ARLINGTON STREET, Feb. 18, 1768.
You have sent me a long and very obliging letter, and yet I am extremely out of humour with you. I saw Poems by Mr. Gray advertised: I called directly at Dodsley's to know if this was to be more than a new edition? He was not at home himself, but his foreman told me he thought there were some new pieces, and notes to the whole. It was very unkind, not only to go out of town without mentioning them to me, without showing them to me, but not to say a word of them in this letter. Do you think I am indifferent, or not curious about what you write? I have ceased to ask you, because you have so long refused to show me anything. You could not suppose I thought that you never write. No; but I concluded you did not intend, at least yet, to publish what you had written. As you did intend it, I might have expected a month's preference. You will do me the justice to own that I had always rather have seen your writings than have shown you mine; which you know are the most hasty trifles in the world, and which though I may be fond of the subject when fresh, I constantly forget in a very short time after they are published. This would sound like affectation to others, but will not to you. It would be affected, even to you, to say I am indifferent to fame. I certainly am not, but I am indifferent to almost anything I have done to acquire it. The greater part are mere compilations; and no wonder they are, as you say, incorrect, when they are commonly written with people in the room, as "Richard"[1] and the "Noble Authors" were. But I doubt there is a more intrinsic fault in them: which is, that I cannot correct them. If I write tolerably, it must be at once; I can neither mend nor add. The articles of Lord Capel and Lord Peterborough, in the second edition of the "Noble Authors," cost me more trouble than all the rest together: and you may perceive that the worst part of "Richard," in point of ease and style, is what relates to the papers you gave me on Jane Shore, because it was tacked on so long afterwards, and when my impetus was chilled. If some time or other you will take the trouble of pointing out the inaccuracies of it, I shall be much obliged to you: at present I shall meddle no more with it. It has taken its fate: nor did I mean to complain. I found it was condemned indeed beforehand, which was what I alluded to. Since publication (as has happened to me before) the success has gone beyond my expectation.
[Footnote 1: He is here alluding to his own very clever essay, entitled "Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of Richard III." It failed to convince Hume; but can hardly be denied to be a singularly acute specimen of historical criticism. It does not, indeed, prove Richard to have been innocent of all the crimes imputed to him; but it proves conclusively that much of the evidence by which the various charges are supported is false. In an earlier letter he mentions having first made "a discovery, one of the most marvellous ever made. In short, it is the original Coronation Roll of Richard, by which it appears that very magnificent robes were ordered for Edward V., and that he did or was to walk at his uncle's coronation." The letter, from which this passage is an extract, was to a certain extent an answer to one from Gray, who, while praising the ingenuity of his arguments, avowed himself still unconvinced by them.]
Not only at Cambridge, but here, there have been people wise enough to think me too free with the King of Prussia! A newspaper has talked of my known inveteracy to him. Truly, I love him as well as I do most kings. The greater offence is my reflection on Lord Clarendon. It is forgotten that I had overpraised him before. Pray turn to the new State Papers, from which, it is said, he composed his history. You will find they are the papers from which he did not compose his history. And yet I admire my Lord Clarendon more than these pretended admirers do. But I do not intend to justify myself. I can as little satisfy those who complain that I do not let them know what really did happen. If this inquiry can ferret out any truth, I shall be glad. I have picked up a few more circumstances. I now want to know what Perkin Warbeck's Proclamation was, which Speed in his history says is preserved by Bishop Leslie. If you look in Speed perhaps you will be able to assist me.
The Duke of Richmond and Lord Lyttelton agree with you, that I have not disculpated Richard of the murder of Henry VI. I own to you, it is the crime of which in my own mind I believe him most guiltless. Had I thought he committed it, I should never have taken the trouble to apologize for the rest. I am not at all positive or obstinate on your other objections, nor know exactly what I believe on many points of this story. And I am so sincere, that, except a few notes hereafter, I shall leave the matter to be settled or discussed by others. As you have written much too little, I have written a great deal too much, and think only of finishing the two or three other things I have begun—and of those, nothing but the last volume of Painters is designed for the present public. What has one to do when turned fifty, but really think of finishing?
I am much obliged and flattered by Mr. Mason's approbation, and particularly by having had almost the same thought with him. I said, "People need not be angry at my excusing Richard; I have not diminished their fund of hatred, I have only transferred it from Richard to Henry." Well, but I have found you close with Mason—No doubt, cry prating I, something will come out….[1]
[Footnote 1: "Something will come out." Walpole himself points out in a note that this is a quotation from Pope: "I have found him close with Swift." "Indeed?" "No doubt, (Cries prating Balbus) something will come out" (Prologue to the "Satires").]
Pray read the new Account of Corsica.[1] What relates to Paoli will amuse you much. There is a deal about the island and its divisions that one does not care a straw for. The author, Boswell, is a strange being, and, like Cambridge, has a rage of knowing anybody that ever was talked of. He forced himself upon me at Paris in spite of my teeth and my doors, and I see has given a foolish account of all he could pick up from me about King Theodore.[2] He then took an antipathy to me on Rousseau's account, abused me in the newspapers, and exhorted Rousseau to do so too: but as he came to see me no more, I forgave all the rest. I see he now is a little sick of Rousseau himself; but I hope it will not cure him of his anger to me. However, his book will I am sure entertain you.
[Footnote 1: Boswell, Dr. Johnson's celebrated biographer, had taken great interest in the affairs of Corsica, which, in this year (1768), Choiseul, the Prime Minister of France, had bought of Genoa, to which State it had long belonged. Paoli was a Corsican noble, who had roused his countrymen to throw off the domination of Genoa; and, on the arrival of French troops to take possession of their purchase, he made a vigorous resistance to the French General, the Comte de Marboeuf; but eventually he was overpowered, and forced to fly. He took refuge in England, where George III. granted him a pension, which he enjoyed till his death in 1807, when he was buried in Westminster Abbey. One of his relations was M. Charles Buonaparte, the father of Napoleon, who was only prevented from accompanying him in his abandonment of Corsica by the persuasion of his uncle, the Archdeacon of Ajaccio. Boswell, who was apt to be enthusiastic in his hero-worship and anxiety for new acquaintances (whom, it must be admitted, he commonly chose with judgement, if with little dignity), introduced him to Johnson, who also conceived a high regard for him, and on one occasion remarked that "he had the loftiest port of any man he had ever seen.">[
[Footnote 2: After several outbreaks within a few years, the Corsicans in 1736 embarked in a revolt so formal and complete that they altogether threw off their allegiance to Genoa, and chose as their king Theodore Neuhof, a Westphalian baron. But Cardinal Fleury, the French Prime Minister, from a belief that Theodore was an instrument of Walpole, lent the Genoese a force of three thousand men, which at last succeeded in crushing the insurrection and expelling Theodore. (See the Editor's "France under the Bourbons," iii. 157.) Theodore is one of the six ex-kings whom, in Voltaire's "Candide," his hero met at a hotel in Venice during the carnival, when he gave a melancholy account of his reverse of fortune. "He had been called 'Your Majesty;' now he can hardly find any one to call him 'Sir.' He had coined money; now he has not a penny of his own. He had had two Secretaries of State; now he has but one valet. He had sat on a throne; but since that time he had laid on straw in a London prison." In fact, his state was so doleful, that the other ex-kings subscribed twenty sequins apiece to buy him some coats and shirts ("Candide," c. 26).]