LETTER LV. MRS TAYLOR. Lichfield, Feb. 3, 1789. THOUGH many letters lie unanswered in my drawer, of remoter date than my dear Mrs Taylor's, and from friends whom I much regard, yet I wave every other claim, that I may answer her kind epistle, before the important hour confines her person, and expands her heart, for the reception of the maternal pleasures.-May they prove an all-recompensing happiness! Hitherto you have seemed as chiefly born to suffer. I had a strong presentiment that pregnancy would have banished your long oppressive train of previous indispositions, and am disappointed to know that they harassed you so much in the beginning of that period. Highly amiable are your filial regrets.—O! I can well imagine them! how poignant they were on quitting the home of your youth, the apartment hallowed by the ideal presence of a dying mother, who so lately expired in your arms!-Let us quit the subject. Your present local sensations must be sweet, from living in the mansion in which that dear fascinating enthusiastic saint, Mrs Rowe, once inhabited. From twelve years old to twenty, not a year elapsed in which I did not rush to a reperusal of her letters, nor have they yet ceased to thrill my imagination, and to soothe my heart. It was indeed fervently my design, never again to have sent any thing of mine to the Gentleman's Magazine but placability, amounting perhaps to weakness, clings about my heart upon every occasion, short of premeditated and apparent treachery practised against me. Nichols, the editor of that publication, is certainly a very ingenious, and, by the report of those who know him well, a very worthy man. It seems he does not take upon himself the department of reviewing poetry. Business brought him through Lichfield last autumn. He called upon me, and expressed concern so fervent for the slight shewn to one of my best works, the Ode to General Elliot, and for the insolence with which his magazine had reviewed Mr Whalley's noble poem, Mont Blanc, that I could not help being softened, nor refuse to remit to him the offences of his reviewer. After he got to town, I received a letter of earnest supplication, to resume my accustomed contributions to his publication my placability, not my judgment, induced me to comply. There are prodigiously fine passages in Mr Hayley's Revolution Ode, and in the Ovidian Epistle subjoined to it. Both are stupidly and impudently criticized in a letter to the Magazine for December last. Nichols ought to have spurned, instead of inserting that letter. About the middle of last month, I sent one of indignant comment, upon that ridiculous censor, and signed mine Anti-Zoilus. Yet on the whole, perhaps, neither the Ode nor the Epistle are quite equal to some other of Mr Hayley's writings. It is possible to fall somewhat short of them, yet be very fine poems.. We have two youths, not yet either of them seventeen, who display very shining poetic talents. England has had no Aonian flowers of such early beauty and luxuriance, since Chatterton's sun set in blood. Adieu! Adieu! LETTER LVI. MISS WESTON. Lichfield, Feb. 4, 1789. THAT you are not richer in leisure than myself, dear Sophia, I can easily credit, drained as is my treasury of hours and minutes, by domestic and pecuniary business of various kinds, by social interruptions, by a too extensive correspondence, and by attendance upon my aged nursling; but how rapidly the day wastes in London I am too conscious, to wonder at your growing distaste to writing, in spite of the golden mines of information which surround you, and of the powers you possess to refine their treasures, and to give them the most valuable currency. For me, if I had more command over my time, you will allow the comparative barrenness of a provincial town. Since thus it is with us both, it were wise to repose upon each other's regard, without struggling after frequent opportunities to expand it yet again and again, upon paper. Hourly do I expect dear Mrs Mompessan,now the oldest friend I have upon earth, except ing Mrs. Knowles, and my father; my acquaintance with Giovanni not passing into confidential friendship, till some years after Mrs M. honoured me with her's. Justly sings the poetic Bard of Night, “Friendship's the wine of life; but friendship new Alas! the poor king!—his fate is indeed a deep, deep tragedy. The centennial birth-day of the glorious Revolution happened at a somewhat unfortunate period for the party, who make the royal calamity the ladder of their ambition, since the mask of public virtue was to be thrown aside so soon; and since its disuse lays bare their selfishness to the shamed eye of day, in nakedness of tenfold disgrace. I wonder somebody does not rise in the Senate House, and cry "for shame, for shame!"-within a month a little month-while the echoes yet vibrate with the sounds "regal restraint," " the salutary curbs of monarchial power," " the peoples' privileges," and "immortal liberty," from your throats: are you now straining them hoarse with clamours for hereditary rights, and the royal pre |