The third is Dr. Brown, that mountebank, who for a little time made as much noise by his Estimate, as ever quack did by a nostrum.  I do not know if I ever told you how much I was struck the only time I ever saw him.  You know one object, and the anathemas of his Estimate was the Italian Opera; yet did I find him one evening, in Passion Week, accompanying some of the Italian singers, at a concert at Lady Carlisle’s.  A clergyman, no doubt, is not obliged to be on his knees the whole week before Easter, and music and a concert are harmless amusements; but when Cato or Calvin are out of character, reformation becomes ridiculous—­but poor Dr. Brown was mad,(378) and therefore might be in earnest, whether he played the fool or the reformer.

You recollect, perhaps, the threat of Dr. Kippis to me, which is to be executed on my father, for my calling the first edition of the Biographia the Vindicatio Britannica—­but observe how truth emerges at last!  In his new volume he confesses that the article of Lord Arlington, which I had specified as one of the most censurable, is the one most deserving that censure, and that the character of Lord Arlington is palliated beyond all truth and reason"-words stronger than mine—­yet mine deserved to draw vengeance on my father! so a Presbyterian divine inverts divine judgment, and visits the sins of the children on the parents!

Cardinal Beaton’s character, softened in the first edition, gentle Dr. Kippis pronounces “extremely detestable”—­yet was I to blame for hinting such defects in that work!—­and yet my words are quoted to show that Lord Orrery’s poetry was ridiculously bad.  In like manner Mr. Cumberland, who assumes the whole honour of publishing his grandfather’s Lucan, and does not deign to mention its being published at Strawberry Hill, (though by the way I believe it will be oftener purchased for having been printed there, than for wearing Mr. Cumberland’s name to the dedication,) and yet he quotes me for having praised his ancestor in one of my publications.  These little instances of pride and spleen divert me, and then make me reflect sadly on human weaknesses.  I am very apt myself to like what flatters my opinions or passions, and to reject scornfully what thwarts them, even in the same persons.  The more one lives, the more one discovers one’s uglinesses in the features of others!  Adieu! dear Sir; I hope you do not suffer by this severe season.

P. S. I remember two other instances, where my impartiality, or at least sincerity, have exposed me to double censure.  You perhaps condemned my severity on Charles the First; yet the late Mr. Hollis wrote against me in the newspapers, for condemning the republicans for their destruction of ancient monuments.  Some blamed me for undervaluing the Flemish and Dutch pictures in my preface to the Aedes Walpolianae.  Barry the painter, because I laughed at his extravagances, says, in his rejection of that school, “But I leave them to be admired by the Hon. Horace Walpole, and such judges.”  Would not one think I had been their champion!