Well! I will say no more now: but if you do not order me a copy of "Bonner's Ghost" incontinently, never dare to look my printing house in the face again. Or come, I'll tell you what; I will forgive all your enormities, if you will let me print your poem. I like to filch a little immortality out of others, and the Strawberry press could never have a better opportunity. I will not haggle for the public will be content with printing only two hundred copies, of which you shall have half, and I half. It shall cost you nothing but a yes, I only propose this, in case you do not mean to print it yourself. Tell me sincerely which you like. But as to not printing it at all, charming and unexceptionable as it is, you cannot be so preposterous.(638) I by no means have a thought of detracting from your own share in your own poem; but, as I do suspect that it caught some inspiration from your perusal of "The Botanic Garden," so I hope you will discover that my style is much improved by having lately studied Bruce's travels. There I dipped, and not in St. Giles's pound, where one would think this author had been educated. Adieu! Your friend, or mortal foe, as you behave on the present occasion.
(637) "Bishop Bonner's Ghost;" to which was prefixed the following argument:—"In the garden of the palace at Fulham is a dark recess; at the end of this stands a chair which once belonged to Bishop Bonner. A certain Bishop of London more than two hundred years after the death of the aforesaid -Bonner just as the clock of the Gothic chapel had struck six undertook to cut with his own hand a narrow walk through this thicket, which is since called 'The Monk's Walk.' He had no sooner begun to clear the way, than lo! suddenly up started from the chair the Ghost of Bonner; who, in a tone of just and bitter indignation, uttered the following verses."-E.
(638) Miss More, in her reply, says—"I send this under cover to the Bishop of London, to whom I write your emendations, and desire they may be considered as the true reading. What is odd enough, I did write both the lines so at first but must go a-tinkering them afterwards. I do not pretend that I am 'lot flattered by your obliging proposal of printing these slight verses at the Strawberry press. YOU must do as you please, I believe. What business have I to think meanly of verses You have commended?" Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 159.-E.
Letter 331 To Miss Berry.
Strawberry Hill, June 30, 1789. (PAGE 419)
Were there any such thing as sympathy at the distance of two hundred miles, you would have been in a mightier panic than I was; for, on Saturday se'nnight, going to open the glass case in the Tribune, my foot caught in the carpet, and I fell with my whole (si weight y a) weight against the corner of the marble altar, on my side, and bruised the muscles so badly, that for two days I could not move without screaming.(639) I am convinced I should have broken a rib, but that I fell on the cavity whence two of my ribs were removed, that are gone to Yorkshire. I am much better both of my bruise and of my lameness, and shall be ready to dance at my own wedding when my wives return. And now to answer your letter. If you grow tired of the Arabian Nights, you have no more taste than Bishop Atterbury,(640) who huffed Pope for sending him them or the Persian Tales, and fancied he liked Virgil better, who had no more imagination than Dr. Akenside. Read Sinbad the Sailor's Voyages, and you will be sick of AEneas's. What woful invention were the nasty poultry that dunged on his dinner, and ships on fire turned into Nereids! a barn metamorphosed into a cascade in a pantomime is full as sublime an effort of genius. I do not know whether the Arabian Nights are of Oriental origin or not:(641) I should think not, because I never saw any other Oriental composition that was not bombast without genius, and figurative without nature; like an Indian screen, where you see little men on the foreground, and larger men hunting tigers above in the air, which they take for perspective. I do not think the Sultaness's narratives very natural or very probable, but there is a wildness in them that captivates. However, if you could wade through two octavos(642) of Dame Piozzi's thoughts and so's and I trow's, and cannot listen to seven volumes of Scheherezade's narrations, I will sue for a divorce infibro Parnassi, and Boccalini shall be my proctor. The cause will be a counterpart to the sentence of the Lacedoemonian, who was condemned for breach of the peace, by saying in three words what he might have said in two.
You are not the first Eurydice that has sent her husband to the devil, as you have kindly proposed to me; but I will not undertake the jaunt, for if old Nicholas Pluto should enjoin me not to look back to you, I should certainly forget the prohibition like my predecessor. Besides, I am a little too close to take a voyage twice which I am so soon to repeat; and should be laughed at by the good folks on the other side of the water, if I proposed coming back for a twinkling Only. No; I choose as long as I can
"Still with my fav'rite Berrys to remain."(643)
So you was not quite satisfied, though you ought to have been transported, with King's College Chapel, because it has no aisles, like every common cathedral. I suppose you would object to a bird of paradise, because it has no legs, but shoots to heaven in a trait, and does not rest on earth. Criticism and comparison spoil many tastes. You should admire all bold and unique essays that resemble nothing else; the Botanic Garden, the Arabian Nights, and King's Chapel are above all rules: and how preferable is what no one can imitate, to all that is imitated even from the best models! Your partiality to the pageantry of popery I do not approve, and I doubt whether the world will not be a loser (in its visionary enjoyments) by the extinction of that religion, as it was by the decay of chivalry and the proscription of the heathen deities. Reason has no invention; and as plain sense will never be the legislator of human affairs, it is fortunate when taste happens to be regent.
(639) Miss More, in a letter written at this time to Walpole, says, "How you do scold me! but I don't care for your scolding; and I don't care for your wit neither, that I don't. half as much as I care for a blow which I hear you have given yourself against a table. I have known such very serious consequences arise from such accidents, that I beg of you to drown yourself in the "Veritable Arquebusade." Memoirs, vol. ii. P. 158.-E.
(640) The following are the Bishop's expressions:—"And now, Sir, for your Arabian Tales. Ill as I have been, almost ever since they came to hand, I have read as much of them as I shall read while I live. indeed, they do not please my taste; they are writ with so romantic an air, and are of so wild and absurd a contrivance, that I have not only no pleasure, but no patience in reading them. I cannot help thinking them the production of some woman's imagination." The Honourable Charles Yorke, in a letter to his brother, the second Earl of Hardwicke written in June 1740, states that Pope and Warburton both agreed in condemning the bishop's judgment on the Arabian Tales and that Warburton added, that from those tales the completest notion might be gather,d of the Eastern ceremonies and manners.-E.