This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
The original letter is extant and usually available for academic research purposes
Julian
This letter is part of the Primary Texts section of the Thomas Gray Archive.
XML created for the Thomas Gray Archive.
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.
This comes to let you know, that I am in good health; but that I should not have been so, if it had not been for your kind promise of coming to tend me yourself, & see the effect of your own Prescription: and I should desire of you, so please you, as how that, you would be so good as to be so kind, as to do me the favour of bringing down with you a quantity of it, prepared as your Grandmothers Aunt, poor Mrs Hawthorn (God rest her soul, for she was as well a natured, a good Gentlewoman, as ever broke bread, or trod upon Shoe-leather; though I say it, that should not say it; for you know, she was related to me, & marry! not a jot the worse, I trow) used to make it: now I would not put you to this trouble, if I could provide myself of the Ingredients here; but truly, when I went to the Poticaries for a drachm of Spirit of Ridicule; the saucy Jackanapes of a Prentice-Boy fleered at me, I warrant ye, as who should say, you don't know your Errand: so by my troth, away ambles me I (like a fool as I came) home again, & when I came to look of your Receipt; to be sure, there was Spt of RIDICULE in great Letters, as plain as the nose in one's face: & so, back hurries I in a making-Water-while, as one may say, & when I came there, says I; you stripling, up-start, worsted-stocking, white-liver'd, lath-backed, impudent Princox, says I; abuse me! that am your betters every day in the week, says I; you ill-begotten, pocky, rascally, damned Son of a Bitch, says I–for you know, when he put me in such a perilous Passion, how could one help telling him his own–why, 'twould have provoked any Christian in the world, tho' twere a Dog–to speak; & so if you'll be so kind, I'll take care you shall be satisfied for your trouble: so, this is all at present from
If I should undertake to prove to you, that everything is Tobacco, it might be looked upon as an Absurdity after the revrd &
learnd Dn Swift has made it so manifest, that every thing is a Pudding: but I conceive it will not be
so difficult to shew, that Tobacco is every thing (at least here) for there is not a soul in our Colledge (a body I should say) who
does not smoke or chew: there's nothing but Whiffing from Fellow to Sizer; nay, even the very Chimnies, that they may'nt be thought
partic'lar, must needs smoke, like the rest: whilst unfashionable I labour thro' clouds of it, with as much pains, as Milton's poor
Devil took, when he travel'd through Chaos:–but, as to the Guzzling affair, you mistook in
thinking it was the Old fellows, that were with me; no 'twas a thousand times worse; they were all young ones–do but imagine me
pent up in a room hired for the purpose, & none of the largest, from 7 a-clock at night, till 4 in the morning! 'midst hogsheads
of Liquor & quantities of Tobacco, surrounded by 30 of these creatures, infinitely below the meanest People you could even form an
Idea off; toasting bawdy healths & deafned with their unmeaning Roar; Jesus! but I must tell you
of a fat Mortal, who stuck close to me, & was as drunk (as Miss Edwards–which story I'm
afraid by the by, was too well-fancied, to be real) well! he was so maudlin & so loving & told me long Stories, interrupted by
the sourest Interjections, with moral Discourses upon God knows what! that I was almost drunk too: oh–I must just beg lea[ve to
men]tion one more, who, they tell me, has no fault, but that, he's a little too foppish & talks like a London-Rake; this fine Gentleman is quite master of the Spectator & retails it for ever; among
the rest, he gave his humble Opinion of the present state of the Play-house; that Stevens had a very
graceful Motion, spoke well, &c, but that he must needs give his Voice for Mr Quin; Mrs
Thurmond too was in great favour with him: as for the Opera's he could not understand them, but had
heard Margaretta & Nicolini highly commended by those, that were
judges: by God, says another, those Opera's are the ruin of the nation; no honest people can go to 'em, & those, that do, are
ashamed of themselves; else why should they go in Masques & Disguises thither–no body in the company found out his blunder,
so no body laugh'd but I, which was taken for applause. you'll think it a strange compliment, when I tell you how often I thought of
you, all the while: but will forgive me, when you recollect, that 'twas a great piece of Philosophy in me, to be able, in ye midst of
Noise & Disturbance, to call to mind the most agreeable thing in nature: when you could give me so much Pleasure, absent; what
must you do, when with me? tho' perhaps its policy in you to stay away so long, that you may increase my Desire of seeing you: in your
next send me word, how soon you design, to come to the relief