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VIII. MR. GRAY TO MR. HOW.*

Cambridge, Sept. 10, 1763. IOUGHT long since to have made you my acknowledgments for the obliging testimonies of your esteem that you have conferred upon me; but Count Algarotti's bookst did not come to my hands till the end of July, and since that time I have been prevented by illness from doing any of my duties. I have read them more than once, with increasing satisfaction; and should wish mankind had eyes to descry the genuine sources of their own pleasures, and judgment to know the extent that nature has prescribed to them: if this were the case, it would be to their interest to appoint Count Algarotti their "Arbiter Elegantiarum." He is highly civil to our nation; but there is one point in which he does not do us justice; I am the more solicitous about it, because it relates to the only taste we can call our own; the only proof of our original talent in matter of pleasure, I mean our skill in gardening, or rather laying out grounds: and this is no small honour to us, since neither Italy nor France have ever had the least notion of it, nor yet do at all comprehend it when they see it. That the Chinese have this beautiful art in high perfection,

1771. It related to the first book of the Minstrel, now sent to him in print, and contained criticisms on particular passages, and commendations on particular stanzas. Those criticisms the author attended to in a future edition, because his good taste found that they deserved his attention; the passages therefore being altered, the strictures die of course. As to the notes of commendation, the poem itself abounds with so many striking beauties, that they need not even the hand of Mr. Gray to point them out to a reader of any feeling: all therefore that I shall print of that letter, is the concluding paragraph relating to his Essay on the Immutability of truth. "I am happy to hear of your success in another way, because I think you are serving the cause of human nature, and the true interests of mankind; your book is read here too, and with just applause."

*This letter and the following, if received earlier, would have found their place, according to their dates, in the fourth Section; but I choose rather to print them here, out of place, than to reserve them for another edition, that the purchasers of this may not have hereafter cause to complain that the book was incomplete.

Three small treatises on Painting, the Opera, and the French Academy for Painters in Italy; they have been since collected in the Leghorn edition of his works.

seems very probable from the Jesuits' Letters, and more from Chambers's little discourse, published some years ago;* but it is very certain we copied nothing from them, nor had any thing but Nature for our model. It is not forty years since the art was born among us;† and it is sure that there was nothing in Europe like it; and as sure, we then had no information on this head from China at all.‡

I shall rejoice to see you in England, and talk over these and many other matters with you at leisure. Do not despair of your health, because you have not found all the effects you had promised yourself from a finer climate. I have known people who have experienced the same thing, and yet, at their return, have lost all their complaints as by miracle.

P.S. I have answered Count Algarotti's letter, and his to Mr. Mason I conveyed to him; but whether he has received his books, I have not yet heard.

Mr. How, on receiving the foregoing letter, communicated the objection which it contained to the Count; who, admitting the justness of it, altered the passage, as appears from the following extract of the answer which he sent to that gentleman.

"Mi spiace solamente che quella critica concernente i Giardini Inglesi non la abbia fatta á me medesimo; quasi egli dovesse credermi piu amico della mia opinione che della veritá. Ecco, come ho cangiato qual

The author has since enlarged, and published it under the title of a Dissertation on Oriental Gardening; in which he has put it out of all doubt, that the Chinese and English tastes are totally dissimilar.

+ See Mr. Walpole's history of this art at the end of the last volume of hisAnecdotes of Painters, when he favours the world with its publication,

I question whether this be not saying too much. Sir William Temple's account of the Chinese gardens was published some years before this period; and it is probable that might have promoted our endeavours, not indeed of imitating them, but of imitating (what he said was their archetype) Nature.

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luogo. Dopo le parole nel tesser la favola di un poema. Simili ai Giardini della Cina sono quelli che piantano gl' Inglesi dietro al medesimo modello della Natura." Quanto ella ha di vago, é di vario, boschetti, collinette, acque vive, praterie con dei tempietti, degli obelischi, ed anche di belle rovine che spuntano quá e lá, si trova quivi reunito dal gusto dei Kent, e dei Chambers,* che hanno di tanto sorpassato il le Nature, tenuto giá il maestro dell' Architettura, diro cosi, dé Giardini. Dalle Ville d'Inghilterra é sbandita la simmetria Francese, i più bei siti pajono naturali, il culto é misto col negletto, é il disordine che vi regna é l'effetto dell' arte la meglio ordinata."

It is seldom that an author of a reputation so established (as Mr. How truly remarked, when he sent this extract to Mr. Gray) so easily, readily, and explicitly gives up his own opinion to that of another, or even to conviction itself; nor perhaps would Count Algarotti have done so, had he not been thoroughly apprized to whose correction he submitted.

IX. MR. GRAY TO MR. HOW.

Pembroke-hall, Jan. 12, 1768.

I WAS willing to go through the eight volumes of Count Algarotti's works, which you lately presented to the library of this college, before I returned you an answer: this must be my excuse to you for my silence. First, I condole with you, that so neat an edition should swarm in almost every page with errors of the press, not only in notes and citations from Greek, English, and French authors, but in the Italian text itself, greatly to the disreputation of the Leghorn publishers. This is the only reason, I think, that could make an edition in England

*As he had written on the subject, this mistake was natural

enough in Count Algarotti.

necessary; but, I doubt, you would not find the matter much mended here; our presses, as they improve in beauty, declining daily in accuracy: besides, you would find the expense very considerable, and the sale in no proportion to it, as, in reality, it is but few people in England that read currently and with pleasure the Italian tongue, and the fine old editions of their capital writers are sold at London for a lower price than they bear in Italy. An English translation I can by no means advise the justness of thought and good sense might remain, but the graces of elocution (which make a great part of Algarotti's merit) would be entirely lost, and that merely from the very different genius and complexion of the two languages.

Doubtless there can be no impropriety in your making the same present to the University that you have done to your own college. You need not at all to fear for the reputation of your friend; he has merit enough to recommend him in any country. A tincture of various sorts of knowledge, an acquaintance with all the beautiful arts, an easy command, a precision, warmth, and richness of expression, and a judgment that is rarely mistaken on any subject to which he applies it. I had read the Congresso di Citéra before, and was excessively pleased with it, in spite of prejudice; for I am naturally no friend to allegory, nor to poetical prose.. "The Giudicio d' Amore" is an addition rather inferior to it. What gives me the least pleasure of any of his writings is the Newtonianism; it is so direct an imitation of Fontenelle, a writer not easy to imitate, and least of all in the Italian tongue, whose character and graces are of a higher style, and never adapt themselves easily to the elegant badinage and legereté of conversation that sit so well on the French. The essays and letters (many of them entirely new to me) on the Arts, are curious and entertaining those on other subjects (even where

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