“Lord Orford feels himself sensibly obliged by Mr. Edwards allowing Miss Berry to communicate to him the fragment of the Life of Lorenzo de’ Medici. Lord O. has not enjoyed so much and such unexpected pleasure for a
subject, which I well know is unnecessary between us, and from the weight of which I find a great relief in the perfect consciousness of my own mind, that the affectionate attachment you have shown me, and which has surmounted so many trials, cannot exceed that which I trust you well know is so sincerely felt by me in return.” * The satisfaction expressed by Mr. Roscoe at the judgment of Lord Orford seems to have excited the spleen of Fuseli. “I understand,” he says in a letter to Mr. Roscoe, “that Lord Orford, the quondam Horace Walpole, has given an ample suffrage to what he saw of “Lorenzo.” That he should have done so surprises me not, but I am a little hurt at your having wished for it. The editor of Vertue’s trash should not have had much consequence in your eyes, though I shall not deny that there are disjecti membra poetæ in the “Mysterious Mother.” |
LIFE OF WILLIAM ROSCOE. | 155 |