and all sweetness too.  I don’t know how, he does not improve so fast upon me:  there is a great deal of parts, and vivacity, and variety, but there is a great deal too of mimicry and burlesque.  I am very ungrateful, for he flatters me abundantly; but unluckily I know it.  I was accustomed to it enough when my father was first minister:  on his fall I lost it all at once:  and since that, I have lived with Mr. Chute, who is all vehemence; with Mr. Fox, who is all disputation; with Sir Charles Williams, who has no time from flattering himself; with Gray, who does not hate to find fault with me; with Mr. Conway, who is all sincerity; and with you and Mr. Rigby, who have always laughed at me in a good-natured way.  I don’t know how, but I think I like all this as well—­I beg his pardon, Mr. Raftor does flatter me; but I should be a cormorant for praise, if I could swallow it whole as he gives it me.

Sir William Yonge, who has been extinct so long, is at last dead; and the war, which began with such a flirt of vivacity, is I think gone to sleep.  General Braddock has not yet sent over to claim the surname of Americanus.  But why should I take pains to show you in how many ways I know nothing?—­Why; I can tell it you in one word—­why, Mr. Cambridge knows nothing!—­I wish you good-night!

To GEORGE, LORD LYTTELTON

Gray’s Odes

Strawberry Hill, 25 Aug. 1757.

MY LORD,

It is a satisfaction one can’t often receive, to show a thing of great merit to a man of great taste.  Your Lordship’s approbation is conclusive, and it stamps a disgrace on the age, who have not given themselves the trouble to see any beauties in these Odes of Mr. Gray.  They have cast their eyes over them, found them obscure, and looked no further, yet perhaps no compositions ever had more sublime beauties than are in each.  I agree with your Lordship in preferring the last upon the whole; the three first stanzas and half, down to agonizing King, are in my opinion equal to anything in any language I understand.  Yet the three last of the first Ode please me very near as much.  The description of Shakespeare is worthy Shakespeare:  the account of Milton’s blindness, though perhaps not strictly defensible, is very majestic.  The character of Dryden’s poetry is as animated as what it paints.  I can even like the epithet Orient; as the last is the empire of fancy and poesy, I would allow its livery to be erected into a colour.  I think blue-eyed Pleasures is allowable:  when Homer gave eyes of what hue he pleased to his Queen-Goddesses, sure Mr. Gray may tinge those of their handmaids.

In answer to your Lordship’s objection to many-twinkling, in that beautiful epode, I will quote authority to which you will yield.  As Greek as the expression is, it struck Mrs. Garrick, and she says, on that whole picture, that Mr. Gray is the only poet who ever understood dancing.