I know no particular news, but that Lord Bute was thought in great danger yesterday; I have heard nothing of him to-day. I do not know even a match, but of some that are going to be divorced; the fate of one of the latter is to be turned into an exaltation, and is treated by her family and friends in quite a new style, to the discomfit of all prudery. It puts me in mind of Lord Lansdowne's lines in the room in the Tower where my father had been confined,

"Some fall so hard, they bound and rise again."

Methinks, however, it is a little hard on Lord George Germaine, that in four months after seeing a d.u.c.h.ess of Dorset, he may see a Lord Middles.e.x too; for so old the egg is said to be, that is already prepared. If this trade goes on, half the peeresses will have two eldest sons with both fathers alive at the same time.

Lady Holderness expresses nothing but grief and willingness to receive her daughter(334) again on any terms, which probably will happen; for the daughter has already opened her eyes, is sensible of her utter ruin, and has written to Lord Carmarthen and Madam Cordon, acknowledging her guilt, and begging to be remembered only with pity, which is sufficient to make one pity her.

I would beg pardon for so long a letter, but your ladyship desired THE intelligence, and I know a long letter from London is not uncomfortable at Christmas, even. in the most comfortable house in the country. Perhaps my own forced idleness has a little contributed to lengthen it; still I hope it implies great readiness to obey your ladyship's commands, in your most obedient humble servant.

(331) Now first printed.

(332) Lady Browne's first husband was Henry Fermor Esq., grandfather of Mr. Fermor of Tusmore House. She was Miss Sheldon.-E.

(333) Some charges having been brought against Admiral Keppel for his conduct at the battle of Ushant, by Sir Hugh Palliser, his vice-admiral, he was tried for the same, and not only unanimously acquitted, but the prosecution declared malicious. This verdict gave such general satisfaction, that London was illuminated for two nights; upon one, of which a mob, consisting in great part of sailors who had served under Keppel, broke all the windows in the house of his accuser. The city of London voted the Admiral the freedom of the corporation. In 1782, he was Created Viscount Keppel, and appointed first lord of the admiralty. He died unmarried, in October 1786. The following is a part of Mr. Burke's beautiful panegyric on him, at the conclusion of his letter to a n.o.ble Lord:--"I ever looked on Lord Keppel as one of the greatest and best men of his age, and I loved and cultivated him accordingly.

It was at his trial that he gave me this picture. With what zeal and anxious affection I attended him through that his agony of glory; what part my son took in the early flush and enthusiasm of his virtue, and the pious pa.s.sion with which he attached himself to all my connexions; with what prodigality we both squandered ourselves in courting almost every sort of enmity for his sake, I believe he felt, just as I should have felt such friendship on such an occasion. I partook, indeed, of this honour with several of the first, and best, and ablest in the kingdom; but I was behind with none of them - and I am sure that if, to the eternal disgrace of this nation, and to the total annihilation of every trace of honour and virtue in it, things had taken a different turn from what they did, I should have attended him to the quarterdeck with no less good-will and more pride, though with far other feelings, than I partook of the general flow of national joy that attended the justice that was done to his virtue."-E.

(335) Amelia D'Arcy, Baroness Conyers, daughter of Robert, fourth Earl of Holderness, Married to Lord Carmarthen; who had eloped with Captain John Byron, father of the great poet.-E.

Letter 154 To The Earl Of Buchan.(336) Arlington Street, Dec. 24, 1778. (page 209)

It was an additional mortification to my illness, my lord, that I was nut able to thank your lordship with my own hand for the honour of your letter, and for your goodness in remembering an old man, who must with reason consider himself as forgotten, when he never was of importance, and is now almost useless to himself.

Frequent severe fits of the gout have a good deal disabled me from pursuing the trifling studies in which I could pretend to know any thing; or at least has given me an indifference, that makes me less ready in answering questions than I may have been formerly; and as my papers are in the country, whither at present I am not able to go, I fear I can give but unsatisfactory replies to your lordship's queries.

The two very curious pictures of King James and his Queen (I cannot recollect whether the third or fourth of the name, but I know that she was a princess of Sweden or Denmark,(337) and that her arms are on her portrait,) were at the palace at Kensington, and I imagine are there still. I had obtained leave from the Lord Chamberlain to have drawings made of them, and Mr. Wale actually began them for me, but made such slow progress, and I was so called off from the thought of them by indispositions and other avocations, that they were never finished; and Mr.. Wale may, perhaps, still have the beginnings he made.

At the Duke of Devonshire's at Hardwicke, there is a valuable though poorly painted picture of James V. and Mary of Guise, his second queen: it is remarkable from the great resemblance of Mary Queen of Scots to her father; I mean in Lord Morton's picture of her, and in the image of her on her tomb at Westminster, which agree together, and which I take to be the genuine likeness. I have doubts on Lord Burlington's picture, and on Dr. Mead's. The nose in both is thicker, and also fuller at bottom than on the tomb; though it is a little supported by her coins.

There is a much finer portrait,--indeed, an excellent head,--of the Lady Margaret Douglas at Mr. Carteret's at Hawnes in Bedfordshire, the late Lord Granville's. It is a shrewd countenance, and at the same time with great goodness of character. Lord Scarborough has a good picture, in the style of Holbein at least, of Queen Margaret Tudor, daughter of Henry VII., and of her second or third husband (for, if I don't mistake, she had three); but indeed, my lord, these things are so much out of my memory at present, that I speak with great diffidence. I cannot even recollect any thing else to your lordship's purpose; but I flatter myself, that these imperfect notices will at least be a testimony of my readiness to obey your lordship's commands, as that I am, with great respect, my lord, your lordship's obedient humble servant.

(336) Now first printed. David Stewart Erskine, eleventh Earl of Buchan. He was intended for public life, but shortly after succeeding to the family honours, in 1767, he retired to Scotland, and devoted himself to literature. His princ.i.p.al works were, an Essay on the lives of Fletcher of Saltoun and the Poet Thomson, and a Life of Napier of Merchiston. He died at Dryburgh Abbey in 1829 at the age of eighty-seven.-E.

(337) James the First married, in 1590, Anne, daughter of Frederick King of Denmark.-E.

Letter 155 To Edward Gibbon, Esq.(338) [1778.] (page 210)

Dear Sir, I have gone through your Inquisitor's attack(339) and am far from being clear that it deserves your giving yourself the trouble of an answer, as neither the detail nor the result affects your argument. So far from it, many of his reproofs are levelled at your having quoted a wrong page; he confessing often that what you have cited is in the author, referred to, but not precisely in the individual spot. If St. Peter is attended by a corrector of the press, you will certainly never be admitted where he is a porter. I send you my copy, because I scribbled my remarks. I do not send them with the impertinent presumption of suggesting a hint to you, but to prove I did not grudge the trouble of going through such a book when you desired it, and to show how little struck me as of any weight.

I have set down nothing on your imputed plagiarisms; for, if they are so, no argument that has ever been employed must be used again, even where the pa.s.sage necessary is applied to a different purpose. An author is not allowed to be master of his own works; but, by Davis's new law, the first person that cites him would be so. You probably looked into Middleton, Dodwell, etc.; had the same reflections on the same circ.u.mstances, or conceived them so as to recollect them, without remembering what suggested them.

Is this plagiarism? If it is, Davis and such cavillers might go a short step further, and insist that an author should peruse every work antecedently written on every subject at all collateral to his own.-not to a.s.sist him, but to be sure to avoid every material touched by his predecessors. I will make but one remark on such divine champions. Davis and his prototypes tell you Middleton, etc. have used the same objections, and they have been confuted: answering, in the theologic dictionary, signifying confuting; no matter whether there is sense, argument, truth, in the answer or not.

Upon the whole I think ridicule is the only answer such a work is ent.i.tled to.' The ablest, answer which you can make (which would be the ablest answer that could be made) would never have any authority with the cabal, yet would allow a sort of dignity to the author. His patrons will always maintain that he vanquished you, unless u made him too ridiculous for them to dare to revive his name. You might divert yourself, too, with Alma Mater, the church, employing a goviat to defend the citadel, while the generals repose in their tents. If irenaeus, St. Augustine, etc.

did not set apprentices and proselytes to combat Celsus and the adversaries of the new religion---but early bishops had not five or six thousand pounds a-year.

In short, dear Sir, I wish you not to lose your time; that is, either ,not reply, or set your mark on your answer, that it may always be read with the rest of your works.

(338) Now first collected.

(339) "An Examination of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Chapters of Mr. Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

By Henry Edward Davis, B.A. of Baliol College, Oxford." He was born in 1756 and died in 1784, at the early age of twenty-seven.

He was a native of Windsor, and is believed to have received a present from George the Third for this production.-E.

Letter 156 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.

Strawberry Hill, Jan. 3, 1779. (page 211)

At last, after ten weeks I have been able to remove hither, in hopes change of air and the frost will a.s.sist my recovery; though I am not one of those ancients that forget the register, and think they are to be as well as ever after every fit of illness.

As yet I can barely creep about the room in the middle of the day.

I have made my printer (now my secretary) copy out the rest of Mr. Baker's Life; for my own hand will barely serve to write necessary letters, and complains even of them. If you know of any very trusty person pa.s.sing between London and Cambridge, I would send it to you, but should not care to trust it by the coach, nor to any giddy undergraduate that comes to town to see a play; and, besides, I mean to return you your own notes. I Will Say no more than I have said in my apology to you for the manner in which I have written this life. With regard to Mr. Baker himself, I am confident you will find that I have done full justice to his work and character. i do not expect You to approve the inferences I draw against some other persons; and yet, if his conduct was meritorious, it would not be easy to excuse those who -were active after doing what he would not do. You will not understand this sentence till you have seen the Life.

I hope you have not been untiled or unpaled by the tempest on New-year's morning.(340) I have lost two beautiful elms in a row before my windows here, and had the skylight demolished in town.

Lady Pomfret's Gothic house in my street lost one of the stone towers, like those at King's Chapel, and it was beaten through the roof The top of our cross, too, at Ampthill was thrown down, as I hear from Lady Ossory this morning. I remember to have been told that Bishop Kidder and his wife were killed in their bed in the palace of Gloucester in 1709,(341) and yet his heirs were sued for dilapidations. Lord de Ferrers,(342) who deserves his ancient honours, is going to repair the castle at Tamworth, and has flattered me that he will Consult me. He has a violent pa.s.sion for ancestry--and, consequently, I trust will not stake the patrimony of the Ferrars, Townshends, and Comptons, at the hazard-table. A little pride would not hurt our n.o.bility, c.o.c.k and hen. Adieu, dear Sir; send me a good account of yourself Yours ever.

(340) On the 1st of January, 1779, London was visited by one of the most violent tempests ever known. Scarcely a public building in the metropolis escaped without damage.-E.

(341) The memorable storm here alluded to took place in November, 1703, and Bishop Kidder and his lady perished in their bed at the episcopal palace at Wells by the fall of a stack of chimneys.

They were privately interred in the cathedral; and one of his daughters, dying single, directed by her will a monument to be erected for her parents.-E.

(342) Robert, sixth Earl Ferrers. He had just succeeded to the t.i.tle, by the death of his brother Washington, vice-admiral of the blue,; who had begun to rebuild the mansion of Stanton Harold, in Leicestershire, according to a plan of his own, and lived to see it nearly finished.-E.

Letter 157 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.

Arlington Street; Jan. 9, 1779. (page 212)

Your flight to Bath would have much surprised me, if Mr.

Churchill, who, I think, heard it from Stanley, had not prepared me for it. Since you was amused, I am glad you went, especially as you escaped being initiated in Mrs. Miller's follies at Batheaston,(343) which you would have mentioned. She would certainly have sent some trapes of a Muse to press you, had she known what good epigrams you write.

I went to Strawberry partly out of prudence, partly from ennui.

I thought it best to air myself before I go in and out of hot rooms here, and had my house thoroughly warmed for a week previously, and then only stirred from the red room to the blue on the same floor. I stayed five days, and was neither the better nor the worse for it. I was quite tired with having neither company, books, nor amus.e.m.e.nt of any kind. Either from the emptiness of the town, or that ten weeks of gout have worn out the patience of all my acquaintance, but I do not see three persons in three days. This gives me but an uncomfortable prospect for my latter days: it is but probable that I may be a cripple in a fit or two more, if I have strength to go through them; and, as that will be long life, one outlives one's acquaintance. I cannot make new acquaintance, nor interest myself at all about the young, except those that belong to me; nor does that go beyond contributing to their pleasures, without having much satisfaction in their conversation-But-one must take every thing as it comes, and make the best of it., I have had a much happier life than I deserve, and than millions that deserve better. I should be very weak if I could not bear the uncomfortableness of old age, when I can afford what comforts it is capable of. How many poor old people have none of them! I am ashamed whenever I am peevish, and recollect that I have fire and servants to help me.

I hear Admiral Keppel is in high spirits with the great respect and zeal expressed for him. In my own opinion, his const.i.tution will not stand the struggle. I am very uneasy too for the Duke of Richmond, who is at Portsmouth, and will be at least as much agitated.

Sir William Meredith has written a large pamphlet, and a very good one. It is to show, that whenever the Grecian republics taxed their dependents, the latter resisted, and shook off the yoke. He has printed but twelve copies: the Duke of Gloucester sent me one of them. There is an anecdote of my father, on the authority of old Jack White, which I doubt. It says, he would not go on with the excise scheme, though his friends advised it, I cannot speak to the particular event, as I was, then at school; but it was more like him to have yielded, against his sentiments, to Mr. Pelham and his candid--or say, plausible--and timid friends. I have heard him say, that he never did give up his opinion to such men but he always repented it. However, the anecdote in the, book would be more to his honour. But what a strange man is Sir William! I suppose, now he has written this book, he will change his opinion, and again be for carrying on the war--or, if he does not know his own mind for two years together, why will he take places, to make every body doubt his honesty?

(343) See ant'e, P. 125, letter 86.-E.

Letter 158 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.

January 15, 1779. (page 213)

I sent you by Dr. Jacob, as you desired, my Life of Mr. Baker, and with it your own materials. I beg you will communicate my Ma.n.u.script to n.o.body, but if you think it worth your trouble I will consent to your transcribing it; but on one condition, and a silly one for Me to exact, who am as old as You, and broken to pieces, and very unlikely to survive you; but, should so improbable a thing happen, I must exact that you will keep your transcript sealed up, with orders written on the cover to be restored to me in case of an accident, for I should Certainly dislike very much to see it printed without my consent. I should not think of your copying it, if you did not love to transcribe, and sometimes things of as little value as my ma.n.u.script. I shall beg to have it returned to me by a safe hand as soon as you can, for I have nothing but the foul copy, which n.o.body can read, I believe, but I and my secretary.