(130 Welmoden.

(131 John, Lord Hervey, so called by Pope.

(132) Where the Prince and Princess of Wales then resided.

                     Correspondence of Horace walpole
                              Earl of Orford

121 Letter 1 To Richard West, Esq. (133) King’s College, Nov 9, 1735,

Dear West, You expect a long letter from me, and have said in verse all that I intended to have said in far inferior prose.  I intended filling three or four sides with exclamations against a University life; but you have showed me how strongly they may be expressed in three or four lines.  I can’t build without straw; nor have I the ingenuity of the spider, to spin fine lines out of dirt:  a master of a college would make but a miserable figure as a hero of a poem, and Cambridge sophs are too low to introduce into a letter that aims not at punning: 

Haud equidem invideo vati, quem pulpita pascunt.

But why mayn’t we hold a classical correspondence?  I can never forget the many agreeable hours we have passed in reading Horace and Virgil; and I think they are topics will never grow stale.  Let us extend the Roman empire, and cultivate two barbarous towns o’er -run with rusticity and Mathematics.  The creatures are so used to a circle, that they Plod on in the same eternal round, with their whole view confined to a punctum, cujus nulla est pars:  “Their time a moment, and a point their space.”

Orabunt causas melius, coelique meatus
Describent radio, et surgentia sidera dicent
Tu coluisse novem Musas, Romane, memento;
Hae tibi crunt artes. . . .

We have not the least poetry stirring here; for I can’t call verses on the 5th of November and 30th of January by that name, more than four lines on a chapter in the New Testament is an epigram.  Tydeus (134) rose and set at Eton:  he is only known here to be a scholar of King’s.  Orosmades and Almanzor are just the same; that is, I am almost the only person they are acquainted with, and consequently the only person acquainted with their excellencies.  Plato improves every day; so does my friendship with him.  These three divide my whole time, though I believe you will guess there is no quadruple alliance; (135) that was a happiness which I only enjoyed when you was at Eton.  A short account of the Eton people at Oxford would much oblige, my dear West, your faithful friend, H. Walpole.

(133) Richard West was the only son of the Right Honourable Richard West, Lord Chancellor of Ireland, by Elizabeth, daughter of the celebrated Dr. Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury.  When this correspondence commences, Mr. West was nineteen years old, and Mr. Walpole one year younger. [West died on the 1st of January, 1742, at the premature age of twenty-six.  He had a great genius for poetry.  His correspondence with Gray, and several of his poems, are included in the collection of letters published by Mr. Mason.  West’s father published an able discourse of treasons and bills of attainder, and a tract on the manner of creating peers.  He also wrote several essays in “The Freethinker;” and was the reputed author of a tragedy called “Hecuba;” which was performed at Drury Lane theatre in 1726.]