Private Correspondence of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford: Now First Collected, Volume 4

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Rodwell and Martin, 1820
 

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Page 13 - Gray never wrote any thing easily but things of humour. Humour was his natural and original turn — and though, from his childhood he was grave and reserved, his genius led him to see things ludicrously and satirically; and though his health and dissatisfaction gave him low spirits, his melancholy turn was much more affected than his pleasantry in writing. You knew him enough to know I am in the right — but the world in general always wants to be told how to think, as well as what to think.
Page 528 - I do not care to say how little.- Alas ! she has reversed experience, which I have long thought reverses its own utility by coming at the wrong end of our life when we do not want it. This author knew the world and penetrated characters before she stepped over the threshold ; and now she has seen so much of it she has little or no insight at all...
Page 537 - ... once a year, to stare at me as the Methusalem of the family, and they can only speak of their own contemporaries, which interest me no more than if they talked of their dolls, or bats and balls.
Page 3 - Alas! Mrs. Miller is returned a beauty, a genius, a Sappho, a tenth Muse, as romantic as Mademoiselle Scuderi, and as sophisticated as Mrs. Vesey. The Captain's fingers are loaded with cameos, his tongue runs over with virtu, and that both may contribute to the improvement of their own country, they have introduced bouts-rimes as a new discovery.
Page 61 - I THANK you for your notices, dear sir, and shall remember that on Prince William. I did see the Monthly Review, but hope one is not guilty of the death of every man who does not make one the dupe of a forgery. I believe M'Pherson's success with Ossian, was more the ruin of Chatterton than I. Two years passed between my doubting the authenticity of Rowley's poems and his death.
Page 375 - The more one learns of Johnson, the more preposterous assemblage he appears of strong sense, of the lowest bigotry and prejudices, of pride, brutality, fretfulness and vanity, — and Boswell is the ape of most of his faults, without a grain of his sense. It is the story of a mountebank and his zany.
Page 214 - England," of which the first edition only consisted of 300 copies. " Of my new fourth volume I printed 600 ; but, as they can be had, I believe not a third part is sold. This is a very plain lesson to me, that my editions sell for their curiosity, and not for any merit in them — and so they would if I printed Mother Goose's Tales, and but a few.
Page 4 - Roman vase dressed with pink ribbons and myrtles receives the poetry, which is drawn out every festival; six judges of these Olympic games retire and select the brightest compositions, which the respective successful acknowledge, kneel to Mrs. Calliope Miller, kiss her fair hand, and are crowned by it with myrtle, with — I don't know what. You may think this is fiction, or exaggeration. Be dumb, unbelievers! The collection is printed, published. — Yes, on my faith! There are bouts-rimes on a...
Page 4 - Yes, on my faith, there are bouts-rimes on a buttered muffin, made by her Grace the Duchess of Northumberland ; receipts to make them, by Corydon the venerable, alias George Pitt ; others, very pretty, by Lord Palmerston ; some by Lord Carlisle ; many by Mrs. Miller herself, that have no fault but wanting metre; and immortality promised to her without end or measure. In short since folly which never ripens to madness but in this hot climate, ran distracted, there never was anything so entertaining...
Page 3 - They hold a Parnassus fair every Thursday, give out rhymes and themes, and all the flux of quality at Bath contend for the prizes. A Roman vase dressed with pink ribbons and myrtles receives the poetry, which is drawn out every festival; six judges of these Olympic games retire and select the brightest compositions, which the respective successful acknowledge, kneel to Mrs. Calliope Miller, kiss her fair hand, and are crowned by it with myrtle, with — I don't know what.

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