To GEORGE MONTAGU, Esq. Arlington-street, Oct. 13, 1769. I ARRIVED last night at eleven o'clock, and found a letter from you, which gave me so much pleasure, that I must write you a line, though I am hurried to death. You cannot imagine how rejoiced I am that lord North1 drags you to light again; it is a satisfaction I little expected. When do you come? I am impatient. I long to know your projects. I had a dreadful passage of eight hours, was drowned, though not shipwrecked, and was sick to death. I have been six times at sea before, and never suffered the least, which makes the mortification the greater: but as Hercules was not more robust than I, though with an air so little Herculean, I have not so much as caught cold, though I was wet to the skin with the rain, had my lap full of waves, was washed from head to foot in the boat at ten o'clock at night, and stepped into the sea up to my knees. Qu'avois-je à faire dans cette galère? In truth, it is a little late to be seeking adventures. Adieu! I must finish, but I am excessively happy with what you have told me. Yours ever. To GEORGE MONTAGU, Esq. Strawberry-hill, Oct. 16, 1769. I ARRIVED at my own Louvre last Wednesday night, and am now at my Versailles. days before I left Paris, for I have been an age at Calais and upon the sea. I could execute no commission for you, and, in truth, you gave me no explicit one; but I have brought you a bit of china, and beg you will be content with a little present, instead of a bargain. Said china is, or will be soon, in the custom-house; but I shall have it, I fear, long before you come to London. Your last letter reached me but two 'Lord North had appointed Mr. Montagu his private secretary. Or.] I am sorry those boys got at my tragedy. I beg you would keep it under lock and key; it is not at all food for the public; at least not till I am food for worms, good Percy. Nay, it is not an age to encourage any body, that has the least vanity, to step forth. There is a total extinction of all taste: our authors are vulgar, gross, illiberal: the theatre swarms with wretched translations, and ballad operas, and we have nothing new but improving abuse. I have blushed at Paris, when the papers came over crammed with ribaldry, or with Garrick's insufferable nonsense about Shakspeare. As that man's writings will be preserved by his name, who will believe that he was a tolerable actor? Cibber wrote as bad odes, but then Cibber wrote the Careless Husband and his own life, which both deserve immortality. Garrick's prologues and epilogues are as bad as his Pindarics and pantomimes. I feel myself here like a swan, that after living six weeks in a nasty pool upon a common, is got back into its own Thames. I do nothing but plume and clean myself, and enjoy the verdure and silent waves. Neatness and greenth are so essential in my opinion to the country, that in France, where I see nothing but chalk and dirty peasants, I seem in a terrestrial purgatory that is neither town nor country. The face of England is so beautiful, that I do not believe Tempe or Arcadia were half so rural; for both lying in hot climates, must have wanted the turf of our lawns. It is unfortunate to have so pastoral a taste, when I want a cane more than a crook. We are absurd creatures; at twenty, I loved nothing but London. Tell me when you shall be in town. I think of passing most of my time here till after Christmas. Adieu ! TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY. Strawberry-hill, Tuesday, Nov. 14, 1769. I AM here quite alone, and did not think of going to town till Friday for the opera, which I have not yet seen. In compliment to you and your countess, I will make an effort, and be there on Thursday; and will either dine with you at your own house, or at your brother's; which you choose. This is a great favour, and beyond my lord Temple's journey to dine with my lord mayor. I am so sick of the follies of all sides, that I am happy to be at quiet here, and to know no more of them than what I am forced to see in the newspapers; and those I skip over as fast as I can. The account you give me of lady *** was just the same as I received from Paris. I will show you a very particular letter I received by a private hand from thence; which convinces me that I guessed right, contrary to all the wise, that the journey to Fontainbleau would overset monsieur de Choiseul. I think he holds but by a thread, which will snap soon. I am labouring hard with the duchess2 to procure the duke of Richmond satisfaction in the favour he has asked about his duchy ;3 but he shall not know it till it is completed, if I can be so lucky as to succeed. I think I shall, if they do not fall immediately. You perceive how barren I am, and why I have not written to you. I pass my time in clipping and pasting prints; and do not think I have read forty pages since I came to England. I bought a poem called Trincalo's Trip to the Jubilee; having been struck with two lines in an extract in the papers, And the ear-piercing fife, Alas! all the rest, and it is very long, is a heap of unintelligible nonsense, about Shakspeare, politics, and the Lord knows what. I am grieved that, with our admiration of Shakspeare, we can do nothing but write worse then ever he did. One would think the age studied nothing but his Love's Labour Lost, and Titus Andronicus. Politics and abuse have totally corrupted our taste. Nobody thinks of writing a line that is to last beyond the next fortnight. We might as well be given up to controversial divinity. The times put me in mind of the Constantinopolitan empire; where, in an age of learning, the subtlest wits of Greece contrived to leave nothing behind them, but the memory of their follies and acrimony. Milton did not write his Paradise Lost till he had outlived his politics. With all his parts, and noble 1 In the second mayoralty of William Beckford. [Or.] 2 The duchess of Choiseul. [Or.] 3 Of Aubigné. [Or.] sentiments of liberty. who would remember him for his barbarous prose? Nothing is more true than that extremes meet. The licentiousness of the press makes us as savage as our Saxon ancestors, who could only set their marks; and an outrageous pursuit of individual independence, grounded on selfish views, extinguishes genius as much as despotism does. The public good of our country is never thought of by men that hate half their country. Heroes confine their ambition to be leaders of the mob. Orators seek applause from their faction, not from posterity; and ministers forget foreign enemies, to defend themselves against a majority in parliament. When any Cæsar has conquered Gaul, I will excuse him for aiming at the perpetual dictature. If he has only jockeyed somebody out of the borough of Veii or Falernum, it is too impudent to call himself a patriot or a statesman. Adieu ! DEAR SIR, TO THE REV. MR. COLE. Arlington-street, Dec. 14, 1769. This is merely a line to feel my way, and to know how to direct to you. Mr. Granger thinks you are established at Milton, and thither I address it. If it reaches you, you will be so good as to let me know, and I will write again soon. Yours ever. To GEORGE MONTAGU, Esq. Arlington-street, Dec. 14, 1769. I CANNOT be silent, when I feel for you. I doubt not but the loss of Mrs. Trevor is very sensible to you, and I am heartily sorry for you. One cannot live any time, and not perceive the world slip away, as it were, from under one's feet: one's friends, one's connections drop off, and indeed reconcile one to the same passage; but why repeat these things? I do not mean to write a fine consolation; all I intended was to tell I cannot be indifferent to what concerns you. you, that I know as little how to amuse you; news they are none but politics, and politics there will be as long we have a shilling left. They are no amusement to me, except in seeing two or three sets of people worry one another, for none of whom I care a straw. Mr. Cumberland has produced a comedy called the Brothers. It acts well, but reads ill, though I can distinguish strokes of Mr. Bentley in it. Very few of the characters are marked, and the serious ones have little nature, and the comic ones are rather too much marked; however, the three middle acts diverted me very well. I saw the bishop of Durham at Carlton-house, who told me he had given you a complete suit of armour. I hope you will have no occasion to lock yourself in it, though, between the fools and the knaves of the present time, I don't know but we may be reduced to defend our castles. If you retain any connections with Northampton, I should be much obliged to you if you could procure from thence a print of an alderman Backwell. It is valuable for nothing but its rarity, and is not to be met with but there. I would give eight or ten shillings rather than not have it. When shall you look towards us? how does your brother John? make my compliments to him. I need not say how much I am, Yours ever. END OF VOL. II. Printed by J. L. Cox and SONS, 75, Great Queen Street, |