derable classic learning the boy had brought from Westminster school; that he procured him a commission; that Howel had behaved gallantly in the East; that his letters to his illustrious benefactor, were patterns of eloquent gratitude, and ingenious observation. All these things you know. About five weeks since, Mr Hayley went up to London, glowing with affectionate expectation of embracing the hero, " with all his blushing honours thick upon him." Alas! instead of this expected happiness, the direful tidings met him, that Howel had perished in the shoreless waters!

The dear bard is returned back to Eartham, to shed the bitter tears of sorrow and disappoint

ment.

Adieu! my friend-how often, alas, is anguish the portion of the elevated and the good!

LETTER XXX.

H. CARY, Esq.

Lichfield, July 1, 1788.

HEAVENS! my dear Cary, is it a poet, a young, an ingenuous, an ardent poet, that condemns Mason for speaking with contempt of the malignant calumniator of his friend's poetic fame!-As to the plea that it was ungenerous to speak of a deceased contemporary with disdain, it is wholly invalidated by the observation, that Gray was deceased when Johnson shed canker spots upon his laurels.

Every month that rolled on, after the publication of the Lives of the Poets, rendered me more and more impatient of Mason's forbearance. I reproached him for it in some stanzas, printed in the Gentleman's Magazine for October (as I think) 1785.

So far, therefore, from being impossible, as you rashly aver, to palliate Mason's avowed contempt of Johnson, in his Life of Whitehead, it will appear amply justified, not only in Mr Hayley's eyes and mine, but in those of every person

who is not a partial idolater of the greatest enemy the poetic science ever had, or ever can have; one, who has already, by his frontless sophistry, brought it into a degree of disgrace, fatal to the expectations of its rising votaries. They must be vain, indeed, who can hope to please a race of readers, that have been taught, by Johnson, to look down upon the Lycidas of Milton, the sportive warblings of Prior, and upon the Odes of Gray.

Little do poets understand their own interest, or that of their science, who deem it unworthy to speak with scorn of its proud defamer.

To me there appears no middle path to be adopted with any rationality, after having read the Lives of the Poets, but either we must perceive and despise the envy and injustice of their author, or believe that there is little or no English poetry worth reading.

I hope and trust, my dear Cary, that the time will come when witty sarcasm, and splendid periods will no longer have power to dazzle your judgment against the claims of your predecessors, and to make you fancy that none have a right to speak as freely of Johnson, as he spoke of others, who were even greater in point of genius than himself. O prejudice! how do I live to deplore

yet more and more, every day, thy baleful influence!

"Give me the man that's not enslav'd by thee,
And I will wear him in my heart's core."

I did, indeed, stare to hear you quote my opinions upon Lee's play, Alexander, uttered so many years back. Little did I think, when I gave them, that an eaglet's eye was upon my criticism. Adieu! Adieu!

LETTER XXXI.

REV. MR FITZTHOMAS, on his Vindication of GRAY from the envious Strictures of JOHNSON.

Lichfield, July 9, 1788.

SIR-PERMIT me to return you my most animated thanks, for the perusal of a pamphlet, ingenious, learned, eloquent, generous, and convincing. That I had not previously seen it, that its reputation had not reached me, affords melancholy proof that we live in an age, in which fine writing, however abundantly produced, passes

away without its fame, and that there is little literary appetite amongst the general race of readers, except for politics, and for literary or personal defamation. In the Gentleman's Magazine for October 1783, I addressed an anonymous copy of verses to Mason, reproaching him for want of duty to his departed friend, in not rescuing his fame

"From the Philistine critic, who defies
The chosen armies of the heavenly muse."

You have stretched the giant at your feet, who had certainly vowed to raise a pile to the snaky goddess, formed of laurels torn from the brows of the English poets. But, alas! that too prevalent desire in human nature, to see the illustrious degraded, gives to the Johnsonian criticisms the power which Antaeus received from touching his mother-earth.

Mr H. Seward represses my hopes to possess what I should esteem a gem of my cabinet, by telling me that this pamphlet, which ought to be engraved in golden letters, is out of print, and that this copy, which you have given me the happiness of perusing, is your only one. have the goodness to permit my detaining it a little while longer, that I may read it to the few,

Will you