At my levee before dinner, I had Mrs. Buller, Lady Lucan, Sir Charles Blagden, Mr. Coxe, and Mr. Gough. This was a good day; I have not always so welcome a circle. I have run through both volumes of Mrs. Piozzi. Here and there she does not want parts, has some good translations, and stories that are new; particularly an admirable bon-mot of Lord Chesterfield, which I never heard before, but dashed with her cruel vulgarisms: see vol. ii. p. 291. The story, I dare to say, never happened, but was invented by the Earl himself; to introduce his reply. The sun never was the emblem of Louis Quinze, but of Louis Quatorze; In whose time his lordship was not ambassador, nor the Czarina Empress: nor, foolish as some ambassadors are, could two of them propose devices for toasts; as if, like children, they were playing at pictures and mottoes: and what the Signora styles a public toust, the Earl, I conclude, called a great dinner then. I have picked out a motto for her work in her own words, and written it on the title-page: "Simplicity cannot please without eloquence!" Now I think on't, let me ask if you have been as much diverted as you was at first? and have not two such volumes sometimes set you a'yawning? It is comic, that in a treatise on synonymous words, she does not know which are and which are not so. In the chapter on worth, she says, "The worth -even of money fluctuates in our state;" instead of saying in this country. Her very title is wrong; as she does not even mention synonymous Scottish words: it ought to be called not British, but English Synonymy.
Mr. Courtenay has published some epistles in rhyme, in which he has honoured me with a dozen lines, and which are really some of the best in the whole set-in ridicule of my writings. One couplet, I suppose, alludes to my Strawberry verses on you and your sister. Les voici—
"Who to love tunes his note, with the fire of old age,
And chirps the trim lay in a trim Gothic cage!"
If I were not as careless as I am about literary fame, still, this censure would be harmless indeed; for except the exploded story of Chatterton, of which I washed myself as white as snow, Mr. Courtenay falls on my choice of subjects—as, of Richard the Third and the Mysterious Mother—and not on the execution; though I fear there is enough to blame in the texture of them. But this new piece of criticism, or whatever it is, made me laugh, as I am offered up on the tomb of my poor mad nephew; who is celebrated for one of his last frantic acts, a publication in some monthly magazine, with an absurd hypothesis on "the moon bursting from the earth, and the earth from the sun, somehow or other:" but how, indeed, especially from Mr. Courtenay's paraphrase, I have too much sense to comprehend. However, I am much obliged to him for having taken such pains to distinguish me from my lunatic precursor, that even the European Magazine, when I shall die, will not be able to confound us. Richard the Third would be sorry to have it thought hereafter, that I had ever been under the care of Dr. Munro. Well! good night!
Letter 414 To Miss Hannah More.
April 27, 1794. (page 558)
This is no plot to draw you into committing even a good deed on a Sunday, which I suppose the literality of your conscience would haggle about, as if the day of the week constitutes the sin, and not the nature of the crime. But you may defer your answer till to-night is become to-morrow by the clock having struck one; and then you may do an innocent thing without any guilt, which a quarter of an hour sooner you would think abominable. Nay, as an Irishman would say, you need not even read this note till the canonical hour is past.
In short, my dear Madam), I gave your obliging message to Lady Waldegrave, who will be happy to see you on Tuesday, at one o'clock But as her staircase is very bad, as she is in a lodging, I have proposed that this meeting, for which I have been pimping between two female saints, may be held here in my house, as I had the utmost difficulty last night in climbing her scala santa, and I cannot undertake it again. But if you are so good as to send me a favourable answer to-morrow, I will take care you shall find her here at the time I mentioned, with your true admirer.
Letter 415 To The Miss Berrys.
Strawberry Hill, Saturday night, Sept. 27, 1794. (page 558)
I have been in town, as I told you I should, but gleaned nothing worth repeating, or I Would have wrote before I came away. The Churchills left me on Thursday, and were succeeded by the Marshal and Mr. Taylor, who dined and stayed all night. I am now alone, having reserved this evening to answer your long, and Agnes's short letter; but in this single one to both, for I have not matter enough for a separate maintenance. I went yesterday to Mrs. Damer, and had a glimpse of her new house; literally a glimpse, for I saw but one room on the first floor, where she had lighted a fire, that I might not mount two flights; and as it was eight o'clock, and quite dark, she only opened a door or two, and gave me a cat's-eye view into them. One blemish I had descried at first; the house has a corner arrival like her father's. Ah, me! who do not love to be led through the public. I did see the new bust of Mrs. Siddons, and a very mistressly performance it is indeed. Mrs. Damer was surprised at my saying I should expect you after you had not talked of returning near so soon. another week; she said. "I do not mention this, as if to gainsay your intention; on the contrary, I hope and beg you will stay as long as either of you thinks she finds the least benefit from it: and after that, too, as long as you both like to stay. I reproached myself so sadly, and do still, for having dragged you from Italy sooner than you intended, and am so grateful for your having had that complaisance, that unless I grow quite superannuated, I think I shall not be so selfish as to combat the inclination of either again. It is natural for me to delight in your company; but I do not even wish for it, if it lays you under any restraint. I have lived a thousand years to little purpose, if I have not learned that half a century more than the age of one's friends is not an agr`ement de plus.
I wish you had seen Canterbury some years ago, before they whitewashed it; for it is so coarsely daubed, and thence the gloom is so totally destroyed, and so few tombs remain for so vast a mass, that I was shocked at the nudity of the whole. If you should go thither again, make the Cicerone show you a pane of glass in the east window, which does open, and exhibits a most delicious view of the ruins Of St. Anstin's.