‘Your most obedient servant,
‘Red. Morres.’
In answer to this letter, I returned sincere thanks for the honour of the vote; and assured them that I should be ready either to publish any part of the work separately, or to make an abridgment of the whole, reduced in such a manner as to be diffused at a small expense over all the kingdom. In a few posts I received, under the Dublin post-mark, an envelope, enclosing an anonymous essay, cut out of a newspaper, which referred to the transactions of the Society relative to me, and condemning pretty heavily my whole publication; and in this unhandsome manner the business ended.
In a Society which disposed of 10,000l. a year of public money, granted by Parliament chiefly with a view, as the Act expresses, to encourage agriculture, but which patronised manufacturers far more, there will necessarily be an agricultural party and a manufacturing one. According as one or the other happens to prevail, such contradictions will arise. All that is to be said of my case now is, that it was not so bad as that of poor Whyman Baker, who settled in Ireland as their experimenter in agriculture—lived there in poverty ten or twelve years—and broke his heart on account of the treatment which he met with. But while their Societies acted thus, the Parliament of the kingdom paid my book a much greater compliment than any Society could do; for they passed more than one Act almost directly, to alter and vary the police of corn, which I had proved was vicious, but which till then had been universally esteemed as the chief pillar of their national prosperity, and I had thus the satisfaction to see the Legislature of the kingdom improving the policy of it from the known and confessed suggestions of a work that, in other respects, had proved to the author a mere barren blank. I have, however, since heard from many most respectable gentlemen of that nation, as well as from the correspondence of others, that the book is even now esteemed of some value to Ireland, and that the agriculture of the kingdom has been advanced in consequence. But it is time to dismiss a subject upon which I have dilated too much, and spoken perhaps with an unguarded vanity and self-love which would ill become me.
I was the chief part of this year at Bradfield, but I had bought at London a pair of roan mares for drawing a post-chaise, and having the small farm in hand, I made myself by practice no bad ploughman, and could finish the stetches[[66]] neatly, and execute everything except the rivalling the Suffolk ploughman in drawing straight furrows to a mark set for that purpose; yet I overcame this difficulty in a manner that would have been commended in any other county.
The Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce voted me their Honorary Medal for some experiments I had communicated to them on the culture of potatoes.
According to custom, part of my time was occupied in reading, and among other works was highly entertained with Gray’s letters, and particularly with the following passage, which displays so much knowledge of the human mind, and, at the same time, much sterling sense: ‘To find oneself business I am persuaded is the great art of life, and I am never so angry as when I hear my acquaintance wishing they had been bred to some poking profession, or employed in some office of drudgery, as if it were pleasanter to be at the command of other people than at one’s own, and as if they could not go unless they were wound up. Yet I know and feel what they mean by this complaint; it proves that some spirit, something of genius (more than common) is required to teach a man how to employ himself—I say a man, for women, commonly speaking, never feel this distemper, they have always something to do. Time hangs not on their hands (unless they be fine ladies), a variety of small inventions and occupations fill up the void, and their eyes are never open in vain’ (vol. ii.)
Thank heaven, I have so much of the woman in me as to possess this faculty of employing myself. The day is never too long, for I think time spent in reading is always well employed, unless a man reads like an idiot, that is, equally removed from instruction and entertainment. Now the general occupation of my life—agriculture—has the happy circumstance of giving much employment, and with it exercise, at the same time that it naturally leads into a course of reading, to which it gives the air and turn of a study, and consequently renders it more interesting, an advantage I shall be solicitous to preserve, by persisting, at all events, to be much interested in farming, even though I should not continue an actual farmer. Gray felt the advantage of country pursuits. ‘Happy they that can create a rose tree or erect a honeysuckle, that can watch the brood of a hen, or see a fleet of their own ducklings launch into the water; it is with a sentiment of envy I speak it, who never shall have even a thatched roof of my own, nor gather a strawberry but in Covent Garden.’
I read also Roberts’ ‘Map of Commerce,’[[67]] and find the following extract about the spot where should be the ruin of Troy: ‘Anno Domini, 1620.—I hardly saw the relics of this mighty fabric (Troy), though I traced it for many miles, and gave ear to all the ridiculous fables of those poor Grecians that inhabit thereabouts in many villages within the compass of her ancient walls, from Mount Ida to the River Scamander, now only a brook not two feet deep, so that what Ovid said of old I found by experience verified, “jam seges est ubi Troja fuit.”’ There is a melancholy which attends such reflections that with me makes a deep impression; the idea that what was once the seat of power, arts, literature and elegance is now in the most miserable situation which Turkish oppression and Mahometan superstition can inflict, that not a trace of a once mighty city is now to be found, is depressing to the human mind. In an equal series of time what will become of the cities which are now the pride of Europe? what obscure farmer of futurity shall plough the ground whereon that House of Common stands in which a Hampden, a Bolingbroke, a Pitt, and a Mansfield have delighted the most celebrated assembly now in the world?[[68]]
My visit to London was, part of it, very agreeable, my whole intercourse with Arbuthnot entirely so. At Dr. Burney’s, while it lasted, the same; the opera, parties, the Royal Society, with some of the attendance on Parliament, add to this being in the world and on the spot for whatever happened, were all so many opportunities for pleasure and amusement, which, however, I did not make the most of. Against these I must now rank ease in my circumstances. Let it fly, and the change has been a bad one, indeed. But I think I have resolution enough to take special care of the greatest of all man’s chances. I do not remember when my acquaintance with Mr. Hugh Boyd[[69]] began, but I was acquainted with him in London, met him in many companies in Dublin, and travelled with him from thence to London. It has been supposed that he was the author of ‘Junius,’ and I must give it as my opinion that there was much probability in the supposition. I have been many times at his house, at breakfasts, morning calls and dinners, and never without seeing the Public Advertiser and remarking that they were blanks, that is to say, without being stamped. All writers in newspapers are allowed a copy gratis, and these are never stamped. His company was so much sought after in Dublin that I was scarcely at a great dinner without his being present. A very striking circumstance in his character was a memory in some points beyond example; he would multiply nine figures by eight entirely in his head, and would give the result with the most perfect accuracy. When it is considered that such an operation demands the recollection not merely of the figures, but of their position in order for the final addition, it must be admitted to be a stupendous one. He was on all occasions and in every circumstance a most pleasing, agreeable companion. His wife was a woman of very good understanding, and appeared to be sensible of her husband’s extraordinary talents. One morning at breakfast Mr. Burke’s son came in, and as his father had made a very celebrated speech the day before in the House of Commons which he intended to publish, but had, in the conclusion, departed from his notes in a very fine strain of eloquence, knowing the great memory of Boyd, he sent his son to request some hints for that conclusion. We set to work to recollect as much as possible his own words, and furnished young Burke much to his satisfaction. Mr. Boyd’s letters, of which I have preserved several, are written in a most pleasing, lively style.