I should like to visit the castles and groves of your old Welsh ancestors with you: by the draughts I have seen, I have always imagined that Wales preserved the greatest remains of ancient days, and have often wished to visit Picton Castle, the seat of my Philipps-progenitors.
Make my best compliments to your sisters, and with their leave make haste to this side of the world; you will be extremely welcome hither as soon and for as long as you like; I can promise you nothing very agreeable, but that I will try to get our favourite Mr. Bentley to meet you. Adieu!
(182) The widow of Brigadier-General Handasyde.-E.
(183) The legacies bequeathed by Gerard Vanneck amounted altogether to more than a hundred thousand pounds. The residue of his property he left to his brother, Joshua Vanneck, ancestor of Lord Huntingfield.-E.
81 Letter 30 To Sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, September 20, 1750.
I only write you a line to answer some of your questions, and to tell you that I can't answer others.
I have inquired much about Dr. Mead, but can't tell you any thing determinately: his family positively deny the foundation of the reports, but every body does 'not believe their evidence. Your brother is positive that there is much of truth in his being undone, and even that there will be a sale of his collection(184) when the town comes to town. I wish for Dr. Cocchi's sake it be false. I have given your brother Middleton's last piece to send you. Another fellow of Eton(185) has popped out a sermon against the Doctor since his death, with a note to one of the pages, that is the true sublime of ecclesiastic absurdity. He is speaking against the custom of dividing the Bible into chapters and verses, and says it often encumbers the sense. This note, though long, I must transcribe, for it would wrong the author to paraphrase his nonsense:—"It is to be wished, therefore, I think, that a fair edition were set forth of the original Scriptures, for the use of learned men in their closets, in which there should be no notice, either in text or margin, of chapter, or verse, or paragraph, or any such arbitrary distinctions, (now mind,) and I might go so far as to say even any pointing or stops. It could not but be matter of much satisfaction, and much use, to have it in our power to recur occasionally to such an edition, where the understanding might have full range, free from any external influence from the eye, and the continual danger of being either confined or misguided by it." Well, Dr. Cocchi, do English divines yield to the Romish for refinements in absurdity! did one ever hear of a better way (if making sense of any writing than by reading it without stops! Most of the parsons that read the first and second lessons practise Mr. Cooke's method of making them intelligible, for they seldom observe any stops. George Selwyn proposes to send the man his own sermon, and desire him to scratch out the stops, in order to help it to some sense.
For the questions in Florentine politics, and who are to be your governors, I am totally ignorant, you must ask Sir Charles Williams; he is the present ruling star of our negotiations. His letters are as much admired as ever his verses were. He has met the ministers of the two angry empresses, and pacified Russian savageness and Austrian haughtiness. He is to teach the monarch of Prussia to fetch and carry, .@;, unless they happen to treat in iambics, or begin to settle the limits of' Parnassus instead of' those of Silesia. As he is so good a pacifier, I don't know but we may want his assistance at home before the end of the winter:
"With secretaries, secretaries jar,
And rival bureaus threat approaching war."
Those that deal in elections look still higher, and snuff a new Parliament; but I don't believe the King ill, for the Prince is building baby-houses at Kew; and the Bishop of Oxford has laid aside his views on Canterbury, and is come roundly back to St. James's for the deanery of St. Paul's.(186) I could not help being diverted the other day with the life of another Bishop of Oxford, one Parker, who, like Secker, set out a Presbyterian, and died King James the Second's arbitrary master of Maudlin College.(187)