guments do not convince ****, and I have said any thing very material. I have very little hope from the Len- As you must be conscious that you borough search. What will be the have agitated me, you will not postevent? If his objections are only pone any agreeable, or even decisive the result of legal scrupulosity, sure- intelligence. I almost hesitate, whely they might be removed, and every ther I shall run over to England, to chink might be filled, by a general consult with you on the spot, and to bond of indemnity, in which I boldly fly from poor Deyverdun's shade, ask you to join, as it will be a sub- which meets me at every turn. I did stantial, important act of friendship, not expect to have felt his loss so without any possible risk to yourself sharply. But six hundred miles! or your successors. Should he still Why are we so far off? remain obdurate, I must believe, what Once more, What is the difficulty I already suspect, that **** repents of the title? Will men of sense, in a of his purchase, and wishes to elude sensible country, nevér get rid of the the conclusion. Our case would tyranny of lawyers, more oppressive then be hopeless, ibi omnis effusus and ridiculous than even the old labor, and the estate would be return-yoke of the clergy? Is not a term of ed on our hands with the taint of a seventy or eighty years, nearly twenbad title. The refusal of mortgage ty in my own person, sufficient to does not please me; but surely our prove our legal possession? Will not offer shews some confidence in the the records of fines and recoveries goodness of my title. If he will not attest that I am free from any bar of take eight thousand pounds at four entails and settlements? Consult some per cent. we must look out elsewhere; sage of the law, whether their prenew doubts and delays will arise, sent demand be necessary and legal. and I am persuaded that you will If your ground be firm, force them not place an implicit confidence in to execute the agreement, or forfeit any attorney. I know not as yet the deposit. But if, as I much fear, your opinion about my Lausanne they have a right and a wish, to purchase. If you are against it, the elude the consummation, would it not present position of affairs gives you be better to release them at once, great advantage, &c. &c. The Se- than to be hung up for five years, as verys are all well: an uncommon in the case of Lovegrove, which cost circumstance for the four persons of me in the end four or five thousand the family at once. They are now pounds? You are bold, you are at Mex, a country-house six miles wise; consult, resolve, act. In my from hence, which I visit to-morrow penultimate letter I dropped a strange for two or three days. They often hint, that a migration homeward was come to town, and we shall contrive not impossible. I know not what to pass a part of the autumn together to say my mind is all afloat! yet at Rolle. I want to change the you will not reproach me with cascene; and beautiful as the garden price or inconstancy. How many and prospect must appear to every years did you damn my scheme of eye, I feel that the state of my own retiring to Lausanne! I executed mind casts a gloom over them; eve- that plan; I found as much happiry spot, every walk, every bench, re-ness as is compatible with human cals the memory of those hours, of nature, and during four years (1783 those conversations, which will re--1787) I never breathed a sigh of turn no more. But I tear myself repentance. On my return from from the subject. I could not help England, the scene was changed: I writing to-day, though I do not find found only a faint semblance of Dey verdun, and that semblance was each day fading from my sight. I have LETTER XCI. passed an anxious year, but my anxi- Edward Gibbon, Esq. to the Right Hon. Lord Sheffield. Lausanne, Dec. 15th, 1789. You have often reason to accuse ety is now at an end, and the prospect before me is a melancholy solitude. I am still deeply rooted in this country: the possession of this paradise; the friendship of the Se-my strange silence and neglect in verys, a mode of society suited to the most important of my own affairs; my taste, and the enormous trouble for I will presume to assert, that in a and expense of a migration. Yet in business of yours of equal conseEngland (when the present clouds quence, you should not find me cold are dispelled) I could form a very or careless. But on the present occomfortable establishment in Lon-casion my silence is, perhaps, the don, or rather at Bath; and I have highest compliment I ever paid you. a very noble country-seat at about You remember the answer of Philip ten miles from East Grinstead in of Macedon; "Philip may sleep, Sussex. That spot is dearer to me while he knows that Parmenio is than the rest of the three kingdoms; awake." I expected, and, to say and I have sometimes wondered how the truth, I wished, that my Parmetwo men, so opposite in their tem- nio would have decided and acted, pers and pursuits, should have im- without expecting my dilatory anbided so long and lively a pro-swer; and in his decision I should pensity for each other. Sir Stai- have acquiesced with implicit confinier Porten is just dead. He has left dence. But since you will have my his widow with a moderate pension, opinion, let us consider the present and two children, my nearest rela- state of my affairs. In the course of tions: the eldest, Charlotte, is about my life I have often known, and Louisa's age, and also a most amia- sometimes felt, the difficulty of getble and sensible young creature. I ting money; but I now find myself have conceived a romantic idea of involved in a more singular distress, educating and adopting her; as we the difficulty of placing it, and, if it descend into the vale of years, our in- continues much longer, I shall almost firmities require some domestic female wish for my land again. society; Charlotte would be the com I perfectly agree with you, that it fort of my age, and I could reward is bad management to purchase in her care and tenderness with a decent the funds when they do not yield fortune. A thousand difficulties op- four pounds per cent. pose the execution of the plan, which * I have never opened but to you; * Some of this moyet it would be less impraticable in ney I can place safely, by means of England than in Switzerland. Adieu. my banker here; and I shall posI am wounded; pour some oil into sess, what I have always desired, a my wounds; yet I am less unhappy command of cash, which I cannot since I have thrown my mind upon abuse to my prejudice, since I have paper. it in my power to supply with my Are you not amazed at the French pen any extraordinary or fanciful inrevolution? They have the power, dulgence of expense. And so much, will they have the moderation, to establish a good constitution? Adieu, ever yours. much indeed, for pecuniary matters. What would you have me say of the affairs of France? We are too near, and too remote, to form an accurate judgment of that wonderful scene. [pen, it will be, both in the cause and The abuses of the court and govern- the effect, a measure of weakness, ment called aloud for reformation; rather than of strength. You send and it has happened, as it will always me to Chamberry, to see a prince happen, that an innocent, well-dis- and an archbishop. Alas! we have posed prince has paid the forfeit of exiles enough here, with the marshal the sins of his predecessors; of the de Castries and the duke de Guignes ambition of Lewis the Fourteenth, at their head; and this inundation of the profusion of Lewis the Fif- of strangers, which used to be conteenth. The French nation had a fined to the summer, will now stagglorious opportunity; but they have nate all the winter. The only ones abused, and may lose their advan- whom I have seen with pleasure are tages. If they had been content with Mr. Mounier, the late president of a liberal translation of our system, the national assembly, and the count if they had respected the preroga- de Lally; they have both dined with tives of the crown, and the privileges me. Mounier, who is a serious, dry of the nobles, they might have raised politician, is returned to Dauphiné. a solid fabric on the only true foun- Lally is an amiable man of the world, dation, the natural aristocracy of a and a poet: he passes the winter free country. How different is the here. You know how much I preprospect! Their king, brought a fer a quiet select society to a crowd captive to Paris, after his palace had of names and titles, and that I always been stained by the blood of his seek conversation with a view to guards; the nobles in exile; the amusement, rather than information. clergy plundered in a way which What happy countries are England strikes at the root of all property; the and Switzerland, if they know and capital an independent republic; the preserve their happiness! union of the provinces dissolved; the I have a thousand things to say to flames of discord kindled by the my lady, Maria, and Louisa, but I worst of men (in that light I consi- can add only a short postscript about der Mirabeau); and the honestest the Madeira. Good Madeira is now of the assembly a set of wild vision- become essential to my health and aries (like our Dr. Price), who grave- reputation. May your hogshead ly debate and dream about the esta- prove as good as the last; may it not blishment of a pure and perfect de- be intercepted by the rebels or the mocracy of five-and-twenty millions, Austrians. What a scene again in of the virtues of the golden age, and that country! Happy England! the primitive rights and equality of Happy Switzerland! I again repeat. mankind, which would lead, in fair Adieu. reasoning, to an equal partition of lands and money. How many years must elapse before France can recover any vigour, or resume her sta LETTER XCII. Esq. Litchfield, Nov. 11, 1787. SEDUCER! thou hast made me what tion among the powers of Europe! Anna Seward to George Hardinge, As yet, there is no symptom of a great man, a Richelieu or a Cromwell, arising, either to restore the monarchy, or to lead the commonwealth. The weight of Paris, more deeply I thought to have left the world withengaged in the funds than all the out having ever been-in love with rest of the kingdom, will long delay a lord. His last letter, which you a bankruptcy; and if it should hap-enclosed, concerning his opinion on capital punishments, has fairly done Amid the hurry in which I wrote the business; and I had rather be last, my thankless pen made no comhonoured with lord Camelford's ami- ment upon the welcome information ty, than with the marked attention you had given, that Mr. Wyatt lik and avowed esteem of most other of ed me a little. Assure yourself I the titled sons of our land. like him a great deal more than a Lord C.'s wit, his ease, and those little. There's fine style for you! descriptive powers, which bring sce- Next to benevolent Virtue, thou, Genery to the eye with the precision of nius, art my earthly divinity. To the pencil, had previously delighted thy votaries, in every line, I look up me; but with the heart, sweetly with an awe-mixed pleasure which it shining out in his last epistle, I am is delicious to feel. "A diff'rent cause, says Parson Sly, so intemperately charmed, that his When he was first introduced to idea often fills my eyes with those me, the glories of our Pantheon rushdelicious tears, which, beneath the ing on my recollection, my heart beat contemplation of virtues that emulate like a love-sick girl's, on the sight what we conceive of Deity, instanta- of her inamorato :neous spring to the lids, without falling from them; tears, which are at once prompted and exhaled by pleasurable sensations. Suffer me I am glad you like Hayley's counto detain, yet a little longer, these tenance. How have seen those scriptures of genius and of mercy. fine eyes of his sparkle, and melt, And now for a little picking at our and glow, as wit, compassion, or everlasting bone of contention. Hope- imagination, had the ascendence in less love is apt to make folk cross; his mind! so you must expect me to snarl a Mrs. Hardinge seems to have as little. much wit as yourself; the conversaI am not to learn that there is a tional ball must be admirably kept up large mass of bad writing in Shak-between you. One of your characspeare; of stiff, odd, affected phrases, teristic expressions about her is as and words, which somewhat disgrace complete a panegyric as ever man him, and would ten times more dis- made upon woman: "She is of all grace a modern writer, who has not hours." If it is not in Shakspeare, his excuses to plead. All I contend and I do not recollect it there, it is for, and it is a point on which I have like, it is worthy of his pen. the suffrage of most ingenious men, About the Herva of my friend is, that his best language, being more Mathias, we are for once in unison; copious, easy, glowing, bold, and but you are not half so candid as I nervous, than that of perhaps any am. Ever have you found me ready other writer, is the best model of po- to acknowledge the prosaism of etic language to this hour, and will many lines, which you have pointed remain so "to the last syllable of re- out in my most favourite poets. I corded time;" that his bold licenses, sent you some of my late friend's, when we feel that they are happy, and your idol, Davies, which you ought to be adopted by other writers, could not but feel were unclassical and thus become established privi- and inelegant in the extreme; yet leges; and that present and future no such concession have you made English poets, if they know their to those instances. own interest, will, by using his I have frequently mentioned Cowphraseology, prevent its ever becom- per's Task to you; but you are ining obsolete. vincibly silent upon that subject. Have I not reason to reproach? How the civility of ordering our servants should an enthusiast in the art she to make up a bed for him during loves bear to see her friend thus three nights, and to prepare a basin coldly regardless of such a poet as of gruel for him in the morning, beCowper, while he exalts Davies above fore he went to the field. This was a Beattie, an Hayley; above the au- literally all he could be prevailed thor of Elfrida and Caractacus!-for upon to accept beneath this roof, said not that friend, that no modern when, in his years of bloom, he unitpoet was so truly a poet as Davies? ed the occupation of Mars to the He who can think so, would, I do form of Adonis. I was then a green believe, peruse, with delectable stoi- girl, " 'something between the wocism, a bard who should now rise up man and the child," nor have I ever with all the poetic glories that lived since beheld the duke of Richmond. on the lyres of Shakspeare and Mil-Though I so perfectly remember him, "If ye believe not Moses and it is more than probable that he rethe Prophets, neither shall ye be members not me; and it would be persuaded by me, though one arose more than impertinent to presume from the dead;"-and so much at that I could have interest with him. present for prejudice and criticism. As to incurring obligations, I ton. As for the last sentence in your should be very glad thus to incur letter, my friend, I meddle not with them from the duke for your advanpolitics; yet confess myself delight- tage ;-but observation, and indeed ed with our juvenile minister, of the revolt I have always myself felt whom, I trust, we may say of his po- from officious recommendation, inlitical as well as natural life, for variably proved to me that it injures many years to come instead of promoting the interests of the recommended. His grace would “Our young Marcellus was not born to die." certainly be disgusted by my seem Adieu! LETTER XCIII. Anna Seward to Captain Seward. Dec. 7, 1787. ing to suppose, that any mention I could make of a relation, or friend, could operate in their favour. Disgust has a withering influence upon patronage. What is it I could say, that has a shadow of probability to enhance the duke's good opinion of a military man?—that man already reIs it possible that lord Heathfield commended to him by lord Heathshould not see the impropriety of my field, the greatest general existing, presuming to intrude upon the duke whose praise ought to be the passport of Richmond's attention with an in- to martial honours and emolument. terference, by request, in military An attempt of this sort from me, promotion, since I can scarcely be would be just as likely to be of use, said to have the shadow of a perso- as if, had I been in Gibraltar during nal acquaintance with his grace! the siege, and when our artillery My father's present state, the al- was pouring on the enemy, I had most utter loss of all his intellectual thrown a bonfire-squib into the mouth faculties, is known. Did he possess of a forty-pounder to assist the force them, impertinent surely would be of the explosion. an acknowledgment from him, that And, lest it should be apprehendhe supposed the duke meant any ed, that my poetic reputation might thing more than a polite compliment, give some degree of consequence to by giving the name of obligation to my request, Mr. Hayley, who is the |