My imagination met your poem with that sort of delight with which I met you last summer at Ludlow; and which no stranger, however brilliant, however estimable, could inspire in the fancy on one hand, in the heart on the other.

My convictions of the merit of this various, glowing, and spirited poetic picture, are confirmed on every new examination. If it is not ardently acknowledged by the whole class of modern readers, their injustice will, in part, result from the stupidity, jealousy, or venality of the public critics. Your and my friend will perhaps bestow a few guineas, gliding to them in a channel, secret even from themselves, but which shall have power to purchase the insertion of those sort of critiques, upon which his envy shall banquet in private.

I said, in part, for the locusts of anonymous criticism are not the sole causes of that blight, beneath which I have observed many a rich poetic harvest to wither uncropt in its first season. Poetry is not the fashionable study of the present age. We have plenty of fine writers, but there is a dearth of readers.

A few lines in this poem I could wish elevated, which are, perhaps, a little too prosaic for the general tenor of the style; but these blemishes, if blemishes they are, seem but dust in the ba

lance against its noble enthusiasm, the strength and glow of appropriated description, so novel and so magnificent. Your Lemyr-Gegar rises in poetic sublimity above the Eagle of Pindar and of Gray. He is shewn in more energetic action, and in more various points of view. When, wheeling round the cliffs, he pursues the Chamois, as it bounds, terrified, from rock to rock, the whole scene is alive; and when, after the storm, he soars to the emerging sun, the passage is of rarely excelled grandeur.

Last Friday morning brought me a visitor, whom I received, and to whom I listened with that awe-mixed delight, which Milton has assigned to Adam,

"When Raphael, the celestial visitant, deign'd
As man with man, as friend with friend, to sit
Indulgent in the bower."

Yes, my dear Mr Whalley, the Christian hero, Mr Howard, sat with me great part of Friday morning, leading me through scenes of infinite interest to the heart, and which I should like to retrace with you.

You wish to see something new of mine. There is no possibility that I should obtain leisure to raise new poetic fabrics. I only wish for

time to arrange and publish the large materials for my Miscellany. Could that be done, it would be only standing one running fire from the Dennises and Gildons of the present day;-it would be only feeling the anxieties of publication once, and then delivering up to the justice of posterity my whole stock of pretensions :-Posterity, which seldom fails, sooner or later, to recal what is worth recalling from the shades of oblivion; in which, for a time, many superior works to any I can produce have been enveloped, by the neglect of that ungrateful age which they adorned.

That my writings should ever experience this regeneration, I am far from depending; but I believe they will, if they deserve it. It has long been my wish to leave my name in life's visit." Should the ink in which it is written prove of a fading and perishable quality, there is no help for that, you know.

As to the present age, which sits listening to its critical Cerberuses, that it may echo their barkings, vain are the hopes of poetic genius to meet its applause... Jephson! the fate of thy three last admirable tragedies,-the Law of Lombardy, the Count of Narbonne, and Julia, can witness how vain! Abused as contemptible bombast by all the reviewers; and, in consequence, neglected by an unfeeling public, though the true dramatic spirit glows through every scene; though

the characters are all strongly marked, and finely discriminated; though pathos and horror breathe all their powers.

Last night I saw the Mentevoli of the Julia performed by a spirited tragedian of the name of Rosewel. Julia was also sweetly and gracefully represented by Mrs Nunns. Through the whole interesting performance, I thought of a line in the Revenge, and applied it to the author of Julia, as indubitably one of those distinguished few,

“Souls made of fire, and children of the sun.”

The finest stage situation in this tragedy is taken from the penknife-scene in that glorious work, the Clarissa.

Giovanni, and his daughter, and my dear invalid, join me in every good wish to yourself and Mrs Whalley.

Assure Mrs Piozzi, when you meet her next, of my frequent recollection of all she has looked, said, and written to me.

You have doubless luxuriated in the late vernal mildness of our noons; but we must expect hybernal relapses; that, ere he takes his final flight,

"Winter will oft at eve resume the breeze,
Chill the pale morn, and bid his driving sleets
Deform the day delightless."

But small is their power to depress, where the Lares are found on the hearth, the Muses breathe inspiration, and the affections diffuse comfort.

LETTER VII.

MRS PIOZZI, on her Publication of JOHNSON'S Letters.

Lichfield, March 7, 1788.

THIS kind present, your last entertaining and valuable publication of the Goliah's Epistles, at once obliges and does me honour. They shew him in a more benign, though less resplendent point of view, than, perhaps, any other of his writings, or than he could appear from any veritable records of his conversation, since you have, doubtless, expunged the malignant passages, from your benevolent attention to the feelings of many.

Letter-writing, however, appears not to have been his talent, though, in the course of these epistles, we find frequently scattered rays of Johnsonian fire. He, whose eloquence has, in his essays, unrivalled majesty and force, seems an unwieldy trifler. When he will gambol, he gam