir, 
 with great respect and esteem, your obedient, hum- 
 ble servant, 
 
 Hor. Walpole. 
 
 Strawberry-hill, June 22, 1785. 
 
92 
 
 LETTERS. 
 
 V. 
 
 ON GRACE IN COMPOSITION. 
 
 June 26, 1785. 
 
 To pour book, sir, I am much obliged on many ac- 
 counts, particularly for having recalled my mind to 
 subjects of delight, to which it was grown dulled 
 by age and indolence. In consequence of your re- 
 claiming it, I asked myself whence you feel so much 
 disregard for certain authors whose fame is esta- 
 blished. You have assigned good reasons for with- 
 holding your approbation from some, on the plea 
 of their being imitators — it was natural then, to 
 ask myself again, whence they had obtained so 
 much celebrity ? I think I have discovered a cause, 
 which I do not remember to have seen noted ; and 
 that cause I suspect to have been, that certain of 
 those authors possessed grace — do not take me for 
 a disciple of lord Chesterfield, nor imagine that I 
 mean to erect grace into a capital ingredient of 
 writing — but I do believe that it is a perfume that 
 will preserve from putrefaction ; and is distinct 
 even from style, which regards expression ; grace I 
 think belongs to manner. It is from the charm of 
 grace that I believe some authors, not in your fa- 
 vour, obtained part of their renown. Virgil in par- 
 ticular — and yet I am far from disagreeing with 
 you on his subject in general. There is such a 
 dearth of invention in the iEneid [and when he did 
 invent, it was often so foolishly] ; so little good 
 
LETTERS. 
 
 93 
 
 sense, so little variety, and so little power over the 
 passions, that I have frequently said, from con- 
 tempt for his matter, and from the charm of his 
 harmony, that I believe I should like his poem bet- 
 ter, if I was to hear it repeated, and did not un- 
 derstand Latin. On the other hand, he has more 
 than harmony ; whatever he utters is said grace- 
 fully, and he ennobles his images, especially in the 
 Georgies, or at least it is more sensible there from 
 the humility of the subject. A Roman farmer might 
 not understand his diction in agriculture — but he 
 made a Roman courtier understand farming, the 
 farming of that age ; and could captivate a lord of 
 Augustus’s bedchamber, and tempt him to listen to 
 themes of rusticity. Statius and Claudian, though 
 talking of war, would make a soldier despise them 
 as bullies. That graceful manner of thinking in 
 Virgil seems to me to be more than style, if I do 
 not refine too much ; and I admire, I confess, Mr. 
 Addison’s phrase, that Virgil tossed about his dung 
 with an air of majesty. A style may be excellent 
 without grace — for instance, Dr. Swift’s. Elo- 
 quence may bestow an immortal style, and one of 
 more dignity ; yet eloquence may want that ease, 
 that genteel air that flows from, or constitutes, 
 grace. Addison himself was master of that grace, 
 even in his pieces of humour, and which do not 
 owe their merit to style; and from that combined 
 secret he excels all men that ever lived, but Shake- 
 speare, in humour, by never dropping into an ap- 
 proach towards burlesque and buffoonery, even 
 when his humour descended to characters that, in 
 any other hands, would have been vulgarly low. Is 
 it not clear that Will Whimble was a gentleman. 
 
LETTERS. 
 
 94 
 
 though he always lived at a distance from good 
 company ? Fielding had as much humour perhaps 
 as Addison ; but having no idea of grace, is perpe- 
 tually disgusting. His innkeepers and parsons are 
 the grossest of their profession ; and his gentlemen 
 are awkward when they should be at their ease. 
 
 The Grecians had grace in every thing, in poetry, 
 in oratory, in statuary, in architecture, and pro- 
 bably in music and painting. The Romans, it is 
 true, were their imitators ; but having grace too, 
 imparted it to their copies, which gave them a 
 merit, that almost raises them to the rank of ori- 
 ginals. Horace’s Odes acquired their fame, no 
 doubt, from the graces of his manner, and purity of 
 his style ; the chief praise of Tibullus and Proper- 
 tius, who certainly cannot boast of more meaning 
 than Horace’s Odes. 
 
 Waller, whom you proscribe, sir, owed his repu- 
 tation to the graces of his manner, though he fre- 
 quently stumbled, and even fell flat : but a few of 
 his small pieces are as graceful as possible : one 
 might say, that he excelled in painting ladies in 
 enamel, but could not succeed in portraits in oil 
 large as life. Milton had such superior merit, that 
 I will only say, that if his Angels, his Satan, and 
 his Adam, have as much dignity as the Apollo Bel- 
 vedere, his Eve has all the delicacy and graces of 
 the Venus of Medici, as his description of Eden has 
 the colouring of Albano. Milton’s tenderness im- 
 prints ideas as graceful as Guido’s Madonnas ; and 
 the Allegro, Penseroso, and Comus, might be de- 
 noted from the three Graces ; as the Italians give 
 singular titles to tw r o or three of Petrarch’s best 
 sonnets. 
 
LETTERS. 
 
 95 
 
 Cowley, I think, would have had grace (for his 
 mind was graceful) if he had had any ear, or if his 
 taste had not been vitiated by the pursuit of wit ; 
 which, when it does not offer itself naturally, de- 
 generates into tinsel or pertness. Pertness is the 
 mistaken affectation of grace, as pedantry produces 
 erroneous dignity; the familiarity of the one, and 
 the clumsiness of the other, distort, or prevent, 
 grace. Nature, that furnishes samples of all qua- 
 lities, and in the scale of gradation exhibits all pos- 
 sible shades, affords us types that are more apposite 
 than words. The eagle is sublime, the lion ma- 
 jestic, the swan graceful, the monkey pert, the bear 
 ridiculously awkward. I mention these as more 
 expressive and comprehensive than I could make 
 definitions of my meaning ; but I will apply the 
 swan only, under whose wings I will shelter an 
 apology for Racine, whose pieces give me an idea 
 of that bird. The colouring of the swan is pure, 
 his attitudes are graceful, he never displeases you 
 when sailing on his proper element. Ills feet may 
 be ugly, his notes hissing, not musical, his walk 
 not natural; he can soar, but it is with difficulty. 
 Still the impression the swan leaves is that of grace 
 — so does Racine. 
 
 Boileau may be compared to the dog, whose sa- 
 gacity is remarkable, as well as its fawning on its 
 master, and its snarling at those it dislikes. If 
 Boileau was too austere to admit the pliability of 
 grace, he compensates by sense and propriety. He 
 is like (for 1 will drop animals) an upright magi- 
 strate whom you respect ; but whose justice and se- 
 verity leave an awe, that discourages familiarity. 
 His copies of the ancients may be too servile — but 
 
LETTERS. 
 
 96 
 
 if a good translator deserve praise, Boileau deserves 
 more : he certainly does not fall below his origi- 
 nals ; and, considering at what period he wrote, 
 has greater merit still. By his imitations he held 
 out to his countrymen models of taste, and banished 
 totally the bad taste of his predecessors. For his 
 Lutrin, replete with excellent poetry, wit, humour, 
 and satire, he certainly was not obliged to the an- 
 cients. Excepting Horace, how little idea had either 
 Greeks or Romans of wit and humour! Aristo- 
 phanes and Lucian, compared with moderns, were, 
 the one a blackguard, the other a buffoon. In my 
 eyes, the Lutrin, the Dispensary, and the Rape of 
 the Lock, are standards of grace and elegance, not 
 to be paralleled by antiquity; and eternal re- 
 proaches to Voltaire, whose indelicacy in the Pu- 
 celle degraded him as much, when compared with 
 the three authors I have named, as his Henriade 
 leaves Virgil, and even Lucan, whom he more re- 
 sembles, by far his superiors. The Dunciad is ble- 
 mished by the offensive images of the games, but 
 the poetry appears to me admirable ; and though 
 the fourth book has obscurities, I prefer it to the 
 three others. It has descriptions not surpassed by 
 any poet that ever existed ; and which surely a 
 writer merely ingenious will never equal. The lines 
 on Italy, on Venice, on Convents, have all the 
 grace for which I contend, as distinct from poetry, 
 though united with the most beautiful ; and the 
 Rape of the Lock, besides the originality of great 
 part of the invention, is a standard of graceful 
 writing. 
 
 In general, I believe that what I call grace , is 
 denominated elegance ; but by grace I mean some- 
 
LETTERS. 97 
 
 thing higher. I will explain myself by instances ; 
 Apollo is graceful, Mercury elegant. 
 
 Petrarch perhaps owed his whole merit to the 
 harmony of his numbers, and the graces of his 
 style. They conceal his poverty of meaning, and 
 want of variety. His complaints too may have 
 added an interest, which, had his passion been suc- 
 cessful, and had expressed itself with equal same- 
 ness, would have made the number of his sonnets 
 insupportable. Melancholy in poetry, I am inclined 
 to think, contributes to grace, when it is not dis- 
 graced by pitiful lamentations, such as Ovid's and 
 Cicero’s in their banishments. We respect melan- 
 choly, because it imparts a similar affection, pity. 
 A gay writer, who should only express satisfaction 
 without variety, would soon be nauseous. 
 
 Madame de Sevigne shines both in grief and 
 gaiety. There is too much of sorrow for her daugh- 
 ter’s absence; yet it is always expressed by new 
 turns, new images ; and often by wit, whose ten- 
 derness has a melancholy air. When she forgets 
 her concern, and returns to her natural disposition, 
 gaiety, every paragraph has novelty: her allusions, 
 her applications, are the happiest possible. She 
 has the art of making you acquainted with all her 
 acquaintance ; and attaches you even to the spots 
 she inhabited. Her language is correct, though un- 
 studied ; and when her mind is full of any great 
 event, she interests you with the warmth of a dra- 
 matic writer, not with the chilling impartiality of 
 an historian. Pray read her accounts of the death 
 of Turenne and of the arrival of King James in 
 France, and tell me whether you do not know their 
 persons, as if you had lived at the time. For my 
 
 F 
 
LETTERS. 
 
 98 
 
 part, if you will allow me a word of digression 
 (not that I have written with any method), I hate 
 the cold impartiality recommended to historians ; 
 si vis me fiere, dolendum est primum ip si tibi — but 
 that I may not wander again, uor tire, nor con- 
 tradict you any more, I will finish now; and shall 
 be glad if you will dine at Strawberry-hill next 
 Sunday, and take a bed there; when I will tell you 
 how many more parts of your book have pleased 
 me, than have startled my opinions, or, perhaps, 
 prejudices. 
 
 I am, sir, your obedient, humble servant, 
 Hor. Walpole. 
 
 P. S. Be so good as to let me know, by a line by 
 the post to Strawberry-hill, whether I shall have 
 the pleasure of seeing you on Sunday. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Strawberry-hill, July 27 , 1785. 
 
 You thank me much more than the gift deserved, 
 sir. My editions of such pieces as I have left, are 
 waste paper to me. I will not sell them at the ri- 
 diculously advanced prices that are given for them ; 
 indeed only such as were published for sale, have I 
 sold at all; and therefore the duplicates that re- 
 main with me, are to me of no value, but when I 
 can oblige a friend w 7 ith them. Of a few of my im- 
 pressions I have no copy but my own set ; and as I 
 could give you only an imperfect collection, the pre- 
 sent was really only a parcel of fragments. My me- 
 
LETTERS. 
 
 99 
 
 mory was in fault about the R. and N. authors : I 
 thought I had given them to you ; I recollect now 
 that I only lent you my own copy ; but I have others 
 in town, and you shall have them when I go thither. 
 For Vertue’s MS. I am in no manner of haste. 
 ***** 
 
 My chief reason for calling on you twice this 
 week was to learn what you had heard ; and I shall 
 be much obliged to you for further information, as 
 I do not care to be too inquisitive, lest I should be 
 suspected of knowing more of the matter. 
 
 There are many reasons, sir, why I cannot come 
 into your idea of printing Greek*. In the first 
 place, I have two or three engagements for my 
 press ; 'and my time of life does not allow me but 
 to look a little way farther. In the next, I cannot 
 now go into new expenses of purchase. My fortune 
 is very much reduced, both by my brother's death, 
 and by the late plan of reformation. The last reason 
 would weigh with me, had I none of the other. My 
 admiration of the Greeks was a little like that of 
 the mob on other points, not from sound knowledge. 
 I never was a good Greek scholar ; have long for- 
 gotten what I knew of the language ; and as I never 
 disguise my ignorance of any thing, it would look 
 like affectation to print Greek authors. I could not 
 bear to print them without owning that I do not 
 understand them ; and such a confession would per- 
 haps be as much ostentation as unfounded preten- 
 sions. I must therefore stick to my simplicity, and 
 not go out of my line. It is difficult to divest one’s 
 
 * An edition of Anacreon had been recommended as a 
 mere literary curiosity. 
 
LETTERS. 
 
 100 
 
 self of vanity, because impossible to divest one’s self 
 of self-love. If one runs from one glaring vanity, 
 one is catched by its opposite. Modesty can be as 
 vain-glorious on the ground, as Pride on a triumphal 
 car. Modesty, however, is preferable ; for should 
 she contradict her professions, .she still keeps her 
 own secret, and does not hurt the pride of others. 
 Adieu, sir. I am, very sincerely, 
 
 Ybur obedient, humble servant, 
 
 Hor. Walpole. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Strawberry-hill, August 18, 1785. 
 
 I am sorry, dear sir, that I must give you un- 
 answerable reasons why I cannot print the work 
 you recommend. I have been so much solicited 
 since I set up my press to employ it for others, that 
 i was forced to make it a rule to listen to no such 
 applications. I refused lord Hardwicke to print a 
 publication of his ; lady Mary Forbes, to print let- 
 ters of her ancestor lord Essex; and the countess 
 of Aldborough to print her father's poems, though 
 in a piece as small as what you mention. These I 
 recollect at once, beside others whose recommenda- 
 tions do not immediately occur to my memory ; 
 though I dare say they do remember them, and 
 would resent my breaking my rule. I will only beg 
 you not to treat me with so much ceremony, nor 
 ever use the word humbly to me, who am no ways 
 entitled to such respect. One private gentleman is 
 not superior to another, in essentials; I fear, the 
 
LETTERS. 
 
 101 
 
 virtues of an untainted young heart are preferable 
 to those of an old man long conversant with the 
 world : and in soundness of understanding you have 
 shown, and will show, a depth which has not fallen 
 to the lot of 
 
 Your sincere humble servant, 
 
 Hor. Walpole. 
 
 P. S. I will call on you in a few days, and say 
 more on the particulars of your letter. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Strawberry-hill, Sept. 17, J785. 
 You are too modest, sir, in asking my advice on a 
 point, on which you could have no better guide 
 than your own judgment. If I presume to give you 
 my opinion, it is from zeal for your honour. I think 
 it would be* below you to make a regular answer to 
 anonymous scribblers in a magazine. You had bet- 
 ter wait to see whether any formal reply is made to 
 your book, and whether by any avowed writer, to 
 whom, if he writes sensibly and decently, you may 
 condescend to make an answer. 
 
 Still, as you say you have been misquoted, I 
 should not wish you to be quite silent, though I 
 should like better to have you turn such enemies 
 into ridicule. A foe who misquotes you ought to 
 be a welcome antagonist. He is so humble as to 
 confess, when he censures what you have not said, 
 that he cannot confute what you have said — and 
 he is so kind as to furnish you with an opportunity 
 
LETTERS. 
 
 102 
 
 of proving him a liar, as you may refer to your book 
 to detect him. 
 
 This is what I would do : I would specify in the 
 same magazine, in which he has attacked you, your 
 real words, and those he has imputed to you, and 
 then appeal to the equity of the reader. You may 
 guess that the shaft comes from somebody whom 
 you have censured, and thence you may draw a fail- 
 conclusion that you had been in the right to laugh 
 at one, who was reduced to put his own words into 
 your mouth, before he could find fault with them : 
 and having so done, whatever indignation he ex- 
 cited in the reader must recoil on himself, as the 
 offensive passages will come out to have beeu his 
 own, not yours. You might even begin with loudly 
 condemning the words, or thoughts, imputed to 
 you, as if you retracted them — and then, as if you 
 turned to your book, and found you had said no 
 such thing there as what you was ready to retract, 
 the ridicule would be doubled on your adversary. 
 Something of this kind is tire most I would stoop 
 to : but I would take the utmost care not to betray 
 a grain of more anger than is implied in contempt 
 and ridicule. Fools can only revenge themselves by 
 provoking, for then they bring you to a level with 
 themselves. The good sense of your work will sup- 
 port it, and there is scarce a reason for defending 
 it, but by keeping up a controversy, to make it more 
 noticed : for the age is so idle and indifferent, that 
 few r objects strike, unless parties are formed for and 
 against them. I remember many years ago advising 
 some acquaintance of mine who were engaged in 
 the direction of the opera, to raise a competition 
 between two of their singers, and have papers writ- 
 
LETTERS. 
 
 103 
 
 ten pro and con — for then numbers would go to 
 clap and hiss the rivals respectively, who would not 
 go to be pleased with the music. 
 
 Dr. Lort was chaplain to the late archbishop, sir, 
 but I believe is not so to the present, nor do I know 
 whether at all connected with him. I do not even 
 know where Dr. Lort is, having seen him but once 
 the whole summer. I am acquainted with another 
 person, who I believe has some interest with the 
 present archbishop ; but I conclude that leave must 
 be asked to consult the particular books, as pro- 
 bably indiscriminate access could not be granted. 
 
 I have not a single correspondent left at Paris. 
 The abbe Barthelemi, with whom I was very inti- 
 mate, behaved most unhandsomely to me after ma- 
 dame du Deffand’s death ; when I had acted by him 
 in a manner that called for a very different return. 
 He could have been the most proper person to apply 
 to; but I cannot ask a favour of one to whom I 
 had done one, and who has been very ungrateful. 
 I might have an opportunity, perhaps, ere long, of 
 making the inquiry you desire, though the person 
 to whom I must apply is rather too great to employ ; 
 but if I can bring it about, I will ; for I should have 
 great pleasure to assist your pursuits, though, from 
 my long acquaintance with the world, I am very 
 diffident of making promises that are to be executed 
 by others, however sincerely I am myself, 
 
 Sir, your obedient, humble servant, 
 
 Hor. Walpole. 
 
104 
 
 BETTERS. 
 
 IX. 
 
 Strawberry-hill, Sept. 30, 1785. 
 As soon, sir, as I can see the lady my friend, who 
 is much acquainted with the archbishop, I will try 
 if she will ask his leave for you to see the books 
 you mention in his library, of which I will give her 
 the list. I did ask Mr. Cambridge where Dr. Lort 
 is : he told me, with the bishop of Chester, and on 
 an intended tour to the Lakes. I do not possess, 
 nor ever looked into, one of the books you specify ; 
 nor Mabillon’s Acta Sanctorum, nor O’Flaherty's 
 Ogygia. My reading has been very idle, and trifling, 
 and desultory ; not that, perhaps, it has not been 
 employed on authors as respectable as those you 
 want to consult, nor that I had not rather read the 
 Deeds of Sinners than Acta Sanctorum. I have no 
 reverence but for sensible books, and consequently 
 not for a great number; and had rather have read 
 fewer than I have than more. The rest may be 
 useful on certain points, as they happen now to be 
 to you, who, I am sure, would not read them for 
 general use and pleasure, and are a very different 
 kind of author. I shall like, I dare say, any thing 
 you do write ; but I am not overjoyed at your wading 
 into the history of dark ages, unless you use it as a 
 canvass, to be embroidered with your own opinions, 
 and episodes, and comparisons with more recent 
 times. That is a most entertaining kind of writing. 
 In general, I have seldom wasted time on the origin 
 of nations, unless for an opportunity of smiling at 
 
LETTERS. 
 
 105 
 
 the gravity of the author, or at the absurdity of the 
 manners of those ages ; for absurdity and bravery 
 compose almost all the anecdotes we have of them ; 
 except the accounts of what they never did, nor 
 thought of doing. 
 
 I have a real affection for Bishop Hoadley. He 
 stands with me in lieu of what are called The Fa- 
 thers ; and I am much obliged to you for offering 
 to lend me a book of his * ; but as my faith in him 
 and his doctrines has long been settled, I shall not 
 return to such grave studies, when I have so little 
 time left, and desire only to pass it tranquilly, and 
 without thinking of what I can neither propagate 
 nor correct. When youth made me sanguine, I 
 hoped mankind might be set right. Now that I am 
 very old, I sit down with this lazy maxim, that un- 
 less one could cure men of being fools, it is to no 
 purpose to cure them of any folly, as it is only 
 making room for some other. Self-interest is 
 thought to govern every man ; yet is it possible to 
 be less governed by self-interest than men are in 
 the aggregate? Do not thousands sacrifice even 
 their lives for single men ? Is not it an established 
 rule in France that every person should love every 
 king they have in his turn ? What government is 
 formed for general happiness? Where is not it 
 thought heresy by the majority to insinuate that 
 the felicity of one man ought not to be preferred to 
 that of millions ? Had not I better at sixty-eight 
 leave men to these preposterous notions, than re- 
 turn to bishop Hoadley, and sigh ? 
 
 * A collection of his small tracts and single sheets, pre- 
 sented by himself to speaker Onslow. 
 
 F 2 
 
LETTERS. 
 
 10G 
 
 Not but I have a heart-felt satisfaction when I 
 hear that a mind as liberal as 'his, and who has 
 dared to utter sacred truths, meets with approba- 
 tion and purchasers of his work. You must not, 
 however, flatter yourself, sir, that all your pur- 
 chasers are admirers. Some will buy your book, 
 because they have heard of opinions in it that of- 
 fend them, and because they want to find matter 
 in it for abusing you. Let them ; the more it is 
 discussed, the more strongly will your fame be 
 established. I commend you for scorning any arti- 
 fice to puff your book ; but you must allow me to 
 hope it will be attacked. 
 
 I have another satisfaction in the sale of your 
 book ; it will occasion a second edition. What if, 
 as you do not approve of confuting misquoters, you 
 simply printed a list of their false quotations, re- 
 ferring to the identic sentences, at the end of your 
 second edition. That will be preserving their in- 
 famy, which else would perish where it was born : 
 and perhaps would deter others from similar forge- 
 ries. If any rational opponent staggers you on any 
 opinion of yours, I would retract it ; and that would 
 be a second triumph. I am, perhaps, too imperti- 
 nent and forward with advice : it is, at least, a 
 proof of zeal ; and you are under no obligation to 
 follow my counsel. It is the weakness of old age, 
 to be apt to give advice; but I will fairly arm you 
 against myself, by confessing, that when I was young 
 I was not apt to take any. 
 
 Yours most sincerely, 
 
 Hor. Walpole. 
 
LETTERS. 
 
 107 
 
 X. 
 
 Strawberry-hill, Oct. 18, 1786. 
 
 I am much obliged to you, dear sir, for the notice, 
 and your kind intentions. I have various copies of 
 king Charles’s collection ; but the one you mention 
 is probably more curious, and what I should be very 
 glad to have ; and, if I can afford it, will give what- 
 ever shall be thought reasonable; for I would by no 
 means take advantage of the poor man’s ignorance 
 or necessity, and therefore should wish to have it 
 estimated by some connoisseur : and though the 
 notes may be foolish, they would not prejudice the 
 information I should like to get. I must go to town 
 on Friday, and will call on you : and if you cannot 
 be at home, be so good as to leave the MS. and I 
 will bring it back to you the next day, or Sunday, 
 as I return hither. 
 
 “ Yours sincerely, 
 
 Hor. Walpole. 
 
 XI. 
 
 Strawberry-hill, June 2Q, 1787. 
 
 Dear Sir, 
 
 Some time ago you said you would be so kind as to 
 give me a list of the writings of lord Elibank. 1 
 have a mind to complete my account of royal and 
 noble authors, for which I have amassed a great 
 
108 
 
 LETTERS. 
 
 number of additions, both of works and omitted 
 writers. I shall therefore be much obliged to yon, 
 if, without interrupting your own much more va- 
 luable writings, you can favour me with that list. 
 
 All 1 know of lord Elibank’s publications are the 
 following : 
 
 1. Inquiry into the Origin and Consequence of 
 the Public Debts. 
 
 2. Thoughts on Money, Circulation, and Paper 
 Currency. Edinb. 1758. 
 
 3. A pamphlet on the Scottish peerage, 1771. 
 I do not know the title. 
 
 I have a very imperfect memorandum, made long 
 ago, and which being only written with a pencil, 
 is almost effaced; so that all that remains legible 
 are these words, “ Lord Lyttelton’s correspondents, 
 Lord Elibank’s answer to”— — 
 
 I recollect that it alluded to some remarkable 
 anecdote ; but my memory grows superannuated, 
 and I cannot recover it. Have you any idea ? 
 
 I do not even know lord Elibank’s Christian 
 name ; was it Patrick ? 
 
 In 1778, 1 cut out of a newspaper almost a whole 
 column, containing an account of the death and 
 character of Patrick, lord Elibank ; and as he is 
 there described as a very aged man, l conclude it 
 was the lord I remember, who married the widow 
 of lord North and Grey, and was brother of Mr. 
 Alexander Murray, imprisoned by the house of 
 commons. 
 
 When I have the pleasure of seeing you here 
 (which I hope will be in about p fortnight, when I 
 shall be free from all engagements), I will, if you 
 care to see it, trouble you with a sight of my in- 
 
LETTERS. 
 
 109 
 
 tended supplement, to which, perhaps, you can con- 
 tribute some additions, as I think you told me. I 
 am in no haste, for I only intend to leave it behind 
 me ; and have actually put all the materials in order, 
 except the article of lord Elibank. I do not pretend 
 to show you any thing worthy of your curiosity, for 
 nothing is more trifling than my writings ; but I 
 am glad to lay you under a sort of debt of commu- 
 nication, in which I am sure of being greatly over- 
 paid. 
 
 I can tell you what is truly curious : I have a list 
 (over and above those whom I shall mention, being 
 dead) of at least thirty living authors and author- 
 esses. Would not one think this a literary age ? 
 As perhaps you was not aware of what a mass of 
 genius the house of lords is possessed — I ought 
 rather to say, the peerage of the three kingdoms, 
 and of all, except of two of the ladies (who are 
 five), the works are in print, I will show you the 
 catalogue ; nay, you shall have a copy, if you please, 
 lest so many illustrious names should be lost, when 
 I, their painful chronicler, am net alive to record 
 them. Nor is there an atom of vanity in that ex- 
 pression. Books of peerage are like the precious 
 spices that embalm corpses, and preserve the dead 
 for ages. — Adieu, dear sir. 
 
 Yours most sincerely, 
 
 Hor. Walpole 
 
no 
 
 LETTERS. 
 
 XII. 
 
 Strawberry-hill, August 14, 1788. 
 
 Dear Sir, 
 
 The new regulation of the post proves very incon- 
 venient to this little district. It arrives and departs 
 again in half an hour; so that having a visit when 
 I received your letter yesterday, I could not pos- 
 sibly answer it then ; nor can I write now expe- 
 ditiously, as for these thirteen days I have had a 
 third fit of the gout in my left arm and hand, and 
 can barely hold the paper. 
 
 Your intelligence of the jubilees to be celebrated 
 in Scotland * in honour of the revolution was wel- 
 come indeed. It is a favourable symptom of an age 
 when its festivals are founded on good sense and 
 liberality of sentiment, and not to perpetuate su- 
 perstition and slavery. Your countrymen, sir, have 
 proved their good sense too in their choice of a 
 poet. Your writings breathe the noble, generous 
 spirit congenial to the institution. Give me leave 
 to say, that it is very flattering to me to have the 
 Ode communicated to me. — I will not say, to be 
 consulted, for of that distinction I am not worthy; 
 I am not a poet ; and am sure cannot improve your 
 ideas, which you have expressed with propriety and 
 clearness, the necessary ingredients of an address 
 to a populous meeting, for I doubt our numerous 
 audiences are not arrived at Olympic taste enough 
 
 At Glasgow, it should have been. 
 
LETTERS. 
 
 Ill 
 
 to seize with enthusiasm the eccentric flights of 
 Pindar. You have taken a more rational road to 
 inspiration by adhering to the genuine topics of the 
 occasion : and you speak in so manly a style, that 
 I do not believe a more competent judge could 
 amend your poetry. I approve of it so much, that 
 if you commanded me to alter it, I would alter but 
 one word, and would insert but one more. In the 
 second stanza, for 
 
 Here ever gleam'd the patriot sword, 
 
 I would rather read. 
 
 Here ever flash'd, 
 
 as I think gleam d not forcible enough for the 
 thought, nor expressive enough of the vigorous ar- 
 dour of your heroes. In the third stanza, I think, 
 there wants a syllable, not literally, but to the ear ; 
 
 And slavery , with arts unbless’d. 
 
 Slavery, if pronounced as three syllables, does not 
 satisfy the fulness of harmony, and besides obliges 
 the tongue to dwell too strongly on ivith, which 
 ought not to occupy much accent. An epithet to 
 arts would make the whole line sonorous. 
 
 These are trifling criticisms of a trifling critic, 
 but they mark both my attention and satisfaction 
 with your ode. I must add, how beautifully is in- 
 troduced, innocent of blood! How ought that cir- 
 cumstance to be dwelt upon at the jubilee of the 
 revolution ! 
 
 I will tell you how more than occasionally the 
 mention of Pindar slipped into my pen. I have fre- 
 
LETTERS. 
 
 112 
 
 quently, and even yesterday, wished that some at- 
 tempt were made to ennoble our horse-races, par- 
 ticularly at Newmarket, by associating better arts 
 with the courses, as by contributions for odes, the 
 best of which should be rewarded by medals. Our 
 nobility would find their vanity gratified, for as the 
 pedigrees of their steeds would soon grow tiresome, 
 their own genealogies would replace them ; and in 
 the mean time poetry and medals would be im- 
 proved. Their lordships would have judgment 
 enough to know if their horse (which should be 
 the impress on one side) were not well executed; 
 and as I hold there is no being more difficult to 
 draw well than a horse, no bad artist could be em- 
 ployed. Such a beginning would lead further, and 
 the cups or plate for the prize might rise into beau- 
 tiful verses. But this is a vision ; and I may as 
 well go to bed and dream of any thing else. I do 
 not return the ode, which I flatter myself you 
 meant 1 should keep. 
 
 Your much obliged, humble servant, 
 
 Hor. Walpole. 
 
 P. S. I must not forget how difficult it is to write 
 to a given tune, especially with so much ease as 
 you have done; and nothing is more happy than 
 making November smile as May . 
 
LETTERS. 
 
 113 
 
 XIII. 
 
 Strawberry-hill, Oet. 13, 1788. 
 
 Dear Sir, 
 
 I am rather sorry to hear that you are going to be 
 the editor of another's work, who are so infinitely 
 better employed when composing yourself. How- 
 ever, as it will be on a branch of vertu that I love, 
 I comfort myself, from your taste and accuracy, 
 that it will be better executed than by any one 
 else. 
 
 I will execute your commissions, but you must 
 give me a little time. The gout has lamed my 
 fingers, and I cannot use them much at a time; 
 and I doubt it has made me a little indolent too. 
 Age, you may be sure, has not improved my sight ; 
 and Vertue’s MSS. are not only a heap of imme- 
 thodic confusion, but are written in so very dimi- 
 nutive a hand, that many years ago, when I col- 
 lected my Anecdotes from them, and had very 
 strong eyes, I was often forced to use a magnifying 
 glass. Should you be impatient, will you come and 
 search those MSS. yourself? next, will you come 
 next Sunday hither, and pass the whole day, if you 
 please, in the examination ? I do not recollect 
 three medals of my father. One 1 think was struck 
 by Natter, who was much patronised by my brother 
 sir Edward, and who also engraved two or three 
 seals of sir Robert's head. The consular figure, on 
 the reverse of the medal I mean, was intended for 
 Cicero, but I believe was copied from a statue be- 
 
114 
 
 LETTERS. 
 
 longing to the late earl of Leicester at Holkham ; 
 and which, if I do not mistake at this distance of 
 time, is called Lucius Antonins. I do not know 
 that any medal of my father was struck on any par- 
 ticular occasion. That 1 mention, and Dassier’s, 
 were honorary, as of a considerable person ; and 
 his being prime minister might have a little share 
 in the compliment. Of Dassier I know no more 
 than I have said in the Anecdotes of Painting. I 
 am ignorant who has the medal of the duchess of 
 Portsmouth ; perhaps you might learn of Mr. ** *, 
 who lives in Somerset-house. He had a great col- 
 lection of modern medals, but sold them. Perhaps 
 the duke of Devonshire has the medal in question ; 
 you might learn of Dr. Lort, or I can ask him. Are 
 there no modern medals in Dr. Hunter’s collection ? 
 These are all the answers I am ready to give to your 
 queries at present. 
 
 Yours most sincerely, 
 
 Hor. Walpole. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 Strawberry-hill, Aug. 14, 1789. 
 
 1 must certainly have expressed myself very awk- 
 wardly, dear sir, if you conceived that I meant the 
 slightest censure on your book ; much less on your 
 manner of treating it, which is able, and clear, and 
 demonstrative as possible. No : it was myself, my 
 age, my want of apprehension and memory, and my 
 total ignorance of the subject, which I intended to 
 blame. I never did taste or study the very ancient 
 
LETTERS. 
 
 115 
 
 histories of nations. I never had a good memory 
 for names of persons, regions, places, which no 
 specific circumstances concurred to make me re- 
 member: and now at seventy-two, when, as is 
 common, I forget numbers of names most familiar 
 to me, is it possible I should read with pleasure any 
 work that consists of a vocabulary totally new to 
 me ? Many years ago, when my faculties were 
 much less impaired, I was forced to quit Dow’s 
 History of Indostan, because the Indian names 
 made so little impression on me, that I went back- 
 ward instead of forward ; and was every minute 
 reverting to the former page, to find about whom I 
 w as reading. 
 
 Your book was a still more laborious task to me, 
 for it contains such a series of argumentation, that 
 it demanded a double effort from a weak, old head ; 
 and when I had made myself master of a deduc- 
 tion, I forgot it the next day, and had my pains to 
 renew. 
 
 These defects have for some time been so obvious 
 to me, that I never read now but the most trifling 
 books, having often said that, at the very end of 
 life, it is very useless to be improving one’s stock of 
 knowledge, great or small, for the next world. 
 
 Thus, sir, all I have said in my last letter, or in 
 this, is an encomium on your work, not a censure 
 or criticism. It w T ould be hard on you indeed, if 
 my incapacity detracted from your merit. 
 
 Your arguments in defence of works of science, 
 and deep disquisition, are most just ; and I am sure 
 I have neither power nor disposition to answer 
 them. You have treated your matter as it ought 
 
LETTERS. 
 
 116 
 
 to be treated. Profound men, or conversant in the 
 subject, like Mr. * * *, will be pleased with it, for 
 the very reasons that made it difficult to me. If 
 sir Isaac Newton had written a fairy tale, I should 
 have swallowed it eagerly; but do you imagine, sir, 
 that, idle as I am, I am idiot enough to think that 
 sir Isaac had better have amused me, for half an 
 hour, than enlightened mankind, and all ages ? 
 
 I was so fair as to confess to you, that your work 
 was above me, and did not divert me. You was too 
 candid to take that ill ; and must have been con- 
 tent with silently thinking me very silly ; and I am 
 too candid to condemn any man for thinking of me 
 as I deserve. I am only sorry when I do deserve a 
 disadvantageous character. 
 
 Nay, sir, you condescend, after all, to ask my 
 opinion of the best way of treating antiquities ; and 
 by the context I suppose you mean how to make 
 them entertaining. I cannot answer you in one 
 word, because there are two ways, as there are two 
 sorts of readers. I should therefore say ; to please 
 antiquaries of judgment, as you have treated them, 
 with arguments and proofs: but if you would adapt 
 antiquities to the taste of those who read only to 
 be diverted, not to be instructed, the nostrum is 
 very easy and short. You must divert them, in the 
 true sense of the word diverto ; you must turn them 
 out of the way ; you must treat them with digres- 
 sions, nothing, or very little, to the purpose. Yet, 
 easy as I call this recipe, you, I believe, would find 
 it more difficult to execute than the indefatigable 
 industry you have employed to penetrate chaos and 
 extract truth. There have been professors who 
 
LETTERS. 
 
 117 
 
 have engaged to adapt all kinds of knowledge to the 
 meanest capacities. I doubt their success ; at least 
 on me. However, you need not despair ; all readers 
 are not so dull and superannuated as, dear sir. 
 Your very humble servant, 
 
 and sincere admirer, 
 
 Hor. Walpole. 
 
 XV. 
 
 Strawberry-hill, Aug. 19, J789> 
 
 Dear Sir, 
 
 I will not use many words, but enough I hope to 
 convince you that I meant no irony in my last. All 
 I said of you, and of myself, was very sincere. It 
 is my true opinion that your understanding is one 
 of the strongest, most manly, and clearest, I ever 
 knew ; and as I hold my own to be of a very infe- 
 rior kind, and know it to be incapable of all sound 
 deep application to all abstract science and ab- 
 stract speculation, I should have been foolish and 
 very partial, if I had attempted to sneer at you or 
 your pursuits. Mine have always been light, tri- 
 lling, and tended to nothing but my casual amuse- 
 ment — I will not say, without a little vain ambi- 
 tion of showing some parts, but never with indus- 
 try sufficient to make me apply them to any thing 
 solid. My studies, if they could be called so, and 
 my productions, were alike desultory. In my latter 
 age I discovered the futility both of my objects and 
 writings — I felt how insignificant is the reputation 
 
LETTERS. 
 
 118 
 
 of an author of mediocrity; and that, being no ge- 
 nius*, I only added one name more to a list of 
 writers ; but had told the world nothing but what 
 it could as well be without. These reflections were 
 the best proofs of my sense ; and when I could see 
 through my own vanity, there is less wonder at my 
 discovering that such talents, as I might have had, 
 are impaired at seventy-two. Being just to myself, 
 I am not such a coxcomb as to be unjust to you. 
 Nor did I cover any irony towards you in the opi- 
 nion I gave you of making deep writings palatable 
 to the mass of readers. Examine my words, and I 
 am sure you will find that, if there was any thing 
 ironic in my meaning, it was levelled at your read- 
 ers, not at you. It is my opinion that whoever 
 wishes to be read by many, if his subject is weighty 
 and solid, he must treat the majority with more 
 than is to his purpose. Do not you believe that 
 twenty name Lucretius, because of the poetic com- 
 mencements of his books, for five that wade through 
 his philosophy ? 
 
 I promised to say but little — and if I have ex- 
 plained myself clearly, I have said enough. It is 
 not my character to be a flatterer. I do most sin- 
 cerely think you capable of great things ; and 1 
 should be a pitiful knave if I told you so, unless it 
 was my opinion. And what end could it answer to 
 me ? Your course is but beginning — mine is al- 
 most terminated. I do not want you to throw a 
 
 * Too modest. The author of the Mysterious Mother 
 was undoubtedly a man of genius — as well as of wit and 
 genuine taste. 
 
LETTERS. 
 
 119 
 
 few daisies on my grave * ; and if you make the 
 figure I augur you will, 1 shall not be a witness to 
 it. Adieu ! Dear sir, pray believe me, what I am, 
 Yours most sincerely, 
 
 Hor. Walpole. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 Berkeley-square, Dec. 15, 1789. 
 
 Dear Sir, 
 
 You will probably have been surprised at not hear” 
 ing from me so long. Indeed, I hope you will have 
 been so, for as it has been occasioned bv no volun- 
 tary neglect, I had rather you should have re- 
 proached me in your own mind, than have been 
 thoughtless of me and indifferent. 
 
 The truth is, that between great misfortunes, 
 accidents, and illness, I have passed six melancholy 
 months. I have lost two of my nearest and most 
 beloved relations, lady Dysart and lord Waldegrave. 
 Her illness terminated but in September; his, be- 
 sides the grievous loss of him, left me in the great- 
 est anxiety for his widow, who thought herself at 
 the end of her pregnancy, but was not delivered 
 
 * sine pondere terram, 
 
 Spirantesque crocos, et in urna perpetuum ver. 
 
 Gentle spirit, the interested arts and insinuations that 
 misled thy two last years of extreme old age, when even 
 talents glimmer ere they die, shall never injure the im- 
 pressions of gratitude ! 
 
120 
 
 LETTERS. 
 
 till above two months after his deaths a fortnight 
 ago. 
 
 In the midst of these distresses I had two very 
 bad falls in June and September, by which I bruised 
 myself exceedingly, and the last of which brought 
 on a fit of the gout. In such situations I was very 
 incapable of entertaining anybody, or even of being 
 entertained, and saw few but of my own unhappy 
 family; or I should have asked the favour of your 
 company at Strawberry- hill. 
 
 I am now pretty Well, and came to town but to- 
 day, when I take the first moment of telling you so, 
 that, whenever you come to London, I may have a 
 chance of having the pleasure of seeing you. I am, 
 with sincere regard and esteem, dear sir, 
 
 Your most obedient, humble servant, 
 
 Hor. Walpole. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 WRITTEN SOON AFTER HE HAD, BY THE DEATH 
 OF HIS NEPHEW, SUCCEEDED TO THE TITLE 
 OF EARL OF ORFOltf). 
 
 Berkeley-square, Dec. 26 , J791- 
 
 Dear Sir, 
 
 As I am sure of the sincerity of your congratula- 
 tions, I feel much obliged by them ; though what 
 has happened destroys my tranquillity ; and if what 
 the world reckons advantages could compensate the 
 loss of peace and ease, would ill indemnify me, even 
 
LETTERS. 
 
 121 
 
 by them. A small estate, loaded with debt, and of 
 which I do not understand the management, and 
 am too old to learn ; a source of law-suits amongst 
 my near relations, though not affecting me ; end- 
 less conversations with lawyers ; and packets of 
 letters every day to read and answer : all this 
 weight of business is too much for the rag of life 
 that yet hangs about me ; and was preceded by 
 three weeks of anxiety about my unfortunate ne- 
 phew, and a daily correspondence with physicians, 
 and mad doctors, calling upon me when I had been 
 out of order ever since July : such a mass of trou- 
 bles made me very seriously ill for some days, and 
 has left me, and still keeps me, so weak and dispi- 
 rited, that if I shall not soon be able to get some 
 repose, my poor head or body will not be able to 
 resist. For the empty title, I trust you do not sup- 
 pose it any thing but an encumbrance, by larding 
 my busy mornings with idle visits of interruption, 
 and which, when I am able to go out, I shall be 
 forced to return. Surely no man of seventy-four, 
 unless superannuated, can have the smallest plea- 
 sure in sitting at home in his own room, as I al- 
 ways do, and being called by a new name. 
 
 It will seem personal, and ungrateful too, to have 
 said so much about my own trist situation, and not 
 to have yet thanked you, sir, for your kind and 
 flattering offer of letting me read what you have 
 finished of your history; but it was necessary to 
 expose my condition to you, before I could venture 
 to accept your proposal, when I am so utterly inca- 
 pable of giving a quarter of an hour at a time to 
 what, I know by my acquaintance with your works, 
 will demand all my attention, if I wish to reap the 
 
 G 
 
122 
 
 LETTERS. 
 
 pleasure they are formed to give me. It is most 
 true that, for these seven weeks, I have not read 
 seven pages, but letters, states of accounts, cases to 
 be laid before lawyers, accounts of farms, &c. &c. 
 and those subject to mortgages. Thus are my 
 mornings occupied : in an evening my relations, 
 and a very few friends, come to me ; and when 
 they are gone, I have about an hour, to midnight, 
 to write answers to letters for the next day's post, 
 which I had not time to do in the morning. This 
 is actually my case now ; I happened to be quitted 
 at ten o’clock, and I would not lose the opportunity 
 of thanking you, not knowing when 1 could com- 
 mand another hour. 
 
 I would by no means be understood to decline 
 your obliging offer, sir. On the contrary, I accept 
 it joyfully, if you can trust me with your manu- 
 script for a little time, should I have leisure to 
 read it but by small snatches, which would be 
 wronging, and would break all connexion in my 
 
 head. Criticism you are* — and 
 
 to read critically is far beyond my present power. 
 Can a scrivener, or a scrivener's hearer, be a judge 
 of composition, style, profound reasoning, and new 
 lights, and discoveries, &c.? But my weary hand 
 and breast must finish. May I ask the favour of 
 your calling upon me any morning when you shall 
 happen to come to town ? you will find the new 7 old 
 lord exactly the same admirer of yours, and your 
 obedient humble servant, 
 
 Hor. Walpole. 
 
 [It was a considerable time before he would sign 
 * An overstrained compliment is omitted. 
 
LETTERS. 123 
 
 Orfcrd , or could even hear his style or title with- 
 out hesitation.] 
 
 XVIH. 
 
 Berkeley-square, April 11, 1794. 
 
 Dear Sir, 
 
 1 have carefully gone through your MSS. with 
 great delight*: and, with the few trifling correc- 
 tions that I have found occasion to make, I shall 
 be ready to restore them to you whenever it shall 
 be convenient to you to call for them ; for I own I 
 And them too valuable to be trusted to any other 
 hand. 
 
 As I hope I am now able to begin to take the 
 air, I beg you not to call between eleven and two, 
 when you would not be likely to And me at home. 
 
 Your much obliged humble servant, 
 
 Orford. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 Berkeley-square, May 15, 1794. 
 
 Dear Sir, 
 
 My house is so full of pictures, that I could not 
 place a new one without displacing some other ; 
 nor is that my chief objection ; I am really much 
 too old now to be hunting for what I may have few 
 moments to possess ; and as the possessor of the 
 picture you mention values it highly, I am not 
 
LETTERS. 
 
 124 
 
 tempted to visit what would probably be very dear. 
 The lady represented does not strike my memory 
 as a person about whom I have any knowledge, or 
 curiosity; and I own I have been so often drawn 
 to go after pictures that were merely ancient, that 
 now , when I am so old, and very infirm, and go 
 out very little, you will excuse me if I do not wait 
 on you, though much obliged to you for your pro- 
 posal. I cannot go up and down stairs without 
 being led by a servant. It is tempus abire for me : 
 lust satis . 
 
 Yours most sincerely, 
 
 Orford. 
 
EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS- 
 
 125 
 
 EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS. 
 
 I. Farce. 
 
 “ Mr. O’Keefe has brought our audiences to bear 
 with extravagance ; and were there not such irre- 
 sistible humour in his utmost daring, it would be 
 impossible to deny that he has passed even beyond 
 the limits of nonsense — but I confine this approba- 
 tion to his Agreeable Surprise. In his other pieces 
 there is much more untempered nonsense than hu- 
 mour. Even that favourite performance I wondered 
 that Mr. Colrnan dared to produce.*’ 
 
 II. Dramatic Characters. 
 
 “ Your remark, that a piece full of marked charac- 
 ters would be void of nature, is most just. This is 
 so strongly my opinion, that I thought it a great 
 fault in Miss Burney’s Cecilia, though it has a 
 thousand other beauties, that she has laboured far 
 too much to make all her personages talk always in 
 character : whereas, in the present refined or de- 
 praved state of human nature, most people en- 
 deavour to conceal their real character, not to dis- 
 play it. A professional man, as a pedantic fellow 
 
EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS. 
 
 126 
 
 of a college, or a seaman, has a characteristic dia- 
 lect ; bat that is very different from continually 
 letting out his ruling passion.” 
 
 III. Song-writing. 
 
 “ I have no more talent for writing a song, than 
 for writing an ode like Dryden’s or Gray’s. It is a 
 talent per se , and given, like every other branch of 
 genius, by Nature alone. Poor Shenstone was la- 
 bouring through his whole life to write a perfect 
 song — and, in my opinion at least, never succeeded 
 — not better than Pope did in a St. Ceciliau ode. 
 I doubt not whether we have not gone a long, long 
 way beyond the possibility of writing a good song. 
 All the words in the language have been so often 
 employed on simple images (without which a song 
 cannot be good), and such reams of bad verses 
 have been produced in that kind, that I question 
 whether true simplicity itself could please now. 
 At least, we are not likely to have any such thing. 
 Our present choir of poetic virgins write in the 
 other extreme. They colour their compositions so 
 highly with choice and dainty phrases, that their 
 own dresses are not more fantastic and romantic. 
 Their nightingales make as many divisions as Italian 
 singers. — But this is wandering from the subject : 
 and while I only meant to tell you what 1 could not 
 do myself, I am telling you what others do ill.” 
 
EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS. 
 
 127 
 
 IV. Poetic Epochs. 
 
 i( I will yet hazard one other opinion, though re- 
 lative to composition in general. There are two 
 periods favourable to poets — a rude age, when a 
 genius may hazard any thing, and when nothing 
 has been forestalled. The other is, when, after 
 ages of barbarism and incorrection, a master or two 
 produce models formed by purity and taste. Virgil, 
 Horace, Boileau, Corneille, Racine, Pope, exploded 
 the licentiousness that reigned before them. What 
 happened ? Nobody dared to write in contradiction 
 to the severity established ; and very few had the 
 abilities to rival their masters. Insipidity ensues : 
 — novelty is dangerous and bombast usurps the 
 throne, which had been debased by a race of 
 Faineants.” 
 
 V. Criticism. 
 
 “ It is prudent to consult others before one ven- 
 tures on publication — but every single person is as 
 liable to be erroneous as an author. An elderly 
 man, as he gains experience, acquires prejudices 
 too : nay, old age has generally two faults — it is 
 too quick-sighted into the faults of the time being, 
 and too blind to the faults that reigned in his own 
 youth ; which having partaken of, or having ad- 
 mired, though injudiciously, he recollects with com- 
 plaisance.” 
 
128 
 
 EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS. 
 
 VI. Dramatic Composition. 
 
 “ I confess, too, that there must be two distinct 
 views in writers for the stage ; one of which is 
 more allowable to them than to other authors. 
 The one is durable fame — the other, peculiar to 
 dramat ic authors, the view of writing to the present 
 taste , and perhaps, as you say, to the level of the 
 audience. I do not mean for the sake of profit — 
 but even high comedy must risk a little of its im- 
 mortality by consulting the ruling taste. And 
 thence a comedy always loses some of its beauties, 
 the transient— and some of its intelligibility. Like 
 its harsher sister, Satire, many of its allusions must 
 vanish, as the objects it aims at correcting cease to 
 be in vogue — and perhaps that cessation, the na- 
 tural death of fashion, is often ascribed by an author 
 to his own reproofs. Ladies would have left off 
 patching on the Whig or Tory side of their face, 
 though Mr. Addison had not written his excellent 
 Spectator. Probably even they who might be cor- 
 rected by his reprimand adopted some new di- 
 stinction as ridiculous; not discovering that his 
 satire was levelled at their partial animosity, and 
 not at the mode of placing their patches — for, un- 
 fortunately, as the world cannot be cured of being 
 foolish, a preacher who eradicates one folly does 
 but make room for some other. 
 
 END OF THE LETTERS. 
 
NARRATIVE 
 
 Of what passed relative jto 
 
 THE QUARREL OF 
 MR. DAVID HUME 
 
 AND 
 
 JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU, 
 
 AS FAR AS MR. HORACE WALPOLE WAS CONCERNED 
 
 IN IT. 
 
 G 2 
 
The Volume is yet deficient in its necessary quan- 
 tity — another “ Reminiscences” the reader will 
 not expect — but the “ Narrative’ ’ which follows, 
 partakes so much of the same materiel , although in 
 a very different tone, and is so strikingly character- 
 istic not only of Rousseau, but of our Author, that 
 the Editor feels no hesitation in selecting it for the 
 entertainment of his readers. 
 
 May, 1819. 
 
NARRATIVE, &c. 
 
 I went to Paris in September, 1765. Mr. Hume 
 was there, secretary to the English ambassador, 
 the earl of Hertford. About that dme the curate 
 of Motiers, in Switzerland, had excited the mob 
 against Rousseau, and it was no longer safe for 
 him to stay in that country. He petitioned the 
 magistrates of the place to imprison him, affirming 
 that he was troubled with a rupture, and in so bad 
 a state of health that it was impossible for him to 
 travel. There was no law in Switzerland against 
 ruptures, and the magistrates could not comply 
 with his request. Mr. Hume was desired by some 
 friends of Rousseau to procure him a retreat in 
 England, aud undertook it zealously. He spoke to 
 me, and said, he had thoughts of obtaining per- 
 mission for him to live in Richmond new park. I 
 said, an old groom, that had been servant of my 
 father, was one of the keepers there, had a com- 
 fortable little lodge in a retired part of that park, 
 and I could answer for procuring a lodging there. 
 We afterwards recollected that lord Bute was ranger 
 
132 
 
 NARRATIVE 
 
 of the park, and might not care to have a man who 
 had given such offence by his writings to pious per- 
 sons, appear to be particularly under his protection ; 
 on which we dropped that idea. Sir Gilbert Elliot 
 was then at Paris, and going to England : to him 
 Mr. Hume applied to look out for some solitary 
 habitation for Rousseau, as the latter had desired. 
 
 The king of Prussia, hearing that Rousseau could 
 not remain in Switzerland, had offered him a re- 
 treat in his dominions, which Rousseau declined. 
 It happened that I was one evening at Madame 
 Geoffrin’s in a mixed company, where the conver- 
 sation turned on this refusal, and many instances 
 were quoted of Rousseau’s affected singularities, 
 and of his projects to make himself celebrated by- 
 courting persecution. I dropped two or three 
 things, that diverted the company, of whom mon- 
 sieur Helvetius was cue. When I went home, I 
 reduced those thoughts into a little letter from the 
 king of Prussia to Rousseau*, and dining the next 
 
 * The letter was as follows : 
 
 “ Le Rot de Prusse ct Mons. Rousseau. 
 
 Mon ehere Jean Jaques, 
 
 “ Vous avez renonc£ a Geneve votrepatrie; vous vous 
 ctes fait ehasser de la Suisse, pays tant vante dans vos 
 ecrits ; la France vous a decrete. 
 
 “ Venez done chez moi : j’admire vos talents; je m’a- 
 muse de vos reveries, qui (soit dit en passant) vous occu- 
 pent trop, et trop long terns. II faut a la fin 6tre sage et 
 heureux. Vous avez fait assez parler de vous par des sin- 
 gularity peu convenables k un veritable grand homme. 
 Demontrez a vos ennemis que vous pouvez avoir quelque- 
 fois le sens commun : cela les fachera, sans vous faire tort. 
 Mes etats vous offrent une retraite paisible; je vous veux 
 
CONCERNING ROUSSEAU. 
 
 133 
 
 day with M. Helvetius, I showed it to him. He 
 was much diverted with it, and pointed out one or 
 two faults in the French, which I am far from pre- 
 tending to write correctly. A day or tw T o after- 
 wards I showed it to two or three persons at ma- 
 dame de Rochfort’s, who were all pleased with it, 
 among whom the due de Nivernois proposed the 
 alteration of one verb. 1 showed the letter too to 
 madame du Deffand, and she desired to communi- 
 cate it to the president Henault, and he changed 
 the construction of the last phrase, though the 
 thought remained exactly the same. Madame de 
 Jonsac, the president’s niece, said, if I had a mind 
 it should appear, she would disperse it without let- 
 ting the author be known. I replied, No, it had 
 never been intended for the public, was a private 
 piece of pleasantry, and I had no mind it should 
 be talked of. One night at madame du Deffand’s, 
 the latter desired me to read it to madame la mare- 
 chale de Mirepoix, who liked it so much, that she 
 insisted upon having a copy ; and this, as far as I 
 can remember, was the first occasion of the dis- 
 persion. 
 
 du bien, et je vous en ferai, si vous le trouvez bon. Mala 
 si vous vous obstiniez a rejetter mon secours, attendez 
 vous que je ne le dirai a personne. Si vous persistez a vous 
 creuser l’esprit pour trouver de nouveaux malheurs, chois- 
 issez les tels que vous voudrez. Je suis roi, je puis vous en 
 procurer au gre de vos souhaits ; et ce qui surement ne 
 vous arrivera pas vis a vis de vos ennemis, je cesserai de 
 vous persecuter quand vous cesserez de mettre votre gloire 
 a l’etre. 
 
 “ Votre bon ami, 
 
 « FREDERIC.’* 
 
NARRATIVE 
 
 134 
 
 I have recounted circumstantially the trifling in- 
 cidents of the corrections of the letter, because they 
 were afterwards most unjustly the occasion of the 
 letter being imputed to one who had not the 
 smallest share in it, and who was aspersed from 
 private pique. As soon as the letter made a noise, 
 I was so afraid of affecting to write French better 
 than I could, that I mentioned every where, and 
 particularly to M. Diderot at baron Holbach’s, that 
 the letter had been corrected, though J did not tell 
 by whom, for fear of involving others in a dispute ; 
 but i never, as M. D'Alembert has falsely asserted, 
 avowed that I had had any assistance in the com- 
 position, which would have been an untruth. This 
 attention of not committing others, has since most 
 absurdly been complained of by D’Alembert. Has 
 he set his name to every thing he has written ? Do 
 his principles lead him to betray every thing that 
 has passed in confidence between him and others ? 
 But I shall unmask his motives, and detect his 
 spleen. He had formerly been a great friend of 
 madame clu Deffand. She had brought to Paris a 
 poor young gentlewoman, a mademoiselle de L’Es- 
 pinasse, who lived with her as a companion. They 
 had quarrelled (I neither know nor care about what) 
 some time before I came to Paris, and had parted. 
 Mademoiselle de L’Espinasse had talents, drew 
 company and authors about her, and of the latter, 
 D’Alembert was the most assiduous ; and a total 
 coolness ensued between him and madame du Def- 
 fand. The latter soon after my arrival had shown 
 me great distinctions and kindness. Mr. Hume 
 proposed to carry me to mademoiselle de L* Espi- 
 nasse, where I might be sure of seeing D’Alembert. 
 
CONCERNING ROUSSEAU. 135 
 
 I said, I had not the honour of knowing mademoi- 
 selle de L'E&pinasse : that madame du Deffand had 
 been remarkably good to me, and as I understood 
 they did not love one another, I did not care to 
 disoblige madame du Deffand, nor to be involved in 
 a quarrel with which I had nothing to do ; and for 
 monsieur D'Alembert, I was mighty indifferent 
 about seeing him ; that it was not my custom to 
 seek authors, who are a conceited troublesome set 
 of people, and that I was not come to Paris to pay 
 homage to their vanity. This was by no means le- 
 velled particularly at D'Alembert, of whom I knew 
 nothing, but so much my way of thinking, that in 
 seven months and a half that I was at Paris, I 
 would visit but two authors, whom I infinitely pre- 
 ferred to all the rest, which were the younger Cre- 
 billon and monsieur Buffon, the latter of whom is 
 one of the most amiable, modest, humane men I 
 ever knew. This neglect of D’Alembert and his 
 friend, and my attachment to madame du Deffand, 
 was not to be forgiven ; and 1 am glad he did not 
 forgive it, as it drew him to expose his peevish 
 spite. 
 
 Mr. Hume remained some time longer at Paris; 
 and though he lodged in the same hotel with me, 
 I declare, and Mr. Crawfurd is my witness, that I 
 never showed or mentioned the king of Prussia’s 
 letter to him. 
 
 In the mean time, a passport had been obtained 
 for Rousseau ; and notwithstanding he was inca- 
 pable of travelling, he came to Paris in his Arme- 
 nian habit, which he had worn some time, as he 
 said, to conceal his rupture. He was lodged by the 
 prince of Conti in the Temple ; several persons ob- 
 
NARRATIVE 
 
 136 
 
 tained his permission to visit him, though he made 
 it a great favour, and yet he was so good as to in- 
 dulge the curiosity of the multitude, by often walk- 
 ing in the public walks, where the singularity of 
 his dress prevented his escaping their eyes. He 
 staid a fortnight, till the parliament who had 
 passed a decree against him began to complain of 
 his residence in their jurisdiction. On their mur- 
 murs, the ministers alleged that the passport had 
 been granted merely to facilitate his journey to 
 England, and was not understood to extend beyond 
 two or three days. The duchess of Choiseul told 
 me, that the duke her husband was very angry that 
 his indulgence had been abused, and at Rousseau\s 
 public exhibition of himself. I said, I hoped the 
 duke would excuse Rousseau’s delay, as I knew he 
 had staid m complaisance to Mr. Hume, who had 
 not been ready to depart. She replied, “ Then he 
 paid more deference to friendship than to obe- 
 dience.” Mr. Hume and Rousseau set out for 
 England. They had not been there many days be- 
 fore accounts were written from thence to Paris of 
 Rousseau's vanity and extravagant folly; as of his 
 complaining to Mr. Hume one afternoon that few 
 persons had been to see him that day; and of his 
 refusing to settle in a gentleman's family, because 
 the latter would not admit Rousseau’s housekeeper 
 to dine with his wife. I pitied Mr. Hume, and 
 thought, as I had done before, that he would be 
 heartily sick of his charge ; but Mr. Hume was 
 beyond measure attached to him, and thought he 
 could not do too much to please him and compen- 
 sate for his past misfortunes. 
 
 Some few days before 1 left Paris, I went to ma- 
 
CONCERNING ROUSSEAU. _ 137 
 
 dame Geoffrin ; she was writing in her closet : in 
 the cabinet I found two persons, one of whom was 
 talking with much warmth, and in the style in 
 fashion, on religion. By the turn of his conversa- 
 tion, and by what I had heard of his person, I con- 
 cluded this was D’Alembert. It was. I walked 
 about the room, till madame Geoffrin came to us. 
 D'Alembert went away, and this was the only time 
 I saw him. 
 
 The very day before I set out, I was showed in 
 an English newspaper, Rousseau's ridiculous letter 
 to the printer, in which he complains with so much 
 bitterness of the letter of the king of Prussia. Be- 
 fore I went to bed, I wrote a letter to Rousseau, 
 under the name of his own Emile, to laugh at his 
 folly; but on reflection I suppressed this, as I had 
 done a second letter in the name of the king of 
 Prussia, in which I foretold the variety of events 
 which would happen in England to interfere witli 
 the noise which Rousseau hoped to make there, 
 which would occasion his being forgotten and 
 neglected, and which consequently would soon 
 make him disgusted with our country. These 
 events were, politics, Mr. Pitt’s return to power, 
 horse-races, elections, &c. all easily foreseen, and 
 which did happen of course, and which did contri- 
 bute to make Rousseau weary of the solitude 
 which he pretended to seek, which he had found, 
 and which he could not bear. 
 
 After I came to England, Mr. Hume told me he 
 had solicited Mr. Conway, one of the secretaries of 
 state, to obtain for Rousseau from the king a pen- 
 sion of an hundred pounds a year. Mr. Conway 
 
NARRATIVE 
 
 138 
 
 asked, and the king consented to it; but, in consi- 
 deration of Rousseau’s obnoxious writings, his ma- 
 jesty desired the pension should be a secret. Rous- 
 seau wished to have it public, and had not yielded 
 then to receive it in a private manner. Afterwards 
 followed Rousseau’s extravagant quarrel with Mr. 
 Hume, in the course of which Mr. Hume begged 
 me to press Mr. Conway to obtain the pension in 
 the way which would please Rousseau most. I 
 willingly undertook it, urged Mr. Conway to pursue 
 it, which he promised me to do; but I told Mr. 
 Hume that he must by no means let Rousseau 
 know that I had any share in it, as he probably 
 would not care to owe it to me. 
 
 Then arrived Rousseau’s long absurd letter to 
 Mr. Hume, which most people in England, and I 
 among the rest, thought was such an answer to 
 itself, that Mr. Hume had no occasion to vindicate 
 himself from the imputations contained in it. The 
 gens de lettres at Paris, who aim at being an order , 
 and who in default of parts raise a dust by their 
 squabbles, were of a different opinion, and pressed 
 Mr. Hume to publish on the occasion. Mr. Hume 
 however declared he was convinced by the argu- 
 ments of his friends in England, and would not en- 
 gage in a controversy. Lord Mansfield told me, he 
 was glad to hear I was of his opinion, and had dis- 
 suaded Mr. Hume from publishing. Indeed I was 
 convinced he did not intend it : and when he came 
 to me one morning, and desired I would give him 
 a letter under my hand to show to his friends, dis- 
 culpating him from having been privy to the king 
 of Prussia’s letter, I willingly consented, and wrote 
 
CONCERNING ROUSSEAU* 139 
 
 one, which I gave him, and the beginning of which 
 proved how strong my opinion was against his 
 publishing. 
 
 I am sorry to say, that on this occasion Mr. Hume 
 did not act quite fairly by me. In the beginning of 
 my letter, I laughed at his learned friends, who 
 wished him to publish, which, as I told him, was 
 only to gratify their own spleen to Rousseau. I 
 had no spleen to him, I had laughed at his affecta-v 
 tion, but had tried to serve him ; and above all 
 things, I despised the childish quarrels of pedants 
 and pretended philosophers. This commencement 
 of my letter was therefore a dissuasive against 
 printing. Could I imagine that Mr. Hume would 
 make use of part of my letter, and suffer it to be 
 printed — and even without asking my consent ? I 
 had told him he might do what he pleased with it : 
 but when he had desired it only to show, and when 
 it advised him not to publish, could my words 
 imply a permission to print my letter, and give it 
 to the public as if I approved his printing. And I 
 repeat, it again : was he at liberty to do this with- 
 out asking and obtaining my consent ? It is very 
 true, I heartily despised Rousseau's ingratitude to 
 Mr. Hume; but had I thought my letter would 
 have been published, I should not have expressed 
 my feeling in such harsh terms as a thorough con- 
 tempt — at least I should, have particularized the 
 cause of that contempt, because the superiority and 
 excellence of Rousseau's genius ought not to be 
 confounded with his defects. Nor should I have 
 treated him with the same indifference as I should 
 the present gens de lettres at Paris, the mushrooms 
 of the moment. But Mr. Hume was penetrated 
 
140 
 
 NARRATIVE 
 
 with respect for them, and not to wound their vain 
 and sensitive ears, suppressed the commencement 
 of my letter, and in that mangled form suffered 
 them to publish it. When it was published, he 
 made an apology to me : his letters and my answers 
 I shall annex to this narrative. 
 
 In consequence however of my contempt of con- 
 troversy, with a proper scorn of D’Alembert’s wo- 
 manish motives, and in tenderness to Mr. Hume, I 
 forbore to expose D’Alembert as he deserved. The 
 little insects produced by this quarrel kept it up for 
 some time in print, and Freron, who exists on such 
 sour nutriment, attacked me in one of his journals, 
 which to this hour I never saw ; nor so much as 
 heard of, till I was informed from Paris that the 
 duchess of Choiseul obliged him to make a public 
 retractation, and, as well as the duke, was much 
 incensed against D’Alembert, madame du Deffand 
 being the duchess's particular friend. I imme- 
 diately wrote to Paris, to beg the duchess would 
 suffer Freron and D'Alembert, or any of the tribe, 
 to write what they pleased, and get what money 
 they could by abusing me. 
 
 Rousseau remained for some months longer in 
 Derbyshire, in a cottage near Mr. Davenport — but 
 in the spring Rousseau and his housekeeper sud- 
 denly departed. The post-master where he hired 
 horses told him, Mr. Davenport would be much 
 concerned at being quitted so abruptly. Rousseau 
 replied, he took that method not to shock Mr. Da- 
 venport by his complaints. — However, he left a 
 letter behind him for this last benefactor, not much 
 inferior in reproaches to the one he had addressed 
 to Mr. Hume. The chief cause of his discontent 
 
CONCERNING ROUSSEAU. 141 
 
 had been a long quarrel between his housekeeper 
 and Mr. Davenport's cook-maid, who, as Rousseau 
 affirmed, had always dressed their dinner very ill, 
 and at last had sprinkled ashes on their victuals. 
 
 Rousseau, quitting his Armenian masquerade, 
 crossed the country with his governance, and ar- 
 rived at Boston in Lincolnshire. There a gentle- 
 man who admired his writings waited on him, of- 
 fered him assistance in money, and called him the 
 great Rousseau. He replied with warmth, “ No, 
 sir, no, I am not the great Rousseau , I am the poor 
 neglected Rousseau, of whom nobody takes any no- 
 tice." Thus broke forth the true source of all his 
 unhappiness. The brightest parts, the most esta- 
 blished fame, could not satisfy him, unless he was 
 the perpetual object of admiration and discourse ; 
 and to keep up this attention, he descended to all 
 the little tricks of a mountebank. 
 
 From Boston he wrote to the lord chancellor 
 Camden, to desire his lordship would send him a 
 guard to conduct him to Dover. A guard ! and in 
 England ! where he or any body may travel in the 
 most perfect security ! and where there was no 
 sentence of law or decree of parliament against 
 him ! — And for what ? To conduct him to France, 
 where he was proscribed and liable to be appre- 
 hended by the first guard that should meet him. 
 The chancellor smiled at his folly, and, desired Mr. 
 Fitzherbert to acquaint him that he had no occa- 
 sion for a guard, and might go with the utmost 
 safety to Dover— and so he did. 
 
 From Dover he wrote to Mr. Conway the most 
 extravagant of all his letters, and which indeed 
 amounted to madness. In it he entreated Mr. Con- 
 
NARRATIVE 
 
 142 
 
 way in the most earnest and pathetic terms to suf- 
 fer him to quit England (from whence he would be 
 sailed long before Mr./ Conway could receive his 
 letter) ; he intimated a violent apprehension that 
 he was to be assassinated at sea ; he promised, if 
 he was permitted to depart, that he never would 
 write a syllable against England, or the English ; 
 offered to deposit all his unprinted writings there, 
 and, to prove his sincerity, demanded his pension 
 (an odd request for a man going to perish), the ac- 
 ceptance of which, he said, would constitute him 
 the greatest of villains, if he should ever after- 
 wards abuse England : and he concluded his so- 
 licitation of leave to depart, with a promise of ac- 
 quainting Mr. Conway how to direct to him, as 
 soon as he should be landed at Calais. 
 
 Mr. Conway showed me this letter. I begged 
 him, as soon as he should receive the direction, to 
 acquaint Rousseau that he was at full liberty to write 
 what he pleased ; that nobody wished to prevent 
 his writing any thing he had a mind to say ; and I 
 begged Mr. Conway to obtain the pension, which 
 he did, and which was granted. 
 
 Still wishing to compensate for any uneasiness I 
 had given Rousseau by the king of Prussia’s letter, 
 and now really thinking him distracted enough to 
 thrust himself on actual calamities, I wrote to the 
 duchess of Choiseul to represent his case, to beg 
 her protection for him, and to entreat that she 
 would save him, if the parliament of Paris or the 
 government should be disposed to exercise their 
 resentment on him. 
 
 He arrived safely at Paris, was received by his 
 old friend the prince of Conti, was for some time 
 
CONCERNING ROUSSEAU. 
 
 143 
 
 lodged near Meudon ; and when I returned to Paris 
 in August, 1767, be lived very privately at a little 
 distance from that capital on an estate belonging 
 to the same prince, where I shall leave him, and 
 conclude this idle history. 
 
 Horace Walpole. 
 
 Paris, Sept. 13, 1/67. 
 

 * 
 
 
 
 . 
 
LETTERS 
 
 Which passed between 
 
 DAVID HUME, ESQ. 
 
 AND 
 
 THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE, 
 
 RELATIVE TO ROUSSEAU. 
 
 H 
 

LETTERS 
 
 RELATIVE TO 
 
 ROUSSEAU. 
 
 I. 
 
 TO THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 
 
 Dear Sir, 
 
 When I came home last night, I found on my table 
 a very long letter from D’Alembert, who tells me, 
 that, on receiving from me an account of my affair 
 with Rousseau, he summoned a meeting of all my 
 literary friends at Paris, and found them all unani- 
 mously of the same opinion with himself, and of a 
 contrary opinion to me, with regard to my conduct. 
 They all think I ought to give to the public a nar- 
 rative of the whole. However, I persist still more 
 closely in my first opinion, especially after receiving 
 the last mad letter. D’Alembert tells me, that it is 
 of great importance for me to justify myself from 
 having any hand in the letter from the king of 
 Prussia : I am told by Crawford, that you had 
 wrote it a fortnight before I left Paris, but did not 
 
LETTERS 
 
 148 
 
 show it to a mortal, for fear of hurting me ; a de- 
 licacy of which I am very sensible. Pray recollect, 
 if it was so. Though I do not intend to publish, I 
 am collecting all the original pieces, and shall con- 
 nect them by a concise narrative. It is necessary 
 for me to have that letter and Rousseau’s answer. 
 Pray assist me in this work. About what time, do 
 you think, were they printed ? 
 
 I am, dear sir, 
 
 Your most obedient humble servant, 
 
 David Hume. 
 
 Saturday forenoon. 
 
 II. 
 
 TO DAVID HUME, ESQ. 
 
 Arlington. street, July 56, 1766. 
 
 Dear Sir, 
 
 Your set of literary friends are what a set of lite- 
 rary men are apt to be, exceedingly absurd. They 
 hold a consistory to consult how to argue with a 
 madman ; and they think it very necessary for your 
 character to give them the pleasure of seeing Rous- 
 seau exposed, not because he has provoked you, but 
 them. If Rousseau prints, you must; but I cer- 
 tainly would not till he does. 
 
 I cannot be precise as to the time of my writing 
 the king of Prussia’s letter, but I do assure you 
 with the utmost truth that it was several days be- 
 fore you left Paris, and before Rousseau’s arrival 
 there, of which I can give you a strong proof ; for 
 
CONCERNING ROUSSEAU. 149 
 
 I not only suppressed the letter while you stayed 
 there, out of delicacy to you ; but it was the reason 
 why, out of delicacy to myself, I did not go to see 
 him, as you often proposed to me, thinking it 
 wrong to go and make a cordial visit to a man, 
 with a letter in my pocket to laugh at him. Ycu 
 are at full liberty, dear sir, to make use of what I 
 say in your justification, either to Rousseau or any 
 body else. I should be very sorry to have you 
 blamed on my account ; I have a hearty contempt 
 of Rousseau, and am perfectly indifferent what the 
 literati of Paris think of the matter. If there is 
 any fault, which I am far from thinking, let it lie 
 on me. No parts can hinder my laughing at their 
 possessor, if he is a mountebank. If he has a bad 
 and most ungrateful heart, as Rousseau has shown 
 in your case, into the bargain, he will have my 
 scorn likewise, as he will of all good and sensible 
 men. You may trust your sentence to such, who 
 are as respectable judges as any that have pored 
 over ten thousand more volumes. 
 
 Yours most sincerely, 
 
 Hor. Walpole. 
 
 P. S. I will look out the letter and the dates as 
 soon as I go to Strawberry-hill. 
 
150 
 
 LETTERS 
 
 III. 
 
 TO THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 
 
 i 
 
 Dear Sir, 
 
 A few posts ago I had a letter from M. D'Alem- 
 bert, by which I learn, that he and my other friends 
 at Paris had determined to publish an account of 
 my rupture with Rousseau, in consequence of a ge- 
 neral discretionary power which I had given them. 
 The narrative they publish is the same with that 
 which I left with lord Hertford, and which I believe 
 you have seen. It consists chiefly of original papers, 
 connected by a short recital of facts. I made a 
 few alterations, and M. D'Alembert tells me he has 
 made a few more, with my permission and at my 
 desire. Among the papers published is your letter 
 to me, justifying my innocence with regard to the 
 king of Prussia’s letter. You permitted me to 
 make what use of it I pleased for my own apology ; 
 and as I knew that you could have no reason for 
 concealing it, I inserted it without scruple in the 
 narrative. My Parisian friends are to accompany 
 the whole with a preface, giving an account of my 
 reluctance to this publication, but of the necessity 
 which they found of extorting my consent. It ap- 
 pears particularly, that my antagonist had wrote 
 letters of defiance against me all over Europe, and 
 said, that the letter he wrote me was so confound- 
 ing to me, that I would not dare to show it to any 
 one without falsifying it. These letters were likely 
 
CONCERNING ROUSSEAU. 151 
 
 to make impression, and my silence might be con- 
 strued into a proof of guilt. I am sure that my 
 friends have judged impartially in this affair, and 
 without being actuated by any prejudice or passion 
 of their o wn : for almost all of them were at first 
 as averse as I was to the publication, and only pro- 
 ceeded to it upon the apparent necessity which they 
 discovered. I have not seen the preface ; but the 
 book will probably be soon in London, and I hope 
 you will find that the reasons assigned by my friends 
 are satisfactory. They have taken upon them the 
 blame, if any appears to lie in this measure. I am, 
 with great truth and sincerity. 
 
 Dear sir. 
 
 Your most obedient 
 and most humble servant, 
 
 David Hume. 
 
 Edinburgh, 30th of Oct. 1766. 
 
 IV. 
 
 TO DAVID HUME, ESQ. 
 
 Nov. 6, 1766. 
 
 Dear Sir, 
 
 You have, 1 own, surprised me by suffering your 
 quarrel with Rousseau to be printed, contrary to 
 your determination when you left London, and 
 against the advice of all your best friends here : I 
 may add, contrary to your own nature, which has 
 always inclined you to despise literary squabbles, 
 the jest and scorn of all men of sense. Indeed I 
 
152 
 
 LETTERS 
 
 am sorry you have let yourself be over-persuaded, 
 and so are all that I have seen who wish you well : 
 I ought rather to use your own word extorted . You 
 say your Parisian friends extorted your consent to 
 this publication. I believe so. Your good sense 
 could not approve what your good heart could not 
 refuse. You add, that they told you Rousseau had 
 sent letters of defiance against you all over Europe . 
 Good God ! my dear sir, could you pay any regard 
 to such fustian ? All Europe laughs at being dragged 
 every day into these idle quarrels, with which Europe 
 only wipes its backside. Your friends talk as loftily 
 as of a challenge between Charles the fifth and 
 Francis the first. What are become of all the con- 
 troversies since the days of Scaliger and Scioppius 
 of Billingsgate memory? Why, they sleep in ob- 
 livion, till some Bayle drags them out of their dust, 
 and takes mighty pains to ascertain the date of each 
 author's death, which is of no more consequence to 
 the world than the day of his birth. Many a coun- 
 try squire quarrels with his neighbour about game 
 and manors, yet they never print their wrangles, 
 though as much abuse passes between them as if 
 they could quote all the Philippics of the learned. 
 
 You have acted, as I should have expected if you 
 would print, with sense, temper, and decency, and 
 what is still more uncommon, with your usual mo- 
 desty. I cannot say so much for your editors. But 
 editors and commentators are seldom modest. Even 
 to this day that race ape the dictatorial tone of the 
 commentators at the restoration of learning, when 
 the mob thought that Greek and Latin could give 
 men the sense which they wanted in their native 
 languages. But Europe is now grown a little wiser, 
 
CONCERNING ROUSSEAU. 153 
 
 and holds these magnificent pretensions in proper 
 contempt. 
 
 What I have said is to explain why I am sorry 
 my letter makes a part of this controversy. When 
 I sent it to you, it was for your justification ; and 
 had it been necessary, I could have added much 
 more, having been witness to your anxious and 
 boundless friendship for Rousseau. I told you, you 
 might make what use of it you pleased. Indeed at 
 that time I did not, could not think of its being 
 printed, you seeming so averse to any publication 
 on that head. However, I by no means take it ill, 
 nor regret my part, if it tends to vindicate your 
 honour. 
 
 I must confess that I am more concerned that 
 you have suffered my letter to be curtailed ; nor 
 should I have consented to that if you had asked 
 me. I guess that your friends consulted your in- 
 terest less than their own inclination to expose 
 Rousseau ; and I think their omission of what I 
 said on that subject proves I was not mistaken in 
 my guess. My letter hinted too my contempt of 
 learned men and their miserable conduct. Since 1 
 was to appear in print, I should not have been 
 sorry that that opinion should have appeared at 
 the same time. In truth, there is nothing I hold 
 so cheap as the generality of learned men ; and I 
 have often thought, that young men ought to be 
 made scholars, lest they should grow to reverence 
 learned blockheads, and think there is any merit in 
 having read more foolish books than other folks, 
 which, as there are a thousand nonsensical books 
 for one good one, must be the case of any man who 
 has read much more than other people. 
 
 H 2 
 
LETTERS 
 
 154 
 
 Your friend D’Alembert, who 1 suppose has read 
 a vast deal, is, it seems, offended with my letter to 
 Rousseau. He is certainly as much at liberty to 
 blame it as I was to write it. Unfortunately he 
 does not convince me ; nor can I think but that 
 if Rousseau may attack all governments and all 
 religions, I might attack him : especially on his 
 affectation and affected misfortunes, which you and 
 your editors have proved are affected. D’Alembert 
 might be offended at Rousseau’s ascribing my letter 
 to him ; and he is in the right. I am a very in- 
 different author ; and there is nothing so vexatious 
 to an indifferent author as to be confounded with 
 another of the same class. I should be sorry to 
 have his eloges and translations of scraps of Taci. 
 tus laid to me. However, I can forgive him any 
 thing, provided he never translates me. Adieu ! 
 my dear sir; I am apt to laugh, you know, and 
 therefore you will excuse me, though I do not 
 treat your friends up to the pomp of their claims. 
 They may treat me as freely ; I shall not laugh the 
 less, and I promise you I will never enter into a 
 controversy with them. 
 
 Yours most sincerely, 
 
 Horace Walpole. 
 
CONCERNING RCUSSEACJ. 
 
 155 
 
 V. 
 
 TO THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 
 
 Dear Sir, 
 
 Yesterday I received by the post a copy of the 
 edition, printed at Paris, of my narrative of this 
 ridiculous affair between Rousseau and me. There 
 is an introduction in the name of my friends, giving 
 an account of the necessity under which they found 
 themselves to publish this narrative; and an ap- 
 pendix in D’Alembert’s name, protesting his inno- 
 cence with regard to all the imputations thrown on 
 him by Rousseau. I have no objection with regard 
 to the first, but the second contains a clause which 
 displeases me very much, but which you will pro- 
 bably only laugh at : it is that where he blames the 
 king of Prussia’s letter as cruel. What could en- 
 gage D’Alembert to use this freedom, I cannot ima- 
 gine. Is it possible that a man of his superior 
 parts can bear you ill will because you are the 
 friend of his enemy, madame du Deffand ? What 
 makes me suspect that there may be something 
 true of this suspicion, is, that several passages in 
 my narrative, in which I mention you and that let- 
 ter, are all altered in the translation, and rendered 
 much less obliging than I wrote them : for my nar- 
 rative sent to Paris was an exact copy of that left 
 in lord Hertford’s hands. I would give any thing 
 to prevent a publication in London (for surely the 
 whole affair will appear perfectly ridiculous) ; but 
 
156 
 
 LETTERS 
 
 I am afraid that a book printed at Paris will be 
 translated in London, if there be hopes of selling a 
 hundred copies of it. For this reason, I fancy it 
 will be better for me to take care that a proper 
 edition be published, in which case I shall give or- 
 ders that all the passages altered in my narrative 
 shall be restored. 
 
 Since I came here I have been told that you have 
 had a severe fit of sickness, but that you are now 
 recovered : I hope you are perfectly so. I am 
 anxious to hear of your welfare ; being, with great 
 sincerity, 
 
 Dear sir, 
 
 Your most obedient and most humble servant, 
 
 David Hume. 
 
 Edinburgh, 4th of Nov. 1766 . 
 
 VI. 
 
 TO DAVID HUME, ESQ. 
 
 Indeed, dear sir, it was not necessary to make me 
 any apology. D’Alembert is certainly at liberty to 
 say what he pleases of my letter; and undoubtedly 
 you cannot think that it signifies a straw to me 
 what he says. But how can you be surprised at his 
 printing a thing that he sent you so long ago ? All 
 my surprise consists in your suffering him to cur- 
 tail my letter to you, when you might be sure he 
 would print his own at length. I am glad, how- 
 ever, that he has mangled mine : it not only shows 
 his equity, but is the strongest presumption that he 
 was conscious I guessed right, when 1 supposed he 
 
CONCERNING ROUSSEAU. 157 
 
 urged you to publish, from his own private pique to 
 Rousseau. 
 
 What you surmise of his censuring my letter be- 
 cause I am a friend of madame du Deffand, is 
 astonishing indeed, and not to be credited, unless 
 you had suggested it. Having never thought him 
 any thing like a superior genius as you term him, 
 I concluded his vanity was hurt by Rousseau’s 
 ascribing my letter to him ; but to carry resent- 
 ment to a woman, to an old and blind woman, so 
 far, as to hate a friend of hers qui ne lui avoit 
 point fait de mal, is strangely weak and lamentable. 
 I thought he was a philosopher, and that philoso- 
 phers were virtuous, upright men, who loved wis- 
 dom, and were above the little passions and foibles 
 of humanity. I thought they assumed that proud 
 title as an earnest to the world that they intended 
 to be something more than mortal ; that they en- 
 gaged themselves to be patterns of excellence, and 
 would utter no opinion, would pronounce no deci- 
 sion, but what they believed the quintessence of 
 truth ; that they always acted without prejudice 
 and respect of persons. Indeed we know that the 
 ancient philosophers were a ridiculous composition 
 of arrogance, disputation, and contradictions ; that 
 some of them acted against all ideas of decency ; 
 that others alFected to doubt of their own senses ; 
 that some, for venting unintelligible nonsense, pre- 
 tended to think themselves superior to kings ; that 
 they gave themselves airs of accounting for all that 
 we do and do not see — and yet, that no two of them 
 agreed in a single hypothesis ; that one thought 
 fire, another water, the origin of all things; and 
 that some were even so absurd, and impious, as to 
 
LETTERS 
 
 158 
 
 displace God, and enthrone matter in his place. I 
 do not mean to disparage such wise men, for we 
 are really obliged to them : they anticipated and 
 helped us off with an exceeding deal of nonsense, 
 through which we might possibly have passed, if 
 they had not prevented us. But when in this en- 
 lightened age, as it is called, I saw the term philo - 
 sophers revived, I concluded the jargon would be 
 omitted, and that we should be blessed with only 
 the cream of sapience ; and one had more reason 
 still to expect this from any superior genius . But, 
 alas ! my dear sir, what a tumble is here ! Your 
 D’Alembert is a mere mortal oracle. Who but 
 would have laughed, if, wlien the buffoon Aristo- 
 phanes ridiculed Socrates, Plato had condemned 
 the former, not for making sport with a great man 
 in distress, but because Plato hated some blind old 
 woman with whom Aristophanes was acquainted ! 
 
 D’Alembert’s conduct is the more unjust, as I 
 never heard madame du Deffand talk of him above 
 three times in the seven months that I passed at 
 Paris, and never, though she does not love him, 
 with any reflection to his prejudice. I remember, 
 the first time I ever heard her mention his name, I 
 said I had been told he was a good mimic, but could 
 not think him a good writer (Crawford remembers 
 this, and it is a proof that I always thought of 
 D’Alembert as I do now). She took it up with 
 warmth, defended his parts, and said he was ex- 
 tremely amusing. For her quarrel with him, I 
 never troubled my head about it one way or other, 
 which you will not wonder at. You know in Eng- 
 land we read their works, but seldom or never take 
 any notice of authors. We think them sufficiently 
 
CONCERNING ROUSSEAU. 159 
 
 paid if their books sell, and of course leave them to 
 their colleges and obscurity, by which means we 
 are not troubled with their vanity and imperti- 
 nence. In France they spoil us ; but that was no 
 business of mine. I who am an author must own 
 this conduct very sensible ; for in truth we are a 
 most useless tribe. 
 
 That D’Alembert should have omitted passages 
 in which you was so good as to mention me with 
 approbation, agrees with his peevishness, not with 
 his philosophy. However, for God’s sake, do not 
 reinstate the passages. I do not love compliments, 
 and will never give my consent to receive any. I 
 have no doubt of your kind intentions to me, but 
 beg they may rest there. I am much more diverted 
 with the philosopher D’Alembert’s underhand deal- 
 ings, than I should have been pleased with pane- 
 gyric even from you. 
 
 Allow me to make one more remark, and I have 
 done with this trifling business for ever. Your 
 moral friend pronounces me ill-natured for laugh- 
 ing at an unhappy man who had never offended 
 me. Rousseau certainly never did offend me. 
 I believed from many symptoms in his wri- 
 tings, and from what I had heard of him, that his 
 love of singularity made him choose to invite mis- 
 fortunes, and that he hung out many more than he 
 felt. I, who affect no philosophy, nor pretend to 
 more virtue than my neighbours, thought this ridi- 
 culous in a man who is really a superior genius , and 
 joked upon it in a few lines never certainly intended 
 to appear in print. The sage D’Alembert repre- 
 hends this — and where ? In a book published to 
 expose Rousseau, and which confirms by serious 
 proofs what I had hinted at in jest. What! does 
 
LETTERS 
 
 160 
 
 a philosopher condemn me, and in the very same 
 breath, only with ten times more ill-nature, act 
 exactly as I had done ? Oh ! but you will say, 
 Rousseau had offended D’Alembert by ascribing the 
 king of Prussia’s letter to him. Worse and worse : 
 if Rousseau is unhappy, a philosopher should have 
 pardoned. Revenge is so unbecoming the rex re- 
 gum, the man who is prsecipue sanus — nisi cum 
 pituita molesta est. If Rousseau's misfortunes are 
 affected, what becomes of my ill-nature ? — In 
 short, my dear sir, to conclude as D’Alembert 
 concludes his book, I do believe in the virtue of 
 Mr. Hume, but not much in that of philosophers. 
 Adieu ! 
 
 Yours ever, 
 
 Hor. Walpole. 
 
 Arlington-street, Nov. 11th, 1766. 
 
 P. S. It occurs to me, that you may be appre- 
 hensive of my being indiscreet enough to let 
 D’Alembert learn your suspicions of him on ma- 
 dame du Deffand’s account ; but you may be per- 
 fectly easy on that head. Though I like such an 
 advantage over him, and should be glad he saw 
 this letter, and knew how little formidable I think 
 him, I shall certainly not make an ill use of a pri- 
 vate letter, and had much rather wave any triumph, 
 than give a friend a moment’s pain. I love to laugh 
 at an impertinent S£avant, but respect learning 
 when joined to such goodness as yours, and never 
 confound ostentation and modesty. 
 
 I wrote to you last Thursday; and, by lady 
 Hertford’s advice, directed my letter to Nine- 
 Wells. I hope you will receive it. 
 
CONCERNING ROUSSEAU. 
 
 161 
 
 VII. 
 
 TO THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. 
 
 I readily agree with you, my dear sir, that it is a 
 great misfortune to be reduced to the necessity of 
 consenting to this publication ; but it had certainly 
 become necessary. Even those who at first joined 
 me in rejecting all idea of it, wrote to me and re- 
 presented, that this strange man’s defiances had 
 made such impression, that I should pass univer- 
 sally for the guilty person, if I suppressed the story. 
 Some of his greatest admirers and partisans, who 
 had read my manuscript, concurred in the same 
 sentiments with the rest. I never consented to any 
 thing with greater reluctance in my life. Had I 
 found one man of my opinion, I should have per- 
 severed in my refusal. One reason of my reluct- 
 ance was, that I saw this publication, if necessary 
 at Paris, was yet superfluous, not to say worse, at 
 London. But I hope it will be considered that the 
 publication is not, properly speaking, my deed, but 
 that of my friends, in consequence of a discretionary 
 power which I gave them, and which it was natural 
 for me to give them, as I was at too great a di- 
 stance to form a judgment in the case. 
 
 I am as sensible as you are of the ridicule to 
 which men of letters have exposed themselves, by 
 running every moment to the public with all their 
 private squabbles and altercations; but surely there 
 has been something very unexpected and peculiar in 
 
LETTERS 
 
 162 
 
 this affair. My antagonist, by his genius, his sin- 
 gularities, his quackery, his misfortunes, and his 
 adventures, had become more the subject of general 
 conversation in Europe (for I venture again on the 
 word) than any person in it. I do not even except 
 Voltaire, but less tbe king of Prussia and Mr. Pitt. 
 How else could it have happened, that a clause of 
 a private letter, which I wrote somewhat thought- 
 lessly to a private gentleman at Paris, should in 
 three days’ time have been the only subject of con- 
 versation in that capital, and should thence have 
 propagated itself every where as fast as the post 
 could carry it ? You know, that at first I was so 
 little inclined to make a noise about this story, that 
 I had entertained thoughts of giving no reply at all 
 to the insult, which was really so ridiculous: but 
 you very properly dissuaded me from this resolu- 
 tion ; and by your advice I wrote that letter, which 
 certainly nobody will find fault with. 
 
 Having made this apology for myself (where, 
 however, I expect to be absolved as much by your 
 compassion as your judgment), I proceed to say 
 something in favour of my friends. Allow me then 
 to inform you, that it was not D’Alembert who 
 suppressed that clause of your letter, but me, who 
 did not transcribe it in the copy I sent to Paris. I 
 was afraid of engaging you needlessly in a quarrel 
 with these literati ; and as that clause had no re- 
 ference to the business in hand, I thought I might 
 fairly secrete it. I wish I could excuse him as well 
 on another head. He sent me above two months 
 ago something like that declaration, and desired me 
 to convey it to Rousseau ; which I refused to do, 
 and gave him some reasons of my refusal : but he 
 
CONCERNING ROUSSEAU. 163 
 
 replied to me, that he was sure my true secret rea- 
 son was my regard to you. He ought thence to 
 have known, that it would be disagreeable to me to 
 see such a piece annexed to mine. 1 have remarked 
 also the omission of a phrase in the translation ; 
 and this omission could not be altogether by ac- 
 cident : it \yas where I mention your suppressing 
 the king of Prussia’s letter, while we lived together 
 at Paris. I said it was agreeable to your usual 
 politeness and humanity . I have wrote to Becket 
 the bookseller to restore this passage, which is so 
 conformable to my real sentiments : but whether 
 my orders have come in time, I do not know as yet. 
 Before I saw the Paris edition, I had desired Becket 
 to follow it wherever it departed from my original. 
 The difference, I find, was in other respects but 
 inconsiderable. 
 
 It is only by conjecture I imagine, that D’Alem- 
 bert’s malevolence to you (if he has any malevo- 
 lence) proceeds from your friendship with madame 
 du Deffand ; because I can find no other ground 
 for it. I see also, that in his declaration there is 
 a stroke obliquely levelled at her, which perhaps 
 you do not understand, but I do ; because he wrote 
 me that he heard she was your corrector. I found 
 these two persons in great and intimate friendship 
 when I arrived at Paris : but it is strange how in- 
 temperate they are both become in their animosity ; 
 though perhaps it is more excusable in her, on ac- 
 count of her age, sex, and bodily infirmities. I am 
 very sensible of your discretion in not citing me on 
 this occasion ; I might otherwise have a new quarrel 
 on my hands. 
 
 With regard to D’Alembert, I believe I said he 
 
LETTERS 
 
 164 
 
 was a man of superior parts , not a superior genius ; 
 which are words, if I mistake not, of a very dif- 
 ferent import. He is surely entitled to the former 
 character, from the works which you and I have 
 read : I do not mean his translation of Tacitus, 
 but his other pieces. But I believe he is more en- 
 titled to it from the works which I suppose neither 
 you nor I have read, his Geometry and Algebra. 
 I agree with you, that in some respects Rousseau 
 may more properly be called a superior genius; 
 yet is he so full of extravagance, that I am inclined 
 to deny him even that appellation. I fancy D’Alem- 
 bert's talents and Rousseau's united might fully 
 merit such an eulogy. 
 
 In other respects, D'Alembert is a very agreeable 
 companion, and of irreproachable morals. By re- 
 fusing great offers from the czarina and the king 
 of Prussia, he has shown himself above interest 
 and vain ambition : he lives in an agreeable re- 
 treat at Paris, suitable to a man of letters. He 
 has five pensions : one from the king of Prussia, 
 one from the French king, one as member of the 
 academy of sciences, one as member of the French 
 academy, and one from his own family. The whole 
 amount of these is not 6000 livres a year; on the 
 half of which he lives decently, and gives the other 
 half to poor people with whom he is connected. 
 In a word, I scarce know a man, who, with some 
 few exceptions (for there must always be some ex- 
 ceptions), is a better model of a virtuous and phi- 
 losophical character. 
 
 You see I venture still to join these two epithets 
 as inseparable and almost synonymous ; though 
 you seem inclined to regard them almost as incom- 
 
CONCERNING ROUSSEAU. 165 
 
 patible. And here I have a strong inclination to 
 say a few words in vindication both of myself and 
 of my friends, venturing even to comprehend you 
 in the number. What new prepossession has seized 
 you to beat in so outrageous a manner your nurses 
 of mount Helicon, and to join the outcry of the 
 ignorant multitude against science and literature ? 
 For my part, I can scarce acknowledge any other 
 ground of distinction between one age and another, 
 between one nation and another, than their different 
 progress in learning and the arts. I do not say be- 
 tween one man and another ; because the qualities 
 of the heart and temper and natural understanding 
 are the most essential to the personal character; 
 but being, I suppose, almost equal among nations 
 and ages, do not serve to throw a peculiar lustre 
 on any. You blame France for its fond admiration 
 of men of genius; and there may no doubt be, in 
 particular instances, a great ridicule in these affec- 
 tations : but the sentiment in general was equally 
 conspicuous in ancient Greece, in Rome during its 
 flourishing period, in modern Italy, and even per- 
 haps in England about the beginning of this cen- 
 tury. If the case be now otherwise, it is what we 
 are to lament and be ashamed of. Our enemies 
 will only infer, that we are a nation which was 
 once at best but half civilized, and is now relapsing 
 fast into barbarism, ignorance, and superstition. 
 I beg you also to consider the great difference in 
 point of morals between uncultivated and civilized 
 ages. — But I find I am launching out insensibly into 
 an immense ocean of common-place ; I cut the 
 matter therefore short, by declaring it as my opi- 
 nion, that if you had been born a barbarian, and 
 
160 LETTERS CONCERNING ROUSSEAU. 
 
 i 
 
 had every day cooked your dinner of horseflesh by 
 riding on it fifty miles between your breech and the 
 shoulder of your horse, you had certainly been an 
 obliging, good-natured, friendly man ; but at the 
 same time, that reading, conversation, and travel 
 have detracted nothing from those virtues, and 
 have made a considerable addition of other valuable 
 and agreeable qualities to them. I remain, not 
 with ancient sincerity, which was only roguery and 
 hypocrisy, but very sincerely, dear sir. 
 
 Your most obedient 
 
 and most humble servant, 
 
 David Hume. 
 
 Edinburgh, 20th of Nov. 1766. 
 
 P. S. The French translation of this strange 
 piece of mine (for I must certainly give it that 
 epithet) was not made by D'Alembert, but by one 
 under his direction. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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