Chapter 55

Strawberry Hill, Monday, Nov. 24, 1760. (page 104)

Unless I were to send you journals, lists, catalogues, computations of the bodies, tides, swarms of people that go to court to present addresses, or to be presented, I can tell you nothing new. The day the King went to the House, I was three quarters of an hour getting through Whitehall; there were subjects enough to set up half-a-dozen petty kings: the Pretender would be proud to reign over the footmen only; and, indeed, unless he acquires some of them, he will have no subjects left; all their masters flock to St. James's. The palace is so thronged, that I will stay tilt some people are discontented. The first night the King went to the play, which was civilly on a Friday, not on the opera-night, as he used to do, the whole audience sung God save the King in chorus. For the first act, the press was so great at the door, that no ladies could go to the boxes, and only the servants appeared there, who kept places: at the end of the second act, the whole mob broke in, and seated themselves; yet all this zeal is not likely to last, though he so well deserves it. Seditious papers are again stuck up: one t'other day in Westminster Hall declared against a Saxe-Gothan Princess. The Archbishop, who is never out of the drawing-room, has great hopes from the King's goodness, that he shall make something of him, that is something bad of him. On the Address, Pitt and his zany Beckford quarrelled, on the latter's calling the campaign languid. What is become of our magnanimous ally and his victory, I know not. It) eleven days, no courier has arrived from him; but I have been these two days perfectly indifferent about his magnanimity. I am come to put my Anecdotes of Painting into the press. You are one of the few that I expect will be entertained with it. It has warmed Gray's coldness so much, that he is violent about it; in truth, there is an infinite quantity of new and curious things about it; but as it is quite foreign from all popular topics, I don't suppose it will be much attended to. There is not a word of Methodism in it, it says nothing of the disturbances in Ireland, it does not propose to keep all Canada, it neither flattered the King of Prussia nor Prince Ferdinand, it does not say that the city of London are the wisest men in the world, it is silent about George Townshend, and does not abuse my Lord George Sackville; how should it please? I want you to help me in a little affair, that regards it. I have found in a MS. that in the church of Beckley, or Becksley, in Sussex, there are portraits on glass, In a window, of Henry the Third and his Queen. I have looked in the map, and find the first name between Bodiham and Rye, but I am not sure it is the place. I will be much obliged to you if you will write directly to your Sir Whistler, and beg him to inform himself very exactly if there is any such thing in such a church near Bodiham. Pray state it minutely; because if there is, I will have them drawn for the frontispiece to my work.

Did I tell you that the Archbishop tried to hinder the "Minor" from being played at Drury Lane? for once the Duke of Devonshire was firm, and would only let him correct some passages, and even of those the Duke has restored some. One that the prelate effaced was, "You snub-nosed son of a bitch." Foote says, he will take out a license to preach Tam. Cant, against Tom. Cant.(117)

The first volume of Voltaire's Peter the Great is arrived. I weep over it. It is as languid as the campaign; he is grown old. He boasts of the materials communicated to him by the Czarina's order--but alas! he need not be proud of them. They only serve to show how much worse he writes history with materials than without. Besides, it is evident how much that authority has cramped his genius. I had heard before, that when he sent the work to Petersburgh for imperial approbation, it was returned with orders to increase the panegyric. I wish he had acted like a very inferior author. Knyphausen once hinted to me, that I might have some authentic papers, if I was disposed to write the life of his master; but I did not care for what would lay me under such restrictions. It is not fair to use weapons against the persons that lend them; and I do not admire his master enough to commend any thing in him, but his military actions. Adieu!

(117) The following anecdote is related in the Biographia Dramatica:--"Our English Aristophanes sent a copy of the Minor to the Archbishop of Canterbury, requesting that, if his grace should see any thing objectionable in it, he would exercise the free use of his pen, either in the way of erasure or correction. The Archbishop returned it untouched; observing to a confidential friend, that he was sure the wit had only laid a trap for him, and that if he had put his pen to the manuscript, by way of correction or objection, Foote would have had the assurance to have advertised the play as 'corrected and prepared for the press by his grace the Archbishop of Canterbury.'"-E.