1780 "A FAREAGO OF ANTIQUITIES" 55 



elegance, and neat simplicity of the original design, by a 

 farrago of antiquities, routed out of the rusts and trusts 

 and crusts of time, I shall not esteem it so well as I once 

 did, and so I tell you. Eemember that Tom Warton has 

 given the world two large specimens of his old bards and 

 untunable harps.* Go to ! " 



To Miss White. Selborne, Sept. 30, 1780. 



Dear Molly, — Your letters are always agreeable to me : 

 but your last was particularly so, because it brought so good 

 an account of the state of your father's health. 



Finding that Larby alone would never finish his job, 

 I hired a whole band of myrmidons and set them to work 

 on the Bostal,-f where they have made great dispatch, and 

 have but half a day's work to come, which has been delayed 

 by the rains. They ran thro' the upper part a day sooner 

 than I expected, because as we advanced, the soil grew 

 shallower: but then we have been obliged to widen and 

 raise all Larby's first attempts; because his part was so 

 narrow, hollow, and clayey, that it soon grew dirty, and 

 would have been impassable. By and with the advice 

 of our Privy Council we took a higher direction than 

 was at first marked out, because it much shortened the 

 path, and brings us out straight at the top of the slidder 

 before you come to shop -slidder at the corner of the 

 Wadden. In our progress we found many pyrites in the 



* The second volume of Thomas Warton's monumental work on 'The 

 History of English Poetry ' had appeared in 1778. 



+ The Bostal, described in the Naturalist's Journal, Sept. 27th, 1780, as 

 " a sloping path up the Hanger from the foot of the Zigzag to the corner 

 of the Wadden, in length 414 yards. A fine romantic path, shady and 

 beautiful," is very well known to visitors to Selborne. It presents a much 

 easier way of reaching the pretty common above the wood than the zigzag 

 path, which was made when the writer of the above letter was a young man, 

 and its construction now must be regarded as a sign of old age. The 

 expense of making it was borne by Thomas White. 



