[113] Private correspondence.
[114] The surrender of the army of Lord Cornwallis to the combined forces of America and France, Oct. 18th, 1781. It is remarkable that this event occurred precisely four years after the surrender of General Burgoyne, at Saratoga, in the same month, and almost on the same day. This disastrous occurrence decided the fate of the American war, which cost Great Britain an expenditure of one hundred and twenty millions, and drained it of its best blood, and exhausted its vital resources.
[115] Private correspondence.
[116] NOTE BY THE EDITOR.
The lines alluded to are the following, which appeared afterwards, somewhat varied, in the Elegant Extracts in Verse:
If John marries Mary, and Mary alone,
'Tis a very good match between Mary and John.
Should John wed a score, oh! the claws and the scratches!
It can't be a match: 'tis a bundle of matches.
[117] Private correspondence.
[118] As the reader may wish to see the lines to Sir Joshua, they are here supplied from the documents left by Dr. Johnson. Those to the Queen of France are not found.
TO SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS.
Dear President, whose art sublime
Gives perpetuity to time,
And bids transactions of a day,
That fleeting hours would wait away
To dark futurity, survive,
And in unfading beauty live,—
You cannot with a grace decline
A special mandate of the Nine—
Yourself, whatever task you choose,
So much indebted to the Muse.
Thus says the Sisterhood:—We come—
Fix well your pallet on your thumb,
Prepare the pencil and the tints—
We come to furnish you with hints.
French disappointment, British glory,
Must be the subject of my story.
First strike a curve, a graceful bow,
Then slope it to a point below;
Your outline easy, airy, light,
Fill'd up, becomes a paper kite.
Let independence, sanguine, horrid,
Blaze like a meteor on the forehead:
Beneath (but lay aside your graces)
Draw six and twenty rueful faces,
Each with a staring, stedfast eye,
Fix'd on his great and good ally.
France flies the kite—'t is on the wing—
Britannia's lightning cuts the string.
The wind that raised it, ere it ceases,
Just rends it into thirteen pieces,
Takes charge of every flutt'ring sheet,
And lays them all at George's feet,
Iberia, trembling from afar,
Renounces the confed'rate war.
Her efforts and her arts o'ercome,
France calls her shatter'd navies home:
Repenting Holland learns to mourn
The sacred treaties she has torn;
Astonishment and awe profound
Are stamp'd upon the nations round;
Without one friend, above all foes,
Britannia gives the world repose.