genius, it is not less dear to me than poetry. My imagination, though perhaps it cannot justly boast that splendid origin, loves to find itself at liberty to pursue serious, pathetic, and elevated subjects, free from the shackles of rhyme and mea

sure.

The young bards were very happy in reading your indulgent mention of their writings. Never did more fervently admiring votaries bow before your shrine.

A female friend of mine, Miss Scott, has just published a poem, entitled The Messiah. She has considerable talents, and her numbers are easy and sweet. We have been friends and correspondents more than ten years; though, from the remoteness of our respective homes, we have been only once in each other's company, and that but for a single day. She is an excellent woman. Her filial piety has been exemplary. The 9th of this month was to be her wedding-day. The bridegroom has waited for her, with Jacobean constancy, nearly twice seven years; for she would not marry while her aged mother lived, whose wretched health demanded her watchful and unremitting cares. Last winter, sorrow and liberty came to her at once from the grave of a beloved parent.

Miss Scott has a serious and religious mind;

but her faith is Arianism. So also is his, to whom, I conclude, she has by this time given her hand; and whose proselyte I believe she is, for her father was a Clergyman of the Church of England.

On her lover's way through Lichfield, once in two years, I have had frequent opportunities of conversing with him. He defends his opinions ably. They are those of the late Dr John Jebb, whose abilities were unquestionable; whose manners, as an husband, a friend, and companion, were angelically amiable; and whose sincerity in his religious opinions,

"His downright violence, and storm of fortunes,
Did trumpet to the world."

Miss Scott sent me extracts from her Messiah some time since. I insinuated my apprehension, that the subject was not the happiest for poetry, when drawn out into historic precision; and that a poem of Pope's, bearing that title, and already in possession of the general admiration, would make against the reception of her's. I thought it a duty of friendship, my opinion asked, to give it freely.

However, many of her literary friends, who had fair hopes and confidence in the place of my

doubts, have persuaded her to publish it. The poetic critic in the Monthly Review is her personal friend, a circumstance much in favour of her poem. For, strange as it is, every thing upon which those gentlefolks, the public critics, frown, "weak masters though they be,' sinks into a temporary oblivion, though glowing with the purest fires of the muses; sure, indeed, hereafter to emerge to the disgrace of their judgments, and to prove them of the never-to-be-extinct race of Zoilus.

By the way, I am assured, that a certain female author, of the mediocre order, has, in the Critical Review, the post of censor-general of all the works of fancy, both in prose and verse. Indeed, the coldness with which Mrs Brooke's charming writings are mentioned in that work, smells strong of rivalry. When moderately ingenious scribblers sit in judgment upon the works of their superiors, it requires great integrity of heart to do justice to talents that have eclipsed their own in the particular sphere in which they wished to shine.

Unsustained by that integrity, you generally find them bestowing much warmer praise upon moderate than upon sublime compositions.

The note in Miss Scott's poem observes, that she caught the idea of her late work from a pas

sage in your Essay on Epic Poetry. See how we little satellites move around you, our Jupiter! Adieu!-Yours, &c.

LETTER XXII.

GEORGE HARDINGE, Esq.

Lichfield, May 16, 1788.

YOUR pardon for having detained Mr L's letter so long. The desire of not returning it in absolute silence, was the reason of this delay. Illness co-operated with indispensables to prolong it.

The destroying angel has, of late, been busy within the gates of our little city-changing the countenance of our neighbours and our friends, and hiding our acquaintance out of our sight.

There was a startling degree of pathos in the selection of one of his victims. A fair, and amiable young lady, only sixteen, stricken in the glow of her health, and in the blossom of her beautythe idol of a fond mother's heart. On Thursday three weeks she was walking upon our public

walk-her eye shining with health and sprightliness. That day week she lay a lifeless corse.

I had an inclination to see the body-and never saw I death so divested of its horrors. The still serenity of the features made their symmetry more conspicuous, and there was a perceivable smile upon the lips. A luxuriant quantity of dark hair, which had been pinned up in papers during her illness, was gracefully disposed in ringlets, that shaded her fair forehead, and fell half way down her arms, over her alabaster neck and shoulders. The most ornamented robe of fashion could not have been half so advantageous to her fine form, in all its vital bloom, as was the simple elegance of the shroud when it became a statue a statue, whose whiteness and grace seemed to vie with the Medicean marble.

An ingenious young clergyman here, was to preach the Sunday seven-night after this pathetic funeral. He solicited me to make his sermon, and that it might be allusive to that mournful circumstance ;-but it was Whit-sunday. Uncommon as was the effort to give a funeral oration on a festival, I thought it possible to blend the subjects, so that they might be favourable to each other; observing in the course of the sermonthat it could not be improper to view the bles