He finds in your sonnets all that excites delight from each of these sources. We are to read your Horatian Ode to Elliot this morn. Mr W. is impatient to see the author of these charming effusions, whom he already loves.

He shrunk, with the most awakened sense of pain, from the late well-meant, but ill-judged interference, with the energies and exertions of friendship and literature.

Alas! that a natural and bodily infirmity in his son, should have produced such an arrangement of circumstances, as to make a parent, who is himself a scholar, and a sweet-tempered man, give such a gothic instance of authority, that, upon the surface of it, wears an air of

“ Hating learning worse than toad or asp ;"

And that it should really have forced him to consider genius as a misfortune to his son.

How I wander from the chief purport of this hasty scribble; it is to desire that you will, if possible, ride over, and give Mr W. as much of your society as you can contrive to do.

He is equally impatient to see Lycid, whom I shall ask to dinner to-day-but I am afraid, that, fearful of the contact of poetic spirits, they will not let him come.

How my heart aches for that dear youth!

"Who would not sigh for Lycidas, who knows
Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme."

Adieu! Adieu!

LETTER XXXV.

EDWARD TIGHE, ESQ.*

Lichfield, Sept. 23, 1788.

You ask me if I know such a word as seductive. It is used perpetually in conversation, and I feel a conciousness of having met it often in elegant writing. We do not find it in Johnson's Dictionary, but it ought to have been there. Since the word seduction is scarce less frequently used than expression, why should it not have been a similar participle. Johnson gives us expressive and oppressive, but neither impressive nor suppressive, though proceeding as obviously from their respective sources. While expressive is on his pages, inexpressive is not, which he should

* The well-known Mr Tighe of Ireland.

have inserted, since Milton makes such fine use of it in Lycidas.

-or

Johnson's omissions (through carelessness I suppose) are infinite. If you were to find in a letter of mine, "I wrote to Mrs, expressing my sense of her kindness”. "I have an oppressing pain in my stomach," you would hardly censure me for too great verbal license, yet you will look in vain for oppressing or expressing in Johnson. Concerning the importation of Latin derivatives. All new words, that are at once forcible and harmonious, do surely enrich and adorn our language. It appears to me that we ought to receive them thankfully, from our recollection, that every word, not of English origin, now mature, and received into our dictionaries, and understood even by the misses, had its infancy; which, if national jealousy, and false pride had crushed, our language, at this hour, must have been little less harsh and hissing, than German or High Dutch. The more the English tongue incorporates with the Latin, the more sweet and sonorous becomes our rhythm, the more round and full the periods of our prose; the more easily is it acquired, and pronounced by foreigners; the more widely will our works of genius spread over the neighbouring nations, and, consequently, the higher will rise the reputation of English literaturé.

I have corresponded much, of late years, with a fastidious critic of your acquaintance, who has more wit and genius, than candour, judgment, or generous perception of contemporary excellence, in beautiful writing. With the tetchiness of a spoiled child, he kicks at every word that is either older or younger than the chit-chat of polite companies; and, when used by the moderns, he quarrels with all the witcheries of Shakespearean simplicity, and with the grandeur of the Miltonic phrases; together with the thrice-happy grammatic licences, that give grace and spirit to their writings.

Such forwardness is more oppressive to me than stupidity itself, and it has often made me so cross, that Hardinge thinks me ill-tempered.

Candid disquisition I have always thought delightful; and I am acknowledged to be patient of criticism, but then my reason must be convinced. I demand the why and wherefore, of objection; and, obtaining them, gratefully kiss the correcting hand-but save me, ye Powers of sensibility and justice, from literary correspondents, who hate for they do.

There is no end of producing what they call feeling, as a critical criterion. Mr Hardinge, perhaps, detests a particular mode of expression; Mr Hayley thinks it charming-yet Mr Hardinge

says, there is no reasoning upon these matters, they must be referred to feeling-let it be so, respecting his own likings and dislikings-but it is arrogance to expect, that I should deem his feelings the unerring judges of propriety, harmony, and grace. Why may I not be allowed to have as much respect for my own?

But how I have forgotten your passion for conciseness, thus suffering myself to prate about it, and about it!

Adieu!-May health and happiness like to be near you, as well as I do, for at least forty years to come!

LETTER XXXVI.

H. CARY, ESQ.

Lichfield, Sept. 25, 1788. YOUR letter, my dear C-, has inspired a cheering hope for the fate of the gallant, interesting, and grateful Howel. I did not happen to see the paragraph in question. All, however, is silence from Eartham. Not a week did I delay to answer that mournful letter of Mr Hayley's,