into Wales, and which remained with him till this perilous attack. He could not be removed with safety during the winter's rigour. Meantime Mrs Smith exerted herself in preparing his new and lightsome habitation, and made it very neat and comfortable; removed all his books, and little furniture, and last Monday Mrs Smith, Mr and Mrs Thomas White, and myself, went with him to take possession, and drank tea and supt in his pleasant parlour. He has a good bed-chamber, a neat second room, for Mrs Smith, if he should again want her nocturnal nearness to his person, and a third for his new servant. I know he will have your fervent wishes for his recovery, and, in that trust, he presents to you his most affectionate respects.

I do not recollect that you ever mentioned Mrs Scowen to me. Very interesting is her portrait in your last letter. It is sad that the peace of so pure and liberal a mind should have been an almost incessant mark for the arrows of misfortune. I long to know more of her history. Closely connected with you these past thirty years, and I unconscious that you possessed a beloved friend of that name! It is then probable that she knew Honora-the day-star of your youth, and of mine. Ah! how often do I exclaim, "Be thou on a moon-beam, Honora,

near the window of my rest, when my soul is at peace, and the hours of anxiety are past."

I wish Mrs Scowen would accompany you on your promised visit to me this spring. O! how long it is since we met! Your next letter will, I trust, fix the period for restoring you to my corporal sense, whose image has, from early youth, lived in my mind, with many many a regret for the distance which divides our persons. If our poor friend continues tolerably well; if I have not to mourn the loss of his existence, or its comfortless debility, how glad shall I be to see you both together, whom, in days long fled, I have so often seen with a third, that, in this world, I must see no more, except with the faithful eye of consecrating remembrance.

That Miss G. Hardy's constitution, rescued from terrible suffering and danger, by the skill of Dr Mosely, retained its state of progressive health, when you last wrote to me, I rejoice. I hope this winter's rigour has not thrown back the amiable creature into her long oppressive malady.

How lamentably disease prevails amongst those sisters, and how dreadfully pitiable was their late maternal loss? Their beloved brother's return will illuminate, for a while, the darkness of regret, and impart as much of joy as cruel disease will permit to arise. I am glad that kind brother is

not amongst the countless victims of the late fruitless and remorseless war.

General Grinfield and his amiable lady left us before your last arrival. It was one universal regret that she was only lent, not given to our little city; but we were consoled that she melted away from us in the blessed sunshine of returning peace.

Well and wisely do you speak on its subject, concerning those redeeming contingencies which the never-ending flight of days and years may bring to rescue this country from the dangerous situation in which the presumptuous folly, the rashness and cruelty of her late rulers, have placed her; who, in defiance of the solemn warnings, and self-evident truths, which their wiser opponents uttered, from time to time, in the senate, persisted in purchasing, with her gold and her blood, the supremacy of her foe.

LETTER III.

WALTER SCOTT, Esq.

Lichfield, April 29, 1802.

ACCEPT my warmest thanks for the so far overpaying bounty of your literary present*. In speaking of its contents, I shall demonstrate that my sincerity may be trusted, whatever cause I may give you to distrust my judgment. In saying that you dare not hope your works will entertain me, you evince the existence of a deep preconceived distrust of the latter faculty in my mind. That distrust is not, I flatter myself, entirely founded, at least if I may so gather from the delight with which I peruse all that is yours, whether prose or verse, in these volumes.

Your dissertations place us in Scotland, in the midst of the feudal period. They throw the strongest light on a part of history indistinctly sketched, and partially mentioned by the English historians, and which, till now, has not been suf

* Miùstrelsy of the Scotish Border, consisting of historical and romantic ballads, collected by Walter Scott, Esq.-S.

ficiently elucidated, and rescued by those of your country, from the imputed guilt of unprovoked depredation on the part of the Scots.

The old border ballads of your first volume, are so far interesting, as they corroborate your historic essays; so far valuable, as that they form the basis of them. Poetically considered, little surely is their worth; and I must think it more to the credit of Mrs Brown's memory, than of her taste, that she could take pains to commit to remembrance, and to retain there, such a quantity of uncouth rhymes, almost totally destitute of all which gives metre a right to the name of poetry.

Poetry is like personal beauty; the homeliest and roughest language cannot conceal the first, any more than can coarse and mean apparel the second. But grovelling colloquial phrase, in numbers inharmonious; verse that gives no picture to the reader's eye, no light to his understanding, no magnet to his affections, is, as composition, no more deserving his praise, than coarse forms and features in a beggar's raiment, are worth his attention. Yet are there critics who seem to mistake the squalid dress of language for poetic excellence, provided the verse and its mean garb be ancient.

Of that number seems Mr Pinkerton, in some