a man of Gay's talents expressing himself in the style of a mere party hireling. It is my hard fate,' he says to Pope, in allusion to the fables written for the prince, and The Beggar's Opera written against the court; it is my hard fate that I must get nothing whether I write for them, or against them.' "On the whole, then, it seems, that the abuse which has been so long and so largely lavished on Queen Caroline, Sir Robert Walpole, and Mrs. Howard, for neglect or persecution of poor Gay, is undeserved, and particularly by the last." Vol. I. P. 31. Some letters from that true hero of romance, the Earl of Peterborough, are of a most extraordinary cast. At sixty-five, when either married or engaged to another woman (Mrs. Robinson), he addressed Mrs. Howard, then forty, and the wife of another man, in the worst strain of Euphuistical gallantry. The lady appears to have been teazed by his perseverance, for she called in Gay as a coadjutor in some of her replies. It is probable that the following is from his hand. When we assure our readers that it is the best in the series, they will not regret that we do not extend our extracts. "I have carefully perused your lordship's letter about your fair devil and your black devil, your hell and tortures, your heaven and happiness-those sublime expressions which ladies and gentlemen use in their gallantries and distresses. "I suppose, by your fair devil, you mean nothing less than an angel. If so, my lord, I beg leave to give some reasons why I think a woman is neither like an angel nor a devil, and why successful and unhappy love do not in the least resemble heaven and hell. It is true, you may quote ten thousand gallant letters and precedents for the use of these love terms, which have a mighty captivating sound in the ears of a woman, and have been with equal propriety applied to all women in all ages. In the first place, my lord, an angel pretends to be nothing else but a spirit. If, then, a woman was no more than an angel, what could a lover get by the pursuit ? "The black devil is a spirit too, but one that has lost his beauty and retained his pride. Tell a woman this, and try how she likes the simile. "The pleasure of an angel is offering praise; the pleasure of a woman is receiving it. "Successful love is very unlike heaven; because you may have success one hour, and lose it the next. Heaven is unchangeable. Who can say so of love or lovers? "In love there are as many heavens as there are women; so that, if a man be so unhappy as to lose one heaven, he need not throw himself headlong into hell. "This thought might be carried further. But perhaps you will ask me, if a woman be neither like angel or devil, what is she like? I answer, that the only thing that is like a woman is-another woman. "How often has your lordship persuaded foreign ladies that nothing but them could make you forsake your dear country ! But at present I find it is more to your purpose to tell me that I am the only woman that could prevail with you to stay in your ungrateful country." Vol. I. p. 154. The great grandson of the celebrated Hampden is placed by these letters in remarkable contrast to the Puritanism and Republicanism of his ancestor. After holding the offices of Teller of the Exchequer and Treasurer of the Navy, he ruined himself, and became a large defaulter to the Public, by embarking in the South Sea scheme. On his dismissal, he was nearly 80,0007. in debt to the Crown, and an Act of Parliament was passed for vesting in trustees his real and personal estate, for making some provision for his wife and family, and for better securing the monies owing by him. Through Mrs. Howard, he proffered his electioneering interest to George II. when Prince of Wales; and, on the accession of that Prince to the Crown, he threatened unless "this Royal family" would give him "wherewith to buy bread," that he would "soon take some service in some other family." Finally, he wished to find any person who would pay the expence which his seat had cost him, and whose election in his place he promised to secure on these terms; and he expressed himself desirous, through Mrs. Howard's influence, to obtain the post of travelling tutor "to any young gentleman, with a 1007. per annum salary." How are the mighty fallen! The happiness of the honour of a Royal visit is pourtrayed to the life, in the following despatch from Lady Orkney. She was the mistress of William III.; was called by Swift" the wisest woman he ever knew ;" and, on her own shewing, in the present instance was an excellent housewife. "Madam,-I give you this trouble out of the anguish of my mind. To have the Queen doing us the honour to dine here, and nothing performed in the order it ought to have been! The stools which were set for the Royal family, though distinguished from ours, which I thought right, because the Princess Royal sits so at quadrille, put away by my Lord Grantham, and said there was no distinction from the Princes and Princesses and the ladies. He directed the table-cloth, that there must be two to cover the table; for he used to have it so; in short, turned the servants' heads. They kept back the dinner too long for her Majesty after it was dished, and was set before the fire, and made it look not well dressed, the Duke Bb VOL. XXI. APRIL, 1824. of Grafton saying, there wanted a maître d'hotel. All this vexed my Lord Orkney so-he tells me, he hopes I will never meddle more, if he could ever hope for the same honour; which I own I did too much, as I see by the success. But having done it for the late King, and was told that things were in that order, that it was as if his Majesty had lived here, I ventured it now. But I have promised not to aim at it more." Vol. I. p. 350. The character of Sir Robert Walpole, given below, was found among Lady Suffolk's papers, carefully written and corrected in Swift's own writing. "With favour and fortune fastidiously blest, He's loud in his laugh, and he's coarse in his jest ; A sharper in trifles, a dupe in the main ; Two letters, in very good English, written by the Comtesse de la Lippe, are too unimportant for extraction; we name them only for the sake of some anecdotes of her grandson, the Comte de la Lippe, with which they are accompanied. This brave officer is now chiefly known through Sir Joshua Reynolds's magnificent portrait. In his day he was one of the most gallant and accomplished soldiers in Europe; though his courage now and then displayed itself in pranks which, in lesser men, the ill-natured might consider somewhat foolish. "During one of his visits to England, a friend (Mr. Hamilton) was driving him in a phaeton and four down Henley Hill; the Count happening to move, Mr. Hamilton, supposing him to be alarmed, desired him not to be afraid; upon which La Lippe quietly drew from his pocket a large knife, and cut the reins. Whether this was to show perfect carelessness of danger, or satirically to express that he thought himself as safe after the reins were cut as before, has not been told. In his own territory in Germany, he amused himself with military manoeuvres and experiments; and one day he invited his little Court and visitors to dine with him after a review. The dinner was served in a tent on the ground; and towards the latter end of the repast, the Count was observed to look several times at his watch, and to put it up again, and call for another bottle at last some one asked the reason of this? Why,' 6 said he, 1 have ordered this tent to be mined by a new method it is to be blown up at a certain minute, and I am anxious to go out to see the explosion.' The tent, it will readily be believed, was soon cleared, without waiting for the other bottle." Vol. II. p. 38.. It is probably forgotten by this time that the Castle Inn at Marlborough was once an ancient mansion of the Seymours. When Sir Hugh Smithson incorporated himself with that family and the Percys, he most disgracefully let this chateau as an hotel. Lady Vere describes it to Lady Suffolk as a prodigiously large house, with a fine garden, greatly gone to ruin, a wood, a running water, and a very high mount. How fearfully, if they had the power, would the ghosts of the Protector and the proud Duke have handled any presumptuous Boniface who dared to stow his filthy beer in vaults which had never yet been tenanted with aught less rich than Canary and Malvoisie: but sic transit! in our own days we have seen the bearings and cognizances of the Plantagenets sacrilegiously torn from their sepulchres, and chaffered as old iron to some miserable tinkers, by those who ought to have been their custodes; and it is not without the limit of probability, as the following passage will shew, that the seat of another Duke may, ere long, participate in the destiny of the palace of the Seymours. Lady Betty does not dare to write the Duke of Dorset an account of this house, for fear it should put him in mind that some time or other it may be thought that Knowl* may make as conve nient an inn for Tunbridge, as this does for Bath." Vol. II. p. 219, The two following letters are amusing, as connected with Court etiquette. The first is from Arbuthnot, who had been directed by Mrs. Howard to make some inquiries from the well-known Mrs. Masham, about the duties which fell to her share as bedchamber-woman to Queen Anne. Madam,-In obedience to your commands I write this to inform you of some things you desired me to ask Lady Masham, and what follows is dictated by her ladyship. "The bedchamber-woman came in to waiting before the Queen's prayers, which was before her Majesty was dressed. The Queen often shifted in a morning: if her Majesty shifted at noon, the bedchamber-lady being by, the bedchamber-woman gave the shift to "By the death, without issue, of the fourth Duke of Dorset, and the necessity of dividing the estate between his sisters, the realisation of this reverie of Lady Vere becomes not improbable; but there was no such excuse for Lord Northum berland's degradation of the House at Marlborough." the lady without any ceremony, and the lady put it on. Sometimes, likewise, the bedchamber-woman gave the fan to the lady in the same manner; and this was all that the bedchamber-lady did about the Queen at her dressing. "When the Queen washed her hands, the page of the back-stairs brought and set down upon a side-table the basin and ewer; then the bedchamber-woman set it before the Queen, and knelt on the other side of the table over-against the Queen, the bedchamberlady only looking on. The bedchamber-woman poured the water out of the ewer upon the Queen's hands. "The bedchamber-woman pulled on the Queen's gloves, when she could not do it herself. "The page of the back-stairs was called in to put on the Queen's shoes. "When the Queen dined in public, the page reached the glass to the bedchamber-woman, and she to the lady in waiting. "The bedchamber-woman brought the chocolate, and gave it without kneeling. "In general the bedchamber-woman had no dependence on the lady of the bedchamber, "If you have the curiosity to be informed of any thing else, you shall have what information Lady Masham can give you; for I must tell you from myself that you have quite charmed her." Vol. I. p. 292. The second is from Miss Power, a relation of Lady Suffolk,, who had been recommended as a fit attendant for the Princess Augusta. you "Madam,—The very first minute I could call my own, I sit down to write to your ladyship. Mrs. Robertson will tell what my lodgings are, and how finished, that I need only say that it is quite a garret; but I cannot possibly think it small; it is very warm, comfortable, and decent, and many happy hours I hope to pass in it. I have affairs of greater consequence to communicate, therefore I shall leave this subject, and inform you of other particulars. "By eleven o'clock this morning I was with Mrs. Pitt; that I was not there sooner, was owing to a note she wrote to me in an. swer to a note of mine. The princess came into the room where Mrs. Pitt and I waited, nobody with her but her children. She received me most graciously, and did me the honour to ask me, many questions of your ladyship, Lord and Lady Vere, and Lady Betty (Germaine). You will not expect, madam, that I should tell you how I answered and behaved, but I hope not extremely ill. When her royal highness retired, which was in a few minutes, I, was presented to the Lady Augusta. When that ceremony was over, the princess returned to the same room, and sat for her picture. She was pleased to talk to me again for some time, and then asked the Lady Augusta if she would not carry me into her apartI followed her royal highness and the Princess Elizabeth into their dressing-room. My opinion was asked if I thought it ment. |