No.

LXXII. To his Mother.-Consolatory on the death of
her sister

Page

· 203

LXXIII. To Mr. Walpole.-Encloses his Elegy in a
Country Church-yard

LXXIV. To Dr. Wharton.-Wishes to be able to pay
him a visit at Durham.-On Dr. Middleton's
death.-Some account of the first volumes of
Burton's Histoire Naturelle

J

205

206

LXXV. To Dr Wharton.-On the ill reception which his Long Story met with in town when handed about in manuscript, and how much his Elegy in a Country Church-yard was applauded 209 LXXVI. To Mr. Walpole.-Desires him to give his Elegy to Mr. Dodsley to be printed immediately, in order to prevent its publication in a magazine

210

LXXVII. To Mr. Walpole-A letter of thanks for Mr. Walpole's care of his literary productions -212 LXXVIII. To Mr. Walpole.-Desires his opinion of the Elfrida of Mr Mason-Proposes some alterations in his Elegy

- 214

LXXIX. To Mr. Walpole.-Remarks on the Elegy of
Mr. Lyttelton, and likewise on some of his
own productions

LXXX. To Mr Walpole -Humorous inquiry into the
state of r. Walpole's forthcoming publica-
tions, &c.

· . 216

- 218

LXXXI. To Mr. Walpole.-With his Hymn to Adver-
sity. Remarks on Dr. C. Middleton's Essay
on Miracles
To Mr. Walpole.-With a promise of shortly
sending his Pindaric Ode

LXXXIL LXXXIII.

- 223

To Mr. Walpole.-Remarks on Dodsley's Col-
lection of Poems, and on several literary
characters of the time, together with an ex-
tract from a poem

- 225

LXXXIV. To Dr. Wharton.-Of Madame Maintenon's character and letters.-His high opinion of M. Racine. Of bishop Hall's Satires, and of a few of Plato's Dialogues

- 232

LXXXV. To Mr. Walpole.-Concerning the intention of
publishing Mr. Bentley's designs for his po-
ems.-Refuses to have his own portrait pre-
fixed to that work

LXXXVI. To Mr. Mason. On the death of his father

END OF VOL. I.

- 234

- 236

THE

LETTERS

OF

THOMAS GRAY,

CHRONOLOGICALLY ARRANGED

FROM THE

WALPOLE AND MASON COLLECTIONS.

VOL. II.

MDCCCXX.

LETTERS

OF

THOMAS GRAY.

LXXXVII.

TO DR. WHARTON.

Stoke, Sept. 18, 1754. I AM glad you enter into the spirit of Strawberry-Castle; it has a purity and propriety of Gothicism in it (with very few exceptions) that I have not seen elsewhere. My lord Radnor's vagaries I see did not keep you from doing justice to his situation, which far surpasses every thing near it; and I do not know a more laughing scene than that about Twickenham and Richmond. Dr. Akenside, I perceive, is no conjurer in architecture, especially when he talks of the ruins of Persepolis, which are no more

1

Gothic than they are Chinese. The Egyptian style (see Dr. Pococke, not his discourses, but his prints) was apparently the mother of the Greek; and there is such a similitude between the Egyptian and those Persian ruins, as gave Diodorus room to affirm, that the old buildings of Persia were certainly performed by Egyptian artists. As to the other part of your friend's opinion, that the Gothic manner is the Saracen or Moorish, he has a great authority to support him, that of sir Christopher Wren; and yet I cannot help thinking it undoubtedly wrong. The palaces in Spain I never saw but in description, which gives us little or no idea of things; but the doge's palace at Venice I have seen, which is in the Arabesque manner: and the houses of Barbary you may see in Dr. Shaw's book, not to mention abundance of other eastern buildings in Turkey, Persia, &c. that we have views of; and they seem plainly to be corruptions of the Greek architecture, broke into little parts indeed, and covered with little ornaments, but in a taste very distinguishable from that which we call Gothic. There is one thing that runs through the Moorish buildings, that an imitator would certainly have been first struck with, and