Page

No.

opinion of M. Racine. - Of Bishop
Hall's Satires, and of a few of Plato's
Dialogues

177
LXXXV. To Mr. Walpole.-Concerning the inten-

tion of publishing Mr. Bentley's designs
for his poems.-Refuses to have his own
portrait prefixed to that work

179
LXXXVI. To Mr. Mason. On the death of his fa-
ther

181

END OF VOL.I.

T. Davison, Printer, Whitefriars.

NEW YORK

LETTERS

OF

THOMAS GRAY.

LXXXVII.

TO DR. WHARTON.

Stoke, Sept. 18, 1754. I am glad you enter into the spirit of StrawberryCastle;

it has a purity and propriety of Gothicism in it (with very few exceptions) that I have not seen elsewhere. My lord Radnor's vagaries I see did not keep you from doing justice to his situation, which far surpasses every thing near it; and I do not know a more laughing scene than that about Twickenham and Richmond. Dr. Akenside, I perceive, is no conjurer in architecture, especially when he talks of the ruins of Persepolis, which are no more Gothic than they are Chinese. The Egyptian style (see Dr. Pococke, not his discourses, but his prints) was apparently the mother of the Greek; and there is such a similitude between the Egyptian and those Persian ruins, as gave Diodorus room to affirm, that the old buildings of Persia were certainly performed by Egyptian artists. As to the other part of your friend's opinion, that the Gothic manner is