Walter Harte (1709–1774)

Mr. Eliot, with whom Dr. Walter Harte had travelled, talked to us of his History of Gustavus Adolphus, which he said was a very good book in the German translation. JOHNSON. ' Harte was excessively vain. He put copies of his book in manuscript into the hands of Lord Chesterfield and Lord Granville, that they might revise it. Now how absurd was it to suppose that two such noblemen would revise so big a manuscript. Poor man! he left London the day of the publication of his book, that he might be out of the way of the great praise he was to receive ; and he was ashamed to return, when he found how ill his book had succeeded. It was unlucky in coming out on the same day with Robertson's History of Scotland'. His [Essays on] husbandry, however, is good.' BOSWELL. ' So he was fitter for that than for heroick history : he did well, when he turned his sword into a plough-share.' -- Boswell, Life of Johnson, and again:

Speaking of Mr. Harte, Canon of Windsor, writer of The History of Gustavus Adolphus, he much commended him as a scholar, and a man of the most companionable talents he had ever known. He said, the defects in his history proceeded not from imbecility but from foppery. "… (mais)