more, so that I doubt if you received my little lette about him. Mason is still here: we are all mighty glad he is in orders, and no better than any of us Pray inform me if Dr. Clarke is come to town and where he is fixed, that I may write to him, angry as he is. My compliments to my friend Mrs. Wharton, to your mother, and all the little gentry. I am ever, dear Doctor, most sincerely

ACCORDING to my reckoning, Mrs. Wharton should have been brought to bed before this time; yet you say not a syllable of it. If you are so loth to publish your productions, you cannot wonder at the repugnance I feel, to spreading abroad mine. But in truth, I am not so much against publishing, as against publishing this alone. I have two or three ideas more in my head; what is to come of them? must they too come out in the shape of little sixpenny flams, dropping one after another, till Mr. Dodsley thinks fit to collect them with Mr. this's song, and Mr. t'other's epigram, into a pretty volume! I am sure Mason must be sensible of this,

* His Ode on the Progress of Poetry.-Mason.

upon the ear, which scarce perceives the regula return of metres, at so great a distance from on another. To make it succeed, I am persuaded the stanzas must not consist of above nine lines each at the most. Pindar has several such odes.

Lord Strathmore is come, and makes a tall genteel figure in our eyes. His tutors and he appear to like one another mighty well. When we know more of him than his outside, you and the historian shall hear of it. I am going to ask a favour of you, which I have no better pretence for doing, than that I have long been used to give you trouble. It is that you would go to the London Insurance office, in Birchin-lane, for me, and pay two insurances; one of my house at Wanstead, (Policy, No. 9675.) the other of that in Cornhill (No. 23470.) from Lady-day next, to Lady-day 1756. The first is twenty shillings, the second, twelve shillings; and be pleased to enclose the two receipts (stamped) in a cover, and send them to me. The sooner the better, for I am always in a little apprehension, during this season of conflagrations. I know you will excuse me, and therefore will make no excuses. I cannot think of coming to town till some time in April, myself.

I know you have wrote a very obliging letter to Tuthill, but as I have not seen it, and he is not in my way at present, I leave him to answer for himself. Adieu, dear Sir, and make my compliments to your family. I am ever yours,

forms a number of bays little and great, that ap pear glittering in the midst of thick groves of them Add to this the Fleet (for I was at Portsmouth two days before it sailed) and the number of vessels always passing along, or sailing up Southampton river, (which is the largest of these bays I mention) and enters about ten miles into the land, and you will have a faint idea of the South. From Fareham to Southampton, where you are upon a level with the coast, you have a thousand such peeps and delightful openings; but would you see the whole at once, you must get upon Ports-down, five miles upon this side Portsmouth. It is the top of a ridge that forms a natural terrass three miles long, literally not three times broader than Windsor-terrass, with a gradual fall on both sides, and covered with a turf like Newmarket. To the North, opens Hampshire and Berkshire, covered with woods, and interspersed with numerous gentlemen's houses and villages, to the South, Portsmouth, Gosport, &c. just at your foot in appearance, the Fleet, the sea winding and breaking in bays into the land, the deep shade of tall oaks in the enclosures, which become blue, as they go off to distance. Porchestercastle, Calshot-castle, and all the Isle of Wight, in which you plainly distinguish the fields, hedgerows, and woods, next the shore, and a back ground of hills behind them. I have not seen a more magnificent or more varied prospect. I have been also at Tichfield, at Netly-abbey (a most beautiful ruin