first; pray tell him so. town, or at Chiswick.

Mason is (I believe) in

I

No news of Tuthill.

wrote a long letter to him in answer to one he wrote me, but no reply. Adieu! I am ever yours,

T. G.

Brown called here this morning before I was up, and breakfasted with me.

LII. MR. GRAY TO DR. WHARTON.

If this be as tedious to you, as it is grown to me, I shall be sorry that I sent it you. I do not pretend to deballate* any one's pride, I love my own too well to attempt it. As to mortifying their vanity, it is too easy and too mean a task for me to delight in. You are very good in shewing so much sensibility on my account, but be assured my taste for praise is not like that of children for fruit; if there were nothing but medlars and blackberries in the world, I could be very well content to go without any at all. I dare say Mason (though some years younger than I) was as little elevated with the approbation of Lord D. and Lord M. as

* Humble any one's pride.-Ed. Mason.

I am mortified by their silence. I desire you would by no means suffer this to be copied, nor even shew it, unless to very few, and especially not to mere scholars, that can scan all the measures in Pindar, and say the Scholia by heart. The oftener, (and in spite of poor Trollope) the more you write to me, the happier I shall be. I envy your opera. Your politics I don't understand, but I think matters can never continue long in the situation they now are. * Barbarossa I have read, but I did not cry; at a modern tragedy, it is sufficient not to laugh. I had rather the King's Arms looked askew upon me, than the Mitre; it is enough to be well bred to both of them. You do not mention Lord Strath

* Barbarossa. This play was written by Dr. Brown, the admirer and friend of Warburton; and author of the Estimate, Essay on Satire, Garrick wrote the Epilogue, the following line of which gave the greatest offence to the Author:

"Let the poor devil eat, allow him that," &c.

"A very indifferent new Tragedy (says Mr. Walpole, in a letter to Mr. Bentley, p. 305) now making: the author unknown, but believed to be Garrick himself. There is not one word of Barbarossa's real story, but almost the individual history of Merope. Not one new thought, and which is the next material want, but one line of perfect nonsense. And rain down transports in the shape of sorrow.'

To complete it, the manners are so ill observed, that a Mahometan Princess Royal is at full liberty to visit her lover in Newgate, like the Banker's Daughter, in George Barnwell."-Ed.

more, so that I doubt if you received my little letter 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 yours.

Camb. Dec. 26, 1754.

LIII. MR. GRAY TO DR. WHARTON.

MY DEAR DOCTOR,

March 9, 1755. Cambridge.

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.

and therefore can never mean what he says. To be sure, Doctor, it must be owned, that physic, and indeed all professions, have a bad effect upon the mind. This it is my duty, and interest to maintain. But I shall still be very ready to write a satire upon the clergy, and an epode against historiographers, whenever you are hard-pressed and (if you flatter me) may throw in a few lines with somewhat handsome, upon Magnesia alba, and Alicant-soap. As to humanity you know my aversion to it, which is barbarous and inhuman; but I cannot help it, God forgive me. I am not quite of your opinion, with regard to Strophe* and Antistrophe, setting aside the difficulties, methinks it has little or no effect

*He often made the same remark to me in conversation, which led me to form the last Ode of Caractacus in shorter stanzas: But we must not imagine that he thought the regular Pindaric method without its use; though, as he justly says, when formed in long stanzas, it does not fully succeed in point of effect on the ear: For there was nothing which he more disliked than that chain of irregular stanzas which Cowley introduced, and falsely called Pindaric; and which from the extreme facility of execution, produced a number of miserable imitators. Had the regular return of Strophe, Antistrophe, and Epode no other merit than that of extreme difficulty, it ought on this very account, to be valued; because we well know that "Easy writing is no easy reading." It is also to be remarked, that Mr. Congreve, who (though without any lyrical powers) first introduced the regular Pindaric form into the English language, made use of the short stanzas which Mr. Gray here recommends.- -See his Ode to the Queen: Works, vol. iii. p. 438, Ed. Birm. Mason.

upon the ear, which scarce perceives the regular return of metres, at so great a distance from one 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 I cannot think of coming to town till

no excuses.

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,

T. G.