mations as those poor plains have in my idea. At first I was contented with tending a visionary flock, and sighing some pastoral name to the echo of the cascade under the bridge. How happy should I have been to have had a kingdom only for the pleasure of being driven from it, and living disguised in an humble vale! As I got further into Virgil and Clelia, I found myself transported from Arcadia to the garden of Italy; and saw Windsor Castle in no other view than the Capitoli immobile saxum. I wish a committee of the House of Commons may ever seem to be the senate; or a bill appear half so agreeable as a billet-doux. You see how deep you have carried me into old stories; I write of them with pleasure, but shall talk of them with more to you. I can't say I am sorry I was never quite a schoolboy: an expedition against bargemen, or a match at cricket, may be very pretty things to recollect; but, thank my stars, I can remember things that are very near as pretty. The beginning of my Roman history was spent in the asylum, or conversing in Egeria's hallowed grove; not in thumping and pummelling King Amulius's herdsmen. I was sometimes troubled with a rough creature or two from the plough; one, that one should have thought, had worked with his head, as well as his hands, they were both so callous. One of the most agreeable circumstances I can recollect is the Triumvirate, composed of yourself, Charles,* and Your sincere friend. TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ. King's College, May 20, 1736. DEAR GEORGE, You will excuse my not having written to you, when you hear I have been a jaunt to Oxford. As you have seen it, I shall only say I think it one of the most agreeable places I ever set my eyes on. In our way thither we stopped at the Duke of Kent's at Wrest. On ⚫ Colonel Charles Montagu, afterwards Lieutenant-general, and Knight of the Bath, and brother of George Montagu. He married Elizabeth Villiers, Viscountess Grandison, daughter of the Earl of Grandison. Henry de Grey, Duke, Marquis, and Earl of Kent, son of Anthony Earl of Kent, and Mary, daughter of Lord Lucas. [The duke, who had been so created in 1710, having lost all his sons during his lifetime, obtained a new patent in 1740, creating him Marquis Grey, with remainder to his grand-daughter Jemima Campbell, daughter of his eldest daughter, Lady Amabel Grey, by her husband John, third Earl of Breadalbane. On the death of the duke, in June 1740, the marquisate of Grey and barony of Lucas, together with the Wrest House and all the vast estates of the duke, devolved upon his grand-daughter, Lady_Jemima Campbell, then Lady Jemima Royston, she having married Philip Viscount Royston, eldest son of the Earl of Hardwicke, by whom she had two daughters, Amabel married in July 1772, to Lord Polwarth, only son of the Earl of Marchmont, created a peer of Great Britain by the title of Baron Hume of Berwick, and who died in 1781 without issue: her ladyship was advanced to the dignity of Countess de Grey by letters patent, in 1816, with remainder of that earldom to her sister Mary Jemima, wife of Thomas second Lord Grantham, and that lady's male issue. Lady Grantham died in 1830; and upon the death of the countess, in 1833, she was suceeeded under the patent by her nephew Lord Grantham, the present Earl de Grey.] c Wrest House in Bedfordshire. [It is remarkable that, from the death of the Duke of Kent, Wrest House has never remained a second generation in the same family, but has the great staircase is a picture of the duchess; I said it was very like; oh, dear sir! said Mrs. Housekeeper, it's too handsome for my lady duchess; her grace's chin is much longer than that. d In the garden are monuments in memory of Lord Harold, Lady Glenorchy, the late duchess, and the present duke. At Lord Clarendon's at Cornbury, is a prodigious quantity of Vandykes; but I had not time to take down any of their dresses. By the way, you gave me no account of the last masquerade. Coming back, we saw Easton Neston, a seat of Lord Pomfret, where in an old greenhouse is a wonderful fine statue of Tully, haranguing a numerous assembly of decayed emperors, vestal virgins with new noses, Colossuses, Venuses, headless carcases, and carcaseless heads, pieces of tombs, and hieroglyphics." I saw Althorpi the same day, where are a vast many pictures-some mighty good; a gallery with the Windsor beauties, and Lady Bridgewater, who is full as handsome as any of them; a bouncing head of, I believe, Cleopatra, called there the Duchess of Mazarine. The park is enchanting. I forgot to tell you I was at Blenheim, where I saw nothing but a cross housekeeper, and an impertinent porter, except a few pictures, a quarry of stone that looked at a distance like a great house, and about this quarry, quantities of inscriptions in honour of the Duke of Marlborough, and I think of her grace too. The verses are not published. Adieu! dear George, Yours ever. descended successively through females to the families of Yorke Earl of Hardwicke, Hume Earl of Marchmont, and is now vested in that of Robinson Lord Grantham, the great-great-grandson of the duke.] Lady Sophia Bentinck, second wife of the Duke of Kent, and daughter to William Earl of Portland. bAnthony Earl of Harold, eldest son of the Duke of Kent. [Married to Lady Mary Tufton, daughter of the Earl of Thanet. He died without issue, in 1723, in consequence of an ear of barley sticking in his throat. His widow, who survived many years, afterwards married John first Earl Gower.] Amabella, eldest daughter of the Duke of Kent, married to John Campbell, Lord Viscount Glenorchy, son of Lord Breadalbane. d Jemima, eldest daughter of Lord Crewe, and first wife of the Duke of Kent. e Henry Earl of Clarendon and Rochester, son of Laurence Earl of Rochester. Easton Neston, the ancient family seat of the Fermor family, had been rebuilt by Sir William Fermor who was elevated to the peerage by the title of Baron Lempster of Lempster, or Leominster, county of Hereford; and whose only son Thomas, second baron, was advanced to the earldom of Pomfret in 1721.-E. h Part of the invaluable collection of the great Earl of Arundel. They had been formerly purchased by John Lord Jefferies, Baron of Wem; and in 1755 were presented by his daughter, the Countess-dowager of Pomfret, to the University of Oxford.-E. i The seat of Charles, fifth Earl of Sunderland; who, upon the demise of his aunt Henrietta, eldest daughter of John Duke of Marlborough, succeeded to the honours of his illustrious grandfather. Althorp is now the seat of Earl Spencer. An account of the mansion, its pictures, &c. was published by Dr. Dibdin, in 1822, under the title of "Edes Althorpianæ," as a supplement to his "Bibliotheca Spenceriana."-E i Elizabeth, third daughter of the great Duke of Marlborough, and wife of Scroop, Earl and afterwards first Duke of Bridgewater. She died, however, previous to her husband's advancement to the dukedom.-E. TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ. King's College, May 30, 1736. DEAR GEORGE, You show me in the prettiest manner how much you like Petronius Arbiter; I have heard you commend him, but I am more pleased with your tacit approbation of writing like him, prose interspersed with verse: I shall send you soon in return some poetry interspersed with prose; I mean the Cambridge congratulation with the notes, as you desired. I have transcribed the greatest part of what was tolerable at the coffee-houses; but by most of what you will find, you will hardly think I have left any thing worse behind. There is lately come out a new piece, called A Dialogue between Philemon and Hydaspes on false religion, by one Mr. Coventry, A.M., and fellow, formerly fellow-commoner, of Magdalen. He is a young man, but 'tis really a pretty thing. If you cannot get it in town, I will send it with the verses. He accounts for superstition in a new manner, and I think a just one; attributing it to disappointments in love. He don't resolve it all into that bottom; ascribes it almost wholly as the source of female enthusiasm; and I dare say there's ne'er a girl from the age of fourteen to four-and-twenty, but will subscribe to his principles, and own, if the dear man were dead that she loves, she would settle all her affection on heaven, whither he was gone. Who would not be an Artemisia, and raise the stately mausoleum to her lord; then weep and watch incessant over it like the Ephesian matron! I have heard of one lady, who had not quite so great a veneration for her husband's tomb, but preferred lying alone in one, to lying on his left hand; perhaps she had an aversion to the German custom of left-handed wives. I met yesterday with a pretty little dialogue on the subject of constancy; 'tis between a traveller and a dove. LE PASSANT. Que fais tu dans ce bois, plaintive Tourturelle ? LA TOURTURELLE. Je gémis, j'ai perdu ma compagne fidelle. LE PASSANT. Ne crains tu pas que l'oiseleur Ne te fasse mourir comme elle ? Mr. Henry Coventry was the son of Henry Coventry, Esq. who had a good estate in Cambridgeshire. He was born in 1710, and died in 1752. He wrote four additional Dialogues. The five were republished shortly after his death, by his cousin, the Rev. Francis Coventry. The following is transcribed from the MSS. of the Rev. W. . Cole :"When Henry Coventry first came to the University, he was of a religious turn of mind, as was Mr. Horace Walpole; even so much so as to go with Ashton, his then great friend, to pray with the prisoners in the Castle. Afterwards, both Mr. Coventry and Mr. Walpole took to the infidel side of the question.”—E. LA TOURTURElle. Si ce n'est lui, ce sera ma douleur. "Twould have been a little more apposite, if she had grieved for her lover. I have ventured to turn it into that view, lengthened it, and spoiled it, as you shall see. P.-Plaintive turtle, cease your moan; In this dreary wood alone T.-These tears, alas! you see flow P.-Dread you not from net or bow T.-If, ah! if they neither kill, You will excuse this gentle nothing, I mean mine, when I tell you, I translated it out of pure good-nature for the use of a disconsolate wood-pigeon in our grove, that was made a widow by the barbarity of a gun. She coos and calls me so movingly, 'twould touch your heart to hear her. I protest to you it grieves me to pity her. She is so allicholy as any thing. I'll warrant you now she's as sorry as one of us would be. Well, good man, he's gone, and he died like a lamb. She's an unfortunate woman, but she must have patience; 'tis what we must all come to, and so as I was saying, Dear George, good bye t'ye, P. S. I don't know yet when I shall leave Cambridge. TO RICHARD WEST, ESQ. DEAR WEST, King's College, Aug. 17, 1736. GRAY is at Burnham, and, what is surprising, has not been at Eton. Could you live so near it without seeing it? That dear scene of our quadruple alliance would furnish me with the most agreeable recollec "Tis the head of our genealogical table, that is since sprouted out into the two branches of Oxford and Cambridge. You seem to be the eldest son, by having got a whole inheritance to yourself; while the manor of Granta is to be divided between your three a * Burnham, in Buckinghamshire, where his uncle resided.-E. a younger brothers, Thomas of Lancashire, Thomas of London, and Horace. We don't wish you dead to enjoy your seat, but your seat dead to enjoy you. I hope you are a mere elder brother, and live upon what your father left you, and in the way you were brought up in, poetry: but we are supposed to betake ourselves to some trade, as logic, philosophy, or mathematics. If I should prove a mere younger brother, and not turn to any profession, would you receive me, and supply me out of your stock, where you have such plenty? I have been so used to the delicate food of Parnassus, that I can never condescend to apply to the grosser studies of Alma Mater. Sober cloth of syllogism colour suits me ill; or, what's worse, I hate clothes that one must prove to be of no colour at all. If the Muses calique vias et sidera monstrent, and quâ vi maria alta tumescant; why accipiant: but 'tis thrashing to study philosophy in the abstruse authors. I am not against cultivating these studies, as they are certainly useful; but then they quite neglect all polite literature, all knowledge of this world. Indeed, such people have not much occasion for this latter; for they shut themselves up from it, and study till they know less than any one. Great mathematicians have been of great use; but the majority of them are quite unconversible: they frequent the stars, sub pedibusque vident nubes, but they can't see through them. I tell you what I see; that by living amongst them, I write of nothing else: my letters are all parallelograms, two sides equal to two sides; and every paragraph an axiom, that tells you nothing but what every mortal almost knows. By the way, your letters come under this description; for they contain nothing but what almost every mortal knows too, that knows you-that is, they are extremely agreeable, which they know you are capable of making them :-no one is better acquainted with it than Your sincere friend. DEAR GEORGE, TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ. King's College, March 20, 1737. THE first paragraph in my letter must be in answer to the last in yours; though I should be glad to make you the return you ask, by waiting on you myself. 'Tis not in my power, from more circumstances than one, which are needless to tell you, to accompany you and Lord Conway to Italy: you add to the pleasure it would give me, Thomas Ashton. He was afterwards fellow of Eton College, rector of St. Botolph, Bishopsgate-street, and preacher to the Society of Lincoln's-inn. It was to him that Mr. Walpole addressed the poetical epistle from Florence, first published in Dodsley's collection of poems. Thomas Gray, the poet. Francis Seymour Conway, son of Francis Seymour, Lord Conway, and Charlotte, daughter of John Shorter, Esq. [Sister to Lady Walpole, the mother of Horace, and with her co-heiress of John Shorter, Esq. lord-mayor of London in 1688, who died during |