(152) in Buckinghamshire, where his uncle resided.

(153) Thomas Ashton.  He was afterwards fellow of Eton College, rector of St. Botolph, Bishopsgate-street, and preacher to the Society of Lincoln’s-inn.  It was to him that Mr. Walpole addressed the poetical epistle from Florence, first published in Dodsley’s collection of poems.

(154) Thomas Gray, the poet.

1737

128 Letter 7 To George Montagu Esq.  King’s College, March 20, 1737.

Dear George, The first paragraph in my letter must be in answer to the last in yours; though I should be glad to make you the return you ask, by waiting on you myself.  ’Tis not in my power, from more circumstances than One, which are needless to tell you, to accompany you and Lord Conway(155) to Italy:  you add to the pleasure it would give me, by asking it so kindly.  You I am infinitely obliged to, as I was capable, my dear George, of making you forget for a minute that you don’t propose stirring from the dear place you are now in.  Poppies indeed are the chief flowers in love nosegays, but they seldom bend towards the lady; at least not till the other flowers have been gathered.  Prince Volscius’s boots were made of love-leather, and honour-leather; instead of honour, some people’s are made of friendship; but since you have been so good to me as to draw on this, I can almost believe you are equipped for travelling farther than Rheims.  ’Tis no little inducement to make me wish myself in France, that I hear gallantry is not left off there; that you may be polite and not be thought awkward for it.  You know the pretty men of the age in England use the women with no more deference than they do their coach-horses, and have not half the regard for them that they have for themselves.  The little freedoms you tell me you use take off from formality, by avoiding which ridiculous extreme we are dwindled into the other barbarous one, rusticity.  If you had been at Paris, I should have inquired about the new Spanish ambassadress, who, by the accounts we have thence, at her first audience of the queen, sat down with her at a distance that suited respect and conversation.  Adieu, dear George, Yours most heartily.

(156) Francis Seymour Conway, son of Francis Seymour, Lord Conway, and Charlotte, daughter of John Shorter, Esq. [Sister to Lady Walpole, the mother of Horace, and with her co-heiress of John Shorter, Esq. lord-mayor of London in 1688, who died during his mayoralty, from a fall off his horse, under Newgate, as he was going to proclaim Bartholomew Fair.  Lady Walpole died in the August of the year in which the present letter was written, and Sir Robert soon afterwards married @Miss Skerrit.  Walpole’s well-known fondness for his mother is alluded to by Gray, in a letter to West, dated 22d August, 1737:-” But while I write to you, I hear the bad news of lady Walpole’s death, on Saturday night last.  Forgive me if the thought of what my poor Horace must feel on that account obliges me to have done.”]