Chapter 14

Strawberry Hill, February 4th, 1760. (page 44)

Sir, I deferred answering your last, as I was in hopes of BEING able to send you a SHEET or two of my new work, but I find so many difficulties and so much darkness attending the beginning, that I can scarce say I have begun. I can only say in general, that I do not propose to go further back than I have sure footing; that is, I shall commence with what Vertue had collected from our records, which, with regard to painting, do not date before Henry III.; and then from him there is a gap to Henry VII. I shall supply that with a little chronology of intervening paintings, THOUGH, hitherto, I can find none of the two first Edwards. From Henry VIII. there will be a regular succession of painters, short lives of whom I am enabled by Vertue's MSS. to write, and I shall connect them historically. I by no means Mean to touch on foreign Artists, unless they came over hither; but they are essential, for we had scarce any others tolerable. I propose to begin with the anecdotes of painting only, because, in that branch, my materials are by far most considerable. If I shall be able to publish this part, perhaps it may induce persons of curiosity and knowledge to assist me in the darker parts of the story touching our architects, statuaries, and engravers. But it is from the same kind friendship which has assisted me so liberally already, that I expect to draw most information; need I specify, Sir, that I mean yours, when the various hints in your last letter speak so plainly for me?

It is a pleasure to have any body one esteems agree with one's own sentiments, as you do strongly with mine about Mr. Hurd.(34) It is impossible not to own that he has sense and great knowledge--but sure he is a most disagreeable writer! He loads his thoughts with so many words, and those couched in so hard a style, and so void of all veracity, that I have no patience to read him. In one point. in the dialogues you mention, he is perfectly ridiculous. He takes infinite pains to make the world believe, upon his word, that they are the genuine productions of the speakers, and yet does not give himself the least trouble to counterfeit the style of any one of them. What was so easy as to imitate Burnet? In his other work, the notes on Horace, he is still more absurd. He cries up Warburton's preposterous notes on Shakspeare, which would have died of their own folly, though Mr. Edwards had not put them to death with the keenest wit in the world.(35) But what signifies any sense, when it takes Warburton for a pattern, who, with much greater parts, has not been able to save himself from, or rather has affectedly involved himself in numberless absurdities?--who proved Moses's legation by the sixth book of Virgil;--a miracle (Julian's Earthquake), by proving it was none;--and who explained a recent poet (Pope) by metaphysical notes, ten times more obscure than the text! As if writing were come to perfection, Warburton and Hurd are going back again; and since commentators, obscurity, paradoxes, and visions have been so long exploded, ay, and pedantry too, they seem to think that they shall have merit by reviving what was happily forgotten -, and yet these men have their followers, by that balance which compensates to one for what he misses from another. When an author writes clearly, he is imitated; and when obscurely, he is admired. Adieu!

(34) Who died Bishop of Worcester in 1808. He was the author of many works, most of which are now little read, although they had a great vogue in their day. There is a great deal of justice in Mr. Walpole's criticism of him and his patron.-C.

(35) In the "Canons of Criticism."--E.