"I hope you will persuade Lord and Lady Mountstuart to make a trip this way, and desire them to come in their coach instead of a chaise, and bring you with them, as nobody (in every sense of the word) will be so glad to see you as, "Yours most sincerely, JOSEPH GULSTON. My whole time will be dedicated to my different schools. Tuesday, 29th of May, sweet Jacobite! I am in raptures with Mason's publication of Gray's Letters-a lovely portrait *!" 5. To Mrs. GULSTON, at Cooley, near Reading. "MY DEAR MOTHER, Corfe Mullen, Sept. 7, 1780. "Many thanks to you for your kind letter. My Election, which will be next Saturday, is perfectly safe; but we have a Petition against us, which will be very expensive, so the whole will cost near £.700; but it is all for the good of my son, so must do the best I can. Our house is very small, but if my sister can make room for you, shall be very glad to see you, if I go a visiting to make room for you. It is a very small place, and we stow close. You well know I am always happy to see you, who am ever your sweet pretty-faced boy, Old JOE GULSTON." 6. To the same. [Undated.] "MY DEAR MOTHER, Many thanks to you for your letter, and as you are entitled to the first frank, send you this short epistle. Am much obliged to you for the offer of a bed, and all your everlasting advice, which is totally thrown away upon me in every shape whatever; your ideas and mine are so very different in every particular, that if we were to dispute to eternity, we should never agree in these points. Self-denial seems to be always upwards in your mouth; but practice is a very different matter from theory; so you may enjoy your philosophical speculations. As for your taking yourself off, mother, mother, you will live as long as you can, which will be exactly long enough to bury us all. I do not think a trip to Dorset would hurt you; my sister will contrive to make room for you. you for your advice, dear mother. Adicu. "From your pretty boy, Thank JOSEPH GULSTON." REV. DR. PETER FRANCIS COURAYER. To the memoirs of this eminent Divine which were given in the "Literary Anecdotes," I shall here subjoin a few charateristic traits from the elegant and lively pen of Mrs. Montagu; which I * Vol. II. p. 39; and see vol. VII. pp. 96. 543. the rather do, as the good Doctor was among the intimate and confidential friends of Mr. Gulston, during his residence at Ealing. In Mrs. Montagu's Letters the name of Dr. Courayer is frequently introduced. Writing to Mrs. Donnellan, Oct. 10, 1742, she says, "Tell Dr. Courayer my head is as much troubled with chimeras and giddiness as ever. I fear he is too fond of variety in life to be a friend to matrimony." In a Letter to the Duchess of Portland, Mrs. Montagu says, "Dr. Courayer dined with us the day before we left town; he was more elated with having a letter from you, than he had been dejected with the overthrow of the French; he looks well, and his mind always seems to be the seat of tranquillity." In another letter to the Duchess, dated Sandleford, she says, "A few days ago I carried the little Pere to see Mr. Sloper's gardens and house, at a time when I was assured he was absent on his election. If I was not afraid of fatiguing you, I believe I could shake your spleen with a description of Dr. Courayer's figure when he arrived here from Oxford, through a whole day's rain; but let it suffice, that he shone with drops of water like the diamond ficoides. How his beaver was slouched, his coloured handkerchief twisted, and his small boots stuck to his small legs; how the rain had uncurled his wig, the spleen dejected his countenance, the cramp spoiled his gait, I shall not describe. Mrs. Donnellan and Dr. Courayer join in desiring their best respects and compliments to your Grace." In a Letter to the Duchess in 1745, she thus describes Dr. Courayer, whom her husband had then recently met at Dunstable, travelling with Mr. Stanhope: "He has all the virtues, and almost as much innocence as would qualify a man for Paradise, and to walk with angels like our first parents. The little Doctor loves London better than the country. He has not only virtue enough to keep himself from the contagion of vice, but to venture to be the physician too of the infected, and the friend of the infirm." In a subsequent Letter, addressed to Mrs. Donnellan, descriptive of a tour, Mrs. Montagu says, "We received great civilities from the Bishop and Mrs. Sherlock, and were invited to dinner by them, which favours we were entitled to only on account of our being friends of Dr. Courayer. At Salisbury Dr. Courayer had the agreeable surprise of seeing Lord Feversham at the Bishop's; the Doctor was abashed, and his Lordship showed some little resentment; indeed, to go so near to an old friend, and a new Peer, and not make a visit, was not so well. Lord Feversham said he and his lady would have been glad to have seen us at Downton. Dr. Courayer sends his thanks for the ring, but I fear he will find your advice impracticable; though this morning he had the douceur to say he was sorry my head ached. From Amesbury we reached. Marlborough early enough to walk in Lord Hertford's garden, with which Dr. Courayer was pleased as at seeing a sort of acquaintance, but it has nothing in its aspect to recommend it to strangers. In a Letter to Gilbert West, Esq. Oct. 31, 1751, Mrs. Montagu writes, " Poor Dr. Courayer notified to me, that he was ill of a sore throat, and could not come to visit me, though he wanted to see me: to make this matter easy, I went to him. I was obliged to pass through all the gay vanities of Mrs. Chenevix *, and then ascend a most steep and difficult staircase, to get at the little Philosopher: this way to wisdom through the vanities and splendid toys of the world, might be prettily allegorized, by the of the great Bunyan; and the good man himself, to an emblematizing genius, would have afforded an ample subject; his head was enfoncée in a cap of the warmest beaver, made still more respectable by * The well-known Toy-shop in Holborn, afterwards Grosvenor's, pen |