XCIV. 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 If the press on Wednesday in the evening. 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 They are resolved to put two or three.* 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 though, I congratulate you on your happiness, and seem to understand it. The receipt is obvious: it is *To the Bard. B. +"Ye towers of Julia, London's lasting shame." B. v. 87. B. only, Have something to do; but how few can apply it! Adieu! XCV. TO MR. WALPOLE. I AM SO charmed with the two specimens of Erse poetry, that I cannot help giving you the trouble to inquire a little farther about them, and should wish to see a few lines of the original, that I may form some slight idea of the language, the measures, and the rhythm. Is there any thing known of the author or authors, and of what antiquity are they supposed to be? Is there any more to be had of equal beauty, or at all approaching to it? I have often been told that the poem called Hardicnute (which I always admired, and still admire) was the work of somebody that lived a few years ago.* This I do not at all * It has been supposed the work of a lady of the name of Wardlaw, who died in Scotland not many years ago, but upon no better evidence, that I could ever learn, than that a copy of the poem with some erasures was found among her papers after her death. No proof surely of its original composition, as few but persous of believe, though it has evidently been retouched in places by some modern hand: but, however, I am authorized by this report to ask, whether the two poems in question are certainly antique and genuine. make this inquiry in quality of an antiquary, and am not otherwise concerned about it: for, if I were sure that any one now living in Scotland had written them to divert himself and laugh at the credulity of the world, I would undertake a journey into the Highlands only for the pleasure of seeing him. XCVI. TO MR. WALPOLE. I HAVE been very ill this week with a great cold and a fever, and, though now in a way to be well, am like to be confined some days longer: whatever you will send me that is new or old, and long, will be received as a charity. Rousseau's people do not interest me; there is but one character and one style in them all; I do not know their faces 66 business, which women seldom are, take the precaution of docketting or writing Copy" upon every thing they may transcribe. B. asunder. I have no esteem for their persons or conduct, am not touched with their passions; and as to their story, I do not believe a word of it-not because it is improbable, but because it is absurd. If I had any little propensity, it was to Julie; but now she has gone and (so hand over head) married that monsieur de Wolmar, I take her for a vraie Suissesse, and do not doubt but she had taken a cup too much, like her lover.* All this does not imply that I will not read it out, when you can spare the rest of it. XCVII. TO MR. HURD. Stoke, August 25, 1757. I Do not know why you should thank me for what you had a right and title to; but * Were not the public already in possession of Mr. Gray's opinion of the Nouvelle Heloise, in his letters published by M“. Mason-how would such a criticism, from such a critic, astonish all those more happily constituted readers, who, capable of appreciating varied excellence, have perhaps read with equal delight the exquisite odes of the one author, and the extraordinary and (with all its faults) inimitable romance of the other. B. A present of his twe Pindaric edes just then published. attribute it to the excess of your politeness; and the more so, because almost no one else has made me the same compliment. As your acquaintance in the university (you say) do me the honour to admire, it would be ungenerous in me not to give them notice, that they are doing a very unfashionable thing; for all people of condition are agreed not to admire, nor even to understand. One very great man, writing to an acquaintance of his and mine, says that he had read them seven or eight times; and that now, when he next sees him, he shall not have above thirty questions to ask. Another (a peer) believes that the last stanza of the second ode relates to king Charles the first and Oliver Cromwell. Even my friends tell me they do not succeed, and write me moving topics of consolation on that head. In short, I have heard of nobody but an actor and a doctor of divinity that profess their esteem for them.* Oh yes, a lady of quality (a * This was written August 25, 1757. An extract from a letter of Mr. Gray to Dr. Wharton, dated October 7, 1757, mentions another admirer whom he knew how to value. "Dr. Warburton is come to town, and I am told likes them extremely; he says the world never passed so just an opinion upon any thing as upon them for that in other things they have affected to like or dislike : whereas here they own they do not understand, which he looks upon |