luogo. Dopo le parole nel tesser la favola di un poema. 'Simili ai Giardini della Cina sono quelli che piantano gl' Inglesi dietro al medesimo modello 'della Natura.' Quanto ella ha di vago, é di vario, boschetti, collinette, acque vive, praterie con dei tempietti, degli obelischi, ed anche di belle rovine che spuntano quá e lá, si trova quivi reunito dal gusto dei Kent, e dei Chambers,* che hanno di tanto sorpassato il le Nature, tenuto giá il maestro dell' Architettura, diro cosi, dé Giardini. Dalle Ville d'Inghilterra é sbandita la simmetria Francese, i più bei siti pajono naturali, il culto é misto col negletto, é il disordine che vi regna é l'effetto dell' arte la meglio ordinata."

It is seldom that an author of a reputation so established (as Mr. How truly remarked, when he sent this extract to Mr. Gray) so easily, readily, and explicitly gives up his own opinion to that of another, or even to conviction itself; nor perhaps would Count Algarotti have done so, had he not been thoroughly apprized to whose correction he submitted.

Ix. MR. GRAY TO MR. HOW.

Pembroke-hall, Jan. 12, 1768.

I WAS willing to go through the eight volumes of Count Algarotti's works, which you lately presented to the library of this college, before I returned you an answer: this must be my excuse to you for my silence. First, I condole with you, that so neat an edition should swarm in almost every page with errors of the press, not only in notes and citations from Greek, English, and French authors, but in the Italian text itself, greatly to the disreputation of the Leghorn publishers. This is the only reason, I think, that could make an edition in England *As he had written on the subject, this mistake was natural

enough in Count Algarotti.

necessary; but, I doubt, you would not find the matter much mended here; our presses, as they improve in beauty, declining daily in accuracy: besides, you would find the expense very considerable, and the sale in no proportion to it, as, in reality, it is but few people in England that read currently and with pleasure the Italian tongue, and the fine old editions of their capital writers are sold at London for a lower price than they bear in Italy. An English translation I can by no means advise the justness of thought and good sense might remain, but the graces of elocution (which make a great part of Algarotti's merit) would be entirely lost, and that merely from the very different genius and complexion of the two languages.

Doubtless there can be no impropriety in your making the same present to the University that you have done to your own college. You need not at all to fear for the reputation of your friend; he has merit enough to recommend him in any country. A tincture of various sorts of knowledge, an acquaintance with all the beautiful arts, an easy command, a precision, warmth, and richness of expression, and a judgment that is rarely mistaken on any subject to which he applies it. I had read the Congresso di Citéra before, and was excessively pleased with it, in spite of prejudice; for I am naturally no friend to allegory, nor to poetical prose. "The

Giudicio d' Amore" is an addition rather inferior to it. What gives me the least pleasure of any of his writings is the Newtonianism; it is so direct an imitation of Fontenelle, a writer not easy to imitate, and least of all in the Italian tongue, whose character and graces are of a higher style, and never adapt themselves easily to the elegant badinage and legereté of conversation that sit so well on the French. The essays and letters (many of them entirely new to me) on the Arts, are curious and entertaining: those on other subjects (even where

Y

the thoughts are not new, but borrowed from his various reading and conversation), often better put, and better expressed than in the originals. I rejoice when I see Machiavel defended, or illustrated, who to me appears one of the wisest men that any nation in any age has produced. Most of the other discourses, military or political, are well worth reading, though that on KouliKhan was a mere jeu d'esprit, a sort of historical exercise. The letters from Russia I had read before with pleasure, particularly the narrative of Munick and Lascy's campaigns. The detached thoughts are often new and just; but there should have been a revisal of them, as they are frequently to be found in his letters repeated in the very same words. Some too of the familiar letters might have been spared. The verses are not equal to the prose, but they are above mediocrity.

X. MR. GRAY TO MR. NICHOLLS.

It is long since that I heard you were gone in haste into Yorkshire on account of your mother's illness, and the same letter informed me that she was recovered, otherwise I had then wrote to you only to beg you would take care of her, and to inform you that I had discovered a thing very little known, which is, that in one's whole life one can never have any more than a single mother. You may think this is obvious, and (what you call) a trite observation. You are a green gosling! I was at the same age (very near) as wise as you, and yet I never discovered this (with full evidence and conviction I mean) till it was too late. It is thirteen years ago, and seems but as yesterday, and every day I live it sinks deeper into my heart.* Many a corollary could I

* He seldom mentioned his mother without a sigh. After his death, her gowns and wearing apparel were found in a trunk in his apartments just as she had left them; it seemed as if he could never take the resolution to open it, in order to distribute them to his female relations, to whom, by his will, he bequeathed them.

draw from this axiom for your use (not for my own), but I will leave you the merit of doing it for yourself. Pray tell me how your health is: I conclude it perfect, as I hear you offered yourself as a guide to Mr. Palgrave into the Sierra-Morena of Yorkshire. For me, I passed the end of May and all June in Kent, not disagreeably. In the west part of it, from every eminence, the eye catches some long reach of the Thames or Medway, with all their shipping: in the east the sea breaks in upon you, and mixes its white transient sails and glittering blue expanse with the deeper and brighter greens of the woods and corn. This sentence is so fine I am quite ashamed; but no matter! You must translate it into prose. Palgrave, if he heard it, would cover his face with his pudding sleeve. I do not tell you of the great and small beasts, and creeping things innumerable, that I met with, because you do not suspect that this world is inhabited by any thing but men, and women, and clergy, and such two-legged cattle. Now I am here again very disconsolate, and all alone, for Mr. Brown is gone, and the cares of this world are coming thick upon me: you, I hope, are better off, riding and walking in the woods of Studley, &c. &c. I must not wish for you here; besides, I am going to town at Michaelmas, by no means for amusement.

XI. MR. GRAY TO MR. NICHOLLS.

Pembroke-hall, Jan. 26, 1771.

I REJOICE you have met with Froissart, he is the Herodotus of a barbarous age; had he but had the luck of writing in as good a language, he might have been immortal! His locomotive disposition (for then there was no other way of learning things); his simple curiosity, his religious credulity, were much like those of the old

Grecian. When you have tant chevauché, as to get to the end of him, there is Monstrelet waits to take you up, and will set you down at Philip de Comines; but previous to all these, you should have read Villehardouin and Joinville. I do not think myself bound to defend the character of even the best of kings:† pray slash them all, and spare not.

It would be strange too if I should blame your Greek studies, or find fault with you for reading Isocrates: I did so myself twenty years ago, and in an edition at least as bad as yours. The Panegyric, the de Pace, Areopagitic, and Advice to Philip, are by far the noblest remains we have of this writer, and equal to most things extant in the Greek tongue; but it depends on your judgment to distinguish between his real and occasional opinion of things, as he directly contradicts in one place what he has advanced in another: for example, in the Panathenaic, and the de Pace, &c. on the naval power of Athens; the latter of the two is undoubtedly his own undisguised sentiment.

I would by all means wish you to comply with your friend's request, and write the letter he desires. I trust to the cause and to the warmth of your own kindness for inspiration. Write eloquently, that is from your heart, in such expressions as that will furnish. Men sometimes catch that feeling from a stranger which should have originally sprung from their own heart.

* See more of his opinion of this author, Sect. IV. Letter XXXVI.

I suppose his correspondent had made some strictures on the character of Henry IV. of France. See Sect. IV. Letter XXII.

This short sentence contains a complete definition of natural eloquence; when it becomes an art it requires one more prolix, and our Author seems to have begun to sketch it on a detached paper. "Its province (says he) is to reign over minds of slow perception and little imagination, to set things in lights they never saw them in; to engage their attention by details and circumstances gradually unfolded, to adorn and heighten them with images and colours unknown to them, and to raise and engage their rude passions to the point to which the speaker wishes to bring them.'