reeable absurdity.
Only think of the gravity of this wise age, that have exploded
"Cleopatra and Pharamond," and approve "The Pleasures of the
Imagination," "The Art of Preserving Health," and "Leonidas!" I beg the
age's pardon: it has done approving these poems, and has forgot them.

Adieu! dear Harry. Thank you seriously for the poem. I am going to town
for the birthday, and shall return hither till the Parliament meets; I
suppose there is no doubt of our meeting then.

Yours ever.

P.S.--Now you are at Stirling, if you should meet with Drummond's
History of the five King Jameses, pray look it over. I have lately read
it, and like it much. It is wrote in imitation of Livy; the style
masculine, and the whole very sensible; only he ascribes the misfortunes
of one reign to the then king's loving architecture and

In trim gardens taking pleasure.

_HE HAS BOUGHT STRAWBERRY HILL._

TO THE HON. H.S. CONWAY.

TWICKENHAM, _June_ 8, 1747.

You perceive by my date that I am got into a new camp, and have left my
tub at Windsor. It is a little plaything-house that I got out of Mrs.
Chenevix's shop, and is the prettiest bauble you ever saw. It is set in
enamelled meadows, with filigree hedges:

A small Euphrates through the piece is told,
And little finches wave their wings in gold.

Two delightful roads, that you would call dusty, supply me continually
with coaches and chaises: barges as solemn as Barons of the Exchequer
move under my window; Richmond Hill and Ham walks bound my prospect;
but, thank God! the Thames is between me and the Duchess of Queensberry.
Dowagers as plenty as flounders inhabit all around, and Pope's ghost is
just now skimming under my window by a most poetical moonlight. I have
about land enough to keep such a farm as Noah's, when he set up in the
ark with a pair of each kind; but my cottage is rather cleaner than I
believe his was after they had been cooped up together forty days. The
Chenevixes had tricked it out for themselves: up two pair of stairs is
what they call Mr. Chenevix's library, furnished with three maps, one
shelf, a bust of Sir Isaac Newton, and a lame telescope without any
glasses. Lord John Sackville _predecessed_ me here, and instituted
certain games called _cricketalia_, which have been celebrated this
very evening in honour of him in a neighbouring meadow.

You will think I have removed my philosophy from Windsor with my
tea-things hither; for I am writing t