I

Chronologique de l'Histoire de France," believe I have mentioned to you as a very good book of its kind.

LXXV.

TO DR. WHARTON.

Dec. 17, 1750.

Or my house I cannot say much,* I wish I could; but for my heart, it is no less yours than it has long been; and the last thing in the world that will throw it into tumults is a fine lady. The verses, you so kindly try to keep in countenance, were written merely to divert lady Cobham and her family, and succeeded accordingly; but being showed about in town, are not liked there at all. Mrs. **, a very fashionable personage, told Mr. Walpole that she had seen a thing by a friend of his which she did not know what to make of, for it aimed at every thing, and meant nothing; to which he replied, that he had always taken her for a woman of sense, and was very sorry to be undeceived. On

*The house he was rebuilding in Cornhill.

the other hand, the stanzas* which I now enclose to you have had the misfortune, by Mr. Walpole's fault, to be made still more public, for which they certainly were never meant; but it is too late to complain. They have been so applauded, it is quite a shame to repeat it: I mean not to be modest; but it is a shame for those who have said such superlative things about them, that I cannot repeat them. I should have been glad that you and two or three more people had liked them, which would have satisfied my ambition on this head amply. I have been this month in town, not at Newcastle-House, but diverting myself among my gay acquaintance; and return to my cell with so much the more pleasure. I dare not speak of my future excursion to Durham for fear of a disappointment, but at present it is my full intention.

distress, you must assist me, I believe, to get out of it as well as I can. Yesterday I had the misfortune of receiving a letter from certain gentlemen (as their bookseller expresses it), who have taken the magazine of magazines into their hands: they tell me that an ingenious poem, called Reflections in a Country Church-yard, has been communicated to them, which they are printing forthwith; that they are informed that the excellent author of it is I by name, and that they beg not only his indulgence, but the honour of his correspondence, &c. As I am not at all disposed to be either so indulgent, or so correspondent, as they desire, I have but one bad way left to escape the honour they would inflict upon me; and therefore am obliged to desire you would make Dodsley print it immediately (which may be done in less than a week's time) from your copy, but without my name, in what form is most convenient for him, but on his best paper and character; he must correct the press himself, and print it without any interval between the stanzas, because the sense is in some places continued beyond them; and the title must be,-Elegy, written in a country church-yard. If he would add a line or two to say it came into his hands by accident, I should like it better.

If you behold the magazine of magazines in the light that I do, you will not refuse to give yourself this trouble on my account, which you have taken of your own accord before now. If Dodsley do not do this immediately, he may as well let it alone.

LXXVII.

TO MR. WALPOLE.

Ash-Wednesday, Cambridge, 1751.

You have indeed conducted with great decency my little misfortune: you have taken a paternal care of it, and expressed much more kindness than could have been expected from so near a relation. But we are all frail; and I hope to do as much for you another time. Nurse Dodsley has given it a pinch or two in the cradle, that (I doubt) it will bear the marks of as long as it lives. But no matter: we have ourselves suffered under her hands before now; and besides, it will only look the more careless and by accident as it were. I thank you for your advertisement, which saves my honour, and in manner bien flatteuse pour moi, who should be put to it even to make myself a compliment in good English.

You will take me for a mere poet, and a fetcher and carrier of singsong, if I tell you that I intend to send you the beginning of a drama;* not mine, thank God, as you'll believe, when you hear it is finished, but wrote by a person whom I have a very good opinion of. It is (unfortunately) in the manner of the ancient drama, with choruses, which I am, to my shame, the occasion of; for, as great part of it was at first written in that form, I would not suffer him to change it to a play fit for the stage, as he intended, because the lyric parts are the best of it, and they must have been lost. The story is Saxon, and the language has a tang of Shakspeare, that suits an old-fashioned fable very well. In short, I don't do it merely to amuse you, but for the sake of the author, who wants a judge, and so I would lend him mine: yet not without your leave, lest you should have us up to dirty our stockings at the bar of your house for wasting the time and politics of the nation. Adieu, sir!

*This was the Elfrida of Mr. Mason.-B.