LETTERS FROM IRELAND. 365 they lost their mother, and I feel as if it was very naughty in me to have come away so far, and to have put so much land, and a river sixty miles broad, between us, though, as you know, I had very strong reasons for coming. I hope you have got Fanny a proper spelling-book. Have you examined her at all, and discovered what improvement she has made in her reading? You do not tell me whether they have paid and received any visits. If it does not take much room in your next letter, I should be very glad to hear of that. Tell Mary I will not give her away, and she shall be nobody's little girl but papa's. Papa is gone away, but papa will very soon come back again, and see the Polygon across two fields from the trunks of the trees at Camden Town. Will Mary and Fanny come to meet me? I will write them word, if I can, in my next letter or the letter after that, when and how it shall be. Next Sunday, it will be a fortnight since I left them, and I should like if possible to see them on the Sunday after Sunday 20th July. . . . William Godwin to F. Marshal. [DUBLIN, Aug. 2, 1800.] "Mrs Elwes tells me in her letter that I shall be at home on the 3d of August. Probably she had the intelligence from you. From what premisses the conclusion was drawn I know not, but I am apprehensive it will prove in some measure erroneous. My original purpose was to have quitted Dublin the 27th of July, last Saturday, and exactly four weeks from the day I quitted London. I am now writing on Saturday, the 2d of August, one week later, and am seated quietly in Mr Curran's bookroom, in his rural retreat he visits from Dublin. It was originally proposed between him and me that the week now concluding should be spent in an excursion to Wexford, whither he expected to be called for the assizes. That expectation has been frustrated, and he has now prevailed on me to attend him to the assizes at Carlow, and has promised that I shall be on board the packet for England on Thursday evening, the 7th inst. That Thursday, however, will probably be Friday. I then propose, as I believe I have told you already, to walk three days amidst the natural and almost unrivalled beauties of N. Wales, and have a letter of introduction from Mr Grattan to Lady Harriet Butler and Miss Di Ponsonby, two old maids in the vale of Llangollen, with whom I propose to spend a couple of hours. I shall, however, certainly endeavour to give you precise notice of the time of my arrival at the trunks of the trees, which I can at any time by despatching a line from any part of N. Wales, twenty-four hours before I quit it in person. . . . "I wish also that you would write to Arnot immediately, poste-restante, at Fünfkirchen, if there is any chance of your letter reaching its destination in time to cheer the beloved wanderer. Tell him of my absence from London, tell him of my increasing affection and anxiety for his welfare, tell him of my increasing admiration and respect for his narrative. Beg him to give me under his hand an explicit permission to publish his journal in case of any unhappy accident to himself, and an approbation beforehand of my conduct, whatever it shall happen to be. Keep a copy of your letter. "I have kept pretty good company here. Last Wednesday I dined with three countesses-Countess-dowager Moira (it was at her house), Earl and Countess Granard, and Countess Mountcashel, and on Sunday I am to dine at Lady Mountcashel's. I mean to call on Lady Moira the moment I have quitted this letter. But I have not yet seen either Grattan or Ponsonby. They are however, I believe, to dine with us at Mr Curran's barn (as he calls it) to-morrow. He wishes me to go with him to the assizes at Wexford, but that I believe I must decline. They are in the beginning of August. Hitherto there have been daily sittings of the courts of law, and I see nothing of him from breakfast till five o'clock. This will last ten days longer, and I wish much to spend one week with this charming creature when he is at full leisure. On that computation I shall not cross the channel till about the 28th inst. "I am fully sensible to your care of my children and my establishment. Every minute particular that you will be so good as to write to me respecting them will be highly gratifying. LETTERS FROM IRELAND. 36 "I depute to Fanny and Mr Collins, the gardener, the care of the garden. Tell her I wish to find it spruce, cropped, weeded, and mowed at my return; and if she can save me a few strawberries and a few beans without spoiling, I will give her six kisses for them. But then Mary must have six kisses too, because Fanny has six. "It would be highly gratifying if on my return I could find the elaborate repairs and papering of my house finished, the gardendoor erected, and the household linen ready for use. Do not forget the directions of this or my preceding letter, though they should not be repeated in any of my subsequent ones. The Same to the Same. "DUBLIN, Aug. 2, 1800. I begin another letter immediately on despatching its predecessor, as much, I believe, by way of recording my own feelings and adventures, as with a view to any amusement you may derive from the narration. Two persons, as you know, exclusive of Mr Curran, I was particularly desirous of seeing in Ireland, Mr Grattan and the Countess of Mountcashel. This desire I have had a reasonable opportunity of gratifying; and, in addition to this, have been a spectator of a considerable portion of most interesting scenery, which was not in my contemplation when I left England. I saw Mr Grattan, for the first time in Ireland, at Mr Curran's country house, on Saturday the 12th of July, ten days after my arrival at Dublin. He then dined with us, but it was a numerous company, that afforded me very little opportunity of diving into his characteristic qualities. The next day, however, we went over to Grattan's own house, where we arrived in the evening, and slept that and the succeeding night. Mr Curran was obliged on Monday morning to go to Dublin to attend the courts, in consequence of which I had Grattan almost, though not entirely, to myself till dinner-time, when Curran and another person, his companion, returned from Dublin, about 18 English miles. The Sunday of this week I had dined at Lady Mountcashel's, about the same distance from Dublin, and 4 miles from Grattan, in company with Mr Curran. These two days, July 13, 14, were the first time in which I saw any of the beautiful scenery with which Ireland, and especially the county of Wicklow, abounds. I was particularly struck with a scene they call the Scalp, which has, I think, a finer effect than Penmanmawr in N. Wales, as in this latter instance you pass between two vast acclivities of rocks, with immense fragments broken off, and tumbled round you to the right and the left. "With this quantity of gratification I might have rested satisfied. No more than this obtruded itself on my acceptance. But I invited myself to a second and a third dinner with Lady Mountcashel, July 21 and 28, and a second at Grattan's, July 29. On the 28th, Lady Mountcashel conducted me in her cabriole to the Devil's Glen, 20 or 30 miles from Dublin, and infinitely the most stupendous scene I ever saw. You travel for at least a mile and a half surrounded by rocks and mountains, varied and magnificent in their form beyond all imagination, and with a current all the way at the bottom, encumbered with stones of astonishing dimensions, and terminating at the further end in a grand waterfall, which changes its direction two or three times in the descent. You are not here, as in a similar scene nearer Dublin, fettered and hemmed in by the too great nearness of the opposing rocks, but, while cut off, on the one hand, from the whole world, your soul has room to expand in its desert, and savour its divinity. My visit at Grattan's, July 29, was peculiarly fortunate. I spent two mornings with him alone. "And now let me recollect with what degree of kindness and cordiality I have been received in this country. No one has been ignorant who I was; to no one in that sense have I needed an introduction; and by none, so far as I know, have I been received with an unfavourable prepossession. Yet, believe me, I feel no atom intoxicated by the kindness of this people. I am not aware that I have been received with distinguishing or inordinate favour, except by a few. The good opinion of Joseph Cooper Walker, an Irish antiquarian, seems to have been marked with sufficient explicitness. Hugh Hamilton, whom I conceive to be the most. LADY MOUNTCASHEL 369 eminent painter in Dublin, has shown himself enthusiastically partial to me. Mr Curran's kindness has been satisfactory, cordial, animated and unceasing. Grattan conversed with me with perfect familiarity, and answered me on all subjects without reserve, but not one word of personal kindness and esteem towards me ever escaped his lips. Let me observe by the way, that the characters of the two most eminent personages of this country, though sincere and affectionate friends to each other, are strongly contrasted. They are both somewhat limited in their information, and are deficient in a profound and philosophical faculty of thinking. They have both much genius. Grattan, I believe, is generally admitted to be the first orator in the British dominions; and variety and richness of picturesque delineation perpetually mask the slightest sallies of Curran's conversation. But Grattan is mild, gentle, polished, and urbane on every occasion on which I have seen him; Curran is wild, ferocious, jocular, humorous, mimetic and kittenish; a true Irishman, only in the vast portion of soul that informs him, which of course a very ordinary Irishman must be content to want. He is declamatory, and his declamation is apt to grow monotonous, so that I have once or twice on such an occasion, felt inclined to question the basis of my admiration for him, till a moment after a vein of genuine imagination and sentiment burst upon me, and threw contempt and disgrace on my scepticism. I have had the good fortune to hear from him a speech of two hours, in the cause of Latten versus the publisher of a pamphlet by Dr Duigenan, which was tried a little before in England, Erskine being advocate for the plaintiff. Erskine got £500 damages and Curran 6d. ; so disgracefully high does the spirit of party, even in courts of law, run on this side the water. "Lady Mountcashel is a singular character: a democrat and a republican in all their sternness, yet with no ordinary portion either of understanding or good nature. If any of our comic writers were to fall in her company, the infallible consequence would be her being gibbetted in a play. She is uncommonly tall and brawny, with bad teeth, white eyes, and a handsome countenance. She |