be equall'd when I meet your Lordship. I hope in a few days to caft myself from your horfe at your feet. I am, etc.

LETTER XI.

To the Duke of BUCKINGHAM.

(In answer to a Letter in which he inclofed the Description of Buckingham-house, written by him to the D. of Sh.)

PLINY

LINY was one of thofe few authors who had a warm house over his head, nay two houses, as appears by two of his epiftles. I believe, if any of his contemporary authors durft have inform'd the publick where they lodged, we should have found the garrets of Rome as well inhabited as thofe of Fleet-street; but 'tis dangerous to let creditors into fuch a fecret, therefore we may presume that then, as well as now-a-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 introduc'd himself to Auguftus by an epigram, beginning Nocte pluit tota -- an obfervation which probably he had not made, unless 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 talk'd 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 country-house in the fummer, and a town-houfe in the winter, and must be owned to be the propereft habitation for a wife man,

who fees all the world change every feafon without ever changing himself.

I have been reading the description of Pliny's house with an eye to yours, but finding they will bear no comparison, will try if it can be match'd by the large country-feat I inhabit at present, and fee what figure it may make by the help of a florid description.

You must expect nothing regular in my description, any more than in the house; the whole vaft edifice is fo disjointed, and the several parts of it fo detach'd one from the other, and yet so joining again, one cannot tell how, that, in one of my poetical fits, I imagined it had been a village in Amphion's time, where the cottages, having taken a country-dance together, had been all out, and stood stone-still with amazement ever fince.

You must excufe me, if I fay nothing of the Front; indeed I don't know which it is. A ftranger would be grievously disappointed, who endeavour'd to get into the houfe 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 fstep into the drawing-room, but upon opening the iron-nail'd door, you are convinc'd by a flight of birds about your ears, and a cloud of duft in your eyes, that it is the Pigeon-, houfe. If you come into the chapel, you find its altars like thofe of the ancients, continually smoking, but it is with the fleams of the adjoining kitchen.

The great hall within is high and spacious, flank'd on one fide with a very long table, a true image of ancient hofpitality: the walls are all over ornamented with monftrous horns of animals, about twenty broken pikes, ten or a dozen blunderbusses, and a rusty matchlock mufquet or two, which we were inform'd had

ferved in the civil wars. Here is one vaft arch'd window beautifully darken'd with divers fcutcheons of painted glass: one shining pane in particular bears date 1286, which alone preferves the memory of a Knight whofe iron armour is long fince perifh'd with ruft, and whofe alabafter nofe is moulder'd from his monument. The face of dame Eleanor in another piece owes more to that fingle pane than to all the glaffes fhe ever confulted in her life. After this, who can fay that glafs is frail, when it is not half fo frail as human beauty, or glory! and yet I can't but sigh to think that the most authentick record of fo ancient a family should lie at the mercy of every infant who flings a ftone. In former days there have din'd in this hall garter'd Knights, and courtly Dames, attended by ushers, fewers, and fenefchals; and yet it was but last night, that an owl flew hither, and miftook 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-belly'd virginal, a couple of crippled velvet chairs, with two or three milldew'd pictures of mouldy ancestors, who look as difmally as if they came. fresh from hell with all their brimstone about them; thefe are carefully fet at the farther corner, for the windows being every where broken, make it fo convenient a place to dry poppies and muftard feed, that the room is appropriated to that ufe.

Next this parlour, as I faid before, lies the pigeonhoufe, by the fide of which runs an entry, which lets you on one hand and t'other into a bed-chamber, a buttery, and a small hole call'd the chaplain's ftudy : then follow a brew-houfe, a little green and gilt parlour, and the great ftairs, under which is the dairy; a little farther on the right the fervants hall, and by the fide of it up fix fteps, the old lady's clofet for her

private devotions; which has a lattice into the hall, intended (as we imagine) that at the fame time as she pray'd, fhe might have an eye on the men and maids. There are upon the ground floor in all twenty-fix apartments, among which I must not forget a chamber which has in it a large antiquity of timber, that seem。 to have been either a bedstead, or a cyder-press.

The kitchen is built in form of the Rotunda, being one vaft vault to the top of the house; where one aperture ferves to let out the fmoke, and let in the light. By the blackness of the walls, the circular fires, vast cauldrons, yawning mouths of ovens and furnaces, you would think it either the forge of Vulcan, the cave of Polypheme, or the temple of Moloch. The horror of this place has made fuch an impreffion on the country people, that they believe the Witches keep their Sabbath here, and that once a year the Devil treats them with infernal venison, a roasted tiger stuff'd with tenpenny nails.

Above ftairs we have a number of rooms: you never pafs out of one into another but by the ascent or defcent of two or three ftairs. Our best room is very long and low, of the exact proportion of a band-box. In most of these rooms there are hangings of the finest work in the world, that is to fay, thofe which Arachne fpins from her own bowels. Were it not for this only furniture, the whole would be a miferable fcene of naked walls, flaw'd cielings, broken windows, and rufty locks. The roof is fo decay'd, that after a favourable shower we may expect a crop of mushrooms between the chinks of our floors. All the doors are as little and low as thofe to the cabbins of packet-boats. Thefe rooms have for many years had no other inhabitants than certain rats, whofe very age renders them worthy of this feat, for the very rats of this venerable houfe are grey: fince thefe have not yet quitted it, we

hope at least that this ancient mansion may not fall during the small remnant thefe poor animals have to live, who are now too infirm to remove to another. There is yet a fmall fubfiftence left them in the few remaining books of the library.

We had never feen half what I have defcribed, but for a ftarch'd grey-headed Steward, who is as much an antiquity as any in this place, and looks like an old family picture walk'd out of its frame. He entertain'd us as we pafs'd from room to room with several relations of the family; but his observations were particularly curious when he came to the cellar: he inform❜d us where ftood the triple rows of butts of fack, and where were ranged the bottles of tent, for toafts in a morning; he pointed to the ftands that fupported the iron-hoop'd hogfheads of strong beer; then stepping to a corner, he lugg'd out the tatter'd fragments of an unfram'd picture; "This (fays he, with tears) was poor "Sir Thomas! once mafter of all this drink. He had

two fons, poor young mafters! who never arrived to the age of his beer; they both fell ill in this very room, and never went out on their own legs." He could not pass by a heap of broken bottles without taking up a piece, to fhow us the Arms of the family upon it. He then led us up the Tower by dark winding ftone fteps, which landed us into feveral little rooms one above another. One of these was nail'd up, and our guide whisper'd to us as a fecret the occafion of it: It feems the courfe of this noble blood was a little interrupted about two centuries ago, by a freak of the lady Frances, who was here taken in the fact with a neighbouring Prior, ever fince which the room has been nail'd up, and branded with the name of the Adultery-Chamber. The ghoft of lady Frances is fuppofed to walk there, and fome prying maids of the