it was the dearness tempted me.  I believe I must keep an astronomer, like Mr. Beauclerk, to help me play with my rattle.  The inventor, who seems very modest and simple, but I conclude an able flatterer, was in love with my house, and vowed nothing ever suited his camera so well.  To be sure, the painted windows and the prospects, and the Gothic chimneys, etc. etc. were the delights of one’s eyes, when no bigger than a silver penny.  You would know how to manage it, as if you had never done any thing else.  Had not you better come and see it?  You will learn how to conduct it, with the pleasure of correcting my awkwardness and unlearnability.  Sir Joshua Reynolds and West have each got one; and the Duke of Northumberland is so charmed with the invention, that I dare say he can talk upon and explain it till I should understand ten times less of the matter than I do.  Remember, neither Lady Ailesbury, nor you, nor Mrs. Damer, have seen my new divine closet, nor the billiard-sticks with which the Countess of Pembroke And Arcadia used to play with her brother Sir Philip; nor the portrait of la belle Jennings in the state bedchamber.  I go to town this day s’ennight for a day or two; and as, to be sure, Mount Edgecumbe has put you out of humour with Park-place, you may deign to leave it for a moment.  I never did see Cotchel,(283) and am sorry.  Is not the old wardrobe there still?  There was one from the time of Cain; but Adam’s breeches and Eve’s under-petticoat were eaten by a goat in the ark.  Good-night!

(282) The machine called a Delineator.

(283) The old residence of the family of Edgecumbe, twelve miles distant from Mount Edgecumbe.

Letter 127 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.  Strawberry Hill, Sept. 22, 1777. (page 173)

I return you Your manuscript, dear Sir, with a thousand thanks, and shall be impatient to hear that you receive it safe.  It has amused me much, and I admire Mr. Baker(284) for having been able to show so much sense on so dry a subject.  I wish, as you say you have materials for it, that you would write his life.  He deserved it much more than most of those he has recorded.  His book on the Deficiencies of Learning is most excellent, and far too little known.  I admire his moderation, too, which was extraordinary in a man who had suffered so much for his principles.  Yet they warped even him, for he rejects Bishop Burnet’s character of Bishop Gunning in p. 200, and yet in the very next page gives the same character of him.  Burnet’s words are, “he had a great confusion of things in his head, but could bring nothing into method:”  pray compare this with p. 201.  I see nothing in which they differ, except that Mr. Burnet does not talk so much of his comeliness as Mr. Baker.