Richard Hurd to Thomas Gray, [7 January 1757]
I will beg the favour of your Milton once more. I have considerd your Observations in the Paper you oblig'd me with yesterday. I think them excellent and shall correct accordingly.
The only one of the least consequence that sticks with me is your hint about the Introduction. And I owe it to your frankness, to tell you my sincere sentiments. I hate the hypocrisy of those men who think to cover their own dullness under the mask of piety, as much as you can do. I know too what is to be said for those who have not devoted themselves to a Profession And still further for those who read the Poets, not for amusement only, but to contend with the best of them. I honour, in a word, true poetry and true Poets as much as any body. And I think, in particular, with you that Mr Pope's apologies for himself were very needless. Yet still in my own case I must profess to you with sincerity, that what I say in the Letter is my real opinion. The Profession, I am of, is a sacred one. And tho' it does not oblige me to renounce the poets, my business, I think, should lie elsewhere. I assure you, I take this design to be but a decent one in my circumstances, and, considering the circumstances of the time, an absolute Duty. So that when these things are out of my hands, and the few Dialogues I mention'd to you, I have determin'd long since to pass the remainder of my Life (I mean if in that remainder I do any thing as a writer) in the concerns of my own Profession. However there are some things in the Introduction put more strongly than they needed to have been, and these I shall soften; principally because what I leave will then be understood, not as words of course, but as my real meaning.
You will think I treat you very formally, in entering into this serious explanation. I do it to show you on what grounds, and with what reluctance, I deny myself the use of any part of your kind Intimations to me.
Your very oblig'd humble Servant
Friday morning
Correspondents
Dates
Places
Content
Holding Institution
(unconfirmed)
Hurd Library, Hartlebury Castle , Hartlebury, UK <https://www.museumsworcestershire.org.uk/museums/county-museum-hartlebury/>
Print Versions
- The Correspondence of Richard Hurd & William Mason. And letters of Richard Hurd to Thomas Gray. With introduction & notes by the late Ernest Harold Pearce. Ed. with additional notes by Leonard Whibley. Cambridge: University Press, 1932, 33-35
- 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. 231*, vol. ii, 492-494