think its generally red and angry beams very auspicious to human happiness, or to human virtue. The name of this luminary is Cowper; his work, entitled The Task, has many and great poetic beauties, both as to imagery, landscape, and sentiment; yet the author perpetually shews himself to be a sarcastic misanthropist. It opens, however, with a gay and enchanting genealogy of seats, from the three-legged stool of Alfred to the accomplished sofa of George the Third; but this delicious gaiety of spirit soon shuts in. Do you remember these lines in an old Scotch balled, called The Flowers of the Forest? "I have seen Tweed streaming Grow drumly and black as he rolls on his way." So it is with the muse of Cowper. But Bristol seems the soil where poetic plants, of wonderful strength and luxuriance, spring up amidst the weeds and brambles of vulgar life. The milk-woman's celebrity must have reached you across the seas. She is said to have behaved most ungratefully to her humane and energetic patroness, Miss H. More. Inflexible moral honesty, stern uncomplaining patience, that silently endured the bitterest evils of want, are re corded by the pen of that celebrated lady, in the anecdotes she formerly gave us of this muse-born wonder. Her writings breathe a gloomy and jealous dignity of spirit. Great delicacy was required in the manner of conferring obligation on a mind so tempered. Miss More's letter to Mrs Montague, prefixed to Lactilla's first publication, struck me with an air of superciliousness towards the Being she patronized; and the pride of genius in adversity revolted. So, in a similar situation, would surly Samuel Johnson have spurned the hand that, after it had procured him the bounty of others, sought to dictate to him as to its use; and that resentment, which, in her, is universally execrated, would, coming down to us now as a record of his emerging talents, have been generally excused, and probably, with whatever little reason, admired. I should not wonder if this sudden reverse of public esteem should send this kindred spirit of the unfortunate Chatterton's to attend his manes in the dreary path of suicide. From a blind alley of the same distinguished city, a third✶ illiterate genius has started up, with powers little inferior to Lactilla's. He sets his compositions to pleasing, though wild, airs of his own. The world, however, refuses to celebrate and protect him, as it did her; sheltering its con tempt under declamations upon the ingratitude of the milk-woman. Critics are also started up, producing books abounding with the spawn of Johnsonian envy, unsupported with Johnsonian ability, and unadorned with Johnsonian wit. The sweet syren, Mrs Smith, is at Bath, and very kindly received. She writes us extremely pretty and pathetic letters. We learn from them, that matrimony has not extinguished Mrs Velley's enthusiasm about your talents and virtues. I draw a pleasing prognostic for that lady's future happiness, from her having, with her own hands, dressed Mrs Smith for her first essay in the con. cert-room. It shews that Major Velley throws no damp of disapprobation upon her active and affable benevolence, from the strutting jealousy of false dignity. Sophia kindly regrets your and Mrs W.'s absence from Bath on Mrs Smith's account, conscious as she is, how warmly you would have patronized that pleasing young woman! The drowsy hour has stolen upon me-my eyes are heavy-so is my heart, at times, when I think of friends whom I might search for in vain over this island, of no narrow bounds. LETTER XXVI. H. REPTON, Eso.* Lichfield, Feb. 23, 1786. It was with the true English sullenness that your spirit felt repressed and deadened beneath the consciousness of having, by procuring a frank, laid yourself under the necessity of writing to me on a certain day. From the style of your first page, I perceive you fancied your talents in cramping-irons, and that they must necessarily plod through the white waste of blank paper, with a dull and heavy pace; and I smile to observe how soon you found these same ideal cramping-irons were, in reality, a pair of light skates, on which imagination glided rapidly away, with every free and graceful exertion; since the very next passage to that which complains of the retarding power of that restraint, is highly beautiful and ingenious. It is on the subject of the celebrated -, expressing your doubts whether * A gentleman well known by his skill in landscape garden. ing, and not less distinguished by private worth and polished mauners. a visit from you would prove welcome, because you had not made one before her benefit; observing, that "the little you have to bestow must be confined to merit in distress; that it is only for the greatly affluent to reward Genius in affluence; since, though a watering-pot may refresh a bed of drooping flowers, nothing less than the liberal showers of the wide horizon can nourish the woods and lawns, or ripen to perfection the abundant harvest." No metaphor can be more complete than that,-no allusion more happy. By reflecting back upon your recollection this admirable sentence, I justify myself against your charge of partial praise on the theme of your epistolary talents; like the lover who, when his mistress tells him he flatters her, leads the nymph to the looking-glass. My pen, let me tell you, never troubles itself to manufacture unmeaning compliments, and scorns the task of disingenuous flattery—but, as I love commendation myself, where my heart tells me I deserve it, and where I have any confidence in the judgment of the commender, so I also love to indulge my spirit in the luxury of encomium where I can honestly bestow it. That I have an eye quick to discern the emanations of genius, and of just and generous sentiments; and a mind which delights to contemplate their graces, and to ap |