THE WENTWORTH PAPERS.* IT may be doubted whether, on principles

of the highest literary morality, the publication of such a volume as the present is altogether defensible. It is quite certain that the horror of the person to whom these letters were addressed, if he could have learnt that they would be lying on our drawing-room tables a. century and a half after his death, would only have been ex- celled by that of the writers,—his mother, wife, brother, or children in most cases. It is quite certain that, if he had dreamed of such a possibility, he would have consigned them

remorselessly to the flames, with all their unconscious self- portraiture, and their intimate, often delicate, and sometimes discreditable details of the private lives of his nearest relations. However, the volume is before us ; and, whether or not this ransacking of dead men's and women's secrets is wholly justi- fiable, we must admit that in this case it has yielded much amusing gossip, and has brought on the stage interesting figures and faces that have long passed into the background of oblivion.

Lord Raby—for so the recipient of these letters was styled

when the volume opens—was grand-nephew of Lucy Hutchin- son, as well as of the Great Earl of Strafford. Of the latter he relates that he "left it as if maxim to our family that an Eng- lishman can't have too many friends, and that people in power should not disoblige the least groom, since no man can tell how things may turn, For,' said he, at the time of his trial, 'Lord 1 how many do I see whom I thought most insignificant, who now sit the heaviest upon me." In the course of the correspondence,. we find his brother picking up for his use in Whitefriars soarce pamphlets referring to the Earl, and offering to supply him with a copy of Strafford's character, as drawn by Clarendon in his newly-published History, and his trial, as related by Rushworth. In 1711 he was created Earl of Strafford ; and though he was Envoy at the Court of Berlin, and afterwards Ambassador at the Hague during several eventful years, he is now chiefly remembered as one of the Plenipotentiaries at the negotiations which led to the Peace of Utrecht. After the unexpected death of Queen Anne had brought back the Whigs to power, his posi- tion became very precarious, and in a few months he was re- called. Thenceforward he took little part in politics, except by occasional correspondence with the King over the water, and was chiefly occupied until his death in 1739 with building Wentworth Castle, and with the not very intellectual pursuits of a country gentleman. This was but a tame ending for a life which had opened with brilliant promise, Our hero seems to have been intended for a military career, and attracted the favourable notice of William III. and Marlborough ; but in spite of his evident preference for a life of action, he gradually drifted into diplomacy, for which he does not seem to have any special aptitudes. pos- sessed

Swift wrote of him that he had

some life and spirit, but was infinitely proud, and "wholly illiterate," and elsewhere that he "can't spell." Yet, though he opposed the appointment of Prior as a co-Plenipotentiary at the Utrecht negotiations, he could write of him that "he has an excellent knack of writing pleasant things, and tells a story in verse the most agreeable that ever I knew." He certainly shows a greater appreciation of literature than the contempo- rary Duke of Bedford, who writes thus to him of a greater than Prior :— "I am sorry the circumstances of Mr. Pope's affairs will not permit, him to come to see me this summer. Your Lordship will be so kind as to snare him that whenever he does me the favour, nobody shall be more welcome. His expression of the honour he has for your Lordship, and the value he puts upon your favour, give me a grectter esteem for him, and a greater opinion of his judgment, than all his other writings besides. I do not know anything he has published that I have not got. I am a subscriber already for his translation of Homer's Odyssee. If there be anything else that he is going to pub. lish, I shall be very glad to be a snbscriber to it."

But whatever Lord Strafford's defects, and however little he • The Wentworth Papers, 1705.1739. Selected from the Private and Family. Om-respondence of Thomas Wentworth, Lord Haby, created in ini Earl of Strap ford. With a Memoir and Notes by James .1. Csrtwright, ALA. Loam: Wyman and Sons. 1883.

may have deserved of posterity by his not very brilliant public career, he certainly seems to have won and retained the strong affection of his near relations and his intimate friends. The volume opens with a series of letters from his mother, who bad been present as bedchamber-woman to the Queen of James II. at the birth of the Old Pretender, and who spent her later years in the society of her numerous pets= Pug' and 'nibs,' and so forth—in somewhat fall-blooded gossip, in promoting the matrimonial and other interests of her son, whom she constantly

characterises as the best of children, and in the various modes of killing time which the manners of the age placed at the

disposal of a woman of high birth and scanty education. This lady, who stands out like a Kneller from the canvas, is, as a rule,

but little interested in politics, though her reading of Baker's Chronicle—her favourite historical work, as it was that of her

contemporary, Sir Roger de Coverley--oceasionally suggests a fear of the recurrence of the Civil War. But she prefers her pets to politics. Sometimes she tells of their droll tricks or their sagacity, sometimes of the destination of a brood of pup- pies. She is disconsolate at the death of 'Fobs,' a special favourite, and we must let her express her sorrow in her own spelling, which has an individuality of its own :—

"I have a moste dismal] story to tell you, God forgiv me for it. I cannot help being more then I ought concerned. I shall never by anything of that kynde quarter soe well again. I had rether lost a hundred pd., nay all the rest of my dome I would have geven to have saved poor, charming Fobs, never poor wretch had a harder death. As it leved see it dyed, full of 10y, leaning ita head in my bosom, never offered to snap at any body in its horrid torter, but nnssle its head to us and luck earnestly upon me and Sue, whoa cryed for

thre days as if it had been for a childe or husband Sure of all its kynd thear never was such a one nor never can be, see many good cazalletys, coo much senc and good nature and cleanly and not one falt; but few human creature had more seno then that had. I could write a quier of paper in her commendations. I have bniryed her in this garden, and thear is a stoan layd at her bead. I leiv all news and the disoription of the Princ his buirying to your brother."

For a considerable time she is occupied in looking out for a town house for her son ; but her opinion of the building of the Queen- Anne period is not so high as that of the dwellers in Bedford Park, and, with the Great Storm fresh in her mind, she looks back with regret to the more solid fabrics of an earlier age. Her affection for her son likewise makes her an inveterate match-maker, and she is continually and obtrusively on the look-out for a bride at once beautiful, wealthy, and high-born.

But Lord Strafford at last very wisely chose a wife for himself, and the union appears to have been a singularly happy one.

Her letters show Lady Strafford to have been clever and viva- cious, devoted to her lord and to their children, passionately fond of show and parade, and tinged with the sensuous world- liness of a somewhat unreflective and self-centred age. Her letters are full of what she calls "chitter-chatter," by no means free from coarseness, but, as a rule, without much malice or bitterness. Here is a specimen of the gossip which was sent to an Ambassador by his Countess in England's "Augustan age ":—

" Next to yon, I believe Lady Wentworth loves me better then any of her childaren. I own I believe sister Betty in her self won'd be very good-hamoned, but my sister Arundel' governs her as won wou'd a child, and she is with her every day, and they get some little od body or othere to play at cards, and such a dirty place sure no body ever went into, and they eat jelly and drink Choekolet from morning tell night I went last week to see our picktnres, and I like them worse then ever I did, for he has made a Dwarfe of you and a Giant of me, and he has not tooched the dressing of them solace you went. I made Capt. Powell scold at hime to mend them, for they are nethere of them like. He is so ingaged with the Marl.

borough daughters that he minds no body else Lady Raw. stern has desired to see all Lady Wentworth's dumb creatures, so I have contrived that the monkey, the parat, and the five doggs shall be all chute up in a chase togethere, and Lady W. in anothere to see they are not run away with. If you don't think this letter long enough the next shall be longer, for you can't be more diverted with reading them than I am with writing 'em, for even talking to you in this way is more pleasing to me then all the conversation in the world besides. I feu some part of this you'll hardly read, for I have speelt it abominably, bat you mast take it for better for worse as you have done me, and to [so] my dearest

soul adieu yours for ever I have been all this day in search of a Ballet made of Lord Treasurer and Mrs. Oglethorp, but could not get it to send to you."

Daring Lord Strafford's absence on the Continent, his brother, Peter Wentworth, equerry successively to Prince George of Denmark, Queen Anne, and George I., sent him the political and Parliamentary news of the day ; and his letters naturally

In-in the most important contribution to history, as it is com- monly understood, that is contained in the volume before us.

His close attendance on the Queen enabled him to give minute particulars of her failing health, which bring home to the reader on how precarious a thread hang the fortunes of the Ring which ruled England in her later years. Peter is not a very attractive character, or a very lively correspondent. An unfortunate addiction to the bottle rather interfered with his success in life, and, it may be feared, shortened his days on what he called "this terestable Glob." At one time, observing that "nobody was so much minded as Members at Court," he was anxious to get into Parliament, and his motives for wishing to serve his country are set forth with commendable frankness. He thought also that public business might enable him to keep his resolution "never to be concerned in liquor again ;" but his brother made no sign, and he never obtained the wished-for opportunity of repairing his broken fortunes at the public expense.

More entertaining than the news-letters of this courtly ne'er- do-well are those of the children of Lord and Lady Strafford, with specimens of some of which we must close. Their only son, Lord Wentworth, writes on a variety of subjects, from the "old dormouse" and the latest Court scandal to Colley Cibber and Fonbert the riding-master. But his favourite theme is evidently none of these. At the age of eleven he writes (we preserve what two or three years before he had characterised.

as his "one spilling ") :—

"We had a very handsome supper, viz., at the upper end cold chikens, next to that a dish of cake paroled almonds aapp biskets [sic], next to that a dish of tarts and chees-cakes, next to that a great custerd, and next to that another dish of biskets parch'd almonds and preserved apricocks, and next a quarter of lamb."

Shortly after, his mother writes, "L. Anne Hervey in- vited my love and I yesterday to a fatt Pig and two Fartridg, which my Jewell eate very well of." In the following year, he describes one " extream good dinner," including "a coop and a pig, and a green goose, and a veal popeats Artichoks and chaw;" followed a few weeks later by "a very good dinner," consisting of " three macerell, beans and bacon and boyl'd chikens, and then

we had four little plates pidgeons, one rabbits [sic], in an other goosberry tart and sparrow grase and no desert." The " fatt piggs " and "beans and bacon" appear to have soon lost their charm, for at the close of the volume we find him writing thus critically to his father, who had just entertained the Duke of

Hamilton :—

" As for the dinner, I am sure his Grace never eat a better or a more genteel one; the only thing which I question being well done was the soup, which generally women-cooks dress sadly, but my mother says Mr. Tod understands cookery as well as his wife, so per- haps on such an occasion he might help her. I dare say the Duke was mightily pleased with his entertainment, but I wonder how poor Lord Clydadale could keep his eyes open so long, for I conclude he did not drink punch as long as the Duke did."

In pleasing contrast to the precocious criticisms of this boy. epicure is this note from his sister, at the age of eight :—

"I told Lady Hariote that you said, as soon as she could speak, you would send her A compliment, and she said thank you Pappa. I also told Lady Lucy, and she desired me to give her duty to you, and says she would have writ, but her nurse would not lot her. Lady Hariote desires you to bring her a Baby [doll]. Pray give my duty to Mamma, and tell her that Lady Lacy's head is much better."

It will be seen that Mr. Cartwright has not consulted the interests exclusively of those who care for "the dignity of history." His selections from the Wentworth correspondence are well chosen, well edited, well printed, and well indexed.