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quite finished the second volume. I detest Cosmo the Great. I am sorry, either that he was so able a man, or so successful a man. When tyrants are great men, they should miscarry; if they are fools, they will miscarry of course. Pray, is there any picture of Camilla Martelli, Cosmo's last wife? I had never heard of her. The dolt, his son, I find, used her ill, and then did the same thing. Our friend, Bianca Capello, it seems, was a worthless creature. I don't expect much entertainment but from the life of Ferdinand the Great. It is true, I have dipped into the others, particularly into the story of Cosmo the Third's wife, of whom I had read much in French Mémoires, and into that of John Gaston, which was so fresh when I was at Florence; but as the author, in spite of the Great-Duke's injunctions, has tried to palliate some of the worst imputations on Cosmo and his son Ferdinand, so he has been mighty modest about the Caprean amours of John Gaston and his elder brother.* Adieu! I have been writing a volume here myself. Pray, remember to answer me about Camilla Martelli. P.S. Is there any china left in the Great-Duke's collection, made by Duke Francis the First himself? Perhaps it was lately sold with what was called the refuse of the wardrobe; whence I hear some

* Prince Ferdinand, who died in 1713, in the lifetime of his father, Cosmo the Third. Sir Horace Mann, who personally knew John Gaston the last Grand-Duke of the Medician line, is stated by Sir Nathaniel Wraxall to have related to him at Florence, in the year 1779, the following particulars: "John Gaston was one of the most superior and accomplished men the present century has witnessed, if his immoderate pursuit of pleasure had not enervated his mind and debilitated his frame. He became, long before his death, incapable of continuing his family; but that inability did not occasion its extinction. A sort of fatality seemed to hang over the House of Medicis, and to render ineffectual all the measures adopted for its prolongation. When the fact was ascertained, that John Gaston could not perpetuate his line, the Cardinal Hippolito de Medicis, his uncle, was selected for that purpose; a dispensation from his ecclesiastical vows being previously obtained from the Papal See. The only and the indispensable object of the marriage being the attainment of heirs male to the Grand Duchy, in order to prevent its seizure by foreign violence, or its incorporation with the Austrian, French, or Spanish monarchies, all Italy was searched in order to find a young and handsome Princess from whom might be expected a numerous family. A Princess of Mirandola, on whom the selection fell, seemed to unite every requisite qualification. The nuptials were solemnized; and the bridegroom. being of a feeble constitution, as well as advanced in life, it was plainly insinuated to the lady, that, for reasons of state necessity, she must produce an heir. The most amiable youths and pages about the Court were purposely thrown in her way, and every facility was furnished that might conduce to the accomplishment of the object; but so sacredly did she observe her marriage vow, that no seductions could make an impression on her, and she remained without issue. Her husband died, and was followed by John Gaston. France having acquired Lorraine, and Don Carlos being made sovereign of Naples, Tuscany was delivered over by the great Continental powers as a conquered or forfeited country to Francis, Duke of Lorraine; but, no sooner had these events taken place, than Hippolito's widow, who had surmounted every temptation to inconstancy during his life, gave the reins to her inclinations, and brought into the world two or three children within a few years. It was thus that Florence, the repository of so many invaluable monuments of Greek and Roman sculpture, collected during successive centuries, together with the territories dependent upon it, passed into the Austrian family." Hist. Mem.. vol. i. p. 281.-ED.

charming things were purchased, particularly the Medallion* of the Medici by Benvenuto Cellini. That sale and the History are enough to make the old Electresst shudder in her coffin.

LETTER CCCLXV.

Berkeley Square, Dec. 21, 1781.

THERE have been no events, except Parliamentary debates, since my last, till last Monday; when news came of Sir Eyre Coote's having defeated Hyder Ally in India, and when we were flattered with promising hopes of Admiral Kempenfelt's demolishing and disappointing the French expedition from Brest to the West Indies. Our Admiral had fallen into the thick of their transports, of which nineteen had struck. Commodore Elliot was engaged with the French Admiral, and had dismasted him; and, when the express came away, Kempen. felt was bearing down with the wind to attack the squadron, which he had been told did not out-number his own fourteen. You may judge how our hopes and impatience rose and increased. I waited till four the next day, when being to dine and pass the evening with Princess Amelia, which I knew would prevent my writing, though post-night, I sent to beg your nephew, if any good news should come, to write to you incontinently. He was not come to town, but was expected every minute. Alas! before I left the Princess, we heard that a second express was just arrived, that our Admiral, besides the fourteen hostile ships, had discovered five more, each mounting 110 or 112 guns; and that, not thinking it prudent to encounter so superior a force, he had retreated, and brought away but fourteen transports, containing about nine hundred men. Neither all of them, nor he himself, are yet arrived, and the expedition has probably continued its course, and there is new danger to our West India islands.

Perhaps we have not received a worse blow than this disappointment. If Lord Sandwich can weather it, he will be skilful or fortunate indeed! In one word, what can be said either for his having no intelligence of five ships of such magnitude, or for despatching Kempenfelt with only fourteen, when Rodney was not sailed, and when we have several more ships lying in port at Portsmouth? Most mouths are opened against him, not only in Opposition and in town, but at Court. Lord Rocking ham did commence the attack the very next day in the Lords, § though

*They were only small models in wax, and were purchased by Sir William Hamilton.

The Electress Palatine Dowager, sister of John Gaston the last Great-Duke of the House of Medici, whom she survived, returned to Florence on her husband's death, and died there.

On the 1st of July, Sir Eyre Coote gained a signal victory over Hyder Ally at Porto Novo; his own forces consisting of only ten thousand men, while those of Hyder amounted to one hundred and fifty thousand.-ED.

The Marquis of Rockingham complained in the House of Lords, on the 19th,

not in form; and one piece of luck has already happened to the Great Delinquent, that the Parliament adjourns to-day for the holidays, and will give him a temporary reprieve for manœuvres and defence, if new calamities do not inflame exasperation.

The king of France is said to have sent for Cardinal de Bernis to be Prime Minister again; but that you must know better than I. I am interrupted, and must finish.

LETTER CCCLXVI.

Strawberry Hill, Dec. 28, 1781.

I HAVE gone regularly through three volumes of the House of Medici, and dipped into a good deal of the fourth. It is rather not well written than ill written; the style is more languid than faulty, and thence neither interests nor disgusts. What pleases me most is, that, besides the two first Great-Dukes being great men, Cosmo the Second and Ferdinand the Second were very good princes; and though John Gaston was very vicious, he was not a bad prince: a much larger proportion of good and great, out of seven, than happens to most sovereign families; perhaps to most elevated families. Francis the First seems to have had no virtues; Cosmo the Third would, some few centuries ago, have passed for the best of all; because a proud silly bigot, who impoverished his subjects to enrich the clergy. In short, I like the author's general impartiality; and though he sometimes spares his Florentine masters, he has no criminal favour for the rest of the Kings of Europe. I wish the line of Popes were extinct, like the Medici, that the world might have a chance of seeing their true history too. Indeed, Galuzzi gives it roundly, when it comes his way; so much, that I imagine that to have been the chief motive to the publication, and to have originated with Cæsar himself,* who may perhaps have an eye to some imperial fiefs usurped by the Popes. The author's severity on such a succession of rascals makes one trust him when he speaks well of any of them. How shameless do others of them appear, when one finds them extending their impudent encroachments, after so large a part of Europe had opened its eyes! On the other hand, how must we English smile at their opposite folly,

of the want of exertion on the part of the Admiralty, and reminded their Lordships of the declaration of Lord Sandwich a session or two ago, that a First Lord of the Admiralty deserved to lose his head, if he did not at all times take care to have a navy fit to face that of the House of Bourbon.. The recent affair of Admiral Kempenfelt was, he said, but one addition to the many proofs of our inferiority. In the House of Commons, Admiral Keppel also complained, that the Admiralty had not given Admiral Kempenfelt, though a favourite, a sufficient force. He added, that upon the expedition from Brest to the West Indies depended the safety of our is lands; and that, if a proper use had been made of our force, the Count de Rochambeau would never have been able to land in America, and consequently the surrender of Lord Cornwallis would not have taken place.-ED.

The Emperor Joseph II.

in seeing them refuse a dispensation for a match with a heretic to our wretched James the First, at the instigation of old Mother Bellarmine! That part is very new to us, and, if Lord Clarendon came to the knowledge of it, he suppressed it; for, though a sincere Protestant, he had so much of the Church in him, that, like the motto on their bells, "Fear God, honour the King," he was always swinging between both. I like the author, too, for touching on the knavery of two of my noble authors, the good Earls of Salisbury* and Northampton ;† and still more so for the justly bitter things he says of Louis XIII. and Richelieu. He is rather too severe on Henry IV. and Sully; if the first was too easy and good-humoured, and the latter too œconomic a politician to be strictly just, one may rejoice rather than weep when nations have no worse reproaches to make to their governors. The part that diverted me the most, in a ludicrous light, was the Court of the Archbishop of Florence condemning the Parliament of England to pay eight millions two hundred thousand pounds sterling to Dudley, Duke of Northumberland,--another of my noble authors! One would think that Court had existed in the present age, when foreigners thinkI fear I must now say thought-there could be no end of our wealth. I wonder such stupendous ideas of our opulence did not weigh with Paul the Fifth to grant the dispensation, in spite of conscientious Bellarmine. Be it remembered for once, that churchmen were more scrupulous than rapacious.

I asked you whether there was any picture of Camilla Martelli. I have found a print of her, among the hundred heads of the House of Medici, by Allegrini. You cannot imagine how pleased I am to find that I have lost so little either of my Italian or of my memory of Florence, after so long a disuse. I am sorry you never mention any

Sir Robert Cecil, first Earl of Salisbury, "who had the good fortune," says Walpole in his Royal and noble Authors, "to please both Queen Elizabeth and King James the First; who, like the son of the Duke of Lerma, had the uncommon fate of succeeding his own father as Prime Minister: and who, unlike that son of Lerma, did not, though treacherous to every body else, supplant his own father."-ED.

"Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton, younger son of the famous Earl of Surrey, said to be the most learned among the nobility, and the most noble among the learned. Lady Bacon, the severe and froward, but upright mother of Sir Francis, often warns her son against him, calling Howard 'a dangerous intelligencing man, and no doubt a subtle papist inwardly, a very instrument of the Spanish papists! Pretending courtesy, he worketh mischief perilously. I have long known him and observed him. His workings have been stark naught.' In another place she calls him 'subtiliter subdolus, and a subtle serpent.' Sir Henry Weldon speaks of him as the grossest flatterer alive." Royal and Noble Authors.-ED.

Robert Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, "called," says Walpole, "the na tural son, probably the legitimate son, of the great Earl of Leicester. He was educated under Sir Thomas Chaloner, the accomplished governor of Prince Henry, and distinguished his youth by martial achievements, and by useful discoveries in the West Indies, but it was the House of Medici, those patrons of learning and talents, who fostered this enterprising spirit, and who were amply rewarded for their munificence by his projecting the free port of Leghorn. He flourished in their court, and that of the Emperor, who declared him Duke of Northumberland; a dukedom remarkably confirmed to his widow, whom Charles the First, in 1644, created Duchess Dudley.”—ED.

of my acquaintance there: no doubt, most of them are gone off; but you would oblige me by naming such as are still alive. This letter is a parenthesis between our present momentous politics, written in the holidays, in the solitude and silence of Strawberry. I shall finish it in town, whither I shall go in two days, expecting to hear new disasters.

Monday night, 31st.

I have this moment received yours of the 13th by your third courier, with those inclosed for your nephew and mine. I imagine the former is not in town, but I shall send it to his house; the other never is, but the mere hours of his waiting; but I have sealed, directed, and sent it to the post. The monument* will not be dear, but it is ugly enough in conscience. Yet, what signifies that, or the blunders? Over the arms is a baron's coronet, I suppose to imply my Lady's barony of Clinton; yet it should not be there, for the shield containing only the arms of Walpole and some of the quarterings, makes it represent only a Baron Walpole; that is, my brother before my father's death. To signify Lady Clinton, it ought to be her arms quartering Clinton in a shield of pretence in the middle of her husband's arms, or rather in the same manner, but in a lozenge, as a widow; for the barony did not descend to her in my brother's life. But all this would be algebra to a Florentine sculptor; nor do I wish to have it clear for whom it was designed,-nor, if known, will any English herald or antiquary probably ever see it. My Lord, in this past month, determined on an expedition to visit his new domains in Dorset and Devon shires, and his seats at Piddletown and Heanton were ordered to be aired and prepared for his reception, and Lucas was despatched to the latter (in Devonshire) to notify his arrival, and invite the neighbouring gentry to the ceremony of inauguration. The Earl followed, arrived at Piddletown (in Dorsetshire,) changed his mind, returned to his hovel at Eriswell, and left Lucas to tell the other county how perfectly his Lordship is in his senses.

I have not found a tittle of news in town; therefore I shall send this away by the post to-morrow, and write again by the return of your courier, if I hear any novelty.

Pray, whose is the portrait that my Lord has so tenderly re-demanded? The Countess certainly did not love any picture of our family enough to lug it behind her chaise to Italy, as Lady Pomfret did Lady Bell Finch's, for which you remember she had a new frame made in every town she stopped at. Perhaps it is his grandpapa Jack Harris's, or Mr. Sewallis Shirley's, the latter of whom had some claim to be registered on the future monument. In my Lord's fit of posthumous piety he may have grown fond, too, of step-grandfathers and fathers, though he has not yet acquired affection for those who passed for his real progenitors.

* The one intended for Lady Orford, at Leghorn.—ED.

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