Having thus confessed the truth, I am sure you are too candid and liberal to be offended: you cannot doubt of my high respect for your extraordinary abilities: I am even proud of having discovered them of myself without any clue. I should be very insincere, if I pretended to have gone through with eagerness your last work, which demands more intense attention than my age, eyes, and avocations will allow. I cannot read long together; and you are sensible that your work is not a book to be read by snatches and intervals; especially as the novelty, to me at least, requires some helps to connect it with the me

mory.

THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE TO MR.

PINKERTON.

Strawberry Hill, Aug. 14th, 1789.

I must certainly have expressed myself very awkwardly, dear Sir, if you conceive I meant the slightest censure on your book, much less on your manner of treating it, which is as able and clear and demonstrative as possible. No, it was myself, my age, my want of apprehension and memory, and my total ignorance of the subject, which I intended to blame. I never did taste or study the very ancient histories of nations. I never had a good memory for names of persons, regions, places, which no specific circumstances concurred to make me remember:—and now, at seventytwo, when, as is common, I forget numbers of

VOL. I.

P

names most familiar to me, is it possible I should read with pleasure any work that consists of a vocabulary so totally new to me? Many years ago, when my faculties were much less impaired, I was forced to quit Dow's History of Indostan, because the Indian names made so little impression on me, that I went backward instead of forward, and was every minute reverting to the former page to find about whom I was reading. Your book was a still more laborious work to me; for it contains such a series of argumentation that it demanded a double effort from a weak old head; and, when I had made myself master of a deduction, I forgot it the next day, and had my pains to renew.

These defects have for some time been so obvious to me, that I never read now but the most trifling books; having often said that, at the very end of life, it is useless to be improving one's stock of knowledge, great or small, for the next world.

Thus, Sir, all I have said in my last letter or in this, is an encomium on your work, not a censure or criticism. It would be hard on you, indeed, if my incapacity detracted from your merit.

Your arguments in defence of works of science and deep disquisition are most just; and I am sure I have neither power nor disposition to answer them. You have treated your matter as it ought to be treated. Profound men or conversant in the subject, like Mr. Dempster, will be pleased with it, for the very reasons that made it If Sir Isaac Newton had written

difficult to me.

a fairy tale, I should have swallowed it eagerly; but do you imagine, Sir, that, idle as I am, I am idiot enough to think that Sir Isaac had better have amused me for half an hour, than enlightened mankind and all ages? I was so fair as to confess to you that your work was above me, and did not divert me you was too candid to take that ill, and must have been content with silently thinking me very silly; and I am too candid to condemn any man for thinking of me as I deserve. I am only sorry when I do deserve a disadvantageous character.

Nay, Sir, you condescend, after all, to ask my opinion of the best way of treating antiquities; and by the context, I suppose, you mean, how to make them entertaining. I cannot answer you in one word; because there are two ways, as there are two sorts of readers. I should therefore say, to please antiquaries of judgment, as you have treated them, with arguments and proofs; but, if you would adapt antiquities to the taste of those who read only to be diverted, not to be instructed, the nostrum is very easy and short. You must divert them in the true sense of the word diverto -you must turn them out of the way-you must treat them with digressions nothing or very little to the purpose. But, easy as I call this recipe, you, I believe, would find it more difficult to execute than the indefatigable industry you have employed to penetrate chaos and extract the truth. There have been professors who have engaged to adapt all kinds of knowledge to the meanest capacities.

I doubt their success, at

least on me however, you need not despair; all readers are not as dull and superannuated as, dear Sir, Yours, &c.

THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE TO MR.

PINKERTON.

Strawberry Hill, Aug. 19th, 1789.

I will not use many words, but enough, I hope, to convince you that I meant no irony in my last. All I said of you and myself was very sincere. It is my true opinion that your understanding is one of the strongest, most manly, and clearest I ever knew; and, as I hold my own to be of a very inferior kind, and know it to be incapable of sound, deep application, I should have been very foolish, if I had attempted to sneer at you or your pursuits. Mine have always been light and trifling, and tended to nothing but my casual amusement; I will not say, without a little vain ambition of showing some parts; but never with industry sufficient to make me apply them to any thing solid. My studies, if they could be called so, and my productions, were alike desultory. In my latter age, I discovered the futility both of my objects and writings: I felt how insignificant is the reputation of an author of mediocrity; and that, being no genius, I only added one name more to a list of writers that had told the world nothing but what it could as well be without.

Those reflections were the best proofs of my sense; and, when I could see through my own vanity, there is less wonder at my discovering that such talents as I might have had, are impaired at seventy-two. Being just to myself, I am not such a coxcomb as to be unjust to you. No, nor did I cover any irony towards you, in the opinion I gave you of the way of making deep writings palatable to the mass of readers. Examine my words; and I am sure you will find that, if there was any thing ironic in my meaning, it was levelled at your readers, not at you. It is my opinion that whoever wishes to be read by many, if his subject is weighty and solid, must treat the majority with more than is to his purpose. Do not you believe that twenty name Lucretius, because of the poetic commencement of his books, for five that wade through his philosophy?

I promised to say but little; and if I have explained myself clearly, I have said enough. It is not, I hope, my character to be a flatterer: I do most sincerely think you capable of great things; and I should be a pitiful knave if I told you so, unless it was my opinion; and what end could it serve to me? Your course is but beginning; mine is almost terminated. I do not want you to throw a few daisies on my grave; and, if you make the figure I augur you will, I shall not be a witness to it. Adieu, dear Sir.