(1015) There has been some mistake here.  Amidst the vast number of verses to Beaumont and Fletcher, none are found with this signature.  There is one copy signed Gardiner.-C.

482 Letter 310 To Sir David Dalrymple.(1016) Strawberry Hill, March 25, 1759.

I should not trouble you, Sir, so soon again with a letter, but some questions and some passages in yours seem to make it necessary.  I know nothing of the Life of Gustavus, nor heard of it, before it was advertised.  Mr. Harte(1017) was a favoured disciple of Mr. Pope, whose obscurity he imitated more than his lustre.  Of the History of the Revival of Learning I have not heard a word.  Mr. Gray a few years ago began a poem on that subject; but dropped it, thinking it would cross too much upon some parts of the Dunciad.  It would make a signal part of a History of Learning which I lately proposed to Mr. Robertson.  Since I wrote to him, another subject has started to me, which would make as agreeable a work, both to the writer and to the reader, as any I could think of; and would be a very tractable one, because capable of being extended or contracted as the author should please.  It is the History of the House of Medici.(1018) There is an almost unknown republic, factions, banishment, murders, commerce, conquests, heroes, cardinals, all of a new stamp, and very different from what appear in any other country.  There is a scene of little polite Italian courts, where gallantry and literature were uncommonly blended, particularly in that of Urbino, which without any violence might make an episode.  The Popes on the greater plan enter of course.  What a morsel Leo the Tenth! the revival of letters!(1019) the torrent of Greeks that imported them!  Extend still farther, there are Catherine and Mary, Queens of France.  In short, I know nothing one could wish in a subject that would not fall into this—­and then it is a Complete Subject, the family is extinct:  even the state is so, as a separate dominion.

I could not help smiling, Sir, at being taxed with insincerity for my encomiums on Scotland.  They were given in a manner a little too serious to admit of irony, and (as partialities cannot be supposed entirely ceased) with too much risk of disapprobation in this part of the world, not to flow from my heart.  My friends have long known my opinion on this point, and it is too much formed on fact for me to retract it, if I were so disposed.  With regard to the magazines and reviews, I can say with equal and great truth, that I have been much more hurt at a gross defence of me than by all that railing.

Mallet still defers his life of the Duke of Marlborough;(1020) I don’t know why:  sometimes he says he will stay till the peace; sometimes that he is translating it, or having it translated into French, that he may not lose that advantage.

(1016) Now first collected.