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LETTER IV.

MR. WEST TO MR. GRAY.

Christ-Church, Dec. 22, 1736.

I CONGRATULATE you on your being about to leave college, and rejoice much you carry no degrees with you. For I would not have you dignified, and I not, for the world; you would have insulted me so. My eyes, such as they are, like yours, are neither metaphysical nor mathematical; I have, nevertheless, a great respect for your connoisseurs that way, but am always contented to be their humble admirer. Your collection of deŝolate animals pleased me much; but Oxford, I can assure you, has her owls that match yours, and the prophecy has certainly a squint that way. Well, you are leaving this dismal land of bondage; and which way are you turning your face? Your friends, indeed, may be happy in you; but what will you do with your classic companion? An inn of court is as horrid a place as a college, and a moot case is as dear to gentle dulness as a syllogism. But wherever you go, let me beg you not to throw poetry "like a nauseous weed away:" cherish its sweets in your bosom, they will serve you now and then to correct the disgusting sober follies of the common law: misce stultitiam consiliis brevem: dulce est desipere in loco; so said Horace to Virgil, those two sous of Anac in poetry, and so say I to you, in this degenerate land of pigmies,

Mix with your grave designs a little pleasure,
Each day of business has its hour of leisure

In one of these hours, I hope, dear sir, you will sometimes think of me, write to me, and know me yours,

Ἐξαύδα, μὴ κεῦθε νόῳ, ἵνα εἰδομεν ἄμφω,

that is, write freely to me and openly, as I do to you; and to give you a proof of it I have sent you an elegy of Tibullus, translated. Tibullus, you must know, is my favourite elegiac poet; for his language is more elegant and his thoughts more natural than Ovid's. Ovid excels him only in wit, of which no poet had more in my opinion. The reason I choose so melancholy a kind of poesie, is because my low spirits and constant ill health (things in me not imaginary, as you surmise, but too real, alas! and I fear, constitutional) “have tun'd my heart to elegies of woe;" and this likewise is the reason why I am the most irregular thing alive at college, for you may depend upon it I value my health above what they call discipline. As for this poor unlicked thing of an elegy, pray criticise it unmercifully, for I send it with that intent. Indeed your late translation of Statius might have deterred me; but I know you are not more able to excel others, than you are apt to forgive the want of excellence, especially when it is found in the productions of your most sincere friend.

LETTER V.

MR. GRAY TO MR. WALPOLE,

Peterhouse, Dec. 23, 1736.

You can never weary me with the repetition of any thing that makes me sensible of your kindness; since that has been the only idea of any social happiness that I have almost ever received, and which (begging your pardon for thinking so differently from you in such cases) I would by no means have parted with for an exemption from all the uneasinesses mixed with it: but it would be unjust to imagine my taste was any rule for yours; for which reason my letters are shorter and less frequent than they would be, had I any materials but myself to entertain you with. Love and brown sugar must be a poor regale for one of your goût; and alas! you know I am by trade a grocer*. Scandal (if I had any) is a merchandise you do not profess dealing in; now and then, indeed, and to oblige a friend, you may perhaps slip a little out of your pocket, as a decayed gentlewoman would a piece of right mecklin, or a little quantity of run tea, but this only now and then, not to make a practice of it. Monsters appertaining to this climate you have seen already, both wet and dry. So you perceive within how narrow bounds my pen is circumscribed, and the whole contents of my share in our correspondence may be reduced under the two

i, e. A man who deals only in coarse and ordinary wares.

heads of 1st, You; 2dly, I: the first is, indeed, a subject to expatiate upon, but you might laugh at me for talking about what I do not understand; the second is so tiny, so tiresome, that you shall hear no more of it than that it is ever yours.

LETTER VI.

MR. GRAY TO MR. WEST.

London, Aug. 22, 1737.

AFTER a month's expectation of you, and a fortnight's despair, at Cambridge, I am come to town, and to better hopes of seeing you. If what you sent me last be the product of your melancholy, what may I not expect from your more cheerful hours? For by this time the ill health that you complain of is (I hope) quite departed; though, if I were selfinterested, I ought to wish for the continuance of any thing that could be the occasion of so much pleasure to me. Low spirits are my true and faithful companions; they get up with me, go to bed with nie, make journeys and returns as I do; nay, and pay visits, and will even affect to be jocose, and force a feeble laugh with me; but most commonly we sit alone together, and are the prettiest insipid company in the world. However, when you come, I believe they must undergo the fate of all humble companions, and be discarded. Would I could turn them to the same use that you have done, and make an Apollo of them! If they could write such verses with me, not hartshorn,

nor spirit of amber, nor all that furnishes the closet of an apothecary's widow, should persuade me to part with them: but, while I write to you, I hear the bad news of lady Walpole's death on Saturday night last. Forgive me if the thought of what my poor Horace must feel on that account obliges me to have done, in reminding you that I am yours, &c.

LETTER VII.

MR. GRAY TO MR. WALPOLE.

September, 1737.

I WAS hindered in my last, and so could not give you all the trouble I would have done. The description of a road, which your coach-wheels have so often honoured, it would be needless to give you; suffice it that I arrived safe* at my uncle's, who is a great hunter in imagination; his dogs take up every chair in the house, so I am forced to stand at this present writing; and though the gout forbids him galloping after them in the field, yet he continues still to regale his ears and nose with their comfortable noise and stink. He holds me mighty cheap, I perceive, for walking when I should ride, and reading when I should hunt. My comfort amidst all this is, that I have at the distance of half a mile through a green lane, a forest (the vulgar call it a common) all my own, at least as good as so, for I spy no human thing in it but

* At Burnham in Buckinghamshire,

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