For me, who wander over the wide world with a determination to let nothing dwell seriously on my mind; but skimming the surface of every thing, to enjoy its sweets, and lightly reject its bitters; for me, the world appears a comedy; and, to own the truth, too much of a comedy! If it does not call forth my resentment, alas! it too little generates my love. You haters have the advantage of us there: I perceive you can love too, with violence! You remind me too acutely of the words of a common song:

"A generous friendship no cold medium knows; Glows with one love, with one resentment glows!"

HARRY RANDOM, with all his carelessness and gaiety, and all his attempts to "set the table in a roar," knows not these gratifying extremes!

Look, however, around you on the world; or if you must confine yourself to literature, look on your brother authors, and observe how little there is worthy either of affection or disgust. I wish, therefore, you would learn to treat your subjects with a little more complacency; with a little more of that playfulness of ideas, which generates ease and cheerfulness; instead of assuming the character of

"Wisdom in sable garb array'd,
Immers'd in rapturous thought profound;
And Melancholy, silent Maid,

With leaden eye, that loves the ground!”

I had written thus far, when your two last numbers reached me; having been for sometime absent from this place on a tour. Your last proves to me how little you are affected by my advice; or, perhaps, how little capable you are of variation! O Sir, do not, I beseech you, indulge so much in these dull sermonizing essays! You infect even me with your gravity! Instead of moving with my wonted elasticity, I shall be me as soporific as yourself!

Why should you argue with such solemn earnestness for the privileges of poets? I do not know in what they differ from other men, unless in their imprudence and their folly! If an author makes me laugh, I am grateful to him; but I cannot forgive his troublesome eccentricities, because, forsooth, he makes not only himself, but his readers, miserable! It is said that Dulce est decipere in loco; and what is the place, in which this is not desirable!

You are told by your correspondent, Londinensis, "to unmask pretended 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,
the cows, and lam'd the deer,

Dried

up 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.