(1019) Walpole's work is thus characterized by Sir Walter Scott:- -"The Historical Doubts are an acute and curious example how minute antiquarian research may shake our faith in the facts most pointedly averred by general history. It is remarkable also to observe how, in defending a system, which was probably at first adopted as a mere literary exercise, Mr. Walpole's doubts acquired, in his own eyes, the respectability of certainties, in which he could not brook controversy." Prose Works; vol. iii. p. 304.-E.
(1020) "They strike, rather than please; the images are magnified by affectation; the language is laboured into harshness. The mind of the writer seems to work with unnatural violence. Double, double, toil and trouble! There is too little appearance of ease and nature." Johnson.-E.
Letter 340 To George Montagu, Esq.
Strawberry Hill, April 15, 1768. (page 516)
Mr. Chute tells me that you have taken a new house in Squireland, and have given yourself up for two years more to port and parsons. I am very angry, and resign you to the works of the devil or the church, I don't care which. You will get the gout, turn Methodist, and expect to ride to heaven upon your own great foe. I was happy with your telling me how well you love me, and though I don't love loving, I could have poured out all the fullness of my heart to such an old and true friend; but what am I the better for it, if I am to see you but two or three days in the year? I thought you would at last come and while away the remainder of life on the banks of the Thames in gaiety and old tales. I have quitted the stage, and the Clive is preparing to leave it. We shall neither of us ever be grave: dowagers roost all round us and you could never want cards or mirth. Will you end like a fat farmer, repeating annually the price of oats, and discussing stale newspapers? There have you got, I hear into an old gallery that has not been glazed since Queen Elizabeth, and under the nose of an infant Duke and Duchess, that will understand you no more than if you wore a ruff and a coif, and talked to them of a call of serjeants the year of the Spanish armada! Your wit and humour will be as much lost upon them, as if you talked the dialect of Chaucer; for with all the divinity of wit, it grows out of fashion like a fardingale. I am convinced that the young men at White's already laugh at George Selwyn's bon-mots only by tradition. I avoid talking before the youth of the age as I would dancing before them; for if one's tongue don't move in the steps of the day, and thinks to please by its old graces, it is only an object of ridicule, like Mrs. Hobart in her cotilion. I tell you we should get together, and comfort ourselves with reflecting on the brave days that we have known—not that I think people were a jot more clever or wise in our youth than now, are now; but as my system is always to live in a vision as much as I can, and as visions don't increase with years, there is nothing so natural as to think one remembers what one does not remember.
I have finished my tragedy,(1021) but as you would not bear the subject, I will say no more of it, but that Mr. Chute, who is not easily pleased, likes it, and Gray, who is still more difficult, approves it.(1022) I am not yet intoxicated enough with it to think it would do for the stage, though I wish to see it acted; but, as Mrs. Pritchard(1023) leaves the stage next month, I know nobody could play the Countess; nor am I disposed to expose myself to the impertinent eyes of that jackanapes Garrick, who lets nothing appear but his own wretched stuff, or that of creatures still duller, who suffer him to alter their pieces as he pleases. I have written an epilogue in character for the Clive, which she would speak admirably; but I am not so sure that she would like to speak it. Mr. Conway, Lady Aylesbury, Lady Lyttelton, and Miss Rich, are to come hither the day after to-morrow, and Mr. Conway and I are to read my play to them; for I have not strength enough to go through the whole alone.(1024)
My press is revived, and is printing a French play written by the old President Henault.(1025) It was damned many years ago at Paris, and yet I think it is better than some that have succeeded, and much better than any of our modern tragedies. I print it to please the old man, as he was exceedingly kind to me at Paris; but I doubt whether he will live till it is finished.(1026) He is to have a hundred copies, and there are to be but a hundred more, Of Which You shall have one.
Adieu! though I am very angry with you, I deserve all your friendship, by that I have for you, witness my anger and disappointment. Yours ever.
P. S. Send me your new direction, and tell me when I must begin to use it.
(1021) The Mysterious Mother. See vol. i. p. 57.-E.
(1022) Of this tragedy Lord Byron was also an approver: "It is the fashion," he says, "to underrate Horace Walpole; firstly, because he was a nobleman; and secondly, because he was a gentleman; but, to say nothing of the composition of his incomparable Letters, and of the Castle of Otranto, he is the ultimus Romanorum, the author of the Mysterious Mother; a tragedy of the highest order, and not a puling love.play."-E.