hewer can lend it you); yet I remain still in doubt about the authenticity of these poems, though inclining rather to believe them genuine in spite of the world; whether they are the inventions of antiquity, or of a modern Scotchman, either case is to me alike unaccountable; je m'y perd. I send you a Swedish and English Calendar;* the first column is by Berger, a disciple of Linnæus; the second by Mr. Stillingfleet; the third (very imperfect indeed) by me. You are to observe, as you tend your plantations, and take your walks, how the spring advances in the north, and whether Old Park most resembles Upsal or Stratton. The latter has on one side a barren black heath, on the other a light sandy loam, all the country about it is a dead flat; you see it is necessary you should know the situation (I do not mean any reflection upon any body's place); and this is the description Mr. Stillingfleet gives of his friend Mr. Marsham's seat, to which he retires in the summer and botanizes. I have lately made an acquaintance with this philosopher, who lives in a garret here in the winter, that he may support some near relations who depend upon him; he is always employed, consequently (according to my old maxim) always happy, always cheerful, and seems to me a very worthy honest man: his present scheme is to send some persons properly qualified to reside a year or two in Attica, to make themselves ac much interested in their decision." No man surely ever took more pains with himself to believe any thing than Mr. Gray seems to have done on this occasion. *See Stillingfleet's Tracts, p. 261. quainted with the climate, productions, and natural history of the country, that we may understand Aristotle, Theophrastus, &c. who have been heathen Greek to us for so many ages; and this he has got proposed to Lord Bute, no unlikely person to put it into execution, as he is himself a botanist. LETTER XLI. MR. GRAY TO MR. MASON. London, Jan. 22, 1761. I CANNOT pity you; au contraire, I wish I had been at Aston, when I was foolish enough to go through the six volumes of the Nouvelle Héloïse. All I can say for myself is, that I was confined for three weeks at home by a severe cold, and had nothing better to do: there is no one event in it that might not happen any day of the week (separately taken) in any private family; yet these events are so put together, that the series of them is more absurd and more improbable than Amadis de Gaul. The dramatis persona (as the author says) are all of them good characters; I am sorry to hear it: for had they been all hanged at the end of the third volume, nobody (I believe) would have cared. In short, I went on and on, in hopes of finding some wonderful denouement that would set all right, and bring something like nature and interest out of absurdity and insipidity: no such thing, it grows worse and worse; and (if it be Rousseau's, which is not doubted) is the strongest instance I ever saw, that a very extraordinary man may entirely mistake his own talents. By the motto and preface, it appears to be his own story, or something similar to it.* The Opera House is crowded this year like any ordinary theatre. Elisi is finer than any thing that has been here in your memory: yet, as I suspect, has been finer than he is: he appears to be near forty, a little pot-bellied and thick-shouldered, otherwise no bad figure; his action proper, and not ungraceful. We have heard nothing, since I remember operas, but eternal passages, divisions, and flights of execution: of these he has absolutely none; whether merely from judgment, or a little from age, I will not affirm; his point is expression, and to that all the graces and ornaments he inserts (which are few and short) are evidently directed: he goes higher (they say) than Farinelli; but then this celestial note you do not hear above once in a whole opera; and he falls from this altitude at once to the mellowest, softest, strongest tones (about the middle of his compass) that can be heard. The Mattei, I assure you, is much improved by his example, and by 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 If it be considered that Mr. Gray always preferred expression and sentiment to the arrangement of a story, it may seem somewhat extraordinary that the many striking beauties of these kinds, with which this singular work abounds, were not excepted from so general a censure; for my own part (to use a phrase of his own)" they strike me blind" to all the defects which he has here enumerated. 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 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 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 cheerfully, 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, * 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. 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 lie 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 I 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 refuse 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 on 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, * See Epitaph II. in the collection of poems. |