You did me the honour of asking me for my “Castle of Otranto,” for your library at Cowslip Green.  May I, as a printer, rather than as an author, beg leave to furnish part of a shelf there? and as I must fetch some of the books from Strawberry Hill, will you wait till I can send them all together?  And will you be so good as to tell me whither I shall send them, or how direct and convey them to you at Bristol?  I shall have a satisfaction in thinking that they will remain in your rising cottage (in which, I hope, you will enjoy a long series of happy hours); and that they will sometimes, when they and I shall be forgotten in other places, recall to Miss More’s memory her very sincere humble servant.

(596) Now first collected.

(597) In a letter to Walpole, written at this time from Cowslip Green, Miss More says, “When I sit in a little hermitage I have built in my garden,-not to be melancholy in, but to think upon my friends, and to read their works and letters,-Mr. Walpole seldomer presents himself to my mind as the man of wit than as the tender-hearted and humane friend of my dear infirm, broken-spirited Mrs. Vesey.  One only admires talents, and admiration is a cold sentiment, with which affection has commonly nothing to do; but one does more than admire them when they are devoted to such gentle purposes.  My very heart is softened when I consider that she is now out of the way of your kind attentions’ and I fear that nothing else on earth gives her the smallest pleasure.”  Memoirs, vol ii, p. 72-E.

(598) This highly-gifted young lady had, in the preceding year, been appointed keeper of the robes to the Queen.-E.

Letter 311 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.  Strawberry Hill, June 17, 1787. (page 393)

I have very little to tell you since we met but disappointments, and those of no great consequence.  On Friday night Lady Pembroke wrote to me that Princess Lubomirski was to dine with her the next day, and desired to come in the morning to see Strawberry.  Well, my castle put on its robes, breakfast was prepared, and I shoved another company out of the house, who had a ticket for seeing it.  The sun shone, my hay was cocked, we looked divinely; and at half an hour after two, nobody came but a servant to Lady Pembroke, to say her Polish altitude had sent her word she had another engagement in town that would keep her too late:-so Lady Pembroke’s dinner was addled; and we had nothing to do, but, like good Christians, if we chose it, to compel every body on the road, whether they chose it or not, to come in and eat our soup and biscuits.  Methinks this liberum veto was rather impertinent, and I begin to think that the partition of Poland was very right.