(none of these cattle, that I have heard of, being bred lower than Plassy,) we must suppose that it would be very much emaciated; yet all on board the ship thought it excellent eating. As the head, feet, skin, entrails, and tallow of a fatted animal, weigh very little less than the four quarters, we shall see reason to believe that some of these, when alive, may be found, which will not be less than from 80 to go cwt. upwards of four ton weight! so that it must be a very stately creature. They are said to be sometimes eleven or twelve feet in height.' ART. VI. The Works of the EARL OF ORFORD. WE hasten to perform our promise of continuing the description of the merits of this curious and interesting publication; and our observations on the first volume being necessarily short and hasty, we shall take a retrospective view of some of its contents. The punctuation has been so sparingly performed (we suppose in the author's own copy) as to render it difficult to comprehend some parts of the epistle from Florence: but neither Robespierre nor Marat ever gave a blacker picture of Gallic monarchs, than our noble author has done of the kings of our own country. The poem, indeed, was written during the most furious conflict between Whigs and Tories; when the Pope and the Pretender were the raw-head and bloody-bones which were to frighten all the legitimate children of liberty. The next piece, Inscription for the neglected Column in the Place of St. Mark at Florence, is a most vehement, and, seemingly, unprovoked philippic on a family, some of whom had certainly virtues to compensate for the vices of the rest; and which were the vices of the times in which they lived. Our readers will doubtless recollect the great obligations that literature, arts, and sciences, have had to Lorenzo il Magnifico, Leo the Xth, &c. The portrait of Lord Granville is spirited, and nicely touched : Portrait of John Earl Granville. Written immediately after his Death in 1763. • Commanding beauty, smooth'd by cheerful grace, A And void of gall, with boundless scorn of fools. His means th' impetuous ardour of his soul; For while his views out-stripp'd a mortal's span, And drank his bottle, tho' he miss'd the world." At p. 32. we have another † ingenious and pleasant fable. When wedescendinto prose, we meet with a specimen of playful sarcastic humour of a very peculiar kind, in the Advertisement to the History of Good-breeding; which appeared, in 1746, in a periodical pamphlet called the Museum. 2 The essays which Mr. Walpole gave to " The World" are of a very original and ironical cast. Whoever is in possession of the papers so called, established and carried on by Mr. Ed. Moore, author of Fables for the Female Sex, may be glad to be informed that No. VI. VIII. X. XIV. XXVIII. CIII. CLX. CLXIV. and a World extraordinary, -with two very pleasant papers on the inundation of books, intended for The World, but which were never published in that work, were written by the Honorable Horace Walpole, late Earl of Orford. We have already celebrated his humorous pamphlet, written in 1757, intitled, "A Letter from XO HO, a Chinese philosopher in London, to his friend LIEN CHI at Pekin," in our xxth volume. Notwithstanding the pains and ingenuity which our author has bestowed in his inquiries into the age and person of the -long-lived Countess of Desmond, we have thought, and think still, that he has left the authenticity of this extraordinary longevity nearly as he found it: i. e. very obscure and unsatisfactory. For our free and candid discussion of the merits of the author's lively and spirited Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors, we refer to the xixth vol. of our Reviews; where, though we have not always been of the ingenious writer's opinion, we have sincerely praised when we approved, and have been unusually copious in our extracts of long and discriminative characters of illustrious persons, whose memory and descendants he has very seldom flattered. Had we leisure to go over the same ground again, we should probably find ample room for discussion in the singularity of some of the early * Pyrrhus.' † See the Review for July. † Under the name of "Adam Fitz-Adam." § First Series, opinions opinions of our author; in which appears a determined ambition of being wiser than all former historians and biographers, and of knowing more of the personages whom he paints ideally, than those who saw the originals face to face. Much as Mr. Walpole ever affected to hate politics, it does seem as if party prejudices had sometimes the guidance of his pen, in pulling down and lifting up established characters; giving no other authority for degrading anecdotes than very impure sources. The character of Sir Edward Hyde, however, p. 348, in comparing him with Vandyke as a verbal portrait painter, is ingenious, discriminative, and candid. Mr. W. seldom is temperate in speaking of any friend or servant of Charles; and some of the character-blasting anecdotes and assertions are little better than female tittle-tattle, particularly those that are hostile to the chastity of the Queens of the first James and of Charles I. P. 381 of this ist vol. is indubitable republicanism;-and in the character of Clarendon, whom he is obliged to praise in some particulars, how much does he deduct, in pronouncing his work "a laboured justification of Charles"! That the son of a favoured minister, during two reigns, should see these defects in the illustrious historian plainer than any other dis passionate man, is somewhat marvellous! Seven additional "noble authors" are added to the Catalogue, in this edition: Lords Bath, Melcombe, Paulett, Townshend, Orrery, Duke of Dorset, and Lord Edgecumbe: but from these gleanings in the nobility's Parnassian fields, not enough seems to have been collected to fatten a goose. Six new characters are added to the supplement, that were omitted in former editions. Among these we have PHILIP STANHOPE, EARL OF CHESTERFIELD; to whose infirmities of vanity, immorality, duplicity, artificial and made-up character, our author is very tolerant; nay more, partial. As this article has not appeared in any former edition of the Catalogue, that we recollect, and has been written with some degree of elaboration, we shall insert it. The reader will also see in it a melancholy instance of want of temper in a polite, well-bred, and, to the living, perfectly good-humoured man, when speaking of a writer as superior in intellectual strength to the noble Lords in his Catalogue, as Samson was to the Lords of the Philistines in muscular force. ، • Philip Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield. Few men have been born with a brighter show of parts: few men have bestowed more cultivation on their natural endowments, and the world has seldom been more just in its admiration both of genuine and improved talents. A model yet more rarely beheld, was that of a prince of wits who employed more application on forming a successor, than to perpetuate E3 perpetuate his own renown-yet, though the peer in question not only laboured by daily precepts to educate his heir, but drew up for his use a code of institution, in which no secret of his doctrine was withheld, he was not only so unfortunate as to behold a total mis. carriage of his lectures, but the system itself appeared so superficial, so trifling, and so illaudable, that mankind began to wonder at what they had admired in the preceptor, and to question whether the dictator of such tinsel injunctions had really possessed those brilliant qualifications which had 30 long maintained him unrivalled on the throne of wit and fashion. Still will the impartial examiner do justice, and distinguish between the legislator of that little fantastic aristocracy which calls itself the great world, and the intrinsic genius of a nobleman who was an ornament to his order, an elegant orator, an useful statesman, a perfect but no servile courtier, and an author whose writings, when separated from his impertinent institutes of education, deserve, for the delicacy of their wit and Horatian irony, to be ranged with the purest classics of the courts of Augustus and Louis quatorze. His papers in Common Sense and The World might have given jealousy to the sensitive Addison; and though they do not rival that original writer's fund of natural hu'mour, they must be allowed to touch with consummate knowledge the affected manners of high life. They are short scenes of gen. teel comedy, which, when perfect, is the most rare of all pro ductions. • His papers in recommendation of Johnson's Dictionary were models of that polished elegance which the pedagogue was pretending to ascertain, and which his own style was always heaving to overload with tautology and the barbarous confusion of tongues, The friendly patronage was returned with ungrateful rudeness by the proud pedant; and men smiled, without being surprised, at seeing a bear worry his dancing-master. • Even lord Chesterfield's poetical trifles, of which a few speci mens remain in some songs and epigrams, were marked by his idolized graces, and with his acknowledged wit. His speeches courted the former, and the latter never forsook him to his latest hours. His entrance into the world was announced by his bon-mots, and his closing lips dropped repartees that sparkled with his ju venile fire. • Such native parts deserved higher application. Lord Chesterfield took no less pains to be the phenix of fine gentlemen, than Tully did to qualify himself for shining as the first orator, magistrate, and philosopher of Rome. Both succeeded: Tully immortalized his name; lord Chesterfield's reign lasted a little longer than that of a fashionable beauty. His son, like Cromwell's, was content to return to the plough, without authority, and without fame. • Besides his works collected and published by doctor Maty, his lordship had begun "Memoirs of his own time." - How far he pro. ceeded on such a work I cannot say; nor whether farther than a few characters of some eminent persons, which have since been printed, and which are no shining proof that lord Chesterfield was an excellent historic painter. From his private familiar letters one should : should expect much entertainment, if most of those published by Maty did not damp such hopes. Some few at the end of his correspondence with his son justly deserve admiration. • Lord Chesterfield's writings that are known, were, "Miscellaneous works, with memoirs of his life, by M. Maty, M. D." published in two large volumes in quarto, 1777. In those volumes are omitted the following journals, which may be found in the several original publications: "Common Sense, for May 21, and 28; October 15; Nov. 5; 1737: and January 21; 1738." The last was probably omitted in the edition of his lordship's works for its indecency. Lady Hervey, an intimate friend of lord Chesterfield, allowed me to mark lord Chesterfield's papers from her copy of Common Sense. "His Letters to his natural son Philip Stanhope;" published in two large volumes in quarto, 1774"A Supplement" of some letters that were wanting to that correspondence, was published in quarto, by Dodsley, 1787. "The art of pleasing;" being letters to his successor in the title; published in The Edinburgh magazine, 1774, N° 4, 5, 6, 7. " Letters from lord Chesterfield to alderman George Faulkener, doctor Madden, Mr. Sexton, Mr. Derrick, and the earl of Arran." London, quarto, 1777. • Other works of lord Chesterfield, not included in Maty's edition: "Characters of eminent personages of his own time." Duod. printed by W. Flexney, 1777. "A petition of humour to the king for a pension;" 1757: reprinted with his letters. "Letter to marshal Belleisle, on his letter to marshal Contades ordering him to lay waste the electorate of Hanover;" 1759: published in English and French. "A letter signed Bayes, on the marriage of the king and queen;" published in The London Chronicle, August 25, 1761. POETRY.-In Dodsley's Collection of miscellaneous poems, zd edition, " the five last poems" in vol. i. are by lord Chesterfield. • Epigrams, " on Esau and Jacob," published in The sports of the Muses; " on lord Hervey, As nature Hervey's clay, &c.” “ on lady Thanet, Physic and cards, &c." in The foundling-hospital for wit, and other miscellanies: and in the third part of The foundling-hospital, "Verses on Sarah duchess of Richmond going to supper;" commonly, but wrongly, entitled, On the duchess of Rutland, "Truth at Court," in the name of a dean, published in The London Chronicle for April 1761, and in The annual register for the same year. "Some lines, to be placed in the parlour of his brother sir William Stanhope, in the house that was Mr. Pope's at Twickenham. "A dialogue, in prose, on his own going to court, 1762;" MS." We cannot pass unnoticed the contemptuous harshness of the author's expressions in speaking of the greatest moral writer, critic, and philologer, combined, that existed in this, or perhaps in any age or nation. Pedagogue-always heaving to overload with E4 |