the marquise de Verneuil, did not involve him and the kingdom in the most inextricable confusion; and his design upon the princess of Condé (in his old age) was worse still. As to the minister, his base application to Concini, after the murder of Henry, has quite ruined him in my esteem, and destroyed all the merit of that honest surly pride for which I honoured him before; yet I own that, as kings and ministers go, they were both extraordinary men. Pray look at the end of Birch's State Papers of sir J. Edmonds, for the character of the French court at that time; it is written by sir George Carew.

You should have received Mason's present* last Saturday. I desire you to tell me your critical opinion of the new Odes, and also whether you have found out two lines which he has inserted in his third to a friend, which are superlativet. We do not expect the world, which is just going to be invaded, will bestow much attention to them; if you hear any thing, you will tell us.

LETTER XXI.

MR. GRAY TO MR. MASON.

Cambridge, May 1757. You are so forgetful of me that I should not forgive it, but that I suppose Caractacus may be the

The four Odes which Mr. Mason had just published sepa. rately.

+ While through the west, where sinks the crimson day, Meek Twilight slowly sails, and waves her banners gray.

better for it. Yet I hear nothing from him neither, in spite of his promises: there is no faith in man, no not in a Welchman; and yet Mr. Parry* has been here, and scratched out such ravishing blind harmony, such tunes of a thousand years old, with names enough to choak you, as have set all this learned body a-dancing, and inspired them with due reverence for my old Bard his countryman, whenever he shall appear. Mr. Parry, you must know, has put my Ode in motion again, and has brought it at last to a conclusion. It is to him, therefore, that you owe the treat which I send you inclosed; namely, the breast and merry-thought, and rump too, of the chicken which I have been chewing so long, that I would give the world for neck-beef or cow-heel.

You will observe in the beginning of this thing, some alteration of a few words, partly for improveinent, and partly to avoid repetitions of like words and rhymes; yet I have not got rid of them all; the six last lines of the fifth stanza are new; tell me whether they will do. I am well aware of many weakly things towards the conclusion, but I hope the end itself will do; give me your full and true opinion, and that not upon deliberation, but forthwith. Mr. Hurd himself allows that Lion port is not too bold for queen Elizabeth.

I have got the old Scotch ballad on which Douglas was founded; it is divine, and as long as from hence to Aston. Have you never seen it? Aristotle's best rules are observed in it, in a man

* A capital performer on the Welch harp, and who was either born blind or had been so from bis infancy.

ner that shows the author had never read Aristotle. It begins in the fifth act of the play: you may read it two-thirds through without guessing what it is about: and yet, when you come to the end, it is impossible not to understand the whole story. I send you the two first stanzas.

CAB

BLIOTH

LETTER XXII.

MR. GRAY TO MR. STONEHEWER.

Cambridge, August 18, 1758. I AM as sorry as you seem to be, that our acquaintance harped so much on the subject of materialism, when I saw him with you in town, because it was plain to which side of the long-debated question he inclined. That we are indeed mechanical and dependent beings, I need no other proof than my own feelings; and from the same feelings I learn, with equal conviction, that we are not merely such; that there is a power within that struggles against the force and bias of that mechan. ism, commands its motion, and, by frequent practice, reduces it to that ready obedience which we call habit; and all this in conformity to a preconceived opinion (no matter whether right or wrong), to that least material of all agents, a thought. I have known many in his case who, while they thought they were conquering an old prejudice, did not perceive they were under the influence of one far more dangerous; one that furnishes us with a ready apology for all our worst actions, and

opens to us a full license for doing whatever we please; and yet these very people were not at all the more indulgent to other men (as they naturally should have beep): their indignation to such as offended them, their desire of revenge on any body that hurt them, was nothing mitigated: in short, the truth is, they wished to be persuaded of that opinion for the sake of its convenience, but were not so in their heart; and they would have been glad (as they ought in common prudence), that nobody else should think the same, for fear of the mischief that might ensue to themselves. His French author I never saw, but have read fifty in the same strain, and shall read no more. I can be wretched enough without them. They put me in mind of the Greek sophist that got immortal honour by discoursing so feelingly on the miseries of our condition, that fifty of his audience went home and hanged themselves; yet he lived himself (I suppose) many years after in very good plight.

You say you cannot conceive how lord Shaftesbury came to be a philosopher in vogue; I will tell you: 1st, he was a lord; 2dly, he was as vain as any of his readers; 3dly, men are very prone to believe what they do not understand; 4thly, they will believe any thing at all, provided they are under no obligation to believe it; 5thly, they love to take a new road, even when that road leads no were; 6thly, he was reckoned a fine writer, and seemed always to mean more than he said. Would you have any more reasons? An interval of above forty years has pretty well destroyed the charm. A dead lord ranks but with commoners: vanity is no longer interested in the matter, for

the new road is become an old one. The mode of free-thinking is like that of ruffs and farthingales, and has given place to the mode of not thinking at all; once it was reckoned graceful, half to discover and half conceal the mind, but now we have been long accustomed to see it quite naked: primness and affectation of style, like the good-breeding of queen Anne's court, has turned to hoydening and rude familiarity.

LETTER XXIII.

MR. GRAY TO DR. WHARTON.

Sunday, April 9, 1758.

I AM equally sensible of your affliction*, and of your kindness, that made you think of me at such a moment; would to God I could lessen the one, or requite the other with that consolation which I have often received from you when I most wanted it! but your grief is too just, and the cause of it too fresh to admit of any such endeavour: what, indeed, is all human consolation? Can it efface every little amiable word or action of an object we loved, from our memory? Can it convince us, that all the hopes we had entertained, the plans of future satisfaction we had formed, were ill-grounded and vain, only because we have lost them? The only comfort (I am afraid) that belongs to our condition, is to reflect (when time has given us leisure for reflection) that others have suffered

* Occasioned by the death of his eldest (and at that time his only) son,