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Richard West to Thomas Gray, [14 November 1735]

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You use me very cruelly: You have sent me but one letter since I have been at Oxford, and that too agreeable not to make me sensible how great my loss is in not having more. Next to seeing you is the pleasure of seeing your handwriting; next to hearing you is the pleasure of hearing from you. Really and sincerely I wonder at you, that you thought it not worth while to answer my last letter. I hope this will have better success in behalf of your quondam school-fellow; in behalf of one who has walked hand in hand with you, like the two children in the wood,

Through many a flowery path and shelly grot,
Where learning lull'd us in her private maze.

The very thought, you see, tips my pen with poetry, and brings Eton to my view. Consider me very seriously here in a strange country, inhabited by things that call themselves Doctors and Masters of Arts; a country flowing with syllogisms and ale, where Horace and Virgil are equally unknown; consider me, I say, in this melancholy light, and then think if something be not due to

Yours.

P.S. I desire you will send me soon, and truly and positively, a history of your own time.

Letter ID: letters.0019 (Source: TEI/XML)

Correspondents

Writer: West, Richard, 1716-1742
Writer's age: 19[?]
Addressee: Gray, Thomas, 1716-1771
Addressee's age: 18

Dates

Date of composition: [14 November 1735]
Date (on letter): [Nov. 14. 1735.]
Calendar: Julian

Places

Place of composition: [Oxford, United Kingdom]
Address (on letter): [Christ Church]

Content

Language: English
Incipit: You use me very cruelly: You have sent me but one letter...
Mentioned: Burnet, Gilbert
Oxford

Holding Institution

Availability: The original letter is unlocated, a copy, transcription, or published version survives

Print Versions

  • The Poems of Mr. Gray. To which are prefixed Memoirs of his Life and Writings by W[illiam]. Mason. York: printed by A. Ward; and sold by J. Dodsley, London; and J. Todd, York, 1775, letter i, section i, 6-7
  • The Works of Thomas Gray, 2 vols. Ed. by Thomas James Mathias. London: William Bulmer, 1814, section I, letter I, vol. i, 137-138
  • The Works of Thomas Gray, 2 vols. Ed. by John Mitford. London: J. Mawman, 1816, section I, letter I, vol. ii, 1-2
  • The Letters of Thomas Gray, 2 vols. in one. London: J. Sharpe, 1819, letter I, vol. i, 5-6
  • The Works of Thomas Gray, 5 vols. Ed. by John Mitford. London: W. Pickering, 1835-1843, section I, letter I, vol. ii, 1-2
  • Gray and his Friends: Letters and Relics, in great part hitherto unpublished. Ed. by Duncan C. Tovey. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1890, section II, letter no. 3, 68-69
  • The Correspondence of Gray, Walpole, West and Ashton (1734-1771), 2 vols. Chronologically arranged and edited with introduction, notes, and index by Paget Toynbee. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1915, letter no. 20, vol. i, 51
  • Correspondence of Thomas Gray, 3 vols. Ed. by the late Paget Toynbee and Leonard Whibley, with corrections and additions by H. W. Starr. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971 [1st ed. 1935], letter no. 18, vol. i, 33-34