would have received more benefit from his good offices, while he continued in, than now he is in effect out. I am concerned too for another person, who surely can never continue where he is, (if he should, it is a wonderful proof of the force of insignificancy), and if he does not, a good friend of ours must feel it a little in a part very tender to most people-his hopes; but he very wisely has been arming it for some time, I believe, with a reasonable insensibility, and taking, by way of precaution, a dose of my sovereign anodyne fastidium.

Don't fancy to yourself that I have been doing any thing here. I am as stupid as a post, and have not added a syllable, but in plain prose. Am still

LETTER LVI.

Ever yours,

T. G.

MR. GRAY TO DR. WHARTON..

DEAR DOCTOR,

I CANNOT help thanking you for your kind letter, though I have nothing essential to inform you of in return. Lord S. and his brother are come back, and in some measure rid me of my apprehensions for the College. Stonehewer is gone to town, but (as he assures me) not to stay above a week. You advise me to be happy, and would to God it depended upon your wishes. A part of what I imagined has already happened here, though not in the way I expected; in a way

indeed, that confutes itself, and therefore (as I am told) makes no impression on the hearers, but I will not answer for the truth of this: at least such as are strangers to me, may be influenced by it. However, though I know the quarter whence it comes, I cannot interpose at present, lest I make the matter worse: judge you of my happiness; may yours never meet with any cloud or interruption. Adieu! I beg you to write to me.

Feb. 17, 1757.

LETTER LVII.

MR. GRAY TO DR. WHARTON.

April 17, Sunday, 1757.

DEAR DOCTOR,

IF I did not immediately answer your kind enquiry, you will attribute it to the visit, which I was obliged to do the honours of, for two or three days, and which is now over. I find nothing new to add to my uneasiness here; on the contrary it is considerably abated; and quiet, and hope is gradually returning. I am extremely glad to hear your country residence promises so well, and has been so serviceable to Mrs. Wharton, already.

Lord N. is a

You desire to know how I like my visit. sensible, well bred young man, a little too fine even for me, who love a little finery: he never will be popular, and it is

1

well if he be not very much hated. His party were Lord Villers and Mr. Spencer, but I did not see a great deal of them. Lord John has been with me all this morning; the Duke of Bedford is now here to settle his son at Trinity, and Mr. Rigby is come to assist him with his advice. Adieu, I am interrupted, but will write again soon. Believe me

LETTER LVIII.

Ever yours,

T. G.

MR. GRAY TO MR. MASON.

Cambridge, May, 1757.

YOU are so forgetful of me that I should not forgive it, but that I suppose Caractacus may be the better for it. Yet I hear nothing from him neither, in spite of his promises there is no faith in man, no not in a Welchman; and yet Mr. Parry* has been here, and scratched out such ravishing blind harmony, such tunes of a thousand years old, with names enough to choak you, as have set all this learned body a dancing, and inspired them with due reverence for my old Bard his countryman, whenever he shall appear. Mr. Parry, you must know, has put my Ode in motion again, and has

* A capital performer on the Welch Harp, and who was either born blind, or had been so from his infancy.-Mason. For an account of Parry, the son of this blind Harper, see Northcote's Life of Sir J. Reynolds, p. 93.-Ed. VOL. II. 20

brought it at last to a conclusion. 'Tis to him, therefore, that you owe the treat which I send you inclosed; namely, the breast and merry-thought, and rump too of the chicken which I have been chewing so long, that I would give the world for neck-beef or cow-heel.

You will observe, in the beginning of this thing, some alterations of a few words, partly for improvement, and partly to avoid repetitions of like words and rhymes; yet I have not got rid of them all; the six last lines of the fifth stanza are new, tell me whether they will do. I am well aware of many weakly things towards the conclusion, but I hope the end itself will do; give me your full and true opinion, and that not upon deliberation, but forthwith. Mr. Hurd himself allows that Lyon port is not too bold for Queen Elizabeth.

I have got the old Scotch Ballad on which Douglas* was founded; it is divine, and as long as from hence to Aston. Have you never seen it? Aristotle's best rules are observed in it, in a manner that shews the Author had never read Aristotle. It begins in the fifth act of the play: you may read it two thirds through without guessing what it is about; and yet when you come to the end, it is impossible not to understand the whole story. I send you the two first stanzas.

*

* He had a high opinion of this first Drama of Mr. Home. In a letter to another friend, dated August 16, this year, he says, "I am greatly struck with "the Tragedy of Douglas, though it has infinite faults: The author seems to "me to have retrieved the true language of the stage, which had been lost for "these hundred years; and there is one scene (between Matilda and the old "peasant) so masterly, that it strikes me blind to all the defects in the world." The Ballad, which he here applauds, is to be found in Mr. Percy's Reliques of Antient Poetry, Vol. III. p. 89, a work published after the date of this letter. -Mason.

LETTER LIX.

MR. GRAY TO MR. WALPOLE.

Stoke, July 11, 1757.

I WILL not give you the trouble of sending your chaise for me. I intend to be with you on Wednesday in the evening. If the press stands still all this time for me, to be sure it is dead in child-bed. I do not love notes, though you see I had resolved to put two or three.* They are signs of weakness and obscurity. If a thing cannot be understood without them, it had better be not understood at all. If you will be vulgar, and pronounce it Lunnun, instead of London,+ I can't help it. Caradoc I have private reasons against; and besides it is in reality Caradoc, and will not stand in the verse. I rejoice you can fill all your vuides; the Maintenon could not, and that was her great misfortune. Seriously Seriously though, I congratulate you on your happiness, and seem to understand it. The receipt is obvious; it is only, Have something to do; but how few can apply it.

Adieu!

I am ever yours,

T. GRAY.

*To the Bard.

+ Ye Towers of Julius, London's lasting shame. Bard, v. 87.

↑ Gray alludes to the line "Leave your despairing Caradoc, to mourn." Which he afterwards altered to, "Leave me unblessed, unpitied here to mourn." -Ed.