alas! too few in this place, or among my more distant visitors, who are ingenious enough, and sufficiently unprejudiced by the sophisms of the envious dogmatist, to feel its excellence. I will take the utmost care of it, and have already commissioned a literary friend to try if it is possible to procure it for me.

Mr Potter's Vindication of Gray's Odes had pleased me extremely, but your's is of prior publication; and I can truly say, it appears to me even more full and complete. You dispute with Johnson every inch of ground, and totally subdue wherever you assail. I am, Sir, yours, &c.

LETTER XXXII.

H. CARY, ESO.*

Lichfield, July 19, 1788.

I AM extremely flattered, and anew delighted, my dear ingenious Cary, by the poetic tribute with which you have honoured my Horatian Odes. Except Anacreon, Horace is certainly the gayest

*Now the Rev. H. Cary, the ingenious translator of Danté, vicar of Kingsbury, near Tamworth. 1810.

and lightest of the lyric poets. You say he has not a Pindaric feather in his wing. To me he often appears to have flashes of sublimity, at least, along the course of his odes. They frequently shone upon me through the dim veil of a literal prose translation;-but it is my creed, that verseliterality draws off all the spirit of an author. It was the creed of Dryden and Pope-as is evident from their always infusing a portion of new and original matter into their translations.

I could not, at the time, quite accede to your objection to the expression, "jocund scorn,” in a poem of mine. We as often see scorn gaily, as gloomily expressed. Dipping, since we parted, into my favourite Pleasures of the Imagination, by Akenside, I found the following line, which has an expression synonymous to that of mine, which you disliked,

"Where gay derision bends her hostile aim.”

My favourite word "yellow," of more than Italian liquidness, except when it is spoiled by the vulgar pronunciation yallow, and which has such a picturesque glow on the imagination, is as frequent in Thomson, as you say the word "bowers" is in my writings. If "bowers" is a word of infinite convenience in rhyme, Milton, however, uses it, through

the Paradise Lost, not less lavishly, though blank verse calls not for it with the same pressing necessity. Adieu!

LETTER XXXIII.

MRS KNOWLES.

Lichfield, August 29, 1788. ·

On my return home from my late excursion into Derbyshire, I found your kind letter, which dear George had brought, when he found its bowery mansion deserted of its mistress.

Soul-exalting music, and the glad welcome of several friends, unseen during some of the late years, recompensed the exertion and anxiety of a being, so stationary as your Anna, divided from her feeble parent, whose life, dear to her peace, hangs by a line slight and attenuated as the spider's thread.

Within a mile of my native village, I could not resist the temptation of ascending the rocks amongst which it winds.

Though I found several valued old acquaintance in its mansions, who seemed thrice glad to

see me, yet were the sensations of this visit pensive, even to pain. I went into the church, where the ashes of my two infant sisters repose. The vacant pulpit, from whence paternal eloquence had so often met my ear, stood before me, as the dim apparition of former happy years.

We went, a large party, from Hopton on Monday, to dine at Matlock. We filled the coach, a whisky, and a gig. I had an idea that we might possibly meet you there, with your Telemachus, and felt disappointed to find this pleasure only ideal. Your purposed re-trip to Lichfield, ere you quit the country, will, I trust, be realized. No more gadding for me at present, so you will be sure to find me at home.

Three letters waited my return, announcing the intended visits of three separate sets of friendsthe Martins; Mr and Mrs Granville, with Mr Dewes, the learned, the interesting, and the good, and his fair and accomplished niece, Miss Port, educated by Mrs Delany, and whose first years of womanhood have been gilded, from day to day, by the smiles of majesty, and by its personal attentions; also, Mr and Mrs Whalley, who will pass most of the month of September with me, and whom I have written to desire Sophia will meet. Already have I written to them separately, to settle these matters-I must now hastily

leave you, to write to a duke, who has sent us a present in the most obliging manner, to plan the introduction of a young actress of genius to the Bath theatre, and to acknowledge the favour of an author of consequence, who has praised my poems in his Life of Cook, just published.

The pleasures, which, from your late kind visit, I reaped in plenteous harvest, come frequently back to my recollection, and will long continue to do so. Adieu! Adieu!

LETTER XXXIV.

H. CARY, Esq.

Lichfield, Sept. 2, 1788.

MR WHALLEY, one of the dearest of my friends, with his worthy wife, are my guests, and will remain here till Monday next. I know not if you have read his sublimely descriptive poem, Mont Blanc. His spirit is as sweetly attuned to every thing benevolent, sympathetic, and generous, as his imagination to

"The great, the wonderful, the fair.”