BOOK III

. LETTER III

SIDONIUS TO HIS ECDICIUS--HEALTH

If ever, now you are longed for by my Arvernians, whose love for you subdues them remarkably, and indeed for all sorts of reasons. First, because a man's native land has the greatest part in creating affection for him.[66] Then, because in your time you are about the only mortal who was longed for before his birth as much as he was rejoiced in after it.... I say nothing of such things--common to all, but no mean incitement to affection--as that you crawled as a child on the same turf with them. I pass over the grass which you first trod, the river you first swam, the woods you broke through in hunting. I leave out the fact that it was here you first played ball[67] and backgammon,[68] that you hawked, coursed, rode, shot with the bow. I omit the fact that for the sake of your boyish presence students of letters came hither from all parts; and that it was due to you as an individual that our nobility, anxious to shed the slough of Celtic speech, imbued itself now with the style of oratory, now with the measures of the Muse. And this specially kindled the love of the community[69] that you forbade those whom you had already made Latins[70] to remain barbarians.[71] For it could never slip the memory of our citizens what and how great you seemed, to every age and rank and sex on the half-ruined mounds of our walls, when, accompanied by scarcely eighteen horsemen, you cut your way through some thousands of Goths in full daylight and (which posterity will hardly believe) in the open field. A well trained army stood aghast at the sound of your name and the sight of your person: so that the leaders of the enemy, in their astonishment, hardly knew how many were their followers, how few yours. Their line was then withdrawn to the brow of a steep hill; it had before been gathered together to storm, but on your appearance was not deployed for battle. Meanwhile you, having slain some of their best men whom not sloth but courage had made the rearmost of the troop, occupied the level ground alone, though such a fight gave you not so many comrades as your table is wont to contain guests. And when you returned to the town at your leisure what came to meet you in the way of official compliments, applause, tears, rejoicings can be better guessed than described. One might see in the crammed halls of the spacious palace that happy ovation for your thronged return. Some caught up the dust of your footsteps to kiss it: others took out the horses' curbs stained with blood and foam; others prepared the stands for the saddles drenched with the horses' sweat; others, when you were about to put off your helmet, unbuckled the clasps of its plated chin-straps, or busied themselves with unlacing your greaves. Yet others counted the notches on the swords, blunted with slaughter, or measured with livid[72] fingers the rings of the corslets, slashed or pierced by weapons.[73]

EARLY MEDIAEVAL LETTER (TWELFTH CENTURY)

Of the other persons mentioned in this letter besides the widowed Duchess and King Louis VII., the first is Ralph, Count of (Peronne and) Vermandois, a leper. The lady's name was Eleanor, and she also was probably a widow; the Duchess's son Hugh was third of that name as Duke of Burgundy. Ivo, Count of Soissons, was the guardian of the Count of Vermandois, incapacitated legally by his plague. The proposed marriage did not come off. The business-like tone of the letter will only surprise those who do not really know the "Ages of Romance." I owe the selection of it to my friend the Rev. W. Hunt, D.Litt., who came to my aid in the dearth of books of this period which circumstances imposed on me.

To Louis[74] most excellent King of the Franks by the grace of God, and her most beloved Lord, Mary, Duchess of Burgundy--health and due respect. It is known to your Majesty that my son is your liegeman, and, if it please you, your kinsman also. Whatsoever he can do is yours: and if he could do more it were yours. And so I all the more confidently ask your highest affection for my son. For it has been told me that Count Ralph of Peronne has a certain marriageable sister who, as has been reported to me and her own people, would be a suitable wife for my son. For this reason, most beloved Lord, I and he ask that you would look to this matter yourself and speak about it to the Count of Soissons, and settle how this marriage may be contracted. You must know that though my son might marry in another kingdom, I greatly prefer that he should take a wife in yours, rather than in any other. The nearer he becomes connected with you the more will he be yours and altogether a profit to you.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] It may of course be "illustrated" in the other sense by a second use of the pen; and we shall have instances of this kind to notice.

[2] As has often been pointed out Ben Jonson's exquisite "Drink to me only with thine eyes" is a verse-paraphrase or mosaic from this writer's prose.

[3] Pliny, if he did not always "write for publication," deliberately "published," as we should say, his letters. Indeed, he is one of the first to use the word in this sense, even if he uses it immediately of an oration not a letter. Some think Cicero meant publication; and he was very likely to do so.

[4] The Latin statesman, like the Greek bishop, condescends to write about wine and even more fully. One of the most interesting and informing things on the subject is his discourse on _vinum acinaticium_, a sort of Roman Imperial Tokay made from grapes kept till the frost had touched them.

[5] Genuine letters of Sappho would have been of the first interest to compare with those of Heloise, and the "Portuguese Nun" and Mademoiselle de Lespinasse. Diotima's might have been as disappointing as George Eliot's: but by no means must necessarily have been so. Aspasia's, sometimes counterfeited, ought to have been good.

[6] It is part of the plan to give, as a sort of Appendix to the Introduction, and extension of it towards the main body of text, some specimens of Greek, Roman (classical and post-classical) and Early Mediaeval letter-writing, translated for the purpose by the present writer. The _continuity_ of literary history is a thing which deserves to be attended to, especially when there is an ever-growing tendency to confine attention to things modern--albeit so soon to be antiquated! I owe the last of these specimens, in the Latin from which I translate it, to the kindness of my friend the Rev. W. Hunt, D.Litt., to whom I had recourse as not myself having access to a large library at the moment, and who has assisted me in other parts of this book.

[7] Yet others, as to authenticity, have, I believe, been rejected by all competent scholarship.

[8] Benjamin Constant and Madame de Charrière.

[9] Some of us think Blake a great poet; but this is scarcely a general opinion, and he does not appear till the century was three parts over. Burns (whose own letters by the way do him little justice) hardly comes in.

[10] Especially the most popular and voluminous if not the most important of all--the periodical and the novel.

[11] The danger being of many sorts--usually in the direction of various kinds of _excess_. A _quietly_ tragic letter may be a masterpiece: perhaps there is no finer example than one to be again referred to, of Mrs. Carlyle's.

[12] Mr. Paul thinks that "the baby language" is terribly out of character, and that there is "too much of it"; that Swift "would try to make love though he did not know what love meant"; and that the whole rings hollow and insincere. Others, women as well as men, have held that the "little language" is only less pathetic than it is charming; that Swift was one of the greatest, if one of the unhappiest lovers of the world; and that the thing is as sincere as if it had been written in the Palace of Truth and only hollow as is the space between Heaven and Hell.

[13] It should never be, but perhaps sometimes is, forgotten that "Stella" was a lady of unusual wits, and of what Swift's greatest decrier called in his own protegée Mrs. Williams "universal curiosity," that is to say not "inquisitiveness" but "intelligent interest." The politics etc. are not mere selfish attention to what interests the writer only.

[14] It must not be forgotten that she was Fielding's cousin. And after the remark above on Swift it is pleasant and may be fair to say that Mr. Paul is a hearty "Marian."

[15] Johnson is again the chief and by no means trustworthy witness for this "insolence." But in the same breath he admitted that Chesterfield was "dignified." Now dignity is almost as doubtfully compatible with insolence as with impudence.

[16] It is difficult to think of anyone who has combined statesmanship (Chesterfield's accomplishments in which are constantly forgotten), social gifts and literary skill in an equal degree.

[17] Excluding of course purely historical and public things like the trials of the '45 and the riots of '80.

[18] They were travelling together (always rather a test of friendship) in Italy, and Horace, as he confesses, no doubt gave himself airs. But it is pretty certain that Gray had not at this time, if he ever had, that fortunate combination of good (or at least well-commanded) temper and good breeding which enables a gentleman to meet such conduct with conduct on his own side as free from petulant "touchiness" as from ignoble parasitism.

[19] Gray was not, like Walpole, a richly endowed sinecurist. But to use a familiar "bull" he seems never to have had anything to do, and never to have done it when he had. His poems are a mere handful; his excellent _Metrum_ is a fragment; and as Professor of History at Cambridge he never did anything at all.

[20] They do not seem to have known each other personally. But (for reasons not difficult to assign but here irrelevant) Johnson was on the whole, though not wholly, unjust to Gray, and Gray seems to have disliked and spoken rudely of Johnson.

[21] The varieties of what may be called literary _exercise_ which have been utilised for educational or recreative purposes, are almost innumerable. Has anyone ever tried "breaking up" a letter (such as those to be given hereafter) into a conversation by interlarded comment, questions, etc.?

[22] As far as the accidents are concerned. The essentials vary not. Marianne is eternal, whether she faints and blushes, or jazzes and--does not blush.

[23] One unfortunate exception, the _ex-post facto_ references to the split with Lady Austin, may be urged by a relentless prosecutor. But when William has to choose between Mary and Anna it will go hard but he will _have_ to be unfair to one of them.

[24] This "swan's" utterances in poetry were quite unlike those of Tennyson's dying bird: and her taste in it was appalling. She tells Scott that the Border Ballads were totally destitute of any right to the name.

[25] For a singular misjudgment on this point see Prefatory Note _infra_.

[26] Particularly when he is able to apply the _Don Juan_ mood of sarcastic if rather superficial life-criticism in which he was a real master.

[27] _I.e._ "violently and vulgarly absurd."

[28] It may, however, be suggested that the extraordinary _bluntness_ (to use no stronger word) of both is almost sufficiently evidenced in the fact that in his last edition of Keats Mr. Forman committed the additional outrage of distributing these letters according to their dates among the rest. The isolation of the agony gives almost the only possible excuse for revealing it.

[29] It is of course true that Shelley himself did not at first quite appreciate Keats. But _Adonais_ cancels the deficit and leaves an almost infinite balance in favour. One can only hope that, had the circumstances been reversed, Keats would have set the account right as triumphantly.

[30] This tendency makes it perhaps desirable to observe that in the _particular_ context of the _Belle Dame_ there is nothing whatever to cavil at.

[31] The recent centenary saw, as usual, with much welcome appreciation some uncritical excesses.

[32] In not a few cases they may be said to have been deliberately _un_prepared--intended though not labelled as "private and confidential."

[33] In which, be it remembered, the "Life-and-Letters" system only came in quite late.

[34] At the very moment when this is being written a considerable new body of them is announced for sale.

[35] The word "restraint" may be misunderstood: but it is intended to indicate something of the general difference between "classical" ages on the one side and "romantic" or "realist" on the other.

[36] Chesterfield's deafness might, without frivolity, be brought in. It is a hindrance to conversation, but none to letter-writing.

[37] Or at least expression of themselves.

[38] Idly: because he himself expressly and repeatedly disclaims _mere_ "translation."

[39] Dryden, in reference to Shadwell.

[40] "The Great God Pan" piece ("A Musical Instrument"), one of the last, was perhaps her _very_ best. But he may have been thinking of _Poems before Congress_, which are poor enough.

[41] Lucy, daughter of that curious Quaker banker's clerk Bernard Barton, whose poetry is negligible, but who must have had some strong personal attraction. For he was a favourite correspondent of two of the greatest of contemporary letter-writers, Lamb and FitzGerald, though he constantly misunderstood their letters; he received from Byron--on an occasion likely to provoke one of the "noble poet's" outbursts of pseudo-aristocratic insolence--a singularly wise and kindly answer; and having as a perfect stranger lectured Sir Robert Peel he was--invited to dinner!

[42] Some have attempted to make a distinction, alleging that there are Franceses who can be called "Fanny" and others who can not. But it is doubtful whether this holds. Of two great proficients of "letter-stuff" in overlapping generations Fanny Burney was eminently a "Fanny." Fanny Kemble, though always called so, was not.

[43] She was the niece of Mrs. Siddons and of John Kemble, generally considered the greatest tragic actor and actress we have had; the daughter of Charles Kemble, a player and manager of long practice and great ability; while she had yet another uncle and any number of more distant relations in the profession.

[44] See Prefatory Note on her letters _infra_, for an illustration of what is said of her here and of Mrs. Carlyle a little further.

[45] Gray may not produce this effect of slight repulsion on everyone: but on the other hand it is pretty generally admitted that the more you read Walpole the more does the prejudice, which Macaulay and others have helped to create against him, crumble and melt.

[46] They grow more and more numerous; a fresh batch having been announced while this Introduction was being written.

[47] I see that Mr. Paul also has made special reference to this letter and no wonder. From the time of its first publication I have regarded it as matchless. But it seems to me that while it is lawful to mention it, it should not have been published and that to republish it here would be at least questionable.

[48] The present writer remembers as a boy reading (he supposes in the newspaper to which it was addressed but is not sure) this very remarkable epistle of Reade's to an editor: "Sir, you have brains of your own and good ones. Do not echo the bray of such a very small ass as the...." There was more, but this was the gist of it. Whether it has ever reappeared he cannot say.

[49] Anthony Trollope did not choose to make his Autobiography a "Life-and-Letters." But he has used the inserted letter very freely and sometimes with great effect in his novels, for instance Mr. Slope's to Eleanor Harding in _Barchester Towers_.

[50] In his Essay mentioned in Preface.

[51] The "Answer to the Introductory Epistle" of _The Monastery_.

[52] This plan was older than the "novel _by_ letters," and had, as noticed above, been largely used in the sixteenth and seventeenth century "heroic" romance.

[53] There is of course a class exactly opposite to the love-letter--that of more or less modified hate or at least dislike. Johnson's epistle to Chesterfield is an example of the dignified form of this; Hazlitt's to Gifford of the undignified. But considering our deserved reputation for humour we are less strong than might be expected in letters which make the supposed writer make _himself_ ridiculous. Sydney Smith's "Noodle's Oration" is the sort of thing in another kind: and some of the letters in the _Spectator_ class of periodical are fun in the kind itself. Defoe's _Shortest Way with the Dissenters_ comes near. But we have nothing like the famous _Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum_, which are the very triumph of the style.

[54] See the extensive classification of the Greeks, as noticed and reproduced before.

[55] The "Letter to Sir W. Windham" of the one and the "Letter to a noble Lord" of the other, have ample justification. _Letters on a Regicide Peace_, great as they are in themselves, have less claim to their title. But it was a favourite with both writers.

[56] The King was William and the Queen Mary, which limits considerably the otherwise rather illimitable "concerning the kingdom."

[57] This word is of course a _vox nihili_, being neither French nor English. But it has usage in its favour, and I do not see that it is improved by writing it "_dis_habille." If anyone prefers the actual French form he can add the accents.

[58] The account of the journey with Lintot the publisher is sometimes quoted in disproof of this. It is amusing, but has still to some tastes Pope's factitiousness without the technical charm of his verse to carry it off.

[59] There is one small but rather famous class of letters which perhaps should receive separate though brief notice. It is that of laconic and either intentionally or unintentionally humorous utilisations of the letter-form. Of one sort Captain Walton's "Spanish fleet taken and destroyed as per margin" is probably the most noted type: of another the equally famous rejoinder of the Highland magnate to his rival "Dear Glengarry, When you have proved yourself to be my chief, I shall be happy to admit your claim. Meanwhile I am Yours, Macdonald." In pure farce of an irreverent kind, the possibly apocryphal interchange between a Royal Duke and a Right Reverend Bishop, "Dear Cork, Please ordain Stanhope, Yours, York," and "Dear York, Stanhope's ordained. Yours, Cork," has the palm as a recognised "chestnut." But these things are only the frills if not even the froth of the subject; and those who imitate them should exercise caution in the imitation. The police-courts, and even more exalted, but still more unwholesome abodes of Justice, have sometimes been the consequences of misguided satire in letters. Even in Captain Walton's case the Spaniards are said to have endeavoured to show that his ironical laconism (which, moreover, tradition has perhaps exaggerated in form) was not strictly in accordance with fact.

[60] Wild olive, with more peaceful uses, was also the usual material for the _un_peaceful club, or quarter-staff, often iron-shod, of the ancients. It was probably like the _lathi_ which the mild Hindoo takes with him to political meetings. The [Greek: pelekys] of the ancients was generally double-bladed, hence the limitation here. This would be lighter and more convenient to carry in the belt.

[61] Of course "the enemies'."

[62] Synesius addresses his letters to Hypatia [Greek: tê philosophô]--"To _the_ Philosophess." This contains at least two of the unapproachable "portmanteau" words in which Greek, and especially late Greek abounds--[Greek: philochôrôn], "loving one's country," and [Greek: metanasteuein], a rare and complicated compound in which I have ventured to see a hint of ironic intention. He feels that he will be a sort of shirker or deserter ([Greek: meta] often imparts this meaning) but he will be coming to _her_.

[63] This necessity of annotating beyond suitable limits was what prevented me, after due re-reading for the purpose, from giving any letter of Cicero's.

[64] _Admoneo_ in Latin not unfrequently has our commercial sense of "advise" = inform, or remind of a fact. It will be remembered that in Elizabethan English this sense was not limited to business, as in "Art thou aviséd of that."

[65] The younger Pliny's full name was C. Plinius _Secundus_.

[66] Among other natives of course.

[67] Doubtless the game still played in Italy (_pallone_) and the South of France, with a wooden hand-guard strapped to the arm.

[68] _Pyrgus_ is not exactly backgammon. The Romans had a sort of combined dice-box and board--the latter having a kind of tower fixed on the side with interior steps or stops, among which the dice tumbled and twisted before they fell out.

[69] _Universitas_: but though the context seems tempting, it is too early for "university" as a translation.

[70] _I.e._ in citizenship.

[71] _I.e._ in speech.

[72] Why _livescentibus_ I am not sure. "Bruised by the rough mail"? But Lucretius has _digiti livescunt_: and Sidonius, like other poets of other decadences, is apt to borrow the phrases of his great predecessors.

[73] Sidonius has nearly as much more of this curious story: but the picture of the excitable Celts mobbing their heroes is vivid enough to make a good stopping-place. If things really went as described, one must suppose that a sudden panic came on the Goths, and that they took Ecdicius and his handful of troopers as merely _éclaireurs_ of a sally in force, and drew back to the higher ground to resist it.

[74] His own experience of marriage cannot have made the subject wholly agreeable to him: for he was, it may not be quite impertinent to remind the reader, the first husband of Eleanor of Guienne.

ENGLISH LETTERS

THE PASTONS. FIFTEENTH CENTURY

Few families in England have achieved a permanent "place i' the story" after such a curious fashion as the Pastons of Paston (Pastons "of that ilk") in Norfolk. They were not exactly "great people" and no member of the family was of very eminent distinction in any walk of life, though they had judges, soldiers, and sailors etc. among them, and though, some time before the house became extinct, its representative attained the peerage with the title of Earl of Yarmouth. But they were busy people in the troublesome times of the Roses, and they obtained a good deal of property, partly by the death of Sir John Fastolf, noted in the French wars and muddled by posterity (there seems to have been no real resemblance between them except an accusation of cowardice, probably false in both cases, and an imperfectly anagrammatised relation of names) with Shakespeare's "Falstaff." But they produced, received, and kept a great mass of letters which, despite the extinction of the family in 1732 survived, were partially printed later in the century by Fenn, and more fully a hundred years after by the late Mr. Gairdner. Although (see Introduction) of no

## particular literary merit they are singularly varied in

subject and authorship, and they give us perhaps a more complete view of the domestic experiences of a single family (not dissociated from public affairs) than we have from any period of English history till quite modern times. Indeed, it would not be easy to put the finger on an exact parallel to them at _any_ time. I have selected from a great mass of documents two--one of love and one of war according to the good old division. John Jernyngan's letter to Margaret Mauteby--wife of John Paston, and one of the most notable and businesslike, though not the least affectionate of wives and mothers--is interesting for its combination of the two motives (were there also _two_ "Mistress Blanches"?) and for the delightfully English frankness of its confession that "we were well and truly beat." On the other hand, that of Miss Margery Brews to John Paston the youngest (the John named above had two sons of his own name) is one of the most agreeable pieces of "plain and holy innocence," as Miranda calls it, on record. It is immediately preceded in the collection by another in which she is equally loving, and quotes some of the shockingly bad fifteenth century verse. One regrets to say that her "Valentine" had, apparently, more than one string to his bow at the moment. However, after vicissitudes in the "matter," as she delicately calls it, John and Margery did marry, and from them proceeded the later stages of the family. Whether things went equally well with Mr. Jernyngan and his Blanche (or either of his Blanches) does not seem to be recorded. (It has been thought better, though the taste of the moment seems to go rather the other way, not to encumber the reader with the original spelling, but there is no further modernisation.)

1. LETTER 317 (GAIRDNER)

Date June 1, 1458

Right worshipful and my most best beloved mistress and cousin, I recommend me to you as lowly as I may, ever more desiring to hear of your good welfare; the which I beseech almighty Jesus to preserve you and keep you to his pleasure and to your gracious heart's desire. And, if it please you to hear of my welfare, I was in good heal(th) at the making of this letter, blessed be God.

Praying you that it please you for to send me word if my father was at Norwich with you at this Trinitymas or no, and how the matter doth between my mistress Blanche Witchingham and me and if ye suppose that it shall be brought about or no, and how ye feel my father, if he be well willing thereto or no; praying you lowly that I may be recommend(ed) lowly to my mistress Arblaster's wife, and to my mistress Blanche her daughter specially.

Right worshipful cousin, if it please you for to hear of such tidings as we have here, the embassy of Burgundy shall come to Calais the Saturday after Corpus Christi day, as men say, 500 horse of them. Moreover on Trinity Sunday in the morning came tidings unto my Lord of Warwick that there were 28 sails of Spaniards on the sea, and whereof there was 16 great ships of forecastle. And then my Lord[75] went and manned 5 ships of forecastle and three carvells, and four pinnaces, and on the Monday, in the morning after Trinity Sunday, we met together afore Calais at 4 at the clock in the morning and fought that (_sic_) gether till 10 at the clock. And there we took six of their ships and they slew of our men about four twenties and hurt a two hundred of us right sore; and there were slain on their part about twelve twenties and hurt a five hundred of them.

And (it) happened me at the first aboarding of us, we took a ship of three hundred ton, and I was left therein and 23 men with me; and they fought so sore that our men were fain to leave them, and then come they and aboarded[76] the ship that I was in and there I was taken, and was prisoner with them 6 hours, and was delivered again for their men that were taken before. And as men say, there was not so great a battle upon the sea this forty winters. And forsooth we were well and truly beat: and my Lord hath sent for more ships, and like to fight together again in haste.

No more I write unto you at this time, but that it please you for to recommend me unto my right reverend and worshipful cousin your husband, and mine uncle Gurney, and to mine aunt his wife and to all good masters and friends where it shall please you; and after the writing I have from you, I shall be at you in all haste. Written on Corpus Christi day in great haste by your own humble servant and cousin,

JOHN JERNYNGAN.

2. LETTER 784 (GAIRDNER)

Date Feb. 1477

Right worshipful and well-beloved Valentine, in my most humble wise I recommend me unto you. And heartily I thank you for the letter which that ye send me by John Beckerton, whereby I am informed and know that ye be purposed to come to Topcroft in short time, and without any errand or matter but only to have a conclusion of the matter between my father and you. I would be most glad of any creature in life so that the matter might grow to effect. And there as ye say, an ye come and find the matter no more towards you than ye did aforetime, ye would no more put my father and my lady my mother to no cost nor business, for that cause, a good while after--which causeth mine heart to be full heavy: and if that ye come, and the matter take to none effect, then should I be much more sorry and full of heaviness.

And as for myself I have done and understood in the matter that I can and may, as good[77] knoweth: and I let you plainly understand that my father will no more money part withal in that behalf but £100 and one mark which is right far from the accomplishment of your desire.

Wherefore if that ye could be content with that good, and my poor person, I would be the merriest maiden on ground. And if ye think not yourself so satisfied, or that ye might have much more good, as I have understood by you afore--good, true, and loving Valentine,[78] that ye take no such labour upon you as to come more for that matter but let it pass and never more be spoken of, as I may be your true lover and bedeswoman[79] during my life.

No more unto you at this time but Almighty Jesus preserve you both body and soul.

By your Valentine,

M. B.

FOOTNOTES:

[75] It is to be feared that "My Lord's" action was rather piratical. The "Spanish Fleet" was of merchantmen ("convoyed" perhaps) on their way to the North with iron etc. for fish, silk, etc., and we were not definitely at war with Spain. But Henry the IV. of Castile was an ally of France. Warwick had just been appointed "Captain of Calais," and it was a general English idea that anything not English in the Channel was fair prize. Warwick's conduct was warmly welcomed in London.

[76] This use of "abord" and that just before are slightly different derivatives of the French _aborder_, which means to "approach," "accost," "come together with" as well as to "board" in the naval sense. The first use here is evidently of the more general, the second of the

## particular kind.

[77] This may be a mere mis-spelling of "God," or a sort of euphemism like the modern "thank _goodness_!" to avoid the more sacred name.

[78] "I would" or "take care" or something similar to be supplied to make a somewhat softened imperative.

[79] One who prays for you.

ROGER ASCHAM (1515-1568)

Although the old phrase about "the schoolmaster being abroad" has never before had anything like the amount of applicableness which it now possesses, there is perhaps still a certain prejudice against schoolmasters. Indeed even some who have more than served time in that capacity will admit that it is a dangerous employment, profession, or vocation. But if all of us had been ever, or ever would try to be, like Roger Ascham, our class would never have deserved, or would victoriously wiped off, any obloquy. It was extraordinary good quality, or more extraordinary good fortune, that made the same man write _Toxophilus_ and _The Schoolmaster_. And there need hardly be any admission of possible good luck as causing, though some certainly helped, his performance as a letter-writer. Something was said before as to the importance of his "getting to English" in this matter. But it may be permissible to remind, or perhaps even inform, some readers of the curious combination which made this importance. As a Renaissance scholar; as a College tutor before the middle of the sixteenth century; as a Secretary of Embassy on the Continent; and as Latin Secretary at Court, he was positively _un_likely to favour the vernacular. Nor could anyone be a warmer or wiser lover of the classics than he was. But what he, being all these things, did for English was all the more influential, while the manner of his doing it could hardly be bettered.

Ascham's letters being partly in English and partly in Latin, there is a certain temptation to translate one of the latter and put it side by side with one of the former. But the process might not be fair: and to give the fairer chance of comparison between originals in the two tongues would be out of the scheme of this book. I therefore choose a part of one of his long letters of travel to Cambridge friends--one of the earliest of the many "Up the Rhines" in English literature--and another part of his letters to Cecil. He has been reproached with the "begging" character of these, but it was the way of the time with Renaissance scholars. In the first "ioney" (Giles's text) must be wrong and towards the end "vile" is an amusing blunder for "_o_ile." "Peter Ailand" a Cambridge friend's child. "Brant" = "steep." In the second "Denny" is Sir Anthony D., a great favourite of Henry VIII. and Edward VI. who was now dead. "Cheke" the still better known "Sir John" had "taught Cambridge and King Edward Greek," and so raised the "goodly crop" but had taken to politics, which were to bring him into trouble.[80]

3. TO MR. EDWARD RAVEN [EXTRACT]

AUGSBURG Jan. 20 1551

13 Octob. We took a fair barge, with goodly glass windows, with seats of fir, as close as any house, we knew not whether it went or stood. Rhene is such a river that now I do not marvail that the poets make rivers gods. Rhene at Spires having a farther course to rin into the ocean sea than is the space betwixt Dover and Barwick is broader over a great deal than is Thames at Greenwich when it is calm weather. The Rhene runs fast and yet as smooth as the sea water stands in a vessel.

From Colen this day we went to Bonna, the bishop's town, the country about Rhene here is plain and ioney. We were drawn up Rhene by horses. Little villages stand by Rhene side, and as the barge came by, six or seven children, some stonenaked, some in their shirts, of the bigness of Peter Ailand, would run by use on the sands, singing psalms, and would rin and sing with us half a mile, whilst they had some money.

We came late to Bonna at eight of the clock: our men were come afore with our horse: we could not be let into the town, no more than they do at Calise, after an hour. We stood cold at the gate a whole hour. At last we were fain, lord and lady, to lie in our barge all night, where I sat in my lady's side-saddle, leaning my head to a malle, better lodged than a dozen of my fellows.

14 Octob. We sailed to Brousik: 15 miles afore we come to Bonna begin the vines and hills keeping in Rhene on both sides for the space of five or six days journey as we made them almost to Mayence, like the hills that compass Halifax about, but far branter up, as though the rocks did cover you like a pentice (pent-house): on the Rhene side all this journey be pathways where horse and man go commonly a yard broad, so fair that no weather can make it foul: if you look upwards ye are afraid the rocks will fall on your head; if you look downwards ye are afraid to tumble into Rhene, and if your horse founder it is not seven to six that ye shall miss falling into Rhene, there be many times stairs down into Rhene that men may come from their boats and walk on his bank, as we did every day four or five miles at once, plucking grapes not with our hands but with our mouths if we list.

The grapes grow on the brant rocks so wonderfully that ye will marvel how men dare climb up to them, and yet so plentifully, that it is not only a marvel where men be found to labour it, but also almost where men dwell that drink it. Seven or eight days journey ye cannot cast your sight over the compass of vines. And surely this wine of Rhene is so good, so natural, so temperate, so ever like itself, as can be wished for man's use. I was afraid when I came out of England to miss beer; but I am more afraid when I shall come into England, that I cannot lack this wine.

It is wonder to see how many castles stand on the tops of these rocks unwinable. The three bishops electors, Colen, Trevers and Mayence; be the princes almost of whole Rhene. The lansgrave hath goodly castles upon Rhene which the emperor cannot get. The palatine of Rhene is also a great lord on this river, and hath his name of a castle standing in the midst of Rhene on a rock. There be also goodly isles in Rhene, so full of walnut trees that they cannot be spent with eating, but they make vile of them. In some of these isles stand fair abbeys and nunneries wonderfully pleasant. The stones that hang so high over Rhene be very much of that stone that you use to write on in tables; every poor man's house there is covered with them.

4. TO CECIL [EXTRACT]

BRUSSELS March 24. 1553

If I should write oft, ye might think me too bold: and if I did leave off, ye might judge me either to forget your gentleness, or to mistrust your good will, who hath already so bound me unto you, as I shall rather forget myself, and wish God also to forget me, than not labour with all diligence and service to apply myself wholly to your will and purpose; and that ye shall well know how much I assure myself on your goodness, I will pass a piece of good manners, and be bold to borrow a little of your small leisure from your weighty affairs in the commonwealth. Therefore, if my letters shall find you at any leisure, they will trouble you a little in telling you ate length, as I promised in my last letters delivered unto you by Mr. Francis Yaxeley, why I am more desirous to have your help for my stay at Cambridge still than for any other kind of living elsewhere. I having now some experience of life led at home and abroad, and knowing what I can do most fitly, and how I would live most gladly, do well perceive there is no such quietness in England, nor pleasure in strange countries, as even in St. John's college, to keep company with the Bible, Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes, and Tully. Which my choice of quietness is not purposed to lie in idleness, nor constrained by a wilful nature, because I will not or can not serve elsewhere, when I trust I could apply myself to mo kinds of life than I hope any need shall ever drive me to seek, but only because in choosing aptly for myself I might bring some profit to many others. And in this mine opinion I stand the more gladly, because it is grounded upon the judgment of worthy Mr. Denny. For the summer twelvemonth before he departed, dinner and supper he had me commonly with him, whose excellent wisdom, mingled with so pleasant mirth, I can never forget: emonges many other talks he would say oft unto me, if two duties did not command him to serve, the one his prince, the other his wife, he would surely become a student in St. John's, saying, "The Court, Mr. Ascham, is a place so slippery, that duty never so well done, is not a staff stiff enough to stand by always very surely, where ye shall many times reap most unkindness where ye have sown greatest pleasures, and those also ready to do you most hurt to whom you never intended to think any harm." Which sentences I heard very gladly then, and felt them soon after myself to be true. Thus I, first ready by mine own nature, then moved by good counsel, after driven by ill fortune, lastly called by quietness, thought it good to couch myself in Cambridge again. And in very deed, too many be pluckt from thence before they be ripe, though I myself am withered before I be gathered, and yet not so for that I have stood too long, but rather because the fruit which I bear is so very small. Yet seeing the goodly crop of Mr. Cheke is almost clean carried from thence, and I in a manner alone of that time left a standing straggler, peradventure though my fruit be very small, yet because the ground from whence it sprung was so good, I may yet be thought somewhat fit for seed, when all you the rest are taken up for better store, wherewith the king and his realm is now so nobly served. And in such a scarcity both of those, that were worthily called away when they were fit, and of such as unwisely part from thence, before they be ready, I dare now bolden myself, when the best be gone, to do some good among the mean that do tarry, trusting that my diligence shall deal with my disability, and the rather because the desire of shooting is so well shot away in me, either ended by time or left off for better purpose. Yet I do amiss to mislike shooting too much, which hath been hitherto my best friend, and even now looking back to the pleasure which I found in it, and perceiving small repentence to follow after it, by Plato's judgment I may think well of it. No, it never called me to go from my book, but it made both wit the lustier, and will the readier, to run to it again, and perchance going back sometimes from learning may serve even as well as it doth at leaping, to pass some of those which keep always their standing at their book.

FOOTNOTES:

[80] The allusions to the writer's own _Toxophilus_ at the end require, it is to be hoped, no annotation.

LADY MARY SIDNEY (?[81]-1586)

This "old Molly," as she so agreeably calls herself, was very unfortunate in her father (that intrusive holder for a short time of the title of Northumberland, who was offensive in success and abject in adversity) and not too lucky in her brother, Leicester. But she must have been far too good for her own breed; she had an excellent husband, Sir Henry Sidney, Deputy of Ireland and President of Wales, one of Elizabeth's best deserving and worst treated servants, and she was the mother of "Astrophel" and Astrophel's sister. "One has known persons more unfortunate," as a famous phrase of a French poem not very long after her own time has it. And she must have thoroughly deserved good fortune: for her letters show her as one of the best of wives and mothers (if not of spellers): though it is quite possible that she might not have made a good jurywoman or a good member of parliament. As her husband was not merely governor (repeatedly and with such success as was possible) of Ireland, but "President of Wales," they usually, when in England but not at Court or at Penshurst, lived at Ludlow Castle and so enjoyed two of the most beautiful homes in the country. But Sir Henry in these and other functions had seas of trouble, great expenses, and according to "Gloriana's" wont, very small thanks for it all. He is said, indeed, to have had his life shortened by weariness and worry. But his son and daughter[82] may have been a comfort to him: and his wife must have been so. The letter itself, as will be seen, is not to himself but to his secretary: and there was more correspondence on the subject of their lodging and its difficulties. Lady Mary was not well, and there must be a place to see friends, and the Queen might come in! The original letter[83] is better spelt than others of hers, the principal curiosity being the form "hit" for "it," which, however, is by no means peculiar.

5. TO EDWARD MOLINEUX, ESQ.

You have used the matter very well; but we must do more yet for the good dear Lord [her husband] than let him be thus dealt withal. Hampton Court I never yet knew so full as there were not spare rooms in it, when it has been thrice better filled than at the present it is. But some would be sorry, perhaps, my Lord should have so sure a footing in the Court. Well, all may be as well when the good God will. The whilst, I pray let us do what we may for our Lord's ease and quiet. Whereunto I think if you go to my Lord Howard, and in my Lord's name also move his Lordship to shew his brother my Lord, (as they call each other)--to show him a cast of his office[84] and that it should not be known allege your former causes, I think he will find out some place to serve that purpose. And also if you go to Mr Bowyer,[85] the gentleman-Usher, and tell him his mother requireth him (which is myself) to help my Lord with some one room, but only for the dispatch of the multitude of Welsh and Irish people that follow him; and that you will give your word in my Lord's behalf and mine, it shall not be accounted as a lodging[86] or known of, I believe he will make what shift he can: you must assure him it is but for the day-time for his business, as indeed it is.

As for my brother's answer of[87] my stay here for five or six days, he knows I have ventured far already with so long absence, and am ill thought of for it,[88] so as that may not be. But when the worst is known, old Lord Harry and his old Moll will do as well as they can in

## parting[89] like good friends the small portion allotted our long

service in Court, which as little as it is, seems something too much.[90] And this being all I can say to the matter, farewell, Mr. Ned.

In haste this Monday 1578,

your assured loving mistress and friend,

M. SYDNEY.

If all this will not serve, prove[91] Mr Huggins, for I know my Lord would not for no good be destitute in this time for some convenient place for his followers and friends to resort to him, which in the case I am in, is not possible to be in _my_ chamber till after sunset, when the dear good Lord shall be, as best becomes him, Lord of his own.

FOOTNOTES:

[81] Her birth-date does not seem to be known, but she was married in 1551.

[82] He had another, of the (for an English girl) very unusual name of "Ambros[z]ia" who died unmarried, at twenty.

[83] Most kindly copied for me by the Rev. W. Hunt from Arthur Collins's _Sydney Papers_.

[84] An agreeable phrase, not in the least obsolete, though I have known ignorant persons who thought it so. The "office" was that of Lord Chamberlain; the holder was Lord Howard of Effingham, afterwards famous in the Armada fights.

[85] See _Kenilworth_ (chap. xvi.), where Scott brings him in as experiencing Gloriana's extreme uncertainty of temper.

[86] _I.e._ a permanent one such as Hampton Court affords to some.

[87] "About"?

[88] Either by the Queen herself, whose touchiness is well known, or by jealous and mischief-making fellow courtiers.

[89] "Sharing."

[90] "Is grudged."

[91] We should say "try."

GEORGE CLIFFORD EARL OF CUMBERLAND (1558-1605)

This not very fortunate or wholly blameless but very remarkable and representative person was the third holder of the earldom and the sixteenth of the famous barony of Clifford. He was great-grandson of Wordsworth's "Shepherd Lord"; father of Anne Countess of Dorset, Pembroke and Montgomery (pupil of Daniel the poet and a typical great lady of her time); one of the foremost of Elizabeth's privateering courtiers; one of the chief victims of her caprice and parsimony; a magnificent noble, but a great spendthrift, something of a libertine, never unkindly but hardly ever wise. This remarkable deathbed letter (the giving of which depended on the kindness of Dr. G. C. Williamson of Hampstead, author of the _Life and Voyages of G. Clifford, 3rd Earl of Cumberland_, Cambridge University Press, 1920, in which it appeared, p. 270-1), pretty well explains itself. "Sweet Meg," his wife, was Lady Margaret Russell, daughter of the Earl of Bedford. The pair were on very affectionate terms for many years: but had latterly been estranged by certain infidelities on the Earl's part and by money disputes and difficulties, so that when his last illness attacked him Lady Cumberland was not with him. She was not, however, proof against this repentant appeal: but returned with her daughter. Both were present at his death in the Savoy soon after he wrote. He had made, personally or by deputy, ten if not twelve voyages against the Spaniards, and though there was a good deal of mismanagement about them he took Porto Rico in one; captured, but made little profit out of, an enormously valuable prize, the _Madre de Dios_, in another; gave the warning which enabled Lord Thomas Howard to escape, but which Sir Richard Grenville refused to take "at Flores, in the Azores"; and built at his own expense, the largest privateer then or perhaps ever constructed, the _Malice Scourge_--for the remarkable subsequent history of which, see Mr. David Hannay's article, "_The Saga of a Ship_," in _Blackwood_, May, 1921.

6.

Sweet and dear Meg,

Bear[92] with, I pray thee, the short and unapt setting together of these my last lines, a token of true kindness, which I protest cometh out of an unfeigned heart of love to thee. For whose content, and to make satisfaction for the wrongs done to thee I have, since I saw thee more desired to return than for any other earthly cause. But being so low brought that, without God's miraculous favour, there is no great likelihood of it I, by this, if so it please God that I shall not, in earnestness make my last requests, which as ever thou lovest me lying so, I pray thee perform for me being dead. First, in greedy earnestness I desire thee not to offend God in grieving too much at His disposing of me: but let my assured hope that He hath done it for the saving of my soul rather comfort thee, considering that we ought most to rejoice, when we see a thing that it is either for the good of our souls or of our friends. And further I beg of thee that thou wilt take, as I have meant, in kindness the course I have set down for disposing of my estate and things left behind. Which truly, if I have not dealt most kindly with thee in, I am mistaken, and as ever thou lovest, (which I know thou hast done faithfully and truly) sweet Meg, let neither old conceit, new opinion, nor false lying tale, make thee fall to hard opinion nor suit with my brother. For this I protest now, when I tremble to speak that which upon any just colour may be turned to a lie, thou hast conceived wrong of him, for his nature is sweet, and though wrong conceit might well have urged him, yet he hath never to my knowledge said or done anything to harm thee or mine, but with tears hath often bemoaned himself to me that he could not devise how to make thee conceive rightly of him. And lastly, before the presence of God, I command thee, and in the nearest love of my heart I desire thee, to take great care that sweet Nan[93] whom God bless, may be carefully brought up in the fear of God, not to delight in worldly vanities, which I too well know be but baits to draw her out of the heavenly kingdom. And I pray thee thank thy kind uncle and aunt for her (?) and their many kindnesses to me. Thus, out of the bitter and greedy desire of a repentant heart, begging thy pardon for any wrong that ever in my life I did thee, I commend these my requests to thy wonted and undeserved kind wifely and lovely consideration, my body to God's disposing and my love (soul?) to His merciful commisseration.

Thine as wholly as man was ever woman's,

GEORGE CUMBERLAND.

To my dear wife, the Countess of Cumberland, give this, of whom, from the bottom of my heart in the presence of God, I ask forgiveness for all the wrongs I have done her.

FOOTNOTES:

[92] There is, as often, little or no punctuation in the original, of which Dr. Williamson's beautiful book gives a facsimile. I have ventured to adjust that of the printed text, here and there, to bring out the meaning.

[93] Lady Anne was at this time only 15. She seems to have been fond of her father and proud of him: nor is there any direct evidence that the fear of God was not in her. But she had no fear of man: and no excessive respect for her father's will. During the lives of her uncle Francis and her cousin Henry, 4th and 5th Earls, she fought it hard at law: and at last, Henry dying without issue, and the title lapsing, came into possession of the great Clifford estates in the North. She lived to be 86, and was masterful all her days.

JOHN DONNE (1573-1631)

"The first poet in the world for some things,"--as Ben Jonson, who nevertheless did not like his metric, thought he would perish for not being understood, and perhaps did not understand him--called Donne with justice, might not be thought likely to be among the first letter-writers. The marvellous lightning-flashes of genius in a dark night of context which illuminate his poetry and his sermons, can hardly be expected--would indeed be almost out of place--in ordinary letter-writing. Moreover, Donne is, perhaps, with Browne, the most characteristic exponent of that magnificent seventeenth century style which accommodates itself ill to merely commonplace matters.

Browne, a younger man by an entire generation who lived far into the age of Dryden, could drop this style when he chose: with Donne it was rather the skin--if not even the very flesh and bone and all but spirit--than the cloak of his thought. Nevertheless there is no exact contemporary of his--and certainly none possessing anything like his literary power--who deserves selection as a representative of his own school and time better than he does; and there is something in him which adds distinction to any company in which he appears. As mentioned in the Introduction, his verse-epistles were even more noteworthy, but in prose he is noteworthy enough.

The batch of letters here chosen was most fortunately preserved by Izaak Walton, who published the first of them _in_ the life not of Donne but of George Herbert, while the rest were "added" to it in 1670.[94] The lady to whom they were written, Magdalen Newport by maiden name, was mother not only of the pious and poetical George, but of Edward Lord Herbert of Cherbury, himself not a very bad poet but by no means in the usual sense pious, a very great coxcomb, and a hero chiefly by his own report. His mother, however, seems to have been one of those "elect ladies" who were among the chief glories of England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and were fortunately numerous. After her widowhood she lived at Oxford for some time, but seems to have moved to London when Donne, about 1607, wrote these letters. He was himself living at Mitcham (spelt "Michin" in one letter), not yet famous for golf though perhaps already for lavender. Later he visited her at Montgomery Castle, the famous seat of the Herberts. She is said to have been very beautiful, and the subtle touch of not in the least fatuous or foppish "devotion" is most agreeable.

7. TO THE LADY MAGDALEN HERBERT

Madam,

Your favours to me are everywhere. I use them, and have them. I enjoy them at London, and leave them there: and yet find them at Mitcham. Such riddles as these become things inexpressible: and such is your goodness. I was almost sorry to find your servant here this day, because I was loath to have any witness of my not coming home last night, and indeed of my coming this morning. But my not coming was excusable, because earnest business detained me; and my coming this day is by example of your St. Mary Magdalen, who rose early upon Sunday, to seek that which she loved most; and so did I. And, from her and myself, I return such thanks as are due to one, to whom we owe all the good opinion that they, whom we need most, have of us. By this messenger and on this good day, I commit the enclosed Holy Hymns and Sonnets--which for the matter not the workmanship have yet escaped the fire,--to your judgment and to your protection too, if you think them worthy of it; and I have appointed this enclosed Sonnet to usher them to your happy hand.

Your unworthiest servant unless your accepting him to be so have mended him

JO. DONNE.

(MITCHAM July 11. 1607)

TO THE LADY MAGDALEN HERBERT: OF ST. MARY MAGDALEN

Her of your name, whose fair inheritance Bethina was, and jointure Magdalo, An active faith so highly did advance, That she once knew, more than the church did know, The Resurrection! so much good there is Delivered of her, that some Fathers be Loath to believe one woman could do this; But think these Magdalens were two or three. Increase their number, Lady, and their fame: To their devotion, add your innocence; Take so much of the example as the name The latter half--and in some recompense That they did harbour Christ Himself--a guest Harbour these Hymns, to His dear Name addressed.

8. TO THE LADY MAGDALEN HERBERT

Madam,

Every excuse hath in it somewhat of accusation; and since I am innocent, and yet must excuse, how shall I do for that part of accusing. By my troth, as desperate and perplexed men, grow from thence bold; so must I take the boldness of accusing you, who would draw so dark a Curtain betwixt me and your purposes, as that I had no glimmering, neither of your goings, nor the way which my Letters might haunt. Yet, I have given this Licence to Travel, but I know not whither, nor it. It is therefore rather a Pinnace to discover; and the entire Colony of Letters, of Hundreds and Fifties, must follow; whose employment is more honourable, than that which our State meditates to _Virginia_ because you are worthier than all that Country, of which that is a wretched inch; for you have better treasure and a harmlessness. If this sound like a flattery, tear it out. I am to my Letters as rigid a Puritan as Caesar was to his Wife. I can as ill endure a suspicious and misinterpretable word as a fault; and of the grossest flatteries there is this good use, that they tell us what we should be. But, _Madam_, you are beyond instruction, and therefore there can belong to you only praise; of which, though you be no good hearer, yet allow all my Letters leave to have in them one part of it, which is thankfulness towards you.

_Your unworthiest Servant Except your accepting have mended him_

JOHN DONNE.

MITCHAM, July 11, 1607.

9. _To the worthiest Lady, Mrs._ MAGDALEN HERBER(T)

_Madam_,

This is my second Letter, in which though I cannot tell you what is good, yet this is the worst, that I must be a great part of it; yet to me, that is recompensed, because you must be mingled. After I knew you were gone (for I must, little less than accusingly tell you, I knew not you would go) I sent my first Letter, like a _Bevis of Hampton_, to seek Adventures. This day I came to Town, and to the best part of it, your House; for your memory is a State-cloth and Presence; which I reverence, though you be away; though I need not seek that there which I have about and within me. There, though I found my accusation, yet anything to which your hand is, is a pardon; yet I would not burn my first Letter, because as in great destiny no small passage can be omitted or frustrated, so in my resolution of writing almost daily to you, I would have no link of the Chain broke by me, both because my Letters interpret one another, and because only their number can give them weight. If I had your Commission and Instructions to do you the service of a Legier Ambassador here, I could say something of the Countess of _Devon_: of the States, and such things. But since to you, who are not only a World alone, but the Monarchy of the World your self, nothing can be added, especially by me; I will sustain myself with the honour of being

_Your Servant Extraordinary And without place_

JOHN DONNE.

LONDON July 23, 1607

10. _To the worthiest Lady, Mrs_. MAGDALEN HERBERT

_Madam_,

As we must die before we can have full glory and happiness, so before I can have this degree of it, as to see you by a Letter, I must almost die, that is, come to _London_, to plaguy _London_; a place full of danger, and vanity, and vice, though the Court be gone. And such it will be, till your return redeem it: Not that, the greatest virtue in the World, which is you, can be such a Marshal, as to defeat, or disperse all the vice of this place; but as higher bodies remove, or contract themselves, when better come, so at your return we shall have one door open to innocence. Yet, Madam, you are not such an Ireland, as produceth neither ill, nor good; no Spiders or Nightingales, which is a rare degree of perfection: But you have found and practised that experiment, That even nature, out of her detesting of emptiness, if we will make that our work to remove bad, will fill us with good things. To abstain from it, was therefore but the Childhood and Minority of your Soul, which hath been long exercised since, in your manlier active part, of doing good. Of which since I have been a witness and subject, not to tell you some times, that by your influence and example I have attained to such a step of goodness, as to be thankful, were both to accuse your power and judgment of impotency and infirmity.

_Your Ladyship's in all Services_,

JOHN DONNE.[95]

August 2d, 1607.

FOOTNOTES:

[94] Mr. Gosse (who has inserted them in his _Life and Letters of Donne_) is perhaps right in putting letter 7 last. I give no opinion on this but merely keep the order in which they originally appeared in the text and in an appendix to the _Life of Herbert_ (1670 edit.). I am not certain to which "first" the "second" in letter 9 refers. "Bevis of Hampton" generally for "knight errant"; "Legier," a _resident_ Ambassador; "States" in the plural--always then "the Dutch"; _Snake_lessness is more often assigned to Ireland than spiderlessness.

[95] The first of these letters, with the sonnet, appears, I think, in all editions of Walton, who has apparently entered the date wrongly. The other three were copied for me from the 1670 original by Miss Elsie Hitchcock, I have slightly modernised a few spellings in them.

JAMES HOWELL (1593-1666)

"The Father" of something is an expression in the history of literature which has become, more justly than some other traditional expressions, rather odious to the modern mind. For in the first place it is an irritatingly conventional phrase, and in the second the paternity is usually questionable. But "the priggish little clerk of the Council," as Thackeray (who nevertheless loved his letters) calls Howell, does really seem to deserve the fathership of all such as in English write unofficial letters "for publication."[96] He wrote a great deal else: and would no doubt in more recent times have been a "polygraphic" journalist of some distinction. And he had plenty to write about. He was an Oxford man; he travelled abroad on commercial errands (though by no means as what has been more recently called a "commercial traveller"); he was one of Ben Jonson's "sons," a Royalist sufferer from the Rebellion, and finally Historiographer Royal as well as Clerk to the Council. His letters, which are sometimes only titularly such[97] but sometimes quite natural, deal with all sorts of subjects--from the murder of Buckingham by Felton to the story of the Oxenham "White Bird" which Kingsley has utilised in _Westward Ho!_ And, to do him justice, there is a certain character about the book which is not _merely_ the expression of the character of the writer, though no doubt connected with it. Now the possession of this is what makes a book literature. It has been usual to select from Howell's letters of travel, and from historical ones like the Buckingham one above mentioned. I have preferred the "White Bird"; and before it one of several documents, of the same or nearly the same period, which deal with the old English life of country houses--between the mediaeval time and the degradation of the "servant" class, which came in with the eighteenth century or a little earlier. Howell would evidently have echoed Isopel Berners--that admirable girl whom George Borrow slighted--in saying, "Long Melford for ever!" though the house would not with him, as with her, have meant a workhouse. Neither letter seems to require annotation.

11. TO DAN CALDWELL, ESQ., FROM THE LORD SAVAGE'S HOUSE IN LONG MELFORD

My dear Dan,

Tho' considering my former condition of life, I may now be called a countryman, yet you cannot call me a rustic (as you would imply in your letter) as long as I live in so civil and noble a family, as long as I lodge in so virtuous and regular a house as any, I believe, in the land, both for economical government and the choice company; for I never saw yet such a dainty race of children in all my life together. I never saw yet such an orderly and punctual attendance of servants, nor a great house so neatly kept; here one shall see no dog, nor a cat, nor cage to cause any nastiness within the body of the house. The kitchen and gutters and other offices of noise and drudgery are at the fag-end; there's a back-gate for the beggars and the meaner sort of swains to come in at; the stables butt upon the park, which, for a cheerful rising ground, for groves and browsings for the deer, for rivulets of water, may compare with any of its bigness in the whole land; it is opposite to the front of the great house, whence from the gallery one may see much of the game when they are a-hunting. Now for the gardening and costly choice flowers, for ponds, for stately large walks green and gravelly, for orchards and choice fruits of all sorts, there are few the like in England; here you have your Bon Chrétien pear and Burgamot in perfection; your Muscadel grapes in such plenty that there are some bottles of wine sent every year to the King: and one Mr. Daniel, a worthy gentleman hard by who hath been long abroad, makes good store in his vintage. Truly this house of Long Melford tho' it be not so great, yet is so well compacted and contriv'd with such dainty conveniences every way; that if you saw the landskip of it, you would be mightily taken with it and it would serve for a choice pattern to build and contrive a house by. If you come this summer to your Manor of Sheriff in Essex, you will not be far off hence; if your occasions will permit, it will be worth your coming hither, tho' it be only to see him, who would think it a short journey to go from St. David's Head to Dover Cliffs to see and serve you, were there occasion; if you would know who the same is, 'tis--

Yours,

J. H.

20. May, 1619.

12. TO MR. E. D.

Sir,

I thank you a thousand times for the noble entertainment you gave me at Bury; and the pains you took in showing me the antiquities of that place. In requital, I can tell you of a strange thing I saw lately here, and I believe 'tis true. As I passed by St. Dunstan's in Fleet Street the last Saturday, I stepped into a lapidary, or stone-cutter's shop, to treat with the master for a stone to be put upon my father's tomb; and casting my eyes up and down, I might spy a huge marble with a large inscription upon't, which was thus to my best remembrance:

_Here lies _John Oxenham_, a goodly young man, in whose chamber, as he was struggling with the pangs of death, a bird with a white breast was seen fluttering about his bed, and so vanished._

_Here lies also _Mary Oxenham_, the sister of the said _John_, who died the next day, and the said apparition was seen in the room._

Then another sister is spoke of, then,

_Here lies hard by _James Oxenham_, the son of the said _John_, who died a child in his cradle a little after; and such a bird was seen fluttering about his head, a little before he expired, which vanished afterwards._

At the bottom of the stone there is:

_Here lies _Elizabeth Oxenham_ the mother of the said _John_, who died sixteen years since, when such a bird with a white breast was seen about her bed before her death._

To all these there be divers witnesses, both squires and ladies, whose names are engraven upon the stone. This stone is to be sent to a town hard by Exeter, where this happened. Were you here, I could raise a choice discourse with you hereupon. So, hoping to see you the next term, to requite some of your favours,

I rest--

Your true friend to serve you,

J. H.

WESTMINSTER, 3 July. 1632

FOOTNOTES:

[96] _Epistolae Hoelianae or Familiar Letters_ (1657).

[97] Indeed his correspondents are probably sometimes, if not always, imaginary: and many of the letters are only what in modern periodicals are called "middle" articles on this and that subject, headed and tailed with the usual letter-formulas.

JOHN EVELYN (1620-1706)

As is naturally the case with writers of "Diaries," "Memoirs," "Autobiographies," and the like, a good deal of matter is deflected into Evelyn's famous _Diary_ from possible letters: while his numerous and voluminous published works may also to some extent abstract from or duplicate his correspondence. But there is enough of this[98] to make him a noteworthy epistoler. And it is interesting, though not perhaps surprising, to find that while his Diary is less piquant than his friend Mr. Pepys's, his letters are more so. Not surprising--first, because official letter-writers (Evelyn did a good deal of public work but was never _exactly_ an official) often get into a habit of noncommittal; and secondly, because there is, in these things as in others, a principle of compensation. Evelyn was almost sure to be a good letter-writer[99] for he had a ready pen, a rather extraordinary range of interests and capacities, plenty of time and means, extensive knowledge of the world, and last but not least, a tendency--not missed by the aforesaid Mr. Pepys--to bestow his information and opinion freely upon less fortunately endowed and equipped mortals. If he never quite reaches in letters the famous passages of the Diary, describing the great Fire, and Whitehall on the eve of Charles the Second's mortal seizure, he sometimes comes near to this, and diffuses throughout a blend of humanism, and humanity, of science and art, which is very agreeable. His wife also was no mean letter-writer, but only one of the minor stars of that day round the moon, Dorothy Osborne, to whom we come next. Of Evelyn's own letters several are specially tempting. His curious plan (a particularly favourite craze of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) for a small "college" or lay convent of ladies and gentlemen, a sort of miniature "Abbey of Thelema" is one. His magnificent eulogy of the Duchess of Newcastle (Lamb's "dear Margaret"), which puzzled his editor Bray (from this and other notes a rather stupid man), is another: and his very interesting letter to Pepys on Dreams (Oct. 4, 1689) a third. But on the whole I have preferred the following, which may remind some readers of Mr. Kipling's charming poem on the wonderful things our fathers did and believed, with its invaluable reminder that after all it would be lucky for us if we were no worse than they. The date is not given: but the letter is printed between one of August and one of September, 1668. [Greek: kollourion] = Collyrium = "eyewash." "Stillatim" = "drop by drop." "Lixivium" (Fr. "lessive") = "lye," "soapwater." "Catoptrics" and "otacoustics" (though the "ot" = "ear" has gone)--are fairly modern words, "phonocamptics" scarcely so. In fact, I do not remember seeing it elsewhere. It does not appear to be a classical Greek compound, but should mean "the art of guiding and managing the voice."[100] The Tom Whittal story shows that Evelyn, though given to seriousness, could (God rest his soul) be a merry man sometimes. The other proper names, from Mr. Oldenburg to Thom. Fazzello, could be expounded without difficulty, but with unnecessary expenditure of space.

13. JOHN EVELYN TO DOCTOR BEALE

Sir,

I happened to be with Mr Oldenburg some time since, almost upon the article of his receiving the notice you sent him of your fortunate and useful invention; and I remember I did first of all incite him, both to insert it into his next transactions, and to provoke your further prosecution of it; which I exceedingly rejoice to find has been so successful, that you give us hopes of your further thoughts upon that, and those other subjects which you mention. You may haply call to remembrance a passage of the Jesuit Honorati Fabri, who speaking of perspectives, observes, that an object looked on through a small hole appears magnified; from whence he suggests, the casting of two plates neatly perforated, and fitted to look through, preferable to glasses, whose refractions injure the sight. Though I begin to advance in years (being now on the other side of forty), yet the continuance of the perfect use of my senses (for which I bless Almighty God) has rendered me the less solicitous about those artificial aids; which yet I foresee I must shortly apply myself to, and therefore you can receive but slender hints from me which will be worthy your acceptance upon that argument; only, I well remember, that besides Tiberius of old (whom you seem to instance in), Joseph Scaliger affirms the same happened both to his father Julius and himself, in their younger years. And sometimes, methinks, I myself have fancied to have discerned things in a very dark place, when the curtains about my bed have been drawn, as my hands, fingers, the sheet, and bedclothes; but since my too intent poring upon a famous eclipse of the sun, about twelve years since, at which time I could as familiarly have stared with open eyes upon the glorious planet in its full lustre, as now upon a glow-worm (comparatively speaking), I have not only lost the acuteness of sight, but much impaired the vigour of it for such purposes as it then served me. But besides that, I have treated mine eyes very ill near these twenty years, during all which time I have rarely put them together, or composed them to sleep, before one at night, and sometimes much later: that I may in some sort redeem my losses by day, in which I am continually importuned with visits from my neighbours and acquaintance, or taken up by other impertinencies of my life in this place. I am plainly ashamed to tell you this, considering how little I have improved myself by it; but I have rarely been in bed before twelve o'clock as I said, in the space of twenty years; and yet I read the least print, even in a jolting coach, without other assistance, save that I now and then used to rub my shut eye-lids over with a spirit of wine well rectified, in which I distil a few rosemary flowers much after the process of the Queen of Hungary's water, which does exceedingly fortify, not only my sight, but the rest of my senses, especially my hearing and smelling; a drop or two being distilled into the nose or ears, when they are never so dull; and other [Greek: kollourion] I never apply. Indeed, in the summer time, I have found wonderful benefit in bathing my head with a decoction of some hot and aromatical herbs, in a lixivium made of the ashes of vine branches; and when my head is well washed with this, I immediately cause abundance of cold fountain water to be poured upon me _stillatim_, for a good half-hour together; which for the present is not only one of the most voluptuous and grateful refreshments imaginable, but an incredible benefit to me the whole year after: for I never need other powdering to my hair, to preserve it bright and clean, as the gallants do; but which does certainly greatly prejudice transpiration by filling up, or lying heavy upon the pores. Those, therefore, who (since the use of perukes) accustom to wash their heads, instead of powdering, would doubtless find the benefit of it; both as to the preventing of aches in their head, teeth, and ears, if the vicissitude and inconstancy of the weather, and consequently the use of their monstrous perukes, did not expose them to the danger of catching colds. When I travelled in Italy, and the Southern parts, I did sometimes frequent the public baths (as the manner is), but seldom without peril of my life, till I used this frigid effusion, or rather profusion of cold water before I put on my garments, or durst expose myself to the air; and for this method I was obliged to the old and noble Rantzow, in whose book _De conservandâ valetudine_ I had read a passage to this purpose; though I might have remembered how the Dutchmen treated their labouring horses when they are all over in a froth, which they wash off with several buckets of cold water, as I have frequently observed it in the Low Countries.

Concerning other aids; besides what the masters of the catoptrics, phonocamptics, otacoustics, &c., have done, something has been attempted by the Royal Society; and you know the industrious Kircher has much laboured. The rest of those artificial helps are summed up by the Jesuit And. Schottus. I remember that Monsieur Huygens (author of the pendulum), who brought up the learned father of that incomparable youth Monsieur de Zulichem, who used to prescribe to me the benefit of his little wax taper (a type whereof is, with the history of it, in some of our Registers) for night elucubrations, preferable to all other candle or lamp light whatsoever. And because it explodes all glaring of the flame, which by no means ought to dart upon the eyes, it seems very much to establish your happy invention of tubes instead of spectacles, which have not those necessary defences.

Touching the sight of cats in the night, I am not well satisfied of the exquisiteness of that sense in them. I believe their smelling or hearing does much contribute to their dexterity in catching mice, as to all those animals who are born with those prolix smelling hairs. Fish will gather themselves in shoals to any extraordinary light in the dark night, and many are best caught by that artifice. But whatever may be said of these, and other senses of fish, you know how much the sagacity of birds and beasts excel us; how far eagles and vultures, ravens and other fowls will smell the carcase; _odorumque canum vis_, as Lucretius expresses it, and we daily find by their drawing after the games. Gesner affirms that an otter will wind a fish four miles distance in the water, and my Lord Verulam (cent. 8) speaks of that element's being also a medium of sounds, as well as air. Eels do manifestly stir at the cracking of thunder, but that may also be attributed to some other tremulous motion; yet carps and other fish are known to come at the call and the sound of a bell, as I have been informed. Notorious is the story of Arion, and of Lucullus's lampreys which came _ad nomen_; and you have formerly minded me of Varro's Greek pipe, of which Lucian and Cicero (ad Atticum) take occasion to speak. Pliny's dolphin is famous, and what is related of the American Manati: but the most stupendous instance, that of the xiphia or sword-fish, which the Mamertines can take up by no other strategem than a song of certain barbarous words, as the thing is related by Thom. Fazzello. It is certain that we hear more accurately when we hold our mouths a little open, than when we keep them shut; and I have heard of a dumb gentleman in England who was taught to speak (and therefore certainly brought to hear in some degree) by applying the head of a base viol against his teeth, and striking upon the strings with the bow. You may remember the late effect of the drum extending the tympanum of a deaf person to great improvement of his hearing, so long as that was beaten upon; and I could at present name a friend of mine, who though he be exceedingly thick of hearing, by applying a straight stick of what length soever, provided it touch the instrument and his ear, does perfectly and with great pleasure hear every tune that is played: all which, with many more, will flow into your excellent work, whilst the argument puts me in mind of one Tom Whittal, a student of Christ Church, who would needs maintain, that if a hole could dexterously be bored through the skull to the brain in the midst of the forehead, a man might both see and hear and smell without the use of any other organs; but you are to know, that this learned problematist was brother to him, who, preaching at St. Mary's, Oxford, took his text out of the history of Balaam, Numb. xxii., "Am I not thine ass?" Dear Sir, pardon this rhapsody of,

Sir, your, &c.

FOOTNOTES:

[98] Some 400 pages from and to him in the most compendious edition.

[99] He thought, writing to Lord Spencer about 1690, that we have "few tolerable letters of our own country" excepting--and that only in a fashion--those of Bacon, Donne and Howell.

[100] "_Odorumque canum vis_--as Lucretius expresses it"--perhaps requires a note. Evelyn ought to have known his Lucretius, the first book of which he translated and which he was only prevented from completing by some foolish scruples which Jeremy Taylor wisely but vainly combated. And Lucretius is fond of _vis_ as meaning "quality" or "faculty." But Evelyn almost certainly was thinking also, more or less, of Virgil's "odora canum vis," _Aen._ iv. 132.

DOROTHY OSBORNE (1627-1695)

This very delightful lady--who became the wife of Sir William Temple, famous in political and literary history, and, by so doing or being, mistress of the household in which Swift lived, suffered, but met Stella--was the daughter of Sir Peter Osborne, one of the stoutest of Royalists who, as Governor of Guernsey, held its Castle Cornet for years against the rebels. Whether she was (in 1627) born there--her father had been made _Lieutenant_ Governor six years earlier--is not known and has been thought unlikely: but the present writer (who has danced, and played whist within its walls) hopes she was. When we come to know her she was living at Chicksands in Bedfordshire and hoping to marry Temple, though the course of love ran by no means smooth. Attention was first drawn to her letters, and some of them were partly printed, in Courtenay's _Life_ of her husband--a book which was reviewed by Macaulay in a famous essay, not overlooking Dorothy. But as a body, they waited till some half century later, when they were published by Judge Parry and received with joy by all fit folk. They were written between 1652 and 1654. The first passage is in her pleasant mood and touches on a subject--aviation--which interested that day and interests this. The second strikes some people as one of the most charming specimens of the love-letter--written neither in the violent delight that has violent end, nor in namby-pamby fashion.[101]

14. TO SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE

Sir,--

You say I abuse you; and Jane says you abuse me when you say you are not melancholy: which is to be believed? Neither, I think; for I could not have said so positively (as it seems she did) that I should not be in town till my brother came back: he was not gone when she writ, nor is not yet; and if my brother Peyton had come before his going, I had spoiled her prediction. But now it cannot be; he goes on Monday or Tuesday at farthest. I hope you did truly with me, too, in saying that you are not melancholy (though she does not believe it). I am thought so, many times, when I am not at all guilty on't. How often do I sit in company a whole day, and when they are gone am not able to give an account of six words that was said, and many times could be so much better pleased with the entertainment my own thoughts give me, that 'tis all I can do to be so civil as not to let them see they trouble me. This may be your disease. However, remember you have promised me to be careful of yourself, and that if I secure what you have entrusted me with, you will answer for the rest. Be this our bargain then; and look that you give me as good an account of one as I shall give you of t'other. In earnest I was strangely vexed to see myself forced to disappoint you so, and felt your trouble and my own too. How often I have wished myself with you, though but for a day, for an hour: I would have given all the time I am to spend here for it with all my heart.

You could not but have laughed if you had seen me last night. My brother and Mr. Gibson were talking by the fire; and I sat by, but as no part of the company. Amongst other things (which I did not at all mind), they fell into a discourse of flying; and both agreed it was very possible to find out a way that people might fly like birds, and despatch their journeys: so I, that had not said a word all night, started up at that, and desired they would say a little more on't, for I had not marked the beginning; but instead of that, they both fell into so violent a laughing, that I should appear so much concerned in such an art; but they little knew of what use it might have been to me. Yet I saw you last night, but 'twas in a dream; and before I could say a word to you, or you to me, the disorder my joy to see you had put me into awakened me. Just now I was interrupted, too, and called away to entertain two dumb gentlemen;--you may imagine whether I was pleased to leave my writing to you for their company;--they have made such a tedious visit, too; and I am so tired with making of signs and tokens for everything I had to say. Good God! how do those that live with them always? They are brothers; and the eldest is a baronet, has a good estate, a wife and three or four children. He was my servant heretofore, and comes to see me still for old love's sake; but if he could have made me mistress of the world I could not have had him; and yet I'll swear he has nothing to be disliked in him but his want of tongue, which in a woman might have been a virtue.

I sent you a part of _Cyrus_ last week, where you will meet with one Doralise in the story of Abradate and Panthée. The whole story is very good; but the humour makes the best part of it. I am of her opinion in most things that she says in her character of "L'honnest homme" that she is in search of, and her resolution of receiving no heart that had been offered to anybody else. Pray, tell me how you like her, and what fault you find in my Lady Carlisle's letter? Methinks the hand and the style both show her a great person, and 'tis writ in the way that's now affected by all that pretend to wit and good breeding; only, I am a little scandalized to confess that she uses that word faithful,--she that never knew how to be so in her life.

I have sent you my picture because you wished for it; but, pray, let it not presume to disturb my Lady Sunderland's. Put it in some corner where no eyes may find it out but yours, to whom it is only intended. 'Tis not a very good one, but the best I shall ever have drawn of me; for, as my Lady says, my time for pictures is past, and therefore I have always refused to part with this, because I was sure the next would be a worse. There is a beauty in youth that every one has once in their lives; and I remember my mother used to say there was never anybody (that was not deformed) but were handsome, to some reasonable degree, once between fourteen and twenty. It must hang with the light on the left hand of it; and you may keep it if you please till I bring you the original. But then I must borrow it (for 'tis no more mine, if you like it), because my brother is often bringing people into my closet where it hangs, to show them other pictures that are there; and if he miss this long thence, 'twould trouble his jealous head.

15.

Sir,--

Who would be kind to one that reproaches one so cruelly? Do you think, in earnest, I could be satisfied the world should think me a dissembler, full of avarice or ambition? No, you are mistaken; but I'll tell you what I could suffer, that they should say I married where I had no inclination, because my friends thought it fit, rather than that I had run wilfully to my own ruin in pursuit of a fond passion of my own. To marry for love were no reproachful thing if we did not see that of the thousand couples that do it, hardly one can be brought for an example that it may be done and not repented afterwards. Is there anything thought so indiscreet, or that makes one more contemptible? 'Tis true that I do firmly believe we should be, as you say, _toujours les mesmes_; but if (as you confess) 'tis that which hardly happens once in two ages, we are not to expect the world should discern we were not like the rest. I'll tell you stories another time, you return them so handsomely upon me. Well, the next servant I tell you of shall not be called a whelp, if 'twere not to give you a stick to beat myself with. I would confess that I looked upon the impudence of this fellow as a punishment upon me for my over care in avoiding the talk of the world; yet the case is very different, and no woman shall ever be blamed that an inconsolable person pretends to her when she gives no allowance to it, whereas none shall 'scape that owns a passion, though in return of a person much above her. The little tailor that loved Queen Elizabeth was suffered to talk out, and none of her Council thought it necessary to stop his mouth; but the Queen of Sweden's kind letter to the King of Scots was intercepted by her own ambassador, because he thought it was not for his mistress's honour (at least that was his pretended reason), and thought justifiable enough. But to come to my Beagle again. I have heard no more of him, though I have seen him since; we meet at Wrest again. I do not doubt but I shall be better able to resist his importunity than his tutor was; but what do you think it is that gives him his encouragement? He was told I had thought of marrying a gentleman that had not above two hundred pound a year, only out of my liking to his person. And upon that score his vanity allows him to think he may pretend as far as another. Thus you see 'tis not altogether without reason that I apprehend the noise of the world, since 'tis so much to my disadvantage.

Is it in earnest that you say your being there keeps me from the town? If so, 'tis very unkind. No, if I had gone, it had been to have waited on my neighbour, who has now altered her resolution and goes not herself. I have no business there, and am so little taken with the place that I could sit here seven years without so much as thinking once of going to it. 'Tis not likely, as you say, that you should much persuade your father to what you do not desire he should do; but it is hard if all the testimonies of my kindness are not enough to satisfy without my publishing to the world that I can forget my friends and all my interest to follow my passion; though, perhaps, it will admit of a good sense, 'tis that which nobody but you or I will give it, and we that are concerned in't can only say 'twas an act of great kindness and something romance, but must confess it had nothing of prudence, discretion, nor sober counsel in't. 'Tis not that I expect, by all your father's offers, to bring my friends to approve it. I don't deceive myself thus far, but I would not give them occasion to say that I hid myself from them in the doing it; nor of making my action appear more indiscreet than it is. It will concern me that all the world should know what fortune you have, and upon what terms I marry you, that both may not be made to appear ten times worse than they are. 'Tis the general custom of all people to make those that are rich to have more mines of gold than are in the Indies, and such as have small fortunes to be beggars. If an action take a little in the world, it shall be magnified and brought into comparison with what the heroes or senators of Rome performed; but, on the contrary, if it be once condemned, nothing can be found ill enough to compare it with; and people are in pain till they find out some extravagant expression to represent the folly on't. Only there is this difference, that as all are more forcibly inclined to ill than good, they are much apter to exceed in detraction than in praises. Have I not reason then to desire this from you; and may not my friendship have deserved it? I know not; 'tis as you think; but if I be denied it, you will teach me to consider myself. 'Tis well the side ended here. If I had not had occasion to stop there, I might have gone too far, and showed that I had more passions than one. Yet 'tis fit you should know all my faults, lest you should repent your bargain when 'twill not be in your power to release yourself; besides, I may own my ill-humour to you that cause it; 'tis the discontent my crosses in this business have given me makes me thus peevish. Though I say it myself, before I knew you I was thought as well an humoured young person as most in England; nothing displeased, nothing troubled me. When I came out of France, nobody knew me again. I was so altered, from a cheerful humour that was always alike, never over merry but always pleased, I was grown heavy and sullen, froward and discomposed; and that country which usually gives people a jolliness and gaiety that is natural to the climate, had wrought in me so contrary effects that I was as new a thing to them as my clothes. If you find all this to be sad truth hereafter, remember that I gave you fair warning.

Here is a ring: it must not be at all wider than this, which is rather too big for me than otherwise; but that is a good fault, and counted lucky by superstitious people. I am not so, though: 'tis indifferent whether there be any word in't or not; only 'tis as well without, and will make my wearing it the less observed. You must give Nan leave to cut a lock of your hair for me, too. Oh, my heart! what a sigh was there! I will not tell you how many this journey causes; nor the fear and apprehensions I have for you. No, I long to be rid of you, am afraid you will not go soon enough: do not you believe this? No, my dearest, I know you do not, whatever you say, you cannot doubt that I am yours.

FOOTNOTES:

[101] The second passage needs little annotation except that Wrest, in Bedfordshire, where Dorothy met her importunate lover, was the seat of Anthony Grey, Earl of Kent. There is said to be a picture there of Sir William Temple--a copy of Lely's. Wrest Park is only a few miles from Chicksands. In the first "Lady Carlisle" is Lucy Percy or Hay, a "_great person_" in many ways--beauty, rank, wit, influence etc.--but hardly a good one. As for "Doralise" Dorothy is quite right. She is one of the brightest features of the huge _Grand Cyrus_. Perhaps it may be just necessary to remind readers that "servant" constantly = "lover"; that "side" refers to the sheet of paper she is using; and that "abuse" = "deceive," not "misuse" or "vituperate."

JONATHAN SWIFT (1667-1745)

The Introduction has dealt rather more fully with Swift than with some others: and a further reference to a dominant influence or conflict of influences on his letters will be found below in the head-note on Thackeray. But a little more may be said here. It is rather unfortunate that we have not more _early_ letters from him (we have some, if only fragments, from Thackeray, and they are no small "light"). We should like some concerning that curious career at Trinity College, Dublin, which was ended _speciali gratia_, leaving the usual wranglers to their usual wrangle whether the last word meant "grace" or "_dis_grace." Others, written in various moods from the time when Sir William Temple "spoiled a fine gentleman," and Esther Johnson set running a life-long course of _un_-smooth love, would be more welcome still. They would no doubt be stumbling-blocks to those apt to stumble, just as the existing epistles are: but they would be stepping-stones for the wise. As it is, we have to do without them and perhaps, like most things that are, it is better. For the stumblers are saved the sin of stumbling, and the wise men the nuisance of seeing them do it, and trying to set them right. And there might have been only more painful revelations of the time when, to adjust the words of the famous epitaph "fierce indignation still _could_ lacerate the heart," that had felt so fondly and so bitterly what it had to feel.

What follows is characteristic enough[102] and intelligible enough to those who will give their intelligence fair play, asking only for information of _facts_. These latter can be supplied at no great length even to those who are unacquainted with Swift's biography. "M. D." is the pet name for Stella, and her rather mysterious companion Mrs. Dingley who lived with her in Dublin and played something like the part of the alloys which are used in experimenting with some metals.[103] "Presto" is Swift himself. "Prior" is the poet. "Sir A. Fountaine" was a Norfolk squire and a great collector of artistic things, most of which were sold not very long ago. "Sterne" (John) was an Irish clergyman and afterwards a bishop, but not of the same family as the novelist. "Cousin _Dryden_ Leach" reminds us that Swift was also a cousin of Dryden the poet. "Oroonoko" refers to Afra Behn's introduction of the "noble savage" to English interest. "Patrick" was Swift's very unsatisfactory man-servant. "Bernage" a French Huguenot refugee. "George Granville," of the family of the hero of the _Revenge_, was a great Tory, a peer a little later with the title of Lansdowne, and a rather better poet than Johnson thought him. "St. John" and "Harley," if not also "Masham," should not need annotation. Notice the seven, (literally seven!) leagued word at the end. Swift calls their attention to it when beginning his next instalment.

16. TO STELLA

LONDON, January 16, 1710-11.

O faith, young women, I have sent my letter N. 13, without one crumb of an answer to any of MD's; there's for you now; and yet Presto ben't angry faith, not a bit, only he will begin to be in pain next Irish post, except he sees MD's little hand-writing in the glass frame at the bar of St James's Coffeehouse, where Presto would never go but for that purpose. Presto's at home, God help him, every night from six till bed time, and has as little enjoyment or pleasure in life at present as any body in the world, although in full favour with all the ministry. As hope saved, nothing gives Presto any sort of dream of happiness, but a letter now and then from his own dearest MD. I love the expectation of it, and when it does not come, I comfort myself, that I have it yet to be happy with. Yes, faith, and when I write to MD, I am happy too; it is just as if methinks you were here, and I prating to you, and telling you where I have been: Well, says you, Presto, come, where have you been to-day? come, let 's hear now. And so then I answer; Ford and I were visiting Mr Lewis, and Mr Prior, and Prior has given me a fine Plautus, and then Ford would have had me dine at his lodgings, and so I would not; and so I dined with him at an eating-house; which I have not done five times since I came here; and so I came home, after visiting Sir Andrew Fountaine's mother and sister, and Sir Andrew Fountaine is mending, though slowly.

17. I was making, this morning, some general visits, and at twelve I called at the coffeehouse for a letter from MD; so the man said he had given it to Patrick; then I went to the Court of Requests and Treasury to find Mr Harley, and after some time spent in mutual reproaches, I promised to dine with him; I staid there till seven, then called at Sterne's and Leigh's to talk about your box, and to have it sent by Smyth. Sterne says he has been making inquiries, and will set things right as soon as possible. I suppose it lies at Chester, at least I hope so, and only wants a lift over to you. Here has little Harrison been to complain, that the printer I recommended to him for his Tatler is a coxcomb; and yet to see how things will happen; for this very printer is my cousin, his name is Dryden Leach; did you never hear of Dryden Leach, he that prints the Postman? He acted Oroonoko, he's in love with Miss Cross.--Well, so I came home to read my letter from Stella, but the dog Patrick was abroad; at last he came, and I got my letter; I found another hand had superscribed it; when I opened it, I found it written all in French, and subscribed Bernage: faith, I was ready to fling it at Patrick's head. Bernage tells me, had been to desire your recommendation to me to make him a captain; and your cautious answer, "That he had as much power with me as you," was a notable one; if you were here, I would present you to the ministry as a person of ability. Bernage should let me know where to write to him; this is the second letter I have had without any direction; however, I beg I may not have a third, but that you will ask him, and send me how I shall direct to him. In the mean time, tell him, that if regiments are to be raised here, as he says, I will speak to George Granville, Secretary at War, to make him a captain; and use what other interest I conveniently can. I think that is enough, and so tell him, and don't trouble me with his letters when I expect them from MD; do you hear, young women, write to Presto.

18. I was this morning with Mr Secretary St John, and we were to dine at Mr Harley's alone, about some business of importance, but there were two or three gentlemen there. Mr Secretary and I went together from his office to Mr Harley's, and thought to have been very wise; but the deuce a bit: the company staid, and more came, and Harley went away at seven, and the Secretary and I staid with the rest of the company till eleven; I would then have had him come away, but he was in for't; and though he swore he would come away at that flask, there I left him. I wonder at the civility of these people; when he saw I would drink no more, he would always pass the bottle by me, and yet I could not keep the toad from drinking himself, nor he would not let me go neither, nor Masham, who was with us. When I got home I found a parcel directed to me, and opening it, I found a pamphlet written entirely against myself, not by name, but against something I writ: it is pretty civil, and affects to be so, and I think I will take no notice of it; 'tis against something written very lately; and indeed I know not what to say, nor do I care; and so you are a saucy rogue for losing your money to-day at Stoyte's; to let that bungler beat you, fy Stella, an't you ashamed? well, I forgive you this once, never do so again; no, noooo. Kiss and be friends, sirrah.--Come, let me go sleep; I go earlier to bed than formerly; and have not been out so late these two months; but the secretary was in a drinking humour. So good night, myownlittledearsaucyinsolentrogues.

FOOTNOTES:

[102] As such, it has commended itself to other selectors. But duplication, though it has been sedulously avoided here, is sometimes almost inevitable.

[103] _I.e._ the part of facilitating the operation, and disappearing in the results aimed at.

LADY MARY WORTLEY-MONTAGU (1689-1762)

The ratio of importance between life and letters varies a good deal with different writers: and the circumstances of the life have seldom been of more importance to the letter than in the case of "Lady Mary"--Pierrepont as she was born. When she was a girl she held an unusual place in the house of her widowed father the Duke of Kingston. Her courtship by, or with, or of (one doubts as to the preposition) Edward Wortley-Montagu, a descendant of Pepys's Lord Sandwich, had peculiarities, and her marriage with him more. She was a sort of pet at George the First's court; she went with her husband to Constantinople as Ambassadress; she introduced inoculation into England; she was, under imperfectly known circumstances, first the idol and then the abomination of Pope; she lived for more than twenty years in France and Italy, having left her husband without, apparently, any quarrel between them; and she only came home in 1761 to die next year. Like her predecessor as Queen of letter-writers, Madame de Sévigné (to whom she was amusingly and rather femininely unjust), she had a favourite daughter (who became Lady Bute[104]); but, unlike her, she had a most objectionable son who was apparently half mad. There was, however, not the slightest madness about Lady Mary--in fact, most of the objectors (perhaps unjust ones) to her have held that her head was very much better than her heart. Her most popular letters have usually been the Turkish ones, and, at the other end of her life, her Italian descriptions: but selections almost invariably pitch on the curious early one in which she, so to speak, "proposes" to her future husband rather more than, or at least as much as, she accepts his proposal. I prefer, both as less popularised and as more unique still, the following most business-like[105] plan and programme of an elopement. Like Mr. Foker's fight with the post-boy it "didn't come off" as first planned; but Fortune favoured it later.

17. TO MR. WORTLEY-MONTAGU

Saturday morning (August, 1712)

I writ you a letter last night in some passion. I begin to fear again; I own myself a coward.--You made no reply to one part of my letter concerning my fortune. I am afraid you flatter yourself that my F. [father] may be at length reconciled and brought to reasonable terms. I am convinced, by what I have often heard him say, speaking of other cases like this, he never will. The fortune he has engaged to give with me, was settled on my B. [brother's] marriage, on my sister and on myself; but in such a manner, that it was left in his power to give it all to either of us, or divide it as he thought fit. He has given it all to me. Nothing remains for my sister, but the free bounty of my F. [father] from what he can save; which, notwithstanding the greatness of his estate, may be very little. Possibly after I have disobliged him so much, he may be glad to have her so easily provided for, with money already raised; especially if he has a design to marry himself, as I hear. I do not speak this that you should not endeavour to come to terms with him, if you please; but I am fully persuaded it will be to no purpose. He will have a very good answer to make:--that I suffered this match to proceed; that I made him make a very silly figure in it; that I have let him spend £400 in wedding-cloaths; all which I saw without saying any thing. When I first pretended to oppose this match, he told me he was sure I had some other design in my head; I denied it with truth. But you see how little appearance there is of that truth. He proceeded with telling me that he never would enter into treaty with another man, &c., and that I should be sent immediately into the North to stay there; and, when he died, he would only leave me an annuity of £400. I had not courage to stand this view, and I submitted to what he pleased. He will now object against me,--why, since I intended to marry in this manner, I did not persist in my first resolution; that it would have been as easy for me to run away from T. [Thoresby] as from hence; and to what purpose did I put him, and the gentleman I was to marry, to expences, &c.? He will have a thousand plausible reasons for being irreconcileable, and 'tis very probable the world will be of his side. Reflect now for the last time in what manner you must take me. I shall come to you with only a night-gown and petticoat, and that is all you will get with me. I told a lady of my friends what I intend to do. You will think her a very good friend when I tell you she has proffered to lend us her house if we would come there the first night. I did not accept of this till I had let you know it. If you think it more convenient to carry me to your lodgings, make no scruple of it. Let it be where it will: if I am your wife I shall think no place unfit for me where you are. I beg we may leave London next morning, wherever you intend to go. I should wish to go out of England if it suits with your affairs. You are the best judge of your father's temper. If you think it would be obliging to him, or necessary for you, I will go with you immediately to ask his pardon and his blessing. If that is not proper at first, I think the best scheme is going to the Spa. When you come back, you may endeavour to make your father admit of seeing me, and treat with mine (though I persist in thinking it will be to no purpose). But I cannot think of living in the midst of my relations and acquaintance after so unjustifiable a step:--unjustifiable to the world,--but I think I can justify myself to myself. I again beg you to hire a coach to be at the door early Monday morning, to carry us some part of our way, wherever you resolve our journey shall be. If you determine to go to that lady's house, you had better come with a coach and six at seven o'clock tomorrow. She and I will be in the balcony that looks on the road: you have nothing to do but to stop under it, and we will come down to you. Do in this what you like best. After all, think very seriously. Your letter, which will be waited for, is to determine everything. I forgive you a coarse expression in your last, which, however, I wish had not been there. You might have said something like it without expressing it in that manner; but there was so much complaisance in the rest of it I ought to be satisfied. You can shew me no goodness I shall not be sensible of. However, think again, and resolve never to think of me if you have the least doubt, or that it is likely to make you uneasy in your fortune. I believe to travel is the most likely way to make a solitude agreeable, and not tiresome: remember you have promised it.

'Tis something odd for a woman that brings nothing to expect anything; but after the way of education, I dare not pretend to live but in some degree suitable to it. I had rather die than return to a dependancy upon relations I have disobliged. Save me from that fear if you love me. If you cannot, or think I ought not to expect it, be sincere and tell me so. 'Tis better I should not be yours at all, than, for a short happiness, involve myself in ages of misery. I hope there will never be occasion for this precaution; but, however, 'tis necessary to make it. I depend entirely on your honour, and I cannot suspect you of any way doing wrong. Do not imagine I shall be angry at any thing you can tell me. Let it be sincere; do not impose on a woman that leaves all things for you.

FOOTNOTES:

[104] The likeness, however, ended with the favouritism: for Madame de Grignan, in spite of good looks and good wits, was apparently detested by everybody, except her mother, and deserved it: while nobody has anything to say against Lady Bute.

[105] It is, of course, not _merely_ business-like--the mixture of something else makes it rather fascinating. They were curiously fond of elopements in the eighteenth century, Sheridan's satire in _The Rivals_ having ample justification. Nor was this merely due to the more severe exercise of paternal authority. For they often preferred (as the philosophical parent of the celebrated Mrs. Greville remarked when his daughter ran away with Mr. G.) to "get out of the window when there was not the slightest objection to their passing through the door."

PHILIP DORMER STANHOPE, EARL OF CHESTERFIELD (1694-1773)

As was suggested in the Introduction, where perhaps enough has been said of his actual letters, the fourth Earl of Chesterfield is too commonly known, or rather _mis_known, only by Johnson's refusal of his patronage and condemnation of his manners and morals, by Dickens's caricature, and by Thackeray's not untrue but merely fragmentary sketch of him as a gambler. Therefore, though these preliminary notes are not as a rule biographical, this may be one of the exceptions; for his life was anything but that of a mere idler and _grand Seigneur_. He entered the House of Commons before he was of age, and had much to do with political and literary as well as Court society before, in 1725, he succeeded to the peerage. A year or two afterwards he went as ambassador to the Hague, a post which he held, doing some important business, for four years. On coming home he became a formidable opponent of Walpole, and at one time led the opposition in the Upper House. He was a most successful Viceroy in Ireland at the difficult period of the "'45," and a judicious "Secretary for the North" after it. He conducted the reform of the Calendar through Parliament, and only gave up active participation in home politics because of his increasing deafness. In foreign affairs he was an adroit and successful diplomatist, and made an early and remarkably clear-sighted anticipation of the French Revolution. It is not extravagant to say that, if he had had his fortune and position to make, he might have been one of the foremost men of his time in politics or letters or both; and that he was not far below such rank in either. The following letter is one of the most characteristic of those at which it has been the fashion to sneer. All one can say of it is, "What a blessing it would be if a good many people in the twentieth century, and in places varying from the streets to the House of Commons, would obey at least some of its precepts!"

18. LORD CHESTERFIELD TO HIS SON

LONDON. Sept. 22, O.S., 1749

Dear Boy,

If I had faith in philters and love potions, I should suspect that you had given Sir Charles Williams some, by the manner in which he speaks of you, not only to me, but to everybody else. I will not repeat to you what he says of the extent and correctness of your knowledge, as it might either make you vain, or persuade you that you had already enough of what nobody can have too much. You will easily imagine how many questions I asked and how narrowly I sifted him upon your subject: he answered me, and I daresay with truth, just as I could have wished; till, satisfied entirely with his accounts of your character and learning, I inquired into other matters, intrinsically indeed of less consequence, but still of great consequence to every man, and of more to you than to almost any man; I mean, your address, manners and air. To these questions, the same truth which he had observed before, obliged him to give me much less satisfactory answers. And, as he thought himself in friendship both to you and me, obliged to tell me the disagreeable as well as the agreeable truths, upon the same principle I think myself obliged to repeat them to you.

He told me, then, that in company you were frequently most _provokingly_ inattentive, absent, and _distrait_. That you came into a room, and presented yourself very awkwardly; that at table you constantly threw down knives, forks, napkins, bread, etc., and that you neglected your person and dress, to a degree unpardonable at any age, and much more so at yours.

These things, however immaterial soever they may seem to people who do not know the world and the nature of mankind, give me, who know them to be exceedingly material, very great concern. I have long distrusted you, and therefore frequently admonished you upon these articles; and I tell you plainly, that I shall not be easy till I hear a very different account of them. I know of no one thing more offensive to a company, than that inattention and _distraction_. It is showing them the utmost contempt; and people never forgive contempt. No man is _distrait_ with the man he fears, or the woman he loves; which is a proof that every man can get the better of that _distraction_ when he thinks it worth his while to do so; and, take my word for it, it is always worth his while. For my own part, I would rather be in company with a dead man than with an absent one; for if the dead man gives me no pleasure, at least he shows me no contempt; whereas the absent man, silently indeed, but very plainly, tells me that he does not think me worth his attention. Besides, can an absent man make any observations upon the characters, customs, and manners of the company? No. He may be in the best companies of his lifetime (if they will admit him, which, if I were they, I would not), and never be one jot the wiser. I never will converse with an absent man; one may as well talk with a deaf one. It is, in truth, a practical blunder, to address ourselves to a man, who we see plainly neither hears, minds, nor understands us. Moreover, I aver that no man is, in any degree, fit for either business or conversation, who cannot, and does not, direct and command his attention to the present object, be that what it will.

You know, by experience, that I grudge no expense in your education, but I will positively not keep you a flapper. You may read, in Dr. Swift, the description of these flappers, and the use they were of to your friends the Laputans; whose minds (Gulliver says) are so taken up with intense speculations, that they neither can speak, nor attend to the discourses of others, without being roused by some external taction upon the organs of speech and hearing; for which reason, those people who are able to afford it, always keep a flapper in their family, as one of their domestics, nor ever walk about, or make visits, without him. This flapper is likewise employed diligently to attend his master in his walks, and, upon occasion, to give a soft flap upon his eyes; because he is always so wrapt up in cogitation, that he is in manifest danger of falling down every precipice, and bouncing his head against every post, and, in the streets, of jostling others, or being jostled into the kennel himself. If _Christian_ will undertake this province into the bargain, with all my heart; but I will not allow him any increase of wages upon that score.

In short, I give you fair warning, that when we meet, if you are absent in mind, I will soon be absent in body; for it will be impossible for me to stay in the room; and if at table you throw down your knife, plate, bread, etc., and hack the wing of a chicken for half an hour, without being able to cut it off, and your sleeve all the time in another dish, I must rise from table to escape the fever you would certainly give me. Good God! How I should be shocked if you came into my room, for the first time, with two left legs, presenting yourself with all the graces and dignity of a tailor, and your clothes hanging upon you like those in Monmouth Street, upon tenter-hooks! Whereas I expect, nay require, to see you present yourself with the easy and gentle air of a man of fashion who has kept good company. I expect you not only well dressed, but very well dressed; I expect a gracefulness in all your motions, and something particularly engaging in your address. All this I expect, and all these it is in your power, by care and attention, to make me find; but, to tell you the plain truth, if I do not find it, we shall not converse very much together; for I cannot stand inattention and awkwardness; it would endanger my health.

You have often seen, and I have as often made you observe, L[yttelton]'s distinguished inattention and awkwardness. Wrapped up like a Laputan in intense thought, and possibly sometimes in no thought at all--which, I believe, is very often the case with absent people--he does not know his most intimate acquaintance at sight, or answers them as if they were at cross purposes. He leaves his hat in one room, his sword in another, and would leave his shoes in a third, if his buckles, although awry, did not save them; his legs and arms, by his awkward management of them, seem to have undergone the _question extraordinaire_; and his head, always hanging upon one or other of his shoulders, seems to have received the first stroke upon a block. I sincerely value and esteem him for his parts, learning, and virtue; but, for the soul of me, I cannot love him in company. This will be universally the case, in common life, of every inattentive awkward man, let his real merit and knowledge be ever so great.

When I was of your age, I desired to shine, as far as I was able, in every part of life; and was as attentive, to my manners, my dress, and my air, in company on evenings, as to my books, and my tutor in the mornings. A young fellow should be ambitious to shine in everything; and, of the two, rather overdo than underdo. These things are by no means trifles; they are of infinite consequence to those who are to be thrown into the great world, and who would make a figure or a fortune in it. It is not sufficient to deserve well, one must please well too. Awkward, disagreeable merit, will never carry anybody far. Wherever you find a good dancing master, pray let him put you upon your haunches; not so much for the sake of dancing, as for coming into a room and presenting yourself genteelly and gracefully. Women, whom you ought to endeavour to please, cannot forgive a vulgar and awkward air and gestures; _il leur faut du brillant_. The generality of men are pretty like them, and are equally taken by the same exterior graces.

I am very glad that you have received the diamond buckles safe: All I desire in return for them, is, that they may be buckled even upon your feet, and that your stockings may not hide them. I should be sorry you were an egregious fop; but I protest that, of the two, I would rather have you a fop than a sloven. I think negligence in my own dress, even at my age, when certainly I expect no advantages from my dress, would be indecent with regard to others. I have done with fine clothes; but I will have my plain clothes fit me, and made like other people's. In the evenings I recommend to you the company of women of fashion, who have a right to attention, and will be paid it. Their company will smooth your manners, and give you a habit of attention and respect; of which you will find the advantage among men.

My plan for you, from the beginning, has been to make you shine, equally in the learned and in the polite world; The former part is almost completed to my wishes, and will, I am persuaded, in a little time more, be quite so. The latter part is still in your power to complete; and I flatter myself that you will do it, or else the former part will avail you very little; especially in your deportment, where the exterior address and graces do half the business; they must be harbingers of your merit, or your merit will be very coldly received: all can, and do judge of the former, few of the latter.

Mr. Harte tells me that you have grown very much since your illness: if you get up to five feet ten, or even nine inches, your figure will, probably, be a good one; and if well dressed and genteel, will probably please; which is a much greater advantage to a man than people commonly think. Lord Bacon calls it a letter of recommendation.

I would wish you to be an _omnis homo_, _l'homme universel_. You are nearer it, if you please, than ever anybody was at your age; and if you will but, for the course of this next year only, exert your whole attention to your studies in the morning, and to your address, manners, air, and _tournure_ in the evenings, you will be the man I wish you, and the man that is rarely seen.

Our letters go, at best, so irregularly and so often miscarry totally, that, for greater security, I repeat the same things. So, though, I acknowledged by last post Mr Harte's letter of the 8th September, N.S., I acknowledge it again by this to you. If this should find you still at Verona, let it inform you, that I wish you to set out soon for Naples; unless Mr. Harte should think it better for you to stay at Verona, or any other place on this side Rome, till you go there for the Jubilee. Nay, if he likes it better, I am very willing that you should go directly from Verona to Rome; for you cannot have too much of Rome, whether upon account of the language, the curiosities, or the company. My only reason for mentioning Naples, is for the sake of the climate, upon account of your health; but, if Mr. Harte thinks your health is now so well restored as to be above climate, he may steer your course wherever he thinks proper; and, for aught I know, your going directly to Rome, and consequently staying there so much the longer, may be as well as anything else. I think you and I cannot put our affairs into better hands than in Mr. Harte's; and I will take his infallibility against the Pope's, with some odds on his side. _A propos_ of the Pope; remember to be presented to him before you leave Rome, and go through the necessary ceremonies for it, whether of kissing his slipper or...; for I would never deprive myself of anything I wanted to do or see, by refusing to comply with an established custom. When I was in Catholic countries, I never declined kneeling in their churches at the elevation, nor elsewhere, when the Host went by. It is a complaisance due to the custom of the place, and by no means, as some silly people have imagined, an implied approbation of their doctrine. Bodily attitudes and situations are things so very indifferent in themselves, that I would quarrel with nobody about them. It may indeed be improper for Mr. Harte to pay that tribute of complaisance, upon account of his character.

This letter is a very long, and possibly a very tedious one; but my interest for your perfection is so great, and particularly at this critical and decisive period of your life, that I am only afraid of omitting, but never of repeating, or dwelling too long upon anything that I think may be of the least use to you. Have the same anxiety for yourself that I have for you, and all will do well. Adieu, my dear child!

GEORGE BALLARD (1706-1755)

The extreme wickedness of reviewers has been a conviction with many authors--who have sometimes, it would seem, succumbed to it themselves and retaliated in reviewing others. The following letter to Dr. Lyttelton, Dean of Exeter, is a very early (1753) and not unamusing example of this conviction: and is given as such, though the writer has no wide fame. His history is, however, interesting and shows, among other things, how entirely erroneous is the idea that till recently (and even now to some extent) opportunities of showing themselves able to profit by education were and are denied to the "lower classes" in England. Ballard was apprenticed to a staymaker ("habit-maker" as others say) at Chipping-Campden, but betook himself in his leisure hours to the study of Anglo-Saxon. Hearing of which fact the gentlemen of the local hunt (the boozy squire-tyrants of popular tradition) subscribed for an annuity of £100 a year to him, but he would only accept £60. With this he went up to Oxford to enjoy the Bodleian, was made a "clerk" at Magdalen and later an esquire-bedell to the University. He did much good work of the antiquarian kind, and died a year or two after writing this letter, having (one hopes) relieved himself by his protest and been consoled by a kind answer from Lyttelton.[106]

19. TO DR. LYTTELTON, DEAN OF EXETER

A DEFENCE OF THE HISTORY OF LEARNED LADIES

Revd. and Hond. Sir,

My best acknowledgments are due for the favour of two epistles; the first of which I received a few minutes after my last set forward for Exeter. I would have answered it immediately, but that I thought a little respite might be agreeable, before I gave you the trouble of another long letter.

The day before I received your first epistle, a Gent. of my acquaintance brought me the _Monthly Review_ for February, that I might see what the candid and genteel authors of that work had said of mine. They observe to the publick, that _I have said_ C. Tishem was so skilled in the Greek Tongue, that she could read Galen in its original, which very few Physicians are able to do. Whether this was done maliciously, in order to bring the wrath of the Æsculapians upon me, or inadvertently, I cannot say: but I may justly affirm, that they have used me very ill in that affair; since if they had read with attention, which they ought to have done before they attempted to give a character of the Book, they must have known that the whole account of that lady (which is but one page) is not mine, but borrowed with due acknowledgment from the _General Dictionary_. They are likewise pleased to inform the world that I have been rather too industrious in the undertaking, having introduced several women who hardly deserved a place in the work. I did not do this for want of materials; neither did I do it rashly, without advising with others of superior judgment in those affairs, of which number Mr. Professor Ward was one. But those pragmatical Censors seem to have but little acquaintance with those studies, or otherwise they might have observed that all our general Biographers, as Leland, Bale, Pits, Wood, and Tanner, have trod the very same steps; and have given an account of all the authors they could meet with, good and bad, just as they found them: and yet, I have never heard of anyone that had courage or ill-nature enough, to endeavour to expose them for it. While I was ruminating on these affairs, three or four letters came to my hands, and perceiving one of them come from my worthy friend the Dean of Exeter, I eagerly broke it open, and was perfectly astonished to find myself charged with _party zeal_ in my book; and that from thence the most candid reader might conclude the author to be both a Church and State Tory. But after having thoroughly considered all the passages objected to, and not finding the least tincture of either Whig or Tory principles contained in them, I began to cheer up my drooping spirits, in hopes that I might possibly out-live my supposed crime; but, alas! to my still greater confusion! when I opened my next letter from a Tory acquaintance, I was like one thunderstruck at the contents of it. He discharges his passionate but ill-grounded resentment upon me most furiously. He tells me, he did not imagine Magdalen College could have produced such a rank Whig. He reproaches me with want of due esteem for the Stuart Family, to whom he says I have shewn a deadly hatred, and he gives me, as he imagines, three flagrant instances of it. 1. That I have unseasonably and maliciously printed a letter of Queen Elizabeth's, in order to blacken the memory of Mary Queen of Scots, and that too, at a time when her character began to shine as bright as the Sun. 2dly. That I have endeavoured to make her memory odious, by representing her as wanting natural affection to her only son, in my note at p. 162, where he says I have printed part of a Will, &c. And 3dly, tho' she was cut off in such a barbarous and unprecedented manner, yet she has fallen unlamented by me. I am likewise charged with having an affection to Puritanism; the reasons for which are, my giving the Life of a Puritan Bishop's Lady, which it seems need not have been done by me, had I not had a particular regard for her, since it had been done before by Goodwin who reprinted her Devotions. And not content with this, I have blemished my book with the memoirs of a Dissenting teacher's wife, and have been kind enough to heighten even the character given her by her indulgent husband: and that I am very fond of quoting Fox and Burnet upon all occasions. These are thought strong indications of the above-mentioned charge. It may be thought entirely unnecessary to answer any of the objections from Exeter, after having given you this Summary of my kind Friend's Candid Epistle; but to you, Sir, to whom I could disclose the very secrets of my soul, I will endeavour to say a word or two upon this subject, and make you my Confessor upon this occasion; and I will do it with as much sincerity, as if I lay on my death-bed. Before I was fourteen years old, I read over Fox's Acts and Monuments of the Church, and several of the best books of Polemical Divinity, which strongly fortified me in the Protestant Religion; and gave me the greatest abhorrence to Popery. And soon after I perused Mercurius Rusticus, The Eleventh Persecution, Lloyd, Walker's Sufferings of the Clergy, and many others, which gave me almost as bad an opinion of the Dissenters. But then I learned in my childhood _to live in Charity with all Men_, and I have used my best endeavours to put this doctrine in practice all my life long. I never thought ill, or quarrelled with any man merely because he had been educated in principles different to mine; and yet I have been acquainted with many papists, dissenters, &c. and if I found any of them learned, ingenuous, and modest, I always found my heart well-disposed for contracting a firm friendship with them: and notwithstanding that, I dare believe that all those people will, with joint consent, vouch for me, that I have ever been steady in my own principles.

I can truly affirm that never any one engaged in such a work, with an honester heart, or executed it with more unbiassed integrity, than I have done. And indeed, I take the unkind censures passed upon me by the furious uncharitable zealots of both parties, to be the strongest proof of it. And after all, I dare challenge any man, whether Protestant, Papist, or Dissenter, Whig or Tory, (and I have drawn up and published memoirs of women who professed all those principles) to prove me guilty of partiality, or to shew that I have made any uncharitable reflections on any person, and whenever that is done, I will faithfully promise to make a public recantation. I wish, Sir, you would point out to me any one unbecoming word or expression which has fell from me on Bishop Burnet. Had I had the least inclination to have lessened his character, I did not want proper materials to have done it. I have in my possession two original letters from Bishop Gibson and Mr Norris of Bemerton, to Dr Charlett, which, if published, would lessen your too great esteem for him. And what, I beseech you, Sir, have I said in praise of Mrs Hopton and her pious and useful labours, which they do not well deserve, and which can possibly give any just offence to any good man? I dare not censure or condemn a good thing merely because it borders upon the Church of Rome. I rather rejoice that she retains any thing I can fairly approve. Should I attempt to do this, might I not condemn the greater part of our Liturgy, &c.? and should I not stand self-condemned for so doing? I cannot for my life perceive that I have said any thing of that excellent woman, which she does not merit; and I must beg leave to say that I think her letter to F. Turbeville deserves to be wrote in letters of gold, and ought to be carefully read and preserved by all Protestants. Mary Queen of Scots fell under my notice, no otherwise than as a learned woman. The affairs you mention would by no means suit my peaceable temper. I was too well acquainted with the warm disputes, and fierce engagement both of domestic and foreign writers on that head, once to touch upon the subject. And indeed, unless I had been the happy discoverer of some secret springs of action which would have given new information to the public, it would have been excessive folly in me to intermeddle in an affair of so tender a nature, and of so great importance.

I have often blamed my dear friend Mr. Brome for destroying his valuable collections, but I now cease to wonder at it. He spent his leisure hours pleasantly and inoffensively, and when old age came on, which not only abates thirst, but oftentimes gives a disrelish to these and almost all other things, which do not help to make our passage into eternity more easy, he then destroyed them (I dare believe) in order to prevent the malicious reflections of an ill-natured world.

I have always been a passionate lover of History and Antiquity, Biography, and Northern Literature: and as I have ever hated idleness, so I have in my time filled many hundred sheets with my useless scribble, the greater part of which I will commit to the flames shortly, to prevent their giving me any uneasiness in my last moments.[107]

[May 22, 1753.]

FOOTNOTES:

[106] Ballard's _Memoirs of Learned Ladies of Great Britain who have been celebrated for their writings or skill in the Learned Languages Arts & Sciences_, appeared at Oxford in 4to (1752) and 8vo (1775). It contains some sixty lives, the most noteworthy names being those of Queens Elizabeth and Mary of Scotland, Lady Jane Grey, Margaret Countess of Richmond (_the_ "Lady Margaret"), the Duchess of Newcastle, Lady Winchelsea, the two Countesses of Pembroke ("Sidney's sister" and Anne Clifford), Dame Juliana Barnes or Berners, Dryden's Anne Killigrew, Dorothy Pakington (the alleged author of _The Whole Duty of Man_), and "the matchless Orinda."

[107] Perhaps a note should be added on "Mrs. Hopton" and "F. Turbe(r)ville." The former, born Susanna Harvey (1627-1709), was the wife of a Welsh judge, and wrote devotional works. The latter, Henry T. (d. 1678: the "F" of text is of course "Father"), was a writer of doctrinal and controversial manuals on the Roman side.

THOMAS GRAY (1716-1771)

The chief thing to add to what has been said of Gray in the Introduction is something that may draw attention to a curious feature of his letters, not there distinctly noticed. Letters, it must be sufficiently seen even from this little book, have a curious _variety_ of relation to the characters, personal and literary, of their writers. Sometimes they show us phases entirely or almost entirely concealed in the published works; sometimes again, without definitely revealing new aspects, they complete and enforce the old; while, in yet a third, though perhaps the smallest, class of instances, they are as it were results of the same governing formula as that of the published works themselves, the difference lying almost wholly in the subjects and in the methods and circumstances of treatment. Gray belongs to this last division. There is not, of course, in his letters the same severity of discipline and restriction of utterance, that we find in his poems. But that, in letters, was impossible--at least in letters that should supply tolerable reading. Yet the same general principle, which was somewhat exaggerated in the phrase about his "never speaking out," appears in them. There is always a certain restraint (at least in all that have been published) and it would probably have extended in proportion to others, however little their subject might seem compatible with it. In what we have it gives a curious _seasoning_--something which preserves as well as flavours like salt or vinegar. Of those which follow the first is an early one. Mason's apologetic note is to the effect that it "may appear whimsical" but it gives him an opportunity of remarking that Mr. Gray was "extremely skilled in the customs of the ancient Romans," both utterances being characteristic, to some extent of the time but to a greater of the writer. The second letter, to Gray's most intimate friend Dr. Wharton, and more than a quarter of a century later, is a good example of the _variety_ of these epistles--scenery, literature, politics, science, gossip and what not, being all dealt with.

20. TO RICHARD WEST [EXTRACT]

ROME, May, 1740.

I am to-day just returned from Alba, a good deal fatigued; for you know the Appian is somewhat tiresome. We dined at Pompey's; he indeed was gone for a few days to his Tusculan, but, by the care of his Villicus, we made an admirable meal. We had the dugs of a pregnant sow, a peacock, a dish of thrushes, a noble scarus just fresh from the Tyrrhene, and some conchylia of the Lake with garum sauce: For my