suit had been so suspiciously clandestine, and who acknowledges the commission of murder. The image of a sorrowing mother, presenting itself in vain to the imagination of that love-devoted maid, would not have heightened our sympathy with her distress. Aware that it would not, Prior informs us, that his heroine lost her mother in infancy :

"They call'd her Emma, for the beauteous dame,
Who gave the virgin birth, had borne the name."

By the word had, we learn that she was no more at the period of this jealous experiment.

So much for Mr Headly, that prose-man decider upon the constituent excellencies of genuine poetry.

My poor father has lately suffered extremely from the paroxysms of a violent cough, to which his strength seems very unequal. To-night he seems better. God grant he may continue to amend—and may you, dear Cary, never know the misery of witnessing pains and struggles which you cannot soften, in an object exquisitely dear to you!

LETTER LXXXIX.

MISS WESTON.

Feb. 9, 1790.

SINCE I last conversed with you upon paper, my dear Sophia, months have hurried away, whose every hour presented claims upon my attention, oppressive from their number, and often painful from their nature. I lead an anxious and fearful, as well as busy life; struggling to preserve a precarious blessing, which seems every moment ready to elude my grasp. Nor is it alone of filial dread that my spirit is sick-shadows of apprehension often lour upon me from another quarter, in some alarming symptoms of declining health in that disinterested faithful friend, whose distinguished virtues have so long been dear to me.

You have doubtless heard of Charlotte Rogers' smiling fortune, in captivating the heart of a man of considerable estate and acknowledged merit. Gentle, benevolent, intelligent; it is of little moment that Mr Zachary has but one arm, and is a Quaker. He retains none of that rigidity which teaches many of his sect to fancy cri

minality in fashionable apparel, and in partaking the public amusements.

you have seen Mr

since his return to

If town, you are doubtless acquainted with the dissolution of all intercourse and companionship between me and his Lichfield friend, who has lately assumed airs of superiority and contempt in public company, rudely contradicting every opinion I advanced. I was sorry, on many accounts, that he forced me to shun him-I bore much ere I took the resolution, on account of our long acquaintance, of the bounty of his spirit to those that wanted his generosity; for his amiable sister's sake, and for the sake of another lady in Lichfield whom I esteem-but I was not to forget what I owed to myself.

Notwithstanding my estrangement from the house where he sojourned, Mr often called upon me, and passed two afternoons and one evening here. We talked much of you and Miss Powel, when to him a still more interesting theme did not draw his eloquence along its channel; I mean the attractions of his lovely Sappho. I have seen a sonnet of her's that has very considerable beauty. It is really a sonnet, legitimate as elegant.

You speak, and beautifully do you speak, of indignities and gross insults committed upon the

abilities of the glorious Siddons in several of the public prints. I have never seen any thing of the kind. The General Evening Post, and the Gentleman's Magazine, are the only periodical publications I look into. I chose that newspaper because it is cleaner from scandal, detraction, and impertinence than most of its brethren. My leisure is too scanty for the indulgence of a daily paper. Nothing can be more just than your observations upon the idiot-veering of the public

taste:

"That to a radiant angel link'd,

Will sate itself on the celestial powers,
And feed on garbage."

It is past conjecture that P. is the source and master-spring of all the blasphemy against Siddonian excellence. Mr Siddons, as you know, traced to him the first malicious paragraphs that appeared against his wife; Mr W knows this, amongst other countless instances of his dark ingratitude, and yet it seems he corresponds with him. Alas! how does this weakness abase the dignity of Mr W.'s character! Mrs Siddons and I may well exclaim to him, as Lear did to Regan, after Goneril's treachery had been unmasked,

"O, W, wilt thou take him by the hand!"

After the charming portrait you had given me of Mrs L, I was indeed surprised to find that she could be taken with the affected pathos that always misses its aim so totally to the undebauched taste, so dazzled with the tinsel garb of that same coxcomb's imagination. But since I have seen some of Mrs L.'s compositions in rhyme and measure, my wonder has ceased. People often admire productions which are on a level with their own, much more than those of higher excellence. The verses in question are strikingly in P.'s style, in his miscellaneous poems. She mistakes the power of producing tuneful numbers with facility for genius, and breathes a profusion of them upon languishing lap-dogs, liberated linnets, and jilted gentlemen.

Well may you wonder what rage possesses the people who delight in seeing virtue and genius insulted in public newspapers; who, as you beautifully express it, "take a savage pleasure in drinking the intellectual life-blood of their neighbours"justly do you observe," that if they did not, such stuff would have no readers, and the evil would die a natural death." That it is fed and nursed into gigantic enormity, is a melancholy proof of human depravity. Whenever I see a person taking in, and reading with avidity, scandalous newspapers, I set them down for worthless-more