room; but I am more delighted with the profpect from the windows, than from the moft magnificent moveables that can be invented. The great dining-room is covered with pictures: two beautiful canarybirds hang near the windows, and however delighted I may fometimes be with Italian mufic, thefe choirifters charm my ears more than the fofteft notes of Cuzzoni's voice ever did. In this room I have had the honour to entertain one of the greatest men of this nation, your much honoured lord Carteret ; with him were lord Weymouth †, &c. * Our champaign flew about with the alacrity it ufually does in this house, nor is the master ever better pleased than when he has an opportunity of improving himfelf by the converfation and countenance of fuch men. I am then, methinks, in * Afterwards earl of Granville, on the death of his mother in 1744. Father of the prefent vifcount, and fon-in-law to lord Carteret. the the same situation in which a Greek epigram, which Fenton * has translated, puts * Mr. Fenton," fays this noble writer in a letter to Mr. Duncombe, dated in 1756, "was my tutor ; "he taught me to read English, and attended me through the Latin tongue from the age of feven to "thirteen. When I became a man, a conftant and "free friendship fubfifted between us. The fact which Mr. Warton afferts concerning him [in the effay on Pope] is far from being true. He tranflated double the number of books in the O"dyffey that Pope has owned. His reward was a "trifle, an errant trifle. He has even told me, that "he thought Pope feared him more than he loved him he had no opinion of Pope's heart, and de"clared him, in the words of bishop Atterbury, "mens curva in corpore curvo. Poor Fenton died "of a great chair, and two bottles of port a day. "He was one of the worthieft and modefteft men "that ever belonged to the court of Apollo. Tears "arife when I think of him, though he has been "dead above twenty years." Pope, in a letter to Gay, dated July 20, 1730, just after Fenton's death, mentions him in much the fame manner : "I have just received the news of "the death of a friend whom I efteemed almost as "many years as you; poor Fenton! He died at "Eaft-hamftead [lady Trumbull's] of indolence and "inactivity." old Homer; I am liftening to Apollo fing ing, and ftealing his fong from him. inactivity." The writer of Fenton's life in the "fupplement to the Biographia," p. 50, fays, that "being difmiffed from his employ of fecretary to the "earl of Orrery in 1705, he gladly accepted the "offer of the free-school at Sevenoak in Kent." It appears, however, from the above, that Fenton was feveral years afterwards tutor to his lordship's fon (then lord Boyle) and for that reafon probably "his 'falary" (as mentioned by the biographer) might be continued to him." 66 As Sevenoak is but five miles from Penshurst, if we had not fuch good vouchers for his indolence, we fhould be at a lofs to account for a man of Mr. Fenton's taste and genius never visiting that feat of the mufes, that English Arcadia, like ancient Greece the theme of poets, the nurse of heroes. If he had, he could not have said, in his obfervations on thefe lines of Waller at Penfhurft," Go, boy, and carve this paffion on the bark "Thefe verfes apparently refer to fome tree in "Penshurst-park, that was planted at the birth of "the famous fir Philip; of which there is now no "tradition remaining in the family; but we may "apply I will not tire you with a description of any other parts of the houfe, with which you are already well acquainted. The days are now grown fhort; I have therefore prepared all the amufements within apply to it what Cicero fays of the Marian " oak, &c." This tree was in being till the year 1768, when it was cut down by the late Algernon Sydney, efq; not long before his death, thus expiring with the name and family to which it owed its origin, and now indeed, like the Sydneys, living only in hiftory, tradition, and fong. Ben Johnson mentions it in the following manner "That later tree, which of an oak was fet, "At his great birth, where all the mufes met." And this hint the late Mr. Coventry (author of Pompey the little") has improved into a beautiful episode in his poem "on Penfhurft," printed in "Dodfley's collection," vol. iv. p. 50. 66 Mr. Coventry wrote an infcription" for the fame oak, which is printed in the "Gentleman's magazine" for 1760, p. 184. Vol. II. G doors doors that will make a folitary life agreeable. When my children are put to bed, I betake myself either to the ftudy of hiftory, poetry, or natural philofophy; and with these I make fhift to fit up till towards eleven; and, then, like Othello, I put out the light, and, without his guilt, wifh for Defdemona; but in vain*! And if I am ever melancholy, it is then, when I cannot help repeating what that black monster fays, with the additional horror of foul, which attends murder, My wife! my wife! what wife? I have no wife? "O infupportable! O heavy hour! Sometimes indeed, unluckily enough for my friends, I am in a humour to write long letters, and that, you fee, is the prefent turn of my temper, for I have been gazing at dried butterflies, hornets, and beetles, 'till I remembered I was a letter in Henrietta countefs of Orrery, daughter to the earl of Orkney, died in 1732. See her character (and epitaph) in lord Orrery's "Pliny," vol. ii, p. 183. your |