and do not be so soon weary of this little world: I do not know what1 refined friendships you may have contracted in the other, but pray do not be in a hurry to see your acquaintance above; among your terrestrial familiars, however, though I say it, that should not say it, there positively is not one that has a greater esteem for you than yours most sincerely, etc. Peterhouse, December 1736.

V.—TO HORACE WALPOLE.2

You can never weary me with the repetition of anything that makes me sensible of your kindness; since that has been the only idea of any social happiness that I have almost ever received, and which (begging your pardon for thinking so differently from you in such cases) I would by no means have parted with for an exemption from all the uneasiness mixed with it: but it would be unjust to imagine my taste was any rule for yours; for which reason my letters are shorter and less frequent than they would be, had I any materials but myself to entertain you with. Love

1 This thought is very juvenile, but perhaps he meant to ridicule the affected manner of Mrs. Rowe's letters of the dead to the living; a book which was, I believe, published about this time.[Mason.]

2 Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford (1717-1797), entered Eton on the 26th of April 1727, and became the school-fellow of Gray, whose friendship he retained, with a certain interval, throughout the life of the latter. When this letter was written, Walpole had been nearly two years at King's College, Cambridge; but at the moment was, doubtless, in London for Christmas. -[Ed.]

and brown sugar must be a poor regale for one of your goût, and alas! you know I am by trade a grocer. Scandal (if I had any) is a merchandise you do not profess dealing in; now and then, indeed, and to oblige a friend, you may perhaps slip a little out of your pocket, as a decayed gentlewoman would a piece of right mecklin, or a little quantity of run tea, but this only now and then, not to make a practice of it. Monsters appertaining to this climate you have seen already, both wet and dry. So you perceive within how narrow bounds my pen is circumscribed, and the whole contents of my share in our correspondence may be reduced under the two heads of 1st, you; 2dly, I; the first is, indeed, a subject to expatiate upon, but you might laugh at me for talking about what I do not understand; the second is so tiny, so tiresome, that you shall hear no more of it, than that it is ever yours.

Peterhouse, December 23, 1736.

VI.-FRAGMENT OF A LETTER TO RICHARD WEST.

March 1737.

I LEARN Italian like any dragon, and in two months am got through the 16th Book of Tasso, whom I hold in great admiration; I want you to learn too, that I may know your opinion of him; nothing can be easier than that language to any one who knows Latin and French already, and there are

few so copious and expressive. . . .

My college has set me a versifying on a public occasion (viz. those verses which are called tripos) on the theme of Luna est habitabilis.

VII. TO RICHARD WEST.

AFTER a month's expectation of you, and a fortnight's despair, at Cambridge, I am come to town, and to better hopes of seeing you. If what you sent me last1 be the product of your melancholy, what may I not expect from your more cheerful hours? For by this time the ill health that you complain of is (I hope) quite departed; though, if I were self-interested, I ought to wish for the continuance of anything that could be the occasion of so much pleasure to me. Low spirits are my true and faithful companions ;2 they get up with me, go to bed with me, make journeys and returns as I do; nay, and pay visits, and will even affect to be jocose, and force a feeble laugh with me; but most commonly we sit alone together, and are the prettiest insipid company in the

1 A very touching elegy in Latin, "Ad Amicos," sent by West to Gray and Walpole from Christ Church on the 4th of July 1737.-[Ed.]

2 So Flaubert says in writing to George Sand: "Je suis submergé par une mélancolie noire, qui revient à propos de tout et de rien, plusieurs fois dans la journée. Puis, ça se passe et ça recommence. Il y a peut-être trop longtemps que je n'ai écrit ?" There is much in what is recorded of the temperament of Flaubert which may help us to comprehend Gray.-[Ed.]

world. However, when you come, I believe they must undergo the fate of all humble companions, and be discarded. Would I could turn them to the same use that you have done, and make an Apollo of them. If they could write such verses with me, not hartshorn, nor spirit of amber, nor all that furnishes the closet of an apothecary's widow, should persuade me to part with them. But, while I write to you, I hear the bad news of Lady Walpole's death on Saturday night last. Forgive me if the thought of what my poor Horace must feel on that account, obliges me to have done in reminding you that I am yours, etc. London, August 22, 1737.

VIII. TO HORACE WALPOLE.

1

I WAS hindered in my last, and so could not give you all the trouble I would have done. The description of a road, which your coach wheels have so often honoured, it would be needless to give you; suffice it that I arrived safe at my uncle's, who is a great hunter in imagination; his dogs take up every chair in the house, so I am forced to stand at this present writing; and though the gout forbids him galloping after them in the field, yet he continues still to regale his ears and nose with their comfortable noise and stink. He holds me mighty cheap, I perceive, for walking when I should ride, and reading when I

1 His mother's brother, Robert Antrobus, of Burnham.

should hunt. My comfort amidst all this is, that I have at the distance of half a mile, through a green lane, a forest (the vulgar call it a common) all my own, at least as good as so, for I spy no human thing in it but myself. It is a little chaos of mountains and precipices; mountains, it is true, that do not ascend much above the clouds, nor are the declivities quite so amazing as Dover cliff; but just such hills as people who love their necks as well as I do may venture to climb, and crags that give the eye as much pleasure as if they were more dangerous. Both vale and hill are covered with most venerable beeches, and other very reverend vegetables, that, like most other ancient people, are always dreaming out their old stories to the winds,

And as they bow their hoary tops relate,

In murn'ring sounds, the dark decrees of fate;
While visions, as poetic eyes avow,

Cling to each leaf, and swarm on every bough.

At the foot of one of these squats ME I (il penseroso), and there grow to the trunk for a whole morning. The timorous hare and sportive squirrel gambol around me like Adam in Paradise, before he had an Eve; but I think he did not use to read Virgil, as I commonly do there. In this situation I often converse with my Horace, aloud, too, that is, talk to you, but I do not remember that I ever heard you answer me. I beg pardon for taking all the conversation to myself, but it is entirely your own fault. We have