Why waste your sweetness on the desert air! at least, why bestow so little of your cheerfulness on your friends? I do not wish you to parade your rubicundity and gray hairs through the mobs and assemblies of London; I should think you bestowed them as ill as on Greatworth; but you might find a few rational creatures here, who are heartily tired of what are called our pleasures, and who would be glad to have you in their chimney-corner. There you might have found me any time this fortnight; I have been dying of the worst and longest cold I ever had in my days, and have been blooded, and taken James's powder to no purpose. I look almost like the skeleton that Frederick found in the oratory;(760) my only comfort was, that I should have owed my death to the long day in the House of Commons, and have perished with Our liberties; but I think I am getting the better of my martyrdom, and shall live to See you; nay, I shall not be gone to Paris. As I design that journey for the term of my figuring in the world, I would fain wind up my politics too, and quit all public ties together. As I am not old yet, and have an excellent though delicate constitution, I may promise myself some agreeable years, if I could detach myself from all connexions, but with a very few persons that I value. Oh, with what joy I could bid adieu to loving and hating; to crowds, public places, great dinners, visits; and above all, to the House of Commons; but pray mind when I retire, it shall only be to London and Strawberry Hill—in London one can live as one will, and at Strawberry I will live as I will. Apropos, my good old tenant Franklin is dead, and I am in possession of his cottage, which will be a delightfully additional plaything at Strawberry. I shall be violently tempted to stick in a few cypresses and lilacs there before I go to Paris. I don't know a jot of news: I have been a perfect hermit this fortnight, and buried in Runic poetry and Danish wars. In short, I have been deep in a late history of Denmark, written by one Mallet, a Frenchman,(761) a sensible man, but I cannot say he has the art of making a very tiresome subject agreeable. There are six volumes, and I am stuck fast in the fourth.
Lord Byron's trial I hear is to be in May. If you are curious about it, I can secure you a ticket for Lord Lincoln's gallery. The Antiquarian Society have got Goody Carlisle(762) for their president, and I suppose she will sit upon a Saxon chalkstone till the return of King Arthur. Adieu!
(760) An allusion to the scene in the last chapter of his Castle of Otranto.- E.
(761) Paul Henry Mallet was born at Geneva in 1731, and was for some time professor of history in his native city. He afterwards became professor royal of the belles lettres at Copenhagen. The introduction to his History of Denmark was afterwards translated by Dr. Percy, under the title of Northern Antiquities, including the Edda.-E.
(762) Dr. Charles Lyttelton, Bishop of Carlisle. See ant`e, p. 207, letter 149. On his death, in 1768, he made a very valuable bequest of manuscripts and printed books to the Society.-E.
Letter 242 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.
Strawberry Hill, Feb. 28, 1765. (page 377)
Dear sir, As you do not deal with newspapers, nor trouble Yourselves with occurrences of modern times, you may perhaps conclude from what I have told you, and from my silence, that I am in France. This will tell you that I am not; though I have been long thinking of it, and still intend it, though not exactly yet. My silence I must lay on this uncertainty, and from having been much out of order above a month with a very bad cold and cough, for which I am come hither to try change of air. Your brother Apthorpe, who was so good as to call upon me about a fortnight ago in town, found me too hoarse to speak to him. We both asked one another the same question—news of you?
I have lately had an accession to my territory here, by the death of good old Franklin, to whom I had given for his life the lease of the cottage and garden cross the road. Besides a little pleasure in planting, and in crowding it with flowers, I intend to make, what I am sure you are antiquarian enough to approve, a bower, though your friends the abbots did not indulge in such retreats, at least not under that appellation: but though we love the same ages, you must excuse worldly me for preferring the romantic scenes of antiquity. If you will tell me how to send it, and are partial enough to me to read a profane work in the style of former centuries, I shall convey to you a little story-book, which I published some time ago, though not boldly with my own name: but it has succeeded so well, that I do not any longer entirely keep the secret. Does the title, The Castle of Otranto(763) tempt you? I shall be glad to hear you are well and happy.
(763) In the first edition of this work, of which but very few copies were printed, the title ran thus:—"The Castle of Otranto, a Story, translated by William Marshal, Gent., from the original Italian of onuphrio Muralto, Canon of the church of St. Nicholas at Otranto. London: printed for Thomas Lownds, in Fleet Street, 1765."-E.
Letter 243 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.
Strawberry Hill, March 9, 1765. (page 378)