| Description | Tunbridge wells 14th September
1805
Dear Sir
I feel quite ashamed
on looking at the date of your kind
and flattering letter
I have suffered
more than a month to elapse without
acknowledging it. I had left town
for the summer when your protege
Mr Phillips brought it, and of course
have not had the pleasure of making
his personal acquaintance. I however
lost no time on its being transmitted
to me to give orders that not only
everything in my house might be
shewn him but that every convenience
might be afforded him for copying
at his greatest care and leisure whatever
he might think worthy of any attention.
I think myself highly honoured indeed,
my dear Sir by the great compliment
you pay my taste, in thinking that
the forms and ornaments I have adopted
in the arrangement and finishing of my
little collection of art can in any degree
add to the merit of the interesting
and useful productions that issue from
your intensive and magnificent establishment.
at the same time I observed
to Mr Phillips that if there was any
novelty in my house, it was only in
the application of very old forms,
that if the forms of my furniture
were more agreeable than the generality
of those one met with, it was only
owing to my having not servibly imitated
but endeavoured to make myself master
of the spirit of the antique. that
consequently imitating me was only
imitating the imitator and that he
would do better still in applying
at once to the fountain head to
those sources of beauty which lay
open to every body I mean the
most approved works on ancient
art: Sir William Hamilton’s vases ,
Winckelman’s [P……?], [S…..?]
Athens, Ionian antiquities &c. &c. &c.
beauty consists not in
ornaments it consists in outline
where this is elegant and well understood
the simplest object will be pleasing
without a good outline , the richest
and most decorated will only appear
tawdry. Ornaments can only be of use
after we have sufficiently surveyed and
dwelt upon the perfection of the whole
to make us find new pleasure in examining
the detail. but for that reason it
should always appear to be subordinate
particularly in objects of utility
I most sincerely regret my dear Sir
that your health far from mending should
as you seem to say be still more [in….]
than when I had the pleasure of paying
my respects to you at Soho. you are
in the predicaments of a sovereign who
cannot quit his capital and no capital
Ever diffused such beneficial influence
over a whole country as that of your
creating does, in the midst of which you live
I have the honour to remain with the highest
regard dear sir your most [honoured?] and obliged
humble servant
Tho. Hope |