one the history of a country town, and give one a circumstantial account of the antediluvian world into the bargain. But I am simple and ignorant, and desire no more than I pay for. And then for my progenitors, Noah and the Saxons, I have no curiosity about them. Bishop Lyttelton used to plague me to death about barrows, and tumuli, and Roman camps, and all those bumps in the ground that do not amount to a most imperfect ichnography; but, in good truth, I am content with all arts when perfected, nor inquire how ingeniously people contrive to do without them--and I care still less for remains of art that retain no vestiges of art. Mr. Bryant,' who is sublime in unknown knowledge, diverted me more, yet I have not finished his work, no more than he has. There is a great ingenuity in discovering all his history [though it has never been written] by etymologies. Nay, he convinced me that the Greeks had totally mistaken all they went to learn in Egypt, &c. by doing, as the French do still, judge wrong by the ear- but as I have been trying now and then for above forty years to learn something, I have not time to unlearn it all again, though I allow this our best sort of

researches. JOHNSON. All that is really known of the ancient state of Britain is contained in a few pages. We can know no more than what the old writers have told us; yet what large books have we upon it; the whole of which, excepting such parts as are taken from those old writers, is all a dream, such as Whitaker's Manchester."" Life of Johnson, vol. vii. p. 189.-E.

Jacob Bryant, the learned author of "A New System; or, an Analysis of Ancient Mythology," London, 4to. 1774-6, 3 vols.; and of many other works. His character was thus finely drawn, in 1796, by Mr. Matthias, in "The Pursuits of Literature:"-" No man of literature can pass by the name of Mr. Bryant without gratitude and reverence. He is a gentleman of attainments peculiar to himself, and of classical erudition without an equal in Europe. His whole life has been spent in laborious researches, and the most curious investigations. He has a youthful fancy and a playful wit; with the mind, and occasionally with the pen of a poet; and with an ease and simplicity of style aiming only at perspicuity, and, as I think, attaining it. He has lived to see his eightieth winter (and may he yet long live!) with the esteem of the wise and good; in honourable retirement from the cares of life; with a gentleness of manners, and a readiness and willingness of literary communication, seldom found. He is admired and sought after by the young who are entering on a course of study, and revered, and often followed, by those who have completed it. Nomen in exemplum sero servabimus ævo!" Mr. Bryant died in 1804, in his eighty-ninth year, in consequence of a wound on his shin, occasioned by his foot slipping from a chair which he had stepped on to reach a book in his library.—E.

knowledge. If I should die when I am not clear in the History of the World below its first three thousand years, I should be at a sad loss on meeting with Homer and Hesiod, or any of those moderns in the Elysian fields, before I knew what I ought to think of them.

Pray do not betray my ignorance: the reviewers and such literati have called me a learned and ingenious gentleman. I am sorry they ever heard my name, but don't let them know how irreverently I speak of the erudite, whom I dare to say they admire. These wasps, I suppose, will be very angry at the just contempt Mr. Gray had for them, and will, as insects do, attempt to sting, in hopes that their twelvepenny readers will suck a little venom from the momentary tumour they raise- but good night—and once more, thank you for the prints. Yours ever.

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.

Strawberry Hill, June 5, 1775.

I AM extremely concerned, dear Sir, to hear you have been so long confined by the gout. The painting of your house may, from the damp, have given you cold—I don't conceive that paint can affect one otherwise, if it does not make one sick, as it does me of all things. Dr. Heberden1 (as every physician, to make himself talked of, will set up some new hypothesis,) pretends that a damp house, and even damp sheets, which have ever been reckoned fatal, are wholesome: to prove his faith he went into his own new house totally unaired, and survived it. At Malvern, they certainly put patients into sheets just dipped in the spring - however, I am glad you have a better proof that dampness is not mortal, and it is better to be too cautious than too rash. I am perfectly well, and expect to be so for a year and a halfI desire no more of the bootikins than to curtail my fits.

' Dr. William Heberden, the distinguished physician and medical writer, who died, on the 17th of March 1801, at the advanced age of ninety-one.-E.

Thank you for the note from North's Life, though, having reprinted my Painters, I shall never have an opportunity of using it. I am still more obliged to you for the offer of an Index to my Catalogue- but, as I myself know exactly where to find everything in it, and as I dare to say nobody else will want it, I shall certainly not put you to that trouble.

Dr. Glynn will certainly be most welcome to see my house, and shall, if I am not at home:-still I had rather know a few days before, because else he may happen to come when I have company, as I have often at this time of the year, and then it is impossible to let it be seen, as I cannot ask my company, who may have come to see it too, to go out, that somebody else may see it, and I should be very sorry to have the Doctor disappointed. These difficulties, which have happened more than once, have obliged me to give every ticket for a particular day; therefore, if Dr. Glynn will be so good as to advertise me of the day he intends to come here, with a direction, I shall send him word what day he can see it.

I have just run through the two vast folios of Hutchins's Dorsetshire.1 He has taken infinite pains; indeed, all but those that would make it entertaining.

Pray can you tell me anything of some relations of my own, the Burwells? My grandfather married Sir Jeffery Burwell's daughter, of Rongham, in Suffolk. Sir Jeffery's mother, I imagine, was daughter of a Jeffery Pitman, of Suffolk; at least I know there was such a man in the latter, and that we quarter the arms of Pitman. But I cannot find who Lady Burwell, Sir Jeffery's wife, was. Edmondson has searched in vain in the Heralds' office; and I have outlived all the ancient of my family so long, that I know not of whom to inquire, but you of the neighbourhood. There is an old walk in the Park at Houghton, called "Sir Jeffery's Walk," where the old gentleman used to teach my father (Sir Robert) his book. Those very old trees encouraged my father to plant at Houghton.

"The History and Antiquities of the County of Dorset." London, 1774, in two volumes, folio. A second edition, corrected, augmented, and improved, by Richard Gough and John Bowyer Nichols, in four volumes, folio, appeared in 1796-1815.-E.

When people used to try to persuade him nothing would grow there, he said, why will not other trees grow as well as those in Sir Jeffery's Walk?-Other trees have grown to some purpose! Did I ever tell you that my father was descended from Lord Burleigh? The latter's grand-daughter, by his son Exeter, married Sir Giles Allington, whose daughter married Sir Robert Crane, father of Sir Edward Walpole's wife. I want but Lady Burwell's name to make my genealogic tree shoot out stems every way. I have recovered a barony in fee, which has no defect but in being antecedent to any summons to Parliament, that of the Fitz Osberts: and on my mother's side it has mounted the Lord knows whither by the Philipps's to Henry VIII. and has sucked in Dryden for a great-uncle: and by Lady Philipps's mother, Darcy, to Edward III. and there I stop for brevity's sake-especially as Edward III. is a second Adam; who almost is not descended from Edward? as posterity will be from Charles II. and all the princes in Europe from James I. I am the first antiquary of my race. People don't know how entertaining a study it is. Who begot whom is a most amusing kind of hunting; one recovers a grandfather instead of breaking one's own neck—and then one grows so pious to the memory of a thousand persons one never heard of before. One finds how Christian names came into a family, with a world of other delectable erudition. You cannot imagine how vexed I was that Bloomfield' died before he arrived at Houghton-I had promised myself a whole crop of notable ancestors - but I think I have pretty well unkennelled them myself. Adieu! Yours ever.

P.S. I found a family of Whaplode in Lincolnshire who give our arms, and have persuaded myself that Whaplode is a corruption of Walpole, and came from a branch when we lived at Walpole in Lincolnshire.

The Rev. Francis Blomefield, the author of an " Essay towards a Topographical History of the County of Norfolk," which was left unfinished by him, and continued by the Rev. Charles Parkin. It was first printed in five folio volumes: 1739-1773. A second edition, in eleven volumes, octavo, appeared in 1805-1810.-E.

TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY.

Strawberry Hill, July 9, 1775.

THE whole business of this letter would lie in half a line. Shall you have room for me on Tuesday the 18th? I am putting myself into motion that I may go farther. I told Madame du Deffand how you had scolded me on her account, and she has charged me to thank you, and tell you how much she wishes to see you, too. I would give anything to goBut the going! However, I really think I shall - but I grow terribly affected with a maladie de famille, that of taking root at home.

I did but put my head into London on Thursday, and more bad news from America.1 I wonder when it will be bad enough to make folks think it so, without going on! The stocks, indeed, begin to grow a little nervous, and they are apt to affect other pulses. I heard this evening here that the Spanish fleet is sailed, and that we are not in the secret whither but I don't answer for Twickenham gazettes, and I have no better. I have a great mind to tell you a Twickenham story; and yet it will be good for nothing, as I cannot send you the accent in a letter. Here it is, and you must try to set it to the right emphasis. One of our maccaronis is dead, a Captain Mawhood, the tea-man's son. He had quitted the army, because his comrades called him Captain Hyson, and applied himself to learn the classics and freethinking; and was always disputing with the parson of the parish about Dido and his own soul. He married Miss Paulin's warehouse, who had six hundred a-year; but, being very much out of conceit with his own canister, could not reconcile himself to her riding-hood-so they parted beds in three nights. Of late he has taken to writing comedies, which everybody was welcome to hear him read, as he could get nobody to act

1 Of the commencement of hostilities with the Americans at Lexington on the 19th of April.-E.