legitimate. Some of Milton's are hard and unpleasing, and one is evidently burlesque, and was certainly never intended by him for publication; but the best of them, that to the soldier to spare his dwelling-place; that on the Piedmont massacre, to Cyriac Skinner on his own blindness, and that sweet one to Laurence, are the patterns of excellence in the English sonnet. They have the plain majestic energy, characteristic of that species of poetry, and blend the undulating pause of blank verse with rhyme, and so prevent the ear from being cloyed with the quadruple recurrence of similar sounds. There is beauty also in the sonnet to the nightingale, and in that to his deceased wife, but they are less perfect than the former. That to Oliver Cromwell, as far as the word "war," is, amidst its energetic plainness, sublime in the first degree; but it concludes unhappily.

Of Mrs Smith's sonnets, I must observe, that I have only seen the first edition; in the preface to which she says, " If, in these sonnets, there are any lines taken from other poets, I am unconscious of the theft. The first of these sonnets concludes:

"Ah! then how dear the muses' favours cost,
If those paint sorrow best who feel it most."

Pope's concluding line in his Eloisa to Abelard,

is:

"He best shall paint them who shall feel them most.”

There is a pretty image in Mrs Smith's second sonnet, but it is taken from Collins:

“Till spring again shall call forth every bell, And dress, with humid hands, her wreaths again.”—Mrs S.

"Till spring, with dewy fingers cold,

Returns to deck their hallow'd mould."-Collins.

That second sonnet concludes thus:

"Ah! why has happines no second spring?"

This conclusion is a very inferior imitation of Beattie's" Hermit's Complaint," of which the ensuing lines form the last verse:

"Nor yet for the ravage of winter I mourn,
Kind nature the embryo blossoms will save :
But when shall spring visit the mouldering urn;
O! when will she dawn on the night of the grave."

Mrs Smith asking the question of happiness, which Beattie asks of the spring, proves the mischiefs of injudicious imitation.

Your friend Mr tells me he suspects Mrs Piozzi gave Johnson's letters to the world that they might form a decent vechicle for the publication of her own. It appears to me, that the natural desire of letting the world know how highly she was esteemed by a person so distinguished, -how constantly, during so many years, she engaged his revering attention, was the masterspring of that publication. If she had chosen to have printed her own letters, I cannot think she needed any excuse-any vehicle for introducing them to the public. There is no greater vanity in publishing one's letters, than one's essays or poems. You say you like no letters but Swift's: Surely, my dear Sir, there is more than one beautiful style of letters. Swift's are pleasant in the humorous chit-chat way. Those, however, please me better

"That steer,

From grave to gay, from lively to severe."

Why should not genius expand in private letters; describe scenery with the glow of the painter; characters with the fire of the dramatist; moralize with the dignity of the philosopher; and sometimes, under the pressure of sorrow, court" Fancy as the friend of woe?" Why, in. short, should any charming efflorescence of the imagination be banished from the page which is

designed for the eye of friendship ?—and why should our style be eloquent only when we are writing to the world?

I have bewildered you in the mazes of criticism. You will be glad to get out of them. So will you, for my sake, to hear that my poor dear father yet lives in tolerable ease, though the dart of death has been often shook over his feeble head since I wrote to you last.

Lady Moira honours me by the predilection which you flatter me she feels in my favour. Cherish it for me, I pray you.

Mrs Gastril continues to receive sacerdotal homage, as usual.

Adieu! May the plate its long delay!

length of this epistle exYet, if you happen to dislike critical investigation, the purposed atonement

forms the greater sin. Yours, very faithfully.

LETTER XXXIX.

GEORGE HARDINGE, ESQ.

Lichfield, Oct. 10, 1788.

I AM not inexorable, nor so arrogant, as to think lightly of any person's talents or virtues, be

cause they may happen not to treat me with that respect, and attention to the communicated circumstances of my situation, which I have been accustomed to receive; but my leisure is incompetent to the various claims upon it, which seem to increase daily; and, if I resume my correspondence with Mr H., I must neglect those who have never treated me with disrespect.

I flatter myself that we have mutually our merits; but there is a certain uncongeniality in our ideas and opinions, which has betrayed, and always will, if we continue to correspond, betray us into saying things to each other which neither can like to hear.

Upon the cover of the most sarcastic letter ever penned, I have written, "to be read frequently, as a medicine against vanity."

When you hold out to my regard for you the bait of kind and gratifying avowals, I fly to this letter, for conviction how impossible it is that you can have any real esteem for talents, which you fancy disgraced by vulgarism, and for a disposition which you believe deformed by the most ungoverned violence of temper. How can you be so unjust to yourself, as to throw away a wish, a minute upon such a being ?-and how can I help turning from you to those who think better of me?