(893) Rector of Allhallows, London Wall, prebendary of Pancras in St. Paul's cathedral, and prebendary of Lincoln. In 1791, be published a translation of Herodotus, and in 1795, the translation of the "Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius," referred to in the above letter. He was also the author of " Anecdotes of Literature and Scarce Books," in six volumes octavo; and after his death, which took place in 1817, appeared "The Sexagenarian, or Recollections of a Literary Life;" which, though a posthumous publication, was printed under his inspection.-E.
Letter 419 To Miss Hannah More.
Berkeley Square, Saturday night, Jan. 24, 1795. (page 565)
My best Madam, I will never more complain of your silence; for I am perfectly convinced that you have no idle, no unemployed moments. Your indefatigable benevolence is incessantly occupied in good works; and your head and your heart make the utmost use of the excellent qualities of both. You have given proofs of the talents of one, and you certainly do not wrap the still more precious talent of the other in a napkin. Thank you a thousand times for your most ingenious plan; may great success reward you! I sent one instantly to the Duchess of Gloucester, whose piety and zeal imitate yours at a distance: but she says she cannot afford to subscribe just at this severe moment, when the poor so much want her assistance, but she will on the thaw, and should have been flattered by receiving a plan from yourself. I sent another to Lord Harcourt, who, I trust, will show it to a much greater lady; and I repeated some of the facts you told me of the foul fiends, and their anti-More activity. I sent to Mr. White for half a dozen more of your plans, and will distribute them wherever I have hopes of their taking root and blossoming. To-morrow I will send him my subscription;(894) and I flatter myself you will not think it a breach of Sunday, nor will I make this long, that I may not widen that fracture. Good night! How calm and comfortable must your slumbers be on the pillow of every day's good deeds!
Monday.
Yesterday was as dark as midnight. Oh! that it may be the darkest day in all respects that we shall see! But these are themes too voluminous and dismal for a letter, and which your zeal tells me you feel too intensely for me to increase, when you are doing all in your power to counteract them. One of my grievances is, that the sanguinary inhumanity Of the times has almost poisoned one's compassion, and makes one abhor so many thousands of our own species, and rejoice when they suffer for their crimes. I could feel no pity on reading the account of the death of Condorcet (if true, though I doubt it). He was one of the greatest monsters exhibited by history; and is said to have poisoned himself from famine and fear of the guillotine; and would be a new instance of what I suggested to you for a tract, to show, that though we must not assume a pretension to judging of divine judgments, yet we may believe that the economy of Providence has so disposed causes and consequences, that such villains as Danton, Robespierre, the Duke of Orleans, etc. etc. etc. do but dig pits for themselves. I will check myself, or I shall wander into the sad events of the last five years, down to the rage of party that has sacrificed Holland! What a fund for reflection and prophetic apprehension! May we have as much wisdom and courage to stem our malevolent enemies, as it is plain, to our lasting honour, we have had charity to the French emigrants, and have bounty for the poor who are suffering in this dreadful season!
Adieu! thou excellent woman! thou reverse of that hyena in petticoats, Mrs. Wolstoncroft, who to this day discharges her ink and gall on Marie Antoinette, whose unparalleled sufferings have not Yet stanched that Alecto's blazing ferocity. Adieu! adieu! Yours from my heart.
P. S. I have subscribed five guineas at Mr. White's to your plan.
(894) To the fund for promoting the printing and dispersion of the works sold at the Cheap Repository.
Letter 420 To Miss Hannah More.
Berkeley Square, Feb. 13, 1795. (page 566)
I received your letter and packet of lays and virelays, and heartily wish they may fall in bad ground, and produce a hundred thousand fold, as I doubt is necessary. How I admire the activity of your zeal and perseverance! Should a new church ever be built, I hope in a side chapel there will be an altar dedicated to St. Hannah, Virgin and Martyr; and that Your pen, worn to the bone, will be enclosed in a golden reliquaire, and preserved on the shrine.
These few words I have been forced to dictate, having had the gout ill my right hand above this fortnight; but I trust it is going off The Duchess was much pleased with your writing to her, and ordered me to thank you. Your friend Lady Waldegrave is in town, and looks very well. Adieu, best of women! Yours most cordially.(895)
(895) In a letter to her sister, dated from Fulham Palace, Miss More says,—"Lord Orford has presented me with Bishop Wilson's edition of the Bible, in three volumes quarto, superbly bound in morocco (Oh! that he would himself study that blessed book), to which, in the following most flattering inscription, he attributes my having done far more good than is true—
"To his excellent friend, MISS HANNAH MORE, THE BOOK, which he knows to be the dearest object of her study, and by which, to the great comfort and relief of numberless afflicted and distressed individuals, she has profited beyond any person with whom he is acquainted, is offered, as a mark of his esteem and gratitude, by her sincere and obliged humble servant, Horace, Earl of Orford, 1795."
Letter 421 To William Roscoe, Esq.
Berkeley Square, April 4, 1795. (page 567)
To judge of my satisfaction and gratitude on receiving the very acceptable present of your book,(896) Sir, you should have known my extreme impatience for it from the instant Mr. Edwards had kindly favoured me with the first chapters. You may consequently conceive the mortification I felt at not being able to thank you immediately both for the volume and the obliging letter that accompanied it, by my right arm and hand being swelled and rendered quite immovable and useless, of which you will perceive the remains if you can read these lines which I am forcing myself to write, not without pain, the first moment I have power to hold 'a pen; and it will cost me some time, I believe, before I can finish my whole letter, earnest as I am, Sir, to give a loose to my gratitude.
If you ever had the pleasure of reading such a delightful book as your own, imagine, Sir, what a comfort it must be to receive such an anodyne in the midst of a fit of the gout that has already lasted above nine weeks, and which at first I thought might carry me to Lorenzo de' Medici before he should come to me.
The complete volume has more than answered the expectations which the sample had raised. The Grecian simplicity of the style is preserved throughout; the same judicious candour reigns in every page; and without allowing yourself that liberty of indulging your own bias towards good or against criminal characters, which over-rigid critics prohibit, your artful candour compels your readers to think with you, without seeming to take a part yourself. You have shown from his own virtues, abilities, and heroic spirit, why Lorenzo deserved to have Mr. Roscoe for his biographer. And since you have been so, Sir, (for he was not completely known before, at least out of Italy,) I shall be extremely mistaken if he is not henceforth allowed to be, in various lights, one of the most excellent and greatest men with whom we are well acquainted, especially if we reflect on the shortness of his life and the narrow sphere in which he had to act. Perhaps I ought to blame my own ignorance, that I did not know Lorenzo as a beautiful poet: I confess I did not. Now I do, I own I admire some of his sonnets more than several-yes, even of Petrarch; for Lorenzo's are frequently more clear, less alembiquis, and not inharmonious as Petrarch's often are from being too crowded with words, for which room is made by numerous elisions, which prevent the softening alternacy of vowels and consonants. That thicket of words was occasioned by the embarrassing nature of the sonnet: a form of composition I do not love, and which is almost intolerable in any language but Italian, which furnishes such a profusion of rhymes. To our tongue the sonnet is mortal, and the parent of insipidity. The Mutation in some degree of it was extremely noxious to a true poet, our Spenser; and he was the more injudicious by lengthening his stanza in a language so barren of rhymes as ours, and in which several words, whose terminations are of similar sounds, are so rugged, uncouth, and unmusical. The consequence was, that many lines which he forced into the service to complete the quota of his stanza are unmeaning, or silly, or tending to weaken the thought he would express.
Well, Sir: but if you have led me to admire the compositions of Lorenzo, you have made me intimate with another poet, of whom I had never heard nor had the least suspicion; and who, though writing in a less harmonious language than Italian, outshines an able master of that country, as may be estimated by the fairest of all comparisons -which is, when one of each nation versifies the same ideas and thoughts. That novel poet I boldly pronounce is Mr. Roscoe. Several of his translations of' Lorenzo are superior to the originals, and the verses more poetic; nor am I bribed to give this opinion by the present of your book, nor by any partiality, nor by the surprise of finding so pure a writer of history as able a poet. Some good judges to whom I have shown your translations entirely agree with me. I will name one most competent judge, Mr. Hoole, so admirable a poet himself, and such a critic in Italian, as he has proved by a translation of Ariosto. That I am not flattering you, Sir, I will demonstrate; for I am not satisfied with one essential line in your version of the most beautiful, I think, of all Lorenzo's stanzas. It is his description of Jealousy, in page 268, equal, in my humble opinion, to Dryden's delineations of the Passions, and the last line of which is—
Mai dorme, ed ostinata, a se sol crede.
The thought to me is quite new, and your translation I own does not come up to it. Mr. Hoole and I hammered at it, but could not content ourselves. Perhaps by altering your last couplet you may enclose the whole sense, and make it equal to the preceding six.
I will not ask your pardon, Sir, for taking so much liberty with you. You have displayed so much candour and are so free from pretensions, that I am confident you will allow that truth is the sole ingredient that ought to compose deserved incense; and if ever commendation was sincere, no praise ever flowed with purer veracity than all I have said in this letter does from the heart of, Sir, your infinitely obliged humble servant.
(896) His History of the Life of Lorenzo de' Medici.
Letter 422 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.
Strawberry Hill, July 2, 1795. (page 569)
I will write a word to you, though scarce time to write one, to thank you for your great kindness about the soldier, who shall get a substitute if he can. As you are, or have been in town, your daughter will have told you in what a bustle I am, preparing—not to resist, but, to receive an invasion of royalties to-morrow; and cannot even escape them like Admiral Cornwallis, though seeming to make a semblance; for I am to wear a sword, and have appointed two aides-de-camp, My nephews, George and Horace Churchill. If I fall, as ten to one but I do, to be sure it will be a superb tumble, at the feet of a Queen and eight daughters of Kings; for, besides the six Princesses, I am to have the Duchess of York and the Princess of Orange! Wo is me, at seventy-eight, and with scarce a hand and foot to my back! Adieu! Yours, etc. A poor old remnant.
Letter 423 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.
Strawberry Hill, July 7, 1795. (page 569)
I am not dead of fatigue with my royal visitors, as I expected to be, though I was on my poor lame feet three whole hours. Your daughter, who kindly assisted me in doing the honours, will tell you the particulars, and how prosperously I succeeded. The Queen was uncommonly condescending and gracious, and deigned to drink my health when I presented her with the last glass, and to thank me for all my attentions. Indeed my memory de la vieille cour was but once in default. As I had been assured that her Majesty would be attended by her chamberlain, yet was not, I had no glove ready when I received her at the step of her coach: yet she honoured me with her hand to lead her up stairs; nor did I recollect my omission when I led her down again. Still, though gloveless, I (fid not squeeze the royal hand, as Vice-chamberlain Smith did to Queen Mary.(897)
You will have stared, as I did, at the Elector of Hanover deserting his ally the King of Great Britain, and making peace with the monsters. But Mr. Fawkener, whom I saw at my sister's on Sunday, laughs at the article in the newspapers, and says it is not an unknown practice for stock-jobbers to have an emissary at the rate of five hundred pounds, and despatch to Frankfort, whence he brings forged attestations of some marvellous political event, and spreads it on 'Change, which produces such a fluctuation in the stocks as amply overpays the expense of his mission.
This was all I learnt in the single night I was In town. I have not read the new French constitution, which seems longer than probably its reign will be. The five sovereigns will, I suppose, be the first guillotined. Adieu! Yours ever.
(897) It is said that Queen Mary asked some of her attendant ladies what a squeeze of the hand was supposed to intimate. They said "Love." "Then," said the Queen, "my Vice-chamberlain must be violently in love with me, for he always squeezes my hand."
Letter 424 To Miss Berry.
Strawberry Hill, Tuesday, Aug. 16, 1796. (page 570)
Though I this morning received your Sunday's full letter, it is three o'clock before I have a moment to begin answering it; and must do it myself: for Kirgate is not at home. First came in Mr. Barrett, and then Cosway, who has been for some days at Mr. Udney's, with his wife: she is so afflicted for her only little girl, that she shut herself up in her chamber, and would not be seen.(898) The man Cosway does not seem to think that much of the loss belonged to him: he romanced with his usual vivacity. Next arrived Dr. Burney, on his way to Mrs. Boscawen. He asked me about deplorable "Camilla." Alas! I had not recovered of it enough to be loud in its praise. I am glad, however, to hear that she has realized about two thousand pounds; and the worth, no doubt, of as much in honours at Windsor; where she was detained three days, and where even M. D'Arblay was allowed to dine.
I rejoice at your bathing promising so well. If the beautiful fugitive(899) from Brighthelmstone dips too, the waves will be still more salutary:—
Venus, orta mari, mare prestat eunti.
I like your going to survey castles and houses: it is wholesomer than drawing and writing tomes of letters;—which, you see, I cannot do.
Wednesday, after breakfast.
When I came home from Lady Mendip's last night, I attempted to finish this myself; but my poor fingers were so tired by all the work of the day, that it will require Sir William Jones's gift of tongues to interpret my pot-hooks. One would think Arabic characters were catching; for Agnes had shown me a volume of their poems, finely printed at Cambridge, with a version which Mrs. Douglas had lent to her, and said they were very simple, and not in the inflated style of the last. You shall judge: in the first page I opened, I found a storm of lightning that had burst into a laugh. I resume the thread of my letter. You had not examined Arundel Castle enough; for you do not mention the noble monuments, in alabaster, of the Fitz-Alans, one of whom bragged of having married Adeliza, widow of Henry the First. In good sooth, they were somewhat defaced by Cromwell having mounted his cannon on the roof to batter the Castle; of which, when I saw it, he had left little but ruins; and they were choked up by a vile modern brick house, which I know Solomon has pulled down: for he came hither two years ago to consult me about Gothicizing his restoration of the castle. I recommended Mr. Wyat, lest he should copy the temple of Jerusalem.
So you found a picture of your predecessor!(900) She had had a good figure: but I had rather it had been a portrait of her aunt, Mrs. Arabella Fermor, the heroine of the Lock, of whom I never saw a resemblance. You did not, I suppose, see the giant, who, the old Duke told me, used to walk among the ruins, but who, to be sure, Duke Solomon(901) has laid in a Red Sea of claret. There are other splendid seats to be seen within your reach; as Petworth, and Standstead, and Up-Park: but I know why I guess that you may even be of parties, more than once, at the last.
As Agnes says, she has promised I should give you an account of a visit I have lately had, I will, if I have time, before any body comes in. It was from a Mr. Pentycross, a clergyman and schoolmaster of Wallingford, of whom I had heard nothing for eight-and-twenty years; and then having only known him as a Blue-coat boy from Kingston: and how that happened, he gave me this account last week. He was born with a poetic impetus, and walked over hither with a copy of verses by no means despicable, which he begged old Margaret to bring up to me. She refused; he supplicated. At last she told him that her master was very learned, and that, if he would write something in the learned languages, especially in French, she would present his poem to me. In the mean time, she yielded; I saw him, and let her show him the house. I think he sent me an ode or two afterwards, and I never heard his name again till this winter, when I received a letter from him from his place' of residence, with high compliments on some of my editions, and beseeching me to give him a print of myself, which I did send to him. In the Christmas holidays he came to town for a few days, and called in Berkeley-square; but it was when I was too ill to see any body. He then left a modest and humble letter, only begging that, some time or other, I would give him leave to see Strawberry Hill. I sent him a note by Kirgate, that should he come to town in summer, and I should be well enough, he should certainly see my house. Accordingly, about a fortnight ago, I let him know, that if he could fix any day in this month, I would give him a dinner and a bed. He jumped at the offer, named Wednesday last, and came. However, I considered that to pass a whole day with this unknown being might be rather too much. I got Lysons, the parson, from Putney, to meet him: but it would not have been necessary, for I found my Blue-coat boy grown to be a very sensible, rational, learned, and remaining a most modest personage, with an excellent taste for poetry-for he is an enthusiast for Dr. Darwin: but, alas! infinitely too learned for me; for in the evening, upon questioning him about his own vein of poetry, he humbly drew out a paper, with proposition forty-seven of Euclid turned into Latin verse. I shrunk back and cried, "Oh! dear Sir, how little you know me! I have forgotten almost the little Latin I knew, and was always so incapable of learning mathematics, that I could not even get by heart the multiplication-table, as blind Professor Sanderson honestly told me, above threescore years ago, when I went to his lectures at Cambridge." After the first fortnight, he said to Me, "Young man, it would be cheating you to take your money; for you can never learn what I am trying to teach you." I was exceedingly mortified, and cried; for, being a prime minister's son, I had firmly believed all the flattery with which I had been assured that my parts were capable of any thing. I paid a private instructor for a year; but, at the year's end, was forced to own Sanderson had been in the right; and here luckily ends, with my paper, my Penticrusade!
(898) The loss of her only child threw Mrs. Cosway upon art once more. To mitigate her grief, she painted several large Pictures for chapels; and afterwards visited Italy, where she formed a college at Lodi for the education of young ladies. On the establishment of peace, she returned to England, where she remained till the death of her husband in 1821; after which she returned to Lodi.-E.
(899) The Countess of Jersey, mother to the present Earl.
(900) A portrait of Trefusis, Countess of Orford, widow of the eldest brother of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford.
(901) Charles Howard, eleventh Duke of Norfolk, so called by Lord Orford, for having his portrait executed in painted glass for the window of his great dining-room, at Arundel Castle, as Solomon entertaining the Queen of Sheba.
Letter 425 To Miss Berry.
Strawberry Hill, August 24, 1796. (page 572)
Bathe on, bathe on, and wash away all your complaints; the sea air and such an oriental season must cure every thing but positive decay and decrepitude. On me they have no more effect than they would have on an Egyptian queen who has been embowelled and reserved in her sycamore etui ever since dying was first invented, and people notwithstanding liked to last for ever, though even in a pyramid. In short, Mr. — has teased me so much about jumbling my relics, that I have aired(902) them every morning in the coach for this fortnight; and yet, you see, I cannot write ten lines together! Lady Cecilia lets me call on her at twelve, and take her with me: and yet I grew tired of it, and shall not have patience to continue, but shall remain, I believe, in my mummyhood. I begin by giving myself a holiday to-day, in order to answer your letter of the 21st; while Lady Waldegrave, who is with me, and who has brought her eldest son, whom, poor soul! she cannot yet bear to call Lord Waldegrave, is gone to the pavilion. Here is a letter for you from Hannah More, unsealed indeed, for chiefly a mon intention. Be so good as to tell her how little I am really recovered but that I will hammer out a few words as fast, that is, as slowly as I can to her, in return.
I am scandalized at the slovenly neglect of the brave chapel of the Fitz-Alans.(903) I thought the longer any peer's genealogy had been spun out, the prouder he was of the most ancient coronets in it; but since Solomon despises the Arundels for not having been dukes, I suppose he does not acknowledge Adam for a relation; who, though he had a tolerably numerous progeny, his grace does not allow to have been the patriarch of the Mowbrays and Howards, as the devil did not make Eve a duchess, though he has made the wives of some other folks so, and may propose to make one more so some time or other.
News I have none; but that Wurmsur seems to have put a little spoke into the wheel of the French triumphal car in Italy: and as those banditti have deigned to smile on the Duke of Wirtemberg, I suppose they mean to postpone imposing a heavy contribution on him till he shall have received the fortune of the Princess Royal. Adieu!
(902) The remainder of this letter is in the handwriting of Kirgate.
(903) In Arundel church. It has since been put in a state of repair by the present Duke of Norfolk.
Letter 426 To Miss Hannah More.
Strawberry Hill, August 29, 1796. (page 573)
You are not only the most beneficent, but the most benevolent of human beings. Not content with being a perfect saint yourself, which (forgive me for saying) does not always imply prodigious compassion for others; not satisfied with being the most disinterested, nay, the reverse of all patriots, for you sacrifice your very slender fortune, not to improve it, but to keep the poor honest instead of corrupting them; and you write politics as simply, intelligibly, and unartfolly, not as cunningly as you can to mislead. Well, with all these giant virtues, you can find room and time in your heart and occupations for harbouring and exercising what those monkeys of pretensions, the French, invented and called les petites morales, which were to supply society with filigrain duties, in the room of all virtues, which they abolished on their road to the adoption of philosophy and atheism. Yes, though for ever busied in exercising services and charities for individuals, or for whole bodies of people, you do not leave a cranny empty into which you can slip a kindness. Your inquiry after me to Miss Berry is so friendly, that I cannot trust solely to her thanking you for your letter, as I am sure she will, having sent it to her as she is bathing in the sea at Bognor Rocks; but I must with infinite gratitude give you a brief account of myself-a very poor one indeed must I give. Condemned as a cripple to my couch for the rest of my days I doubt I am. Though perfectly healed, and even without a sear, my leg is so weakened that I have not recovered the least use of it, nor can move cross my chamber unless lifted up and held by two servants. This constitutes me totally a prisoner. But why should not I be so? What business had I to live to the brink of seventy-nine? And why should One litter the world at that age? Then, I thank God, I have vast blessings; I have preserved my eyes, ears, and teeth; I have no pain left; and I would bet with any dormouse that it cannot outsleep me. And when one can afford to pay for every relief, comfort, or assistance that can be procured at fourscore, dares one complain? Must not one reflect on the thousands of old poor, who are suffering martyrdom, and have none of these alleviations? my good friend, I must consider myself as at my best; for if' I drag on a little longer, can I expect to remain even so tolerably. Nay, does the world present a pleasing scene? Are not the devils escaped out of the swine, and overrunning the earth headlong? What a theme for meditation, that the excellent humane Louis Seize should have been prevented from saving himself by that monster Drouet, and that that execrable wretch should be saved even by those, some of whom one may suppose he meditated to massacre; for at what does a Frenchman stop? But I will quit this shocking subject, and for another reason too: I omitted one of my losses, almost the use of my fingers: they are so lame that I cannot write a dozen lines legibly, but am forced to have recourse to my secretary. I will only reply by a word or two to a question you seem to ask; how I like "Camilla?" I do not care to say how little. Alas! she has reversed experience, which I have long', thought reverses its own utility by coming at the wrong end of our life when we do not want it. This author knew the world and penetrated characters before she had stepped over the threshold; and, now she has seen so much of it, she has little or no insight at all perhaps she apprehended having seen too much, and kept the bags of foul air that she brought from the Cave of Tempests too closely tied.
Adieu, thou who mightest be one of the cleverest of women if thou didst not prefer being one of the best! And when I say one of the best, I have not engaged my vote for the second. Yours most gratefully.
Letter 427 To Richard Gough, Esq.
Berkeley Square, Dec. 5, 1796. (page 574)
Dear Sir, Being struck with the extreme cold of last week, it has brought a violent gouty inflammation into one of my legs, and I was forced to be instantly brought to town very ill. As soon as I was a little recovered, I found here your most magnificent present of the second volume of Sepulchral Monuments, the most splendid work I ever saw, and which I congratulate myself on having lived long enough to see. Indeed, I congratulate my country on its appearance exactly at so illustrious a moment, when the patriotism and zeal of London have exhibited so astonishing marks of their opulence and attachment to the constitution, by a voluntary subscription of seventeen millions of money in three days. Your book, Sir, appearing, at that very instant, will be a monument of a fact so unexampled in history; the treasure of fine prints with which it is stowed, well becomes such a production and such a work, the expense of which becomes it too. I am impatient to be able to sit up and examine it more, and am sure my gratitude will increase in proportion. As soon as I shall receive the complete sheets, I will have the whole work bound in the most superb manner that can be: and though, being so infirm now, and just entered into my eightieth year, I am not likely to wait on you, and thank you, I shall be happy to have an opportunity, whenever you come this way, of telling you in person how much I am charmed with so splendid a monument of British glories, and which will be so proud an ornament to the libraries of any nation.
Letter 428 To Miss Berry.
Thursday, December 15, past noon, 1796. (page 575)
I had no account of you at all yesterday, but in Mrs. Damer's letter, which was rather better than the preceding; nor have I had any letter before post to-day, as you promised me in hers. I had, indeed, a humorous letter from a puss that is about your house,(904) which is more comfortable; as I think she would not have written cheerfully if you had not been in a good way. I would answer it, but I am grown a dull old Tabby, and have no "Quips and cranks and wanton wiles" left; but I shall be glad to see her when she follows you to town, which I earnestly hope will not pass Saturday. My horses will be with you on Friday night.
The House of Commons sat till half an hour after three this morning, on Mr. Pitt's loan to the Emperor; when it was approved by a majority of above two hundred. Mr. Fox was more temperate than was expected; Mr. Grey did not speak; Mr. Sheridan was very entertaining: several were convinced and voted for Mr. Pitt, who had gone down determined against it. The Prince came to town t'other day ill, was blooded twice, but has now a strong eruption upon his skin, which will probably be of great service to him. Sir Charles Blagden has been with the Duchess of Devonshire, and found her much better than he expected. Her look is little altered: she suffers but little, and finds herself benefited by being electrified.
I have received a compliment to-day very little expected by a superannuated old Etonian. Two tickets from the gentlemen of Westminster School, for their play on Monday next. I excused myself as civilly and respectfully as I could, on my utter impossibility of attending them. Adieu! I hope this will be the last letter I shall write before I See you.(905)
(904) This was written by Miss Salon, in the name of a kitten at Little Strawberry Hill, with whose gambols Lord Orford had been much amused.-M.B.
(905) Very soon after the date of the above letter, the gout, the attacks of which were every day becoming more frequent and longer, made those with whom Lord Orford was living at strawberry Hill very anxious that he should remove to Berkeley Square, to be nearer assistance, in case of any sudden seizure. As his correspondents, soon after his removal, were likewise established in London, no more letters passed between them. When not immediately suffering from pain, his mind was tranquil and cheerful. He was still capable of being amused. and of taking some part in conversation: but, during the last weeks of his life, when fever was superadded to his other ills, his mind became subject to the cruel hallucination of supposing himself neglected and abandoned by the only persons to whom his memory clung, and whom he desired always to see. In vain they recalled to his recollection how recently they had left him, and how short had been their absence: it satisfied him for the moment, but the same idea recurred as soon as he had lost sight of them. At last, nature sinking under the exhaustion of weakness, obliterated all ideas but those of mere existence, which ended, without a struggle, on the 2d of March 1797.-M.B.
Letter 429 To The Countess Of Ossory.
January 13, 1797. (page 576)
You distress me infinitely by showing my idle notes, which I cannot conceive can amuse any body. My old-fashioned breeding impels me every now and then to reply to the letters you honour me with writing; but in truth very unwillingly, for I seldom can have any thing particular to say. I scarce go out of my own house, and then only to two or three very private places, where I see nobody that really know's any thing; apd. what I learn comes from newspapers, that collect intelligence from coffee-houses—consequently, what I neither believe nor report. At home I see only a few charitable elders, except about fourscore nephews and nieces of various ages, who are each brought to me once a year, to stare at me as the Methusalem of the family; and they can only speak of their own contemporaries, which interest no more than if they talked of their dolls, or bats and balls. Must not the result of all this, Madam, make me a very entertaining correspondent? and can such letters be worth showing? or can I have any spirit when so old, and reduced to dictate? Oh! my good Madam, dispense with me from such a task, and think how it must add to it to apprehend such letters being shown. Pray send Me no more Such laurels, which I desire no more than their leaves when decked with a scrap of tinsel, and stuck on twelfth-cakes that lie on the shop boards of pastrycooks at Christmas. I shall be quite content with a sprig of rosemary thrown after me, when the parson of the parish commits my dust to dust. Till then, pray, Madam, accept the resignation of your ancient servant, Orford.