The Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II | Page 3

pretty well
cured by her journey. She is past forty, and does not appear ever to
have been handsome, but is one of the most agreeable and sensible
women I ever saw; yet I must tell you a trait of her that will not prove
my assertion. Lady Holland asked her how she liked Strawberry Hill?
She owned that she did not approve of it, and that it was not digne de la

solidité Angloise. It made me laugh for a quarter of an hour. They allot
us a character we have not, and then draw consequences from that idea,
which would be absurd, even if the idea were just. One must not build a
Gothic house because the nation is solide. Perhaps, as everything now
in France must be à la Grecque, she would have liked a hovel if it
pretended to be built after Epictetus's--but Heaven forbid that I should
be taken for a philosopher! Is it not amazing that the most sensible
people in France can never help being domineered by sounds and
general ideas? Now everybody must be a géomètre, now a philosophe,
and the moment they are either, they are to take up a character and
advertise it: as if one could not study geometry for one's amusement or
for its utility, but one must be a geometrician at table, or at a visit! So
the moment it is settled at Paris that the English are solid, every
Englishman must be wise, and, if he has a good understanding, he must
not be allowed to play the fool. As I happen to like both sense and
nonsense, and the latter better than what generally passes for the former,
I shall disclaim, even at Paris, the profondeur, for which they admire us;
and I shall nonsense to admire Madame de Boufflers, though her
nonsense is not the result of nonsense, but of sense, and consequently
not the genuine nonsense that I honour. When she was here, she read a
tragedy in prose to me, of her own composition, taken from "The
Spectator:" the language is beautiful and so are the sentiments.
There is a Madame de Beaumont who has lately written a very pretty
novel, called "Lettres du Marquis du Roselle." It is imitated, too, from
an English standard, and in my opinion a most woful one; I mean the
works of Richardson, who wrote those deplorably tedious lamentations,
"Clarissa" and "Sir Charles Grandison," which are pictures of high life
as conceived by a bookseller, and romances as they would be
spiritualized by a Methodist teacher: but Madame de Beaumont has
almost avoided sermons, and almost reconciled sentiments and
common sense. Read her novel--you will like it.
DEBATE ON AMERICAN TAXES--PETITION OF THE
PERIWIG-MAKERS--FEMALE HEAD-DRESSES--LORD BYRON'S
DUEL--OPENING OF ALMACK'S--NO. 45.

TO THE EARL OF HERTFORD.
ARLINGTON STREET, Feb. 12, 1765.
A great many letters pass between us, my dear lord, but I think they are
almost all of my writing. I have not heard from you this age. I sent you
two packets together by Mr. Freeman, with an account of our chief
debates. Since the long day, I have been much out of order with a cold
and cough, that turned to a fever: I am now taking James's powder, not
without apprehensions of the gout, which it gave me two or three years
ago.
There has been nothing of note in Parliament but one slight day on the
American taxes,[1] which, Charles Townshend supporting, received a
pretty heavy thump from Barré, who is the present Pitt, and the dread
of all the vociferous Norths and Rigbys, on whose lungs depended so
much of Mr. Grenville's power. Do you never hear them to Paris?
[Footnote 1: Mr. Grenville's taxation of stamps and other articles in our
American colonies, which caused great discontent, and was repealed by
Lord Rockingham's Ministry.]
The operations of the Opposition are suspended in compliment to Mr.
Pitt, who has declared himself so warmly for the question on the
Dismission of officers, that that motion waits for his recovery. A call of
the House is appointed for next Wednesday, but as he has had a relapse,
the motion will probably be deferred. I should be very glad if it was to
be dropped entirely for this session, but the young men are warm and
not easily bridled.
If it was not too long to transcribe, I would send you an entertaining
petition of the periwig-makers to the King, in which they complain that
men will wear their own hair. Should one almost wonder if carpenters
were to remonstrate, that since the peace their trade decays, and that
there is no demand for wooden legs? Apropos my Lady Hertford's
friend, Lady Harriot Vernon, has quarrelled with me for smiling at the
enormous head-gear of her