LXVII.

TO DR. WHARTON.

Stoke, June 5, 1748.

YOUR friendship has interested itself in my affairs so naturally, that I cannot help troubling you a little with a detail of them.*** And now,

my dear Wharton, why must I tell you a thing so contrary to my own wishes and yours? I believe it is impossible for me to see you in the north, or to enjoy any of those agreeable hours I had flattered myself with. This business will oblige me to be in town several times during the summer, particularly in August, when half the money is to be paid; besides the good people here would think me the most careless and ruinous of mortals, if I should take such a journey at this time. The only satisfaction I can pretend to, is that of hearing from you, and particularly at this time when I was bid to expect the good news of an increase of your family. Your opinion of Diodorus is doubtless right; but there are things in him very curious, got out of better authorities now lost. Do you remember the Egyptian history, and particularly the account of the gold mines? My own readings have been cruelly interrupted: What I have been highly pleased with, is

• The paragraph here omitted contained an account of Mr. Gray's loss of a house by fire in Cornhill, and the expense he should be at in rebuilding it. Though it was insured, he could at this time ill bear to lay out the additional sum necessary for the purpose.

the new comedy from Paris by Gresset, called le Mechant; if you have it not, buy his works all together in two little volumes: they are collected by the Dutch booksellers, and consequently contain some trash; but then there are the Ververt, the epistle to P. Bougeant, the Chartreuse, that to his sister, an ode on his country, and another on mediocrity, and the Sidnei, another comedy, all which have great beauties. There is also a poem lately published by Thomson, called the Castle of Indolence, with some good stanzas in it. Mr. Mason is my acquaintance; I liked that ode* much, but have found no one else that did. He has much fancy, little judgment, and a good deal of modesty; I take him for a good and well-meaning creature; but then he is really in simplicity a child, and loves every body he meets with: he reads little or nothing; writes abundance, and that with a design to make his fortune by it. My best compliments to Mrs. Wharton

* Ode to a Water Nymph, published about this time in Dodsley's miscellany. On reading what follows, many readers, I suspect, will think me as simple as ever, in for. bearing to expunge the paragraph: but as I publish Mr. Gray's sentiments of authors, as well living as dead, without reserve, I should do them injustice, if I was more scrupulous with respect to myself. My friends, I am sure, will be much amused with this and another passage hereafter of a like sort. My enemies, if they please, may sneer at it; and say (which they will very truly) that twenty-five years have made a very considerable abatement in my general philanthropy. Men of the world will not blame me for writing from so prudent a motive, as that of making my fortune by it; and yet the truth, I believe, at the time was, that I was perfectly well satisfied, if my publications furnished me with a few guineas to see a play or an opera.

and your family does that name include any body I am not yet acquainted with?

LXVIII.

TO DR. WHARTON.

Stoke, August 19, 1748.

I AM glad you have had any pleasure in Gresset; he seems to me a truly elegant and charming writer; the Mechant is the best comedy I ever read; his Edward I could scarce get through; it is puerile ; though there are good lines, such as this for example :

"Le jour d'un nouveau regne est le jour des ingrats." But good lines will make any thing rather than a good play: however you are to consider this as a collection made up by the Dutch booksellers; many things unfinished, or written in his youth, or designed not for the world, but to make his friends laugh, as the Lutrin vivant, &c. There are two noble lines, which, as they are in the middle of an ode to the king, may perhaps have escaped you:

"Le cri d'un peuple heureux est la seule eloquence "Qui sçait parler des Rois.

Which is very true, and should have been a hint to himself not to write odes to the king at all.

As I have nothing more to say at present, I fill my paper with the beginning of an essay; what name to give it I know not; but the subject is the alliance of Education and Government: * I mean to

*See Poems.

show that they must both concur to produce great and useful men. I desire your judgment upon it before I proceed any further.

LXIX.

TO DR. WHARTON.

Cambridge, March 9, 1748-9.

You ask for some account of books. The principal, I can tell you of is a work of the President Montesquieu, the labour of twenty years; it is called L'Esprit des Loix, 2 vols. 4to. printed at Geneva. He lays down the principles on which are founded the three sorts of government, despotism, the limited monarchy, and the republican; and shows how from these are deduced the laws and customs by which they are guided and maintained; the education proper to each form; the influence of climate, situation, religion, &c. on the minds of particular nations and on their policy. The subject, you see, is as extensive as mankind; the thoughts perfectly new, generally admirable as they are just, sometimes a little too refined. In short, there are faults, but such as an ordinary man could never have committed. The style very lively and concise (consequently sometimes obscure); it is the gravity of Tacitus, whom he admires, tempered with the gaiety and fire of a Frenchman. The time of night will not suffer me to go on; but I will write again in a week.

LXX.

TO DR. WHARTON.

Cambridge, April 25, 1749.

I PERCEIVE that second parts are as bad to write as they can be to read; for this, which you ought to have had a week after the first, has been a full month in coming forth. The spirit of laziness (the spirit of the place) begins to possess even me, who have so long declaimed against it; yet has it not so prevailed, but that I feel that discontent with myself, that ennui, that ever accompanies it in its beginnings. Time will settle my conscience; time will reconcile me to this languid companion: We shall smoke, we shall tipple, we shall doze together: we shall have our little jokes like other people, and our old stories: brandy will finish what port began; and a month after the time you will see in some corner of a London evening-post, Yesterday died the reverend Mr. John Gray, senior fellow of ClareHall, a facetious companion, and well respected by all that knew him. His death is supposed to have been occasioned by a fit of an apoplexy, being found fallen out of bed with his head in the chamber-pot."

In the meanwhile, to go on with my account of new books. Montesquieu's work, which I mentioned before, is now publishing anew in 2 vols. 8vo. Have you seen old Crebillion's Catalina, a tragedy, which has had a prodigious run at Paris? Historical truth is too much perverted in it, which is ridiculous in a story so generally known; but if you can get over