en a poet laureate.

To DR. WHARTON

_A holiday in Kent_

Pembroke College, 26 _Aug_. 1766.

DEAR DOCTOR,

Whatever my pen may do, I am sure my thoughts expatiate nowhere
oftener, or with more pleasure, than to Old Park. I hope you have made
my peace with Miss Deborah. It is certain, whether her name were in
my letter or not, she was as present to my memory as the rest of the
little family; and I desire you would present her with two kisses
in my name, and one a piece to all the others; for I shall take the
liberty to kiss them all (great and small) as you are to be my proxy.

In spite of the rain, which I think continued with very short
intervals till the beginning of this month, and quite effaced the
summer from the year, I made a shift to pass May and June, not
disagreeably, in Kent. I was surprised at the beauty of the road
to Canterbury, which (I know not why) had not struck me in the same
manner before. The whole country is a rich and well cultivated garden;
orchards, cherry grounds, hop grounds, intermixed with corn and
frequent villages, gentle risings covered with wood, and everywhere
the Thames and Medway breaking in upon the landscape, with all their
navigation. It was indeed owing to the bad weather that the whole
scene was dressed in that tender emerald green, which one usually sees
only for a fortnight in the opening of Spring; and this continued till
I left the country. My residence was eight miles east of Canterbury,
in a little quiet valley on the skirts of Barham Down; in these parts
the whole soil is chalk, and whenever it holds up, in half an hour
it is dry enough to walk out. I took the opportunity of three or four
days fine weather to go into the Isle of Thanet, saw Margate (which
is Bartholomew Fair by the seaside), Ramsgate, and other places there;
and so came by Sandwich, Deal, Dover, Folkestone, and Hythe, back
again. The coast is not like Hartlepool, there are no rocks, but
only chalky cliffs, of no great height, till you come to Dover. There
indeed they are noble and picturesque, and the opposite coasts of
France begin to bound your view, which was left before to range
unlimited by anything but the horizon; yet it is by no means a
_shipless_ sea, but everywhere peopled with white sails and vessels of
all sizes in motion; and take notice (except in the Isle, which is all
corn fields, and has very little enclosure), there are in all places
hedgerows and tall trees, even within a f