her great success this winter; but then the burlettas, and the Paganina, I have not been so pleased with any thing these many years: She too is fat, and above forty, yet handsome withal, and has a face that speaks the language of all nations: She has not the invention, the fire, and the variety of action that the Spiletta had; yet she is light, agile, ever in motion, and above all graceful; but then her voice, her ear, her taste in singing: Good God-----as Mr. Richardson the painter says. Pray, ask Lord *; for I think I have seen him there once or twice, as much pleased as I was.

LETTER XLII.

MR. GRAY TO MR. MASON.

August, 1761.

BE E assured your York Canon never will die; so the better the thing is in value, the worse for you. The true way to immortality is to get you nominated one's successor: Age and Diseases vanish at your name; Fevers turn to radical heat, and Fistulas to issues: it is a

*This was written at a time, when, by the favour of Dr. Fountayne, Dean of York, I expected to be made a Residentiary in his Cathedral.

judgment that waits on your insatiable avarice. You could not let the poor old man die at his ease, when he was about it; and all his family (I suppose) are cursing you for it.

I wrote to Lord **** on his recovery; and he answers me very chearfully, as if his illness had been but slight, and the pleurisy were no more than a hole in one's stocking. He got it (he says) not by scampering, racketing, and riding post, as I had supposed; but by going with Ladies to Vauxhall. He is the picture (and pray so tell him, if you see him) of an old Alderman that I knew, who, after living forty years on the fat of the land, (not milk and honey, but arrack punch and venison) and losing his great toe with a mortification, said to the last, that he owed it to two grapes, which he eat one day after dinner. He felt them lic cold at his stomach the minute they were down.

Mr. Montagu (as I guess, at your instigation) has earnestly desired me to write some lines to be put on a monument, which he means to erect at Bellisle *. It is a task 1 do not love, knowing Sir William Williams so slightly as I did: but he is so friendly a person, and his affliction seemed to me so real, that I could not re

* See p. 57 of the Poems.

fuse him. I have sent him the following verses, which I neither like myself, nor will he, I doubt: however, I have shewed him that I wished to oblige him. Tell me your real opinion.

LETTER XLIII.

MR. GRAY TO DR. WHARTON.

Cambridge, Dec. 4, 1762.

I Feel very ungrateful every day that I continue

silent; and yet now that I take my pen in hand I have only time to tell you, that of all the places which I saw in my return from you, Hardwicke pleased me the most *. One would think that Mary, Queen of Scots, was but just walked down into the park with her guard for half an hour; her gallery, her room of audience, her anti-chamber, with the very canopies, chair of state, footstool, lit de repos, oratory, carpets, and hangings, just as she left them: a little tattered indeed, but the more venerable; and all preserved with religious care, and papered up in winter.

* A seat of the Duke of Devonshire, in Derbyshire.

ner

When I arrived in London I found Professor Tur

* had been dead above a fortnight; and being cockered and spirited up by some friends (though it was rather the latest) I got my name suggested to Lord Bute. You may easily imagine who undertook it, and indeed he did it with zeal t. I received my answer very soon, which was what you may easily imagine, but joined with great professions of his desire to serve me on future occasions, and many more fine words that I pass over, not out of modesty, but for another reason: so you see I have made my fortune like Sir Francis Wronghead. This nothing is a profound sesuspects it even now. To-day I

cret, and no one here hear Mr. E. Delaval

has got it, but we are not yet certain; next to myself I wished for him.

You see we have made a peace. I shall be silent about it, because if I say any thing anti-ministerial, you will tell me you know the reason; and if I approve it, you will think I have my expectations still. All I

* Professor of Modern Languages in the University of Cambridge.

+ This person was the late Sir Henry Erskine. As this was the only application Mr. Gray ever made to ministry, I thought it necessary to insert his own account of it. The place in question was given to the tutor of Sir James Lowther.

Fellow of Pembroke-Hall, and of the Royal Society.

know is, that the Duke of Newcastle and Lord Hardwick both say it is an excellent peace, and only Mr. Pitt calls it inglorious and insidious.

LETTER XLIV.

MR. GRAY TO MR. MASON.

February 3, 1763.

DOCTISSIME Domine, anne tibi arrident complimenta*? If so, I hope your vanity is tickled with the verghe d'oro of Count Algarotti, and the intended trans

* William Taylor Howe, Esq; of Stondon Place, near ChippingOngar, in Essex, an honorary Fellow of Pembroke-Hall, was now on his travels in Italy, where he had made an acquaintance with the celebrated Count Algarotti, and had recommended to him Mr. Gray's Poems and my Dramas. After the perusal he received a Letter from the Count, written in that style of superlative panegyric peculiar to Italians. A copy of this letter Mr. Howe had just now sent to our common friend Mr. Brown, then President of the College; and also another of the Count's, addressed to Sigr. Paradisi, a Tuscan Poet; in which, after explaining the arguments of my two Dramatic Poems, he advises him to translate them; but principally Caractacus.---This anecdote not only explains the above para_raph, but the subsequent Letter. The Latin, at the beginning of the letter, alludes to a similar expression which a Fellow of a College had made use of to a foreigner who dined in the College Hall. Having occasion to ask him if he would eat any cabbage to his boiled beef, he said "anne tibi arrident Herba?"