LETTER XL. MISS SCOTT. Lichfield, Oct. 20, 1786. THE visible dejection of your mind, when you wrote last, pains me; so does it to learn that a new complaint, in the most important of our senses, is added to the many other circumstances of corporal annoyance, that have often made the hours, to which your talents are so capable of giving wings, "Move slowly on With dull and flagging pinion." May their dark and retarding influence descend seldomer upon you! It is too much to hope that they may never come to the healthiest and the happiest. "Who dreams of nature free from nature's strife? Your objection to the monotonous chime of the legitimate sonnet, from the four times repeated rhyme, would be just, if the sense were carried on, as in the couplet, to the end of each line. But that jingling effect is entirely done away where the verses run into each other with undulating flow, and varied pause, after the manner of blank verse, as in the sublime anathema of Milton on the massacre at Piedmont. of them extremely; but that mania of the imagination about weakened nature and exhausted art, in the poetic line, is strongly upon him. He should be above such idle prejudice, which has been the common cant in all ages. Never was there so rich a galaxy of poetic stars as have shone out, with perpetual augmentation to their number, within the last half century. Mighty is the power of prejudice, when she weaves a web thick and dark enough to conceal their lustre from the eyes of her votaries. It is true, we have not a Shakespeare and a Milton, but that is not owing to nature having become more penurious respecting the gift of genius, but to the fastidiousness of refinement, and the severity of criticism. I entered the lists with Mr G when I was in town last spring, on this subject; and, after I had enumerated our modern bards, living and extinct, who have adorned the last fifty years, and he had, somewhat reluctantly, been brought to acknowledge the genuine spirit, originality, and grace of their compositions, he was candid enough to acknowledge also, that his decisions against the claims of the moderns were hasty and unjust. I know there is a great falling off since Johnson's Lives of the Poets appeared. It is in the taste of the public, however, not in the genius of individuals; but the induration on the sensibility of excellence in the higher walks of poetry, which that work has so generally produced, will, in future, create the paucity it does not meet. Who takes the trouble of singing to the deaf, or of painting for the blind? But it is time to close my epistle. Ere this period, I hope your eyes have regained their strength, and again permit the streams of wisdom and genius to flow in upon your mind from the pages of ancient and modern literature. What a misfortune to feel the soul thirsting for them in vain through ocular impediment! Heaven preserve all I love from such deprivation! LETTER XLI. GEORGE HARDINGE, ESQ. Lichfield, Oct. 4, 1786. I AM perfectly of David Garrick's opinion respecting your jeu d'esprit, and cannot return it without your reiterated commands. Were I Lord Chancellor, I should not think it necessary to crush such a blossom of my youth, nor wish to prevent its floating on the public gale. It is so light, so vivid, so original. Be you, however, assured, that if you permit its stay with me, no copy shall be given, nor shall it steal into circulation through the thievish memory of listeners, who have taste enough to intreat a second recitalthen beg to be favoured with it a moment in their hand. It is thus Mr Hayley's impromptu, sent in the pocket-book Mrs Hayley worked for me, got abroad; and, by the failure of memory in one word, lost a material beauty. The book has an embroiderea lyre on one side, and a laurel wreath on the other. The mistaken line was written in the original, "Go thou embroider'd wreath and mimic lyre;" It is printed, "Go thou embroider'd wreath and muses' lyre." The common epithet, muses' lyre, injures the accurate delicacy of the whole. Hayley is indeed a true poet; he has the fire and the invention of Dryden, without any of his absurdity; and he has the wit and ease of Prior. If his versification is a degree less polished than Pope's, it is more various. We find the numbers sweet and flowing, and, I think, sufficiently abundant in the graces of harmony. Our four years correspondence has been enriched with a galaxy of little poetic gems, of the first water. Were I to be honoured with their insertion all together in his miscellany, I should rival, in his brilliant celebration, the Chloe of Prior, and the Stella of Swift. Your letter is extremely gratifying to my selfattachment. We are perfectly congenial in our love of praise. I think, with you, that it is sweeter to be beloved than admired; and that, consequently, commendation is the more welcome from our consciousness of its partiality. The coldhearted monitor would perhaps tell us, “ it is flattery, your encomiast is not sincere." I should be tempted to reply, that is his own affair; and, |