their appearing together. Yours should not have been printed before the letter, which referred to it, could be admitted. But never mind it; printed remonstrance will but call attention more forcibly to what is made to seem so very a bow and curtsey. Adieu!

LETTER L.

MR WESTON.

Lichfield, Jan. 7th, 1789.

As to my anger, whatever my wonder may be at your strong prejudices in favour of my muse, and against the sweet Swan of Twickenham, anger is out of the question. It would be affectation, in the first instance, in the last injustice; for have you not a right to assert your own opinions, whatever they may be? I, however, devoutly wish, that, for your own sake and mine, you would greatly soften the hyperbole of your praise of me, and the warmth of your censure upon Pope, since there is such an inevitably

large majority of opinions against yours in both instances.

Mr Morfit's fragment has great beauty. I am pleased and flattered by the similarity in its leading idea to that of my rural sonnet,

Why do you fancy that it was Dr Johnson's blindness to the merits of some of my favourite writers, that produced my conviction concerning the rancour of his spirit?

It appears to me, that you are as unjust to Pope, and to the collective merit of modern poets, as Johnson is to those of almost every poet he depreciates; yet nobody ever heard me reflect upon the general expansion and goodness of your heart.

But perusing, with unprejudiced judgment, the records of his malevolence, given by his friends, that fancy it was, in him, great to be abusive, who can think Johnson's heart a good one?

In the course of many years' personal acquaintance with him, I never knew a single instance in which the praise (from another's lip) of any human being, excepting that of Mrs Thrale, was not a caustic on his spirit; and this, whether their virtues or abilities were the subject of encomium.

VOL. II.

What a strange power has prejudice, since it can strike such a mind as yours so blind, as to make you fancy Pope little more than a brilliant versifier, because he successfully endeavoured to polish his numbers high. If ingenious allusions, striking and graceful imagery, sound, perspicuous, and pointed good sense were not, in happy succession, to be found throughout his writings, their beautiful harmonies would be of trivial import to me. Exalted, however, as I think the claims of Pope, I do not place him on any level with Shakespeare and Milton.

Dr Johnson's opinions of poetry are so absurd and inconsistent with each other, that, though almost any of his dogmas may be clearly and easily confuted, yet the attempt is but combating an hydra-headed monster.

Pope's indiscriminate aversion to the Alexandrine verse is as ill-judged as Dryden's licentious use of it. In the lyric measure, it gives great dignity to the close of a stanza, if its cesura is properly placed. In the couplet-measure, it also gives energy and grace to the close of a passage; but its effect appears to me always bad, when placed in the middle of a sentence. I like the sense to overflow the couplet, as you ingeniously express it, oftener than it ever does in Pope and Johnson.

Have you reflected, that the most brilliant and celebrated of Dryden's works (his noble Ode excepted) are paraphrastic translations from Chaucer, &c. Neither he nor Pope have one original poem so rich in poetic invention, that first gift of the muses, as Hayley's Triumphs of Temper. Then, what stuff has Dryden left amidst his excellencies, what bombast ?-What tame did and do prosing!-What wretched conceits!

My ear seldom quarrels with the imperfect rhymes in any situation. I find them in the most harmonious verses of Dryden, Pope, Gray, Mason, Collins, Beattie, &c. which seem not the less musical for their admission. With regard to the other circumstances that concur to form the polish and sweetness of numbers, I would have no author spare his pains to procure them. Unpolished verse is much more apparently laborious, than where art has been skilfully applied. Let us apply it, therefore, as assiduously as possible, always remembering, however, that the music of numbers is a subordinate excellence, to which sense and picture ought never to be sacrificed. If to present them with an high degree of strength or grace, is only to be done by dispensing with a little hardness in the measure, an hiatus, or an unpleasant alliteration, we should sacrifice the less to the greater excellence; nor, in that case, mind

a defect that respects the sound merely, unless the measure is absolutely broken, and the ancient and established rules of versification infringed. And so terminates the history of my ideas concerning the duties a poet owes to the formation of his numbers.

LETTER LI.

MRS HAYLEY.

Lichfield, Jan. 11, 1789.

You inquire, dearest Madam, my opinion of Mr Hayley's Revolution Ode. His return home has doubtless furnished you with them, for to him did I ingenuously breathe them, as they arose on my first perusals. Amidst the much that I found to admire, the most material of my few objections Dr Warner has obviated, by communicating the new discovery of the Tornado-its dispersing upon any sharp-pointed steel being presented to it. This discovery leaves the simile, and its application, one of the most beautiful and perfect passages English poetry can boast.

Why, I wonder, will Nichols disgrace his ma