Dr. Robertson's work I should expect would be more accurate.

P. S. There has lately appeared, in four little volumes, a Chinese Tale, called Hau Kiou Choaan,(205) not very entertaining from the incidents, but I think extremely so from the novelty of the manner and the genuine representation of their customs.

(203) Now first collected.

(204) Probably Sir David's "Memorials and Letters relating to the History of Britain in the Reigns of James the First and Charles the First," which were published in 1766, from the originals in the Advocates' Library.-E.

(205) This pleasing little novel, in which the manners of the Chinese are painted to the life, was a translation from the Chinese by Mr. Wilkinson, and revised for publication by Dr.

Percy.-E.

Letter 105 To George Montagu, Esq.

Arlington Street, Dec. 8, 1761. (page 162)

I return you the list of prints, and shall be glad you will bring me all to which I have affixed this mark X. The rest I have; yet the expense of the whole list would not ruin me. Lord Farnham, who, I believe, departed this morning, brings you the list of the Duke of Devonshire's pictures.

I have been told that Mr. Bourk's history was of England, not of Ireland; I am glad it is the latter, for I am now in Mr. Hume's England, and would fain read no more. I not only know what has been written, but what would be written. Our story is so exhausted, that to make it new, they really make it new. Mr.

Hume has exalted Edward the Second and depressed Edward the Third. The next historian, I suppose, will make James the First a hero, and geld Charles the Second.

Fingal is come out; I have not yet got through it; not but, it is very fine-yet I cannot at once compa.s.s an epic poem now. It tires me to death to read how many ways a warrior is like the moon, or the sun, or a rock, or a lion, or the ocean. Fingal is a brave collection of similes, and will serve all the boys at Eton and Westminster for these twenty years. I will trust you with a secret, but you must not disclose it; I should be ruined with my Scotch friends; in short, I cannot believe it genuine; I cannot believe a regular poem of six books has been preserved, uncorrupted, by oral tradition, from times before Christianity was introduced into the island. What! preserved unadulterated by savages dispersed among mountains, and so often driven from their dens, so wasted by wars civil and foreign! alas one man ever got all by heart? I doubt it; were parts preserved by some, other parts by others? Mighty lucky, that the tradition was never interrupted, nor any part lost-not a verse, not a measure, not the sense! luckier and luckier. I have been extremely qualified myself lately for this Scotch memory; we have had nothing but a coagulation of rains, fogs, and frosts, and though they have clouded all understanding, I suppose, if I had tried, I should have found that they thickened, and gave great consistence to my remembrance.

You want news--I must make it, if I send it. To change the dulness of the scene I went to the play, where I had not been this winter. They are so crowded, that though I went before six, I got no better place than a fifth row, where I heard very ill, and was pent for five hours without a soul near me that I knew.

It was Cymbeline, and appeared to me as long as if every body in it went really to Italy in every act,, and came back again. With a few pretty pa.s.sages and a scene or two, it is so absurd and tiresome, that I am persuaded Garrick(206) * * * * *

(206) The rest of this letter is lost.

Letter 106 To Sir David Dalrymple.(207) December 21, 1761. (page 163)

Your specimen pleases me, and I give you many thanks for promising me the continuation. You will, I hope, find less trouble with printers than I have done. Just when my book was, I thought, ready to appear, my printer ran away, and has left it very imperfect. This is the fourth I have tried, and I own it discourages me. Our low people are so corrupt and such knaves, that being cheated and disappointed are all the fruits of attempting to amuse oneself or others. Literature must struggle with many difficulties. They who print for profit print only for profit; we, who print to entertain or instruct others, are the bubbles of our designs, defrauded, abused, pirated--don't you think, Sir, one need have resolution? Mine is very nearly exhausted.

(207) Now first collected.

Letter 107 To George Montagu, Esq.

Arlington Street, Dec. 23, 1761. Past midnight. (page 164)

I am this minute come home, and find such a delightful letter from you, that I cannot help answering it, and telling you so before I sleep. You need not affirm, that your ancient wit and pleasantry are revived; your letter is but five and twenty, and I will forgive any vanity, that is so honest, and so well founded.

Ireland I see produces wonders of more sorts than one; if my Lord Anson was to go lord-lieutenant, I suppose he would return a ravisher. How different am I from this state of revivification!

Even such talents as I had are far from blooming again; and while my friends, or contemporaries, or predecessors, are rising to preside over the fame of this age, I seem a mere antediluvian; must live upon what little stock of reputation I had acquired, and indeed grow so indifferent, that I can only wonder how those, whom I thought as old as myself, can interest themselves so much about a world, whose faces I hardly know. You recover your spirits and wit, Rigby is grown a speaker, Mr. Bentley a poet, while I am nursing one or two gouty friends, and sometimes lamenting that I am likely to survive the few I have left.

Nothing tempts me to launch out again; every day teaches me how much I was mistaken in my own parts, and I am in no danger now but of thinking I am grown too wise; for every period of life has its mistake.

Mr. Bentley's relation to Lord Rochester by the St. Johns is not new to me, and you had more reason to doubt of their affinity by the former marrying his mistress, than to ascribe their consanguinity to it. I shall be glad to see the epistle: are not "The Wishes" to be acted? remember me, if they are printed; and I shall thank you for this new list of prints.

I have mentioned names enough in this letter to lead me naturally to new ill usage I have received. Just when I thought my book finished, my printer ran away, and had left eighteen sheets in the middle of the book untouched, having amused me with sending proofs. He had got into debt, and two girls with child; being two, he could not marry two Hannahs. You see my luck; I had been kind to this fellow; in short, if the faults of my life had been punished as severely as my merits have been, I should be the most unhappy of beings; but let us talk of something else.

I have picked up at Mrs. Dunch's auction the sweetest Pet.i.tot in the world-the very picture of James the Second, that he gave Mrs.

G.o.dfrey,(208) and I paid but six guineas and a half for it. I will not tell you how vast a commission I had given; but I will own, that about the hour of sale, I drove about the door to find what likely bidders there were. The first coach I saw was the Chudleighs; could I help concluding, that a maid of honour, kept by a duke, would purchase the portrait of a duke kept by a maid of honour-but I was mistaken. The Oxendens reserved the best pictures; the fine china, and even the diamonds, sold for nothing; for n.o.body has a shilling. We shall be beggars if we don't conquer Peru within this half year.

If you are acquainted with my lady Barrymore, pray tell her that in less than two hours t'other night the Duke of c.u.mberland lost four hundred and fifty pounds at loo; Miss Pelham won three hundred, and I the rest. However, in general, loo is extremely gone to decay; I am to play at Princess Emily's to-morrow for the first time this winter, and it is with difficulty she has made a party.

My Lady Pomfret is dead on the road to Bath; and unless the deluge stops, and the fogs disperse, I think we shall all die. A few days ago, on the cannon firing for the King going to the House, some body asked what it was? M. de Choiseul replied, "Apparemment, c'est qu'on voit le soleil."

Shall I fill up the rest of my paper with some extempore lines that I wrote t'other night on Lady Mary c.o.ke having St. Anthony's fire in her cheek! You will find nothing in them to contradict what I have said in the former part of my letter; they rather confirm it.

No rouge you wear, nor can a dart >From Love's bright quiver wound your heart.

And thought you, Cupid and his mother Would unrevenged their anger smother?

No, no, from heaven they sent the fire That boasts St. Anthony its sire; They pour'd it on one peccant part, Inflamed your cheek, if not your heart.

In vain-for see the crimson rise, And dart fresh l.u.s.tre through your eyes While ruddier drops and baffled pain Enhance the white they mean to stain.

Ah! nymph, on that unfading face With fruitless pencil Time shall trace His lines malignant, since disease But gives you mightier power to please.

Willis is dead, and Pratt is to be chief justice; Mr. Yorke attorney general; solicitor, I don't know who. Good night! the watchman cries past one!

(208) Arabella Churchill, sister of the great Duke of Marlborough, was the mistress of James the Second while Duke of York, by whom she had four children; the celebrated Duke of Berwick, the Duke of Albemarle, and two daughters. She afterwards became the wife of Colonel Charles G.o.dfrey, master of the jewel office, and died in 1714, leaving by him two daughters, Charlotte Viscountess Falmouth, and Elizabeth, wife of Edmund Dunch, Esq.-E.

Letter 108 To George Montagu, Esq.

Arlington Street, Dec. 30, 1761. (page 165)

I have received two more letters from You since I wrote last week, and I like to find by them that you are so well and so happy. As nothing has happened of change in my situation but a few more months pa.s.sed, I have nothing to tell you new of myself.

Time does not sharpen my pa.s.sions or pursuits, and the experience I have had by no means prompts me to make new connexions. 'Tis a busy world, and well adapted to those who love to bustle in it; I loved it once, loved its very tempests--now I barely open my windows to view what course the storm takes. The town, who, like the devil, when one has once sold oneself' to him, never permits one to have done playing the fool, believe I have a great hand in their amus.e.m.e.nts; but to write pamphlets, I mean as a volunteer, one must love or hate, and I have the satisfaction of doing neither. I Would not be at the trouble of composing a distich to achieve a revolution. 'Tis equal to me what names are on the scene. In the general view, the prospect is very dark: the Spanish war, added to the load, almost oversets our most sanguine heroism: and now we have in opportunity of conquering all the world, by being at war with all the world, we seem to doubt a little of our abilities. On a survey of our situation, I comfort myself with saying, "Well, what is it to me?" A selfishness that is far from anxious, when it is the first thought in one's const.i.tution; not so agreeable when it is the last, and adopted by necessity alone.

You drive your expectations much too fast, in thinking my Anecdotes of Painting are ready to appear, in demanding three volumes. You will see but two, and it will be February first.

True, I have written three, but I question whether the third will be published at all; certainly not soon; it is not a work of merit enough to cloy the town with a great deal at once. My printer ran away, and left a third part of the two first volumes unfinished. I suppose he is writing a tragedy himself, or an epistle to my Lord Melcomb, or a panegyric on my Lord Bute.

Jemmy Pelham(209) is dead, and has left to his servants what little his servants had left him. Lord Ligonier was killed by the newspapers, and wanted to prosecute them; his lawyer told him it was impossible--a tradesman indeed might prosecute, as such a report might affect his credit. "Well, then," said the old man, "I may prosecute too, for I can prove I have been hurt by this 'report I was going to marry a great fortune, who thought I was but seventy-four; the newspapers have said I am eighty, and she will not have me."

Lord Charlemont's Queen Elizabeth I know perfectly; he outbid me for it; is his villa finished? I am well pleased with the design in Chambers. I have been my out-of-town with Lord Waldecrave, Selwyn, and Williams; it was melancholy the missing poor Edgecombe, who was constantly of the Christmas and Easter parties. Did you see the charming picture Reynolds painted for me of him, Selwyn, and Gilly Williams? It is by far one of the best things he has executed. He has just finished a pretty whole-length of Lady Elizabeth Keppel,(210) in the bridemaid's habit, sacrificing to Hymen.

If the Spaniards land in Ireland, shall you make the campaign?

No. no, come back to England; you and I will not be patriots, till the Gauls are in the city, and we must take our great chairs and our fasces, and be knocked on the head with decorum in St.

James's market. Good night!

P. S. I am told that they bind in vellum better at Dublin than any where; pray bring me one book of their binding, as well as it can be done, and I will not mind the price. If Mr. Bourk's history appear,-, before your return, let it be that.

(209) The Hon. James Pelham, of Crowhurst, Suss.e.x. He had been princ.i.p.al secretary to Frederick Prince of Wales, and for nearly forty years secretary to the several lords-chamberlain.-E.

(210) She was daughter of the Earl of Albemarle, and married to the Marquis of Tavistock.

Letter 109 To George Montagu, Esq.

Arlington Street, Jan. 26, 1762. (page 167)