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,)208) 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, etc. 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 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.

(207) “The History of Manchester,” by John Whitaker, B. D. London, 1771-3-5. 2 vols. 4to.  “We talked,” says Boswell, “of antiquarian 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 we have upon it; the whole of which, excepting such parts as are taken from these old writers, is all a dream, such as Whitaker’s Manchester.’” Life of Johnson, vol. vii. p. 189.-E.

(208) Jacob Bryan, the learned author of “A New System; or, n Analysis of Ancient Mythology,” 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