(1023) This celebrated actress, who excelled alike in tragedy and comedy, took leave of the stage in May, in the part of Lady Macbeth, and died at Bath in the following August.-E.
(1024) Walpole, in a letter to Madame du Deffand, of the 11th of March, speaking of the "Honn`ete Criminel," a copy of which she had sent him, gives her the following account of his own tragedy:—"L'Honn`ete Criminel me paroit assez m`ediocre. Ma propre trag`edie a de bien plus grands d`efauts, mais au moins elle ne ressemble pas au toout compass`e tet r`egl`e du si`ecle. Il ne vous plairoit pas assur`ement; il n'y a pas de beaux Sentiments: il n'y a que des passions sans envelope, des crimes, des repentis, et des horreurs. Je crois qu'il y a beaucoup plus de mauvais que de bon, et je sais s`urement que depuis le premier acte jusqu'a la derni`ere sc`ene l'int`er`et languit au lieu d'augmenter: peut-il avoir on plus grand d`efaut?"-E.
(1025) Corn`elie, a manuscript tragedy, written by the Pr`esident Henault in early life.
(1026) He died in Novembor 1770, at the age of eighty-six.-E.
Letter 341 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.
Strawberry Hill, April 16, 1768. (page 517)
Well, dear Sir, does your new habitation improve as the spring advances? There has been dry weather and east wind enough to parch the fens. We find that the severe beginning of this last winter has made terrible havoc among the evergreens, though of old standing. Half my cypresses have been bewitched, and turned into brooms; and the laurustinus is every where perished. I am Goth enough to choose now and then to believe in prognostics; and I hope this destruction imports, that, though foreigners should take root here, they cannot last in this climate. I would fain persuade myself, that we are to be our own empire to eternity.
The Duke of Manchester has lent me an invaluable curiosity; I mean invaluable to us antiquaries: but perhaps I have already mentioned it to you; I forgot whether I have or no. It is the original roll of the Earls of Warwick, as long as my gallery, and drawn by John Rous(1027) himself. Ay, and what is more, there are portraits of Richard III., his Queen, and son; the two former corresponding almost exactly with my print; and a panegyric on the virtues of Richard, and a satire, upwards and downwards, on the illegal marriage of Edward IV., and on the extortions of Henry VII. I have had these and seven other portraits copied, and shall, some time or other, give plates of them. But I wait for an excuse; I mean till Mr. Hume shall publish a few remarks he has made on my book: they are very far from substantial; yet still better than any other trash that has been written against it, nothing of which deserves an answer.
I have long had thoughts of drawing up something for London like St. Foix's Rues de Paris,(1028) and have made some collections. I wish You Would be so good, in the course of your reading, to mark down any passage to that end: as where any great houses of nobility were situated; or in what street any memorable event happened. I fear the subject will not furnish much till later times, as our princes kept their courts up and down the country in such a vagrant manner.
I expect Mr. Gray and Mr. Mason to pass the day with me here to-morrow. When I am more settled here I shall put you in mind of your promise to bestow more than one day on me.
I hope the Methodist, your neighbour, does not, like his patriarch Whitfield, encourage the people to forge, murder, etc. in order to have the benefit of being converted at the gallows. That arch-rogue preached lately a funeral sermon on one Gibson, hanged for forgery, and told his audience, that he could assure them Gibson was now in heaven, and that another fellow, executed at the same time, had the happiness of touching Gibson's coat as he was turned off. As little as you and I agree about a hundred years ago, I don't desire a reign of fanatics. Oxford has begun with these rascals, and I hope Cambridge will wake. I don't mean that I would have them persecuted, which is what they wish; but I would have the clergy fight them and ridicule them. Adieu! dear Sir. Yours ever.