P. S. I don’t know yet when I shall leave Cambridge.

(151) Mr. Henry Coventry was the son of Henry Coventry, Esq. who had a good estate in Cambridgeshire.  He was born in 1710, and died in 1752.  He wrote four additional Dialogues.  The five were republished shortly after his death, by his cousin, the Rev. Francis Coventry.  The following is transcribed from the MSS. of the Rev. W. Cole:-

“When Henry Coventry first came to the University, he was of a religious turn of mind, as was Mr. Horace Walpole; even so much so as to go with Ashton, his then great friend, to pray with the prisoners in the Castle.  Afterwards, both Mr. Coventry and Mr. Walpole took to the infidel side of the question."-E.

127 Letter 6 To Richard West, Esq.  King’s College, Aug. 17, 1736.

Dear West, Gray is at Burnham,(152) and, what is surprising, has not been at Eton.  Could you live so near it without seeing it?  That dear scene of our quadruple-alliance would furnish me with the most agreeable recollections.  ’Tis the head of our genealogical table, that is since sprouted out into the two branches of Oxford and Cambridge.  You seem to be the eldest son, by having got a whole inheritance to yourself; while the manor of Granta is to be divided between your three younger brothers, Thomas of Lancashire, [153] Thomas of London [154] and Horace.  We don’t wish you dead to enjoy your seat, but your seat dead to enjoy you.  I hope you are a mere elder brother, and live upon what your father left you, and in the way you ’were brought up in, poetry:  but we are supposed to betake ourselves to some trade, as logic, philosophy, or mathematics.  If I should prove a mere younger brother, and not turn to any Profession, would you receive me, and supply me out of your stock, where you have such plenty?  I have been so used to the delicate food of Parnassus, that I can never condescend to apply to the grosser studies of Alma Mater.  Sober cloth of syllogism colour suits me ill; or, what’s worse, I hate clothes that one must prove to be of no colour at all.  If the Muses coelique vias et sidera monstrent, and qua vi maria alta lumescant. why accipiant:  but ’tis thrashing, to study philosophy in the abstruse authors.  I am not against cultivating these studies, as they are certainly useful; but then they quite neglect all polite literature, all knowledge of this world.  Indeed, such people have not much occasion for this latter; for they shut themselves up from it, and study till they know less than any one.  Great mathematicians have been of great use; but the generality of them are quite unconversible:  they frequent the stars, sub pedibusque vident nubes, but they can’t see through them.  I tell you what I see; that by living amongst them, I write of nothing else:  my letters are all parallelograms, two sides equal to two sides; and every paragraph an axiom, that tells you nothing but what every mortal almost knows.  By the way, your letters come under this description; for they contain nothing but what almost every mortal knows too, that knows you-that is, they are extremely agreeable, which they know you are capable of making them:-no one is better acquainted with it than Your sincere friend.