HIS "ROYAL AND NOBLE AUTHORS"—LORD CLARENDON—SIR R. WALPOLE AND LORD BOLINGBROKE—THE DUKE OF LEEDS.
TO THE REV. HENRY ZOUCH.
STRAWBERRY HILL, Oct. 21, 1758.
Sir,—Every letter I receive from you is a new obligation, bringing me new information: but, sure, my Catalogue was not worthy of giving you so much trouble. Lord Fortescue is quite new to me; I have sent him to the press. Lord Dorset's[1] poem it will be unnecessary to mention separately, as I have already said that his works are to be found among those of the minor poets.
[Footnote 1: Lord Dorset, Lord Chamberlain under Charles II., author of the celebrated ballad "To all you ladies now on land," and patron of Dryden and other literary men, was honourably mentioned as such by Macaulay in c. 8 of his "History," and also for his refusal, as Lord-Lieutenant of Essex, to comply with some of James's illegal orders.]
I don't wonder, Sir, that you prefer Lord Clarendon to Polybius[1]; nor can two authors well be more unlike: the former wrote a general history in a most obscure and almost unintelligible style; the latter, a portion of private history, in the noblest style in the world. Whoever made the comparison, I will do them the justice to believe that they understood bad Greek better than their own language in its elevation. For Dr. Jortin's[2] Erasmus, which I have very nearly finished, it has given me a good opinion of the author, and he has given me a very bad one of his subject. By the Doctor's labour and impartiality, Erasmus appears a begging parasite, who had parts enough to discover truth, and not courage enough to profess it: whose vanity made him always writing; yet his writings ought to have cured his vanity, as they were the most abject things in the world. Good Erasmus's honest mean was alternate time-serving. I never had thought much about him, and now heartily despise him.
[Footnote 1: "You prefer Lord Clarendon to Polybius." It is hard to understand this sentence. Lord Clarendon did not write a general history, but an account of a single event, "The Great Rebellion." It was Polybius who wrote a "Universal History," of which, however, only five books have been preserved, the most interesting portion of which is a narrative of Hannibal's invasion of Italy and march over the Alps in the Second Punic War.]
[Footnote 2: Dr. Jortin was Archdeacon of London; and, among other works, had recently published a life of the celebrated Erasmus, the mention of whom by Pope, which Walpole presently quotes, is not very unfairly interpreted by Walpole.]
When I speak my opinion to you, Sir, about what I dare say you care as little for as I do, (for what is the merit of a mere man of letters?) it is but fit I should answer you as sincerely on a question about which you are so good as to interest yourself. That my father's life is likely to be written, I have no grounds for believing. I mean I know nobody that thinks of it. For, myself, I certainly shall not, for many reasons, which you must have the patience to hear. A reason to me myself is, that I think too highly of him, and too meanly of myself, to presume I am equal to the task. They who do not agree with me in the former part of my position, will undoubtedly allow the latter part. In the next place, the very truths that I should relate would be so much imputed to partiality, that he would lose of his due praise by the suspicion of my prejudice. In the next place, I was born too late in his life to be acquainted with him in the active part of it. Then I was at school, at the university, abroad, and returned not till the last moments of his administration. What I know of him I could only learn from his own mouth in the last three years of his life; when, to my shame, I was so idle, and young, and thoughtless, that I by no means profited of his leisure as I might have done; and, indeed, I have too much impartiality in my nature to care, if I could, to give the world a history, collected solely from the person himself of whom I should write. With the utmost veneration for his truth, I can easily conceive, that a man who had lived a life of party, and who had undergone such persecution from party, should have had greater bias than he himself could be sensible of. The last, and that a reason which must be admitted, if all the others are not—his papers are lost. Between the confusion of his affairs, and the indifference of my elder brother to things of that sort, they were either lost, burnt, or what we rather think, were stolen by a favourite servant of my brother, who proved a great rogue, and was dismissed in my brother's life; and the papers were not discovered to be missing till after my brother's death. Thus, Sir, I should want vouchers for many things I could say of much importance. I have another personal reason that discourages me from attempting this task, or any other, besides the great reluctance that I have to being a voluminous author. Though I am by no means the learned man you are so good as to call me in compliment; though, on the contrary, nothing can be more superficial than my knowledge, or more trifling than my reading,—yet, I have so much strained my eyes, that it is often painful to me to read even a newspaper by daylight. In short, Sir, having led a very dissipated life, in all the hurry of the world of pleasure, I scarce ever read but by candlelight, after I have come home late at nights. As my eyes have never had the least inflammation or humour, I am assured I may still recover them by care and repose. I own I prefer my eyes to anything I could ever read, much more to anything I could write. However, after all I have said, perhaps I may now and then, by degrees, throw together some short anecdotes of my father's private life and particular story, and leave his public history to more proper and more able hands, if such will undertake it. Before I finish on this chapter, I can assure you he did forgive my Lord Bolingbroke[1]—his nature was forgiving: after all was over, and he had nothing to fear or disguise, I can say with truth, that there were not three men of whom he ever dropped a word with rancour. What I meant of the clergy not forgiving Lord Bolingbroke, alluded not to his doctrines, but to the direct attack and war he made on the whole body. And now, Sir, I will confess my own weakness to you. I do not think so highly of that writer, as I seem to do in my book; but I thought it would be imputed to prejudice in me, if I appeared to undervalue an author of whom so many persons of sense still think highly. My being Sir Robert Walpole's son warped me to praise, instead of censuring Lord Bolingbroke. With regard to the Duke of Leeds,[2] I think you have misconstrued the decency of my expression. I said, Burnet[3] had treated him severely; that is, I chose that Burnet should say so, rather than myself. I have never praised where my heart condemned. Little attentions, perhaps, to worthy descendants, were excusable in a work of so extensive a nature, and that approached so near to these times. I may, perhaps, have an opportunity, at one day or other of showing you some passages suppressed on these motives, which yet I do not intend to destroy.
[Footnote 1: Sir R. Walpole was so far from having any personal quarrel with Bolingbroke, that he took off so much of his outlawry as banished him, though he would not allow him to take his seat in the House of Peers.]