Volume I Part 8 (1/2)
Well, Harry, Scotland is the last place on earth I should have thought of for turning anybody poet: but I begin to forgive it half its treasons in favour of your verses, for I suppose you don't think I am the dupe of the Highland story that you tell me: the only use I shall make of it is to commend the lines to you, as if they really were a Scotchman's. There is a melancholy harmony in them that is charming, and a delicacy in the thoughts that no Scotchman is capable of, though a _Scotchwoman_ might inspire it.[1] I beg, both for Cynthia's sake and my own, that you would continue your De Tristibus till I have an opportunity of seeing your muse, and she of rewarding her: _Reprens la musette, berger amoureux_! If Cynthia has ever travelled ten miles in fairy-land, she must be wondrous content with the person and qualifications of her knight, who in future story will be read of thus: Elmedorus was tall and perfectly well made, his face oval, and features regularly handsome, but not effeminate; his complexion sentimentally brown, with not much colour; his teeth fine, and forehead agreeably low, round which his black hair curled naturally and beautifully. His eyes were black too, but had nothing of fierce or insolent; on the contrary, a certain melancholy swimmingness, that described hopeless love rather than a natural amorous languish. His exploits in war, where he always fought by the side of the renowned Paladine William of England, have endeared his memory to all admirers of true chivalry, as the mournful elegies which he poured out among the desert rocks of Caledonia in honour of the peerless lady and his heart's idol, the incomparable Cynthia, will for ever preserve his name in the flowery annals of poesy.
[Footnote 1: Walpole could not foresee the genius of Burns, that before his own death was to shed such glory on Scotland. His compliment to a Scotchwoman was an allusion to Lady Aylesbury (_nee_ Miss Caroline Campbell), whom Conway married after her husband's death, which took place a few months after the date of this letter. Lady Aylesbury was no poetess, but his estimate of what might be accomplished by Scotch ladies was afterwards fully borne out by Lady Anne Lindsay, the auth.o.r.ess of ”Auld Gray,” and Lady Nairn.]
What a pity it is I was not born in the golden age of Louis the Fourteenth, when it was not only the fas.h.i.+on to write folios, but to read them too! or rather, it is a pity the same fas.h.i.+on don't subsist now, when one need not be at the trouble of invention, nor of turning the whole Roman history into romance for want of proper heroes. Your campaign in Scotland, rolled out and well be-epitheted, would make a pompous work, and make one's fortune; at sixpence a number, one should have all the damsels within the liberties for subscribers: whereas now, if one has a mind to be read, one must write metaphysical poems in blank verse, which, though I own to be still easier, have not half the imagination of romances, and are dull without any agreeable absurdity.
Only think of the gravity of this wise age, that have exploded ”Cleopatra and Pharamond,” and approve ”The Pleasures of the Imagination,” ”The Art of Preserving Health,” and ”Leonidas!” I beg the age's pardon: it has done approving these poems, and has forgot them.
Adieu! dear Harry. Thank you seriously for the poem. I am going to town for the birthday, and shall return hither till the Parliament meets; I suppose there is no doubt of our meeting then.
Yours ever.
P.S.--Now you are at Stirling, if you should meet with Drummond's History of the five King Jameses, pray look it over. I have lately read it, and like it much. It is wrote in imitation of Livy; the style masculine, and the whole very sensible; only he ascribes the misfortunes of one reign to the then king's loving architecture and
In trim gardens taking pleasure.
_HE HAS BOUGHT STRAWBERRY HILL._
TO THE HON. H.S. CONWAY.
TWICKENHAM, _June_ 8, 1747.
You perceive by my date that I am got into a new camp, and have left my tub at Windsor. It is a little plaything-house that I got out of Mrs.
Chenevix's shop, and is the prettiest bauble you ever saw. It is set in enamelled meadows, with filigree hedges:
A small Euphrates through the piece is told, And little finches wave their wings in gold.
Two delightful roads, that you would call dusty, supply me continually with coaches and chaises: barges as solemn as Barons of the Exchequer move under my window; Richmond Hill and Ham walks bound my prospect; but, thank G.o.d! the Thames is between me and the d.u.c.h.ess of Queensberry.
Dowagers as plenty as flounders inhabit all around, and Pope's ghost is just now skimming under my window by a most poetical moonlight. I have about land enough to keep such a farm as Noah's, when he set up in the ark with a pair of each kind; but my cottage is rather cleaner than I believe his was after they had been cooped up together forty days. The Chenevixes had tricked it out for themselves: up two pair of stairs is what they call Mr. Chenevix's library, furnished with three maps, one shelf, a bust of Sir Isaac Newton, and a lame telescope without any gla.s.ses. Lord John Sackville _predecessed_ me here, and inst.i.tuted certain games called _cricketalia_, which have been celebrated this very evening in honour of him in a neighbouring meadow.
You will think I have removed my philosophy from Windsor with my tea-things. .h.i.ther; for I am writing to you in all this tranquillity, while a Parliament is bursting about my ears. You know it is going to be dissolved: I am told, you are taken care of, though I don't know where, nor whether anybody that chooses you will quarrel with me because he does choose you, as that little bug the Marquis of Rockingham did; one of the calamities of my life which I have bore as abominably well as I do most about which I don't care. They say the Prince has taken up two hundred thousand pounds, to carry elections which he won't carry:--he had much better have saved it to buy the Parliament after it is chosen.
A new set of peers are in embryo, to add more dignity to the silence of the House of Lords.
I made no remarks on your campaign, because, as you say, you do nothing at all; which, though very proper nutriment for a thinking head, does not do quite so well to write upon. If any one of you can but contrive to be shot upon your post, it is all we desire, shall look upon it as a great curiosity, and will take care to set up a monument to the person so slain; as we are doing by vote to Captain Cornewall, who was killed at the beginning of the action in the Mediterranean four years ago. In the present dearth of glory, he is canonized; though, poor man! he had been tried twice the year before for cowardice.
I could tell you much election news, none else; though not being thoroughly attentive to so important a subject, as to be sure one ought to be, I might now and then mistake, and give you a candidate for Durham in place of one for Southampton, or name the returning officer instead of the candidate. In general, I believe, it is much as usual--those sold in detail that afterwards will be sold in the representation--the ministers bribing Jacobites to choose friends of their own--the name of well-wishers to the present establishment, and patriots outbidding ministers that they may make the better market of their own patriotism:--in short, all England, under some name or other, is just now to be bought and sold; though, whenever we become posterity and forefathers, we shall be in high repute for wisdom and virtue. My great-great-grandchildren will figure me with a white beard down to my girdle; and Mr. Pitt's will believe him unspotted enough to have walked over nine hundred hot ploughshares, without hurting the sole of his foot. How merry my ghost will be, and shake its ears to hear itself quoted as a person of consummate prudence! Adieu, dear Harry!
Yours ever.
_HIS MODE OF LIFE--PLANTING--PROPHECIES OF NEW METHODS AND NEW DISCOVERIES IN A FUTURE GENERATION._
TO THE HON. H.S. CONWAY.
STRAWBERRY HILL, _Aug._ 29, 1748.
Dear Harry,--Whatever you may think, a campaign at Twickenham furnishes as little matter for a letter as an abortive one in Flanders. I can't say indeed that my generals wear black wigs, but they have long full-bottomed hoods which cover as little entertainment to the full.
[Ill.u.s.tration: STRAWBERRY HILL, FROM THE SOUTH EAST.]
There's General my Lady Castlecomer, and General my Lady Dowager Ferris!
Why, do you think I can extract more out of them than you can out of Hawley or Honeywood? Your old women dress, go to the Duke's levee, see that the soldiers c.o.c.k their hats right, sleep after dinner, and soak with their led-captains till bed-time, and tell a thousand lies of what they never did in their youth. Change hats for head-clothes, the rounds for visits, and led-captains for toad-eaters, and the life is the very same. In short, these are the people I live in the midst of, though not with; and it is for want of more important histories that I have wrote to you seldom; not, I give you my word, from the least negligence. My present and sole occupation is planting, in which I have made great progress and talked very learnedly with the nurserymen, except that now and then a lettuce run to seed overturns all my botany, as I have more than once taken it for a curious West Indian flowering shrub. Then the deliberation with which trees grow, is extremely inconvenient to my natural impatience. I lament living in so barbarous an age, when we are come to so little perfection in gardening. I am persuaded that a hundred and fifty years hence it will be as common to remove oaks a hundred and fifty years old, as it is now to transplant tulip roots.[1] I have even begun a treatise or panegyric on the great discoveries made by posterity in all arts and sciences, wherein I shall particularly descant on the great and cheap convenience of making trout-rivers--one of the improvements which Mrs. Kerwood wondered Mr. Hedges would not make at his country-house, but which was not then quite so common as it will be.