Chapter 399

Strawberry Hill, Nov. 7, 1793. (page 549)

I often lay the egg of my journals two or three days before they are hatched. This may make some of my articles a little stale before you get them; but then you know they are the more authentic, if the Echo has not told me to unsay them-and, if a Prince of Wales drops a thumping victory at my door as he goes by, you have it hot out of the oven--though, as happened lately, not half baked.(866)

The three last newspapers are much more favourable, than you seemed to expect. Nieuport has been saved; Ostend is safe. The Royalists in La Vend`ee are not demolished, as the Convention of Lars asserted. Strasbourg seems likely to fall. At Toulon even the Neapolitans, on whom you certainly did not reckon, have behaved like heroes. As Admiral Gravina is so hearty, though his master makes no progress in France, I suspect that the sovereign of so many home kingdoms is a little afraid Of trusting his army beyond the borders, lest the Catalans should have something of the old--or new leaven. In the mean time, it Is still more provoking to hear of Catherine Slay-Czar sitting on her throne and playing with royal marriages, without sending a single ship or regiment to support the cause of Europe, and to punish the Men of the Mountain, who really are the assassins that the Crusaders supposed or believed existed in Asia. Oh! Marie Antoinette, what a contrast between you and Petruchia!

Domestic news are scanty, but dismal, and you have seen them anticipated; as the loss of the young Lord Montague(867) and Mr. Burdett,(868) drowned in a cataract in Switzerland by their own obstinate folly.(869) Mr. Tickell's death was a determined measure, and more shocking than the usual mode by a pistol. He threw himself from one of the uppermost windows of the palace at Hampton Court, into the garden -an immense height! Some attribute his despair to debts; some to a breach with his political friends. I am not acquainted with, but am sorry for him, as I liked his writings.(870)

Our weather remains unparagoned; Mrs. Hastings is not more brilliant: the elms are evergreens. I a little regret your not seeing how beautiful Cliveden can be on the 7th of November; ay, and how warm. Then the pheasants, partridges, and hares from Houghton, that you lose: they would have exceeded Camacho's wedding, and Sancho Panza would have talked chapters about them. I am forced to send them about the neighbourhood, as if I were making interest to be chosen for the united royal burghs of Richmond and Hampton Court. But all this is not worth sending: I must wait for a better bouche. I want Wurmser to be Caesar, and send me more Commentaries de Bello Gallico. What do you say to those wretches who have created Death an endless Sleep,(871) that nobody may boggle at any crime for fear of hell? Methinks they have no reason to dread the terrors of conscience in any Frenchman!

November 10th.

Hiatus non deflendus; for I have neither heard a word, nor had a word to say these three days. Victories do not come every tide, like mackerel, or prizes in the Irish lottery. Yesterday's paper discounted a little of Neapolitan valour; but, as even the Dutch sometimes fight upon recollection, and as there was no account yet of O'Hara's arrival at Toulon, I hope he will laugh or example lor' Signori into spirit.

YOU Will Wonder at my resuming my letter, when I profess having nothing to add to it; but yours of the 7th is just arrived, and I could not make this commenced sheet lie quiet in my writing-box: it would begin gossiping with your letter, though I vowed it shall not Set out till to-morrow. "Why, you empty thing," said I, "how do you know but there may have been a Gazette last night, crammed With vast news, which, as no paper comes out on Sundays, we shall not learn here; and would you be such a goose as to creep through Brentford and Hammersmith and Kensington, where the bells may be drinking some general's health, and will scoff you for asking whose? Indeed you Shall not stir before to-morrow. Lysons is returned from Gloucestershire, and is to dine here to-day; and he will at least bring us a brick, like Harlequin, as a pattern of any town that we may have taken. Moreover, no Post sets out from London on Sunday nights, and you would only sit guzzling--I don't mean you, Miss Berry, but you, my letter-with the clerks of the post-office. Patience till tomorrow."

We have had some rain, even this last night: but the weather is fine all day, and quite warm. I believe it has made an assignation with the Glastonbury Thorn, and that they are to dance together on old Christmas-day. What could I do with myself in London! All my playthings are here, and I have no playfellows left there! Lady Herries's and poor Mrs. Hunter's(872) are shut up. Even the "one game more at cribbage"(873) after supper is on table, which is not my supreme felicity, though accompanied by the Tabor and Pipe,(874) is in the country or, to say all in a word, North Audley-street is in Yorkshire! Reading composes little of my pastime, either in town or country. A catalogue of books and prints, or a dull history of a county, amuse me sufficiently; for now I cannot open a French book, as it would keep alive ideas that I want to banish from my thoughts. When I am tired at home, I go and sit an hour or two with the ladies of Murray,(875) or the Doyleys, and find them conversable and comfortable; and my pessime aller is Richmond.

Monday morning, 11th.

Lysons(876) has been drawing churches in Gloucestershire, and digging out a Roman villa and mosaic pavement near Cirencester, which he means to publish: but he knew nothing outlandish; so if the newspaper does not bring me something fresh for you presently, this limping letter must set out with its empty wallet. Mrs. Piozzi is going to publish a book on English Synonymes. Methinks she had better have studied them, before she stuffed her Travels with so many vulgarisms!(877)

(866) This alludes to some false report of the time.

(867) Lord Viscount Montague was the last male heir of a most noble and ancient family, in a lineal descent from the Lady Lucy Nevill.-E.

(868) Charles Sedley Burdett, second son of Francis Burdett Esq. and brother of Francis, who on the death of his grandfather, Sir Robert Burdett, in 1797, succeeded to the baronetcy.-E.

(869) They insisted on shooting down the, great fall of the Rhine at Schaflhausen in a boat, against the remonstrances of the neighbouring inhabitants and their refusal of every bribe, either to assist or accompany them. They and their boat were shattered to pieces, and their remains were found some days after, at a considerable distance from the scene of their mad exploit.

(870) Richard Tickell, Esq. author of "Anticipation," the " Wreath of Fashion," and other poems. He was a commissioner of the stamp-office, and brother-in-law to Richard Brinsley Sheridan.-E.

(871) "C'est ici l'asile du sommeil `eternel," was the republican inscription over all the public cemeteries. Pache, Hebert, and Chaumette, the leaders of the municipality, publicly expressed their determination to dethrone the King of Heaven, as well as the kings of the earth. Gebel, the constitutional Bishop of Paris, disowned at the bar of the Convention the existence of a God. On the 10th of November, a female whom they termed the Goddess of Reason, was admitted within the bar, and placed on the right hand of the president. After receiving the fraternal hug, she was mounted on a magnificent car, and conducted to the church of Notre Dame, to take the place of the Holy of Holies; and thenceforth that ancient and imposing cathedral was called "the Temple of Reason," See Thiers, vol. iii, p. 2,25, and Lacretelle, torn. xi. p, 306.-E.

(872) Widow of Dr. John Hunter.

(873) A manner of designating the Countess of Ailesbury.

(874) Two old ladies of his society, whom he thus called.

(875) Sisters to the great Earl of Mansfield.

(876) Samuel Lysons, Esq. brother to the Rev. Daniel Lysons, of whom a notice has been given at p. 438, (letter 344, note 674(, and author of several works relating to the Roman Antiquities of Great Britain. He also published, in conjunction with his brother, the earlier volumes of the "Magna Britannica." In 1804, be succeeded Mr. Astle as keeper of the records in the Tower of London; which office he held till his death in 1819. Mr. Mathias, in November 1797, described him as "one of the most judicious, best-informed, and most learned amateur antiquaries in the kingdom in his department;" and his work on the remains of the Roman villa and pavements near Gloucester, as "such a specimen of ingenuity, unwearied zeal, and critical accuracy in delineating and illustrating the fragments of antiquity, as rarely had been equalled, certainly never surpassed." See Pursuits of Literature.-E.

(877) The following is Mr. Gifford's opinion of the qualifications of the lady for such a work--"Though no one better knows his own house' than I the vanity of this woman; yet the idea of her undertaking it had never entered my head; and I was thunderstruck when I first saw it announced. To execute it with any tolerable degree of success, required a rare combination of talents, among the least of which may be numbered neatness of style, acuteness of perception, and a more than common accuracy of discrimination; and Mrs. Piozzi brought to the task, a jargon long since become proverbial for its vulgarity, an utter incapacity of defining a single term in the language, and just as much Latin from a child's syntax as sufficed to expose the ignorance she so anxiously labours to conceal." See Baviad and Maviad.-E.