I was in Northamptonshire when I received your letter, but am now returned hither. I have been at Warwick, which is a place worth seeing. The town is on an eminence, surrounded every way with a fine cultivated valley, through which the Avon winds, and at the distance of five or six miles, a circle of hills well wooded, and with various objects crowning them, that close the prospect. Out of the town on one side of it, rises a rock that might remind one of your rocks at Durham, but that 、 it is not so savage or so lofty, and that the river which washes its foot, is perfectly clear, and so gentle that its current is hardly visible. Upon it stands the castle, the noble old residence of the Beauchamps and Nevilles, and now of Earl Brooke. He has sashed the great apartment that's to be sure, (I can't help these things) and being since told that square sash windows were not Gothic, he has put certain whim-whams within side the glass, which appearing through, are to look like fret-work. Then he has scooped out a little burrough in the massy walls of the place, for his little self, and his children, which is hung with paper, and printed linen, and carved chimneypieces, in the exact manner of Berkley-square, or Argyle-buildings. What in short can a Lord do now a days, that is lost in a great old solitary Castle, but skulk about, and get into the first hole he finds, as a rat would do in like case. A pretty long old stone-bridge leads you into the town, with a mill at the end of it, over which the rock rises with the Castle upon it, with all its battlements, and queer-ruined towers, and on your left hand the Avon strays through the park, whose ancient elms seem to remember Sir Philip Sidney (who often walked under them) and talk of him to this day. The Beauchamp Earls of Warwick, lie under stately monuments in the choir of the great church, and in our lady's chapel adjoining to it. There also lie Ambrose Dudley, Earl of Warwick, and his brother, the famous Lord Leicester, with Lettice, his Countess.

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This chapel is preserved entire, though the body of the church was burnt down sixty years ago, and rebuilt by Sir C. Wren. I had heard often of Guy-Cliff, two miles from the town, so I walked to see it; and of all improvers commend me to Mr. Greathead, its present owner. He shewed it me himself, and is literally a fat young man, with a head and face much bigger than they are usually worn. It was naturally a very agreeable rock, whose cliffs covered with large trees hung beetling over the Avon, which twists twenty ways in sight of it; there was the cell of Guy Earl of Warwick cut in the living stone, where he died a hermit (as you may see in a penny history, that hangs upon the rails in Moorfields); there were his fountains bubbling out of the cliff;-there was a chantry founded to his memory in Henry the VIth's. time, but behold the trees are cut down to make room for flowering shrubs, the rock is cut up till it is as smooth and as sleek as satin; the river has a gravel-walk by its side; the cell is a grotto with cockle-shells and looking-glass; the fountains have an iron gate before them, and the chantry is a barn, or a little house. Even the Even the poorest bits of nature that remain, are daily threatened; for he says, (and I am sure, when the Greatheads are once set upon a thing, they will do it) he is determined it shall be all new. These were his words, and they are fate. I have also been at Stow, at Woburn (the Duke of Bedford's), and at Moxton (Duke of Guilford's), but I defer these chapters till we meet. I shall only tell you for your comfort, that the parts of Northamptonshire where I have been, is in fruits, in flowers, and in corn, very near a fortnight behind this part of Buckinghamshire; that they have no nightingales, and that the other birds are almost as silent as at Durham. It is rich land, but upon a clay, and in a very bleak, high, exposed situation. I hope you have had some warm weather, since you last complained of the south. I have thought of seeing you about Michaelmas, though I shall

not stay long in town; I should have been at Cambridge before now, if the Duke of Newcastle and his foundation-stone would have let me, but I want them to have done before I go. I am sorry Mr. Brown should be the only one that has stood upon punctilios with me, and would not write first; pray tell him so. Mason is (I believe) in town, or in town, or at Chiswick. No news of Tuthill. I wrote a long letter to him in answer to one he wrote me, but no reply.

Adieu!

I am ever yours,

T. G.

Brown called here this morning before I was up, and breakfasted with me.

LETTER XLV.

MR. GRAY TO DR. WHARTON.

ODE IN THE GREEK MANNER.

[THE ODE ON THE PROGRESS OF POESY.]

IF this be as tedious to you, as it is grown to me, I shall be sorry that I sent it you. I do not pretend to deballate* any one's pride, I love my own too well to attempt

* Humble any one's pride.-Ed. Mason.

it. As to mortifying their vanity, it is too easy and too mean a task for me to delight in. You are very good in shewing so much sensibility on my account, but be assured my taste for praise is not like that of children for fruit; if there were nothing but medlars and blackberries in the world, I could be very well content to go without any at all. I dare say Mason (though some years younger than I) was as little elevated with the approbation of Lord D. and Lord M. as I am mortified by their silence. I desire you would by no means suffer this to be copied, nor even shew it, unless to very few, and especially not to new scholars, that can scan all the measures in Pindar, and say the Scholia by heart. The oftener, (and in spite of poor Trollope) the more you write to me, the happier I shall be. I envy your opera. Your politicks I don't understand, but I think matters can never continue long in the situation they now are. * Barbarossa I have read, but I did not cry; at a modern tragedy, it is sufficient not to laugh. I had rather the King's Arms looked askew upon me, than the Mitre ; it is enough to be well bred to both of them. You

* Barbarossa. This play was written by Dr. Brown, the admirer and friend of Warburton; and author of the Estimate, Essay on Satire, Garrick wrote the Epilogue, the following line of which gave the greatest offence to the Author.

"Let the poor devil eat, allow him that," &c.

A very indifferent new Tragedy (says Mr. Walpole, in a letter to Mr. Bentley, p. 305) now making: the author unknown, but believed to be Garrick himself. There is not one word of Barbarossa's real story, but almost the individual bistory of Merope. Not one new thought, and which is the next material want, but one line of perfect nonsense.

"And rain down transports in the shape of sorrow."

To complete it, the manners are so ill observed, that a Mahometan Princess Royal is at full liberty to visit her lover in Newgate, like the Banker's Daughter, in George Barnwell."-Ed.

do not mention Lord Strathmore, so that I doubt if you received my little letter about him. Mason is still here: we are all mighty glad he is in orders, and no better than any of us. Pray inform me if Dr. Clarke is come to town, and where he is fixed, that I may write to him, angry as he is. My compliments to my friend Mrs. Wharton, to your mother, and all the little gentry. I am ever, dear Doctor,

Most sincerely yours.

Camb. Dec. 26, 1754.

LETTER XLVI.

MR. GRAY TO DR. WHARTON.

March 9, 1755. Cambridge.

MY DEAR Doctor,

ACCORDING to my reckoning, Mrs. Wharton should have been brought to bed before this time; yet you say not a syllable of it. If you are so loth to publish your productions, you cannot wonder at the repugnance I feel, to spreading abroad mine. But in truth, I am not so much against publishing, as against publishing this * alone. I have two or three ideas more in my head; what is to come of them? must they too come out in the shape of little sixpenny flams, dropping one after another, till Mr. Dodsley thinks fit to collect them

* His Ode on the Progress of Poetry.-Mason.