Private Letters of Edward Gibbon (1753-1794) Volume 2 (of 2). Edward Gibbon

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СКАЧАТЬ equal purchaser will not easily be found. But your native vigour excited by friendship will remove mountains and perform impossibilities. My salvation would be more assured if I had half as much faith in any body else.

      *With regard to meaner cares, these are two, which you can and will undertake. 1. As I have not renounced my Country, I should be glad to hear of your Parliamentary squabbles, which may be done with small trouble and expence. After an interesting debate, Miss Firth or My lady in due time may cut the speeches from Woodfall. You will write or dictate any curious anecdote, and the whole, inclosed in a letter, may be dispatched to Lausanne. 2. A set of Wedgewood China, which we talked of in London, and which would be most acceptable here. As you have a sort of a taste, I leave to your own choice the colour and the pattern; but as I have the inclination and means to live very handsomely here, I desire that the size and number of things may be adequate to a plentiful table.

      If you see Lord North, assure him of my gratitude; had he been a more successful friend, I should now be drudging at the board of Customs, or vexed with business in the amiable society of *the Duke of M[anchester].* To Lord Loughborough present a more affectionate sentiment; I am satisfied with his intention to serve me, if I had not been in such a fidget. I am sure you will not fail, while you are in town, to visit and comfort poor Aunt Kitty. I wrote to her on my first arrival, and she may be assured that I will not neglect her.* Any occasional hints from Bath will be wellcome, but nothing from hence must ever transpire. *To My lady I say nothing; we have now our private Correspondence, into which the eye of an husband should not be permitted to intrude. I am really satisfied with the success of the Pamphlet;72 not only because I have a sneaking kindness for the author, but as it shows me that plain sense, full information, and warm spirit, are still acceptable to the World. You talk of Lausanne as a place of retirement; yet from the situation and freedom of the Pays de Vaud, all nations, and all extraordinary characters, are astonished to meet each other. The Abbé Raynal, the grand Gibbon, and Mercier,73 author of the Tableau de Paris, have been in the same room. The other day, the Prince and Princess de Ligne,74 the Duke and Dutchess d'Ursel, &c. came from Brussels on purpose (literally true) to act a comedy at d'Hermanches's, in the Country. He was dying, and could not appear; but we had Comedy, ball, and supper. The event seems to have revived him; for that great man is fallen from his ancient glory, and his nearest relations refuse to see him. I told you of poor Catherine's deplorable state; but Madame de Mesery, at the age of sixty-nine, is still handsome. Adieu.*

      487.

       To Lord Sheffield

Lausanne, December 20th, 1783.

      *I have received both your Epistles; and as any excuse will serve a man who is at the same time very busy and very idle, I patiently expected the second, before I entertained any thoughts of answering the first.*

      SALE OF LENBOROUGH.

      And so poor Lenborough is at length sold; poor indeed I may call, for I must confess that I am most woefully disappointed in the price. Without going back to the Golden Age in which we looked down with disdain on the round twenty, you may remember that even this summer we scarcely allowed our most timid expectations to sink below seventeen, and this sum for which it is now sold falls £1400 short of that amount, without deducting the promised gratuity to Christie.

      You might indeed reckon on my impatience to be delivered from a heavy burden both of fortune and of mind which I have often deplored with so much energy, but that burthen was much alleviated by my rational retreat from a scene of tumult and expence, and I always understood that we should take the chance of the winter and of the rise of stocks before we tryed the decisive and almost irrevocable measure of an auction. However the blow is struck, and I have already reconciled my mind to this new loss. I should have been afraid of writing thus much to Hugonin, but your nerves are more firmly strung, and through these expressions of disappointment, you discern, that instead of being displeased with your conduct, however inadequate to my hopes, I feel myself inexpressibly obliged to your pure fervent and persevering friendship. You will watch over the conclusion of this business, and whatever steps on my side may be necessary shall be diligently executed as soon as you send me the proper papers and instruction. When the money is paid (in February) you will leave the residue, a wretched fragment, in the hands of the Goslings on my account. I have not absolutely determined how I shall employ it. Something must be done in the way of annuity, and the French funds which are very fashionable in this country are wonderfully tempting to a poor man by the high interest, but I am aware of their slippery foundation, and you may be assured that I shall do nothing of that kind without full and mature and even cautious investigation. For the same reason, instead of paying the money to Darrel, I could wish that the £1100 or £1000 for Lymington (for we must not haggle about trifles) may likewise slumber for a little while in the shop in Fleet Street. Yet I should not be sorry to hear that the direction comes too late and that they are already more actively employed.

      Sure I have been particularly unfortunate in my connections of business, for in good truth, Winton, Lovegrove, and Sir H. Burrard75 are more than should fall to the share of one man.

      PRIDE IN FOX'S FAME.

      Yet the last mentioned beast is no fool, and when that affectionate kinsman has squeezed the Minister to the utmost, he will be satisfied with all that he can get, and will not suffer his farm to lye fallow without being of any value either to landlord or tenant. *I therefore conclude, on every principle of common sense, that, before this moment, his own interest and that of the Government, stimulated by your active zeal, have already expelled me from the House, to which, without regret, I bid an everlasting farewell. The agreeable hour of five o'Clock in the morning, at which you commonly retire, does not tend to revive my attachment; but if you add the soft hours of your morning committee,76 in the discussion of taxes, customs, frauds, smugglers, &c., I think I should beg to be released and quietly sent to the Gallies, as a place of leisure and freedom. Yet I do not depart from my general principles of toleration; some animals are made to live in the water, others on the Earth, many in the air, and some, as it is now believed, even in fire. Your present hurry of Parliament I perfectly understand; when opposition make the attack —

      – Horæ

      Momento cita mors venit, aut victoria læta.

      But when the Minister brings forward strong and decisive measure, he at length prevails; but his progress is retarded at every step, and in every stage of the bill, by a pertinacious, though unsuccessful, minority. I am not sorry to hear of the splendour of Fox; I am proud, in a foreign Country, of his fame and abilities, and our little animosities are extinguished by my retreat from the English Stage. With regard to the substance of the business, I scarcely know what to think: the vices of the Company,77 both in their persons and their constitution, were manifold and manifest; the danger was imminent, and such an Empire, with thirty millions of subjects, was not to be lost for trifles. Yet, on the other hand, the faith of Charters, the rights of property! I hesitate and tremble. Such an innovation would at least require that the remedy should be as certain as the evil, and the proprietors may perhaps insinuate, that they were as competent Guardians of their own affairs, as either *George North or L. Lewisham.78* Their acting without a salary seems childish, and their not being removable by the Crown is a strange and dangerous precedent.

      But enough of politics, which I now begin to view through a thin, cold, distant cloud, yet not without a reasonable degree of curiosity and patriotism. From the papers (especially when you add an occasional slice of the Chronicle) I shall be amply informed of facts and debates; from you I expect the causes rather than the events, the true springs of action, and those interesting anecdotes which seldom ascend СКАЧАТЬ