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This letter is part of the correspondence calendar of the complete correspondence of Thomas Gray. The calendar contains detailed bibliographic records for all known original, copied, or published letters written by or to the poet as well as the full-text, where available. Each record is accompanied by digitised images of the manuscript, where available, or digitised images of the first printed edition.
I want to know a hundred things about you. are you fix'd in your house, for I hear many vague reports of Miss A:s inclination to part with the estate, & that the Loves are desirous of the
purchase, & would bid high? what part of the mansion (where I used to tremble at a breath of air) was blown down in the high wind?
did not you bless your stars for that dreary flat, that lay between you & Corton, & bar'd all
sight of the sea in its fury, & of the numberless wrecks, that strew'd all your coast? as to our little & unpicturesque events
you know them, I find, & have congratulated Mr Presendent, who is now our Master, in due form: but you do not know, that it never rains but it pours: he goes to Town on Monday for
institution to the Living of Streatham in the Isle of Ely worth from two to three hundred pound
a-year & given him by the King's Majesty. the detail is infinite, the attacks, the defences, the evasions, the circumventions, the
sacrifices, the perjuries, are only to be told by word of mouth: suffice it to say, that it is carried swimmingly & triumphantly
against two Lords temporal & one spiritual, who sollicited for their several Protegés in vain: so
our good Uncle Toby will have about 400£ a-year, no uncomfortable pittance! I have had several capricious letters from Berne. he has
sent me some pretty views of his native country, & its inhabitants. the portrait too is arrived
done at Paris, but no more like than I to Hercules:
you would think, it was intended for his Father, so grave & so composed: doubtless he meant to
look, like an Englishman or an owl. pray send me the letter, & do not suppose I grudge
postage.
I rejoice you have met with Froissart: he is the Herodotus of a barbarous age. had he but had the
luck of writing in as good a language, he might have been immortal! his locomotive disposition (for then there was no other way of
learning things) his simple curiosity, his religious credulity, were much like those of the old Grecian. our Ancestors used to read the
Mort d'Arthur, Amadis de Gaul, & Froissart, all alike, that is,
they no more suspected the good faith of the former than they did of the latter, but took it all for history. when you have tant chevauché
as to get to the end of him, there is Monstrelet waits to take you
up, & will set you down at Philip de Comines.
but previous to all these you should have read Villehardouin,
& Joinville.
I do not think myself bound to defend the character of even the best of Kings. pray slash them,
& spare not. my best compliments to Mrs Nicholls.
Your friend Mr Crofts has just left me. he is a candidate for the University & will succeed in the room of De Grey, now Chief-Justice of ye Common-Pleas.