to Edmond Malone.
��And now for my friend. The appearance of Malone's Shake speare on the 29th November was not attended with any external noise ; but I suppose no publication seized more speedily and surely on the attention of those for whose critical taste it was chiefly intended r . At the Club on Tuesday, where I met Sir Joshua, Dr. Warren, Lord Ossory 2 , Lord Palmerston 3 , Windham, and Burke in the chair, Burke was so full of his anti-French revolution rage, and poured it out so copiously, that we had almost nothing else 4 . He, however, found time
��1 It was published in ten volumes ; ' in fifteen months a large edition was nearly sold.' Unfortunately the type and paper were bad. Prior's Malone, p. 168.
Horace Walpole describes it as ' the heaviest of all books, in ten thick octavos, with notes that are an extract of all the opium that is spread through the works of all the bad play-wrights of that age : mercy on the poor gentleman's patience.' Letters, ix. 326.
2 It was to Lord Ossory's wife that Horace Walpole wrote so many of his letters. In a note to the letter of Feb. i, 1779 (vii. 169), the following quotation is given from Lord Ossory's Memoranda : 'In Italy I became acquainted with Garrick, and from my earliest youth having admired him on the stage, was happy to be familiarly acquainted with him, culti vated his society from that time till his death, and then accompanied him to his grave as one of his pall bearers. He and Mrs. Garrick (I think it was in 1777) have been with us in the country; Gibbon and Reynolds at the same time, all three delightful in society. The vivacity of the great actor, the keen sarcastic wit of the great historian, and the genuine pleasantry of the great painter, mixed up well together, and made a charming party. Garrick's
��mimicry of the mighty Johnson was excellent.'
Reynolds, by his will, left Lord Ossory the first choice of any picture of his own painting. Taylor's Rey nolds, ii. 636.
3 Lord Palmerston, the father of the Prime Minister, when proposed at the Club in 1783 was, writes Johnson, * against my opinion re jected.' Life, iv. 232. He was elected a few months later.
4 Burke, acknowledging Malone's gift of his Shakespeare, sent him his Reflections on the Revolution in France. ' You have sent me gold,' he wrote, ' which I can only repay you in my brass.' Prior's Malone, p. 170.
Horace Walpole wrote of Burke's book (Letters, ix. 268) : ' Every page shows how sincerely he is in earnest a wondrous merit in a political pamphlet. All other party writers act zeal for the public, but it never seems to flow from the heart.'
Burke told Malone, in Sept. 1791, that 18,000 copies had been sold, and 12,000 in Paris of the French trans lation. Prior's Malone, p. 183.
Bennet Langton told H. D. Best that ' Burke was rude and violent in dispute ; instancing, " if any one as serted that the United States were in the wrong in their quarrel with the mother country, or that England
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