Old Lady Sandwich(766) had obtained this remission, and yet, though she left every thing to the present lord, her grandson, a man for whose rank one should have thought they would have had regard, the King’s officers forced themselves into her house, after her death, and plundered.  You see, if you go, I shall expect to have your MSS. deposited with me.  Seriously, you must leave them in safe custody behind you.

Lord Essex’s trial is printed with the State Trials.  In return for your obliging offer, I can acquaint you with a delightful publication of this winter, a Collection of Old Ballads and Poetry, in three volumes, many from Pepys’s Collection at Cambridge.(767) There were three such published between thirty and forty years ago, but very carelessly, and wanting many in this set:  indeed, there were others, a looser sort,(768) which the present editor, who is a clergyman, thought it decent to omit.

When you go into Cheshire, and upon your ramble, may I trouble you with a commission? but about which you must promise me not to go a Step Out of your way.  Mr. Bateman has got a cloister at Old Windsor, furnished with ancient wooden chairs, most of them triangular, but all of various patterns, and carved and turned in the most uncouth and whimsical forms.  He picked them up one by one, for two, three, five, or six shillings apiece from different farmhouses in Herefordshire.  I have long envied and coveted them.  There may be such in poor cottages, in so neighbouring a county as Cheshire.  I should not grudge any expense for purchase or carriage; and should be glad even of a couple such for my cloister here.  When you are copying inscriptions in a churchyard in any village, think of me, and step into the first cottage you see—­but don’t take further trouble than that.

I long to know what your bundle of manuscripts from Cheshire contains.

My bower is determined, but not at all what it is to be.  Though I write romances, I cannot tell how to build all that belongs to them.  Madame Danois, in the Fairy Tales, used to tapestry them with jonquils; but as that furniture will not last above a fortnight in the year, I shall prefer something more huckaback.  I have decided that the outside shall be of treillage, which, however, I shall not commence, till I have again seen some of old Louis’s old-fashioned Galanteries at Versailles.  Rosamond’s bower, you, and I, and Tom Hearne know, was a labyrinth:(769) but as my territory will admit of a very short clew, I lay aside all thoughts of a mazy habitation:  though a bower is very different from an arbour, and must have more chambers than one.  In short, I both know, and don’t know, what it should be.  I am almost afraid I must go and read Spenser, and wade through his allegories, and drawling stanzas, to get at a picture.  But, good night! you see how one gossips, when one is alone, and at quiet on one’s own dunghill!—­Well! it may be trifling; yet it is such trifling as Ambition never is happy enough to know!  Ambition orders palaces, but it is Content that chats for a page or two over a bower.  Yours ever.