Such Guido's pencil, beauty-tip'd,
And in ethereal colours dip'd,
In measur'd dance to tuneful song
Drew the sweet goddess, as along
Heaven's azure 'neath their light feet spread,
The buxom hours the fairest led.'[67]
'Charming Berkeley,' here mentioned, afterwards became the third wife of Goldsmith's friend, Earl Nugent, and the mother of the little girl who played tricks upon the author of She Stoops to Conquer at her father's country seat of Gosfield; 'Aylesb'ry, like hoary Neptune's queen,' married Walpole's friend, Conway, and 'the new Aurora, Lyttelton,' was that engaging Lucy Fortescue upon whose death in 1747 her husband wrote the monody so pitilessly parodied by Smollett.[68] Lady Almeria Carpenter, Lady Emily Lenox, Miss Chudleigh (afterwards the notorious Duchess of Kingston), and many other well-known names, quos nunc perscribere longum est, are also celebrated.
In August, 1746, Walpole announces to Mann that he has taken a pretty house within the precincts of the castle at Windsor, to which he is going for the remainder of the summer. In September he has entered upon residence, for Gray tells Wharton that he sees him 'usually once a week.' 'All is mighty free, and even friendly more than one could expect,'—and one of the first things posted off to Conway, is Gray's Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College, which the sender desires he 'will please to like excessively.' He is drawn from his retreat by the arrival of a young Florentine friend, the Marquis Rinuncini, to whom he has to do the London honours. 'I stayed literally an entire week with him, carried him to see palaces and Richmond gardens and park, and Chenevix's shop, and talked a great deal to him alle conversazioni.'[69] 'Chenevix's shop' suggests the main subject of the next chapter,—the purchase and occupation of Strawberry Hill.