Chapter 136

Strawberry Hill, June 10, 1778. (page 187)

I am as impatient and in as much hurry as you was, dear Sir, to clear myself from the slightest intention of censuring your politics. I know the sincerity and disinterested goodness of your heart, and when I must be convinced how little certain we are all of what is truth, it would be very presumptuous to condemn the opinions of any good man, and still less an old and unalterable friend, as I have ever found 'You, The destruction that violent arbitrary principles have drawn on this blinded country has moved my indignation. We never were a great and happy country till the Revolution. The system of these days tended to overturn, and has overturned, that establishment, and brought on the disgraces that ever attended the foolish and wicked Councils of the house of Stuart. If man is a rational being, he has a right to make use of his reason, and to enjoy his liberty. We, we alone almost had a constitution that every other nation upon earth envied or ought to envy. This is all I contend for. I will give you up whatever descriptions of men you please; that is, the leaders of parties, not the principles. These cannot change, those generally do, when power falls into the hands of them or their party, because men are corruptible, which truth is not. But the more the leaders of a party dedicated to liberty are apt to change, the more I adore the principle, because it shows that extent of power is not to be trusted even, with those that are the most sensible of the value of liberty. Man is a domineering animal; and it has not only been my principle. but my practice, too. to quit every body at the gate of the palace. I trust we shall not much differ on these outlines, but we will bid adieu to the subject. It is never an agreeable one to those who do not mean to make a trade of it.

I heartily wish you may not find the pontiff what I think the order, and what I know him, if you mean the high priest of Ely.(305) He is all I have been describing and worse; and I have too good an opinion of you, to believe that he will ever serve you.

What I said of disclaiming authorship by no means alluded to Mr. Baker's life. It would be enough that you desire it, for me to undertake it. Indeed, I am inclined to it because he was what you and I are, a party-man from principle, not from interest: and he, who was so candid, surely is entitled to the strictest candour. You shall send me your papers whenever you please. If I can succeed to your satisfaction, I shall be content: though I assure you there was no affectation in my saying that I find my small talent decline. I shall write the life to oblige you, without any thoughts of publication, unless I am better pleased than I expect to be, and even then not in my own life. I had rather show that I am sensible of my own defects, and that I have judgment enough not to hope praise for my writings: for surely when they are not obnoxious, and one only leaves them behind one, it is a mark that one is not very vain of them.

I have found the whole set of my Painters, and will send them the first time I go to town: and I will have my papers on Chatterton transcribed for you, though I am much chagrined at your giving me no hope of seeing you again here. I will not say more of it; for, while it is in my power, I will certainly make you a visit now and then, if there is no other way of our meeting Mr. Tyrwhit, I hear, has actually published an Appendix, in which he gives up Mr. Rowley. I have not seen it, but will. Shall I beg you to transcribe the passage in which Dr. Kippis abuses my father and Me;(306) for I shall not buy the new edition, only to purchase abuse on me and mine: I may be angry with liberties he takes with Sir Robert, but not with myself; I shall rather take it as a flattery to be ranked with him; though there can be nothing worse said of my father than to place us together. Oh! that great, that good man! Dr. Kippis may as well throw a stone at the sun.

I am sorry you have lost poor Mr. Bentham. Will you say a civil thing for me to his widow, if she is living, and you think it not improper? I have not forgotten their kindness to me. Pray send me your papers on Mr. Prior's generosity to Mr. Baker.(307) I am sorry it was not so. Prior is much a favourite with me, though a Tory, nor did I ever hear any thing ill of him. He left his party, but not his friends, and seems to me to have been very amiable. Do you know I pretend to be very impartial sometimes. Mr. Hollis(308) wrote against me for not being Whig enough. I am offended with Mrs. Macaulay(309) for being too much a Whig. In short, we are all silly animals, and scarce ever more so than when we affect sense. Yours ever.

(305) Dr. Edmund Keene-E.

(306) See ant`e, p. 155, letter 108.

(307) The Biograpbia Britannica had asserted, that Prior ceded to Mr. Baker the profits of his fellowship after his expulsion.-E.

(308) Thomas Hollis, Esq. the editor of Toland's Life of Milton; Algernon Sidney's Discourses on Government; Algernon Sidney's Works, etc. He died in 1774.-E.

(309) The celebrated Catherine Macaulay, well known by her "History of England."-E.