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do not hear of fine compositions till they have been out perhaps many weeks; but, sure to hear of them at length, from some of my literary correspondents, I look upon the delay of the pleasure I have in reading them as a less evil in the balance against those hectics which false criticism always gives me. I have ordered Diversity from my bookseller, but it is generally a fortnight at least before I receive the books I bespeak.

The wish you express to see me in town is very flattering; but my father is too feeble to be left. Invalid parents have always made me a great home-keeper. I begin to suspect that the long continuance of stationary habits will make them adhere to my inclinations, even when the precious chains, now entwined around my heart, shall be finally broken.

I was interrupted at the close of my last sentence, and prevented by an eruptive inflammation in my eye-lids, from resuming my pen, except when indispensable business forced it into my fingers. I have, in the interim, seen Major Barry ; and I spoke immediately to him of the poem in question." It is Mr Merry's, and how do you like it, Colonel ?" "I told Mrs Piozzi I could "O! you should have read

not understand it."

it a second time." "I did not think it worth while

-since one wants time to read better things with the attention they deserve."

He delighted me by saying that your Sonnets are on the eve of publication.

Mr Merry has hitherto appeared to me a writer of considerable genius; but whom self-confidence, and total want of taste, perpetually betrays into bombast, obscurity, and inelegance. Then the Anna Matilda verses are evidently his composition; and is it not very sickening to see an author creeping beneath a veil of gauze, and proclaiming under it, that he is the first poet the world has ever produced?

I have not read Mr Cumberland's novel—nor ever wish to read a novel written by one who has proclaimed the Clarissa of Richardson void of genius, of nature, and inimical to the right formation of the female mind.

I am very sorry Mr Greathead's laurels have suffered a blight, since his virtues interest the wishes of all the generous who know him, for the duration of every thing which promotes his happiness.

Adieu! dearest Madam. My best compliments to Mr Piozzi.

Yours, very faithfully.

LETTER LX.

GEORGE HARDINGE, ESQ.

Lichfield, Feb. 24, 1789.

I HAVE indeed a great deal for which to love you. You are a noble creature.-May the generosity, kindness, and exertion you have devoted to the interests of the amiable, unfortunate Mrs B. be rewarded by many a blessing, superadded to a consciousness that will strew roses over your pillow!

I congratulate you, from my inmost heart, upon the king's recovery, which, I trust, will preserve to us the political saviour of our country.

Your mind has of late, I conclude, been too much engrossed by patriotic solicitudes to receive visits from your muse, though benevolence, through the ever-open passages in your heart, found means to engage your animated attention. The next poetical pleasure you can give me to that of sending me verses of your own, is to hear you avow approbation of mine. It is from you that I learn the existence of the word idiocy, as synonymous to idiotism. Substituting it for the lat

ter, my line is rendered much more harmonious. ~ This word is to me as an hidden guinea, just discovered by a miser.

With what original ideas does that brain of yours teem! What spirit and frolic in the manner of your telling me, that one of the two sonnets I sent you had strength, the other softness!

But I am, beyond expression, gratified by your warm approbation of my paraphrastic translations of Horace. The praise of so perfect a master of the beauties of my original, is an armour of steel and gold, against the sneers of the pedant, who demands fidelity in a translation, at the expence of spirit and of grace. I have taken the painter's maxim for my guiding rule in these attempts" It is better to sin against truth than beauty." Sir John Demham, my friend Weston tells me, justly observes that poetry, like ether, is a very subtle and volatile spirit, which in pouring from one language into another, evaporates so much, that, if a new spirit be not added in the transfusion, little more than a caput mortuum will remain. Adieu!

LETTER LXI.

MISS WILLIAMS.

Lichfield, March 3, 1789.

YOUR charming poem on the Slave Trade is a most welcome present. It would have given me great pleasure to have covered many pages in discriminating its various graces-but a recent inflammation in my eyes forbids the indulgence.

Self-partiality, which makes us fond of ideas and images that have arisen in our own minds, increases perhaps the solemn feelings, excited by the twelve first lines of your exordium. If your friend, Mr Hardinge, has thought it worth his while to preserve my letters, he could shew you one, written last April, in answer to one of his, which requested me to employ my muse on this popular subject. That letter of mine to Mr Hardinge, described scenery, and expressed ideas exactly similar to those in the first twelve lines of your poem. I never committed them to measure, through utter want of time for compositions of any length. I could obtain it only by the sacri

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