Thomas Gray to Thomas Wharton, 17 August 1757
To
Dr Thomas Wharton M:D: in
Kings-Arms Yard, Coleman-Street
London
18 AV
It feels to me as if it were a long while, since I heard from you. not a word to flatter or to abash the vanity of an Author! suffer me then to tell you, that I hear, we are not at all popular. the great objection is obscurity, no body knows what we would be at. one Man (a Peer) I have been told of, that thinks the last Stanza of the 2d Ode relates to Charles the first & Oliver Cromwell. in short the Συνετοί appear to be still fewer, than even I expected.
You will imagine all this does not go very deep; but I have been almost eversince I was here exceedingly dispirited, besides being really ill in body. no gout, but something feverish, that seems to come almost every morning, & disperses soon after I am up. the Cobhams are here, & as civil as usual. Garrick & his Wife have been down with them some days, & are soon to come again. except the little amusement they give me, & two volumes of the Encyclopedie now almost exhausted, I have nothing but my own thoughts to feed upon, & you know they are of the gloomy cast. write to me then for sweet St Charity, & remember, that while I am my own, I am most faithfully
My best Services to Mrs Wharton.
Correspondents
Dates
Places
Physical description
Content
Holding Institution
(confirmed)
Egerton MS 2400, ff. 92-93, Manuscripts collection, British Library , London, UK <http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/bldept/manuscr/>
Print Versions
- The Works of Thomas Gray, 2 vols. Ed. by John Mitford. London: J. Mawman, 1816, section IV, letter LXII, vol. ii, 286
- The Works of Thomas Gray, 5 vols. Ed. by John Mitford. London: W. Pickering, 1835-1843, section IV, letter LXX, vol. iii, 164-165
- The Letters of Thomas Gray, including the correspondence of Gray and Mason, 3 vols. Ed. by Duncan C. Tovey. London: George Bell and Sons, 1900-12, letter no. CXLVI, vol. i, 345-346
- 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. 246, vol. ii, 518-519