Chapter 88

Arlington Street, April 11, 1775. (page 129)

I thank you, dear Sir, for your kind letter., and the good account YOU give of yourself-nor can I blame your change from writing that is, transcribing, to reading--sure you ought to divert yourself rather than others-though I should not say s, if your pen had not confined itself to transcripts.

I am perfectly well, and heed not the weather; though I wish the seasons came a little oftener into their own places instead of each Other's. From November, till a fortnight ago, we had much warmth that I should often be glad of in summer--and since we are not sure of it then, was rejoiced when I could get it. For myself, I am a kind of delicate Hercules; and though made of paper, have, by temperance, by using as much cold water inwardly and outwardly as I can, and by taking no precautions against catching cold, and braving all weathers, become capable of suffering by none. My biennial visitant, the gout, has yielded to the bootikins, and stayed with me this last time but five weeks in lieu of five months. Stronger men perhaps would kill themselves by my practice, but it has done so long with me, I shall trust to it.

I intended writing to you on Gray's Life,(206) if you had not prevented me. I am charmed with it, and prefer it to all the biography I ever saw. The style is excellent, simple, unaffected; the method admirable, artful, and judicious. He has framed the fragments, as a person said, so well, that they are fine drawings, if not finished pictures. For my part, I am so interested in it, that I shall certainly read it over and over. I do not find that it is likely to be the case with many yet. Never was a book, which people pretended to expect so much with impatience, less devoured-at least in London, where quartos are not of quick digestion. Faults are found, I hear, at Eton with the Latin Poems for false quantities-no matter-they are equal to the English -and can one say more?

At Cambridge, I should think the book would both offend much and please; at least if they are as sensible to humour as to ill-humour; and there is orthodoxy enough to wash down a camel. The Scotch and the Reviewers will be still more angry. and the latter have not a syllable to pacify them. So they who wait for their decisions will probably miss of reading the most entertaining book in the world--a punishment which they who trust to such wretched judges deserve; for who are more contemptible than such judges, but they who pin their faith on them?

In answer to you, yourself, my good Sir, I shall not subscribe to your censure of Mr. Mason, whom I love and admire, and who has shown the greatest taste possible in the execution of this work. Surely he has said enough in gratitude, and done far beyond what gratitude could demand., It seems delicacy in expatiating on the legacy; particularizing more gratitude would have lessened the evidence of friendship, and made the 'justice done to Gray's character look more like a debt.,_ He speaks of him in slender circumstances, not as distressed: and so he was till after the deaths of his parents and aunts; and even then surely not rich. I think he does somewhere say that he meant to be buried with his mother, and not specifying any other place confirms it. In short, Mr. Mason shall never know your criticisms; he has a good heart, and would feel them, though certainly not apprised that he would merit them. A man who has so called out all his -friend's virtues, could not want them himself.

I shall be much obliged to you for the prints you destine for me. The Earl of Cumberland I have, and will not rob you of. I wish you had been as successful with Mr. G. as with Mr. T. I mean, if you are not yet paid-now is the time, for he has sold his house to the Duke of Marlborough-I suppose he will not keep his prints long: he changes his pursuits Continually and extravagantly-and then sells to indulge new fancies.

I have had a piece of luck within these two days. I have long lamented our having no certain piece written by Anne Boleyn's brother, Lord Rochford. I have found a very pretty copy of verses by him in the new published volume of the Nuge Antiquae, though by mistake he is called, Earl of, instead Of Viscount, Rochford. They are taken from a MS-dated twenty-eight years after the author's death, and are much in the manner of Lord Surrey's and Sir T. Wyat's poems. I should at first have doubted if they were not counterfeited, on reading my Noble Authors; but then the blunder of earl for viscount would hardly have been committed. A little modernized and softened in the cadence, they would be very pretty.

I have got the rest of the Digby pictures, but at a very high rate. There is one very large of Sir Kenelm, his wife, and two sons, in exquisite preservation, though the heads of him and his wife are not so highly finished as those I have--yet the boys and draperies are so that, together with the size, it is certainly the most capital miniature in the world: there are a few more, very fine too. I shall be happy to show them to you, whenever You Burnhamize--I mean before August, when I propose making MY dear old blind friend a visit at Paris--nothing else would carry me thither. I am too old to seek diversions, and too indolent to remove to a distance by choice, though not so immovable as YOU to much less distance. Adieu! Pray tell me what you hear is said of Gray's Life at Cambridge.

(206) "The Poems of Mr. Gray: to which are prefixed Memoirs of his Life and Writings; by W, Mason, M A, York, 1775." At the end of Mason's work Mr. Cole wrote the following memorandum:-- "I am by no means satisfied with this Life; it has too much the affectation of classical shortness to please me, More circumstances would have suited my taste better; besides, I think the biographer had a mind to revenge himself of the sneerings Mr. Gray put upon him, though he left him, I guess, above a thousand pounds, which is slightly hinted at only; yet Mr. Walpole was quite satisfied with the work when I made my objection." A copy of Gray's will is given in the Rev. J. Mitford's very valuable edition of the poet's works, published by Pickering, in four volumes, in 1836.-E.