AN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY CORRESPONDENCE.* IT is never safe to say that

unread letters have in them nothing of interest. For interest is a word of many meanings. As applied to letters it may imply attractiveness either of subject or of treatment. It may have its origin in the import- ance of the matter, or in the fact that between correspondents of such mark the matter should be so trivial. It may depend on the lightness of touch which enabled Cowper and Charles lianib to invest the smallest incident with literary charm, or -on the severity that betrays the restraint under which the letters must have been written. A chance reference to a third person may light up a whole page of commonplaces, or what the writer discloses of himself or his correspondent may go .far towards explaining an inconsistency which has puzzled historians. Sanderson Miller, whose correspondence has been .edited by two ladies, " was a Warwickshire squire, with a genius for architecture and friendship, whose talents brought 'him into contact with many of the leading men of his day." The letters he wrote or received for more than forty years —the earliest bears the date of 1734, the latest of 1779—were selected and arranged by himself; but it was not until a hundred and thirty years after that the thought of publishing them occurred to his great-grandson. Upon his death the work was taken up by the present editors, and the result is a volume which introduces us to "the everyday life of a group of men many of whom played an important part in the history of their country. We learn at first hand what they thought of the Broad Bottom Ministry, of the Oxfordshire election of 1754, of the loss of Minorca, the execution of Byng, and all the various political changes of the last fifteen years of George II."

• An Eighteentli-Centun Correspondence. Edited by Lilian Elaine and Mary Stanton. London John Murray. [15s. net.] The letters from Deane Swift have been wisely given a, place to themselves. Unlike the others, they have very little reference to contemporary affairs. The writer was an Oxford friend of Miller's, and a cousin of Jonathan Swift's, who, in a letter to Pope, says of him :—" He hath a very good taste for wit, writes agreeable and entertaining verses, & is a perfect master equally skilled in the best Greek & Roman authors. He has a true spirit for liberty, & with all these advantages is extremely decent & modest." The letters are not unworthy of the praise here bestowed on the writer, and one of them does us the service of adding another touch to the terrible picture of Swift's last days. Lord Orrery had asked whether, on catching sight of himself in a looking-glass, the Dean had really exclaimed, "O poor old man! " His cousin inquires into the story, and, though the servants cannot recollect what the actual words were, he thinks there may be some truth in it, for " on Sunday the 17th of March (1744) as he sat in the chair, upon the housekeeper moving a knife from him as he was going to catch it, he shrugged his shoulders & rocking himself said, am what I am, I am what I ' : &about six' minutes afterwards repeated the same words two or three times over."

Deane Swift's wife is even a better letter-writer than her husband. We quote parts of a letter she wrote to Miller some four months after her marriage :—

"I have been teizing your idle, last., indolent friend this week past to answer your letter ; but never could prevail on him to sit down to do it, therefore to be revenged & to obey your commands I have done it myself; if you will joyn secretly with me the following hints may perhaps perplex him enough to inquire who could give you these accounts ; nor can you be at a loss to mention a poetical Familiar; who are so well acquainted with sylphs & gnomes; I think the latter comes nearest the character of a wife who enters into a combination against her husband. Know then that your once gay, rambling friend has dwindled into a cheerfull agreeable Husband, that goeth to bed at eleven o'clock, can lye till nine in the morning, then reads two or three hours to me while I am stitching, vissit with me or receive our common friends with me in the afternoon, or play at home the old sober family game of whisk for a trifle, and finish the evening with a single bottle of wine, and three or four agreeable persons of either sex: as for a -Coffee House he hath forgot the way to it, and I verily believe doth not know whether wine be sold in a Tavern or in a Chandler's shop Have you not expected for some minutes an apology half as long as my letter, for blundering and scrawling, a bad pen and a room full of company, with a thousand other such female excuses and not a word of truth in them all ! but this I do assure you may be depended on, that in twenty letters I write nineteen bath ten times as many of these faults. I have been studying this half hour for some witty, smart, genteel thought to finish my letter with and at last I have hit on one that I believe you will say is clever and new.—I am, Sir, your most humble and most obedient servant, Mary Swift."

Here, again, is a postscript to one of her husband's letters written a month later :— " Sir, I think a Lady that receives a Gentleman's picture with pleasure may reasonably be supposed to connive at her confidant's sending hers in return. I know Mr. Swift's vanity made the best of it to you, perhaps imagining you might never be undeoeived but take it from a person that loves her better than he can [that's impossible D.S.] Her height indeed I cannot brag much of being about three ft, yet if she were rolled out she might be of a tolerable size, her complexion [as bright as an angel's (D.S.)1 if one shade brighter than a deep French yellow, with great staring eyes [blue, radiant like Minerva's (D.S.)] which might have been the fashion 2000 years agoe ; if you like this kind of beauty I venture to say she is very much your humble servant M. Swift."

Prettily turned trifles that come to light after being buried for over a century and a half, they have a charm quite out of proportion to their real value.

The event which finds the largest mention in these letters is the Oxfordshire election of 1754. It was remarkable for its cost, for the excitement it caused both in the constituency and in Parliament, and for the want of any real ground of

difference between the combatants. For the two seats there were four candidates. " All four were residents in the county and men of property and position,"—the one in whom Miller was most interested being a principal correspondent of his, Sir Edward Turner. He and Lord Parker "represented the New or Whig Interest, the others the Old or Tory Interest,"

and, except that the Tories were still suspected of Jacobite leanings, the politics of the two sides were nearly identical. As a consequence of this, the literature on both sides was mainly personal. Sir Edward Turner had made himself very unpopular at Banbury. He had done his best to stamp out cattle disease in the county, and this made it necessary to interfere with the local markets. " You can't imagine," writes Lord Guilford, the father of the more famous Lord North, " what resentment and prejudice against Sir Edward Turner reigns in the Corpora- tion of Banbury. Had I expressed a zeal for his interest I should have hurt my self there and done him very little more good than I have as it is. I have a personal regard for him and sincerely wished him success." The candidate does not seem to have set much store by this sort of support, for Lord- Guilford goes on-r--" By the letter to you he seems out of humour with me & writes as if he

thought I either wished to hurt him or grudged a little meat & drink to the few freeholders I had engaged." The supply of meat and drink was evidently a matter of importance, for in another letter Sir Edward Turner regrets that while " Lord Macclesfield & other gentlemen are doing on the Chiltern

side what bath been done very liberally at Burford, Witney, &a., Banbury and its Neighbourhood bath been neglected!

it surely doth not deserve so ungrateful a distinction !" But Sir Edward is not implacable. "If His Lordship doth not care to treat his particular voters will he suffer his Steward to advance anything towards a Confederate entertainment ?" And he entreats Miller to hint to his Lordship that " the Promoters of the NEW INTEREST IN GENERAL are uneasy at not being at Liberty to take Notice of Banbury." Indeed, the sad contrast between Banbury and the rest of the country distresses him. "An hogshead of wine and more drank at Watlington," a Blanket Feast at Witney, and nothing done at Banbury ! Lord Guilford replies that as he has many worthy neighbours in Banbury who think differently from him in politics, and has a great deal of satisfaction in living upon good terms with them, he wishes to keep out of electioneering quarrels. His principal attention must always be to the Corporation of Banbury, and Sir Edward has greatly disgusted this august body by " putting down the markets. Who was in the right I can't tell; but they call him their greatest enemy." He has done all he can for Sir Edward Turner, but could he be expected to do less than tell his friends in Banbury that he will not take it amiss if they give one vote to

Sir James Dashwood ? " Having said this I think I cannot properly give a Treat at Banbury against Sir James." Even on this point, however, he is prepared to yield a little. " Tho' I don't like to have it declared that I am a contributor to the

entertainment, I have no objection to its being thought to have my approbation." Sir Edward Turner declares that this amount of support will be sufficient, and is only anxious that Lord Guilford should not think that he is promoting his own interest when he has only shared the general opinion that " it was pity that the neighbourhood of Banbury should not be taken notice of as well as other parts." In the end the Sheriff made a double return of all four candidates, and the excitement was transferred from the constituency to the Hones of Commons. A scrutiny was ordered, a large number of the votes given for each party were struck out, and in the end Sir Edward Turner and his colleague were declared to be duly elected. Bnt the election cost £'240,000, and as a conse- quence of this expenditure Sir Edward Turner's political career ended with the Parliament.

Our last quotation shall be from a letter of Lord Dame's giving advice on the cure of " the Blew Devils ":—

" Bustle, Bustle : this is the only way. Fly them & plunge into Society : Eat wholesome meals : few flabby or flatulent ones : or that produce bile ; an Batter, Pye crust, etc., etc., your Favourites; Drink not much Tea:. or Coffee, or even Chocolate but with moderation. Let no one thing induce you now to Read too serious or abstracted Books : Don Quixote is better for you than all of them put together, or Gil- Bias, or Tom Jones, or Joseph Andrewes. I must add that (like it or not) you should ride frequently a good round Trott: & walk moderately and takes care of standing still when you are warm to talk or look at your Labourers. Get up early in the morning and never lie and doze tho' you have had a bad night. Drink every day a sup of wine at Dinner or after."

The treatment of nervous breakdown is not greatly changed from what it was a hundred and fifty years ago.

We cannot pretend to have done justice to this book. The letters touch on so many subjects, and are arranged so strictly in order of time, that it is difficult to bring their contents into anything approaching an orderly arrangement. But the reader will not share the reviewer's objection to the method the editors have adopted. He will rather welcome the continual variety that they offer him.