What shall I say?  How shall I thank you for the kind manner in which you submit your papers to my correction?  But if you are friendly, I must be just.  I am so far from being dissatisfied, that I Must beg to shorten your pen, and in that respect only would I wish, with regard to myself, to alter your text.  I am conscious that in the beginning of the differences between Gray and me, the fault was mine.  I was young, too fond of my own diversions; nay, I do not doubt, too much intoxicated by indulgence, vanity, and the insolence of my situation, as a prime minister’s Son, not to have been inattentive to the feelings of one, I blush to say, that I knew was obliged to me; of one, whom presumption and folly made me deem not very superior in parts, though I have since felt my infinite inferiority to him.  I treated him insolently.  He loved me, and I did not think he did.  I reproached him with the difference between us, when he acted from the conviction of knowing that he was my superior.  I often disregarded his wish of seeing places, which I would not quit my own amusements to visit, though I offered to send him thither without me.  Forgive me, if I say that his temper was not conciliating, at the same time that I confess to you, that he acted a most friendly part had I had the sense to take advantage of it.  He freely told me my faults.  I declared I did not desire to hear them, nor would correct them.  You will not wonder,, that with the dignity of his spirit, and the obstinate carelessness of mine the breach must have widened till we became incompatible.

After this confession, I fear you will think I fall short in the words I wish to have substituted for some of yours.  If you think them inadequate to the state of the case, as I own they are, preserve this letter and let some future Sir John Dalrymple produce it to load my memory; but I own I do not desire that any ambiguity should aid his invention to forge an account) for me.  If you would have no objection, I would propose your narrative should run thus, [Here follows a note, which is inserted verbatim in Mason’s Life of Gray.(90)] and contain no more, till a more proper time shall come for publishing the truth, as I have stated it to you.  While I am living, it is not pleasant to see my private disagreements discussed in magazines and newspapers.

(89) This and the following letter are from Mr. mitford’s valuable edition of Gray’s Works.  See vol. iv. pp. 216, 218.- E.

(90) “In justice to the memory of so respectable a friend, Mr. Walpole enjoins me to charge himself with the chief blame in their quarrel — confessing that more attention and complaisance, more deference to a warm friendship, superior judgment and prudence, might have prevented a rupture that gave such uneasiness to them both and a lasting concern to the survivor; though, in the year 1744, a reconciliation was effected between them, by a lady who wished well to both parties."-E.