IO4 HISTORY OF HARTING. 



were the Carylls themselves unknown to the literary 

 world ; one was a writer of plays, and another is im- 

 mortalized by Pope as having suggested the Rape of 

 the Lock. 



" I sing this line to Caryll, Muse, is due 

 This, Belinda may vouchsafe to view." 



Thus West Harting is as wealthy as East in his- 

 torical records at this time, while in literary subjects 

 and domestic sketches of the period it may be said 

 far to surpass it, and to have copious annals of its 

 own. 



And as the main guide which we shall now have 

 to follow is the large collection of " Caryll Corre- 

 spondence " given, together with many Charters and 

 other MSS., to the British Museum, in 1870, by 

 Sir Charles Dilke, perhaps it may not be amiss to 

 give a description of this mass of evidence, copied 

 from a periodical of 1869. The Caryll MSS. are 

 stated to contain letters of King James and his' 

 Queen, The Dukes of Berwick, Beaufort and Norfolk, 

 Dryden, Wycherley, Pope, Sir Richard Steele, Sir 

 Roger L' Estrange, St. Evremond, and other celebrities 

 of those times. Pope's letters (to John Caryll, of Lady 

 Holt), which begin at an early period of his life, alone 

 number 150, and are the more interesting from the 

 fact that they have not, like his published corre- 

 spondence, been improved by their author into mere 

 literary essays. A curious history attaches to these 

 papers, which were left behind when the last of the 

 Carylls took service in the French army in 1767, and 

 were accidentally discovered some years ago, together 

 with a mass of other documents, stowed up in boxes, 

 rotted with damp and preyed upon by vermin.* 



Following Sir Edward Caryll, who, as we have seen, 

 purchased West Harting of the Fortescues in the 



* Daily Telegraph (or News), Monday, October (or Sep- 

 tember) 23rd, 1869. In the Recess. 



