you desire I would burn your letters:  I desire you would keep mine.  I know but of one way of making what I send you useful, which is, by sending you a blank sheet:  sure you would not grudge threepence for a halfpenny sheet, when you give as much for one not worth a farthing.  You drew this last paragraph on you by your exordium, as you call it, and conclusion.  I hope, for the future, our correspondence will run a little more glibly, with dear George, and dear Harry [Conway]; not as formally as if we were playing a game at chess in Spain and Portugal; and Don Horatio was to have the honour of specifying to Don Georgio, by an epistle, whither he would move.  In one point I would have our correspondence like a game at chess; it should last all our lives—­but I hear you cry check; adieu!

Dear George, yours ever.

[Footnote 1:  Augusta, younger daughter of Frederic II., Duke of Saxe-Gotha, married (27th April, 1736) to Frederick, Prince of Wales, father of George III.

In 1736, I wrote a copy of Latin verses, published in the “Gratulatio
Acad.  Cantab.,” on the marriage of Frederick, Prince of
Wales.—­Walpole (Short Notes).]

FONDNESS FOR OLD STORIES—­REMINISCENCES OF ETON, ETC.

TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ.

KING’S COLLEGE, May 6, 1736.

Dear George,—­I agree with you entirely in the pleasure you take in talking over old stories, but can’t say but I meet every day with new circumstances, which will be still more pleasure to me to recollect.  I think at our age ’tis excess of joy, to think, while we are running over past happinesses, that it is still in our power to enjoy as great.  Narrations of the greatest actions of other people are tedious in comparison of the serious trifles that every man can call to mind of himself while he was learning those histories.  Youthful passages of life are the chippings of Pitt’s diamond, set into little heart-rings with mottoes; the stone itself more worth, the filings more gentle and agreeable.—­Alexander, at the head of the world, never tasted the true pleasure that boys of his own age have enjoyed at the head of a school.  Little intrigues, little schemes, and policies engage their thoughts; and, at the same time that they are laying the foundation for their middle age of life, the mimic republic they live in furnishes materials of conversation for their latter age; and old men cannot be said to be children a second time with greater truth from any one cause, than their living over again their childhood in imagination.  To reflect on the season when first they felt the titillation of love, the budding passions, and the first dear object of their wishes! how unexperienced they gave credit to all the tales of romantic loves!  Dear George, were not the playing fields at Eton food for all manner of flights?  No old maid’s gown, though it had been tormented into all the fashions from King James to King George, ever underwent so many transformations