I have-put together some trifles I promised you, and will beg Mr. Lort to be the bearer when he goes to Cambridge, if I know of it. At present I have time for nothing I like. My age and inclination call for retirement: I envied your happy hermitage, and leisure to follow your inclination. I have always lived post, and shall not die before I can bait-yet it is not my wish to be unemployed, could I but choose my occupations. I wish I could think of the pictures you mention, or had time to see Dr. Glynn and the master of Emmanuel. I doat on Cambridge, and could like to be often there. The beauty of King's College Chapel, now it is restored, penetrated me with a visionary longing to be a monk in it; though my life has been passed in turbulent scenes, in pleasures-or rather pastimes, and in much fashionable dissipation, still books, antiquity, and virt`u kept hold of a corner of my heart, and since necessity has forced me of late years to be a man of business, my disposition tends to be a recluse for what remains-but it will not be my lot: and though there is some excuse for the young doing what they like, I doubt an old man should do nothing but what he ought, and I hope doing one's duty is the best preparation for death. Sitting with one's arms folded to think about it, is a very lazy way of preparing for it. If Charles V. had resolved to make some amends for his abominable ambition by doing good, his duty as a King, there would have been infinitely more merit than going to doze in a convent.(270) One may avoid active guilt in a sequestered life; but the virtue of it is merely negative, though innocence is beautiful.
I approve much of 'Your corrections on Sir J. Hawkins, and send them to the Magazine. I want the exact blazon of William of Hatsfield his arms,—I mean the Prince buried at York. Mr. Mason and I are going to restore his monument, and I have not time to look for them-: I know you will be so good as to assist. Yours most sincerely.
(270) "The Spaniard, when the lust of sway
Had lost its quickening spell,
Cast crowns for rosaries away,
An empire for a cell!
"A strict accountant of his beads,
A subtle disputant on creeds,
His dotage trifled well:
Yet better had he neither known
A bigot's shrine nor despot's throne." Byron.-E.
Letter 121 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.
Strawberry Hill, June 19, 1777. (page 167)
I thank YOU for your notices, dear Sir, and shall remember that on Prince William. I did see the Monthly Review, but hope one is not guilty of the death of every man who does not make one the dupe of a forgery. I believe M'Pherson's success with Ossian was more The ruin of Chatterton than I. Two years passed between my doubting the authenticity of Rowley's(271) poems and his death. I never knew he had been in London till some time after he had undone and poisoned himself there. The poems he sent me were transcripts in his own hand, and even in that circumstance he told a lie: he said he had them from the very person at Bristol to whom he had given them. If any man was to tell you that monkish rhymes had been dug up at Herculaneum, which was destroyed several centuries before there was any such poetry, should you believe it? Just the reverse is the case of Rowley's pretended poems. They have all the elegance of Waller and Prior, and more than Lord Surrey—but I have no objection to any body believing what he pleases. I think poor Chatterton was an astonishing genius-but I cannot think that Rowley foresaw metres that were invented long after he was dead, or that our language was more refined at Bristol in the reign of Henry V. than it was at court under Henry VIII. One of the chaplains of the Bishop of Exeter has found a line of Rowley in Hudibras-the monk might foresee that too! The prematurity of Chatterton's genius is, however, full as wonderful, as that such a prodigy as Rowley should never have been heard of till the eighteenth century. The youth and industry of the former are miracles, too, yet still more' credible. There is not a symptom in the poems, but the old words, that savours of Rowley's age—change the old words for modern, and the whole construction is of yesterday.
(271) See in Walpole's Works, vol. iv. the Papers relative to Chatterton; see also vol- i. P. 61 of this collection.-E.
Letter 122 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.
Strawberry Hill, July 10, 1777. (page 168)
Don't be alarmed at this thousandth letter in a week. This is more to Lady Hamilton(272) than to you. Pray tell her I have seen Monsieur la Bataille d'.Agincourt.(273) He brought me her letter yesterday: and I kept him to sup, sleep in the modern phrase, and breakfast here this morning; and flatter myself he was, and she will be, content with the regard I paid to her letter.
The weather is a thought warmer to-day, and I am as busy as bees are about their hay. My hayssians(274) have cost me as much as if I had hired them of the Landgrave.(275)