LETTERS.

I. TO RICHARD WEST.1

Cantabr. May 8, 1736.

MY DEAR WEST-My letter enjoys itself before it is opened, in imagining the confusion you will be in when you hear that a coach and six is just stopped at Christ Church gates, and desires to speak with you, with a huddle of things in it, as different as ever met together in Noah's Ark; a fat one and a lean one, and one that can say a little with his mouth and a great deal with his pen, and one that can neither speak nor write. But you will see them; joy be with you! I hope too I shall shortly see you, at least in congratulatione Oxoniensi.

1 Richard West (1717-1742), was the only son of a Lord Chancellor of Ireland, of the same name, who died in 1726. His poems were collected by Gray, but not printed until after that writer's death. West possessed a tender elegiac vein of no great depth, but was a sound scholar. He, Gray, Walpole, and Ashton formed a "quadruple alliance of friendship at Eton, whence West proceeded to Oxford and the other three to Cambridge.-[Ed.]

VOL. II.

B

My dear West, I more than ever regret you it would be the greatest of pleasure to me to know what you do, what you read, how you spend your time, etc., and to tell you what I do not do, not read, and how I do not, for almost all the employment of my hours may be best explained by negatives. Take my word and experience upon it, doing nothing is a most amusing business, and yet neither something nor nothing give me any pleasure. For this little while last past I have been playing with Statius; we yesterday had a game at quoits together. You will easily forgive me for having broke his head,1 as you have a little pique to him.

I will not plague you too much, and so break the affair in the middle, and give you leave to resume your Aristotle instead of your friend and servant,

T. GRAY.

II. TO RICHARD WEST.

my days, you have they go round and

WHEN you have seen one of seen a whole year of my life; round like the blind horse in the mill, only he has the satisfaction of fancying he makes a progress and gets some ground; my eyes are open enough to see the same dull prospect, and to know that having

1 West replied: "I agree with you that you have broke Statius' head, but it is in like manner as Apollo broke Hyacinth's, you have foiled him infinitely at his own weapon."-[Ed.]