"and tells me in the fame breath, that the book is "commendable, and the pudding excellent. "Now, Sir, (concluded Mr. Lintot,) in return to "the frankness I have fhewn, pray tell me, Is it the opinion of your friends at court that my Lord "Lanfdown will be brought to the bar or not?" I told him I heard he would not, and I hoped it, my Lord being one I had particular obligations to. "That may be, (replied Mr. Lintot,) but by G-d if " he is not, I fhall lose the printing of a very good "Trial." These, my Lord, are a few traits by which you difcern the genius of Mr. Lintot, which I have chofen for the fubject of a letter. I dropt him as foon as I got to Oxford, and paid a visit to my Lord Carleton at Middleton. The converfations I enjoy here are not to be prejudiced by my pen, and the pleasures from them only to be equalled when I meet your Lordship. I hope in a few days to cast myself from your horse at your feet. I am, etc. LETTER XII. TO THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM. [In answer to a Letter in which he inclofed the Defcription of Buckingham-Houfe, written by him to the D. of Sh.] was one of those few authors who had a warm PLINY house over his head, nay two houses, as appears by two of his epiftles. I believe, if any of his contemporary authors durft have informed the public where they lodged, we should have found the garrets of Rome as well inhabited, as thofe of Fleet-street: but it is dangerous to let creditors into fuch a fecret; therefore we may prefume that then, as well as nowa-days, nobody knew where they lived but their bookfellers. It seems that when Virgil came to Rome, he had no lodging at all*: he first introduced himself to Auguftus * But Virgil, afterwards, poffeffed a fine house at Rome, and a villa at Naples. And Horace, fays Swift, I am fure kept his coach. Lucan and Silius Italicus dwelt in marble palaces, and had their gardens adorned with the moft exquifite ftatues of Greece. Of modern poets, Triffino and Voltaire seem to have had the most fuperb houses. The former, who was a skilful architect, as well as poet, was rich enough to build a palace from a defign of his own, under the direction of the celebrated Palladio. And the chateau of Voltaire, at Ferney, has been vifited by fo many Englishmen, as to render a defcription of it fuperfluous. Mr. Harte related to me, that Pope, in one of their usual walks together, defired him to go with him to a house in the Hay market, guftus by an epigram, beginning Nocte pluit tota an obfervation which probably he had not made, unlefs he had lain all night in the street. Where Juvenal lived we cannot affirm; but in one of his fatires he complains of the exceffive price of lodgings; neither do I believe he would have talked fo feelingly of Codrus's bed, if there had been room for a bedfellow in it. I believe, with all the oftentation of Pliny, he would have been glad to have changed both his houses for your Grace's one; which is a countryhouse in the fummer, and a town-house in the winter, and must be owned to be the propereft habitation for a wife man, who fees all the world change every season without ever changing himself. I have been reading the description of Pliny's houfe with an eye to yours, but, finding they will bear no comparison, will try if it can be matched by the large country-feat I inhabit at present, and see what figure may make by the help of a florid defcription. it You must expect nothing regular in my defcription, any more than in the house; the whole vast edifice is so disjointed, and the feveral parts of it fo detached one from the other, and yet fo joining again, one cannot tell how, that, in one of my poetical fits, I imagined market, where he would fhew him a curiofity. On being admitted by an old woman who kept a little shop, and going up three pair of stairs into a small room; " In this garret," faid Pope, "Addison wrote his Campaign." imagined it had been a village in Amphion's time, where the cottages having taken a country dance together, had been all out, and ftood ftone-ftill with amazement ever since. You must excuse me, if I fay nothing of the front; indeed I don't know which it is. A ftranger would be grievously disappointed, who endeavoured to get into this house the right way. One would reasonably expect after the entry through the porch to be let into the hall alas! nothing lefs! you find yourself in the house of office. From the parlour you think to step into the drawing-room, but upon opening the iron-nailed door, you are convinced by a flight of birds about your ears, and a cloud of duft in your eyes, that it is the pigeon-house. If you come into the chapel, you find its altars, like thofe of the ancients, continually fmoaking, but it is with the fteams of the adjoining kitchen. The great hall within is high and fpacious, flanked on one fide with a very long table, a true image of ancient hospitality: the walls are all over ornamented with monftrous horns of animals, about twenty broken pikes, ten or a dozen blunderbuffes, and a rufty matchlock mufquet or two, which we were informed had ferved in the civil wars. Here is one vaft arched window* beautifully darkened with divers fcutcheons * This letter contains a moft lively and picturesque account of an old Gothic feat or caftle. All true Poets have a taste for antiquities. scutcheons of painted glass: one fhining pane in particular bears date 1286, which alone preserves the memory of a Knight whose iron armour is long fince perished with ruft, and whofe alabafter nofe is mouldered from his monument. The face of dame Eleanor in another piece owes more to that single pane than to all the glaffes fhe ever confulted in her life. After this, who can say that glass is frail, when it is not half fo frail as human beauty, or glory? and yet I can't but figh to think that the most authentic record of so ancient a family fhould lie at the mercy of every infant who flings a ftone. In former days there have dined in this hall gartered Knights, and courtly Dames, attended by ushers, fewers, and seneschals and yet it was but last night, that an owl flew hither, and mistook it for a barn. ; This hall lets you (up and down) over a very high threshold into the great parlour. Its contents are a broken-bellied virginal, a couple of crippled velvet chairs, with two or three mildewed pictures of mouldy ancestors, who look as difmally as if they came fresh from hell with all their brimstone about them; these are carefully fet at the further corner, for the windows being In Britain's ifle, no matter where, To raise the ceiling's fretted height, GRAY. |