[May 22, 1753.]
FOOTNOTES:
[106] Ballard's Memoirs of Learned Ladies of Great Britain who have been celebrated for their writings or skill in the Learned Languages Arts & Sciences, appeared at Oxford in 4to (1752) and 8vo (1775). It contains some sixty lives, the most noteworthy names being those of Queens Elizabeth and Mary of Scotland, Lady Jane Grey, Margaret Countess of Richmond (the "Lady Margaret"), the Duchess of Newcastle, Lady Winchelsea, the two Countesses of Pembroke ("Sidney's sister" and Anne Clifford), Dame Juliana Barnes or Berners, Dryden's Anne Killigrew, Dorothy Pakington (the alleged author of The Whole Duty of Man), and "the matchless Orinda."
[107] Perhaps a note should be added on "Mrs. Hopton" and "F. Turbe(r)ville." The former, born Susanna Harvey (1627-1709), was the wife of a Welsh judge, and wrote devotional works. The latter, Henry T. (d. 1678: the "F" of text is of course "Father"), was a writer of doctrinal and controversial manuals on the Roman side.
THOMAS GRAY (1716-1771)
The chief thing to add to what has been said of Gray in the Introduction is something that may draw attention to a curious feature of his letters, not there distinctly noticed. Letters, it must be sufficiently seen even from this little book, have a curious variety of relation to the characters, personal and literary, of their writers. Sometimes they show us phases entirely or almost entirely concealed in the published works; sometimes again, without definitely revealing new aspects, they complete and enforce the old; while, in yet a third, though perhaps the smallest, class of instances, they are as it were results of the same governing formula as that of the published works themselves, the difference lying almost wholly in the subjects and in the methods and circumstances of treatment. Gray belongs to this last division. There is not, of course, in his letters the same severity of discipline and restriction of utterance, that we find in his poems. But that, in letters, was impossible—at least in letters that should supply tolerable reading. Yet the same general principle, which was somewhat exaggerated in the phrase about his "never speaking out," appears in them. There is always a certain restraint (at least in all that have been published) and it would probably have extended in proportion to others, however little their subject might seem compatible with it. In what we have it gives a curious seasoning—something which preserves as well as flavours like salt or vinegar. Of those which follow the first is an early one. Mason's apologetic note is to the effect that it "may appear whimsical" but it gives him an opportunity of remarking that Mr. Gray was "extremely skilled in the customs of the ancient Romans," both utterances being characteristic, to some extent of the time but to a greater of the writer. The second letter, to Gray's most intimate friend Dr. Wharton, and more than a quarter of a century later, is a good example of the variety of these epistles—scenery, literature, politics, science, gossip and what not, being all dealt with.
20. To Richard West [extract]
Rome, May, 1740.