Lord Sandwich, with whom I have not exchanged a syllable since the general warrants, very obligingly sent me an account of the roll at Kimbolton; and has since, at my desire, borrowed it for me and sent it to town.(1016) It is as long as my Lord Lyttelton’s History; but by what I can read of it (for it is both ill written and much decayed), it is not a roll of kings, but of all that have been possessed of, or been Earls of Warwick:  or have not—­for one of the first earls is Aeneas.  How, or wherefore, I do not know, but amongst the first is Richard the Third, in whose reign it was finished, and with whom it concludes.  He is there again with his wife and son, and Edward the Fourth, and Clarence and his wife, and Edward their son (who unluckily is a little old man), and Margaret Countess of Salisbury, their daughter.—­But why do I say with these?  There is every body else too and what is most meritorious, the habits of all the times are admirably well observed from the most savage ages.  Each figure is tricked with a pen, well drawn, but neither Coloured nor shaded.  Richard is straight, but thinner than my print; his hair short, and exactly curled in the same manner; not so handsome as mine, but what one might really believe intended for the same countenance, as drawn by a different painter, especially when so small; for the figures in general are not so long as one’s finger.  His queen is ugly, and with just such a square forehead as in my print, but I cannot say like it.  Nor, indeed, where forty-five figures out of fifty (I have not counted the number) must have been imaginary, can one lay great stress on the five.  I shall, however, have these figures copied, especially as I know Of no other image of the son.  Mr. Astle is to come to Me tomorrow morning to explain the writing.

I wish you had told me in what age your Franciscan friars lived; and what the passage in Comines is.  I am very ready to make amende honorable.  Thank you for the notes on the Noble Authors.  They shall be inserted when I make a new edition, for the sake of the trouble the person has taken, though they are of little consequence.  Dodsley has asked me for a new edition; but I have had little heart to undertake such work, no more than to mend my old linen.  It is pity one cannot be born an ancient, and have commentators to do such jobs for one!  Adieu!  Yours ever.

Saturday morning.

On reading over your letter again this morning, I do find the age in which the friars lived—­I read and write in such a hurry, that I think I neither know what I read or say.

(1013) Gray, in his letter of the 25th, had said:—­“The Long Story was to be totally omitted, as its only use (that of explaining the plates) was gone; but, to supply the place of it in bulk, lest my works should be mistaken for the works of a flea or a pismire I promised to send him an equal weight of poetry or prose; so I put up about two ounces of stuff, viz.  The Fatal Sisters; The Descent of Odin; a bit of something from the Welch, and certain little Notes, partly from justice-,, partly from ill-temper, just to tell the gentle reader that Edward 1. was not Oliver Cromwell, nor Queen Elizabeth the Witch of Endor.  This is literally all; and with all this, I shall be but a shrimp of an author.”  Works, vol. iv.  P. 110.-E.