Why do you praise me for praising Miss Williams's poem on the Slave Trade? So doing, you are worse than the folk who extol Joseph's virtue, as almost super-human, because he would not be a scoundrel,-not dishonour the man who had raised him from a dungeon to wealth, and power, and happiness, and trust.

If I had not thought the work ingenious, I would have been silent as to the production of my friend, for my encomiums shall not be partial; but thinking it charming, I were despicable had I suppressed the consciousness.

"For all that wealth, and power, and fame bestow,
I would not be that thing, an envious woman."

On the 27th of last month I was honoured and blest by a two hours' personal conversation with the most distinguished excellence that ever walked the earth, since saints and angels left off paying us morning visits. To say that his name is Howard would be superfluous. This is the third time he has favoured me with his conversation on his way through this town. I am truly glad of our king's recovery, but yet I should not walk half so tall upon a visit from him. Mr Howard presented me with his new publication, and had previously given me the former. This is enriched

with beautiful engravings of the foreign Lazarettos. He sets out next spring, to encounter again the shafts that speed through the darkness, and "the pestilence that walketh at noon-day," stimulated by the hope of being enabled to avert, in future, some of their mischiefs from the human

race.

Last Friday evening was the "Feast of Lights" with us; I assure you every window shone, many with transparent paintings, whose emblems were well imagined, while loyal enwreathed thanksgivings glowed in phosphorus. Our corporation, our esquires, our choir, and our principal tradesmen, preceded by a band of music, sung God Save the King through the streets. If our little city loved genius, science, and art, half as well as it loves its king, and his minister, our societies would be more animated than they are.

LETTER LXIII.

REV. T. S. WHALLEY.

Lichfield, April 10, 1789.

It is our fate, my dearest friend, that the wish of answering each other's letters should often and long precede our power. I hope I am not strongly tainted with the female frailty, curiosity, yet I must be interested in all that has agitated the feelings of those I love; and I thirst to know from what quarter could proceed that storm which threatened to blow your summer hopes from their cottage anchor. The harassing perplexities of which your last complains, grieved me; but I hope they are past away, without having left any nest-eggs to annoy you in future, and to vex and afflict my dear Mrs Whalley. Precious are the assurances you give me, that I possess her partial love.

I am happy in your glowing approbation of my long Horatian Paraphrase on the Pleasures of rural life. There is nobody whom my muse more ardently wishes to please than her Edwy; nor have I less pleasure in the similarity of our

tastes about Weston's beautiful sonnet to Cary and Lister, and about the sweet collection by our pensive young friend, particularly as our general ideas of sonnet-excellence do not quite coincide. That Dr Johnson should dislike the Miltonic sonnet, with its grave energies, and majestic plainness, I do not wonder. Those who, like him, hate blank-verse, are constitutionally insensible of those excellencies; but that you, whose ear is delightedly familiar with the manly melodies of blank-verse, as Mr F. Warton justly calls them, that you should not love the varying pause, undulating through the lines of the Miltonic sonnet--that you should fancy them rough breaks, astonishes me. I do not, however, despair of your conversion on this point, as I know you have a soul superior to that false shame, which annexes the idea of disgrace to changed opinions, even when their change results from the force of excellence, emerging from the mists of our accidental neglect, or hasty prejudices. The rather do I hope it, as I once held your present ideas on the nature of the sonnet, misled by the gaiety of its title. Mr Boothby, his friend Mr Tighe, Mr Dewes, and Mr Hardinge, are warm admirers of the best of Milton's sonnets; are good judges of English poetry, and masters of the Italian language. Mr Boothby and Mr Tighe

first opened my eyes, or rather put me upon attending to the peculiar excellence of the Miltonic sonnet; and I soon became of their opinion, that it formed a beautiful and distinct order of composition in our language; that dignity and energetic plainness were its most indispensable characteristics. When first Mr Boothby and Mr Tighe began my conversion, I pleaded that the very name demanded gaiety, lightness, and elegance. They urged, that nothing could be less gay than Petrarch's sonnets; reminded me, that the original meaning of the word monody, no more implied a funeral poem, than the title of sonnet seemed to call for a grave energetic picture of a single thought in fourteen lines; that great writers had a just claim to have their compositions considered as models in every style in which they have excelled; that Milton, having styled his poem, on the death of his friend, a Monody, the name has become appropriate to funeral compositions ;-so also, that his sonnets have annexed an expectation of strength and majesty to that title, which, though sorrow or affectionate contemplation may soften down, the sonnet must not part with in exchange for any of the lighter graces. This was Boileau's idea concerning the nature of this order of verse. Behold a transla