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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Section fourteen of Horace four Pulse Letters a selection. This
is a LibriVox recording or LibriVox recordings through in the
public domain. A witty protest to George Montague with Squire
Strawberry Hill, April fifteenth, seventeen sixty eight. Mister Shute tells
me that you've taken a new house in squire Land
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and have given yourself up for two years more to
port and parsons. I am very angry and resign you
to the works of the devil or the Church. I
don't care which you will get the gout. Turn Methodist
and expect to write to Heaven upon your own great toe.
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I was happy with your telling me how will you
love me? And though I don't love loving, I could
have poured out all the fullness of my heart to
such an old and true friend. But what am I
the better for it? If I am to see you
but two or three days in the year I thought
you would at last come, and while away the remainder
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of life on the banks of the Thames in gayety
and old tales, I have quitted the stage, and the
Clive is preparing to leave it. We shall neither of
us ever be grave Dowager's roost all around us, and
you could never want cards or mirth. Will you end
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like a fat farmer, repeating annually the price of oats
and discussing stale newspapers? There have you got? I hear
into an old gallery that has not been glazed since
Queen Elizabeth, and under the nose of an infant duke
and duchess that will understand you no more than if
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you were a rough and a cooiff and talk to
them of a call of sergeants the year of the
Spanish Armada. Your wit and humor will be as much
lost upon them as if you talk to the dialect
of choice. For with all the divinity of wit, it
grows out of fashion like a fighting girl. I am
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convinced that the young men at Whites already laugh at
George Selwyn's bonmeaux. Only by tradition. I avoid talking before
the youth of the age as I would dancing before them.
For if one's tongue don't move in the steps of
the day and thinks to please by its old graces,
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it is only an object of ridicule. Like Missus Hobart
in her Cotillion. I tell you we should get together
and comfort ourselves with reflecting on the brave days that
we have known. Not that I think people were a
jot more clever or wise in our youth than they
are now. But as my system is always to live
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in a vision as much as I can, and as
visions don't increase with years, there is nothing so natural
as to think one remembers what one does not remember.
Wilkes at Westminster Hall, rumors of war to saharrace Man's
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Strawberry Hill during the ninth seventeen sixty eight. Yesterday was
fixed for the appearance of Wilkes in Westminster Hall. The
judges went down by nine in the morning, but the
mob had done breakfast still sooner and was there before them.
And as judges stuffed up with the dignity and lamb
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skins are not absolute sprites, they had much ado to
glide through the crowd. Wilkes's counsel argued against the outlawry,
and then Lord Mansfield, in a speech of an hour
and a half, set it aside, not on their reasons,
but on grounds which he had discovered in it himself.
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I think they say it was on some floor in
the Christian name of the county, which should not have
been Middle Sex to wit. But I protest I don't know,
for I'm here alone and picked up my intelligence as
I walked in our meadows by the river. You, who
may be walking by the Arno, will perhaps think there
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was some timidity in this, But the depths of the
law are wonderful, So pray don't make any rash conclusions,
but stay till you get better information. Well, now he
has gone to prison again, I mean Wilkes, and on
Tuesday he is to return to receive sentence on the
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old guilt of writing, as the Scotch would not call
it the forty five, though they called the rebellion. So
the sentence may be imprisonment, fine or pillory. But as
I am still near the tem I do not think
the latter will be chosen of But stay. He may
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plead against the indictment, And should there be an improper
Middlesex to Wit in that too, then in that case
you know he did not write the forty five. And
then he is as white as milk, and as free
as air, and as good a member of Parliament as
if he had never been expelled. I'm sure, my dear sir,
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I am trying to explain to you what I literally
do not understand. All I do know is that mister Cork,
the other member for Middlesex, is just dead, and that
we're going to have another Middlesex election, which is very
unpleasant to me who hate mobs so near as Brentwood,
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Sergeant Glynn Wilson's counsel is the candidate, and I suppose
the only one in the present humor of the people
who will here to have his brains dashed out in
order to sit in Parliament. In truth, this enthusiasm is
confined to the very mob or little higher and does
not extend beyond the county. All other riots are ceased,
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except the little civil war between the sailors and coal heavers,
in which two or three lives are lost every week.
What is most disagreeable, even the Emperor of Morocco has
taken courage on these tumults and is dead to mutiny
for increase of wages, like our journeyman tailors. Francis per
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too and gives herself airs. In the Mediterranean, our Paolists
were violent for support of Corsica, but I think they
are a little startled on a report that the hero
Paoli is like other patriots, and has gone to vour
sigh for a peerage and pension. I was told today
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that in London there are murmurs of a war. I
shall be sorry if it proves so. Deaths, suspense, say victory?
How end all our victories in debts and a wretched
peace mad world in the individual or the aggregate? Well,
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say I to myself, and what is all this to me?
Have I not done with that world? Am I not
here at peace? Unconnected with courts and ministries and indifferent?
Who is minister? What is a war in Europe to me?
More than a war between the Turkish and Persian emperors? True?
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Yet self love makes one love of the nation when
belongs to, and vanity makes one wish to have that
nation glorious. Well, I have seen it, so, I have
seen its conquests spread farther than Roman eagles thought there
was land. I have seen too, the pretender at Derby.
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And therefore you must know that I am content with
historic seeing, and wish fame and history would be quiet
and content without entertaining me with any more sights. We
were down at Derby, we were up at both indies.
I have no curiosity for any intermediate sights ellipses. I
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hope there will be no war for some hero to
take your honors out of your mouth's sword in hand.
The first question I shall ask when I go to
town will be how my Lord Chatham does. I shall mind,
and his health more than the stocks, the least symptom
of a war, will certainly cure him. Adieu, my dear sir,
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the delights of the English climate. To George Montague, Squire,
Strawberry Hill, June the fifteenth, seventeen sixty eight. I perceived
the deluge fell upon you before it reached us. It
began here but on Monday last, and then reigned near
eight and forty hours without intermission. My poor hay has
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not a dry thread to its back. I've had a
fire these three days. In short, every summer one lives
in a state of mutiny and murmur, and I have
found the reason. It is because we will affect to
have a summer, and we have no title to any
such thing. Our poets learnt their trade of the Romans,
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and so adopted the terms of their masters. They talk
of shady groves, hurling streams and cooling breezes and we
get sore throats and agus. With attempting to realize these visions.
Master Damon writes a song and invites Miss Chloe to
enjoy the cool of the evening and use a bit
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of we of any such thing as a cool evening.
Zephyr is a northeast wind that makes Damon button up
to the chin and pinches Chloe's nose till it is
red and blue. And then they cry, this is a
bad summer, as if we ever had any other, The
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best son we have is made of Newcastle coal, and
I am determined never to reckon upon any other. We
ruin ourselves with inviting over foreign trees and making our
houses clamber up hills to look at prospects. How our
ancestors would laugh at us, who knew there was no
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being comfortable. And as you had a high hill before
your nose and a thick warm wood at your back,
taste is too freezing a commodity for us, and depend
upon it will go out of fashion again. There is
indeed a natural warmth in this country, which, as you say,
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I am very glad not to enjoy any longer. I
mean the hot house in Saint Stephen's Chapel. My own
sagacity makes me very vain. Though there was very little
merit in it. I had seen so much of all
parties that I had little esteem left for any It
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is most indifferent to me who is in or who
is out, or which is said in the pillory mister
Wilkes of my Lord Mansfield. I see the country going
to ruin, and no man with brains enough to save it.
That is mortifying. But what signifies who has the undoing
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of it? I seldom suffer myself to think on this subject.
My patriotism could do no good, and my philosophy can
make me be at peace. Voltaire's criticisms on Shakespeare Monsieur
de Voltaire, Strawberry Hill, July the twenty seventh, seventy sixty eight.
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One can never, sir, be sorry to have been in
the wrong when one's errors are pointed out to one
in so obliging and masterly a manner. Whatever opinion I
may have of Shakespeare, I should think him to blame
if he could have seen the letter. You have done
me the honor to write to me, and yet not
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conform to the rules you have there laid down when
he lived there had not been a voltaire, both to
give laws to the stage and to show on what
good sense those laws were founded. Your art, Sir goes
to her father, For you have supported your arguments without
having recourse to the best authority your own works. It
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was my interest, perhaps to defend barbarism and irregularity. A
great genius is in the right on the contrary, to
show that when correctness, nay, when perfection is demanded, he
can still shine and be himself whatever fetters are imposed
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on him. But I will say no more on this head,
for I am neither so unpolished as to tell you
to your face how much I admire you. Nor though
I have taken the liberty to vindicate Shakespeare against your criticism,
am I vain enough to think myself an adversary worthy
of you. I am much more proud of receiving laws
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from you than of contesting them. It was bold in
me to dispute with you, even before I had the
honor of your acquaintance. It will be ungrateful now when
you have not only taken notice of me, but forgiven me.
The admirable letter you have been so good as to
send me is a proof that you are one of
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those truly great and rare men who know at once
how to conquer and to pardon the election of Wilkes.
The Comtesse de Barris Tisire's Man, Arlington Street, January the
thirty first, seventy sixty nine. The affair of Wilkes is
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rather undecided yet than in suspense it has been a
fair trial between faction and corruption of two such common creatures.
The richest will carry it. The court of Aldermen set
aside the election of Wilkes on some informality, but he
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was immediately re chosen. This happened on Friday last, the
very day of his appearance at the House of Commons.
He went thither without the least disturbance or mob, having
dispersed his orders accordingly, which are obeyed implicitly. He did not, however,
appear at the bar till ten at night, the day
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being wasted in debating whether he should be suffered to
enter on his case at large or be restrained to
his two chief complaints. The latter was carried by two
hundred seventy to one hundred thirty one, a majority that
he will not easily reduce. He was then called in,
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looked ill but behave decently, and demanded to take the
oaths and his seat. This affair, after a short debate,
was refused, and his counsel being told the restrictions imposed,
the house adjourned at midnight. To day he goes again
to the house. But whatever steps he takes there, or
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however long debates he may occasion, you may look upon
his fate as decided in that place. We are in
hourly expectation of hearing that a nymph, more common still
than the two I have mentioned, has occasioned what Wilkes
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has failed in now a change of administration. I mean,
the Comtesse de Barrys, the grant Abbie are made, and
nothing wanting for her presentation. But what do you think
some woman of quality to present her in that servile
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court and country? The nobility have had spirit enough to
decline paying their court, though the king has stooped I
dee basses to obtain it. The Duc de Choiselle will
be the victim, and they pretend to say that he
has declared he will resign a longue laise rather than
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be chasse by such a creature. His indiscretion is astonishing.
He has set at his own table and she has
been told. So Madame du barys e trema aforme on
de parp bade de captain chemoi catain diverts himself in
King Solomon wise with tossing oranges into the air after
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supper and crying Sotte choisselle sotte brasse lain, and then
Solomon laughs heartily. Sometimes she things powder in his sage
face and calls him Jean Farine. Well, we are not
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the foolishest nation in Europe. Yet it is supposed that
the Duc d'aguillonn will be the successor. I am going
to send away this letter because you will be impatient,
and the house will not rise, probably till long after
the post has gone out. I did not think last
May that you would hear this February that there was
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an end of mobs, that Wilkes was expelled, and the
colony is quieted. However, prayteke, notice that I do not
stir a foot out of the province of gazetteer into
that of prophet. I protest I know no more than
a prophet. What is to come? Adieu. End of section
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fourteen