(42) "Allen, the friend of Pope," says Sir Walter Scott, "was also one of his benefactors, but unnamed at his own desire; thus confirming the truth of the poet's beautiful couplet,
'Let humble Allen, with an awkward shame,
Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame.'
It is said that this munificent and modest patron made Fielding a present of two hundred pounds at one time, and that even before he was personally acquainted with him."-E.
(43) "This," observes Sir Walter Scott, in his biographical notice of Fielding, " is a humiliating anecdote, even after we have made allowance for the aristocratic exaggeration of Walpole; yet it is consoling to observe that Fielding's principles remained unshaken, though the circumstances attending his official situation tended to increase the careless disrespectability of his private habits. His own account of his conduct respecting the dues of the office on which he depended for subsistence, has never been denied or doubted: 'I confess,' says he, 'that my private affairs at the beginning of the winter had but a gloomy aspect; for I had not plundered the public or the poor of those sums which they who are always ready to plunder both as much as they can, have been pleased to suspect me of taking: on the contrary, by composing, instead of inflaming, the quarrels of porters and beggars, and by refusing to take a shilling from a man who most undoubtedly would not have had another left, I had reduced an income of about five hundred a year, of the dirtiest money upon earth, to a little more than three hundred; a considerable portion of which remained with my clerk."'-E.
(44) West's mother was sister to Sir Richard Temple, afterwards Lord Cobham. Of his translation of Pindar, Dr. Johnson states, that he found his expectations surpassed, both by its elegance and its exactness. For his "Observations on the Resurrection," the University of Oxford, in March 1748, created him a Doctor of Laws by diploma. At his residence at Wickham, where he was often visited by Lyttelton and Pitt, there is a walk designed by the latter; while the former received at this place that conviction which produced his "Dissertation on St. Paul."-E.
(45) Daughter of Sir Robert Furnese, and widow of Lewis, Earl of Rockingham.
30 Letter 6 To Sir Horace Mann. Strawberry Hill, June 4, 1749.
As summery as June and Strawberry Hill may sound, I assure you I am writing to you by the fire-side: English weather will give vent to its temper, and whenever it is out of humour it will blow east and north and all kinds of cold. Your brothers Ned and Gal. dined with me to-day, and I carried the latter back to Richmond: as I passed over the green, I saw Lord Bath, Lord Lonsdale,(46) and half-a-dozen more of the White's club sauntering at the door of a house which they have taken there, and come to every Saturday and Sunday to play at whist. You will naturally ask why they can't play at whist in London on those two days as well as on the other five; indeed I can't tell you, except that it is so established a fashion to go out of town at the end of the week, that people do go, though it be only into another town. It made me smile to see Lord Bath sitting there, like a citizen that has left off trade.
Your brother Ned has not seen Strawberry Hill since my great improvements; he was astonished: it is pretty: you never saw so tranquil a scene, without the least air of melancholy: I should hate it, if it was dashed with that. I forgot to ask Gal. what is become of the books of Houghton which I gave him six months ago for you and Dr. Cocchi. You perceive I have got your letter of May 23rd, and with it Prince Craon's simple epistle to his daughter:(47) I have no mind to deliver it: it would be a proper recommendation of a staring boy on his travels, and is consequently very suitable to my colleague, Master St. Leger; but one hates to be coupled with a romping grayhound puppy, "qui est moins prudent que Monsieur Valpol!" I did not want to be introduced to Madame de Mirepoix's assemblies, but to be acquainted with her, as I like her family: I concluded, simple as he is, that an old Frenchman knew how to make these distinctions. By thrusting St. Leger into the letter with me, and talking of my prudence, I shall not wonder if she takes me for his bear-leader, his travelling governor!
Mr. Chute, who went from hence this morning, and is always thinking of blazoning your pedigree(48) in the noblest colours, has turned over all my library, till he has tapped a new and very great family for you: in short, by your mother it is very clear that you are descended from Hubert de Burgh, Grand Justiciary to Richard the Second: indeed I think he was hanged; but that is a misfortune that ill attend very illustrious genealogies; it is as common to them as to the pedigrees about Paddington and Blacieheath. I have had at least a dozen great-great-grandfathers that came to untimely ends. All your virtuosos in heraldry are content to know that they had ancestors who lived five hundred years ago, no matter how they died. A match with a low woman corrupts a stream of blood as long as the Danube, tyranny, villainy, and executions are mere fleabites, and leave no stain. The good Lord of Bath, whom I saw on Richmond-green this evening, did intend, I believe, to ennoble my genealogy with another execution: how low is he sunk now from those views! and how entertaining to have lived to see all those virtuous patriots proclaiming their mutual iniquities! Your friend Mr. Doddington, it seems, is so reduced as to be relapsing into virtue. In my last I told you some curious anecdotes of another part of the band, of Pope and Bolingbroke. The friends of the former have published twenty pamphlets against the latter; I say against the latter, for, as there is no defending Pope, they are reduced to satirize Bolingbroke. One of them tells him how little he would be known himself from his own writings, if he were not immortalized in Pope's; and still more justly, that if be destroys Pope's moral character, what will become of his own, which has been retrieved and sanctified by the embalming art of his friend? However, there are still new discoveries made every day of Pope's dirty selfishness. Not content with the great profits which he proposed to make of the work in question, he could not bear that the interest of his money should be lost till Bolingbroke's death; and therefore told him that it would cost very near as much to have the press set for half-a-dozen copies as it would for a complete edition, and by this means made Lord Bolingbroke pay very near the whole expense of the fifteen hundred. Another story I have been told on this occasion, was of a gentleman who, making a visit to Bishop Atterbury in France, thought to make his court by commending Pope. The Bishop replied not: the gentleman doubled the dose - at last the Bishop shook his head, and said, "Mens curva in corpore curvo!" The world will now think justly of these men: that Pope was the greatest poet, but not the most disinterested man in the world; and that Bolingbroke had not all those virtues and not all those talents which the other so proclaimed; and that be did not even deserve the friendship which lent him so much merit; and for the mere loan of which he dissembled attachment to Pope, to whom in his heart he was as perfidious and as false as he has been to the rest of the world.