fice of more material things-my duties-my common-life business-and my friends.

Perhaps I wish this poem of yours had been written in the ten-feet couplet, of whose graces and powers you are so eminently mistress. I think that of eight feet requires the frequent intermixture of the line of seven syllables, in either very solemn, or very sprightly compositions, to give spirit and variety to the measure. Observe how often the seven feet line recurs in the Allegro, Il Penseroso, and in Gray's Descent of Odin.

•

Amongst many other happinesses in your last poem, it has great originality and beauty in its similes.

I am gratified that Mrs Siddons chose one of my darling plays for her benefit. How charming must the Law of Lombardy have been, arrayed in her graces, and in her powers! Its characters are drawn with the free hand of a master, who takes human nature rather than theatric precision for his model-and its language has Shakesperian ease and fire. Our public critics abuse it-but they are almost all composed of bad authors, whose enmity to good ones is inevitable, and, towards Mr Jephson, national jealousy increases their venom.

Charming Mrs Piozzi recommends Della Crusca's Diversity to me, as an extremely fine poemand Mr Hayley tells me, that Mrs Smith's Pegasus is of the true etherial breed-of whose Sonnets, in my opinion, Colonel Barry, as justly as wittily, said, when he was last here, that the general run of them was two or three good lines, stolen from our most popular poets, dispersed here and there in each sonnet, with ten or a dozen others of very indifferent cement.

"Alas! my gentle Helen, how must I,
Who will not flatter, and who dare not lie,"

have wounded you with cold praise, had you sent me poems with as little original poetic matter as Mrs Smith's Sonnets; or strutting in such inflated defiance of every thing like common sense, as the compositions of Della Crusca!-not but there are considerable flashes of genius in the latter, but to me they serve only to make the general darkness more visible. Such odes as Diversity will confirm, instead of invalidating Mr Mason's objection to the irregular ode—yet, since Dryden and Lord Lyttleton have proved the possibility of making sublime and beautiful poems upon that model, I wonder at Mason's reprobat

ing it. We may venture to pronounce, that a composition, which fails to interest us in irregular lyrics, would not please us better, if we were to see it reduced to the regular form--though fine odes are certainly the more perfect on that account. Adieu! my dear Miss Williams,-your's faithfully.

LETTER LXII.

GEORGE HARDINGE, ESQ.

Lichfield, March 5, 1789.

THE evidence you bring of Mr B's bache lor voluptuousness, is irresistibly strong. I suppose Mr Day knew it not, or, with his general abhorrence of sensuality, he had spared to mention him with so much esteem:-but, Lord! what a pale, maidenish-looking animal for a voluptuary!

-so reserved as were his manners!-and his countenance!—a very tablet, upon which the ten commandments seemed written.

There is sublime allegoric imagery in your son

net to Pitt*. I like the two first lines the leastand do not approve of two torches in one sonnet, the light of virtue, and the flame of honour. If it was mine I would alter the opening, thus,

Genius and virtue's prodigy, thy fame
Through ages shall diffuse its cloudless light.

"Thee Britain found," I do not think sufficiently clear, unless it had been in her late emergency, that she had first found her political saviour.

* SONNET TO MR PITT,

By G. HARDINGE, ESQ. written March 1789.

O! miracle of sure, tho' early fame,

By genius prov'd, and sacred virtue's light,
Thee Britain found in her tempestuous night,
When Belial, starting from the bonds of shame,
With frantic joy, and guilt's avenging might,

Threaten'd in radiant panoply the fight;
The arm that waved imperial honour's flame,
Reveal'd those hideous phantoms of the night,
That hover'd, brooding, o'er the regal bed,

In shapeless folds of dusky hue;—the pale
Half-rebel Fear,--to venal homage bred,
And Perfidy, that marks the shifting gale

Obsequious--idiot Scorn, tho' nature bled,
And perjur'd Craft in duty's hallow'd veil.

My objection might be obviated thus :

"Thee Britain found, strong in her stormy night.”

Invincible is the word, but there is not room for it. In the sonnet, how often does language find herself on the bed of Procrustes ! All the rest of this composition has Miltonic sublimity. The picture, as an whole, is infinitely grand. The night fiends brooding o'er the regal bed, and discovered by the torch of honour! Nothing can be more sublime; though poets only will perhaps properly feel this oracular imagery, at least without a key, but it is the kind of thing in which a portion of obscurity is rather an excellence than a defect-I mean as to the imagery merely, for nothing can preserve from just censure obscurity of expression.

my

My poor sonnets are made delectable nonsense in the General Evening Post for the 7th of this month, March, by the carelessness of the printer, who, in reversing the words hills and rills, has caused hills to wind and to murmur, and my brooks to be convex. He has also of the word illume made illums, and for the word idiocy, as synonymous to idiotism, (See Lord Bacon's authority in Johnson's folio Dictionary,) he has given idiotcy.