writing French, perhaps the sense may not be clearer than the writing. Adieu!

TO MR. GRAY.

Arlington Street, Friday night, Feb. 26, 1768.

I PLAGUE you to death, but I must reply a few more words. I shall be very glad to see in print, and to have those that are worthy see your ancient Odes; but I was in hopes there were some pieces, too, that I had not seen. I am sorry

there are not.1

I troubled you about Perkin's Proclamation, because Mr. Hume lays great stress upon it, and insists, that if Perkin affirmed his brother was killed, it must have been true, if he was true Duke of York. Mr. Hume would have persuaded me that the Proclamation is in Stowe, but I can find no such thing there; nor, what is more, in Casley's Catalogue, which I have twice looked over carefully. I wrote to Sir David Dalrymple in Scotland, to inquire after it; because I would produce it if I could, though it should make against me: but he, I believe, thinking I inquired with the contrary view, replied very drily, that it was published at York, and was not to be found in Scotland. Whether he is displeased that I have plucked a hair from the tresses of their great historian; or whether, as I suspect, he is offended for King William; this reply was all the notice he took of my letter and book. I only smiled; as I must do when I find one party is angry with me on King William's, and the other on Lord Clarendon's

account.

1 Gray, in his letter of the 25th, had said "The Long Story was to be totally omitted, as its only use (that of explaining the plates) was gone; but, to supply the place of it in bulk, lest my works should be mistaken for the works of a flea or a pismire, I promised to send him an equal weight of poetry or prose; so I put up about two ounces of stuff, viz. The Fatal Sisters; The Descent of Odin; a bit of something from the Welch, and certain little Notes, partly from justice, partly from ill-temper, just to tell the gentle reader that Edward I. was not Oliver Cromwell, nor Queen Elizabeth the Witch of Endor. This is literally all; and with all this, I shall be but a shrimp of an author.” Works, vol. iv. p. 110.-E.

The answer advertised is Guthrie's, who is furious that I have taken no notice of his History. I shall take as little of his pamphlet; but his end will be answered, if he sells that and one or two copies of his History.1 Mr. Hume, I am told, has drawn up an answer too, which I shall see, and, if I can, will get him to publish; for, if I should ever choose to say anything more on this subject, I had rather reply to him than to hackney-writers:-to the latter, indeed, I never will reply. A few notes I have to add that will be very material; and I wish to get some account of a book that was once sold at Osborn's, that exists perhaps at Cambridge, and of which I found a memorandum t'other day in my note-book. It is called A Paradox, or Apology for Richard the Third, by Sir William Cornwallis. If you could discover it, I should be much obliged to you.

Lord Sandwich, with whom I have not exchanged a syllable since the general warrants, very obligingly sent me an account of the roll at Kimbolton; and has since, at my desire, borrowed it for me and sent it to town. It is as long as my Lord Lyttelton's History; but by what I can read of it (for it is both ill written and much decayed), it is not a roll of kings, but of all that have been possessed of, or been Earls of Warwick or have not-for one of the first earls is Æneas. How, or wherefore, I do not know, but amongst the first is Richard the Third, in whose reign it was finished, and with whom it concludes. He is there again with his wife and son, and Edward the Fourth, and Clarence and his wife, and Edward their son (who unluckily is a little old man), and Margaret Countess of Salisbury, their daughter.—But why do I say with these? There is everybody else too

1 Gray, in his answer of the 6th of March, says - "Guthrie, you see, has vented himself in the Critical Review. His History I never saw, nor is it here, nor do I know any one that ever saw it. He is a rascal; but rascals may chance to meet with curious records." Works, vol. iv. p. 116.-E.

2 "The Praise of King Richard the Third," which was published by Sir William Cornwallis, Knight, the celebrated "Essayist," in 1617, is reprinted in the third volume of the Somers' Collection of Tracts.-É.

3 From this roll were taken the two plates of portraits in the Historic Doubts.

and what is most meritorious, the habits of all the times are admirably well observed from the most savage ages. Each figure is tricked with a pen, well drawn, but neither coloured nor shaded. Richard is straight, but thinner than my print; his hair short, and exactly curled in the same manner; not so handsome as mine, but what one might really believe intended for the same countenance, as drawn by a different painter, especially when so small; for the figures in general are not so long as one's finger. His queen is ugly, and with just such a square forehead as in my print, but I cannot say like it. Nor, indeed, where forty-five figures out of fifty (I have not counted the number) must have been imaginary, can one lay great stress on the five. I shall, however, have these figures copied, especially as I know of no other image of the son. Mr. Astle is to come to me to-morrow morning to explain the writing.

I wish you had told me in what age your Franciscan friars lived; and what the passage in Comines is. I am very ready to make amende honorable. Thank you for the notes on the Noble Authors. They shall be inserted when I make a new edition, for the sake of the trouble the person has taken, though they are of little consequence. Dodsley has asked me for a new edition; but I have had little heart to undertake such work, no more than to mend my old linen. It is pity one cannot be born an ancient, and have commentators to do such jobs for one! Adieu! Yours ever.

Saturday morning.

On reading over your letter again this morning, I do find the age in which the friars lived - I read and write in such a hurry, that I think I neither know what I read or say.

TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ.

Arlington Street, March 12, 1768.

THE house, &c. described in the enclosed advertisement I should think might suit you; I am sure its being in my neighbourhood would make me glad, if it did. I know no

more than what you will find in this scrap of paper, nor what the rent is, nor whether it has a chamber as big as Westminster-hall; but as you have flown about the world, and are returned to your ark without finding a place to rest your foot, I should think you might as well inquire about the house I notify to you, as set out with your caravan to Greatworth, like a Tartar chief; especially as the laws of this country will not permit you to stop in the first meadow you like, and turn your horses to grazing, without saying by your leave.

As my senatorial dignity is gone,' and the sight of my name is no longer worth threepence, I shall not put you to the expense of a cover, and I hope the advertisement will not be taxed, as I seal it to the paper. In short, I retain so much iniquity from the last infamous Parliament that you see I would still cheat the public. The comfort I feel in sitting peaceably here, instead of being at Lynn in the high fever of a contested election, which at best would end in my being carried about that large town like the figure of a pope at a bonfire, is very great. I do not think, when that function is over, that I shall repent my resolution. What could I see but sons and grandsons playing over the same knaveries, that I have seen their fathers and grandfathers act? Could I hear oratory beyond my Lord Chatham's? Will there ever be parts equal to Charles Townshend's? Will George Grenville cease to be the most tiresome of beings? Will he not be constantly whining, and droning, and interrupting, like a cigala2 in a sultry day in Italy.

Guthrie has published two criticisms on my Richard;3 one

Walpole had retired from Parliament at the general election in the beginning of this year.—E.

2 "The shrill cicalas, people of the pine,

Making their summer lives one ceaseless song,
Were the sole echoes, save my steed's and mine,
And vesper-bell's that rose the boughs along."

Don Juan, c. iii. st. 106.-E.

3 Walpole's work is thus characterized by Sir Walter Scott:-" The Historical Doubts are an acute and curious example how minute antiquarian research may shake our faith in the facts most pointedly averred by general history. It is remarkable also to observe how, in defending a system, which was probably at first adopted as a mere literary exercise,

abusive in the Critical Review; t'other very civil and even flattering in a pamphlet; both so stupid and contemptible, that I rather prefer the first, as making some attempt at vivacity; but in point of argument, nay, and of humour, at which he makes an effort too, both things are below scorn. As an instance of the former, he says, the Duke of Clarence might die of drinking sack, and so be said to be drowned in a butt of malmsey; of the latter sort, are his calling the Lady Bridget Lady Biddy, and the Duke of York poor little fellow! I will weary you with no more such stuff!

The weather is so very March, that I cannot enjoy my new holidays at Strawberry yet; I sit reading and writing close to the fire.

Sterne has published two little volumes, called Sentimental Travels. They are very pleasing, though too much dilated, and infinitely preferable to his tiresome Tristram Shandy, of which I never could get through three volumes. In these there is great good-nature and strokes of delicacy. Gray has added to his poems three ancient Odes from Norway and Wales. The subjects of the two first are grand and picturesque, and there is his genuine vein in them; but they are not interesting, and do not, like his other poems, touch any passion. Our human feelings, which he masters at will in his former pieces, are here not affected. Who can care through what horrors a Runic savage arrived at all the joys and glories they could conceive, the supreme felicity of boozing ale out of the skull of an enemy in Odin's hall? Oh! yes, just now perhaps these odes would be toasted at many a contested election. Adieu! Yours ever.

Mr. Walpole's doubts acquired, in his own eyes, the respectability of certainties, in which he could not brook controversy." Prose Works; vol. iii. p. 304.-E.

"They strike, rather than please; the images are magnified by affectation; the language is laboured into harshness. The mind of the writer seems to work with unnatural violence. Double, double, toil and trouble! There is too little appearance of ease and nature." Johnson. -E.