419 Letter 259 To The Rev. Dr. Birch. Arlington Street, May 4, 1758.
Sir, I thought myself very unlucky in being abroad when you were so good as to call here t'other day. I not only lost the pleasure of your company, but the opportunity of obtaining from you (what however I will not despair of) any remarks you may have made on the many errors which I fear you found in my book.(886) The hurry in which it was written, my natural carelessness and insufficiency, must have produced many faults and mistakes. As the curiosity of the world, raised I believe only by the smallness Of the number printed, makes it necessary for me to provide another edition, I should be much obliged to whoever would be enough my friend to point out my wrong judgments and inaccuracies,—I know nobody, Sir, more capable Of both offices than yourself, and yet I have no pretensions to ask so great a favour, unless your own zeal for the cause of literature should prompt you to undertake a little of this task. I shall be always ready to correct my faults, never to defend them.
(886) " The Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors," of which Walpole had just printed three hundred copies, at the Strawberry Hill press.-E.
420 Letter 260 To George Montagu, Esq. Arlington Street, May 4, 1758.
You are the first person, I believe, that ever thought of a Swiss transcribing Welsh, unless, like some commentator on the Scriptures, you have discovered great affinity between those languages, and that both are dialects of the Phoenician. I have desired your brother to call here to-day, and to help us in adjusting the inscriptions. I can find no Lady Cutts in your pedigree, and till I do, cannot accommodate her with a coronet.
My book is marvellously in fashion, to my great astonishment. I did not expect so much truth and such notions of liberty would have made their fortune in this our day. I am preparing an edition for publication, and then I must expect to be a little less civilly treated. My Lord Chesterfield tells every body that he subscribes to all my opinions; but this mortifies me about as much as the rest flatter me I cannot, because it is my own case, forget how many foolish books he has diverted himself with commending The most extraordinary thing I have heard about mine is, that it being talked of at lord Arran's table, Doctor King, the Dr. King of Oxford, said of the passage on my father; "It is very modest, very genteel, and VEry TRUE." I asked my Lady Cardigan if she would forgive my making free with her grandmother;(887) she replied very sensibly, "I am sure she would not have hindered any body from writing against me; why should I be angry at any writing against her?"
The history promised you of Dr. Brown is this. Sir Charles Williams had written an answer to his first silly volume of the Estimate,(888) chiefly before he came over, but finished while he was confined at Kensington. Brown had lately lodged in the same house, not mad now, though he has been so formerly. The landlady told Sir Charles, and offered to make affidavit that Dr. Brown was the most profane cursor and swearer that ever came into her house. Before I proceed in my history, I will tell you another anecdote of this great performer: one of his antipathies is the Opera, yet the only time I ever saw him was in last Passion-week singing the Romish Stabat mater with the Mingotti, behind a harpsichord at a great concert at my Lady Carlisle's. Well—in a great apprehension of Sir Charles divulging the story of his swearing, Brown went to Dodsley in a most scurrilous and hectoring manner, threatening Dodsley if he should publish any thing personal against him; abusing Sir Charles for a coward and most abandoned man, and bidding Dodsley tell the latter that he had a cousin in the army who would call Sir Charles to account for any reflections on him, Brown. Stay; this Christian message from a divine, who by the way has a chapter in his book against duelling, is not all: Dodsley refused to carry any such message, unless in writing. The Doctor, enough in his senses to know the consequences of this, refused; and at last a short verbal message, more decently worded, was agreed on. To this Sir Charles made Dodsley write down this answer: "that he could not but be surprised at Brown's message, after that he Sir Charles, had, at Ranby's desire, sent Brown a written assurance that he intended to say nothing personal of him—nay, nor should yet, unless Brown's impertinence made it necessary." This proper reply Dodsley sent: Brown wrote back, that he should send an answer to Sir Charles himself; but bid Dodsley take notice, that printing the works of a supposed lunatic might be imputed to the printer himself, and which he, the said Doctor, should chastise. Dodsley, after notifying this new and unprovoked insolence to me, Fox, and Garrick, the one friend of Sir Charles, the other of Brown, returned a very proper, decent, yet firm answer, with assurances of repaying chastisement of any sort. Is it credible? this audacious man sent only a card back, saying, "Footman's language I never return, J. Brown." You know how decent, humble, inoffensive a creature Dodsley is; how little apt to forget or disguise his having been a footman! but there is no exaggerating this behaviour by reflections. On the same card he tells Dodsley that he cannot now accept, but returns his present of the two last volumes of his collection of poems, and assures him that they are not soiled by the reading. But the best picture of him is his own second volume, which beats all the Scaligers and Scioppins's for vanity and insolent impertinence. What is delightful; in the first volume he had deified Warburton, but the success of that trumpery has made Warburton jealous, and occasioned a coolness—but enough of this jackanapes.
Your brother has been here, and as he is to go to-morrow, and the pedigree is not quite finished, and as you will be impatient, and as it is impossible for us to transcribe Welsh which we cannot read without your assistance, who don't understand it neither, we have determined that the Colonel should carry the pedigree to you; you will examine it and bring it with you to Strawberry, where it can be finished under your own eye, better than it is possible to do without. Adieu! I have not writ so long a letter this age.
(887) Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough.
(888) Estimate of the Manners of the Times. See ant`e, p. 232, letter 119.-E.