Idle notes! untimely green!
Why this unavailing haste!
Western gales and skies serene
Speak not always winter past.
Cease my doubts, my fears to move;
Spare the honour of my love.
Adieu, Madam, your most faithful servant.
[Footnote 1: Mr. Pitt had lately resigned the office of Secretary of State, on being outvoted in the Cabinet, which rejected his proposal to declare war against Spain; and he had accepted a pension of £3,000 a year and a peerage for his wife—acts which Walpole condemns in more than one letter, and which provoked comments in many quarters.]
DEATH OF THE CZARINA ELIZABETH—THE COCK-LANE GHOST—RETURN TO ENGLAND OF LADY MARY WORTLEY.
TO SIR HORACE MANN.
ARLINGTON STREET, Jan. 29, 1762.
I wish you joy, sir minister; the Czarina [Elizabeth] is dead. As we conquered America in Germany,[1] I hope we shall overrun Spain by this burial at Petersburg. Yet, don't let us plume ourselves too fast; nothing is so like a Queen as a King, nothing so like a predecessor as a successor. The favourites of the Prince Royal of Prussia, who had suffered so much for him, were wofully disappointed, when he became the present glorious Monarch; they found the English maxim true, that the King never dies; that is, the dignity and passions of the Crown never die. We were not much less defeated of our hopes on the decease of Philip V. The Grand Duke[2] [Peter III.] has been proclaimed Czar at the army in Pomerania; he may love conquest like that army, or not know it is conquering, like his aunt. However, we cannot suffer more by this event. I would part with the Empress Queen, on no better a prospect.
[Footnote 1: "We conquered America in Germany." This is a quotation from a boastful speech of Mr. Pitt's on the conquest of Canada.]
[Footnote 2: The Grand Duke (Peter III.) was married, for his misfortune, to Catharine, a princess of Anhalt-Zerbzt, whose lover, Count Orloff, murdered him before the end of the summer, at his wife's command; and in August she assumed the government, and was crowned with all due solemnity as Czarina or Empress. Walpole had some reason for saying that "nothing was so like a predecessor as a successor," since in character Elizabeth closely resembled Catharine.]
We have not yet taken the galleons, nor destroyed the Spanish fleet. Nor have they enslaved Portugal, nor you made a triumphant entry into Naples. My dear sir, you see how lucky you were not to go thither; you don't envy Sir James Grey, do you? Pray don't make any categorical demands to Marshal Botta,[1] and be obliged to retire to Leghorn, because they are not answered. We want allies; preserve us our friend the Great Duke of Tuscany. I like your answer to Botta exceedingly, but I fear the Court of Vienna is shame-proof. The Apostolic and Religious Empress is not a whit a better Christian, not a jot less a woman, than the late Russian Empress, who gave such proofs of her being a woman.