You are told by your correspondent, Londinensis, "to unmask prètended patriotism, and detect the empiricism of ministers." Do it then with a playful hand, if you can; gently and smilingly draw off the disguise; but tear it not open with rude indignation, leaving wounds by the violence of the rent; nor probe the sore to the bottom with a rough and unsparing lancet. The man, who makes us smile is forgiven even while he exposes us; but severity, harshness, and insult no one ever forgets. And are you in such conscious security yourself, as undauntedly to incur the hazard of revenge? I have heard that you have enemies enough without wantonly provoking more; or whetting the appetites of those, to whose malice you have been already exposed! You have been guilty of unpardonable offences among your neighbouring squires:

"Fame in the shape of one Sir Harry
(By this time all the parish know it)
Had told, that thereabouts did tarry
A wicked imp, they call a poet:

Who prowl'd the country far and near,
Bewitch'd the children of the peasants,
Dried up the cows, and lam'd the deer,
And suck'd the eggs and kill'd the pheasants."

See Gray's Long Story.

H

"For something he was heard to mutter,
How in the park beneath an old tree
(Without design to hurt the butter,
Or any malice to the poultry,)

He once or twice had penn'd a sonnet;
Yet hop'd that he might save his bacon;
Numbers would give their oaths upon it,
He ne'er was for a conjurer taken.” h

No, Sir! Your neighbours will not forgive you, even if you can justly plead the excuse contained in this quotation! Why then urge them to load you with still heavier calumny? You trust to the rectitude of your intentions, and the openness of your conduct! Alas! what a dupe are you then to the folly which you despise! These are not the weapons with which your opponents will fight. They will never meet you in the field face to face. They will way-lay you in the dark; their poison will be concealed; but it will be sure. Your reputation will secretly moulder away; your anxieties will increase; and mortification and neglect will bring your grey hairs to the grave before their time.

"Vive la bagatelle !" but let us have no more of this "sober sadness!"

Bath, Sept. 5, 1807.

HARRY RANDOM.

See Gray's Long Story.

N° XVI.

Reflections arising from the Season of the Year.

I AM afraid Mr. Random will give me up as incapable of amendment, when he reads the present paper. He will find me still in my old melancholy track. Alas! though he guesses well at some of my grievances, he knows not half the causes I have for gravity.

There is something in the fall of the leaf, which always overcomes me with a pensive turn of mind. It is a cast of frame, which is most beautifully described by Thomson in his enchanting delineation of this season of the year. When he speaks of the "faint gleams" of the autumn, and "the fading many-coloured woods," what poet can equal him? The foliage eddying from the trees, and choking up the forest walks, is a circumstance which touches the heart with an indescribable kind of sensation! All Mr. RANDOM's raillery cannot dissipate the sombre hue of my thoughts at such a sight. My bosom is then filled with a thousand tender and solemn reflections; and sometimes they will, in spite of me, clothe themselves in verse.

Thus it happened the other morning, when, on rising, and looking from my window, I saw that the season had already begun its devastations in the shades which surround me.

Sonnet suggested by the approach of Autumn.

Another fall of leaf! And yet am I

No nearer to those sweet rewards of toil,
The praise of Learning and the good man's smile!
Year follows year, and age approaches nigh,
But still I linger in obscurity:

My painful days no sounds of fame beguile;
But Calumny, instead, would fain defile
The rhymes I build with many a tear and sigh.
Perchance ere yet another Autumn throws

The faded foliage from the mourning trees,
My vain presumptuous hopes may find repose;
And all these empty wishes Death appease!
Beneath the turf my weary bones be prest;
And the cold earth lie on this beating breast!

Having thus transcribed this sonnet, I hesitate to let it stand here, lest it should seem ungrateful to some respected friends, from whom, within the last year, I have received unmerited encouragement. But I am sure their candour will not interpret my

expressions too strictly. From their praise I have felt a cheering consolation, which, though I have little reason to be in good humour with the world, has given in my sight new colours to existence here. I know, indeed, that I am too anxious to possess, as well as to deserve, their favourable opinion. And that he who thinks me careless of a good name, or not morbidly alive even to the whispers of calumny, is marvellously ignorant of the nature of my irritable disposition.

It has been my lot, if not innocently, at least by a very pardonable indiscretion of pen, to make enemies; of whose life, it has, in return, become the future business to traduce and blacken me. Lost in my books, or in distant speculations, I live in hourly danger; unprotected, and undefended; while these wretches are always at their post, and working in the mine. In this gloom the praise of more impartial and more intelligent judges is all I have to lighten me; and to give me a chance of counteracting these deeds of darkness. I cannot conceal how anxious I am to retain this consolation.

Sept. 21, 1807.