Chapter 346

Strawberry Hill, Sept. 21, 1790. (page 454)

So many years, Sir, have elapsed since I saw Burleigh, that I cannot in general pretend to recollect the pictures Well. I do remember that there was a surfeit of pieces by Luca Jordano, and Carlo Dolce, no capital masters, and posterior to the excellent. The Earl of Exeter, who resided long at Rome in the time of those two painters, seemed to have employed them entirely during his sojourn there. I was not struck more than you, Sir, with the celebrated Death of Seneca, though one of the best works of Jordano. Perhaps Prior's verses lifted it to part of its fame, though even those verses are inferior to many of that charming poet's compositions. Upon the whole, Burleigh is a noble palace, contains many fine things, and the inside court struck me with admiration and reverence. The Shakspeare Gallery is truly most inadequate to its prototypes but how should it be worthy of them! If we could recall the brightest luminaries of painting, could they do justice to Shakspeare? Was Raphael himself as great a genius in his art as the author of Macbeth? and who could draw Falstaffe, but the writer of Falstaffe? I am entirely of your opinion, Sir, that two of Northcote's pictures, from King John and Richard the Third, are at the head of the collection. In Macklin's Gallery of Poets and Scripture, there are much better pictures than at Boydell's. Opie's Jephthah's Vow is a truly fine performance, and would be so in any assemblage of paintings; as Sir Joshua's Death of Beaufort is worthy of none: the Imp is burlesque, and the Cardinal seems terrified at him as before him, when the Imp is behind him. In Sir Thomas Hanmer's edition there is a print that gives the fact simply, pathetically, and with dignity, and just as you wish it told.

My sentiments on French politics concur as much with yours as they do on subjects above. The National Assembly set out too absurdly and extravagantly, not to throw their country into the last confusion; which is not the way of correcting a government, but more probably of producing a worse, bad as the old was, and thence they will have given a lasting wound to liberty: for what king will ever call `Etats again, if he can possibly help it! The new legislators were pedants, not politicians, when they announced the equality of all men. We are all born so, no doubt, abstractedly; and physically capable of being kept so, were it possible to establish a perfect government, and give the same education to all men. But are they so in the present constitution of society, under a bad government, where most have had no education at all, but have been debased, brutified, by a long train and mixture of superstition and oppression, and witnesses to the luxury and vices of their superiors, which they could only envy and not enjoy? It was turning tigers loose; and the degradation of the nobility pointed out the prey. Could it be expected that savages so hallooed on to outrage and void of any notions of reciprocal"duties and obligations, would fall into a regular system of' acting as citizens under the government of reason and justice? It was tearing all the bonds of society, which the experience of mankind had taught them were necessary to the mutual convenience of all; and no provision, no security, was made for those who were levelled, and who, though they enjoyed what they had by the old constitution, were treated, or were exposed to be treated, as criminals. They have been treated so: several have been butchered; and the National Assembly dare not avenge them, as they should lose the favour of the intoxicated populace. That conduct was senseless, or worse. With no less folly did they seek to expect that a vast body of men, more enlightened, at least, than the gross multitude, would sit down in patience under persecution and deprivation of all they valued; I mean the nobility and clergy, who might be stunned, but Were sure of reviving and of burning with vengeance. The insult was the greater, as the subsequent conduct of the National Assembly has proved more shamefully dishonest, in their paying themselves daily more than two-thirds of them ever saw perhaps in a month; and that flagitious self-bestowed stipend, as it is void of all patriotic integrity, will destroy their power too; for, if constitution-making is so lucrative a trade, others will wish to share in the plunder of their country too; and, even without a civil war, I am persuaded the present Assembly will neither be septennial, nor even triennial.

(701) Now first collected.