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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 feel a contrition for my long silence; & yet perhaps it is the last thing you trouble your head about. nevertheless I will be
as sorry, as if you took it ill. I am sorry too to see you so punctilious, as to stand upon answers, & never to come near me, till
I have regularly left my name at your door, like a Mercer's Wife, that imitates People, who go a-visiting. I would forgive you this, if
you could possibly suspect I were doing any thing, that I liked better. for then your formality might look like being piqued at my
negligence; wch has somewhat in it like kindness: but you know I am at Stoke, hearing, seeing, doing, absolutely nothing. not such a
nothing, as you do at Tunbridge, chequer'd & diversified with a succession of fleeting colours; but heavy, lifeless, without form,
& void; sometimes almost as black, as the Moral of Voltaire's Lisbon, wch
angers you so. I have had no more pores & muscular inflations, & am only troubled with this depression of mind. you will not
expect therefore I should give you any account of my Verve, wch is at best (you know) of so delicate a
constitution, & has such weak nerves, as not to stir out of its chamber above three days in a year. but I shall enquire after
yours, & why it is off again? it has certainly worse nerves than mine, if your Reviewers have frighted it. sure I (not to mention a
score of your Uncles and Aunts) am something a better Judge, than all the Man-Midwives &
Presbyterian Parsons, that ever were born. pray give me leave to ask you. do you find yourself tickled
with the commendations of such People? (for you have your share of these too) I dare say not. Your Vanity has certainly a better taste.
and can then the censure of such Criticks move you? I own, it is an impertinence in these Gentry to talk of one at all either in good
or in bad, but this we must all swallow, I mean not only we, that write, but all the we's that ever did any
thing to be talk'd of. I canot pretend to be learned without books, nor to know the Druids from the Pelasgi at this distance from Cambridge, I can only tell you not to go & take the Mona for the Isle of Man. it is Anglesey, a tract of plain country, very fertile, but picturesque only from the
view it has of Caernarvonshire, from wch it is separated by the Menai, a narrow arm of the Sea. forgive me for supposing in you such a
want of erudition.
I congratulate you on our glorious successes in the Mediterranean. shall we go in time, & hire a house together in Switzerland? it is a fine poetical country to look at, & no body there will understand a word we say or write. pray, let me know what you are about, what new acquaintances you have made at Tunbridge, how you do in body & in mind?
Have you read Mad: Maintenon's Letters. When I saw Ld John in Town,
he said if his Brother went to Ireland, you were to go second Chaplain. but it
seem'd to me not at all certain, that the Duke would return thither. you probably know by this time.