6 LETTEBS TO GILBBBT WHITE 



totally expell'd her Rival, ye Stamfordian. Tell me if She shall 

 be your Penelope, for since your reading ye Odyssey, I suppose 

 You have learn'd to despise ye whip-syllabub names of Amoret 

 & Saccharyssa. 



Do You use my Room enough to keep it warm ? & do You take 

 care of those few Books I own, which few as they are I should 

 have been very glad to have had for my Companions here. I 

 congratulate myself that I am going to leave this dullest of dull 

 places. I hope to find a Letter from You to welcome me to 

 Town on Saturday, tho' I had rather meet you in person. My 

 Respects to Mr Bentham,* & to all Oriel men or others that 

 enquire after me, & believe me to be, dear White, 



Your's sincerely, 



J. M. 



Letter 4. 



To Mr White 



at Oriel College, Oxford. Oct : 8, 1744. 



Dear Gil, 



I was celebrating a Birth-day yesterday, when two Letters 

 came to my Hands, sign'd Tom: Manderf & Gil: White, & I 

 assure you that they greatly added to ye pleasures of ye Day : 

 Tho' Letters from Friends are always highly agreable, yet like 

 music, we relish them now & then with a higher Gusto. You 

 can but just conceive, (& You seem to express a delicate feeling) 

 ye home-felt joy that possess'd me, to find myself at ye same 

 Time caress'd by present Friends, and remembered by absent. 

 Continue to love my Memory, for unless You come up hither, I 

 shall be dead to You this Winter, & only appear now & then in 

 my shroud of Paper. Tom Mander will do me Honour, as my 

 Representative in ye red room ; if I had ever any thing agreable, 

 You will find it doubled in Tom ; I do myself too much Honour, 

 & Tom but Justice, when 1 say that He will be Pope modernizing 

 Dr. Donne. Yet when He is upon any Act of Friendship, re- 

 member his uncouth Original, & assure yourself that tho' perhaps 

 not in so polite a manner, yet that he would in will do that for 

 You, and more. 



I reciev'd that Letter at Leed's which You speak of, & ought, 

 I own, to have mentioned it more particularly than I find I have 

 done, for in that, as in everything, — in omni parte placebas. 



Do you really find Celibacy hang heavy upon your Hands? 

 or does Tom only jest when He says that you are on ye high 

 road to ye dreary & dolorous Land of Matrimony — tho' of those 



* Fellow and tutor of Oriel. 

 t A member, subsequently Fellow, of Oriel College. 



