taphysics, I am no cat, I cannot see in the dark; and as for mathematics, I am no eagle, I cannot see in too much light."

It is in defence of the existence of inherent inclinations, and of the wisdom which directs them in various beings, to various objects, that I have cited these instances, since, on the subject of music, your last seems to doubt their existence.

Our young bards, Cary and Lister, Mr White and Mr Saville, continue to explore with me the poetic graces of the Botanic Garden, with delight "which grows by what it feeds upon." I had great pleasure on Wednesday, in conversing with the ingenious and generous Dr R. Darwin. We walked together to the blooming valley which you gave to beauty, and intended giving to science. Though the traces of the latter are fading fast away, the glow of the former is yet vivid, "and breathes of you."

LETTER LXIX.

HENRY CARY, Esq.

Lichfield, May 29, 1789.

NEEDLESS, I trust, is your apprehension, that Lister slackens in his allegiance to the muses In the, of late, seldom times that we have conversed together, without the restraining presence of uncongenial spirits, I have perceived no bluntness in the edge of his poetic enthusiasm ; and he lately sent me a charming Miltonic sonnet on the hard and penurious lot of the untaught genius, Hamilton Reid.

The beauty of your sonnet on Mr Hayley's excursion to Italy is considerable. If it posses sed the, in my opinion, essential characteristic of a legitimate sonnet, the Miltonic pauses, I should consider it as one of the most perfect compositions I know in that order of verse. Hope it will appear in the next Gentleman's Magazine.

Upon the design you expressed of writing a didactic epistle to young poets, I am going to speak to you with the freedom of friendship. Recollect that the subject has been exhausted by

Mr Hayley, in his great, his not-to-be-excelled work, the Epistles on Epic Poetry.

If a great writer has taken a theme, and fallen below himself in the execution; if he has neglected to give it those advantages, of which it seems to us capable, then let us not be discouraged by any splendour of name or reputation, in the probable hope of soaring above him where he has failed to rise the height that we think attainable; but if, on the contrary, we feel that he has treated the subject in the best-possible manner, so as to render hopeless every attempt to excel him, then let us, above all other poetic errors, avoid taking a theme so pre-occupied; for if it has already received every necessary justice, and every requisite ornament; if it is already in possession of the public attention, it is in vain that we might even treat it equally well. We must excel the established work, or inevitable neglect will be the barren recompense of our labour. Besides, the attempt will always be construed into proof, that we think we have excelled the writer whose subject we chose to discuss over again; and if the world should think otherwise, it will despise our presumption. This was the rock upon which Pope split, when he gave our nation an ode upon a subject which had been so felicitously hit off

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by Dryden. I must ever think that, but for that

luckless and ill-judged attempt, no person of any taste for the true excellence of our art, would have hesitated a moment to pronounce Pope a greater poet than Dryden. I believe also, that Milton, whose superiority to Dryden none deny, would have failed to rival the Ode on St Cecilia's day, had he contested the theme, so that Pope's inferiority on that one subject ought not to be brought, though it so often is brought, as a proof of a genius inferior to Dryden's. I am sure his Eloisa to Abelard excels every epistle of Dryden's, in a greater degree than Dryden's Ode excels his. Addison was guilty of the same folly in attempting to rival Pope's splendid translation, and he added despicable meanness to that folly, when he made Tickel father his translation, for the purpose of deciding publicly in its favour against that of Pope,—an attempt which met the disgrace it deserved. An open, ingenuous contest, had been only presumption; but his conduct in that affair was too base for the practice of a noble mind, and would amply have justified satire far more rough and indignant than it received from the bard he had injured.

Shenstone committed an error of judgment, though not of heart, when he employed his muse upon the Choice of Hercules; already enriched and adorned to the utmost by the imagination of

Lowth, whose beautiful Spenceric ode on that fable is one of the brightest stars in Dodsley's Galaxy.

As to P.'s ode to Howard, it is veritable the clown tumbling after harlequin; with an infinitely greater inferiority to Hayley's, than Pope's ode is inferior to Dryden's; than Addison's translation of the first book of Homer to Pope's; than Shenstone's allegory to Lowth's.

With taste and sensibility like yours, very warm admiration of Rousseau is inevitable; but I am sorry to see you so dazzled by the splendours of his eloquence, as not to perceive that little sound morality is to be found amidst his glittering maze of paradoxes. Remember, my dear Cary, the distrust, misanthropy, and wretchedness into which his subtle refinements betrayed his own spirit, and beware of adopting them with too implicit veneration!

I read his Emile some twenty years ago. As every thing from his pen must be exquisitely ingenious, I would reperuse it if I had leisure to read for amusement merely, or if I were likely to be engaged in the education of youth; since, however wild, impracticable, and absurd it must be to reduce his entire system to practice, many useful hints may doubtless be taken from it. I wish that you would put the volume in your pocket