tion from a passage in him that proves it. I mean, that it should stand the first in my collection, as shewing the principles on which mine have been written. Upon your present system, the numbers will not please you. It is, however, very exactly Boileau's sense and image *.

Cary's sonnets are upon softer subjects than Milton's, and the versification is consequently and properly softer; but they are truly Miltonic, and have nothing of what you say sonnets ought to have," the lightness of a zephyr's wing." The pause, instead of pausing at the end of the line, is often floated into the next, forming those impressive breaks, so dear to the lovers of blank-verse. The language has rather an elevated simplicity than that Popean smoothness and polish, which so highly adorn the heroic and the elegiac measure, but which I cannot think essential, or even an advantage to that of the lyric and the sonnet style. The last Gentleman's Magazine has a fine sonnet of Cary's, translated from the Italian, and a beautiful little poem upon the same subject, from Ovid. It contains also two sonnets of mine, upon which I have been highly complimented by my literary friends. They had been direfully misprinted in the General Evening Post,

* See the first sonnet in the Miscellany.-S.

but the Magazine has rectified the errors. I dare believe you will like the ideas, whatever you may think of the numbers.

My acquaintance, Mr Sargent, has lately reprinted his Mine, with two additional odes. The first, the Vision of Stone-Henge, we should think sublime, if it were possible to forget Gray's Welch Bard; but servilely imitative, yet, strikingly inferior, we are inclined to quarrel with it. The second ode, Mary Queen of Scots, has much charm for the imagination, and interest for the heart; and, though we find the author there a little too much in debt to Gray, and with high obligations to Ossian, yet has it three or four pictures as original as they are sublime.

There is fine use made of the Ossianic machinery; but you, as well as myself, will quarrel with the disingenuous note upon the very finest passage in the ode, speaking, as it does, with a degree of contempt, of the source whence the author has drawn its sublimity, and containing an insinuation against the originality of Ossian. It is impolitic, as well as disgraceful to his sensibility, which ought to furnish internal evidence of originality, powerful enough to do away all the testimony which Macpherson's disingenuous pretenees have thrown into the opposite scale.

How does your beloved Mrs Jackson, whose heart is as warm as her understanding is enlarged? Has time infused its balm into those sorrows which fortitude sustained so nobly?

Adieu, Adieu!

LETTER LXIV.

MRS PIOZZI.

Lichfield, April 11, 1789.

SOON after I had the honour of addressing you last, I obtained the poem Diversity from my tardy bookseller. I confess myself to want taste for that author's general style of writing, though I admire particular passages in him extremely. By the perpetual effort and violence of his style, he loses all sight of nature, simplicity, and perspicuity, till one of his own lines in Diversity becomes his most applicable motto,

"Waging with common sense perpetual war.”

Our amiable Miss W.'s poem on the Slave Trade is very dear to me. I am sure you have

attended to the happiness, beauty, and originality of its similies. Helen's genius is as soaring as her manners are gentle.

The king's recovery, preserving to us our minister, our second Daniel in talents, firmness, and integrity, was a singular mercy to the nation. Our little city made her feast of lights on the occasion, with unanimous alacrity. I marvel at the frontless effrontery with which our nominal whigs disgraced a title I ever thought so honourable, and threw away their mask of. patriotism the instant the rising-sun seemed likely to ascend the zenith.

You feel, I dare say, that Dr Johnson would have been of the regent party, had he existed during the late astonishing and sudden change of ground in the parties, which, pulling different ways, make and maintain the balance of the constitution.

Another poetic publication, entitled the Loves of the Plants, has just passed the press. It is the work of one of my oldest literary friends,-a mock heroic poem, of beautiful invention, variety, and descriptive grace; with numbers even more richly harmonious than Pope's. There is a great deal of botanic science in the notes. The author is Dr Darwin, though he does not avow himself; one of Dr Johnson's blockheads, who

lived in Lichfield when Johnson told you that Lichfield had nothing for the mind. I am, with best compliments to Mr Piozzi, dear Madam, yours, &c.

LETTER LXV.

CAPTAIN SEWARD.

Lichfield, April 15, 1789.

I REJOICE in the king's recovery. From my soul I pitied his sufferings, and the queen's affliction; but, great as is the national blessing of such a restoration, I never had an idea of writing verses on the occasion, and am sorry you have set your heart on any such matter. The Laureate must write. It is my opinion no other good poet will. The royal pair have never patronised the bards, and care little for their songs.

This period teems with poetic genius; but George the Third is no Augustus Cæsar to his Virgils, his Ovids, and his Horaces; and Mr Pitt, though a great minister, is not a Mecænas. The King of England will not resemble Alexander, in shedding the tear of envy over the tomb of Achil