absolutely they cannot trespass upon the guardian golden rule of humanity-" Do unto others, as thou wouldst they should do unto thee."

The novel has not yet fallen in my way. No hours are mine to waste upon romances, that are not very eminent. Who would so waste a much more plenteous leisure, that has fifteen volumes of the glorious Richardson upon their shelves?

"Who but rather turns

To heaven's bright orb his unrestrained view,
Than to the glimmering of a waxen flame!
Who, that from Alpine heights his labouring eye,
Shoots o'er the wide horizon, to survey

Nile, or the Ganges, rolling the broad wave
Through mountains, plains, and spacious cities old,
And regions dark with woods, would turn his gaze
To mark the path of some penurious rill,
That murmurs at his feet?"

You say Mrs Piozzi's style, in conversation, is exactly that of her travels. Our interviews were only two-no vulgarness of idiom or phrases, no ungrammatic inelegance struck me then, as escaping, amidst the fascination of her wit, and the gaiety of her spirit; but inaccuracies, and ungraceful expressions, often pass unobserved in the quick commerce of verbal society, that are very disgusting, after their deliberate passage through the pen. What testimony did her Johnson bear, both by

precept and example, against slovenly inelegance of style! What force and beauty do his observations, upon life and manners, receive from the magnificence of their language! However, if Mrs Piozzi has chosen to take a lower tone, as to style, it ought, at least, to have been pure, to have possessed the simplex mundities of Richardson's, Gray's, and Hayley's prose compositions, when they choose to clip the eagle wings of their eloquence.

Your opinion of Mr Hayley's tragedies is mine. If his Eudora is upon the same sentimental declamatory plan, long speeches, and few characters, I shall not like it. There is little wonder that the milk-woman's did not succeed. The tragic muse is, in this age, propitious to nobody but Jephson, at least as to inspirations of high poetic value.

Miraculous as it is, that, amidst the darkness of incultivation, and the miseries of want, Lactilla should have been able to exhibit inspirations worth any thing to a refined taste, yet I profess not to hold her claims to genius so high as many hold them. Surely, however, she has sometimes written what would not have disgraced even exalted poets. In justice to her talents, though I am afraid she is not amiable, I am tempted to inclose a few extracts from her works, to mitigate an opinion of yours, which, amounting to absolute contempt, nay, avowed detestation, becomes

a prejudice unworthy of a mind liberal as Sophia's.

Pleasant Mrs Piozzi, with all her knowledge as a linguist and an historian, is somewhat ignorant upon poetic subjects. She speaks of odewriting as an inferior species of composition, the utmost excellence of which can (she says) place no man on a level with the epic, the dramatic, or didactic bard. Now the rank of the lyric poet, as settled by the ancients, succeeds immediately to that of the epic. Pindar, who wrote nothing but odes, is always named immediately after Homer, taking the lead of Eschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles; and our English Pindar, Gray, is the first poetic name of this century. She ought to know that the Latins place their lyric Horace next to their epic Virgil, much more on account of his odes than of his satires; for, in the latter, Juvenal vies with him. Their great didactic poet, Lucretius, though high in fame, obtained not Horatian eminence. She ought also to recollect, that Dryden owes his chief glory to his Ode.

My General Evening has this instant shewn me the fate of Eudora. I had an ill-divining soul upon her subject. From the instant I beheld Marcella in manuscript, I saw that Mr Hayley's genius was not calculated to the dramatic meri

dian, any more than Pope's to the lyric. But I grieve for the wounded feelings of so fine a spirit on occasions like these, and regret that he quitted, for a new inauspicious sphere, the bright tracks of his glory, as a lyric and didactic bard.

Sir B B the brilliant, was lately asked, in company, his opinion of Zeluco. He replied, "No great affair as to genius, and without any graces of style-however, Zeluco is a good rough novel.”—So fastidious are these modern fine men, even where they have imagination and literature. Adieu! Yours faithfully.

LETTER XC.

DR DARWIN.

Feb. 11, 1790.

GRATEFULLY do I thank you for this second delightful present from the * new edition of the Botanic Garden. No work of length can be so perfect, but that the genius, which produced, may improve it.

The Amaryllis, with its beautiful simile and

*The second.

its note-the poetic landscapes also, after Wright, are rich additions to the first canto-that graceful name, Orixa, improves the 184th line. In my translations of the Odes of Horace, I have often found the high-vowelled names of the Greek and Roman cities produce harmonious effect in the flow of the lines: as,

"Nor patient Lacedemon wakes my lyre,
That trains her sons to all the warrior's toil;
Nor me Larissa's airy graces fire,

Though round her hills the golden vallies smile;
But my lov'd mansion by the circling wood,
On the green bank of clear Albunea's flood,
Its walls resounding with the echo'd roar,
As Anio's torrents down the mountain pour."

The Dream of the Dormouse pleases me extremely, and the happy expression "Kernell'd groves;"-not so the alteration of the rhymes form and storm, in the Colchgeum, to air and hair, because, being succeeded by year and sphere, the continued jingle cloys my ear. But I now see why they are changed, and, to be sure, the added lines, to which the discarded rhymes are removed, make large recompense. It is well to have lessened by one, the plentitude of the epithet fair, on the 25th and 26th page. Shakespeare's sleeping moonlight has been happily adopted in the poetic mirror of Wright's pictures. On the