spect, a work extremely below the level of those talents to which we believe ourselves indebted for the admirable English Baron. The former seems chiefly written to court the favour of our reviewers, whom it meanly invests with that justice and ability of decision to which their general strictures have so little pretension. How should they be able, and how are they likely to be just, composed, as the general class of them are, of hireling authors, whose own works have not merit, or celebrity to afford them a maintenance? Hence are they naturally the foes of their superior and more fortunate rivals. Miss Reeves, in her work on romances, exposes her ignorance in terming H. Cleveland an original, and the composition of an unknown writer; since it is well understood to be a translation from the celebrated Abbé Prevost.

We are this year threatened with as long a dreariness as banished from the last our genial hours of fresh prelusive sweetness; robbed our banks of their primroses and violets, and our fields and hills of their golden king-cups.

LETTER XXIX.

MISS WESTON.

Lichfield, March 28, 1786.

You seem surprised, dear Sophia, at my idea that there is the same sort of difference between Mr W.'s letters and those of a certain friend of yours, that exists in their mutual poetry. In characterising the talents of poetic writers, I always rate their claim by the merit of their best work. Such of their writings as have marked inferiority to that never occur to me on the estimate. In mentioning this difference, I thought solely of the interesting and beautiful Edwy and Edilda. Mr W. is there in verse what he is

in

prose; when his spirit takes the wings of the morning, and flies to those it loves, from distant regions of the earth, infused in all her tender dews, and arrayed in all her orient colours. But to drop the metaphor; that dear poem is surely the exact counterpart of his letters, often diffuse, and often heedless of elegance, in particular expressions, but always abounding with the most touching pathos, the most exalted sentiments, the

most glowing and picturesque descriptions; nervous at times, but not habitually nervous. He has now been silent longer than usual; and I begin to grow anxious for tidings of his and Mrs Whalley's welfare. Our avidity to hear from those we love, is always, in some degree, proportioned to the consciousness of their distance, especially when Imagination sets her hour-glass on the ocean's edge.

Mr Saville's spirits begin to recover the deep shock they received in the strange death of his unfortunate daughter. His Elisabeth, whose life and manners form so amiable a contrast to that of her sister, is gone to Bath, to imbibe more of that honied elegance, which Mr Rauzzini infuses into her tones and manner of singing Italian.

Ah! Sophia, it will be in vain that you expect trust in friendship, against appearances, from her to whose devoted affection, of twenty years' duration, an could be ungrateful. Friendship is a serious sentiment; and, however the imagination may be charmed, the heart sighs when it perceives its affectionate enthusiasms repaid only by the light flourishings of gallantry, and the sparkling explosion of wit. On perusing such gay, such short, such seldom epistles from the dear and ever-honoured bard, I exclaim, with Ophelia, "No more, but so!"-remembering

the frequency, the length, and the heart-warm style of our first correspondence. Little did I once think that those prized letters would prove

"But violets in the youth of primy friendship,

Forward, not permanent, tho' sweet not lasting,
The perfume, and suppliance of a minute."

My opinion of the Recess, of its faults, and of its beauties, is congenial to your own; but I cannot think it possesses that strong hold on the heart, with which the pages of Werter so irresistibly seize it. I scarce wept at the Recess, full of studied misery as it is; while the so naturally mournful pages of Werter resist the indurating effect of repeated perusals, and drown me in exhaustless tears.

Mr Dewes, Mr Arch-Deacon Clive, Mr Grove, Dr Gregory, and several other of my literary friends, gratify me by the warmest praises of my paraphrases of some of the most beautiful of Horace's odes. It is on no occasion that I have been better satisfied with my muse, I must confess, than when, after having put an ode of Horace into English verse, I have examined the translation of it by Francis, Oldsworths, and Duncombe. I shall adopt some fine lines, which I have met with on Dr Johnson's imitations of Juvenal's Satires-not vainly to say what I have done, but what I have wished and aimed to do.

"Boldly my ardent spirit seeks t'infuse
The vigorous sense of the Horatian muse;
Wou'd shine with more than a reflected light,
And with a Roman's ardour think and write.
The Latian flower, transplanted by weak hands,
To bloom a while factitious heat demands;
Tho' glowing Horace a faint warmth supplies,
The sickly blossom in the hot-house dies.
But from more genial culture, art, and toil,
The root strikes deep, and owns a kindred soil;
Imbibes our sun thro' all its glowing veins,
And grows a native of Britannia's plains."

So the voluptuous, the refined, the gay, the dissipated votary of fashion and expence, Mr after having lavished away a noble fortune, avows his resolve to renounce the world, to retire into the country, to keep no servant, and content himself with the mere necessaries of life. I hope there can, after all his imprudence, be no necessity for an extreme so violent-for a contrast so total; and if there should, I doubt his perseverance, and therefore said to him, with a smile of blended pity and affection,

"What! thinkest thou,

That the bleak air, thy boist'rous chamberlain,
Will put thy shirt on warm?-Will those moss'd trees,
That have outliv'd the eagle, page thy heels,

And skip when thou point'st out?-Will the cold brook,
Candied with ice, caudle thy morning taste
To cure thy o'er-night's surfeit?"