or insolent; on the contrary, a certain melancholy swimmingness, that described hopeless love rather than a natural amorous languish.  His exploits in war, where he always fought by the side of the renowned Paladine William of England, have endeared his memory to all admirers of true chivalry, as the mournful elegies which he poured out among the desert rocks of Caledonia in honour of the peerless lady and his heart’s idol, the incomparable Cynthia, will for ever preserve his name in the flowery annals of poesy.

[Footnote 1:  Walpole could not foresee the genius of Burns, that before his own death was to shed such glory on Scotland.  His compliment to a Scotchwoman was an allusion to Lady Aylesbury (nee Miss Caroline Campbell), whom Conway married after her husband’s death, which took place a few months after the date of this letter.  Lady Aylesbury was no poetess, but his estimate of what might be accomplished by Scotch ladies was afterwards fully borne out by Lady Anne Lindsay, the authoress of “Auld Gray,” and Lady Nairn.]

What a pity it is I was not born in the golden age of Louis the Fourteenth, when it was not only the fashion to write folios, but to read them too! or rather, it is a pity the same fashion don’t subsist now, when one need not be at the trouble of invention, nor of turning the whole Roman history into romance for want of proper heroes.  Your campaign in Scotland, rolled out and well be-epitheted, would make a pompous work, and make one’s fortune; at sixpence a number, one should have all the damsels within the liberties for subscribers:  whereas now, if one has a mind to be read, one must write metaphysical poems in blank verse, which, though I own to be still easier, have not half the imagination of romances, and are dull without any agreeable absurdity.  Only think of the gravity of this wise age, that have exploded “Cleopatra and Pharamond,” and approve “The Pleasures of the Imagination,” “The Art of Preserving Health,” and “Leonidas!” I beg the age’s pardon:  it has done approving these poems, and has forgot them.

Adieu! dear Harry.  Thank you seriously for the poem.  I am going to town for the birthday, and shall return hither till the Parliament meets; I suppose there is no doubt of our meeting then.

Yours ever.

P.S.—­Now you are at Stirling, if you should meet with Drummond’s History of the five King Jameses, pray look it over.  I have lately read it, and like it much.  It is wrote in imitation of Livy; the style masculine, and the whole very sensible; only he ascribes the misfortunes of one reign to the then king’s loving architecture and

    In trim gardens taking pleasure.

HE HAS BOUGHT STRAWBERRY HILL.

TO THE HON.  H.S.  CONWAY.

TWICKENHAM, June 8, 1747.

You perceive by my date that I am got into a new camp, and have left my tub at Windsor.  It is a little plaything-house that I got out of Mrs. Chenevix’s shop, and is the prettiest bauble you ever saw.  It is set in enamelled meadows, with filigree hedges: