The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 by Philip Wharton;Grace Wharton
page 58 of 304 (19%)
page 58 of 304 (19%)
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of science, and to leave the thorns behind.' To how few of the gifted
have the means of gratification been permitted! to how many has hard work been allotted! Then, when genius has been endowed with rank, with wealth, how often it has been degraded by excess! Rochester's passions ran riot in one century: Beckford's gifts were polluted by his vices in another--signal landmarks of each age. But Horace Walpole was prudent, decorous, even respectable: no elevated aspirations, no benevolent views ennobled under the _petitesse_ of his nature. He had neither genius nor romance: he was even devoid of sentiment; but he was social to all, neighbourly to many, and attached to some of his fellow-creatures. The 'prettiest bauble' possible, as he called Strawberry Hill, 'set in enamelled meadows in filigree hedges,' was surrounded by 'dowagers as plenty as flounders;' such was Walpole's assertion. As he sat in his library, scented by caraway, heliotropes, or pots of tuberose, or orange-trees in flower, certain dames would look in upon him, sometimes _malgrê lui_, sometimes to his bachelor heart's content. 'Thank God!' he wrote to his cousin Conway, 'the Thames is between me and the Duchess of Queensberry!' Walpole's dislike to his fair neighbour may partly have originated in the circumstance of her birth, and her grace's presuming to plume herself on what he deemed an unimportant distinction. Catherine Hyde, Duchess of Queensberry, was the great-granddaughter of the famous Lord Clarendon, and the great-niece of Anne, Duchess of York. Prior had in her youth celebrated her in the 'Female Phaëton,' as 'Kitty:' in his verse he begs Phaëton to give Kitty the chariot, if but for a day. In reference to this, Horace Walpole, in the days of his admiration of her grace, had made the following impromptu:-- |
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