(366) This was a print of Mr. Gray, after the portrait of him by Eckardt. It was intended to have been prefixed to Dodsley's quarto edition of the Odes with Mr. Bentley's designs but Mr. Gray's extreme repugnance to the proposal obliged his friends to drop it.
(367) In a letter to Walpole, written from Stoke, in January, on receiving a proof of the head, Gray had said, "Sure you are not out of your wits! This I know, if you suffer my head to be printed, you will put me out of mine. I conjure you immediately to put a stop to any such design. Who is at the expense of engraving it, I know not; but if it be Dodsley, I will make up the loss to him. The thing as it was, I know, will make me ridiculous enough: but to appear in proper person, at the head of my works, consisting Of half a dozen ballads in thirty pages, would be worse than the pillory. I do assure you, if I had received such a book, with such a frontispiece, without any warning, I do believe it would have given me the palsy." Works, vol. iii. p. 106.-E.
(368) Of Mr. Bentley's designs.
158 Letter 72 To Sir Horace Mann. Strawberry Hill, March 4, 1753.
have you got any wind of our new histories? Is there any account at Rome that Mr. Stone and the Solicitor-general are still thought to be more attached to Egypt than Hanover? For above this fortnight there have been strange mysteries and reports! the cabinet council sat night after night till two o'clock in the morning: we began to think that they were empannelled to sit upon a new rebellion, or invasion at least; or that the King of Prussia, had sent his mandate, that we must receive the young Pretender in part payment of the Silesian loan. At last it is come out that Lord Ravensworth,(369) on the information of one Fawcett, a lawyer, has accused Stone, Murray, and Dr. Johnson, the new Bishop of Gloucester, of having had an odd custom of toasting the Chevalier and my Lord Dunbar at one Vernon's, a merchant, about twenty years ago. The Pretender's counterpart ordered the council to examine into it: Lord Ravensworth stuck to his story: Fawcett was terrified with the solemnity of the divan, and told his very different Ways, and at last would not sign his deposition. On the other hand, Stone and Murray took their Bible on their innocence, and the latter made a fine speech into the bargain. Bishop Johnson scrambled out of the scrape at the very beginning; and the council have reported to the King that the accusation was false and malicious.(370) This is an exact abridgement of the story; the commentary would be too voluminous. The heats upon it are great: the violent Whigs are not at all convinced of the Whiggism of the culprits, by the defect of evidence: the opposite clan affect as much conviction as if they wished them Whigs.
Mr. Chute and I are come hither for a day or two to inspect the progress of a Gothic staircase, which is so pretty and so small, that I am inclined to wrap it up and send it you in my letter. As my castle is so diminutive, I give myself a Burlington air, and say, that as Chiswick is a model of Grecian architecture, Strawberry Hill is to be so of Gothic. I went the other morning with Mr. Conway to buy some of the new furniture-paper for you: if there was any money at Florence, I should expect this manufacture would make its fortune there.
Liotard, the painter, is arrived, and has brought me Marivaux's picture, which gives one a very different idea from what one conceives of the author of Marianne, though it is reckoned extremely like: the countenance is a mixture of buffoon and villain. I told you what mishap I had with Cr`ebillon's portrait: he has had the foolish dirtiness to keep it. Liotard is a G`en`evois; but from having lived at Constantinopole, he wears a Turkish habit, and a beard down to his girdle: this, and his extravagant prices, which he has raised even beyond what he asked at Paris, will probably get him as much money as he covets, for he is avaricious beyond imagination. His crayons and his water-colours are very fine; his enamel, hard: in general, he is too Dutch, and admires nothing but excess of finishing.
We have nothing new but two or three new plays, and those not worth sending to you. The answer to the Prussian memorial, drawn chiefly by Murray, is short, full, very fine, and has more spirit than I thought we had by us. The whole is rather too good, as I believe our best policy would have been, to be in the wrong, and make satisfaction for having been ill-used: the author with whom we have to deal, is not a sort of man to stop at being confuted. Adieu!
(369) Sir Henry Liddel, Baron of Ravensworth.
(370) "Upon the whole matter," says the Hon. Philip Yorke, in his MS. Parliamentary Journal, "the lords came unanimously to an opinion of reporting to the King, that there appeared to them no foundation for any part of the charge; that Mr. Fawcett, the only evidence, had grossly prevaricated in it: that it was malicious and scandalous, and ought not to affect the character of the Bishop, or either of the gentlemen who were aspersed by it."-E.