then struggling to emancipate his audience from the Some years after this, Mr. Cumberland's father exchanged his living of Stanwick for that of Fulham, in order that his son might have the benefit of his society, while obliged to reside in the vicinity of the metropolis. The celebrated Bubb Ďodington resided at this time in the neighbouring parish of Hammersmith; and Mr. Cumberland, who soon became a frequent guest at his table, has presented his readers with the following spirited full length portrait of that very remarkable and preposterous personage. son of the wearer, that I remember when he made his first speech in the House of Peers as Lord Melcombe, all the flashes of his wit, all the studied phrases and well-turned periods of his rhetoric lost their effect, simply because the orator had laid aside his magisterial tie, and put on a modern bag-wig, which was as much out of costume upon the broad expanse of his shoulders, as a cue would have been upon the robes of the Lord ChiefJustice." sions of his hero's absurdity, rather surpassed The following, with all our former impresour expectations. "Of pictures he seemed to take his estimate only by their cost; in fact, he was not possessed of any. But I recollect his saying to me one day in his great saloon at Eastbury, that if he had halt a score picdecorate his walls with them; in place of which I tures of a thousand pounds a-piece, he would gladly am sorry to say he had stuck up immense patches of gilt leather, shaped into bugle horns, upon hangings of rich crimson velvet! and round his state bed he displayed a carpeting of gold and silver embroidery. which too glaringly betrayed its derivation from coat, waistcoat, and breeches, by the testimony of pockets, buttonholes, and loops, with other equally incontrovertible witnesses, subpoenaed from the James' to the present queen upon her nuptials, he approached to kiss her hand, decked in an embroidered suit of silk, with lilac waistcoat, and breeches, the latter of which, in the act of kneeling down, forgot their duty and broke loose from their moorings in a very indecorous and uncourtly manner.' "During my stay at Eastbury, we were visited by the late Mr. Henry Fox and Mr. Alderman Beckford; the solid good sense of the former, and the dashing loquacity of the latter, formed a striking contrast between the characters of these gentlemen. To Mr. Fox our host paid all that courtly homage, which he so well knew how to time, and where to apply; to Beckford he did not observe the same attentions, but in the happiest flow of his raillery and wit combated this intrepid talker with admirable effect. It was an interlude truly comic and amusing.-Beckford loud, voluble, self-sufficient, and galled by hits which he could not parry, and probably did not expect, laid himself more and more open in the vehemence of his argument; Dodington lolling in his chair in perfect apathy and self-command, dozing, and even snoring at intervals, in his lethargic way, broke out every now and then into such gleams and flashes of wit and irony, as by the contrast of his phlegm with the other's impetuosity, made his huinour irresistible, and set the table in a roar. He was here upon his very strongest ground." Our splendid host was excelled by no man in doing the honours of his house and table; to the ladies he had all the courtly and profound devotion of a Spaniard, with the ease and gaiety of a French-tailor's shopboard! When he paid his court at St. man towards the men. His mansion was magnificent; massy, and stretching out to a great extent of front, with an enormous portico of Doric columns, ascended by a stately flight of steps. There were turrets, and wings too, that went I know not whither, though now levelled with the ground, or gone to more ignoble uses: Vanbrugh, who constructed this superb edifice, seemed to have had the plan of Blenheim in his thoughts, and the interior was as proud and splendid as the exterior was bold and imposing. All this was exactly in unison with the taste of its magnificent owner; who had gilt and furnished the apartments with a profusion of finery, that kept no terms with simplicity, and not always with elegance or harmony of style. Whatever Mr. Dodington's revenue then was, he had the happy art of managing it with such economy, that I believe he made more display at less cost than any man in the kingdom but himself could have done. His town-house in Pall-Mall, and this villa at Hammersmith, were such establishments as few nobles in the nation were possessed of. In either of these he was not to be approached but through a suit of apartments, and rarely seated but under painted ceilings and gilt entablatures. In his villa you were conducted through two rows of antique marble statues, ranged in a gallery floored with the rarest marbles, and enriched with columns of granite and lapis lazuli; his saloon was hung with the finest Gobelin tapestry, and he slept in a bed encanopied with peacock's feathers in the style of Mrs. Mon- "He wrote small poems with great pains, and fague. When he passed from Pall-Mall to La elaborate letters with much terseness of style, and Trappe it was always in a coach, which I could not some quaintness of expression: I have seen him but suspect had been his ambassadorial equipage at refer to a volume of his own verses in manuscript, Madrid, drawn by six fat unwieldy black horses, but he was very shy, and I never had the perusal short-docked, and of colossal dignity. Neither was of it. I was rather better acquainted with his Diary. he less characteristic in apparel than in equipage; which since his death has been published; and I he had a wardrobe loaded with rich and flaring suits, well remember the temporary disgust he seemed each in itself a load to the wearer, and of these I to take, when upon his asking what I would do have no doubt but many were coeval with his em- with it should he bequeath it to my discretion, I bassy above mentioned, and every birth-day had instantly replied, that I would destroy it. There added to the stock. In doing this he so contrived was a third, which I more coveted a sight of than as never to put his old dresses out of countenance, of either of the above, as it contained a miscellaby any variations in the fashion of the new; in the neous collection of anecdotes, repartees, good saymean time, his bulk and corpulency gave full dis-ings, and humorous incidents, of which he was part play to a vast expanse and profusion of brocade and author and part compiler, and out of which he was embroidery, and this, when set off with an enor-in the habit of refreshing his memory, when he mous tie-periwig and deep-laced ruffles, gave the prepared himself to expect certain men of wit and picture of an ancient courtier in his gala habit, or pleasantry, either at his own house or elsewhere. Quin in his stage dress. Nevertheless, it must be Upon this practice, which he did not affect to con confessed this style, though out of date, was not out ceal, he observed to me one day, that it was a comof character, but harmonised so well with the per-pliment he paid to society. when he submitted to steal weapons out of his own armoury for their entertainment." "I had taken leave of Lord Melcombe the day preceding the coronation, and found him before a looking-glass in his new robes, practising attitudes, and debating within himself upon the most graceful mode of carrying his coronet in the procession. He was in high glee with his fresh and blooming honours; and I left him in the act of dictating a billet to Lady Hervey, apprising her that a young lord was coming to throw himself at her feet."-p. 159. Mr. Cumberland went to Ireland with Lord Halifax in 1761; and the celebrated SingleSpeech Hamilton went as chief secretary.His character is well drawn in the following sentences. "He spoke well, but not often, in the Irish House of Commons. He had a striking countenance, a graceful carriage, great self-possession and personal courage: He was not easily put out of his way by any of those unaccommodating repugnances that men of weaker nerves, or more tender consciences, might have stumbled at, or been checked by: he could mask the passions that were natural to him, and assume those that did not belong to him: he was indefatigable, meditative, mysterious; his opinions were the result of long labour and much reflection, but he had the art of setting them forth as if they were the starts of ready genius and a quick perception: He had as much seeming steadiness as a partisan could stand in need of, and all the real flexibility that could suit his purpose, or advance his interest. He would fain have retained his connection with Edmund Burke, and associated him to his politics, for he well knew the value of his talents; but in that object he was soon disappointed the genius of Burke was of too high a caste to endure debasement."—pp. 169, 170. In Dublin Mr. Cumberland was introduced to a new and a more miscellaneous society than he had hitherto been used to, and has presented his readers with striking sketches of Dr. Pococke and Primate Stone. We are more amused, however, with the following picture of George Faulkner. Description must fall short in the attempt to convey any sketch of that eccentric being to those who have not read him in the notes of Jephson, or seen him in the mimickry of Foote, who, in his portraits of Faulkner, found the only sitter whom his extravagant pencil could not caricature; for he had a solemn intrepidity of egotism, and a daring contempt of absurdity, that fairly outfaced imitation, and, like Garrick's Ode on Shakespeare, which Johnson said "defied criticism," so did George, in the original spirit of his own perfect buffoonery, defy caricature. He never deigned to join in the laugh he had raised, nor seemed to have a feeling of the ridicule he had provoked. At the same time that he was preeminently, and by preference, the butt and buffoon of the company, he could find openings and opportunities for hits of retaliation, which were such left-handed thrusts as few could parry nobody could foresee where they would fall; nobody, of course, was fore-armed and as there was, in his calculation, but one supereminent character in the kingdom of Ireland, and he the printer of the Dublin Journal, rank was no shield against George's arrows, which flew where he listed, and hit or missed as chance directed,-he cared not about consequences. He gave good meat and excellent claret in abundance. I sat at his table once from dinner till two in the morning, whilst George swallowed immense potations, with one solitary sodden strawberry at the bottom of the glass,-which he said was recommended to him by his doctor for its cooling properties! He never lost : his recollection or equilibrium the whole time, and was in excellent foolery. It was a singular coinci dence, that there was a person in company who had received his reprieve at the gallows, and the very judge who had passed sentence of death upon him: But this did not in the least disturb the harmony of the society, nor embarrass any human creature present."-pp. 174, 175. At this period of his story he introduces several sketches and characters of his literary friends; which are executed, for the most part, with great force and vivacity. Of Garrick he says— "Nature had done so much for him, that he could not help being an actor; she gave him a frame of so manageable a proportion, and from its aptitude and elasticity, he could draw it out to fit flexibility so perfectly under command, that, by its any sizes of character that tragedy could offer to him, and contract it to any scale of ridiculous diminution, that his Abel Drugger, Scrubb, or Frib ble, could require of him to sink it to. His eye, in the meantime, was so penetrating, so speaking; his brow so movable, and all his features so plas. tic, and so accommodating, that wherever his mind impelled them, they would go; and before his tongue could give the text, his countenance would express the spirit and the passion of the part he was encharged with."-pp. 245, 246. The following picture of Soame Jenyns is excellent. "He was the man who bore his part in all societies with the most even temper and undisturbed hilarity of all the good companions whom I ever knew. He came into your house at the very moment you had put upon your card; he dressed himself to do your party honour in all the colours of the jay; his lace indeed had long since lost its since the days when gentlemen embroidered figured lustre, but his coat had faithfully retained its cut velvets with short sleeves, boot cuffs, and buckram shirts. As nature had cast him in the exact mould of an ill made pair of stiff stays, he followed her so close in the fashion of his coat, that it was doubted if he did not wear them. Because he had a protuberant wen just under his poll, he wore a wig that did not cover above half his head. His eyes were protruded like the eyes of the lobster, who wears them at the end of his feelers, and yet there was room between one of these and his nose for another wen, that added nothing to his beauty; yet 1 heard this good man very innocently remark, when Gibbon published his history, that he wondered any body so ugly could write a book. "Such was the exterior of a man, who was the charm of the circle, and gave a zest to every company he came into: His pleasantry was of a sort peculiar to himself; it harmonised with everything; it was like the bread to your dinner; you did not perhaps make it the whole, or principal part of your meal, but it was an admirable and wholesome auxiliary to your other viands. Soame Jenyns told you no long stories, engrossed not much of your attention, and was not angry with those that did. His thoughts were original, and were apt to have a very whimsical affinity to paradox in them: He wrote verses upon dancing, and prose upon the origin of evil; yet he was a very indifferent metaphysician, and a worse dancer: ill-nature and personality, with the single exception of his lines upon Johnson, I never heard fall from his lips: Those lines I have forgotten, though I believe I was the first person to whom he recited them; they were very bad, but he had been told that Johnson ridiculed his metaphysics, and some of us had just then been making extemporary epitaphs upon each other. Though his wit was harmless, yet the general cast of it was ironical; there was a terseness in "That he was fantastically and whimsically vain, all the world knows; but there was no malice in his heart. He was tenacious to a ridiculous extreme of certain pretensions that did not, and by nature could not, belong to him, and at the same time he was inexcusably careless of the fame which he had powers to command. What foibles he had he took no pains to conceal; and the good qualities of his heart were too frequently obscured by the carelessness of his conduct, and the frivolity of his manners. Sir Joshua Reynolds was very good to him, and would have drilled him into better trim and order for society, if he would have been amenable; for Reynolds was a perfect gentleman, had good sense, great propriety, with all the social attributes, and all the graces of hospitality, equal to any man. Distress drove Goldsmith upon undertakings neither congenial with his studies nor worthy of his talents. I remember him, when in his chambers in the Temple, he showed me the beginning of his Animated Nature; it was with a sigh, such as genius draws, when hard necessity diverts it from Its bent to drudge for bread, and talk of birds and beasts and creeping things, which Pidcock's showman would have done as well. Poor fellow, he hardly knew an ass from a mule, nor a turkey from a goose, but when he saw it on the table." pp. 257-259. "I have heard Dr. Johnson relate with infinite humour the circumstance of his rescuing Goldsmith from a ridiculous dilemma, by the purchase-money of his Vicar of Wakefield, which he sold on his behalf to Dodsley, and, as I think, for the sum of ten pounds only. He had run up a debt with his landlady, for board and lodging, of some few pounds, and was at his wits end how to wipe off the score, and keep a roof over his head, except by closing with a very staggering proposal on her part, and taking his creditor to wife, whose charms were very far from alluring, whilst her demands were extremely urgent. In this crisis of his fate he was found by Johnson, in the act of meditating on the melancholy alternative before him. He showed Johnson his manuscript of the Vicar of Wakefield, but seemed to be without any plan, or even hope, of raising money upon the disposal of it; when Johnson cast his eye upon it, he discovered something that gave him hope, and immediately took it to Dodsley, who paid down the price above-mentioned in ready money, and added an eventual condition upon its future sale. Johnson described the precautions he took in concealing the amount of the sum he had in hand, which he prudently adminis tered to him by a guinea at a time. In the event he paid off the landlady's score, and redeemed the person of his friend from her embraces."-p. 273. We will pronounce no general judgment on the literary merits of Mr. Cumberland; but our opinion of them certainly has not been raised by the perusal of these memoirs. There is no depth of thought, nor dignity of sentiment about him;-he is too frisky for an old man, and too gossipping for an historian. His style is too negligent even for the most familiar composition; and though he has proved himself, upon other occasions, to be a great number of phrases into this work, which, we master of good English, he has admitted a are inclined to think, would scarcely pass current even in conversation. "I declare to truth"-" with the greatest pleasure in life" "she would lead off in her best manner," &c. are expressions which we should not expect to hear in the society to which Mr. Cumberland belongs;-"laid," for lay, is still more insufferable from the antagonist of Lowth and the descendant of Bentley ;-"querulential" strikes our ear as exotic;-locate, location, and locality," for situation simply, seem also to be bad; and "intuition" for observation sounds very pedantic, to say the least of it. Upon the whole, however, this volume is not the work of an ordinary writer; and we should probably have been more indulgent to its faults, if the excellence of some of the author's former productions had not sent us to its perusal with expectations perhaps somewhat extravagant. (July, 1803.) The Works of the Right Honourable Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Including her Correspondence, Poems, and Essays. Published by permission, from her Original Papers. 5 vols. 8vo. London: 1803. THESE Volumes are so very entertaining that we ran them all through immediately upon their coming into our possession; and at the same time contain so little that is either difficult or profound, that we may venture to give some account of them to our readers without farther deliberation. The only thing that disappointed us was the memoir of the writer's life, prefixed by the editor to her correspondence. In point of composition it is very tame and inelegant; and rather excites than gratifies the curiosity of the reader, by the imperfect manner in which the facts are narrated. As the letters themselves, however, are arranged in a chronological order, and commonly contain very distinct notices of the writer's situation at their dates, we shall be enabled, by our extracts from them, to give a pretty clear idea of her Ladyship's life and adventures, with very little assistance from the meagre narrative of Mr. Dallaway. Lady Mary Pierrepoint, eldest daughter of the Duke of Kingston, was born in 1690; and gave, in her early youth, such indications of a studious disposition, that she was initiated into biassed by her inclinations, appears to have addressed a great number of letters to him upon this occasion; and to have been at considerable pains to relieve him of his scruples, and restore his confidence in the substantial excellences of her character. These letters, which are written with a great deal of female spirit and masculine sense, impress us with a very favourable notion of the talents and dispositions of the writer; and as they exhibit her in a point of view altogether different from any in which she has hitherto been presented to the public, we shall venture upon a pretty long extract. the rudiments of the learned languages along | acter in a different light, and was at any rate with her brother. Her first years appear to have been spent in retirement; and yet the very first series of letters with which we are presented, indicates a great deal of that talent for ridicule, and power of observation, by which she afterwards became so famous, and so formidable. These letters (about a dozen in number) are addressed to Mrs. Wortley, the mother of her future husband; and, along with a good deal of girlish flattery and affectation, display such a degree of easy humour and sound penetration, as is not often to be met with in a damsel of nineteen, even in this age of precocity. The following letter, in 1709, is written upon the misbehaviour of one of her female favourites. "My knighterrantry is at an end; and I believe I shall henceforward think freeing of galley-slaves and knocking down windmills, more laudable undertakings than the defence of any woman's reputation whatever. To say truth, I have never had any great esteem for the generality of the fair sex; and my only consolation for being of that gender, has been the assurance it gave me of never being married to any one among them! But I own, at present, I am so much out of humour with the actions of Lady H***, that I never was so heartily ashamed of my petticoats before. My only refuge is, the sincere hope that she is out of her senses; and taking herself for the Queen of Sheba, and Mr. Mildmay for King Solomon, I do not think it quite so ridiculous: But the men, you may well imagine, are not so charitable; and they agree in the kind reflection, that nothing hinders women from playing the fool, but not having it in their power.' Vol. i. pp. 180, 181. "I will state the case to you as plainly as I can, and then ask yourself if you use me well. I have showed, in every action of my life, an esteem for you, that at least challenges a grateful regard. I have even trusted my reputation in your hands; for I have made no scruple of giving you, under my own hand, an assurance of my friendship. After all this, I exact nothing from you: If you find it inconvenient for your affairs to take so small a fortune, I desire you to sacrifice nothing to me: I pretend no tie upon your honour; but, in recompense for so clear and so disinterested a proceeding, must I ever receive injuries and ill usage? Perhaps I have been indiscreet: I came young into the hurry of the world; a great innocence, and an undesigning gaiety, may possibly have been construed coquetry, and a desire of being followed, though never meant by me. I cannot answer for the observations that may be made on me. All who are malicious attack the careless and defenceless: I own myself to be both. I know not any thing I can say more to show my perfect desire of pleasing you, and making you easy, than to proffer to be confined with you in what manner you please. Would any woman but me renounce all the world for one? or would any man but you be insensible of such a proof of sincerity?"-Vol. i. pp. 208-210. t' other so bad, as you fancy it. Should we ever live One part of my character is not so good, nor together, you would be disappointed both ways; you would find an easy equality of temper you do not expect, and a thousand faults you do not imagine. You think, if you married me, I should be passionately fond of you one month, and of somebody else the next. Neither would happen. I can If you can resolve to live with a companion that will have all the deference due to your superiority of good sense, and that your proposals can be agreeable to those on whom I depend, I have nothing to say against them. In the course of this correspondence with the mother, Lady Mary appears to have conceived a very favourable opinion of the son; and the next series of letters contains her antenuptial correspondence with that gentleman, from 1710 to 1712. Though this correspondence has interested and entertained us as much at least as any thing in the book, we are afraid that it will afford but little gratification to the common admirers of love letters. Her Ladyship, though endowed with a very lively esteem, I can be a friend; but I don't know wheimagination, seems not to have been very sus-ther I can love. Expect all that is complaisant and ceptible of violent or tender emotions, and to easy, but never what is fond, in me. have imbibed a very decided contempt for sentimental and romantic nonsense, at an age which is commonly more indulgent. There are no raptures nor ecstasies, therefore, in these letters; no flights of fondness, nor vows of constancy, nor upbraidings of capricious affection. To say the truth, her Ladyship acts a part in the correspondence that is not often allotted to a female performer. Mr. Wortley, though captivated by her beauty and her vivacity, seems evidently to have been a little alarmed at her love of distinction, her propen-ness. sity to satire, and the apparent inconstancy of her attachments. Such a woman, he was afraid, and not very unreasonably, would make rather an uneasy and extravagant companion to a man of plain understanding and moderate fortune; and he had sense enough to foresee, and generosity enough to explain to her, the risk to which their mutual happiness might be exposed by a rash and indissoluble union. Lady Mary, who probably saw her own char "As to travelling, 'tis what I should do with great pleasure, and could easily quit London upon your account; but a retirement in the country is not so disagreeable to me, as I know a few months would for life, 'tis their mutual interest not to grow weary make it tiresome to you. Where people are tied of one another. If I had the personal charms that I want, a face is too slight a foundation for happiYou would be soon tired with seeing every day the same thing. Where you saw nothing else, you would have leisure to remark all the defects; which would increase in proportion as the novelty lessened, which is always a great charm. I should have the displeasure of seeing a coldness, which, though I could not reasonably blame you for, being involuntary, yet it would render me uneasy; and the more, because I know a love may be revived, which absence, inconstancy, or even infidelity, has extinguished: But there is no returning from a dé goût given by satiety."-Vol. i. pp. 212-214. "I begin to be tired of my humility; I have car ried my complaisances to you farther than I ought. You make new scruples: you have a great deal of fancy and your distrusts, being all of your own making, are more immovable than if there were some real ground for them. Our aunts and grandmothers always tell us, that men are a sort of animals, that if ever they are constant, 'tis only where they are ill-used. 'Twas a kind of paradox I could never believe; but experience has taught me the truth of it. You are the first I ever had a correspondence with; and I thank God, I have done with it for all my life. You needed not to have told me you are not what you have been; one must be stupid not to find a difference in your letters. You seem, in one part of your last, to excuse yourself from having done me any injury in point of fortune. Do I accuse you of any? an opinion of your merit, which, if it is a mistake, I would not be undeceived. It is my interest to believe (as I do) that you deserve every thing, and are capable of every thing; but nobody else will believe it, if they see you get nothing."--Vol. i. pp. 250-252. The second volume, and a part of the third, are occupied with those charming letters, written during Mr. Wortley's embassy to Constantinople, upon which the literary reputation of Lady Mary has hitherto been exclusively founded. It would not become us to say any thing of productions which have so long engaged the admiration of the public. The grace and vivacity, the ease and concise"I have not spirits to dispute any longer withness, of the narrative and the description which you. You say you are not yet determined. Let me determine for you, and save you the trouble of writing again. Adieu for ever; make no answer. I wish, among the variety of acquaintance, you may find some one to please you and can't help the vanity of thinking, should you try them all, you wont find one that will be so sincere in their treatment, though a thousand more deserving, and every one happier."-Vol. i. pp. 219–221. These are certainly very uncommon productions for a young lady of twenty; and indicate a strength and elevation of character, that does not always appear in her gayer and more ostentatious performances. Mr. Wortley was convinced and re-assured by them; and they were married in 1712. The concluding part of the first volume contains her letters to him for the two following years. There is not much tenderness in these letters; nor very much interest indeed of any kind. Mr. Wortley appears to have been rather indolent and unambitious; and Lady Mary takes it upon her, with all delicacy and judicious management however, to stir him up to some degree of activity and exertion. There is a good deal of election-news and small politics in these epistles. The best of them, we think, is the following exhortation to impudence. I I they contain, still remain unrivalled, we think, by any epistolary compositions in our language; and are but slightly shaded by a sprinkling of obsolete tittle-tattle, or womanish vanity and affectation. The authenticity of these letters, though at one time disputed, has not lately been called in question; but the secret history of their first publication has never, we believe, been laid before the public. The editor of this collection, from the original papers, gives the following account of it. "In the later periods of Lady Mary's life, she employed her leisure in collecting copies of the letters she had written during Mr. Wortley's embassy, and had transcribed them herself, in two small volumes in quarto. They were, without doubt, return to England for the last time, in 1761, she sometimes shown to her literary friends. Upon her gave these books to a Mr. Snowden, a clergyman of Rotterdam, and wrote the subjoined memorandum on the cover of them: These two volumes are given to the Reverend Benjamin Snowden, thinks proper. This is the will and design of M. minister at Rotterdam, to be disposed of as he Wortley Montagu, December 11, 1761.' "After her death, the late Earl of Bute commissioned a gentleman to procure them, and to offer Mr. Snowden a considerable remuneration, which he accepted. Much to the surprise of that nobleman and Lady Bute, the manuscripts were scarcely safe in England, when three volumes of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's Letters were published by Beckett; and it has since appeared, that a Mr. Clehad negotiated before, was again despatched to land was the editor. The same gentleman, who Holland; and could gain no further intelligence he parted with the MSS. two English gentlemen called on him to see the Letters, and obtained their request. They had previously contrived that Mr. Snowden should be called away during their perusal; and he found on his return that they had disappeared with the books. Their residence was unknown to him; but on the next day they brought back the precious deposit, with many apologies. It may be fairly presumed, that the intervening night was consumed in copying these letters by several amanuenses."-Vol. i. pp. 29-32. "I am glad you think of serving your friends. hope it will put you in mind of serving yourself. need not enlarge upon the advantages of money; every thing we see, and every thing we hear, puts us in remembrance of it. If it were possible to restore liberty to your country, or limit the encroach-from Mr. Snowden, than that a short time before ments of the prérogative, by reducing yourself to a garret, I should be pleased to share so glorious a poverty with you: But as the world is, and will be, 'tis a sort of duty to be rich, that it may be in one's power to do good; riches being another word for power; towards the obtaining of which, the first necessary qualification is Impudence, and (as Demosthenes said of pronunciation in oratory) the second is impudence, and the third, still, impudence! No modest man ever did, or ever will make his fortune. Your friend Lord Halifax, R. Walpole, and all other remarkable instances of quick advancement, have been remarkably impudent. The ministry, in short, is like a play at court: There's a little door to get in, and a great crowd without, shoving and thrusting who shall be foremost; people who knock others with their elbows, disregard a little kick of the shins, and still thrust heartily forwards, are sure of a good place. Your modest man stands behind in the crowd, is shoved about by every body, his clothes torn, almost squeezed to death, and sees a thousand get in before him, that don't make so good a figure as himself. "If this letter is impertinent, it is founded upon 90 A fourth volume of Lady Mary's Letters, published in the same form in 1767, appears now to have been a fabrication of Cleland's; as no corresponding MSS. have been found among her Ladyship's papers, or in the hands of her correspondents. To the accuracy of her local descriptions, and the justness of her representations of oriental manners, Mr. Dallaway, who followed her footsteps at the distance of eighty years, and resided for several months in the very 3 K 2 |