nient penthouse. The top is crowned with a very venerable tower, so like that of the church just by, that the jackdaws build in it as if it were the true steeple.

The great hall is high and spacious, flanked with longtables, images of ancient hospitality; ornamented with monstrous horns, about twenty broken pikes, and a matchlock musket or two, which they say were used in the civil wars. Here is one vast arched window, beautifully darkened with divers scutcheons of painted glass. There seems to be great propriety in this old manner of blazoning upon glass, ancient families being like ancient windows, in the course of generations seldom free from cracks. Oneshining pane bears date 1286. There the face of Dame Elinor owes more to this single piece, than to all the glasses she ever consulted in her life. Who can say after this that glass is frail, when it is not half so perishable as human beauty or glory? For in another pane you see the memory of a knight preserved, whose marble nose is mouldered from his monument in the church adjoining. And yet, must not one sigh to reflect, that the most. authentic record of so ancient a family should lie at the mercy of every boy that throws a stone? In this hall, in

former days, have dined gartered knights and courtly dames, with ushers, sewers, and seneschals; and yet it was but 'tother night that an owl flew in hither, and mistook it. for a barn.

This hall lets you up (and down) over a very high threshold into the parlour. It is furnished with historical tapestry, whose marginal fringes do confess the moisture of the air. The other contents of this room are a brokenbellied virginal, a couple of crippled velvet chairs, with two or three mildewed pictures of mouldy ancestors, who look as dismally as if they came fresh from hell with all their brimstone about 'em. These are carefully set at the further corner; for the windows being every where broken, make it so convenient a place to dry poppies and mustardseed in, that the room is appropriated to that use.

Next this parlour lies (as I said before) the pigeonhouse; by the side of which runs an entry that leads, on one hand and t'other, into a bed-chamber, a buttery, and a small hole called the chaplain's study. Then follow a

brewhouse, a little green-and-gilt parlour, and the great stairs, under which is the dairy. A little further on the right, the servants' hall; and by the side of it, up six steps, the old lady's closet, which has a lattice into the said hall, that while she said her prayers, she might cast an eye on the men and maids. There are upon this ground-floor in all twenty-four apartments, hard to be distinguished by particular names; among which I must not forget a chamber, that has in it a large antiquity of timber, which seems to have been either a bedstead or a cyder-press.

Our best room above is very long and low, of the exact proportion of a band-box: it has hangings of the finest work in the world, those I mean which Arachne spins out of her own bowels: indeed, the roof is so decayed, that after a favourable shower of rain, we may (with God's blessing) expect a crop of mushrooms between the chinks of the floors.

All this upper story has for many years had no other inhabitants than certain rats, whose very age renders them worthy of this venerable mansion, for the very rats of this ancient seat are grey. Since these have not quitted it, we hope at least this house may stand during the small remainder of days these poor animals have to live, who are now too infirm to remove to another: they have still a small subsistence left them in the few remaining books of the library.

:

I had never seen half what I have described, but for an old starched grey-headed steward, who is as much an antiquity as any in the place, and looks like an old family picture walked out of its frame. He failed not, as we passed from room to room, to relate several memoirs of the family, but his observations were particularly curious in the cellar he shewed where stood the triple rows of butts of sack, and where were ranged the bottles of tent for toasts in the morning: he pointed to the stands that supported the iron-hooped hogsheads of strong beer; then stepping to a corner, he lugged out the tattered fragment of an unframed picture: This (says he, with tears in his eyes) was poor Sir Thomas, once master of all the drink I told you of: he had two sons (poor young masters!) that never arrived to the age of his beer; they both fell ill in

this very cellar, and never went out upon their own legs. He could not pass by a broken bottle, without taking it up to shew us the arms of the family on it. He then led me up the tower, by dark winding stone steps, which landed us into several little rooms, one above another; one of these was nailed up, and my guide whispered to me the occasion of it. It seems the course of this noble blood was interrupted about two centuries ago, by a freak of the Lady Frances, who was here taken with a neighbouring prior; ever since which, the room has been made up and branded with the name of the adultery-chamber. The ghost of Lady Frances is supposed to walk here; some prying maids of the family formerly reported that they saw a lady in a fardingale through the key-hole; but this matter was hushed up, and the servants forbid to talk of it.'

I must needs have tired you with this long letter; but what engaged me in the description was a generous principle to preserve the memory of a thing that must itself soon fall to ruin; nay, perhaps, some part of it before this reaches your hands indeed, I owe this old house the same sort of gratitude that we do to an old friend, that harbours us in his declining condition, nay, even in his last extremities. I have found this an excellent place for retirement and study, where no one who passes by can dream there is an inhabitant, and even any body that would visit me dares not venture under my roof. You will not wonder I have translated a great deal of Homer in this retreat; any one that sees it will own I could not have chosen a fitter or more likely place to converse with the dead. As soon as I return to the living, it shall be to converse with the best of them. I hope therefore very speedily to tell you in person how sincerely and unalterably

I am, Madam,

Your most faithful, obliged, and obedient servant.2 I beg Mr. Wortley to believe me his most humble servant.

1 Mr. Carruthers remarks that this description of Stanton-Harcourt is almost wholly fanciful. The observation is probably equally applicable to the stories of Sir Thomas and his sons, and "Lady Frances." No Sir Thomas had been the possessor of Stanton-Harcourt for several centuries preceding the date of this letter.-T.

2 It is remarkable that this description of an old mansion is the very

FROM POPE.1

Ir is not in my power (dear madam) to say what agitation the two or three words I wrote to you the other morning have given me. Indeed, I truly esteem you, and put my trust in you. I can say no more, and I know you would not have me.

I have been kept in town by a violent headache, so that if I might see you any time to-day (except two, three, or four o'clock, when I am engaged to dinner) I should be pleased and happy, more indeed than any other company could make me.

Your most faithful obliged servant.

FROM POPE.

Sunday.

INDEED, dear madam, 'tis not possible to tell you, whether you give me every day I see you, more pleasure or more respect. And, upon my word, whenever I see you after a day or two's absence, it is just such a view as that you yesterday had of your own writings. I find you still better than I could imagine, and think I was partial before, to your prejudice.

The picture dwells really at my heart, and I have made a perfect passion of preferring your present face to your past. I know and thoroughly esteem yourself of this year: I know no more of Lady Mary Pierrepont, than to admire at what I have heard of her, or be pleased with some fragments of hers as I am with Sappho's. But now-I can't say what I would say of you now.-Only still give me cause to say you are good to me, and allow me as much of your person as Sir Godfrey can help me to. Upon conferring with him yesterday, I find he thinks it absolutely necessary to draw the face first, which he says can never be set right on the figure, if the drapery and posture be finished

same with that he sent to the Duke of Buckingham, in answer to one the duke had given him of Buckingham House.--WARTON.

Indorsed by Mr. Wortley Montagu "Mr. Pope."-T.

before. To give you as little trouble as possible, he proposes to draw your face with crayons, and finish it up at your own house in a morning; from whence he will transfer it to the canvas, so that you need not go to sit at his house. This, I must observe, is a manner in which they seldom draw any but crowned heads; and I observe it with secret pride and pleasure.

Be so kind as to tell me, if you care he should do this to-morrow at twelve. Though if I am but assured from you of the thing, let the manner and time be what you best like let every decorum you please be observed. I should be very unworthy of any favour from your hands, if I desired any at the expense of your quiet, or conveniency, in any degree.

:

I have just received this pamphlet, which may divert you. I am sincerely

[FROM POPE.!

Yours, &c.

[1719.]

I might be dead, or you in Yorkshire, for any thing that I am the better for your being in town. I have been sick ever since I saw you last, and now have a swelled face, and very bad; nothing will do me so much good as the sight of dear Lady Mary; when you come this way let me for indeed I love you.

see you,

A. P.]

FROM POPE.

Thursday, 9 o'clock.

I

MADAM, Sir Godfrey, happening to come from London yesterday (as I did myself), will wait upon you this morning at twelve, to take a sketch of you in your dress, if you will give leave. He is really very good to me. heartily wish you will be so too. But I submit to you in all things; nay, in the manner of all things: your own pleasure, and your own time. Upon my word I will take

[This letter seems to have been overlooked by Mr. Thomas. It is given by Dallaway as part of another, following Warton's edition of Pope, but the latest editors print it as a separate letter.