When your pen was in your hand you might have been a little more communicative, for though disposed enough to believe the opposition rather consumptive, I am entirely ignorant of all the symptoms. Your canonical book I have been reading with great satisfaction. He speaketh as one having authority. If Englishmen have any feeling left, methinks they must feel now; and if the Ministry have any feeling (whom nobody will suspect of insensibility) they must cut off the author's ears, for it is in all the forms a most wicked libel. Is the old man and the lawyer put on, or is it real? or has some real lawyer furnished a good part of the materials, and another person employed them? This I guess; for there is an uncouthness of diction in the beginning which is not supported throughout, though it now and then occurs again, as if the writer* was weary of supporting the character he had assumed, when the subject had warmed him, beyond dissimulation.

Rousseau's Letters + I am reading heavily, heavily! He justifies himself, till he convinces me that he deserved to be burnt, at least that his book did. I am not got through him, and you never will. Voltaire I detest, and have not seen his book: I shall in good time. You surprise me, when you talk of going in February. Pray, does all the minority go too? I hope you have a reason. Desperare de republica is a deadly sin in politics.

* Mr. Gray_may probably allude to a Pamphlet called "A Letter concerning Libels, Warrants, Seizure of Papers, and Security for the Peace or Behaviour, with a View to some late Proceedings, and the Defence of them by the Majority:"-supposed to have been written by William Greaves, Esq. a Master in Chancery, under the inspection of the late Lord Camden.-Ed. of Walpole's Works.

+ The Letters de la Montagne.

To Paris.

Adieu! I will not take my leave of you; for (you perceive) this letter means to beg another, when you can spare a little.

LETTER CXVII.

MR. GRAY TO MR. PALGRAVE.

March, 1765.

MY instructions, of which you are so desirous, are twofold: the first part relates to what is past, and that will be rather diffuse: the second, to what is to come; and that we shall treat more succinctly, and with all due brevity.

First, when you come to Paris you will not fail to visit the cloister of the Chartreuse, where Le Sueur (in the history of St. Bruno) has almost equalled Raphael. Then your Gothic inclinations will naturally lead you to the Sainte Chapelle built by St. Louis: in the treasury is preserved one of the noblest gems of the Augustan age. When you take a trip into the country, there is a fine old chapel at Vincennes with admirable painted windows; and at Fontainebleau, the remains of Francis the First's magnificence might give you some pleasure. In your way to Lyons you will take notice of the view over the Saone, from about Tournus and Macon. Fail not to walk a few miles along the banks of the Rhone, down the river. I would certainly

* Mr. Gray's correspondent was now making the tour of France and Italy. Mason.

make a little journey to the Grande Chartreuse, up the mountains: at your return out of Italy this will have little effect. At Turin you will visit the Capuchins' convent just without the city, and the Superga at no great distance, for the sake of the views. At Genoa observe the Terreno of the Palace Brignoli, as a model of an apartment elegantly disposed in a hot climate. At Parma you will adore the great Madonna and St. Jerom, once at St. Antonio Abbate, but now (I am told) in the Ducal Palace. In the Madonna della Steccata observe the Moses breaking the tables, a chiaroscuro figure of the Parmeggiano at too great a height, and ill-lighted, but immense. At the Capuchins, the great Pietá of Annib. Carracci; in the Villa Ducale, the room painted by Carlo Cignani; and the last works of Agostino Caracci at Modena*. I know not what remains now, the flower

.

* When our Author was himself in Italy, he studied with much attention the different manners of the old masters. I find a paper written at the time in which he has set down several subjects proper for painting, which he had never seen executed, and has affixed the names of different masters to each piece, to show which of their pencils he thought would have been most proper to treat it. As I doubt not but this paper will be an acceptable present to the Reynoldses and Wests of the age, I shall here insert it.

An Altar Piece.Guido.

The top, a Heaven; in the middle, at a distance, the Padre-Eterno indistinctly seen, and lost, as it were, in glory. On either hand, Angels of all degrees in attitudes of adoration and wonder. A little lower, and next the eye, supported on the wings of Seraphs, Christ (the principal figure) with an air of calm and serene majesty, his hand extended, as commanding the elements to their several places: near him an Angel of superior rank bearing the golden compasses (that Milton describes); beneath the Chaos, like a dark and turbulent ocean, only illumined by the Spirit, who is brooding over it.

Eve newly created, admiring her own shadow in the lake.

of the collection is gone to Dresden. Bologna is too vast a subject for me to treat: the palaces and churches are open; you have nothing to do but to see them all. In coming down the Appennine you will see (if the sun shines) all Tuscany before you. And so I have brought you to Florence, where to be sure there is nothing worth seeing. Secondly,

The famous Venus of this master, now in the possession of Sir William Hamilton, proves how judiciously Mr. Gray fixed upon his pencil for the execution of this charming subject. M.

Another.-Domenichino.

Medea in a pensive posture, with revenge and maternal affection striving in her visage; her two children at play, sporting with one another before her. On one side a bust of Jason, to which they bear some resemblance.

A Statue. Michael Angelo.

Agave in the moment she returns to her senses; the head of her Son, fallen on the ground from her hand.

Vide Ovid. Met. lib. iii. 1. 701. &c. M.

A Picture.

-Salvator Rosa.

Eneas and the Sybil sacrificing to Pluto by torch light in the wood, the assistants in a fright. The Day beginning to break, so as dimly to show the mouth of the

cavern.

Sigismonda with the heart of Guiscardo before her. I have seen a small print on this subject, where the expression is admirable, said to be graved from a picture of Correggio.

Afterwards, when he had seen the original in the possession of the late Sir Luke Schaub, he always expressed the highest admiration of it; though we see, by his here giving it to Salvator Rosa, he thought the subject too horrid to be treated by Correggio; and indeed I believe it is agreed that the capital picture in question is not of his hand. M.

1. Vide, quodcunque videndum est.

2. Quodcunque ego non vidi, id tu vide.

3. Quodcunque videris, scribe & describe; memoria ne fide.*

4. Scribendo nil admirare; & cum pictor non sis, verbis omnia depinge.

Another. Albano, or the Parmeggiano.

Iphigenia asleep by the fountain side, her maids about her; Cymon gazing and laughing.

This subject has been often treated; once indeed very curiously by Sir Peter Lely, in the way of portrait, when his sacred Majesty, Charles the Second, represented Cymon, and the Dutchess of Cleveland and Mrs. Eleanor Gwin (in as indecent attitudes as his royal taste could prescribe) were Iphigenia and her attendants., M.

Another.Domenichino, or the Carracci 1

Electra with the urn, in which she imagined were her Brother's ashes, lamenting over them; Orestes smothering his concern.

Another. Correggio.

Ithuriel and Zephon entering the bower of Adam and Eve; they sleeping. The light to proceed from the Angels.

Another.-Nicholas Poussin.

Alcestis dying; her children weeping, and hanging upon her robe; the youngest of them, a little boy, crying too, but appearing rather to do so, because the others are afflicted, than from any sense of the reason of their sorrow: her right arm should be round this, her left extended towards the rest, as recommending them to her Lord's care; he fainting, and supported by the attendants.

* See Philo de Miraculis, p. 9.