Obrázky na stránke
PDF
ePub

apothecaries, ministers, all deserted him-made an epitaph in the chaise-hear it :

"The ill he did,-(Then conceitedly turning his head away,

and twirling his hand,) he did not mean;

The good he did (action ditto) he meant ; And thus, when virtues intervene,

The worst advices (action ditto) have the best intent."

He then sailed away before us, without saying another word, and has this morning been preaching a funeral sermon for the king.-How mad is all this! Adieu.

LETTER XLVIII.

REV. T. S. WHALLEY.

Lichfield, Nov. 27, 1788.

RESTING on your permission, not to struggle violently for that leisure, of which a thousand less interesting employments have robbed me, your charming little letter has not yet been acknowledged, but it has very, very often been read. How many delightful things does it breathe!— wit, humour, gaiety, affection. Its paragraph,

so characteristic of Cary's mind and manners, I have copied for many of my correspondents, in the hope, that so striking a portrait of the young author, may increase their interest in his publication. You see that his sonnets are out.

You will rejoice to hear, that, by unwearied diligence, in reading slowly aloud, and by speaking deliberately, Lister's articulation has grown so much firmer, that his parents have released him from the shrine of Plutus, and intend to send him to the university.

Giovanni rejoices in Mrs Whalley's good opinion, in her health, in yours, and in that of his floral representatives.

I have too much confidence in the congeniality of our taste, to feel any apprehension of violating sincerity, when I shall descant, with enthusiasm, on the charms of those sylvan glades, which you are rearing

[ocr errors]

-"On the champaign head Of the steep mountain."

More and more the leading inhabitants of our little city surprise me by their insensibility. Cold

as they have ever been towards genius in every line, could you have believed they would have been senseless to the blessings of freedom; that,

while the voice of glad commemoration resounded over all the nation, it should be hushed as midnight at Lichfield? Was it not "an opaque of nature and the soul?" Have you seen the rival odes by our illustrious bards on this great centennial anniversary? Mr Hayley's contains one image of never-excelled sublimity; and the egotism with which Mr Mason opens, is thrice happy. The Epistle from Mary to William was a juvenile work, written before Mr Hayley's ear for musical numbers had attained its perfection. But one passage in it, the anathema against the boasted Gallic Ship, the Rising Sun, is picturesque poetry, in its highest possible perfection— nor are any of Pope's lines more richly harmoniAdieu !

ous.

LETTER XLIX.

MR WESTON OF SOLIHUL.

Lichfield, Dec. 8, 1788.

AMIDST the much which gratifies me in the

late letters of my friend, I am half angry at his

parading with a request, which I trust he knows me incapable of granting. Too perfect is my confidence in the unerring aim, and in the sharpness of your darts, to shoot in your strong bow, I promise you.

I long to see your two translations of the Latin poem on the Woodmen of Arden, being fully conscious of Mr Morfitt's responsibility for all the classic excellence you tell me it possesses. I wish every translator of beautiful Greek, Latin, and Italian poetry, knew as well as yourself how to transfer its gold, unalloyed by any dross in the process.

You are too hard upon Mason's Ode on the Revolution. The felicity of the egotism with which it opens, is extreme; the exordium is superior to Mr Hayley's on the same subject; yet, on the whole, I think Hayley's ode the richer in poetic matter. Both of them are surely the evident works of great masters, though by no means the greatest of their works.

I cannot say I have read, but I have glanced over parts of Mason's Life of Whitehead, and felt myself often pleased and interested. Let me know what it is for which you will never forgive him. Surely his ridicule upon that malicious tyrant, Johnson, both as an author and a man,

will not prove the never-to-be-pardoned sin. You know I think with you about the abilities, and about the style of the despot; but, strange as it may seem to us, many men of first-rate talents, with Mr Hayley at their head, think his style turgid and laboured. If they sincerely think so, where is the crime of avowing their opinion? They like Addison's Capillaire better than Johnson's Burgundy; but remember, that Johnson has, in his Lives of the Poets, praised the dead smallbeer of Blackmore's imagination, and abused the nectared streams of Gray's.

Both of your sonnets please me too well to allow my contending with you for the palm of comparative transcendency respecting either. Perhaps that addressed to me has more genius, that to Cary and Lister more grace. It is said to be an excellence in a sonnet, to have but one thought. These same sonnets appear to me as a couple of beautiful rings,-one a cluster of sapphires, amethysts, and diamonds,—the other, a large single brilliant, of the first water.

Nichols has certainly made the worst possible arrangement of our sonnets. It is like putting a man and his wife to dance together at a ball; and his knowing that yours was written so many months before mine, increases the impropriety of

3

« PredošláPokračovať »