able match. During the last seven years of this gentleman's absence, he went every Sunday to St. James's church, and used to sit in Mr. Salt's seat, where he had a view of his wife, but could not easily be seen by her. After he returned home, he never would confess, even to his most intimate friends, what was the real cause of such a singular conduct; apparently, there was none: but whatever it was, he was certainly ashamed to own it. Dr. Rose has often said to me, that he believed his brother Howe* would never have returned to his wife, if the money which he took with him, which was supposed to have been 1,000l. or 2,000l. had not been all spent: and he must have been a good economist, and frugal in his manner of living, otherwise his money would scarce have held out; for I imagine he had his whole fortune by him, I I mean what he carried away with him in money or bank bills, and daily took out of his bag, like the Spaniard in Gil Blas, what was sufficient for his expenses.

HORACE WALPOLE.

(Letters from the Hon. Horace Walpole to the Rev. W. Cole, and others.)

I have been eagerly reading

And yet I have seen him after his return addressing his wife in the language of a young bridegroom. And I have been assured by some of his most intimate friends, that he treated her during the rest of their lives with the greatest kindness and affection.

Mr. Shenstone's Letters, which, though containing nothing but trifles, amused me extremely, as they mention so many persons I know; particularly myself. I found there, what I did not know, and what, I believe, Mr. Gray himself never knew, that his ode on my cat was written to ridicule lord Littleton's monody. It is just as true as that the latter will survive, and the former be forgotten. There is another anecdote equally vulgar, and void of truth: that my father, sitting in George's coffee-house (I suppose Mr.Shenstone thought, that, after he quitted his place, he went to coffee-houses to learn news), was asked to contribute to a figure of himself that was to be beheaded by the mob. I do remember something like it, but it happened to myself. I met a mob, just after my father was out, in Hanover-square, and drove up to it to know what was the matter. They were carrying about a figure of my sister. This probably gave rise to the other story. That on my uncle I never heard; but it is a good story, and not at all improbable. I felt great pity on reading these Letters for the narrow circumpassion for fame that he was stances of the author, and the tormented with; and yet he had

much more fame than his talents intitled him to. Poor man! he wanted to have all the world talk of him for the pretty place he had made; and which he seems to have made only that it might be talked of. The first time a company came to see my house, I felt his joy. I am now so tired

of

of it, that I shudder when the bell rings at the gate. It is as bad as keeping an inn, and I am often tempted to deny its being shown, if it would not be illnatured to those that come, and to my house-keeper. I own, I was one day too cross. I had been plagued all the week with staring crowds. At last it rained a deluge. Well, said I, at last, nobody will come to-day. The words were scarce uttered, when the bell rang. A company desired to see the house. I replied, Tell them they cannot possibly see the house, but they are very welcome to walk in the garden.

You know I shun authors, and would never have been one my self, if it obliged me to keep such bad company. They are always in earnest, and think their profession serious, and dwell upon trifles and reverence learning. I laugh at all those things, and write only to laugh at them, and divert myself. None of us are authors of any consequence; and it is the most ridiculous of all vanities to be vain of being mediocre. A page in a great author humbles me to the dust, and the conversation of those that are not superior to myself, reminds me of what will be thought of myself. I blush to flatter them, or to be flattered by them, and should dread letters being published some time or other, in which they should relate our interviews, and we should appear like those puny conceited witlings in Shenstone's and Hugh's Correspondence, who give themselves airs from being

in possession of the soil of Parnassus for the time being; as peers are proud, because they enjoy the estates of great men who went before them. Mr. Gough is very welcome to see Strawberry-hill; or I would help him to any scraps in my possession, that would assist his publications; though he is one of those industrious, who are only reburying the dead-but I cannot be acquainted with him. It is contrary to my system, and my humour; and, besides, I know nothing of barrows, and Danish entrenchments, and Saxon barbarisms, and Phoenician characters-in short, I know nothing of those ages that knew nothingthen how should I be of use to modern litterati? All the Scotch metaphysicians have sent me their works. I did not read one of them, because I do not understand, what is not understood by those that write about it; and I did not get acquainted with one of the writers. I should like to be intimate with Mr. Anstey, even though he wrote Lord Buckhorse, or with the author of the Heroic Epistle-I have no thirst to know the rest of my cotemporaries, from the absurd bombast of Dr. Johnson down to the silly Dr. Goldsmith; though the latter changeling has had bright gleams of parts, and the former had sense, till he changed it for words, and sold it for a pension. Don't think me scornful. Recollect that I have seen Pope, and lived with Gray.

been glorious, if finished. I wish the lords of Berkeley had retained the spirit of deposing till Henry the 8th's time! The situation is fine, though that was not the fashion; for all the windows of the great apartment look into the inner-court. The prospect was left to the servants. Here I had two adventures. I could find nobody to show me about. I saw a paltry house that I took for the sexton's, at the corner of the close, and bade my servant ring, and ask who could show me the castle. A voice in a passion flew from a casement, and issued from a divine. "What! was it his business to show the castle! Go look for somebody else! What did the fellow ring for as if the house was on fire!" The poor Swiss came back in a fright, and said, the doctor had sworn at him. Well-we scrambled over a stone stile, saw a room or two glazed near the gate, and rung at it. A damsel came forth, and satisfied our curiosity. When we had done seeing, I said, "Child, we don't know our way, and want to be directed into the London-road; I see the duke's steward yonder at the window, pray desire him to come to me, that I may consult him." She went-he stood staring at us at the window-and sent his footman. I do not think courtesy is resident at Thornbury. As I returned through the close, the divine came running out of breath, and without his beaver or band, and calls out, "Sir, I am come to justify myself: your servant says I swore at him: I am no swearer-Lord bless me! [dropping his voice] it is Mr.

Walpole !" "Yes, sir, and I think you was lord Beauchamp's tutor at Oxford, but I have forgot your name." "Holwell, sir." "Oh! yes" and then I comforted him, and laid the ill-breeding on my footman's being a foreigner; but could not help saying, I really had taken his house for the sexton's. "Yes, sir, it is not very good without, won't you please to walk in?" I did, and found the inside ten times worse, and a lean wife, suckling a child. He was making an index to Homer, is going to publish the chief beauties, and I believe had just been reading some of the delicate civilities. that pass between Agamemnon and Achilles, and that what my servant took for oaths, were only Greek compliments.

I am always intending to draw up an account of my intercourse with Chatterton, which I take very kindly you remind me of, but some avocation or other has still prevented it. My perfect innocence of having indirectly been an ingredient, in his dismal fate, which happened two years after our correspondence, and after he had exhausted both his resources and his constitution, have made it more easy to prove that I never saw him, knew nothing of his ever being in London, and was the first person instead of the last, on whom he had practised his impositions, and founded his chimeric hopes of promotion. My very first, or at least second letter, undeceived him in those views, and our correspondence was broken off before he quitted his master's

business

sanctimonious honour. Think of that young rascal's note, when summoning up his gains and losses by writing for and against Beckford, he says, "I am glad he is dead by 31. 13s. 6d." There was a lad of too nice honour to be capable of forgery! and a lad who, they do not deny, forged the poems in the style of Ossian, and fifty other things, In the parts I did read, Mr. Bryant, as I expected, reasons admirably, and staggered me; but when I took up the poems called Rowley's again, I protest I cannot see the smallest air of antiquity but the old words. The whole texture is conceived on ideas of the present century. The liberal manner of thinking of a monk so long before the reformation is as stupendous

and where he met with Ovid's Metamorphoses, Eclogues, and plans of Greek tragedies, when even Caxton, a printer, took Virgil's Ænead for so rare a novelty, are not less incomprehensible-though on these things I speak at random, nor have searched for the era when the Greek and Latin classics came again to light-at present I imagine long after our Edward 4th.

Another thing struck me in my very cursory perusal of Bryant. He asks, where Chatterton could find so much knowledge of English events? I could tell him where he might, by a very natural hypothesis, though merely an hypothesis. It appears by the evidence, that Canninge left six chests of MSS. and that Chatterton got possession of some or several. Now what was therein so probably as a diary drawn up by Canninge himself or

some churchwarden, or wardens, or by a monk, or monks? Is any thing more natural, than for such a person, amidst the events at Bristol, to set down such other public facts as happened in the rest of the kingdom? Was not such almost all the materials of our ancient story? There is actually such an one, with some curious collateral facts, if I am not mistaken, for I write by memory, in the history of Furnese or Fountain's Abbey, I forget which. If Chatterton found such an one, did he want the extensive literature on which so much stress is laid? Hypothesis for hypothesis, I am sure this is as rational an one, as the supposition, that six chests were filled with poems never else heard of.

These are my indigested thoughts on this matter-not that I ever intend to digest them -for I will not at sixty-four sail back into the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and be drowned in an ocean of monkish writers of those ages or of this!

There is a report that some part of Chatterton's forgery is to be produced by an accomplicebut this I do not answer for, nor know the circumstances. I have scarce seen a person who is not persuaded that the fashion of the poems was Chatterton's own, though he might have found some old stuff to work upon, which very likely was the case; but now that the poems have been so much examined, nobody (that has an ear) can get over the modernity of the modulations, and the recent cast of the ideas and phraseology, corroborated

by