“... I regret that poor Mr. Gray is now no more than Pindar. One fatal moment sets two or three thousand years aside, and brings the account equal. I really believe our British Pindar not unequal in merit to the bard of Thebes. I hope Mr. Gray has left some works yet unpublished.” Walpole, who never appears in a more favourable light than when he speaks with affectionate reverence of Gray, supplemented Mrs. Montagu’s hopes by saying: “I should earnestly wish, if he has destined anything for the public, to print it at my press. It would do me honour and give me an opportunity of expressing what I feel for him. Methinks, as we grow old, our only business here is to adorn the graves of our friends or dig our own.” From these reflections, Mrs. Montagu takes her readers back to life and its varieties, in a letter without date, but it is endorsed in a hand, not hers, 1773. “In the early part of my life I was a most punctual correspondent; but of late I have been as much too remiss as I was formerly too diligent in writing letters. I have at length discovered that writing letters is idleness without ease, and fatigue without a purpose. When newspapers only told weddings, births, and burials, a letter from London bore some value; but now that the public papers not only tell when men are born and dye, but every folly they contrive to insert between those periods, the literary correspondent has nothing left. Lies and dulness used to be valued in manuscript, but printing has assumed a right over the lies of the day and the amusement of the hour. On stamped paper and by authority are publish’d what Lady B—— L——e says of a fat alderman, and how Miss Biddy Bellair was dress’d at the last masquerade. I can, however, tell you some news from St. Vincent, which I had just now from a gentleman in a public office, which is, that an account has just arrived from Colonel Dalrymple, with news of the total reduction of the Caribs, in St. Vincent, and a treaty concluded with them, with small loss on our side. I could find in my heart to say ‘poor Caribs!’