LETTER XCVI.

To Lady HESKETH.

The Lodge, May 27, 1788.

The General, in a Letter which came

yesterday, sent me inclosed a copy of my Sonnet; thus introducing it.

" I send a copy of verses somebody has written in the Gentleman's Magazine for April last. Independent of my partiality towards the subject, I think the lines themselves are good."

Thus it appears that my poetical adventure has succeeded to my wish; and I write to him by this post, on purpose to inform him that the somebody in question is myself.

I no longer wonder that Mrs. Montagu stands at the head of all that is called learned, and that every critic veils his bonnet to her superior judgment; I am now reading, and have reached the middle of her Essay on the Genius of Shakspeare; a book of which, strange as it may seem, though I must have read it formerly, I had absolutely forgot the existence.

The learning, the good sense, the sound judgment, and the wit displayed in it, fully justify, not only my compliment, but all compliments that either have been already paid to her talents, or shall be paid hereafter. Voltaire, I doubt not, rejoiced that his antagonist wrote in English, and that his countrymen could not possibly

possibly be judges of the dispute. Could they have known how much she was in the right, and by how many thousand miles the Bard of Avon is superior to all their dramatists, the French critic would have lost half his fame among them.

I saw at Mr. C's a head of Paris; an antique of Parian marble. His uncle, who left him the estate, brought it, as I understand, Mr. C, from the Levant you may suppose I viewed it with all the enthusiasm that belongs to a Translator of Homer. It is in reality a great curiosity, and highly valuable.

Our friend Sephus has sent me two Prints; the Lace-maker and Crazy Kate. These also I have contemplated with pleasure; having, as you know, a particular interest in them. The former of them is not more beautiful than a Lace-maker, once our neighbour at Olney; though the artist has assembled as many charms in her countenance as I ever saw in any countenance, one excepted. Kate is both younger and handsomer than the original from which I drew; but she is in a good stile, and as mad as need be.

How does this hot weather suit thee, my dear, in London; as for me, with all my colonades and bowers, I am quite oppressed by it.

W. C.

LETTER

LETTER XCVII.

To Lady HESKETH.

MY DEAREST COZ.

The Lodge, June 3, 1788.

The excessive heat of these last

few days, was indeed oppressive; but excepting the languor that it occasioned both in my mind and body, it was far from being prejudicial to me. It opened ten thousand pores, by which as many mischiefs, the effects of long obstruction, began to breathe themselves forth abundantly. Then came an east wind, baneful to me at all times, but following so closely such a sultry season, uncommonly noxious. To speak in the seaman's phrase, not entirely strange to you, I was taken all aback; and the humours which would have escaped, if old Eurus would have given them leave, finding every door shut, have fallen into my eyes. But in a country like this, poor miserable mortals must be content to suffer all that sudden and violent changes can inflict; and if they are quit for about half the plagues that Caliban calls down on Prospero, they may say we are well off, and dance for joy, if the rheumatism or cramp will let them.

Did you ever see an advertisement by one Fowle, a dancing master of Newport-Pagnel? If not, I will contrive to send it you for your amusement. It is the most extravagantly ludicrous affair of the kind I ever saw. The author of it had the good hap to be

crazed,

crazed, or he had never produced any thing half so clever; for you will ever observe, that they who are said to have lost their wits, have more than other people. It is, therefore, only a slander with which envy prompts the malignity of persons in their senses to asperse wittier than themselves. But there are countries in the world where the mad have justice done them, where they are revered as the subjects of inspiration, and consulted as oracles. Poor Fowle would have made a figure there.

W. C.

.....

LETTER XCVIII.

To JOSEPH HILL, Esqr.

Weston, June 8, 1788.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

Your Letter brought me the very first

intelligence of the event it mentions. My last Letter from Lady Hesketh gave me reason enough to expect it; but the certainty of it was unknown to me till I learned it by your information. If gradual decline, the consequence of great age, be a sufficient preparation of the mind to encounter such a loss, our minds were certainly prepared to meet it: yet, to you, I need not say, that no preparation can supersede the feelings of the heart on such occasions. While our friends yet live, inhabitants of the same world with ourselves, they seem still to live to us; we are sure that they sometimes think of us; and however improbable it may seem, it is never impossible that we may see each other

once

once again. But the grave, like a great gulph, swallows all such expectations; and in the moment when a beloved friend sinks into it, a thousand tender recollections awaken a regret that will be felt in spite of all reasonings, and let our warnings have been what they may. Thus it is I take my last leave of poor Ashley, whose heart towards me was ever truly parental, and to whose memory I owe a tenderness and respect that will never leave me.

W. C.

MY DEAR COZ.

LETTER XCIX.

To Lady HESKETH.

The Lodge, June 10, 1788.

Your kind Letter of precaution to Mr.

Gregson, sent him hither as soon as chapel service was ended in the evening; but he found me already apprized of the event that occasioned it, by a line from Sephus, received a few hours before. My dear Uncle's death awakened in me many reflections, which, for a time, sunk my spitits. A man like him would have been mourned, had he doubled the age he reached; at any age his death would have been felt as a loss that no survivor could repair. And though it was not probable that, for my own part, I should ever see him more, yet the consciousness that he still lived, was a comfort to me let it comfort us now that we have lost him only at a time when nature could afford him to us no longer; that as his life was blameless, so was his death without anguish; and that he is gone

to